This one's an example of how a perfectly mundane day can still provoke an extraordinary dream. Or is that whole theory wrong? Did my quiet day just give the dream elbow room? We all assume our dreams are a reaction to our day--but this dream seems to disagree!

THAT DAY: All Quiet on the Home Front

I've been ill. Thought I was better, but today I wake in a sweat with a mild fever. Headache--actually worse today, despite the rest. Discouraging.

While I'm writing my dreams, my sister Miriel calls. "I'm meeting Mom in Half Moon Bay, do you want to join us? She's been weakening slowly; I've been visiting more while she's still with us." I feel mild guilt I don't visit more, but not much. I'm struggling to survive and get well myself. I have nothing to spare, not now. Even if I were well, I couldn't go anyway. I lent my car to my friend Alder so she could go to a family reunion.

Listless all day. Eat small meals, don't exercise much. My friend Nic needs a corrected photo of her painting of Christ surrounded by the atrocities of the Inquisition and witch-burnings. I take the finished digital file up the street to her. Then walk to the store and buy milk and peanuts. But stay in most of the day. Not much of an Easter vacation!

Work on a dream-painting, Razi and the Holy Wino of Shasta--redo the reflections of Razi in the hotspring. Still not perfect but better. Water is difficult...

I finish Overlay, an experimental dream-comic with transparent overlays between pages where you see my dream/aura/energy sense.

Then I just look at and sort and contemplate dream art on my hard disk, and half-done comix on paper. Which ones cry out to be done next? I have no will. It's the art that decides. Or possibly the illness; I know I can't do anything big right now.

Practice the voice and piano parts for some original songs I plan to pitch to our band, the Krelkins.

Read "Fables: 1001 Nights of Snow" (backstories of various characters in FABLES, a comic-book series). Varied and interesting art-styles, though the stories are slight. Then I start Delia Sherman's THE PORCELAIN DOVE, about pre-revolutionary France...

Zonk out early. But it wasn't that awful a day, I guess. For a sick day it was fine. A lot of art did itself without my ego (or little inner critics) getting in the way... or worsening my headache. I'm tired, that's all. Sleep...

Dream 1: Shelley Guesses

I'm visiting Shelley, a hypnotherapist I saw weekly for years, though now I've tapered off. This time I gave her my dream notes beforehand--not typed up, just my rough, scrawled dream-notes on waking. I was so busy this last couple of weeks I didn't have time to write them up! An experiment to see what she could get out of those half-awake scrawls.

Quite a lot, really! Shelley says "I found two linked themes: health-risks as assertion-challenges. Each time you're exposed to something toxic, it's a spiritual opportunity. Will you assert your needs and protect yourself even if it means drawing attention, even making a scene? They're spiritual lessons.

"I didn't see any dreams suggesting there are simple cures once you've let yourself become sick, but assertion looks like a powerful PREVENTIVE medicine."

{ACTION: ouch! If a relapse has no cure, I BETTER protect my health scrupulously.}

Dream 2: Lucid Living

I'm biking along slowly, like the easy-going hippie I am. Polite, letting cars go by--the very antithesis of the San Francisco demon biker, the Critical Mass maniac all the drivers fear.

But suddenly I change my attitude. Declare "I'm male, I'm fast, I'm coordinated." In my teens and twenties I was ashamed of masculinity, due to some horrible role models. But before that, when I was little, I saw myself as a boy all right--but a small, slow, clumsy boy. Wrong too! I wasn't clumsy or small at all; I was skipped ahead, younger, unable to compete with older boys, but in fact I was tall and well-coordinated for my age.

Suddenly I realize this somatically, not just intellectually. Accept aggression, enjoy speed--kinetic guy-pleasures. And right away feel an instant burst of energy! ZOOM!

Revealing.

Pass the entrance to a school. A man out front leans on a sundial or dry fountain, tallying students. A voter registration campaign, I think. But I zoom on by. I did go here once, but not any more! Free!

Now I bike on water! Nah, I can't walk on it--not Jesus. My energy epiphany wasn't THAT big! But I can bike on it. Maybe it's just the air in the tires. Bikes always get me high...

Head out across a deep lake. To the right the shore-hills are dim, on the horizon. Ahead, a crowded city lines the slopes above a half-moon bay.

The streets are jammed. Everyone's out--an election? And I'm a citizen of this city-state. Must find my precinct! I'm late; a few other stragglers walking on water check in at the shore-gates, and then I'm the very last. My district is across the inlet from here. I set out for it, but have a failure of nerve with this huge crowd all watching me, all waiting. I should zoom straight across but I hug the shore nervously, fearing my satori will suddenly fail and I'll drown. Lengthens my trip only by 100 yards or so, but the bike is slowing too... Guess my lack of faith is depressing my bicycle as well as me. Sloshing awash, it takes forever...

But still, I don't sink, and eventually I do arrive.

