Feel tired and a bit faint whenever I get up. On the edge of illness? So I stay in, do little, wary of triggering worse. Work on my lifesize, furry cat-centaur. Sculpt the head: insert plastic foam (packing material) for a skull, inside foam rubber from an old mattress. Trim and pad till it fits.

BEFORE

AFTER

At last I cover it all with pantyhose, then a kid's hoodie to smooth & unify the new head. Eventually, a furry pelt will tighten and strengthen the figure. But enough to make her stand firmly? Still wobbly so far.

Like me. Patience! Progress.

BBC Mysteries: Inspector Lewis. A shy fragile Oxford teacher tried a singles site, but her video's pirated onto a cruel humor site. Gets a torrent of mockery and hate mail. She kills herself. Or did she? When gorgeous Shakespeare student Briony does a little digging, she's found dead too. And not a suicide. Bludgeoned!

I'm raven-perched atop a cupola on a Victorian mansion in Berkeley. Dawn. Rococo trim and psychedelic paint. No wonder Berkelean politics are odd: they live like mice in weddingcakes-- drag-queen cakes the size of God. I'm pondering rare dream-types. And some so vivid they're not "real as waking life" but realer. I suspect this scene is one-- So feverish the carve. Though one black matte bruise in the floral stands out: on roof-brink leans a heavy cast-iron safe! Unsafe. About to swim into abyss. Iron eager to cast itself. Public hazard. And to raise that black lump here had to bruise a brawny team of frats; no mere accident waiting to happen. A weapon cocked as a raven-slouch. Weapon set to fire. The Berkeley streets are empty. Safe to test if I'm dreaming, and safely safen the unsafe. I lean shoulder hard on the black cube. Yes. A dream! Too tipsy for a waking anvil. Groans o'er the brink! The raven iron (safe nevermore!) leaps ten meters to crater the street concrete... ...pulling me over the scrimshaw brink! A flailing comet tail. And as I trail, I shriek "LET GO THE SAFE!" My hands obey, let go, let caution plummet and smash below. Freed, I will my meteor fall to slow until I hover effortless as ghost, mid-air. No physics-paradox: no Berkeley's here to stare. So I float, heart pounding hard. Well, well! Guess I only half-believed, or as I fell I'd feel no fear at all. But is this really fear? What if a bout of tachycardia'd begun (I get adrenaline rushes; cause unclear) and my sly sleeping shaman-brain whipped up a weakmare to explain my already-drumming heart AND lack of fear? I wake to find it's true. A dawn attack. Clear source of the dream? Well, no; all that baroque from a mere heart-pound? And yet... "Let go the SAFE!" roared loud indeed. The warning clear.

• Berkeley: Bishop Berkeley, who both the town and university are named for, dealt in phenomenological doubt--"How would you know if the whole world's a dream?" Well, in THIS case it is, and I put my life on the line to test it! Even if Berkeley's not here to see the dreamer fall...
• Safe might crush heads: in that BBC mystery, Oxford student Bryony found hints that a prof's "suicide" wasn't; the killer finds out and cracks her skull to silence her.
• Safe: pun. The safe's a hazard, the hazard's safe. But a visual pun too: the rooftop safe--a protective shell--echoes poor Bryony's skull.
• "Let go of the safe": I have been playing it safe; felt borderline ill. Maybe retreating actually makes me worse; the safe drags me down.
• Forestall a head-smasher, early: resting up today may have forestalled a full attack of my recurring illness--fever, chills and headaches. Not malaria. Lyme? Undiagnosed so far.
• ACTION: don't mistake such slow days for depression! With an undiagnosed, untreated illness, I need such rests. Or else... crash! And yet... let go of the safe; it drags me down. Let go the safe and hover. It's a dream.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites