THAT DAY

I search the U.S. patent records online, to see if there's anything resembling my design for a helical musical instrument, the Coil. Nothing like it so far.

In the afternoon, I reread Jung's biography, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections". I'm struck by the tone of his childhood dreams, like The Man-Eater: in an underground chamber a monstrous phallus sits enthroned, staring upward with a huge eye; Jung shakes in terror as a voice announces "That is the man-eater." So different than my childhood stuff! So... well, Jungian. Mythic, static, seeming impersonal: just how things are. Yet it is personal--it's Jung all over.

Oops! Time to quit learning--time for school! I have to take a speech class for my degree. Bike over. My classmates generally praise my talk. Return home cheered up a bit.

Evening: a talkshow has a CIA agent who helped the mujihadeen in Afghanistan--lived there for years. He savages the Bush administration. "We can't avoid a world war--Saudi Arabia's Wahhabi sect and their sympathizers have already declared one on us, and their aim is world domination. The question is, when'll we fight the real enemy in Arabia instead of bullying everyone else?"

On a lighter note, a documentary shows rural Thai families plan to sell their daughters into prostitution to pay for their brothers' schooling! Not war, not famine--they sacrifice the girls for the boys. And it works. Many girls do send money home to the families who sold them. Until they get AIDS and die, of course.

Tense from all this grim news, I do yoga as I watch. Drape my torso on the footboard of the bedlike a leopard on a branch, and do leg lifts. After, in bed, drifting off to sleep, I twist my spine and spread my legs, one way up one down. The knots in my gut slowly loosen...

THAT NIGHT

I'm walking down the street in San Francisco. I think the sidewalk needs more greenery, so I pull out a feltpen and start drawing the roots of a large plant. Not just on the walk--draw the stalk on the air! Long skinny leaves done in single strokes, like dune grass or pampas grass. The air-lines are faint; the pen's half-dry. So I lick the pen-tip; that helps a bit. Scribble in the trunk and leaf-veins. The plant is faint, yes, but it hangs in the air! I'm doing the impossible! Badly, yes... but doing it.

I walk on, round the corner to a shop-lined street. But all is closed and empty today. No people, no cars. Pass a shop selling imported foods from Europe--wine, cheese, preserves, cakes. I'm allergic to wheat, cheese, and wine, so I usually ignore this shop, but today, with no distractions, I glance idly in the window and stop in shock. I must have noticed it before, subliminally, for the display's strangely familiar, yet... I never realized what I was seeing.

Vines (real or fake?) drape over two lifesize plaster nudes. The lower figure sprawls on a log, the upper lazes on a fence or trellis three feet higher, near my eye level. She looks human at first glance--a girl with one arm reaching down to lazily stroke the back of her lover below. One leg is folded up on the broad fence-top, the other reaches straight down the end of the fence to the ground, foot pointed like a dancer in relevee, up on her toes and the ball of her foot. Looks like half her weight's on the wood, half on the ground.

The lower figure is more hidden by vines, and is below eye level, so I first saw the human girl, and missed how strange this lower figure is. She's a mix of girl and cat with a dash of horse, larger than the human girl but not much. Rather wide face, more feline/human than equine. She's draped sleepily on a broad curving log. Her legs sprawl to the side. I know this girl--Silky. Unmistakable! My familiar, from a hundred other dreams. The upper girl's a stranger. They're both so beautiful I can't look away, despite (because of?) their strangeness.

Both figures have their heads facing into the shop, looking at the wares, not us. The human girl, bending 90 degrees, bares her pussy to us passers-by! And no discreet little slit either. With one leg up on the fence, her cunt stretches to an open, smiling mouth, right at kissing level.

A display this blatant would get shut down in any other town. Not just the nudity--they're unmistakably lovers, and inviting us to join in. My blood's all confused, can't decide whether to rush to my face to help me blush, or to my crotch where everything's tingling...

But it also makes me want to sculpt again! To create work like this... wow.

Now I notice the upper girl has a short deerlike tail--the vines just hid her a bit more. And pointed ears! She's more kin to Silky than she seemed! And when I look closely at that tail, trying to memorize it to sculpt later on, I find the leaves hid a lot--it's really a full-length mare's tail! Just raised up out of the way. Which says something about her feelings. When a mare raises her tail like that... she's turned on. By her lover? Or is it exhibitionism that gets her hot?

Except, of course, she's not. Cold plaster! But I'd swear images this vivid were carved from life. And wherever they are, whatever it takes, I have to meet the models.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Silky = dreams. So the upper girl probably = waking mind, waking life! Superficially more human, but they're more akin than they seem at first glance.
• Nudity = my dream echoes Jung's first recorded dream, The Man-Eater. But instead of a primal cock, I see a primal cunt. Instead of a secret subterranean throne, an open, public, even commercial display... that still no one notices! Instead of a solitary figure evoking terror, a loving couple evokes longing. But Jung's archetype was alive; mine are just images, and they're sealed off from me in a place full of toxic foods. (No mystery THERE--food allergies severely limit my social life.)
• Statues, in public: reading Jung, I felt guilty, shallow, as if just because my dreams aren't very Jungian, I must be censoring my inner life, Disnefying it. The dream says "No, you're just different. Jung likes Subterranean Weenies of Terror, you like exhibitionist lesbian furries. Chaque a son gout. ['Tastes differ.'] Only you've been ignoring us lately, passing us by." Maybe that's why they've dwindled into images. Where are the living models?
• Their poses: echo my own stretching. They're my BODY! It loved stretching last night, and wants more.
• In fact, I see THREE calls to action here:
  • ACTION 1: more stretching--my body likes it as much as sex!
  • ACTION 2: if I want love, health and magic, I have to quit ignoring the rolemodels & advice my dreams offer--as strong as Jung's!
  • ACTION 3: start sculpting again. Sculpt THIS--if I dare. These figures might just manifest! Why not? I drew living plants in thin air.

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