I've been sewing some big soft-sculptures--figures from my dreams. They're not typical soft sculpture or fabric art; instead of cotton or poly fill, they're dense foam rubber with a jointed skeleton, so they're posable; those muscles have tone & memory. Push them and they push right back!

They're meant to be several things at once:

• Portraits. They aren't fantasies, but life-size effigies of beings I've met in my dreams. Big, startling and surreal, with a strong presence, as if you've fallen into a dream.
• Recycling. My materials were marked for landfill! Gooseneck lamp-necks (spines), mop- and shovel-handles (bones), a stiff foamrubber mattress (muscles), a softer foam pillow (fat), old bike helmets (pelvises & skulls), marble wedges (shoulderblades, pelvic wings). Partly I used discards because capitalism discards people like me--but partly it's simple survival--many new materials are toxic to me. The fake fur is about the only new stuff, and I chose it with care, touching and sniffing hundreds in two fabric warehouses till I found ones that felt & smelt safe.
• A new medium. I've never sewn anything more than patches on jeans! And sewing's just the surface. Building bones, muscles & joints required learning anatomy & low-tech robotics.
• Tactile portraits, not just visual--feeling alive to your touch. That's vital for me! I'm an Aspie--a borderline autistic. IQ off the charts, but people stress me out--human touch, even eye contact, can panic me. Autistic writer Temple Grandin (Thinking in Pictures) found a way to calm herself--she built a big V of plywood, a crack she can squeeze into to feel safe--an impersonal hug. My creatures are basically portable Grandin devices! They're heavy, with wood or stone bones. Burrowed under them, in a nest of wild animals like me, I feel safe and loved.
• Healing--physical & emotional. I've been fighting Lyme for years--mostly it hits at night; disrupting sleep. Light wakes me too; the creatures shade my head. Also they feel friendly and quite warm--their foam muscles store heat. Curled up with my dream-friends, I sleep much better. Imaginary friends, but real benefits!
• Sexual healing. If they're disturbingly erotic, that's no error. Big huggable pets on my bed... but snuggling turns me on. For years, Lyme caused recurrent pelvic pain; I got very cautious about sex. And despite my doctors' assurances I'm not contagious, lingering Lyme symptoms make me nervous about dating. I wanted practice partners who are absolutely immune, who I don't have to worry about.
  So are the Foam Furs like silicone sex dolls? Not very. A sexdoll factory website (I was curious how they built their joints!) admits their dolls are limp, seem asleep--artificially passive partners. My dream-creatures, with their stubborn springy muscles, are willful, with a strong presence, not just visually but tactilly and sexually.
  Love? Conversation? That's what friends are for. Oh, I still hope to find true love, the all-in-one package. But in the meantime, my dream-creatures are at least a lot nicer than a vibrator. Mmm, furry...

Five Heart Unicorn
Ailura the catgirl		Silky the cattaur

Mer-Tiger

Vixtauria

I've had recurring dreams of cat people for decades. My anima (dream-guide) often shows up as a cat or a mare--as often as she dons a human form. After years, one night she married me. Not much talk about this in Jung or Freud, but Siberian shamans do often marry their guiding spirits.

Ailura the catgirl sprawls on side

Ailura in bed, head on hands

She's the most humanlike of the four--my take on what humans might be, if we'd evolved from big cats not apes. (Her name, Ailura, is from the Greek root for cat.)

Ailura (early fur) in comfy chair

Ailura (late fur) in less-comfy chair

Technical note: none of these poses, not even the crawling one, involve hidden props or fishing line or such. Ailura supports herself with her own muscles, tendons and bones.

Ailura crawls

Ailura raising her tail

Fiveheart is based directly on a vivid shamanic dream, Five Hearts. But there's one drastic change. In the dream I was a straight girl who found herself attracted to a unicorn stallion; to recreate that attraction in waking life, where I'm a straight male, I made Fiveheart a mare.

But I preserved her dream-strangeness--Fiveheart had a rose and a mirror on his forehead, not the traditional spiral horn. Hell to sew, but I did it: a round mirror in her mane, and a handmade silk rose growing from her brow.

Fiveheart's head--the rose and mirror

Tail and hindmost heart/labia

The five hearts don't all double as vaginas, but the ones between her forelegs and hindlegs do. It's not MY visual pun; the conventional red heart shape, our symbol for love, is not in fact a heart; does it really look like one? Not if you've ever seen a heart. Calling it a heart is a euphemism insisted on by the medieval Church. Our heart symbol is a stylized drawing of spread labia! Yep, we send giant pink genitalia every Valentine's Day. So I can't feel too crude for re-sexualizing them.

Roughed-in unicorn

The unicorn's five hearts

Silky in feline-centaur form. She's the largest, most complex of the foam furs, by far, since she's built not just to be realistically flexible but be able to stand in various poses--something that's hard even for real meat-creatures, unless they're awake and burning energy to trim their balance. So she was a technical challenge--the right tension, the right flex. Took a long time to get her to stand firmly. But she came out well--she has startling presence, and I think some of that is precisely that she stands on her own, when the other Furs sit or recline or sprawl.

Presence

Standing

Silky's about 150 cm (5') tall. Short for a human--but since a centaur has an L-shaped torso, she's actually taller than a basketball player. If she reared she could pick fruit 3m up (10') with no effort. Other than co-ordinating all those limbs...

Fore-bold

Hind-shy

She's just as complex sexually. In Titan and its sequels, John Varley imagined Titanides, centauroids with genitals fore, middle, and aft. I didn't go quite that far, but Silky does have both a fore- and hind-vagina; like Titanides, reproduction involves up to four parents, though Titanide hindsex was common and casual, creating a small egg, which, if implanted in a forevagina, could be quickened by foresex (rare, intimate). This always seemed backward to me; the forepelvis has more weight on it and birth of a humansize baby would be as hard as for humans... a Titanide colt would be worse.

So I picture cattaurs as having casual foresex, bearing a sort of turtle egg that can, if a cub is truly wanted, be slipped into a hindwomb to be quickened; the hindpelvis can loosen, so a cattaur can give birth as easily as a mare or lioness. Safer all round.

Anyway. Silky is complex. She does not give horsie rides. Except, now and then, in the bedroom sense.

Face-fur still pinned

Hands at last!

Bedtime

Mer-Tiger comes last even though in a sense she was first--a large stuffed toy tiger from a thrift store, to use to shade my pillow as I slept (which worked; better dreams in the tiger's shadow!) Only a year later, as I gradually felt healthier and hornier, did I gradually elaborate her into a sex toy and soft sculpture.

Early: low brow, big nose, no chin, no dreads

Late: high brow, button nose, chin, dreadlocks

Slowly, the toy I'd bought on impulse transformed into a sea-tiger, with dolphin/mermaid flukes. Note the steady changes in face, hair and crest--until quite recently she still had exposed bits of her commercial-toy roots--covered now, but her facial structure and pose still echo the original toy.

Vixtoria was an afterthought. The friend who gave me the foam mattress that became the first four Foam Furs, later gave me some dense little foam pads from a reupholstered chair--just enough foam for a last (smallish) creature.

In studio with Silky

Sitting

Standing

So I built a foxtaur. Smallish, red-blonde, with big ears and a brushy tail. For obvious reasons she's named Vixtoria, though I'm sure Her Majesty would not be amused. Or aroused.

But this Vixtoria, like all foxes, likes to play. In bed and otherwise.

Reclining, half-kneeled

Building the first four creatures overlapped; the quasi-blog Come up to the Lab and See what's On the Slab shows their slow creation. But Vixtoria was built last (and fast!), so, for photos and notes on her construction, jump down to Building Vixtoria.

Generally my workflow went like this:

1. Sketch the figure and then plot pieces of foamrubber I'll need on graph paper at quarter-scale, and arrange small paper cutouts of those pieces til they tightly fit, to avoid waste.
2. Rough in the figure in foam rubber. I used an old mattress, 5" thick (13 cm), that a friend was ready to toss in a landfill. I carved four creatures from just the one pad--new foam is pricy!
3. Skeletons: vary in complexity. I tunnel down the middle of a rubber limb with a breadknife, then slowly force the bones in.
   • Skulls & pelvises: vary--old bike helmets, stiff plastic packing, wood.
   • Spines: vary too. The most elaborate have either dead gooseneck lamps--tough but flexible--or wooden vertebrae strung on a nylon spinal cord.
   • Shoulderblades & pelvic wings: marble wedges (broken flagstones) tied inside old socks.
   • Long bones: broomsticks and shovel handles and scrap wood like a big round wooden dowel I found on the street by a construction site. I bought more dowels when I saw they worked for the biggest bones.
   • Ribs and collarbones: where present (not all the Furs have ribs) I used wood and metal coat hangers.
4. Muscle: high-density foamrubber.
5. Fat: ordinary soft foamrubber, from a pillow.
6. Tendons: rope, fishline and (in the cat-taur) metal springs.
7. Joints: light joints are just duct tape linking bones. Hip & shoulderjoints are steel hooks and eyes, with the hook vicegripped into a second eye so they can't pop loose. Loadbearing legjoints, as in the cattaur, are cabinet or gate hinges (doorhinges were too wide)--with springs so they tend to straighten. Beveled bone-ends and guide screws on sides (under blue pads in photo) prevent the spring slipping off to the side during sharp bends.
8. Fur: fake fur. Mostly new; I wanted this layer to last. The only reused fabric is the blue mane, tail & fetlocks of Five Heart Unicorn.
9. Eyes: acrylic cabachons with silvered backs (making them glow eerily in near-dark, like the eyes of real nocturnal animals). For the pupils, I scraped off part of the silver backing & painted the back black.
10. Paws, lips, nipples, ears, labia: mostly hand-sewed silk. But for the soles of feet, I used either bathroom traction mats, or, for the creatures that freestand, those rubbery flexible jar-openers--they proved to give the best traction.

I want to show you the gestation of these creatures--how dreams prompted me to try sculptural (and sexual) experiments, prompting more dreams, in a long feedback cycle. In retrospect, it's clear it was a 5-year dialog between dreams and waking work. But I'd have denied that until I compiled this timeline! Strange as it sounds, I thought of these creatures as an innovation for me--a mostly non-dream project. But compiling this timeline proved me wrong. Dozens of dreams guided and prodded me--the list below is just a selection.

But it's not just a dialog--waking artist, dreaming mind. Five other voices (themes sculpting me just as I sculpt these toys) weave in & out--chronic illness (recurring fevers), brains (as a group, prodigies are as different from "the gifted" as gifteds are from normals, or normals are from Downs), autism and its sensory overload/differences, ESP and the different worldview that extra senses give one, and sex, especially interspecies sex. The braiding gets complex. Two examples:

1. Talking creatures much like the Foam Furs run through these dreams, and I'm just as attracted to them as to humans. But is that a fur fetish, or a response to seeing their energy fields more than their physical shape? For me, some creatures have sexy energy, the majority don't--whether they're humans, wolves, cats or horses. I literally can't see humans as unique. Autism alone? I no longer think so. I have some sixth sense I rely on instinctively.
2. I'm isolated, but surprisingly content that way. How to parse out isolation that's from environmental illness (I can't eat, drink, work, live or travel as humans do!) from Asperger problems (both stress from human social structures and their prejudice toward our coping tactics) from a huge IQ gap (every girlfriend I ever had turned out to be gifted--and I wasn't cruising Mensa events. Some hid their brains; some didn't even know, and found out later!) from shamanism/ESP (my girlfriends' auras just felt right! That's not an issue I can even discuss with most gifteds or autistics.)

For some time, I'd been making centaur-like dolls out of cut-up, glued-together Barbies, dubbed Cendancers. I hadn't thought of making anything larger, but in the winter of 2011-2012 I had two dreams:

2011/12/10 dream: FURRY CENTAUR PROJECT

Friends remind me of two art projects I half-finished, sitting neglected in corners of my bedroom: centauroid sculptures up to half a meter long. One is literally furry--the torso has thick fake-fur. And feathered--folded wings, like a pegasus.

Main problem: the limbs look clunky. I recall now--I made them extra thick cuz the medium was brittle and crack-prone. Could trim the legs down, varnish with thick acrylic goo to strengthen. Might look more elegant.

2012/1/30 dream: SHOW AND TELL

I'm at a class in Redwood City, down by the new harbor. Show-and-tell day. I present the Cendancers, the troupe of centauroid modern dancers I'm sculpting out of two Barbies each. I make a political joke about them, and this somehow wakes up one of the dancers! She grows, hops off the display table. Full size now--and alive. And we mate, centaur style. In front of the class, right on the harbor promenade. It feels lovely, and she's so cute.

I feel no shyness at all. In fact I rather enjoy shocking my classmates. I wake before I come--but oh, I was happy.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Sexy happy mood: surprising, since I stayed up sculpting Cendancers till midnight, till I was exhausted and shivering in my unheated room. My best guess: though I overworked, sculpting went great all day, and when it's going right, art feels as sexy as... well, sex.
• ACTION: Keep sculpting! Using yourself up is no sin. Spend the coin of your life! After all, in the end you don't get to save it. (Chronic illness taught me to do things now--while I live.)

