People tell me my familiar spirit, Silky, is back in town, but I haven't seen her. Is she avoiding me? I don't know why.

I try the spots she frequents--she often likes to hang with the gargoyles on the older churches in town, and with the carved critters on some of the neoclassical buildings in the Civic Center.

But she's not up on the first few buildings I check, and the gargoyles all say they haven't seen her.

At last I spot her in a colored drawing or painting of mine I forgot--a hearth seen in side view, in a large old-fashioned hall. Silky, in one of her favorite forms, a black mare, is standing rampant--but upside down, on the ceiling!

Being a spirit, she can decide what gravity field she wants to honor. Whimsical. That's Silky all over! Funny-looking, but not that outrageous for her.

But several other anomalies do throw me.

• She's wearing a shiny ruby-red patch--silk? Or rubies or garnets sewn onto cloth? NOT like her to wear anything as a horse--hates feeling haltered or bridled.
• And white speckles are floating through the room. Snow's falling indoors!
• And most shocking of all, Silky is male! A huge erection. As spirits go she's pretty femme. Rarely seen her playing stallion.

Silky likes to be played with. So she obliged!

Whatever feels good, I guess...

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• She hangs with gargoyles: two nights ago I dreamt of gargoyle-goddesses with advice for me. So Silky here may mean my dreamwork itself.
• Inverted, standing on ceiling: is Silky hinting that I'm interpreting my dreams wrong? Upside down and backward! Or is she mocking psychiatry's complicity in homophobia? In the 20th Century, shrinks labeled queers "inverts". Well, here she is, turning male, gay and inverted...
• Equine sex change: I once dreamed I was a woman in love (apparently unrequited) with a Five-Heart Unicorn. Recently, I sculpted that unicorn, but made him female since I was now a straight male. Huge huggable fuckable plushie. Well, not quite a plushie (floppy stuffed sextoy)--wood bones, foamrubber muscles! Push THIS girl around and she pushes BACK. So as I've sewed, I've been (literally) wrestling with a sex-changed equine.
• Snow falls on floating dark horse, sex change again: echoes "Arrival", a painting I saw by Alex Gross in the artbook Weirdo Noir: a glum girl rides a dark Pegasus flying thru snowfall over angular mountains; a note by the kid says "Myself as a girl". I wanted to include this piece in the World Dream Bank if it was a dream, so I emailed Alex to ask "Did you dream it?" No answer. Except in my dreams!
• So what's it all mean? You could dismiss it as mishmash of elements from seeing Arrival & sculpting Fiveheart. But I can't. My dreams always have a point. And I know what it isn't saying! I already knew my playful side, Silky, ignores rules & appearances as long as everyone's having fun. Old news! That upside-downness says I'm missing something important. Either she or I or that guy (whatever HE represents) doesn't know what's up! About what?
• ACTION: Well... sketch her, I guess. I mean him. Them. Finish Fiveheart. And see what's up next. Dreamwork's a long-term game.

"Five Heart Unicorn", sculpture of a dream figure by Chris Wayan, 2014

"Arrival", (dream?) painting by Alex Gross, 2001

2016 NOTE:

Today, I think the dream was prompting me to notice something sexual I didn't for another two years, till after I'd finished fine-tuning all four of the furry sex toys I was sculpting: I tried to make every mouth or vagina I built individual, interestingly different, and they were--except for one thing. Every one was at first too tight, too small, because I underestimated the size of my own cock--both length and diameter. (The reverse of every guy in existence! Don't they all think they're more studly than they are? But I underestimate. Consistently.)

I'm not surprised in retrospect. I grew up surrounded by sisters, with a female/androgenous body image--"I'm in a male body", not "I am male." Not gender-dysphoric enough to risk surgery; my intensest longings are for health and vigor that recurring Lyme denied me, so that's what I've focused on. Talk therapy had corrected my self-image, undone my early training to assume that I (and all males) must be sexist, suspect, always at fault in relationships [thanks, mom!]... but Silky's Erection was warning me I still had work to do: to correct my body image too. "Big cock. And that's OK. More than OK. It's good. Those who like them, like them big." And I was unconsciously building my sexy creatures to force that re-evaluation.

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