INTRODUCTION--Wayan

In the early 1990s the web was slow and crashprone, so I still made paper zines (though I later uploaded many as The Gif Series). By 1995 the Web got easier and I shifted away from paper to code. But I did few more illustrated chapbooks telling short dreams: Birth Dreams, Dumb Dreams, Weird Weddings.

Late 1998, I gave a copy of my very last dead-tree zine, Money Dreams, to my sister Althea. It's full of dreams challenging our family brainwashing to be poor and saintly, like

Financial Porn	Saboteur	Rich Bitch	Trump on the Run
and, increasing over several years, dreams with specific financial advice:
Poker with a Demon	Pregnancy from Hell	Net Profits	Sessile Utopia

Well, Althea read my dreams. And her own dreams answered.

Dream 1: ALIEN PARENTS, DEFECTIVE SON--Althea

In a family of five, aliens take over human bodies or fuse with them. Two daughters are parasitized, and their parents. They leave the one son alone; he's somehow wrong, defective. The aliens don't get human genders very well--two males as parents, but they look rather female--genitals sort of in, sort of out. They act more human than the human son; make him feel wrong, left out.

But I felt sympathy for the alien children inside the daughters, too, forced to grow up in inappropriate bodies and roles.

NOTES--Wayan

At the time I was startled that the dream focused not on Althea's situation in our family of five but mine--singled me out as the only unparasitized one, though defective and stigmatized for it. So I treated this dream as a greeting from Althea's spirit to mine, a warning to treat the following dreams as letters to me as well as her--her dreams' view of my life based on the dream-book I gave her. This first dream sees me as the odd one out even in our family of freaks--brilliant geeks with flashes of second sight but weak immune systems and weird illnesses. Given that waking reality, I'm not surprised at the aliens, parasites etc. My dreams too show us as aliens in human bodies.

It took 20 years from Althea's dream till I got a diagnosis--my 'defect' is Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a mutation weakening my collagen; along with loose joints often comes high-functioning autism. There's evidence for a lifelong infection of Lyme and/or Babesia too; Althea's dream of parasites infesting the whole family may be correct.

Dream 2: SPIRITUAL SPRINGS--Althea

I walk a path known from many dreams, up a river valley to deep magical pools at the source. Been so long though, I take the wrong fork and get lost!

Meet three teenage boys; they point the way. I pass a big rich house on a hill where my daughter Amy is staying. She loves it--lots of high-tech toys there! I worry.

Or is it envy? Wouldn't I mind some toys myself? But I wasn't allowed in.

I think this dream says "I feel I don't deserve money, good leftists are poor, and how could I possibly go on to visit the spiritual wellsprings if I lived in a nice house?"

But of course I could!

NOTES--Wayan

Not unique to Althea; money scares our whole family. Raised with hippie guilt. "Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven." As some old hippie said.

Twenty years later, she has a very nice house. And finds that its peace and quiet helps with finding the spiritual wellsprings. Curious, that.

Dream 3: TWO-HEADED KING--Althea

I'm in a conservative, poor country with a harsh rite of passage for girls: you must go on a pilgrimage of many days, barefoot, only allowed a maroon robe. And you may only carry one day's food. Three out of four never make it back. Most starve to death, or are raped and murdered on the road, or are kidnaped and enslaved--a whole slave trade is based on this. But the villagers meekly accept this--even the girls' parents, even single men facing terrible shortage of potential wives.

I found it a grim land, but also eerily beautiful--the roads with red-robed pilgrims, even the starved fallen ones like flowerpetals. I want to paint it.

The king of that country has two heads. One's centered and fully developed, one's small, on his shoulder.

Whenever the big head disapproves of the little head's words, he bites his tiny ear. Mini-head can't reach the dominant one.

The queen is voluptuously beautiful and has a strong presence, but doesn't try to change this, or the puberty rite for girls.

I got the impression she loves only ONE of the king's two heads--but I'm not so sure which!

NOTES--Wayan

Althea didn't know I'd Web-published a dream, In Io, where I really WAS two-headed--one big, one small! I lived as a single spirit with two heads, one aquatic and dream-wise, one air-breathing and practical--but small, a child's head, underdeveloped. Despite the inequality, together we made a totally amphibious, drownproof explorer!

But I wanted to impress people, so I hid my embarrasing airhead [!!!] underwater, and kept the adult, articulate, respectable water-breathing head up in the air... thus managing to double-drown myself! In my hunger to fit in, I strangled even super-abilities.

Just as in Althea's dream the two-headed king's country is strangling itself, killing its own daughters...

Dream 4: FOUR-LETTER CODE--Althea

A recurring dream. I'm in a beautiful empty mansion. I hunt for the owner, but she's never there. Feel like that woman is my full self--near, but hard to find. Anyway, the phone rings, I answer. A man's voice tells me something very important, but complex and slightly garbled; I can't quite get it. Feels like cheating, but I ask the man to speak clearly, slowly, simply--to spell it out. He does--literally! "E... V... M... D..." or maybe D-V-M-E.

I wake bewildered--but sure it's an important message. Checked to see if some problem with the DMV... but that's all I could think of except "call Chris and ask him."

NOTE--Wayan

Althea called me. The dream stumped me too till she mentions "I did ask my dreams about money, at least I had it in the back of my mind." My guess is the voice was explaining her attitude to money, what problems it creates, but she couldn't hear it. So instead it just gave her investment advice! She'd just read the last dream in Money Talks, advising me to buy a stock in a startup called Keravision, so she such advice was possible. But Althea never invests, so she didn't recognize the four-letter code as a standard stock abbreviation!

I plan to look them up this weekend on the Net, see if one is a company. If so, buy it. Curiously enough, she's usually broke, but happens to have cash at the moment, so she could invest a bit. I will too and give her a commission if it pays off.

TWENTY YEARS LATER--Wayan

Notice the specificity and practicality of these dreams. Yes, they explore family brainwashing and ambivalence about money. But specific stock tips? All I can conclude is that Althea's dreams, like mine, weren't ambivalent at all; they wanted us financially secure, and tried hard to help. This particular dream-tip that Althea feared she'd garbled, I couldn't trace to a real stock; but my own dreams were equally practical and specific--"invest in silver"--"sell Keravision at 45". They made me rich.

Most dream-theories, including Jung's, say dreams ignore practicality--math, science and business are exclusively waking concerns.

Most dream-theories, including Jung's, are just wrong.

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