2012/2/24

I bike to Thrift Town to buy Barbies to use for armatures for a new Cendancer. Instead, I find a big stuffed tiger on sale for $12. On impulse, I buy her. Biking home, she rides in my bike basket, head as high as me, tail nearly to ground. People react all the way home.

"Tiiiigre!"

"Can I take your picture?"

"Rrrow!"

Fascinating. People of all cultures really do like tigers. Well, in the abstract. Maybe not real ones moving in next door. There goes the neighborhood...

2012/3/17
I use the tiger to block light at night--my bedroom fronts a busy street. Find it's warm and comforting to have a tiger on my bed--nearly as strong a presence as a real pet would. Or a lover!

On impulse, just before sleep, I ask the tiger to send me dreams bringing up any problems I've been avoiding. (Yep, I'm using a stuffed toy as my Higher Power! Why not? So many devout pray as if God is their personal teddybear. Any old idol can do that job! It's the asking--and facing the answers--that works. And THAT's not so easy.)

Dream: MY LEOPARD LOVER'S CLUE

I'm still living in San Francisco, but I'm a teenage girl (I was her in my dream last night too).

I befriend a leopard-sized cat. More than befriend; we make love. Over and over. He's hot! People snicker and make jokes, but since he's no tame cat but a huge wild creature, they don't make them too loudly when he's around...

My boyfriend the leopard leads me through big dark rooms, like empty dance studios, to a doorway. Sniffs around it, looks at me. I recall asking my stuffed tiger in the waking world to show me early (or even past-life) issues relevant now, so I know my dream leopard's telling me something serious happened here. Sight reveals nothing much. I sniff, but can't scent anything unusual. But I believe my boyfriend; his senses are sharper.

What happened here?

This isn't our home; too long and deep and dark. The back is lighter, opener, rawer; all one big room with a skylight, full of tools and benches. A woodshop? It's a step down from the front half. A big step, so someone nailed little wood scraps in a row on a board to create a "landing" an inch or two above the floor, to make the riser more normal. But the scraps are on top, and irregular, and have nails sticking out! Terrible footing, and risk of a rusty nail in your soul. Sorry, I meant sole.

So I upend this board and try nailing the little chocks firmly on beneath. Problems: short nails, just 2". They may come loose; the board'll tip. And I worry about my noise--am I bothering the other residents? I'm a guest here.

I slow down as I really notice that loud silence. Pause working and tune in. The old violence centers here! I see it now. Someone stepping through this doorway was shot by a gunman at the front door--down the length of that dark hall, his target was framed in light.

This home's a literal shotgun shack!

The murder made the place unsellable, even unrentable for a while, but it's been mostly forgotten now. But still the crime lingers. For those who sense it.

• Old gun death: friends of mine have a house they bought cheap because the previous owner shot himself in it. Still has a dark bloody feel to it. I can barely tolerate the downstairs front room (where, I learned later, he did it). The dream may be rubbing my nose in it: "You have a sixth sense; you pick up a lot of painful stuff. Not fragility; it's a sense."
• ACTION 1: Face that my illness may partly be stress from VERY old trauma: a past death. Or it may be OTHERS' trauma in THIS life. Hard to distinguish! The important thing is not to assume, as therapists do, that any stress I feel is always from my current life. True for most people. I'm not most people.
• ACTION 2: make love to the big cat in my bed? How?

2012/3/20 dream: SILKY'S BACK

I wander a shoplined street with a woman who has a black nightmare. I don't mean a scary dream. A mare! Not a mount or packhorse--a pet. She acts like a huge dog. In fact the woman and I lug parcels while the mare runs free, sniffs around shops. She even ventures in one without us. Nope, she's not a bull in a china shop, just a nightmare. Alarms the owner but doesn't break a thing.

A considerate nightmare.

At the next shop--a long deep cafe I think--the black nightmare (oh, let's just get on with it and admit she's Silky, my familiar, who shows up in half my dreams) crawls up on a waist-high wood counter fronting the street. When a waiter objects, she giggles and pretends to be a stuffed toy, lying limp and plump, eyes closed. But I stroke her neck, and my touch startles her. Legs flail (rather bonelessly, almost as if she IS a stuffed toy! And small for a real horse--more humansized). Silky rolls off the counter...

I blurt "Oh, Silky, I'm sorry!"--apologize for forgetting her equine nerves--she startles more readily than, say, a dog. Why not? She's an herbivore keeping an eye out for predators. That's not a sign of trouble. Just her nature.

• Silky's back! Felt a little more energy today, and more playful when our band rehearsed.
• Silky's high-strung: I've been rereading Elaine Aron's The Highly Sensitive Person, her book on sensitivity as a natural variation useful in a tribe as an early warning system. We aren't neurotic, maladjusted or ill--we're lifeguards watching for predators, navigating, considering the future. Protecting our herd!
• She pretends she's a toy as big as me: that stuffed tiger I got on impulse. Dreams approve.
• ACTION: Maybe make a soft sculpture like this of Silky? Or maybe the dream of the Five Heart Unicorn, but with a sex change?

2012/6/28 dream: ROSETTES

Low hills with groves and meadows. Camping with friends. One is a cat with bold rosettes like a cloud leopard, but she's nearly as big as a tiger. A gentle and amiable soul. We snuggle up a lot. I think she's more beautiful than any of the humans I've met on this trip, and I look hopefully forward to the next time she goes into heat. I want to be her mate.

• Fourth dream in a row where I contemplate sex with someone but wait. Though the reason's different. And the earlier dreams felt look-but-don't-touch; here, we touched freely and affectionately, just not sexually yet.
• Cloud leopard rosettes: refers to MCA Hogarth's story Ribbons and Rosettes: on a planet still allowing duels, a wolf tells his wife that a feline offworld anthropology student is his lover. He uses & endangers her to end his marriage. She's intelligent, sensitive, but shy; finally sick of his public talk of her "pure, white-furred breasts", supposedly proving his intimacy with her; she gets up the nerve to bare them, revealing a leopard-rosette--and proving he lied. So...
• The rosettes may mean refinement, shyness, intelligence, honesty, courage, or just meeting a girl who identifies as a fur.

2012/9/18
The tiger's hind legs and tail are spindly, disproportionately small. Ugly. And she's a little too floppy--often falls over in the night, lets light glare again, waking me up.

So both healing & art urge me to enlarge her hindquarters and add legbones (made of broomsticks) so she won't fall over. I can use an old bike helmet for a pelvis.

Now sex speaks up too--build in a vagina so the tiger'll be a sex toy. Next time I get turned on in the night by the warm creature beside me...

2012/10/1
Work on an eventual skeleton for the stuffed tiger. Not just a pelvis and thighbones--a basic clavicle, spine, and foreleg bones too.

Dream: FURRY SCULPTURE

A soft sculpture, small as my hand, of an animal with pointed canine ears but short catlike face, horse tail but paws not hooves. Not quite a stuffed toy; firmer, with rotatable joints. I twist it round to a new pose, trying to recreate the sexy pose I saw when it was given to me, on side, one thigh forward, head turned to lick her own cunt. But I can't catch that pose. Try variants...

• Sexy critter: working on a skeleton for the stuffed tiger.
• ACTION: think this through. Maybe I really do want to make a furry girl from scratch. Easier in some ways than opening the stuffed tiger, working round that existing structure & stuffing...
• The illustration of a winged cat-dancer in moonlight isn't quite the figurine in my dream--she was wingless. Just a drawing inspired by all these sexy cats. But how lovely it'd be to have a catgirl who could stand, and stretch, and dance.

2012/11/1
Spend a couple hours lying in bed, massaging, masturbating--don't even come, just reconnect with my body after 4 weeks of computer work. Also admit what I've felt since I broke up with Sharon and Emily--it's energy/auras that excite me sexually--or sicken me. The physical sensations haven't been central for years, maybe not since I was a kid first discovering sex. Still, I stretch rock and wiggle. But in a way it's just a different sort of piano practice.

Finish building a tiger skeleton out of an old bike helmet and scrap wood, to support her hindquarters. Slow sewing.

2012/11/2
Fit the skeleton in, settle stuffing around. Sew up the tiger. Done? Lacks the aura of a living tiger, but sits up looking more alert--has more presence. See if she works as a sex toy. Feels unlike both sex with a lover OR masturbation--more like... yoga? But healthy exercise/practice just the same--work up a sweat, stretch...

2012/11/3
Feel a bit achy and swollen inside. Lasts all day. Had to be that sex play with the tiger yesterday--really using pelvic and back muscles for an hour or two. But this isn't just sore muscles; inflammation! So much for my belief sex is risky for me because it means letting in another person's energy/aura. Not today! Plain sexercise triggered inflammation. I already knew Lyme does this after hiking, carpentry, dance; sex too, it seems. I'm only asymptomatic as long as I stay within harsh limits, don't do much. Illness still lurks outside the box.

On the other hand, for years a chain of therapists all assumed pelvic pain & inflammation must mean sexual guilt, ambivalence, stress, or whatever's fashionable this week. And they were all wrong. A side effect of Lyme! And this little sexual experiment revealed it.

So antibiotics and NSAIDS will do more than therapy.

2012/11/12
Try the tiger sex-toy again. Don't come intensely but come this time. A real workout; no sexual or emotional stress appears. That's been consistent. Less soreness after, too. Separating sex from relationship-anxiety i shaving effects.

2012/11/22
Wake early, a bit feverish. Try sex again with the tiger. Yes. I feel better each time. Adjusting. A pattern exactly like any other exercise for me with Lyme. Prone to inflammation till body gets used to it, and then I get better, start benefitting from exercise that caused fever & inflammation a week before. Hypothesis confirmed!

2013/1/15 dream: BIG CAT'S SCENT SCARES LITTLE CAT

In the woods I meet a big cat. Tiger sized, but leopard spots. Friendly. We play. Make love? Have fun.

But later, at "home", our little housecat panics at the scent of the giant cat on me! Slashes my hand and flees. Drew blood, and of course I'll react allergically, AND I may get infected with cat-scratch fever. I pay for my fun... but NOT because the creature itself was any problem. The problem was third-party hysteria!

DREAM NOTES

• Big cat, little cat: maybe the Zen concept of Big Mind (Jung's "Self"; something like 'soul') versus Little Mind (the conscious, commonsense). Unless... it's my friends & housemates & social environment in general. Small-minded?
• Panic causes slash: Be patient! The stuffed tiger is relaxing me around sex. Even though my daily mind recalls old hurts and still panics even at practice. But Lyme's not as severe as it was; the reaction's controllable. Just take it slow.

I'm in Santa Cruz, ambling around the Boardwalk cove with my cow friend, the pink one. She's a huge stuffed toy, pony-sized. I've known her for years, but only today did I notice that what I think of as her face and body isn't all original equipment! She stitched on (well, hired someone to stitch on; hooves aren't dexterous) fabric accessories--huge fuchsia lips, a flowerlike third-eye thing between horns, a sort of floral mane, decorations in pink and purple on her sides. Beneath her alterations even the shape of her head would seem different, plainer. To a large extent she's a self-made cow!

And maybe I should shape myself, too. Why not?

• Female friend in Santa Cruz: my sister Miriel! She may call, then.
• Big plushtoy: the stuffed tiger on my bed? She big, furry and comforting, she works as a sex toy, but isn't beautiful; skimpy hindquarters and skinny ratlike tail. Do I want to alter her more? I think so.
• ESP! Miriel calls a few days later; sings me a song she wrote at the time of this dream, with the line "keep your stuffing in"; her best friend Scott, on hearing it, said: "You are a strawberry milk cow." She swears it. I believe her; I know Scott too, and he really is strange enough to say that.
• ACTION: incremental self-improvement, I guess. Or more literal sewing. Improve your tiger...

2013/4/24 dream: WHAT TO DO IN A WIZARD'S LAIR

A friend, a tall lanky, easy-going guy, has a stuffed tiger like mine--though he hasn’t converted it into a sex toy. Healthy and pleasant, he has all the girls he wants. But he also has something I don't want: a mentor he always obeys--a powerful sorcerer. I follow him over to his master's flat. Small, dark, cheap. Ugh, I wouldn't live here!

It does have a huge bed covered in stuffed toys. Very wizardy.

Hmm. He has not one but TWO stuffed tigers. Or rather half-stuffed. Unlike my friend's toy, or mine, they're as flat and limp as tiger-skin rugs! Trophies? O bold slayer of polyester kitties! Their heads are wide and flat as if their skulls--well, their styrofoam pseudo-skulls--have been altered or removed. What for? I'm tempted to steal one of his toys just to learn what he's up to. Messing with their heads... sheesh.

But robbing a wizard's a bad idea. Remember Pippin. So I leave his stuff alone.

Except, of course, that just before leaving, I jump up and down on the wizard's bed until it's really bouncing, and all his toys dance floppily around me till we're all just.animals dancing in space... because I just couldn't resist. I mean, who could?

DREAM NOTES

• Whole herd of stuffed critters on wizard's bed: maybe I should make more. I'm certainly dreaming about them a lot.