Here on the far side of this Half Moon Bay, I'm in the future! Well, no wonder it was hard going! That wasn't water, that was time.

Up a boatramp onto a stone terrace. There's a great podium or pulpit. On the stand, a huge open book. I climb up and look. My dream diary! Well, a record of nocturnal events should be called a noctary, shouldn't it?

The dates on the pages are yet to come. The book of my future, all printed out for me! It feels like cheating to peek. Could cause trouble--what if reading the future collapses a sort of quantum uncertainty, firming up problems that might have stayed potential? But I already HAVE concrete problems. I want advice on this recalcitrant illness! So I snoop, cautiously--skim my future dreams to see if I'm better, and if so, what cured me.

I find neatly typed dreams, weeks ahead, months ahead. Their general flavor: complex but sober--practical, good advice. But still struggling with illness. Don't sound worse, but not much better. A daily discipline to build health. And nightly? The dreams lack fun, magic, love/sex, strange creatures. Dull, earnest dreams keeping me on the path.

But interspersed with the dreams are detailed pencil sketches of possible paintings and sculptures. They look lovely, strange, magical... sexy. Hmm! I don't HAVE to wait passively for dreams to give me magic--my conscious mind can take initiative too! Not lucid dreaming: lucid living.

The two sculpture-studies I recall:

1: Sketches of a krelkin, one of the beings I meet in dreams. She's reared up on her hindpaws, leaning on the hooked staff of a shepherdess. In some, she's nude; in others, draped round her slight shoulders is a thin shawl or gauze robe that doesn't reach to her hips--doesn't hide a thing. The sketches are stained with watercolor washes of sepia, or are on paper so old it's yellowed.

And I won't be, either. Not any more.

2: My spirit-wife Silky is drawn five times in one big sketch--pencil and sepia again. She's in the form of a big-eyed mare--five of her, in different symbolic poses. These represent the Five Appetites I need to indulge for health and happiness: food, rest/sleep, love/sex, exercise/dance, and... creativity? When I woke I wasn't sure exactly what--painting? Something focused and demanding... Maybe it doesn't matter what! Anything that's a nonphysical workout--a mental or spiritual stretch.

Like asking someone out on a date. Showing my art to a gallery. Or walking out of a required class in a toxic computer lab.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Bike = solitude. I worked alone today. Solo, I'm FULL of energy!
• Gender breakthrough = I was ashamed of being male; that's been healing. But I hadn't noticed this deeper childhood distortion of my body-image: I feel small timid & clumsy. False! I was just younger than my classmates--precocious, skipped ahead. For my real age, I was large and coordinated.
• The entrance fused my middle school (where older boys beat me up) and the old staff entrance to Stanford Library (where work beat me down).
• No longer trapped in school OR work = My friend Nic went to Easter Mass. I went for a walk, glad I wasn't Christian. Ran into her later at the store; I felt I should wait & socialize. Rebelled! Went home to eat breakfast. I honored my hunger!
• Bike on water = Nic went to church, but I don't need to. I can work small miracles myself--long as I honor my needs and ride my solitary flow-state--my bike!
• City on a half-moon bay = Miriel met our mom today in Half Moon Bay. I didn't go.
• I'm last, holding everyone up = guilt for not going?
• Election = erection? Due to shyness and illness I'm about the latest-starting dater in the world. Delaying the erection...
• Go round not straight at goal = 1: didn't call Cheryl for a date--just left a message. 2: didn't get up and leave that toxic computer lab yesterday.
• Slowdown = my current relapse. Notice, though, that even at my slowest, I still didn't sink, and was STILL just as fast as Jesus walking on water!
• Dream art of the future = Unsure. I studied my past dreams for art & story subjects. Is this dream arguing "look to the future" instead?
• Sexy images of krelkins = 1: the promise of dreamwork. Can go on sexy adventures I can't in waking life. 2: Playing music! I sing & songwrite for a band, The Krelkins; dreams approve of music...
• Five Healthy Appetites = parodies the Five Senses and Seven Deadly Sins.
• Equine figurines = eches my sculpture Unicorn Orgy. I nearly hid it away--too private a fantasy. But it turned me on, and at last I posted photos of it. A wave of hits, and it just got featured in the Brit magazine Bizarre! So the dream hints that following my urges is right--forget being sensible. Where'd that ever get me?

ACTIONS

1. To get my energy back, respect my hermit side. I ZOOM when I'm alone and doing exactly what I want.
2. Forget a dayjob! My future doesn't include one any time soon. If ever.
3. Be bold and direct. Cowardice tires me more than directness. Strike out directly toward goals, over deep water. Never mind God, trust your tires!
4. Walk out of classes and jobs and relationships if I have to--protect my health at all costs! Once I trigger a relapse, I lose days.
5. If I want to share art and stories, draw my recent dreams, not old ones! Work on live issues!
6. Paint the Five Healthy Appetites. And show it.

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