On the lawn that used to stretch behind my parents' house, we're playing a sort of soccer game: at least, no hands are allowed. The players are all my relatives; each stands guarding a different golf hole in the lawn--each with his own goal!

But it's not quite golf OR soccer, for the holes are funnels--gravity wells! Each is a star, a solar system. And instead of a ball, we play with many glass marbles. The one currently in play is big, with blue green white and orange swirls: a world. An inhabited world. Time flows differently there--from their viewpoint we're so big and slow that when I kick it there's plenty of time for the inhabitants to get out of the way. And I have to kick it! It needs to be moved to a safe healthy orbit around the right sun. The current orbit's too eccentric.

I leave my own goal and orbit around my big sister. She looks leonine, wide-face, shaggy-maned, old and rough and wild. Scary, but I have to hover near, to keep the world from rolling down into her dead-end gravity well. Is she... a black hole?

A marble rolls a long way, months or years to them. Hard to say from outside. The points of contact with the lawn and the cement patio creep around their world as it rolls, daily? Yearly? Storms, eruptions, how do they see these points of contact with a world so much bigger it may be invisible to them?

Now I'm down on the blue marble, the world. On its long roll to a safe orbit by a friendly sun, a guardian angel guides it. An alien everyone's heard of, but few have seen. It looks like a Bosch fantasy, part strawberry, part truck tire, part vase and part bee, bright red yellow and white. Quite beautiful. It's 5 feet one inch tall, and centuries old. Get lonely in its orbiting ship, bored with its long contract as a shepherd moon. Every lifetime or so, it descends to earth. It can take a human form, and usually does--a tall elegant woman. Easy to find lovers. But she's SO bright and powerful and knowledgeable that no matter how much she hides, she can't walk freely among humans. They get obsessed, or suspect the truth. Then she feels trapped in her human form, obliged to meet human expectations of her. And there's the lifespan problem! She's immortal, her friends and lovers age... And there's a whole annoying priesthood that worships her, in either form, if they catch her. A far as she's concerned, they're just spiritual paparazzi--spoiling all the fun!

Usually. But one priest I know quietly researches all the conflicting historical accounts of glimpses of the guardian's own form. Compares, confirms, and lists its specs, down to its real height. Meeting the Lady, he says "Would you like to take your real form? I'd feel more comfortable, and perhaps you would too."

I think the only humans the Angel really respects are the few like him, who accept its real nature--who don't demand humanity.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Rough wild strange "sister" = a tall woman who entered the clinic today as I left. A street crazy? Didn't hold back her energy. Dream hints she might have odd abilities. Hmm. I worry I'll get involved with another angry outsider... like my ex-girlfriend Kay. She had great power too--and no restraint.
• Gravity well, black hole = the comfortable pull of habit and familiarity is a dead end!
• The game = Two days ago, on "Voyager": the starship captain shot pool, sinking balls like worlds into green pockets... then nearly got her ship stuck in a pocket of space.
• 5'1" = a short girl I saw on Haight Street today; out of hundreds, the only one I was attracted to. Some others looked pretty but their auras looked sick.
• Alien's odd shape and color = "La Chute Des Anges" by Breughel has a beautiful falling angel made of seedpods, butterflies and... a dirt-bike tire? Sure looks like it. Always wondered about that.
• My dream-angel looks like a Breughel devil = admitting I'm remarkable is the sin of pride! But it's my experience. Most people seem so simple. Forceful sometimes, even sharper than me in some area of expertise, but over all, simple.
• Angel = my own soul. Smart, psychic, immortal... and 'alienated'! So I see myself as partly responsible for guarding and guiding this world! Vain, or realistic? Hard to balance responsibilities to self and others when you're a shaman.

And I ignore it... over and over!

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