2013/5/29
Headache fades at last. Attack bottomed out? I improve all day. Still tired, sore joints. But basically OK...

Dream: PET WOLF & LEOPARD

I'm at a friend's house. Drowsy. Nap on a bed with a big dog or wolf and a leopard-size cat with patterned fur--more stripes than rosettes, though too small for a tiger. Both critters love my petting. So much so, they let me fondle their bellies, nipples, cunts with pleasure. I feel their joy and affection so intensely, I get very turned on. Ready to try sex even though they're not in heat yet--I think.

But then I half wake in MY bed, where the only big cat's a stuffed toy--no sexy aura, no enjoyment of my touch. Sigh! Being appreciated is half of what turns me on. Anyone on.

• Sex, sensuality: I've felt too achy to even think about sex till yesterday. Tried my sextoy tiger; felt like good exercise but didn't come--not a failure, body didn't want to. But wanted to be woken up.
• Dream points out sextoys can't do what a real lover can, just by having a good time. It's that aura. With Emily or with Sarah, I always came when she did, just from the pleasure of feeling her pleasure. I miss that.
• ACTION: get well! The joys of real love ARE real. But I mustn't spread my illness. And in the meantime, cat-sensuality is good training.

2013/8/7
Talk to Lily my fabric-artist friend about making a soft sculpture/lightscreen like the stuffed tiger but a bit bigger, out of the dense foam mattress I'm getting from my friend Catshall. I may cover it with the blue fur coverlet my sister left, too. Lily warns "that blue fur will be hell to sew on a machine--you'll have to hand-sew with a big needle." But she'll loan me a machine for the rest.

2013/8/11
Drive to Oakland, get Catshall's foam mattress. Feel eco-virtuous--if I hadn't picked it up, it'd be headed for landfill now.

2013/8/13
Now that I have some dense, muscular foam, should I graft proper legs on the stuffed tiger? Better yet would be a completely original figure--I'd like to make a unicorn 150 cm long (5'), a portrait of a dream figure, Five Heart Unicorn who I loved...

But how do I make bends and tapers? Translating flat plans to 3D shapes isn't easy. I start charting, working out how it might be done...

2013/8/15
Bike along Mission Street, look through half a dozen shops for giant stuffed toys to serve as guides. No. Styrofoam heads or wigs? No. Peltlike stretchable fabrics? One store has some, in zebra and leopard prints--nice, but not fake fur. The art supply store has acrylic cabachons that might do for eyes, and a cat mask usable as an armature for...

2013/8/16
Rather than using my foam-rubber windfall to enlarge the tiger or build a dream-unicorn, I find myself carving a lifesize catgirl. Then I bore holes in her limbs with a breadknife, and insert the first broomstick bones. Hard to insert--the foam muscles resist! Work all day. Exhausting. But good Frankenstein fun.

2013/8/17
Catgirl: smooth her foam torso. Slow snips. Like haircutting. How to attach her head so it's posable? Aha! Flexible tubing from our old water filter!

Decide the best way to define the catgirl's legs would be to buy kids' stretchpants or tights. And an animal-ear hat, to define her head. Bike to Bernal Community Thrift. Nope. The pet store does have a fake-fur blanket I could use for the pelt but it's too small and they only have one. I'll need more fur than THAT. On to Cole Hardware--get a coping saw and silicone caulk (most glues are rigid, but caulk bonds chunks of foam flexibly). On to Goodwill. No stretchpants, tight, hats, blankets, or mannequin heads that work. Frustrating!

Last place: Fabric Outlet. I like it instantly. A community of art enthusiasts. Sexy feeling, just walking in. I can ask for advice here. And they have dozens of fake furs! Buy three yards on sale--still pricy, $65 with tax--but it feels right. Bike home, basket full of fur.

Try shaping an old leotard to define catgirl's torso and arms... and fail utterly. Zigzag seams, wrong sizes. Of course super-elastic fabrics are notoriously hard to control. Not a beginner's fabric.

HEALTH: hands slowly recover. Achy right arm socket too. Cutting and sewing is hard on me!

2013/8/18
Catgirl's legs look a bit stubby. No easy way to lengthen them! Finally I realize I could just as well say her torso is too long. Cut her in two at the waist, shorten her torso 5 cm (2"), and suddenly she looks leggy! Glue with silicone caulk... till I run out. Add three plastic tubes like tendons to help tie waist together. Bike to Cole Hardware for more caulk. On the way, look in Heartfelt and kids' store and Big Lots and Walgreens and then all the way to Japantown seeking a kids' hat with animal ears, but nothing. I do buy pantyhose to strengthen her legs.

It's a warm evening. Everyone's out. Hot girls promenade. The few who notice me eying them as I pass, all look away. Even if I someday meet girls who ARE compatible with me, it may only be friendship plus unrequited lust across a gulf of age and illness. At least that feels likely now. So no wonder I'm building a sex toy--the ultimate otaku act. At least it'll separate those two hungers--friendship and sex. Somewhat.

Try cutting my first fur--the tail. Sew fabric into a tapering tube, turn it inside out, and with struggle I roll it slowly onto the foam musculature inside. Furry snake! Sew it on. Beautiful! Now that her figure's whole, she's already sexy. Sculpt a vagina, lie down on her, and... she grabs me. Feels alive. I come fiercely.

2013/8/19
Catgirl: add her flexible gooseneck-lamp spine. At first place too far south, must move inches into neck/shoulders--disturbing half-dried silicone. Gets all over, inflames my hands. A mild but cumulative irritant. Razor some foam, add in spots, trim others. Her basic shaping done at last. Put on pantyhose and leotard to hold her torso together. Proportions look right. There's another presence in my room!

Measure legs, chart that complex shape--curving digitigrade cat-leg, not straight plantigrade human leg. Challenging! Add gathers to make the fake fur bend. It's hard to pull/roll on--the foam grabs hold--but that's good: clings firmly once there. Feels muscular.

Plan the 2nd leg, aim for smoother curves. Rough in arms--so simple after cat-legs.

My hands & right foot still have cuts & abrasions--but they're healing.

2013/8/20
Catgirl: finish her arms & shoulders. Start on hood for neck/head, rolling/folding it for ears. Torso: now I see I must do front & back separately so the curves are symmetrical. One big tube won't work--the fabric's not elastic enough for the curves I need. Cut the front but don't attach yet--it needs small gathers and a shaped back to attach it to.

2013/8/21
Downtown shopping. See a stunning girl. She sees me looking. Gives me a lonnnnng look back, then a smile. So NOT all those I like will reject me. But then, today I wore a tight T-shirt and tight jeans. I rarely show off my body, shamble around in work clothes, and then conclude I must be ugly. What if I don't radiate illness, ugliness or age, but simple neglect? An otaku! Of a kind. I'm so concerned with health/survival I spend no time on appearance.

At home, surrender to my otaku--or inner Michelangelo, or Frankenstein. "A rose by any other name"... Cut back & belly panels separately, shape, and sew together. Try hand sewing my first details with a big curved leatherworking needle. Works--fixes tail-root problem. She seems very solid now.

Intense wave of arousal... an hour later I know cat-style sex really works. Purrrrr...

Dream: STEPS, GIRL, SIZE-SHIFTING CAT

Visit friends. Go up their side yard to the back door. Two friends live here; a thirtyish guy and a skinny teenage girl who often flirts with me. She's too young to be serious about sex, but I feel no guilt or worry--just flirt right back, and hope that in the long run our teasing grows into something deeper.

I sit on the back steps and talk with them and look out over the city. And pet the cat. Or is she a cat? Strange creature. LOOKS feline, but changes size. First she turns chipmunk-small, running along the top of the fence, then grows raccoon-big...

• Cat who changes size: let me rephrase that! If I say enlarging & shrinking pussy we love to pet does it makes more sense? Nipples, clits, penises. That cat means sexual excitement!
• Teen too young now, but a potential future mate: me. My adolescence was delayed decades by chronic illness, but I'm emerging now.
• ACTION: patience. I'm still not quite healed, but when I am, I'll find a mate.

And if it can be true of Lyme and me, why not for all of us? Half our romantic conundrums and sexual recklessness may be viruses, bacteria and parasitic fungi saying "no, not now...NOW. No, not this one... THAT one." We horses may not realize our riders are calling the shots.

One of the few useful insights of the chronically ill is the bone-deep knowledge that we DO have riders--we're as much bacterial colonies as individuals. And they have their say.

Or maybe this is just health--my first experience of normal human sexual levels, decades late. Sustainable now because I'm climbing at last out of chronic illness where I was always tired and sex often hurt.

2013/8/22

Catgirl: long hours sewing, both by hand and machine. Fur on belly, butt, back, neck, ears, head. Pin the arm-fur in place. Only her face and hands are bare foam rubber now.

My friend Nic is rehearsing music with me here today. Clean my room/lab nervously. I'm displacing embarrassment about the half-done catgirl I think. My housemates tease me a lot about the sex toys--first the tiger, now the catgirl. But when Nic arrives, she focuses on the sewing (she's a fashion designer). She suggests "Try two panels each for the legs, not single tubes--you'll get fewer wrinkles." I may redo; I have the fur to spare.

HEALTH: I minimized hand-sewing, used the machine wherever I could, and still my hands ache. Hard to sew heavy fur with a leatherworking needle!

2013/8/23
Clear my floor. Carve and assemble a unicorn out of five pieces of dense foam rubber. Plan one hind leg forward at an angle; a challege to visualize. How to hold the parts together? Foam pegs are too weak; try other tricks until bonelike duct-taped bundles of chopsticks with bulgy ends work as pegs: the limbs stay on. Glue foam chunks with flexible caulk; we'll see if it all holds together in the morning when it dries. Obsess; use up most of day. But well used!

2013/8/24
Wake 5 AM, work on unicorn sculpture. Walk to Cole Hardware, more goo... Hours carving and gluing.

Shower. Test catgirl again as sex toy. Wow!

HEALTH: abused my hands again. Worked so hard. VERY sleepy. A trace dizzy.

2013/8/25
Photograph unicorn--just bare foam rubber, chipped and snipped. But it looks almost like a sort of golden sandstone...

Stretch pantyhose over the foamrubber and sew together; ready for fur now. But she'll have to wait; Fabric Outlet's closed Sundays. Time to plan. What palette? This is basically a portrait of Silky, my dream-anima and spirit wife; why not her black/blonde coloration? On other hand, zebra stripes with a blue mane and tail attract me too--and I can get those colors.

Back to Catgirl: slow progress hand-sewing her fur with a big curved leather-needle.

2013/8/26
Catgirl: sew till I run outa brown heavy-duty thread. So I switch to...

Unicorn: put an old leotard on her to help hold front legs on. Snip & sew to shape. She looked better to me as sculpted bare foam--scruffy now, half-dressed. But much stronger! At this stage strength is all. Not quite ready to go buy fur for her yet; need to map panel shapes to create tension defining muscles. Like that tight T-shirt eliciting smiles that I never get when I dress baggy & absent-minded.

Cut off a piece of furry blue comforter and rough in a unicorn tail and mane. My borrowed sewing machine won't work with a heavy needle. Rethread, adjust, never works. Return to normal needle. Yes! Sew tail inside out in two pieces, each a cone with blur fur inside... then invert. Nicely shaggy, lifelike.

My fashion-designer friend Nic gives me a book on sewing stuffed shapes. Not much help--the book-patterns look pudgy & teddybearish; I want more elegance and suspect bones are what define it.

Tired by 9:30. Forget my bedtime herb-dose, fall asleep. Stupid. Wake 2:30 AM, hot & sweating from a Lyme attack. Take herbs & aspirin. Long as I'm up, work on catgirl's face: use acrylic paint as glue, fill in old eyesockets--half an inch too low. At last, herbs kick in, fever fades, I go back to sleep.

2013/8/27
Catgirl: sew part of face. Pin the rest. Affix eyes with acrylic.

Unicorn: rough-measure. If bolts of fur are 60" wide, two yards should do.

2013/8/28 dream: EMBARKATION, or, THIS PORTAL COIL

• The spiral: felt like an astral airport. I suspect it's dreaming itself--not a single night, but a long Jungian spiral: you land on a pillow, dream, hop through the day to land on the next lesson... spiraling in to...
• The portal: well, I can see why lots of folks will assume that that portal is death. But I'm not so sure. If so, why are flirtatious elves popping out? A thousand Dickinson poems about death, and not one had this airport-circus. And she saw a lotta death. She should know.

2013/8/29
Catgirl: Sew her face, eyes, lips. Slow hand work. A couple of hours.

Unicorn: make five silk hearts. Very slow even with sewing machine. Poor cutting, slippy fabric, machine unthreads. Fussy, frustrating--but easier than real heart surgery, I guess.

HEALTH: OK day till eve: allergy attack from fuzz. Wake 130 AM, sweating, shaky. Only 6 hours sleep.

2013/8/30
Bike to Discount Fabric. Cute girls work and shop there but I'm shy today, won't talk to any. Find & buy short light faux-zebra pelt for unicorn.

