I'm at the edge of a vast crowd. Near me, a loud argument starts. A tall birdlike figure stands up. I'm unsure if it's a man or woman, if it's even human--a bit herony, crany. The aura is like Wilmer, the paranoid gunsel in The Maltese Falcon. Uh-oh. It waves a strange futuristic gun--an energy weapon? No, bullets! This gun-stork turns to fire into the crowd, but two people the gunner was arguing with grab the gun-hand and struggle to turn it up or down. I think about Stephen La Berge's advice not to change such dream-figures, only choose your own actions. So I yell "Shoot ME, I'm lucid!" Which is ironic since by La Berge standards I'm not: I never deduced for sure that it's a dream, I just feel it is--and anyway I'm not so sure it makes a difference. Why's it okay to recklessly risk this body because it's a dream? Like a Euro pioneer casually cutting down trees and game and darker neighbors in the "wilderness"... of dreams. Or a kid wrecking clothes, confident Mom will clean and fix them. Who supplied me with this body--am I so sure it's free, mine to trash?

Yet I'm protecting others here--I'm a shaman, that's my job. I risk either my body or my values. In the crisis, it's the only way I think of to do my job. Reluctantly, I wave at the killer and repeat "Shoot at ME then." Gunner turns to me and aims clumsily, with hangers-on. My body's turned so my left side faces the gun. Good, not too much cross-section. I'm ten or fifteen yards away, s/he's agitated and wrestling two people. May miss, and if I'm hit, it's likely to be an arm or leg. Odds are I can risk a bullet or two under the circumstances. But I don't know if I can endure a full clip--and how many does that strange gun hold? And what caliber?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

I hate crowds. I think the gunner is my tension. The bullets are stress hormones, and my body is... my body! It always takes the hit, pays the price when I socialize too much! And I ignore this, stoically!

ACTION: should I have intervened more aggressively, bewitched the gun or tried to take it? Transformed the gunner into the stork s/he resembled? As a shaman I probably could've, even without Stephen La Berge-type lucidity--but SHOULD I?

NEXT EVENING

My housemate Alder turns on the TV and finds... the climax of The Maltese Falcon, with the original gunsel, Wilmer. Sam Spade disarms him promptly. No tolerance at all for his triggerhappy paranoia--he knows a nut case when he sees one! Maybe Sam has the right idea. Time to suppress my fears, or root them out. I'm paying a physical price for them--and I'm not sure I have the right to indulge such feelings anymore. To victimize my own body.

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