THAT DAY

A book on Carl Jung appears at the library where I work [sorry, my journal lacks the title]. I skim it at lunch. I'm curious about Jung--more him than his theories... For example, most textbooks mention his theory that the mind is many-layered, going back to archaic ways we've consciously forgotten. And many tell the famous dream that convinced him of this:

Jung dreamed that his house was modern on the top floor, but centuries old (and full of fascinating junk) downstairs... Then he found a hidden stair down to a cellar built in Roman times, and under THAT, he found a pit of bones dating back to the Stone Age.

But this book has a something completely new. The house Jung dreamed of was real, of course. It had been his grandmother's house in town; a big old place. But years AFTER Jung had the dream, and had interpreted it symbolically, they did some excavations, and, yes, they uncovered a Roman cellar no one knew about!

The dream was literal and psychic, as well as symbolic. Jung's dream house had floors of time-future as well as time-past.

THAT NIGHT

An art show. A long sequence of pictures, taking up over half the show, forms a loose linked story, in different styles and with oblique references. But the general plot is clear. It's a tale of love and hate.

He was a Timelord stranded on Earth, though he could still change shape. His animal forms are all like deer, goats, or vicunas, though he may have a wolf form, too.

She was a Timelord too, but sent here as an agent. She's blond, tall, beautiful and very open and young-seeming--when she's human. Her shifting skills are broader than his: a fish, a coyote, a chicken, and many others.

They often both end up undercover in the same century--she on a mission, and he seeking parts to fix his broken timeship, his Tardis. She's officially supposed to treat him as an enemy agent.

A quick set of snapshots, each of another of his schemes to escape Earth, and her blocking his meddling with human history.

Opposites attract, I guess. Over time.

And they had time.

Now I'm him. I'm swimming in a muddy lake surrounded by wooded hills. The water's opaque and for a second I worry about sharks or gators, but I don't care--swimming is the only way to touch her.

I mean... she'll only touch me here, secretly, in the water, where others on the beach or even in the water near us just can't see.

We face each other, neck-deep. We tickle each other's inner thighs, creeping up to the crotch... she doesn't want to fuck in the water, but she wants me to play with her cunt and pelvic floor and ass. We're wearing swimsuits, but her hands creep inside and stroke and wiggle and tickle.

It's very exciting... and a promise.

Now I'm her. It's the 19th century, in Santa Cruz, California. I'm tinkering with a device that he gave up on: a spring-loaded stick with rings and plates and screws. It's a pocket Tardis! I'm trying to get it to work again, though I'm unsure if I'm doing it for him or for me. I know if he finds it working, or any Tardis working, he's gone! Despite our long, long on-again off-again relationship over the centuries, he won't let his liking for me keep him here.

And though I'll fight to keep him from recklessly zooming off to disturb history again, perversely I respect him for this. Not for his morality, but for his stubborn focus on freeing himself.

I tinker with the parts but some seem to be missing: a little screw?

In the past he used to trap me and block me. Will he this time?

A generation later. Jazz and gin. We live in the Southern Mission, in San Francisco, on the slope of Mount Davidson, by a maze that's part of this war we're involved in. I appear and disappear, but won't show him where I hid my Tardis.

For a generation we live together, posing as human. We get degrees and become professors at a college: historians, of course! We write plays based on our experiences. Our apartment is clear and clean as an aquarium, a big green tank. We live lightly, waiting for a move that never comes.

We do grow to love each other: I mean, admit it openly. We always did, underneath.

I affectionately refer to our days of cat and mouse (never sure who was which), as "the old days" now.

The Great Depression. He disappears. An opportunity came up, and he dives into the centuries again, back into the opaque water. He’s in his animal form somewhen, somewhere.

A fugitive? No. On the trail of his lost part again!

And I’m shocked he did it! Laugh when I see how I’ve deluded myself.

I follow him, leaving home and professorship and human form, loping across campus into the Arboretum and... gone. Tracking through time. I only want to see, not help him or try to change him now. I've learned I can't, and perhaps shouldn't. I want to see him as the pure animal he was before I tried to tame him with love... just as I was a pure time-traveling animal before he helped me by accepting my love, and the tinge of illusions I carried with my love.

If we have a relationship now, it must be pure -- each of us must be what we really are.

I take the form of a hen, flapping across the Old World into the New, trailing him. I stop now and then to lay my eggs, which are half his children too. Often they come before I have a nest ready, but I leave my eggs in wild bird's nests. Whether they'll hatch into Timelords or chickens or were-beasts, even I don't know. He's all that matters to me now. My love is pure. Condemn me if you must.

Though I will say in my own defense, our children aren't like you hapless humans. Foster parents suit us well--for the first few years, before our powers fully manifest. Still, you may hiss. I went on. I was a chicken and I was free, and I chose to chase him. To love him, not my eggs.

So punish me--I'm a bad egg! Lock me up, fry me for my sins! Chicken saints, chicken sinners, chicken eggs, you treat us cheat us and eat us all the same--you have no moral edge. Hiss on.

Now. Whatever now means.. On! On! Around the world, up and down time, in a game of chutes and ladders. I'm encouraged in my quest by little notes and pictures, forwarded from home... from him! Though they carefully lack a return address... still.

For a long time I don't catch on that this is one last illusion. Though not mine: our friends have been making up and sending these lures, so I won't get discouraged.

And so they falsify his love. The pure hunger that cuts through time and place is not easy to sustain, in a world full of treacherous, well-meaning friends.

WHAT'S IT MEAN?

I'm still not sure, beyond the warning that it's quite hard to be yourself, that role-playing takes over, that time and place and work and colleagues and friends all mold you--squeeze you out of shape.

What that lost part was, that he sought above all else--I don't know. Jung might.

ART NOTE, 2024

A real artist would've illustrated this dream in one unified style. But I'm clumsy and slow, so I took days, tackling each scene & image on its own--and that meant I fumbled around with varied moods and medias.

But then the dream was like that too. Our lives in the dream were like that. In the dream. Not here, of course. Not you. I'm sure you're the real you.

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