Sew several more short seams on catgirl--cunt & pelvic floor, face-seams. Still to go: neck, shoulders, hands & feet.

Five Heart Unicorn: two final foam rubber chunks around ribs; sew leotard tighter to narrow her waist & curve her lower back more; cut up sheet and pin shapes to belly from cunt to chin and right foreleg & shoulder. Measure, chart, flip these two pieces. Slow, fussy, and probably not too accurate. But I'll try cutting 'em tomorrow just the same. Add more stuffing to tail through an inch-wide hole. Like force-feeding a grumpy Tribble.

2013/8/31
Fiveheart Unicorn all day--shape & sew right foreleg, belly, hind leg. Inner piece is an inch short despite great care measuring. I knew that leg'd be the hardest--it's drawn up, sharply bent, the most convoluted shape. Try sewing in the five hearts two ways. Neither is ideal.

2013/9/4
Sew catgirl's front panel on--spotted cheetah fur. Much nicer. Improve lips and define cheekbones more.

Dream: EAT THE MOON

I'm at a party. Evening. Yard. A tea-stained pregnant moon ascends blue gulf behind the oak. Not Luna--this moon's ringed! But no, the alien halo slow-dissipates to arcs: just contrails curiously curved and momently aligned; mere atmosphere. And those twin lights, eyes bright on the moon rim, must be planes just passing; jets in the night. But heartbeats pass, the moon snails higher--and the lights cling firm. Volcanoes, comet strikes? But not red wounds; a steady white. Palomar and Keck will see; confirm their artificiality. I stride across yard; hope-fear my parallax-shift will reveal they're not lunar: near. No. Two stars persist! Eyes on the disk. At last I can't resist a lunar trip--side-slip into shamanosphere. Here the moon is small and near, hung in a willow tree, touchably low. Sidle up to Luna slow, so as not to scare. Like a shy girl in a bar. The moon's the skull of a deer! The lights, two shards of glass. Or are those deer-eyes true jewels? Kalgoorlie opalescences within flash and mist. I lift the wary moon from willow branch. Pocket eyes, slip her skull in a deep soup bowl. Add water, wash. Uh-oh. Do I plan to stew and eat the moon? But she's corpse-bone. Shreds of sinew and skin; velvet scraps rot on the horn. Flay to bone, and brew the reeking shreds. Surprise! The soup's a putrid mess. I can't eat this! Wait--who forced me? I chose, and I can un. Apologize to her deer soul, pull out her skull, pat her dry, and hang her high on willowfork clean-boned, and walk away, my coyotish cookery nearly all undone. And yet I won der. In my pocket, opaline deer-eyes still hide. As I side-step and return to the human party, doe-innocent as from a stretch or smoke on the lawn... will the moon-towns be gone? Oh, they can't yet shine; decades too soon! Had to be done. But here in human time, where jewel-eyed deer are still as absurd as lunar cities premature... will my pocket be bare? Or aglow with light to come?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Rings around the moon:
  1. Today I turned an otherworldly dream, Maelen and Me, into a song opening "Rings around the moon tonight". My dreams took that at face value!
  2. A prompt that I'm dreaming. But I neither go lucid and act on a conscious agenda NOR drift on, dream-credulous. Instead I slip onto a THIRD path. I act like a dream-figure myself--my strange deeds aren't rational, just effective. (But I clean up my mess! I wish more lucid dreamers did. What makes you sure YOU own your dreams?)
• Cities on the moon: in Dan Simmons' Phases of Gravity, an ex-astronaut seeks meaning in his life. What do you do in life after a moonwalk? He goes on a vision quest and sees cities shine on the rising moon; his 'one small step', in deeper time, really will lead us to the stars.
• Parallax shift: if the clouds are atmospheric, just lined up with Luna, then they'll shift if I walk a bit. They don't, so I deduce they're lunar.
• Tree: the Tree of Time. Time as we shamans see it, that is--branched, not linear. Note the deer-skull has antlers--again, a sign of time-forks.
• Jeweled eyes in a horned head: I'm sculpting Five-Heart the Unicorn; I just did place jeweled eyes in a horned head.
• Taste of death in my mouth: Today I...
  1. Heard Procol Harum's song "Something Following Me". The singer feels a funny extra tooth; what's in his mouth is "my own tombstone!"
  2. Wrote a webpage for Jenny Badger Sultan's dream-painting Peggy the Cake. Her dead friend Peggy appeared as a rabbit-cake and Jenny had to EAT her. The rabbit in the moon.
• ACTION: sing and sculpt my weirdest dreams; shoot for the moon! Why cater to people who never leave our time? Plenty of other artists for that.

2013/9/5
Catgirl: damn! My friends Alder and Patagia thought she was adorable--but they also thought she was a bear! I am NOT A.A. Milne (though I grew up on him, and may now as a consequence have Little Brain). I'd like a little more elegance than Pooh. So I strengthen Ailura's cheekbones, point her chin, redo lips, make skull symmetrical. Still need to redo left ear to make it more prominent, pointed & catlike, but she looks more feline already.

5 Heart Unicorn: plan & sew last leg. Takes forever. Still to go: covering head, back in zebra fur. And re-cover belly with cream fur.

2013/9/6
Unicorn: cut a long piece of cream fur for her throat and belly, and pencil in the holes where the silk hearts will peek through, though I don't dare cut them out yet--get it wrong and I ruin a big patch of fur. Pin it all together, but only link the hind legs so far; still lots of machine and hand stitching to go. And I haven't solved the head problem. Or paws.

2013/9/7
Back to Catgirl! Tentatively arrange fur snippets on her face, trying to shape her head, define her features, so she isn't an undifferentiated plush-toy lump.

2013/9/8
Catgirl's face: decide on a tricolor pattern. Then do breast implants; then measure cut and sew chest/ruff/neck piece--4' of hand sewing. Cut & pin throat piece too. Much better.

2013/9/9
Catgirl: sew blonde fur onto chin/neck. Face is working, but head? And I need to tighten her back-fur an inch for more swayback and a more raised tail--a cat in heat! Should I also resew seamy, bulgy thigh? First seam I did, and now it stands out. Sloppy.

2013/9/10
Catgirl: use paper to model blonde highlights for face. Cut & sew all but one cheek. Slow, takes hours. Still unsure what to do for hair. Yarn like a Raggedy Ann? Tubes of fur, like dreadlocks?

2013/9/11
Catgirl: sew her cheeks. Delicate, slow. Still unsure about her hair. Don't like back of neck, so need something to cover. Undo seam on lower back, it's still too flat; must redo at least an inch tighter to get natural curve.

2013/9/12
Sew several hours--catgirl's lower back and tail-root. Shorten, tighter. Shifts whole posture. Much better.

Decide to try fur dreadlocks. Make an inside-out furry tube on Lily's sewing machine and turn the tube furside-out with a pencil--tricky! It looks like a cat's tail. Sew on a few. Yes, that works!

2013/9/13
Catgirl: make and add more dreadlocks. Next I try making a tawny, flaring, lionlike tail-tip 20 cm long (8"). Same technique as the dreadlocks: machine-sewn inside out, then inverted, and handsewn on. Except I stuff the tail-tip with scrap fur. Looks and feels good.

2013/9/15
Bike to Goodwill. Find two pale blonde wigs that match; I could make a mane and tail for a life-size centaur! Just $2, so I buy them. (They're on several of the photos in the next section, though I hand-sewed red-blonde fur instead, in the end--well, both ends.)

Next stop: the fabric store, to shop for fake fur. I ask for help from a cute slender blonde with smart child's face, a Vulcan/elvish head-aura, and a sexy equine gait, though her hips are segregated from both legs and upper body somehow. Weird but charming. Kind of like the creatures I'm building.

Did I just disturb my human readers? Sorry! Remember I'm an Aspie. I can't identify people by faces; I use stance, gesture & voice. And this girl moves like a wild animal or Aspie, not a human. I like that. Both sexy and reassuring--because readable!

People say us Aspies seem animal or mechanical--our body language is wrong. But it cuts both ways, folks! For me, watching a rush-hour crowd downtown is like being trapped in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers... or a Hieronymus Bosch painting of hell. Many normal humans feel robotic or cartoonish to me--natives of that famous Uncanny Valley with the monkeys and mannequins--seeming neither quite Person nor Thing. I suspect it's one reason I can build giant furry sex dolls with equanimity. I'm already surrounded by grotesque puppets. Who vote.

2013/9/23
Go through photos of my Barbie Cendancer sculptures (my inspiration for the Foam Furs), making a shortlist of my favorite staged dioramas for submission to the Altered Barbie Exhibition in San Francisco.

Centaur Barbies dolls, acrylic, nails, epoxy			Aifelle in The Coming Dark	Archa in Diamonds	Ariel in Coral Dream	Bergia in Rain is Sky-Grass	Dlana in Snuggle Up...
Filia in Kelp Gets me Wet	Flora in I Built Mtns	Frizia in Tundra	Fuchsia in I Made the Sun Come	Kentaur in Red Hot Desert	Lia in Morla's Fish	Lina in O Wanderer	Lotora in Ruby as big as my Heart
Nila in I Married Rainbows	Proni in Mirrormate	Shya in Summer Heart	Sidera in Hidden Succulence	Spira in Microgravities	Storia in News from Tasa, Probably	Suplica in Balance of Light &...	Zara in Rain on Me

2013/9/24
My friend Catshall comes by to see how her old mattress has been transformed into creatures. She's impressed! To her they look comic, surreal AND hot. Exactly what I'm after.

Catshall's been charging ahead with her own work. Well, charging back. Made a to-do list of all her unfinished projects going back years, that she wants to finish before she dies. I can relate. All my huge quixotic projects--while still convalescing from chronic Lyme, as she is from slow cancer.

We compare bucket lists, for a laugh. Similar. No travel, no dreams of wealth, no kids or grandkids to see graduate summa cum laude. We just wanna finish the art before the death sentence gets, um, executed.

I think serious illness--waltzing with Death--fosters seriousness about your work. Not that I wouldn't trade the waltz in for health, of course. No matter how much the ghost of Darwin natters on about the benefits of natural selection, us deer go on praying for wolf eradication! Just can't appreciate the benefits, with wolf-jaws on my neck.

Evening: build Jenny Badger's dream-art website. Takes hours, whoof! As prolific as me. And better art. Sigh...

Keep sewing!

Dream: A WOLFE TRIANGLE

I'm reading a new book by Gene Wolfe. Florid but literate prose. The plot's dull so far--or is it that the characters seem blah? Comic cops or guardsmen talk with petty bureaucrats. Meant to be comic, at least. Tedious for me. Wall-to-wall men in this book. Women can't be funny, it seems, not in Wolfe's world.

But I do like the next scene. Same style, but now two of the witches from "Macbeth" are on vacation at a Caribbean beach resort. They peel off all their uglification with relief. The Fates always wear warty make-up on the job. Guys expect it. Fate is ugly, you know. And straight. But on vacation, the Fates can be themselves, and cruise the beach bunnies. And it's a diverse crowd: the resort's popular with wolf people.

Turns out Macbethian witches have a breast fetish--but they don't have to be big, just sensitive. That's fortunate, since wolf girls aren't busty. Wolfe girls. However you spell it. Our Macbethians end up in a threesome with a lanky, laconic wolf girl, lean as a greyhound. Only a lot smarter. And cuter. A furry orgy on the beach!

A furry orgy on the beach in goofy Shakespearean Scots dialect. "Whan shall wee three meete agayne?" Ha. More Terry Pratchett than what I think of as Gene Wolfe, but it works. He can write, then; I just don't share his usual worldview. His 'realistic' passages don't reflect MY reality at all. Wolves and witches on vacation, I get.

But then I'm basically a Terry Pratchett witch myself. Except the gender and the hat.

• Furry orgy: how my giant plush critters and photos of cendancers looked through Catshall's eyes.
• Go wild on Caribbean vacation: in Kate Elliott's Cold Fire, Cat, a proper 18th-century European girl, has Caribbean adventures--dancing, rum and sex on the beach. Her relatives would predict moral ruin. She gains confidence.

The Cendancers, a tower of dancing centauroid Barbies, by Chris Wayan

2013/9/27
Five Heart Unicorn: final adjustments to hind legs, but feel stuck on how to sew her belly and forelegs. Just don't see how to do the next step(s). Feel stupid.

2013/10/7
Work on Five Heart Unicorn most of day. Slow. Try to cut the holes for the hearts in her belly-fur, but botch them. Try again. Botch again. Wasting fake fur, but I have to get it right.

2013/10...
Pause work on foam furs for a month: I did get into the Altered Barbie Exhibition, so now I have to build a giant diorama showing off some twenty doll-based sculptures, the Cendancers.

2013/11/4
Back to the Foam Furs! Sew catgirl's right shoulder and foot. Hours of hand work. Listen to music.

2013/11/5
Sew away at cat girl. Build a rough left foot, sew shoulder. Done for now!

2013/11/6
Resume work on Five Heart Unicorn--hand sewing only, since Lily needs her machine back.

