My friend Xanthe keeps getting pneumonia. She asks me to try dreaming about her lung problems. I've rarely tried to solve other people's problems with my dreams before, but I'll give it a try...

THAT NIGHT

This cop invites me to his house. He claims it's 240 years old. I'm surprised--thought Europeans didn't build here much before 200 years ago. But he's very careful not to say 200 or 250, so maybe it's true.

It's a close little cottage with thick stone walls. Not to my taste, but it does have character. "These two rooms," he says, "are reserved for magic." They're round little chambers with thick plush-red curtains round the walls, and a single branched entrance, like a trachea leading into giant lungs. He adds "The left one is the Goddess's chamber, the right one is the God's. There were Crowley-type rituals here a hundred years ago, maybe even more. The local witches still use them." They look in good shape, though a bit musty. They could use some airing.

Off to the north, a passage opens up to a stage facing out to a huge empty theater. It's being remodeled. I get very excited, and think "This is a theater on the Stanford campus" then "correct" myself, think "It may be Paly High School Auditorium." So this hall, that seems just a few yards long, is really a hidden corridor a couple of miles long! And this place was a secret pagan church, so it may have passages leading still further! I'm very excited. The cop's not. Old news to him.

Now he takes me on the journey over to a neighbor's house. Not a social call, though--business. It's a raid! I recognize the house before he tells me which one it is. It's a little mobile home and we're near the back. The window shows a man and a refrigerator. When he leaves the room, we creep in the back door to arrest him.

He resists--and he's a magician. He whips out a magic sword!

And suddenly the cop who dragged me in here is gone...

The magician's girlfriend comes in. She's tall, feline, and muscular, wearing a bright red bikini. She offers me a sword and dares me to attack her! "Hit me! Go on, try to hit me!" But she's so hot, I'm flustered by her body. The man encourages me to stab her with the sword! I sense it's a deal they've arranged, and they're both laughing at the sexual symbolism and my discomfort to be "pricking" his lover while he watches.

I feel guilty, but try to enjoy it, and be turned on by gently poking and pricking this woman, watching her skin pucker like a peach. She purrs and subtly leans into the swords, though not enough to draw blood... mocking me with her intense eyes. I don't care about the sword, or the scene, or the symbolism, I just want to hold her, and stroke her, and fuck her. Instead I'm teasing her at arms' length, poking delicately and nervously at her crotch. She seems to get off on the power game, but what's in it for me? Still, I do as she dares me, looking her in the eye, keeping it symbolic, the way she wants it...

At last she walks off with her boyfriend.

Suddenly she breaks from him and runs back. I feel it's totally her impulse--the first clean feeling I got from her, unmixed with mockery or hidden meanings thrown to her boyfriend like meat to a crocodile. This is just her.

Out of the bikini she pulls a golden chain, and says "I want you to have this." It's a pendant, a golden figure of a rampant unicorn in profile, about an inch tall. I feel a little shock as the skin-warm gold touches my hand... She scampers back to her lover, and they leave me alone, in their house, with a golden prize.

Since I can't enlarge the bracelet any more, I shrink my wrist. Simple enough: I just turn into a tall bird person with long heron-legs, prehensile feet/hands, and of course very narrow wrist/ankles. The bauble fits easily now, worn like a researcher's bird-band.

I decide to try flying, as long as I'm a bird. It's hard at first, but my main problem isn't physical, but simply forgetting that I can! My body image outlives the body that grew it!

How many other attitudes is that true for?

I spiral up through rooms of their house, up to the rafters. I find owls and other creatures watching me, and wonder if they're other shamans. I become lucid as I explore a sort of skylight deck, and find a way out through an open window...

I think "Oh yeah, this is a dream, then." A furtive thought zips by: "those Stephen LaBerge articles say now that I'm lucid it's going to fade, because I'll get overexcited. So just keep flying and stay in your bird body... don't bother to keep it lucid, you don't need to. You were flying ALREADY."

So I toss my knowledge I'm dreaming out right of my head... as useless!

And then I fly away.

NOTES THAT MORNING

• The twin Magic Rooms = Xanthe's lungs!
• Male and female sacred chambers = Xanthe's treating her lungs (and her health) casually. The dream seems to be suggesting her chronic infections are (at root) more an attitude problem than a physical one. She has to treat her lungs as sacred--no more casual dust/pollen/pesticide exposure... maybe more exercise in clean air?
• The gift = a shamanic reward for doing something I found pointless and uncomfortable, but which she got off on...
• Why a unicorn? 1: it's traditionally considered a healer, and bears a sword on its head! I'm a true shaman now--not just dreaming for myself, but getting diagnostic dreams for others. 2: I was sexually shy in the dream, and the unicorn's become a symbol of virginity... but originally it was a sex symbol!
• But why that magic sword and red bikini?

NEXT EVENING

My friend Isabel invites me and Xanthe to come see her dance troupe, Fua Dia Congo. The show wasn't very well publicized, so the hall, on the Stanford University campus, is nearly empty. But the drumming and dancing are fantastic.

But at the climax of the show, Isabel and the others rush out in grass skirts and red bikinis, to do...the Sword Dance! There are so few of us in the audience, we all just get up at the end and dance wildly onstage with them. Dance like flying...

And I look out from the stage full of swords and red bikinis, out at the empty Stanford auditorium... and recognize my dream.

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