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The Erthedni

Dreamed 1977/1/7 by Wayan
for Fran Vashaw and Doris Piserchia

THAT DAY

I've been miserable. So far, 1977's been the worst year of my life. Dropped out of school, homeless, living in a van with Kay... and her recurring rages.

But today, I escaped for hours into a book--A Billion Days Of Earth by Doris Piserchia. A very odd parable set in the far future, in which a silvery being called Sheen tempts each creature it meets by offering a personalized heaven--leaving the frustrations of reality for your ideal world--your dream.

At this point, even knowing it's wrong, I'd cave in to Sheen without a fight.

THAT NIGHT...

We're all obsessive scholars, like Professor Blok
in A Billion Days Of Earth; we gnaw at our
little worlds obscure.

Our dogs know our pet obsessions; greet
canine kin with "mushroom", "metamorphic", or
at most, two jargon words. Never more than two.
None of us have more

Core, so this laconic dogtalk limns us all too well.
Alarming just how circumscribed we are! We try
to force our pets to talk with us, converse. But no.
Dogs all shun us

...humans? Are we? No. We're creatures too!
Another sort--furred quadrupeds, but tall, and
Oh, so professorial.

We are hungry, hungry, in a dead-end valley.
Jade grass, flowers by the creek; Eden to the eye,
but a scowling bunny called a Jare put up a sign:

ALL FOOD RESERVED FOR THE ERTHEDNI

ERTHEDNI's a living God (or Sheen); a superjare.
Cultist rabbit-mobs enforce their holy writ.
By FOOD the pious mean even creek and air!
Garden for us all, yet we slow-starve in it.

Desperate we scholars lope toward the DOOR
at valleymouth. Headfirst down the Stair!
A zoo of academic beasts well-tumble, pour
Out of Erthedni's vale.

Emerge in a sea-cave. Shimmer blue. We're caged
Inside a hollow Monolith infinitely pierced;
A oval sieve of pinholes, like a tea-ball of stone;
Or that Old Celestial Sphere, God-prick'd with star
Portals raining down transcendent Light.

Air slips in too, dissolved. Non-bubble form.
A Friend Aquatic fears I'll drown down here,
but I can (barely) breathe sans gear--IF I hover near
the Holy Wall. I'm astonished too. "It's because I am
a relative to Turtles" I explain, "called a Tare."
WAVES up the cave-gullet pound brine to foam;
Air-bubbles seep, dissolve. Breathe. Breathe on.

The dream-scene shifts. Breathe easy. For now I am
a Merman, lazing in a pool below a lacy Fall,
Refreshed by spray and rainbows. A Fran,
(a Water-Earth-Mother) is fishbowled too. Everyone
expects us to make love, but I have the wrong
body for her green kind, so I coil round
the Fran and hold her head up; she needs air.
Not lovers yet love. Deep friends.

There, bearable at last, my hard dream ends.

We're creatures starving in Eden because the Erthedni Cult hogs the food. Then I'm a turtle-person trapped in a water-cage, struggling to breathe. Then I'm a merman in a waterfall-pool, hugging a friend. Dream sketch by Wayan. Click areas to enlarge.

NOTES

FORTY YEARS LATER

The worst year of my life really was 1977--all the way through. The radical feminism of Santa Cruz in the mid-70s left me guilty and racked with self-doubt. I got trapped by Kay--brilliant, but a bully. I dropped out of school and let her batter me for two years. She didn't use threats to keep me, but leftist guilt. She had a feminist right to her anger--who was I to complain just because she broke my nose? Fran was one of the few role models telling me I had a right to leave, to my own life.

By the time I did leave Kay in mid-1978, I was nearly dead.

I've been transcribing my few journals that survived (most were lost or destroyed), and posting a handful of representative dreams from those lost years. This is the very last.

It's been painful, reliving that abuse. Any lessons to pass on? Well, yes. Kay and I weren't in a vacuum. The subculture we lived in was complicit in the crime. Few Frans; most looked away. Actually, that's hopeful; it implies that running can work, if you find a community that won't deny or excuse abuse. Maybe you'll still repeat your old mistake; but maybe not. With a little help from your friends.



LISTS AND LINKS:
Erthedni: academics - autism furry people - dogs & rabbits - topdogs & underdogs - I'm Just Not Myself Today! - species-bent dreams - cults & gods - food & famine
Teaball: by the sea - caves & the underworld - underwater dreams - prisons - gimme air! - I'm Just Not Myself Today! (again!) - reptiles
Fran & the dreams as a whole: waterfalls & spray - merfolk - mentors & friends - healing from abuse - other worlds - the power of names - shamanic dreams - 1977-78

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