2013/11/7
Set up sewing machine again; work on Five Heart Unicorn. Long twisty seam.

2013/11/8-14
The curator of the Altered Barbie show, desperate for sales, tries to sell one of my centaur dancers for WAY under my minimum price! The resulting fuss, recriminations and counter-recriminations eat up a week of creative time. At last I get all my Cendancers back.

Gotta face it--the curator was wrong to undercut my prices, but she made a perceptive point. I set them so high to discourage sales, because I'm still emotionally unready to sell the Cendancers at ANY price. I still have some project in mind for them... But what? A planet where they live?

[LATER NOTE: over the next year I photograph the Cendancers in dioramas staged to look like stylized landscapes--essentially, alien dance-theatre. And then build a wide world for them to travel and perform on, where they could plausibly have evolved... Kakalea.]

2013/11/15
Hand-sew Fiveheart Unicorn a couple hours, while I listen to REM songs. I'm sculpting a being I met in REM while listening to... hah!

2013/11/19
Sew seven more dreadlocks onto catgirl (Leonore? Ailura I think. Still a bit unsure of her name at this point).

Line her inner ears in pink silk.

Define her toes, and sew two layers of rubbery traction-mat for her soles, an underlayer of pink, black on top. Feels very like a real cat's paw.

Still to do: hands, and need more flexible hipjoints.

2013/11/20-23
Fiveheart Unicorn. Sew striped back, then blue fetlocks, tail and mane, then cream patch on throat. Many feet of hand-sewing. Slow.

2013/11/29
Unicorn's face. Cut and shape zebra fabric. Silk for mouth/lips is hard to sew. Feels thin. My fabric-art friend Lily suggests thicker silk DOES exist... Dig through her scrap bin, find some thick maroon silk...

2013/12/1
Work on 5 Heart Unicorn's face. Takes a couple of hours and false tries (balky sewing machine eats up an hour too) to get a successful mouth--a silk toroid wrapped around a foamrubber insert that becomes quite beautiful lips. Amazing how a flat surface can transform...

2013/12/2-4
Lose my straight needle. Search but can't find. Borrow another from Lily. Five Heart Unicorn: sew nostrils (small but delicate) and mane (cruder but long).

2013/12/5
Need a fabric rose to finish Fiveheart Unicorn--in the original dream, the unicorn had a rose and a mirror on his brow, not the traditional horn.

Go to SCRAP, hunting a fabric rose...

2013/12/7
Sew Five Heart Unicorn's face--carve and adjust eyesockets and try linings, sew deep threads to shape nose. Progress. As I listen to the Smiths! The least unicornian band ever...

2013/12/8
Still can't find a fabric flower of right shape, size, color & feel. So I'm studying how to make my own silk rose. Found a how-to page...

2013/12/9
Back to Ailura the Catgirl! Build a proper hand of pencils and bolts (for the weight), dense foam rubber, glove, then fur on the back. Wrist too. Hand-sew the hand on, ha! Then make and sew on seven more furry dreadlocks...

2013/12/10
Catgirl: carve her other hand of foam rubber, add metal weight, put leopard glove on, sew onto catgirl. Cut & add wristpiece. Slow work. But her hands look and feel handlike. Add four more white dreadlocks in a strip like a mohawk among darker ones.

Read more about fabric flowers and try two simple test designs, which come out mediocre. But I learned the principles. Fabric store tomorrow for thread and an insettable round mirror if they have one--Lily says they will.

2013/12/11
Five Heart Unicorn. Plan, study flowers, but don't sew; unsure how to arrange rose and mirror. Maybe make a mockup horn?

Fabric store. Buy strong thread, hunt for a round mirror for unicorn. Yep, they do have them.

Therapy. Talk about how ill I got from that Altered Barbie show dispute. But then, most social interactions drain or sicken me; can I find ones that energize me? Or even ones that drain me but are worth the stress?

Homework: just notice what feels good.

Dream: FURRY SEX OPENS GATE

Two dogsized longnosed mammals with black striped coats. Mates I think. Together they do a strange trick requiring a lot of intelligence, in which they skitter opposite directions but come back together through a maze? As they pass in a corridor, they line up head to tail... and then do 69, licking away happily till they both come. And...

... when they come, their orgasms open a gate to another world!

• Dogsized stripy smart critters, other world: in Andre Norton's old science fiction novels Storm over Warlock and Ordeal in Otherwhere, mutant wolverines link with humans; linked, they're stronger in Otherwhere (her name for the dreamworld) than they were alone. Thought of those books today.
• furry creatures mating head to tail: I fell asleep between catgirl (head north) and unicorn (head south).
• Furry sex opens gate to other world: Oh, well, if you insist... Yes, that works. Her gate opens and I enter paradise.

2013/12/12
Five Heart Unicorn's face: sew her eyeholes/lining, glue her eyes in with gummy acrylic, add a second piece of foamrubber to thicken and center the horn, binding the two pieces together with a sheath of shot green silk.

Body too. Add a foam insert to her abdomen over her three hindmost hearts, and resew one heart by hand--slower but much smoother look/feel than machine stitching. Maybe I need to hand-sew all the hearts...

2013/12/13-16
Fiveheart Unicorn. Re-sew the other four hearts. Much better. Sew up the open tip of her horn; start planning how to build a rose atop it.

2013/12/17-18
Five Heart Unicorn: sew on her ears. Slow. Difficult shapes!

2013/12/20
Sew a green rose-stem onto Fiveheart Unicorn's horn. Decide the dream image of the rose separate from the mirror is the way to go, not combining them (tried gluing a small mirror in the heart of the flower, but it seemed topheavy). A mirror inset in her blue mane around her crown chakra will look fine, I think, and it's truer to the dream. If I can figure how to hold it. Can't sew glass! Glue it? Make a pocket?

2013/12/22
Five Heart Unicorn: Try making silk roses. Over & over I botch them. Finally get one that works! Add green calyx...

2013/12/24-30
Xmas guests for a week. Everything stops.

2013/12/27 dream: WE'RE ALL SOMEONE'S TOYS

I'm in a menagerie of sentient furries including the stuffed catgirl and unicorn I just sewed; but now they're alive. We lounge together on a dais--a performance stage in a small cafe, I think. A cloth banner reads something like "We're All SOMEONE'S Toys".

I feel happy. We've gone from inanimate toys to animals to people so quickly! Progress. So don't worry about small glitches; we're developing well.

What's next? A band?

• ACTION: patience! This isn't just a sculpture project. It's healing. And healing takes time.

2013/12/30
Fiveheart Unicorn: at last, inset a round mirror in the mane at her crown chakra--make a pocket rather than glue it. Works!

Still to go: some paw work. But nearly done!

Catgirl: repad left breast, lengthen neck and lower the left shoulder. Smooth out the seams. Way better. Work on lips too--a little fuller.

2014/1/1-2
Resew catgirl's right shoulder lower, and start on her neck. And resew her thigh to remove saddlebag (an artifact of my crude early sewing). Resewing shifts her posture to slightly more lourdic/feline, too; she sits better.

2014/1/3
Catgirl: resew loose seams on pelvic floor, tail, neck. Smoother. Try sex! Feels so good. Relax from all those human visitors over the holidays. Just curl up as cats together and sleep.

Silky the cattaur, sprawling and boneless

2014/1/4
Walking to the Farmers' Market, I find a heavy round wooden dowel in the street, tall as me. Perfect for centaur bones! Take it as a hint from the art-gods. I lug it home on my shoulder. Add up my wood-needs. Need more legbones. Broomstick's too light, only fit for forearms. Walk to Lowe's and buy two more big dowels for spine and thighbones. Lug back up hill with them over my shoulders. All right, I got bones. Ready to build a centaur skeleton.

2014/1/5
Centaur/Cattaur: cut dowels for vertebrae; calculate limb-bone lengths

2014/1/6
Centaur: drill holes in vertebrae. Saw the long legbones by hand; slow, till I replace the sawblade--looked fine, but it was dull. String the vertebrae and ring-pads together with rope. Plastic packing around my new computer is tougher & less brittle than styrofoam--I'll try it as a skull. Still thinking about ribs, clavicle, pelvis.

2014/1/7
Go for it! Rough-sculpt a giant foamrubber centaur torso. Insert spine and pelvic crossbars. A mess, and I still get one bloody cut, but my hands aren't hurt nearly as much as when I carved foam for the earlier creatures. Either I'm more skilled (which I doubt; still pretty crude) or... I'm learning to care for my body better. Staying in it, as I cut.

2014/1/8
Centaur: Buy pantyhose and a kids' hoodie as underskins to help hold the centaur's pieces together. Plan her legs at quarter-scale on paper, then mark and cut my remaining foam mattress with a felt pen. Slow work: not an inch to spare. Zero waste! Recycling indeed.

Assemble roughly. Far too weak to stand free, but leaning on the wall with a chair supporting belly, she stays up. Chunks of foam suddenly become... a creature.

2014/1/9
Cattaur: shape legs and torso. Slow. Trying to pace this so I don't hurt my hands.

[food poisoning, sick a few days]

2014/1/13
Hollow out first two centaur legs, preparing for bones.

2014/1/14-17
Want the centaur to stand, yet have posable/movable joints that won't loosen over time. How?

Search the web. Email Abyss Studios, home of RealDolls (lifesize sex dolls), asking how they build their joints. A woman working there emails back, says they buy them from a third party that makes them for some quite different purpose than silicone sex toys, but...she can't reveal their supplier or what their normal use is. "Sorry, it's a trade secret."

Oh, well. I'll have to figure out my own solution.

2014/1/19
Party at our house. All day! People fill the house from 2PM till after midnight. Many (like Catshall and Ruth) fall in love with the giant plush dream critters.

2014/1/20-22
Re-sew the rough seams on catgirl's face and torso. Smoother. Looking okay's not enough; has to FEEL natural.

2014/1/23
Catgirl: resew overtight side of neck, add a stretch of brown fur. Better. Face was baggy & shapeless; define chin better, and whole face improves--still not too feline but getting there.

2014/1/24-26
Sew hours: catgirl's lighter face-patches, smooth seams on neck, face, around eyes. Slim the throat padding. Build new fuller lips. Sexy! Ready to sew in? But my fingers are too tired.

Ailura with new bangs

Ultrasimple universal joint for hips & shoulders

2014/1/29
Bike through the Mission seeking joints that'd hold a centaur's weight. Calumet Photography, with its huge Sirron Norris murals outside. Big expensive joints. They recommend JVC Lighting, may have smaller cheaper ones. Go ask, fighting my Aspie shyness. A guy there suggests two types that might work--rosettes (radially ridged washer/gears), and concentric-ring-ridged ones that allow infinite positions, and neither would wear out quickly--stainless steel. But they're $75-100 each, and I need 1-2 dozen. A last resort, I think.

Talking to strangers about weird dream sculpture is... interesting. They're all intrigued, not freaked as I expected. Scary but almost fun. But I'm tiring and getting cold and it's starting to rain... so I just go home, still jointless. Sigh.

2014/1/31
Centaur: Buy cabinet hinges for knee joints, and hooks & eyes for balljoints in shoulders & hips. Way simpler and won't wear out--the metal just anchors it, the weight's supported mostly by the foam & fabric around it. Drill, saw and assemble a rough test foreleg. Have to use vice grips to turn the hip-hook into a closed eye like so the two loops can't twist loose. Weave a fabric strip round the linked rings, to suppress noise.

Hip and knee seem to work now, but the ankle's still iffy. So confined, so much weight & stress! Can I make them strong enough?

How do humans stand up at ALL?

2014/2/1-3
Smooth the centaur; body was only roughed in. A blizzard of foamrubber chips fill my room.

Time to build legs. Have to use steel gate-springs to get joints strong enough, and even now I suspect they'll need stronger springs. Or two each. Complex. Affix hinges & springs, but only insert the foot and shin-bones. Two big ones to go. My hands get tired, start hurting. And it's just rubber and wood! Imagine sculpting marble or granite...

Silky the cattaur in her proud new bones; stands with wall-support

2014/2/4
Push bones slowly into fourth leg--exhausting. Add springs. Will it stand? Almost; bears the weight, but can't balance. This is with three of the four vital springs--they only had three at Cole Hardware. I'll try to pick up a fourth spring tomorrow at another branch.

2014/2/5
Bike to Cole Hardware at 4th and Mission. Get a fourth big spring, the last they have. It lacks a price code but it's listed on wall. The cashier won't believe me about the price, and delays the whole line while a guy goes downstairs to verify the price--all this for a two-buck item. Because, I guess, some humans'd lie about it to save 50¢? And they call us Aspies crazy!

At home, install fourth big spring. The leg's firm, but the centaur still won't stand on her own. Once either fore- or hindquarters start to stretch out horizontally they keep going... But the furry fabric layers may soon restrain that. Do I need more springs, or is it time for the next step?

2014/2/6
About ready to trim excess foam and add pantyhose & kid's hoodie to tighten up form. Will she stand on her own then? Even if not, won't really know until the fur layer tightens and strengthens it all. Hollow out centaur head and insert plastic as a skull. Doesn't fit well yet.

