THAT DAY

My back aches and loudly pops. Inflamed from overwork.

My fellow dreamworker Xanthe calls. She's joined a group that visualizes their heart's desire. Xanthe's: to draw again, learn to paint, dream intensely, yoga and tai chi--to feel good in her body. That's all! No ambition out in the world.

Xanthe asks something peculiar. "Don't you ever wish, or visualize, or use your will? I've known you decades and never seen you do it." She's right. I won't. Careful not to. I will not to use my will! Like fasting--abstaining from volition! Why?

Next, my OTHER shamanic colleague calls--Mark. He's forming a band! And then HE TOO says (unprompted, out of the blue--a spooky synchronicity!) "You never wish or will anything, do you? Your restraint is extraordinary. No one else I know..."

I'm still wary to use my will. I tried last month, first time in years--I demanded health and committed to whatever that took. What a backlash! Immediately got sicker than I have been in years.

How CAN I use will safely? Some things work--artistic determination is safe. So's asking questions in dreams--to pin down & confront & question dream figures. That I could do more! Need to question that arrogant writer who ordered me in a dream "Go to grad school or my goons will hafta beat you up."

I go over the last months' dreams to see what's brewing. Feel I'm missing the obvious...

In the evening, watch Fry & Laurie play Wooster and Jeeves... Whew. NOT healthy rolemodels!

THAT NIGHT

I'm drifting slowly futureward,     over the Reefs of Time. The coralheads aren't hard, but brush--     flowering chaparral. I swim above rich time-heads,     fragrant monster brains, trucksize indigo cauliflower mounds.     Lower now I fin, seek a landing strip. My goal's     just a timenook with trouble a shaman like me can fix.     Hey! A time of myth

Full of creatures bred for long     life and hands and brains. A fairytech world of talking beasts,     animadorable kin! Not cute to all. New Nazis bred,     loathing animal ways. Citizenship? Outrageous! Not     for these furry Jews. The Führer kidnaps a puppy;     weeks old, still dumb. Neodogs grow fast, but still     literacy takes time.

The Führer's fiendish plan is to test     Pup to show that dogs can't read! Yet newborn humans just     gurgle, flap their legs. Unfair! So I'm here to save the pup.     Baby. Whatever you call the tender sprout of a citizen with     or without a tail. But what I hit as I angle o'er     a final lilac head to nestle in the Age of Fur,     is old rock stars instead!

They hunker in blue ceanothus brush,     Eighties shoulderpads; a hulking barrier reef! Their     mohawks filterfeed. My airfield's Suzi Quatro--     Oof! Her neck is tense. So I ask "Would you like a massage?"     And as I pluck, she sings!

Her throat and collarbone thrum sweet,     but laterals are tight and her back's piano wire. "Too much?"     "No, stretch more! That's right!" Garble snorkel decade mash!     My time-swim's a joke. But at least I found right work at last.     Quatroing, I woke.

• Mounds of lilac: When I was a kid, our yard had a mound of ceanothus brush like a dry-land coral-head. Hidden in the mound's heart was a tiny hiding-place. Sweet scent, masses of lavender-blue flowers.
• Chaparral of time: Behind our house was a canyon full of chaparral--poison oak and rattlesnakes. I loved it. It gave me Lyme.
• Neo-Nazi leader: on that Bertie and Jeeves video I saw before bed, an English Nazi leader kept whacking Bertie on the head. Ironic, since Bertie's author, PG Wodehouse, was accused of Nazi sympathies.
• Nazis oppress talking animals: my workaholism oppresses my body and heart
• Quatro, tense: I don't know Suzi Quatro's music at all, so "quatro tense" is probably an ironic dream-pun on "quattrocento"--Botticelli's era. Graceful art unlike the American eighties--the Reagan years.
• Rock, Quatro/4 pun: my friend Mark does admire 1980 punk's simple spontaneity: the Freedom of Ugly. I suggest "Your new band could try making songs by taking four random chords and looping. You don't need a punk movement to use punk techniques."
• ACTION: make time for animal needs. Not just rest and food--touch, play, fun, sex, friends. No need to voyage through time, looking for good deeds to do. Start with your own sore, overworked neck!
• This is Dreamverse #36. Every week, a dream-poem! Not every day. Don't push that puppy.

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