THAT DAY

Another of my attacks. Mild joint pain, low fever, night sweats. No wonder--I overworked for days. Try to pace myself, but it's hard. So driven to create!

Work on the globe for Abyssia: paint Mascarenia, Crozetia, the small Isle of Sapmer. Revise maps of Agulhas (mostly renaming), Albatrosia (minimal), Andean Islands (major enlargement to show the new outlying isles), Argentia (renaming highland features and shifting them west).

Switch to music--polish two songs, Keep It Simple Stupid and First Impressions. Bones unchanged, but I tweak both words and chords.

THAT EVENING

Force myself to take a break. Watch a mystery from Sweden. Grim. The murder victim's rich family wants a fast conviction to minimize scandal. The detective gets a guy to confess, but has doubts--the man was drunk, hazy.

Right to doubt. Turns out the victim sexually abused his daughter for years. His son knew too. Dad was dying, but I guess his kids saw a natural death as 'getting away with it'. The brother stabs the detective and leaves him gasping for life in a wine cellar--just walks off, no longer caring what happens to either of them. While his sister kills herself.

Well, problem solved, then. Such a relaxing break.

THAT NIGHT

I'm with a girl I care about--but my girlfriend or my sister? We have consecutive appointments with a doctor. She goes first, then my turn. He asks a few questions and then, without examining me or even checking my medical records, says flatly "You need to say what it is you want; you stay habitually silent."

I think: "That's undoubtedly true, but not proof my illness is psychosomatic. Test me thoroughly for infection, THEN you can preach assertion at me..."

But I don't say it aloud. See, he's right about that.

So what DO I want but keep silent about? Sex, certainly--but what else?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• My silence: both mystery shows had hush-ups. Abusive dad's family learned to keep the abuse secret
• ACTION 1: Identify these other goals hidden even from me. Use dreamwork. Even if I can't act on them yet, my inner doctor thought just voicing them would help. It's not deprivation that sickens, but denial.
• ACTION 2: Don't assume my illness is ALL stress from secrets! My dream self is just as authoritative as a dream doctor who didn't bother to examine me--and that dream self thinks an infection may contribute. Then there's stress from long hours of art-obsession--but my conscious knew about that.

SIX YEARS LATER

I chose not to wait till I uncovered the suppressed goals my dream-doctor warned of. Instead I followed up my dream-self's suspicion I had an infection. I charted my daily health--what triggered attacks? I took strong herbs (cat's claw, artemisia, eleuthero and milk thistle--about two grams each) and a year of prescription antibiotics. The combination worked! I still get mild fevers and if I skip the herbs too long, I worsen again. But overall, my health's way better.

The trick here was to see the dream had two layers of health advice, not one. The doctor's advice (presumably he stands for intuition) requires longterm work. But my skepticism in the dream was also dream advice--and its hypothesis was more quickly testable.

What about the doctor's advice? I'm still not clear what I want beyond health and creative energy. A steady drummer for our band might help; more kindred dreamers would be nice; love would be nicer; a realm of peaceful unicorns, ideal. But even without Twilight Sparkle or Marigold Heavenly Nostrils, I'm good--fed by the work I was sent here to do.

These days, it's the rest of you I worry about.

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