2014/2/8
Centaur: hollow out arms and insert bones and joints. For first time, remove pillow from chair. Legs support abdomen, though she still needs chair to stabilize the legs. I bought a kids' hoodie to strengthen/tighten the thorax (upper body), but lost it somehow.

2014/2/9
Centaur: Stuff extra foamrubber "muscle" round the four hipjoints to firm them, and thread a shoelace through the torso, tightening it. Upper body still droops if unpropped. But progress. She stands without a chair now! Still needs to lean against the wall or windowsill, but she bears her own weight and her four legs balance.

2014/2/10
A break in the rain, merely gray, so I bike back to Cole Hardware and get bigger springs and eyelets for the centaur. Have to go again to the downtown branch. Been days now, and our local shop still has nothin'--slow to restock. On the way back, I stop at Goodwill and go through hundreds of kids' tops, buy a 2nd small hoodie to replace one I lost. Back at home, beef up two weak springs in knees and add new ones to ankles. One spring deep in thoracic curve too.

The result? She's still wobbly, but stands without a chair now, just leaning a hip or two slightly against a windowsill, and her thorax rears for minutes now before leaning or drooping. Not quite freestanding yet, but very close. It'll work.

Silky freestands!

2014/2/11
Smooth the Centaur's figure all day, snipping and padding. For first time, her head & shoulders stay upright briefly though her hip still leans against my bay window. Still just short of freestanding.

2014/2/12
Centaur: final smoothing. Snip snip. Then put on pantyhose--three pair, one fore, one hind, one (upside down, crotch snipped out for a neck-hole) over arms & thorax. Add a piece of thermal underwear for stretch of belly uncovered. Add pads, fill holes... work till noon...

She freestands! Tipsy, and only a few stable positions, but still she's standing on her own. Take photos.

Baby's first step!

2014/2/13
A bit drained from sculpting. My hurt hands are healing; at least the cuts didn't get infected and sore for three days as during earlier foam-hackings.

Spend the day recovering, avoid further cuts--to fabric, rubber or me.

Bike to fabric stores--sale at Fabric Outlet, but can't find a good rust/foxy fake fur.

On to Discount Fabric. Find rust/fox fur. Get some--pricy, and a long wait. Back to sale, get two more samples, long blonde fur (for mane and tail?) and a leopard pattern (sides?). Home. Six furs to work with now: cream, blonde, red, and three leopard-spot patterns--light tan, mid-bronze, deep chocolate.

2014/2/14
Centaur stands briefly then falls over. But this time it won't stand again. Just too loose. Springs can't be stretching yet. Are spinal pads squashing? Is foam flattening? Unsure what's wrong, what to do.

2014/2/15 dream: TALKED OUT OF MY SPHINX

I'm on a busy street in north-central San Francisco. Many masked and painted people. Paint-spattered leotards, feathers, cardboard tutus, fake fur. Not a festival--such body-decoration's just common now.

A big cafe is crowded with cute greenish women--bodypaint from dusky olive to lime-green. I wander through--came here for an art opening. It's a cooperative art gallery I belong to; we have thematic shows, monthly.

This month's curator chose "Violence" for his theme, disappointing me. Still, I committed to carving a styrofoam statue based on his theme, and soon after, I had a compelling dream [within my dream] of a sexy, life-affirming winged sphinx challenging how we see issues of violence with her awkward sphinx-questions. Showed the curator sketches of my dream.

He didn't like it. Too philosophical, too furry... too peaceful. He asked me instead to hack a crude wheeled figure out with an ax, on opening night, live, in front of everyone. While acting crazed and violent. The embodiment of his theme.

And I do it, cackling madly as asked.

But the resulting art, both performance and statue, are crude cartoons, no more. A chunky figure standing for perpetrators. Pointless. A trio of skinny Indian yuppies looks at the figure. A tall girl speaks up. "It's rather one-note, isn't it?" The others agree. I'm hurt... but they're absolutely right. Dull. The whole show's dull. As dull as violence is dull. Pieces depicting & protesting violence just echo that violence. They say nothing constructive or new.

The crowd disperses quickly--on to the next and probably better event, better party, better art...

I wish I'd defied the curator and gone ahead with my own vision. I let myself get talked out of my sphinx!

• Sphinx: my own preferences--artistic & spiritual as well as sexual.
• Sphinx questions: sphinxes are famous for asking hard riddles. So I suspect she also means dreamwork, where answers aren't easy yet the rewards are great--if you really do challenge your culture's pat answers.
• ACTION: stick with my own artistic path. And dreamwork. Perverse or not, it's life-affirming. Respectability leads nowhere!

2014/2/19
Centaur: level her gaze and chin--she was gawking at the roof. Open her waist and reinforce with shoelaces and extra padding to give forelegs an A-frame tension.

Walk down to Lowe's and buy heavy springs. Add to hock joints on hind legs. Find one hinge is loose: the wood split! No wonder she's been wobbly. Tear out & redo that bone, reinsert w/extra springs. Slow, tedious and hurts my hands. Then equalize her leg lengths--shorten two an inch or so. Trim an inch off one lopsided, oversize haunch.

Last: add cut-off thermal underwear (arms, actually) to her hind legs, tightening/slimming them. Now her stance is firmer. She stands for hours! Three quadrangular stances work; even one triangular one--all four legs down, but two meet. Vast improvement. This'll work! Orwell said "Ignorance is strength"; but the truth is, underwear is strength.

2014/2/20-21
Centaur: cut two trapezoids of blonde fur for the tail. My first fur work. Try hand-sewing. Fail Try machine. Yes! Trim/shape the two tail pieces till they fit together, though I can't see how to sew them together yet. Machine can't do it--it's a ring. A topological problem! No way to end it. Hand-sew, with one hand trapped inside? When done, just slip that hand out through the fourth dimension. Easy!

Open her forehips and add diagonal springs from hipbones to thoracic spine. Repack foam rubber differently. Result: stands better. Try leaving the centaur standing in the middle of my room all night. She stays up--first time. Lasted hours before, but usually she droops into a bow or back-lean, the thorax unstable; not tonight!

Dream: GRAY CATGIRL

In my dream, I dream that I fall asleep. Wake in dim dawn. Noise. A yowly gray cat, a big one. Lurches onto a bench, curls up on my jacket.

I trill at her, and she shoves her face in my hand, wants to be petted. I do. She grows larger and larger until she's a catgirl in a gray fur T-shirt and we're groping and pawing and purring. I'm very turned on. My mouth finds her nipple through the fur. Into my mouth, an inch long... and milky. Weird, she's lactating. Yet she's way too lean to be pregnant. Strange milk--colostrum maybe? Tastes sourish like kefir! Not bad, just odd...

• Nipple: I haven't made any. Is the dream prompting me to? The Furs look a bit androgynous now, with small breasts; overlookable.
• Colostrum: stimulates a baby's immune system. I think the dream's hinting the Foam Furs really can improve my immune system!
• Kefir: a second dream-prompt? I do a lot of fermented foods, but not much kefir. It too could help my immune system.
• ACTIONS: 1: Drink kefir, eat yogurt! 2: Sew nipples; let the Furs be more openly nurturing and sexual. Why hide it?

Hand-sew pieces of tail together, though the last inch is tricky, as expected--I can't reach inside a sealed spindle-shape! Just shrink the final hole till the last centimeter's lost in the fur...

Looks & feels great--like a real tail. Next?

Cattaur, firming up. Some bozo in the picture. But I guess he shows the scale.

2014/2/24
Unicorn: insert some leftover foam to tighten vagina and give her true labia not just some undifferentiated slit. "A woman's not just a series of holes." Neither is a nightmare.

Her hindmost heart is loose and ratty, needs resewing with silk not nylon. Do it by hand not machine. Better. I'm learning!

Unicorn's paws need detailing too. She definitely wants paw/hands, not hooves.

Centaur: start sewing her underlayers together--just pinned till now. Tweak the foamrubber lining her joints. Trim a hand.

Centaur's left foreleg looks slightly curving, feels wobbly. Turns out it's a broken ankle! Not the metal; the wood dowel was just too soft. Small screws ripped right out! I replaced the other joints, but forgot this one. Cut a new anklebone of harder wood, and reconnect the hinge with bigger screws, then reattach the foot, and then the spring (it literally gives her the Spring In Her Step). Slow. Open her right foreknee to tighten its spring too. And add an ankle cuff to shape one hind leg.

Pin traction mats on her four soles--it slips, but cloth slips even worse and I can't leave them bare foam rubber.

Overall, she's more robust. Stands for hours again. Standing is the new default!

2014/2/25
Centaur: sew the first fur. Chocolate boots for her hind legs, and one rust thigh piece. Add stretchable cloth to reinforce fore- and hindquarters.

Unsure I like that rust-colored fur. Its neat, even stripes look too mechanical--no living creature would be so linear.

2014/2/26
Centaur: No, I don't like the heavy rust fur. Love the foxy hue, but those neat stripes just look wrong, like a mink coat, not a living creature's pelt. So I bike to the fabric store during a lull in the rain. Nearly all the bolts of fake fur I bought last time are gone. Can't match. Frustrating. Find a rough match to one; it'll have to do. Out into steady rain. By home, I'm soaked and cold. Exhausted.

2014/2/27
Centaur. Strip off bad fur, add more elastic around hindquarters, and sew it all rough and fast with button thread, removing pins. Takes hours. Stands stronger. I think. Traction still poor--rubbery traction mats for pawpads are useless. Raw foam rubber was better. Need some rubberized fabric jar-openers, I think--the best grip on earth! But I only have one now. Might make two pads from it, but too small to make four.

2014/2/28
Centaur--finish chocolate boots and gloves. Measure lighter bronze leopard fur for her thigh, and pin it. Yeah, better than the fake mink coat. She's definitely turning feline. A cattaur.

2014/3/1
Cattaur: just one inner thigh. Colors and shapes seem right but I'm so slow & timid. But rightly so. Even at this speed, I botch a measurement, cut an inch too small, and have to piece one area out of scraps.

Dream: RED MARE ON MY BED

I'm on a quest with friends in a cartoon universe. Our quest began in a delicately inked cartoon 1945 New York going through a war-scare (it seems World War Two never happened on this timefork).

But that was then, this is now. We've come all the way to 1960s suburbia: Meadow Heights School in San Mateo, California--though the school grounds are studded with anachronistic horse troughs and Wild West saloons.

I sit by the watertrough outside our favorite saloon, studying two of our horses--gray and dun. Good walkers, but a bit drab. Then out of the saloon strolls a gorgeous red mare, the cartoonist's horse, the one who's drawn our whole universe. I like her rich fox-color and tell her so.

She carefully settles down on a bed here in the upstairs flat we all share. My bed. I don't mind, but a while later, I casually pat her and she flinches, afraid I'm shooing her off. The cartoonist allows her up on the furniture, but apparently some people here get mad about it. I apologize, soothe her with voice and touch till she settles down. I purr "You're always welcome on my bed."

No, it doesn't turn sexual; not yet. But she is cute. Big girl, but graceful. And I do like redheads... of any species.

DREAM NOTES

• Meadow Heights: my school for one year only--6th grade, a gifted class, the first in our school district. I was 9 & going through puberty. And faced my first harrassment by a clique of older boys--a couple of years later, this culminated with a rib broken in the school library where I was attacked from behind. So Meadow Heights may mean giftedness, sexual awakening or bullying--the gunfighters' saloons suggest the last.
• Cute red mare: the centaur I'm working on? Tried rich brown leopard-fur. Dream likes it. Likes her.
• ACTION: keep on! I don't care if others like subtle and gray. I like colorful and furry.

Read an award-winning but dark postmodern fable by Kij Johnson, Ponies. Little girls all start out with a familiar--a flying unicorn pony. But the price for acceptance is to mutilate your pony. Oh, they let you choose which mutilation it'll be. Cut off the horn of magic/healing? The wings of imagination? Or the tongue of your authentic voice? Little Barbara surrenders, seeking inclusion at any price. At least Sunny, her Pony, makes a break for freedom, though too late. Right to. They don't take one of the three. They cut off all--horn, wings, tongue. And then, because Sunny fled, they cut off his life.

Me, I was always a Sunny. As a child prodigy AND an Aspie, I COULDN'T act normal, take the deal; I never even got offered inclusion. The normals just cut me out of their lives. Except... I learned you can regrow your wings and horn and voice... gradually.

Dream: SNAKY FAMILIARS

Little girls all have, as their birthright, a Familiar--an animal/spirit companion. By far the commonest type is a snake as big as a firehose. Unexpected! I thought all girls were issued Ponies. Nope. Snakes!

One girl asks me for help in peeling the snakeskin off her familiar--it's getting too tight, time to shed the old skin. As happens regularly. Scratch scratch, peel peel...

DREAM NOTES

• Snakes: Well, of course my Freudian readers know it's a...
  1. Penis, or at least a clit. After all, Ponies is all about castration (or at least clitoridectomy)--chopping off the horn, wings, tongue, Wordsworthian clouds of glory... anything fun. But snakes mean something more to me:
  2. Slow cyclic growth. Periodically, the skin of daily life gets too tight--we've outgrown ourselves--we must be cracked, peeled and shed. It takes effort, even external help. If we don't, we stifle.
• The dream disagrees with Kij Johnson's image! Don't focus on childhood mutilation, but on aiding regrowth. You can get your voice back, your magic back, your wings back. But only if you shed your old dead self periodically. Not that peeling's always easy!
• ACTION: keep peeling off my old skin, I guess. Whatever it take to regrow that winged unicorn. Or snake.

2014/3/8 dream: FUR FETISHISTS PIONEER CAMOUFLAGE

It's the future; I live in space. I discover a fascinating old book on camouflage--the author was an Earth native, a man living in the late 1700s, but the illustrations in this edition, the definitive one, are by a woman in the 1950s. This edition's been reissued for centuries by military/scouting academies because it's a tactical classic! It shows how patterns can hide you (useful for scoutships) or make you stand out (useful for surveys, search & rescue).

Of course, it was written and illustrated long before humans found how common furry people are in the galaxy. Or to put it the way most galactics do, how rare naked apes are! It's a furry, feathery, scaly universe.

Clothing exists, of course--for harsh weather, and, well, for dressing up in bed. It's a little kinky to wear it on the street on a nice day. Normally-clothed humans are the ones who look like primitive fetishists nowadays!

And yet, and yet... this book, written back in a strange, primitive, prudish, naked-ape time somehow depicts modern, furry people. Were the author and illustrator just fetishists who got lucky in anticipating the interstellar truth, or did they have a flash of prescience?

The book really does seem fetishy, though. Sex-obsessed. One page shows how to sew fake fur in patterns around genitals, and to build fake vaginas of silk. Looks like the obscurest of sexual kinks...

And yet, and yet, and yet, their distant descendants use their prespace fetish-art techniques to hide scoutships!

DREAM NOTES

• Weird art used for war: in World War Two, in Paris, some Cubists who saw camouflaged tanks laughed ironically and said "We caused that!" Not the war, but camo as a technology.
• Changes in deep time: What of me? I build my foam furs for beauty, sex, emotional comfort and healing. But that's me. You readers may see surrealism, fetishism, fashion, regression to childhood magical thinking & narcissism... or queer envy? But a century after you, who knows how they'll be seen? Political statements, banality, comedy... body designs for AIs? We can't know how later ages will see our art.
• ACTION: Quit trying to be responsible for (that is, control) what other people (let alone other eras!) project on my art. But there's a price. To earn that freedom from guilt about others' use of my art, I AM obliged to be clear about MY intentions, MY meanings.

Cattaur, half-furred

2014/3/9
Cattaur: sew her sides all day, on & off. Planned to peel off the fur pieces and machine-sew most seams, but decide it's easier and looks/feels better to sew 'em in place by hand. Do three long seams.

2014/3/11
Cattaur: flanks done. Sew side panels, belly. Restuff the tail firmer. Cut out the panel for her back.

She's so cute now! Sprawl her on my bed like the Red Mare in my dream. Roll around with her, get very turned on, mate with her, come...

But... one kind of screw undoes another! Floppy leg, injured joint. Ow! Peel her fur back. Yep, broken. Redo the joint with bigger screw, new hole, reposition springs a bit, and pad the springs and guideposts (screws halfway out). The joint seems stronger.

2014/3/13
Cattaur's hind legs and low & sew a dozen small pieces of cheetah fur onto forethighs. Last bits of that fur, and can't match it at store, so have to make each scrap count. Very slow, but by end, she stands firmer. And her thighs have such soft fur now. Wanna rest my head there and lick her, mmm...

2014/3/25
Rain. Spend most of day sewing the centaur. Take off tail, restuff, add flexible stiffener extending from spine, sew on tail plus half a dozen small bits of pelt around it.

About one more full day and I'll be done up to the waist (except, of course, soles; saved for last so I can keep rolling up fur to repair joints till I get them right).

2014/3/26
Cattaur: finish adjusting tail. Sew forecrotch and one hip. Almost done to the waist! Start thinking about her face. Switch to...

Ailura the catgirl! Sew in darker fuller lips. Ooh, so kissable...

2014/3/28 dream: LEOPARDS AT THE FRINGE

Whew! A steamy, funny dream--I'll just summarize it here:

I'm performing in San Francisco's Fringe Festival in a show billed as "a performance orgy."

• ACT ONE--I'm a leopard (not a human in a suit a la Cats; a real, talking leopard!) with several pet human girls on leashes.
• ACT TWO--Pet and owner reverse--and so does species! Now I'm a human boy on a leash, the pet of a leopard girl. We have furry sex onstage... in between soliloquys!

• I don't know what else that dream may mean, but it definitely means that dream-me loves Ailura's sexy new lips. Wish I could sew a sexy new pair for me too. But flesh has limitations.

2014/3/29
Open that wobbly centaur knee. Yep, a screw tore out of the soft wood of the shin; the other screw's bent. Replace the shin with hardwood. Open the other knee. A little loose, but much better. Add guides flanking the spring and a stop-screw to reduce torque on the joint and make the default straight rather than colt-kneed, and reclose her leg. She stands firmer.

Dream 1: SEXY SUBSTANCE EXCITES UNIGIRL

Encounter an inherently sexy substance. Just being near it turns me on; touching it is wildly exciting. A beautiful girl who's a human-unicorn hybrid finds the stuff as stimulating as I do.

I hope we end up in bed. Will she find ME attractive?

DREAM NOTES

• Unicorn-girl:
  1. Fiveheart Unicorn on my bed? But also...
  2. She refers to an earlier life-altering dream: Bastard Unicorn! In it, I learned I'm half-unicorn and need to live by unicorn rules: help the whole herd, and ignore those human competitive status games; unicorns have no pecking order, just cliques sharing interests. Not chains or pyramids, clubs. My altruism isn't compulsive niceness, nor some feigned tactic; I'm hardwired that way. So...
  This little dream hints... what? My sexual orientation is... girly? Unicornian? No surprise there. But I forget how many girls like what I do. No matter how much American guys still sneer at... unicorn values.

I live in a different room in a different house, though with the same housemates, I think. Slowly wake up in a sleeping bag or a mattress on the floor. In bed with me are clothes, several complete sets. Fursuits!

I put one on. A skinny catsuit with a long tail. How do I look? My only mirror is really just a window. Not even one pane; image broken into four parts at least. Hmm. The suit's just not clingy or elastic enough to look as slinky-feline as I hoped. And the fur is short, revealing my skinny human shape, and the hood's too small, baring my human face. Except for weird goggle-frames and a few straps. Breaks up my face but not at all catlike--makes the whole suit look unfinished. I need to buy or sculpt a full cat mask.

• Catsuit's flawed head: Silky the Cattaur's head is just roughed in, fabrication lagging way behind the rest. Or does it mean something deeper? That I may have regained a lot of my lost animality, but my head--my thinking--is still brainwashed, conventionally human?
• Glasses-frames: frames of my real glasses broke, need gluing.
• ACTION: shape centaur head/face! And fix those glasses before a lens falls out.
• ACTION: make a fursuit?
• LATER NOTE: Fursuit dream repeats two weeks later! 2014/4/16, Adjustable Fursuit.

2014/3/30
Sew cattaur. Up to ribs now. Stuff silencer-cloth into squeaky shoulder joints. Trim arms a bit.

2014/4/2
Sex play with cattaur--she's so cute now! Then sew some more. Fur done up to nipples, and her face is shaped, though still bare of fur--unsure what colors.

2014/4/3-17
Cattaur: steadily hand-sew various tones of fur onto her arms, shoulders & upper back. Ready for her neck.

2014/4/16 Dream: ADJUSTABLE FURSUIT

I'm a slender woman in the early 20th Century Britain, in WB Yeats's circle. His great patron and friend Lady Gregory lends me her... fursuit? Yes. She loves turning into a big talking cat. The suit opens down the front and is very adjustable--complex laces/stays around belly and crotch let it snugly fit fat or thin, male or female.

Takes a while to get it snug on me, I'm so thin. But once it moves with me and shows me off, I feel sexy!

I must take care to store some optional stays and fur-wedges thin wearers don't need, since Lady Gregory's plump and will need them. No pockets, so I must store inside without spoiling the lines. Luckily fur is more forgiving than skin.

I wish I'd brought along the belt or implant that lets me control a tail; the suit's capable, but I can't hook that up without one more piece. Still its tail's default setting is springy, lively, looks good.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Yeats, Gregory, plump, sexiness: I was reading a bio of Yeats. It mentioned a friend of theirs who was sexy but/and plump.
• Long struggle before suit fits, then I feel sexy: my body? Sexiness delayed decades by health-struggle.
• Tighten fur to fit: echoes a dreampoem I'm writing, Teacher-Bird. A yeti bursts into my room. I fear it'll eat me, but it tears off its own fur to reveal the feathers of my teacher, a giant raven-black heron... who had been wearing a fursuit! Such a story's already too weird to allow any fancy stylistic treatment, so I'm trying to tighten the poem down to bare-bones doggerel.
• Powered, cybernetic tail: maybe a prompt to try adding a vibrator to the catgirl's throat so she can purr. Have to figure out power, switch, batteries. Oh! Maybe it's prompting to try a pre-electronic sextoy like benwah balls, that pick up ambient motion and vibrate without switches or batteries.
• ACTION 1: work on centaur today.
• ACTION 2:Plug away at Teacherbird poem. I'm a slow writer. It took time to adjust the fursuit. But tighten it down. Slim is sexy!
• ACTION 3: when done with the giant furry creatures, make a fursuit? By now I sure know how to sew fur!

2014/4/24 dream: SILKY'S INVERSION

People tell me my familiar spirit, Silky, is back in town, but I haven't seen her. Is she avoiding me? I don't know why.

I try the spots she frequents--she often likes to hang with the gargoyles on the older churches in town, and with the carved critters on some of the neoclassical buildings in the Civic Center.

But she's not up on the first few buildings I check, and the gargoyles all say they haven't seen her.

At last I spot her in a colored drawing or painting of mine I forgot--a hearth seen in side view, in a large old-fashioned hall. Silky, in one of her favorite forms, a black mare, is standing rampant--but upside down, on the ceiling!

Being a spirit, she can decide what gravity field she wants to honor. Whimsical. That's Silky all over! Funny-looking, but not that outrageous for her.

But several other anomalies do throw me.

• She's wearing a sort of halter or bikini top, shiny ruby-red--silk? Or rubies or garnets sewn onto cloth? NOT like her to wear anything as a horse--hates feeling haltered or bridled.
• And white speckles are floating through the room. Snow's falling--indoors!
• And most shocking of all, Silky is male! A huge erection. As spirits go, she's pretty femme. Rare to see her playing stallion.

And then the explanation walks in--a guy who adores her, but he's gay. Longs for a big black dick to play with.

Silky likes to be played with. So she obliged!

Whatever feels good, I guess...

• She hangs with gargoyles: two nights ago I dreamt I met some gargoyle-goddesses on a huge library dome, with advice for me. So Silky here may mean my dreamlife itself.
• Inverted, standing on ceiling: is Silky hinting that I'm interpreting my dreams wrong? Upside down and backward! Or is she mocking psychiatry's complicity in homophobia? In the 20th Century, shrinks labeled queers "inverts". Well, here she is, turned male, gay, "inverted"...
• Man attracted to horse, sex change to stallion: sex play with Fiveheart the unicorn! In the original dream of Fiveheart, he really was a stallion and I was a woman in love with him. But I sculpted him as a mare since when awake I'm in a male body attracted to females.
• Snow falls on floating dark horse, sex change again: echoes "Arrival", a painting I saw by Alex Gross in the artbook Weirdo Noir: a glum girl rides a dark Pegasus flying thru snowfall over angular mountains; a note by the kid says "Myself as a girl". I wanted to include this piece in the World Dream Bank if it was a dream, so I emailed Alex to ask if he dreamt it. No answer. Except in my dreams!
• So what's it all mean? You could dismiss it as mishmash of elements from seeing Arrival & sculpting Fiveheart. But I can't. My dreams always have a point. And I know what it isn't saying! I already knew my playful side, Silky, ignores rules & appearances as long as everyone's having fun. Old news! That upside-downness says I'm missing something important. Either she or I or that guy (whatever HE represents) doesn't know what's up! About what?
• ACTION: Well... sketch her, I guess. I mean him. Them. Finish Fiveheart. And see what's up next. Dreamwork's a long-term game.

"Five Heart Unicorn", sculpture of a dream figure by Chris Wayan, as of 2014

"Arrival", (dream?) painting by Alex Gross, 2001

2016 NOTE: today I think the dream was prompting me to notice something sexual I didn't for another two years, till after I'd finished fine-tuning all four sex toys: I tried to make every mouth or vagina I built individual, interestingly different, and they were--except for one thing. Every one was at first too tight, too small, because I underestimated the size of my own cock--both length and diameter. (The reverse of every guy in existence! Don't they all think they're more studly than they are? But I underestimate. Consistently!)

I'm not surprised in retrospect. I grew up surrounded by sisters, with a female/androgenous body image--"I'm in a male body", not "I am male." Not gender-dysphoric enough to risk surgery; my intensest longings are for health and vigor that recurring Lyme denied me, so that's what I've focused on. Talk therapy did remedy my psychological self-image--I was trained to think I (and all males) must be sexist, suspect, always at fault in relationships [thanks, Mom!]... but Silky's Inversion was warning me I still had work to do: to correct my body image, too. "Big cock. And that's OK. More than OK. It's good. Those who like them, like them big." And I was unconsciously building my sexy creatures to force that re-evaluation.

And maybe, Dear Reader, this distinction will be useful for you too. You have at least two self-images; either or both may be wrong. Check both!

2014/4/25
Cattaur: rough in fur pieces for face.

Make blue cat-eyes out of oval acrylic-resin-crystal cabachons. But I don't put them on. My other creatures have violet and blue eyes. How about gold?

Yes. Gold. They really give her presence.

2014/5/13-29
Cattaur: sew neck and hair and ears. To my surprise, her posture subtly improves! Mysterious, but I'm not complaining.

2014/6/10-13
Cattaur: sew chin/cheek, pin & sew lips. Emphasize the hollows below cheekbones by going right through skull with massive straight needle and extra-heavy thread.

2014/6/15
Cattaur: redo small of back, improves posture a lot. Add hair/mane.

I'm reading Jo Walton's What Makes This Book So Great, on science fiction & fantasy novels. First I note a few I'd like to read, but after twenty reviews, I start seeing broader patterns. Walton reads with a writer's eye; she sees (and admires) structural things I don't. And should learn to.

Walton also likes violence and ugliness I can't. I'm not sure that's a strength; she likes a lot of Gripping Dystopias I tried and found dreary. She seems to buy the "veneer" theory of human nature--decency is recent, a mere skin over primal brutality. It's a common belief, but in Rebecca Solnit's study A Paradise Built In Hell, she debunks it in detail. In disasters, people self-organize and cooperate, quickly and efficiently--just as the anarchists always said. Only when business-as-usual resumes--bosses, profits, competing for social status--do people start misbehaving again! Human nature, as we know and decry it, is a reaction to hierarchy and exploitation.

So a lot of Walton's reviews about "great" books leave me cold. More militarism, patriarchy, empire? Who cares how well-painted it is, if its view of human nature is false and it imagines nothing better than what we have?

What I like (to read, and to write) Walton would probably dislike--or just dismiss as immature, wishful thinking--as unicorns in love, with pink wings. But then utopians often get mocked for building paradise out of chopsticks and duct tape. As if our present dystopia isn't equally flimsy!

I write this while sick again--fever, sweating, joint aches, shakes, racing heart. What has western medicine prescribed? Migraine pills! Which don't work. But migraines are common, so that's what I get. What WORKS is azithromycin, but that implies a recurrent bacterial infection, and Kaiser believes in statistically likely causes--stress, caffeine, migraine. Diagnosis is too costly. Obsolete. And blindly handing out antibiotics to fix an unknown infection is irresponsible--even if it's known to work.

Dystopia is BORING. I live there. I should know.

Dream: A HISA ON OLYMPUS

I'm a hisa. We look a bit like your Terran kangaroos, though we run, not hop. Upright like you, but forward-leaning, balanced by a long tail (prehensile at the tip). Long face, mobile ears. Brown coat on my back, cream countershading.

We lack your technology; we've never flown, let alone traveled space. To us it's Heaven--holy. Your people built an orbital station to trade with us. And our atmosphere's so dense that Terrans can breathe our stratosphere, so you've set up small trade stations on our highest mountaintops too; well above our comfort zone, so none of us minded.

I'm a well-known private detective--the nearest local equivalent of your Sherlock Holmes. Respected even by Terrans. Recently the manager of a Terran trade station hired me for a difficult case, waiving the usual tech-quarantine--the Prime Directive about altering native cultures. I've done local business with Terrans, but this'll be my first trip outside the hisa zone.

See, the crime-scene is a station--a small town, really--atop a high shield volcano much like Mount Olympus on your Mars. The crime was an elaborate break-in that clearly took a team. It's a mystery how they got in without cameras spotting them. I need to examine that perimeter and its tracks closely, on foot. How? Much debate and fuss... how to get me up there to investigate? Rig an oxygen mask fitting my long hisa head? Or can I drive a pressurized rover? Or run a robot explorer from inside the station? (I veto this last. Need to be there, touch it, taste the dirt.) All mean exposing me to offworld tech.

I don't recall whodunit. Or howtheydunit. What I do recall comes after I solve the case. (Of course I solve it! I told you: I'm the hisa Holmes.) But later...

A stubborn streak makes me go home my own people's way, not flying in the daily shuttle: I need to connect with the land and make my journey back down Olympus real, by walking all the way home. I flew up, reluctantly, because time was of the essence; but a technomagical flight BOTH ways would leave my memories ungrounded. Sacrilegious to a hisa--and just plain disorienting.

So I hike down the shield of Olympus--and that's an epic trek! Hundreds of kilometers, a week's walk even at our leggy people's fast pace. I do use an adapted breathing-mask and bundle up in furs, UV goggles and a ridiculous fuzzy hat. Humiliating and uncomfortable--our people hate clothes confining our own fur. Itchy. But I have to. I need to walk. I can't hitch rides, not even with security guards in ground vehicles when they drop off my oxygen refills and bring me mail... let alone ride in their shiny, easy shuttles overhead.

An endless trek, risking high-altitude radiation, oxygen shortage, sunburned ears, embolism, frostbite, sore paws (dark basalt in that high-altitude sun gets hot)... But I need to. To recover from that disconnected flight. To know where I am. And who I am.

Do you?

DREAM NOTES

• Hisa among humans: Jo Walton critiqued CJ Cherryh's Downbelow Station for her portrait of the hisa, "her least interesting aliens, clichéd Noble Savages". Funny, what bored me in that glum book were the humans: clichéd Ignoble Assholes. Tired dystopians! The hisa made more sense. Unsurprising, since I am one, basically. And my dreams confirm it by making me a hisa--among humans. Or, as Walton put it recently: Among Others.
• Furry Holmes: I just read Eleanor Arnason's story "Holmes Sherlock". A scholarly hwarhath, a furry alien, reads Conan Doyle, and successfully applies Holmesian logic to a local mystery, which turns out to hinge on a scandalous secret: closet heterosexuals! (When you've eliminated the impossible, what remains, no matter how preposterous, must be true.)
• My stubborn, slow trek down:
  1. My dream agrees with Australian Aboriginal tradition: after a fast high-tech trip, kick back till your soul catches up! Jetlag's obvious; subtler, but equally real, is carlag.
  2. I'm stubbornly trying to get help from an HMO built to manage common illnesses, not diagnose rare ones. That frustration's spread--makes me feel like I'm stuck in EVERY area of my life right now--love, creativity. While others zoom by... swift and disconnected.
• Low-tech, primitive, animal: next to Jo Walton's speed and productivity, I do feel slow. But I'm a primitive. I have to stay grounded.
• ACTION 1: keep taking my primitive herbs--artemisia, eleuthero, milk thistle, cat's claw. They're slow, but slow beats malpractice--as dispensed by high-tech fools in a hurry.
• ACTION 2: Accept my hisa nature. I plod down Olympus, step by step, while your shiny shuttles dart overhead.

2014/6/24-5
Cattaur: face. Sew light patches over her cheekbones, forehead, nose, chin--such highlights pop out, contrast with dark hollows around eyes and hollows below cheekbones. Helps to shape her face, emphasize relief, minimize that blobby stuffed-toy look.

2014/7/4
House party! Most guests start out downstairs barbecuing, but by evening they all migrate up and see Barbie cendancers and the huggable sculptures, who are the big hit of the evening.

But the cattaur gets even wobblier by party's end. All four knee joints have clearly torn loose from even gentle petting. Knees need a total redesign.

2014/7/6-7
Hardware store. Buy large strap-hinges and a big dowel, probably unneeded, and 2" wood screws. Open front knee joints of centaur. Yep, those wimpy little screws tore out. Put in new long straplike hinges on side instead of in the joint; the bigger holes in it let me put long heavy screws right through the bone; six not four, and each MUCH bigger than previous. They feel VERY strong now. Even after just fixing the forelegs, the centaur stands up again.

2014/7/8
Cattaur: fix hind legjoints too.

2014/7/12-13
Cattaur: cut and sew those red-blonde fetlocks.

2014/7/14
Cattaur AND unicorn; add small inserts to three vaginas (yes three; centaur has two, fore and hind).

2014/7/15
Cattaur: reopen her right foreknee; replace & adjust straightness screw (a spacer to limit how far the hinge swings). But generally, the new joints seem to be holding.

2014/8/26-27
Sew forearm-fetlocks on centaur. Paint a pair of gloves; will they do for hands?

2014/9/8 dream: POSABLE MUSCULAR DOLL

I'm sitting, playing with an oversize doll I found, about 40 cm tall (c. 15"). She's a voluptuous, athletic-looking woman with odd sliding flexible plastic muscles that all interlock, as complex as living musculature. The friction from sliding helps her hold poses despite joints as flexible as a gymnast! Clever, elegant.

She has one flaw: her right hip socket seems dislocated. Examine the left. There seem to be two pegs somehow snapped together (concentrically?) then inserted in a socket. On the right, I see the two pegs, but can't link them. And I can't find the socket at all!

Is this a manufacturing defect, or is she broken, or... am I missing something? Maybe there's a third peg with smooth skin to hide the joint, that got popped in prematurely, when it should go on last, after the joint's assembled? Maybe all the essentials are here--just hidden!

DREAM NOTE

• The doll's odd muscles add friction, stabilizing loose joints: this endorses a conscious idea I had for posable joints for my creatures (or, for that matter, any adjustable structure whose joints can't easily be reached for servicing)--use a few vinyl venetian blind-slats or laminated playing cards and dovetail them. Such interleaving generates a strong grip/friction. Like shuffling cards! Their drag could hold the joint in position, and this friction's so widely distributed over the flat surfaces that the joint'd take many years to wear and loosen.

  In contrast, a conventional hinge without some kind of external drag concentrates friction in the hinge itself, and will wear/loosen too fast. You have to tighten a wing nut, or equivalent. Annual knee surgery for robots? Fine backstage, or for an exposed steampunk look, but a problem if you're sewing fur like me--emulating life.

  I don't want to install maintenance zippers every foot or so!

  But these dove-drag joints really might maintain an even resistance for years.

  Now that the cattaur's joints are working well, I won't replace them--but if I ever do another freestanding creature, I should try this.

Mockup of longlived posable joint. Wear gets distributed among dovetailed cards.

Side view, dove-drag joint. (Drill bit snapped, gashing my hand. Just call me van Gogh...)

Silky the Cattaur, still handless

2014/9/15-16
The cattaur falls down. Discover the left front kneejoint's blown. Peel the fur back. Expect to find the hinge ripped out of wood. Nope. Firmly in. The steel hinge itself tore apart! Not the solid pin it seemed to be, but two cheap rivets with a gap hidden in the sleeve. Saved themselves a tenth of a cent of metal--and made hours of trouble for me.

Now last week's dream, Posable Muscular Doll, with its defective joint, seems literal and predictive--the center-pin of a leg joint snapped? Only difference: hip in dream, knee in reality.

Bike to hardware shop and get the biggest strap hinges in the store. Door hinges are too wide to fit in a centaur knee, but strap-hinges for gates WILL fit--and have triple the old strength rating--15 lbs lateral per hinge. Wonder if even that's enough. Drill & screw centaur knee, put in 3rd hinge, bigger than ever.

She stands firmer now. We'll see...

MERTIGER

2014/9/21
Start to turn my thrift-store tiger into a mer-tiger--front end feline, back end mermaid. Well, furmaid. No, not Rubbermaid.

Out on our back deck, I start the tail. Cut foam rubber, sew inner lining, stuff the foam in. Crude, but get the general shape.

2014/9/24
Bike to fabric stores and look at tiger-striped fake furs.

2014/9/25
Mer-tiger: smooth and even out her flukes. Tail behind waist is still too fat.

Back to Catttaur: saw her left hind leg 1.5 cm shorter; her tendency to slouch & twist, fidgeting like a teen in a group photo, abruptly ends. Firm.

2014/9/26
Mer-tiger: Out on deck with a bread knife, I slim her "knees" a lot, flatten butt a bit, widen hips.

2014/9/28
Mer-tiger: open up her tiger half. Make a spine, though don't insert yet. Unsure what to do about early struts inside--what to anchor for shoulders, what to discard.

2014/9/29
Mer-tiger: bevel & lengthen spine. Remove old struts and insert the spine at last. Arm bones, too. Replace most of the poly batting with foam rubber. Firmer bouncier, more like living muscle.

2014/9/30
cattaur: add much bigger stronger hinge to right hind knee (well, hock). Left hock still weaker.

2014/10/3
Bike to fabric store--sale on, get tiger-fur for the mertiger. I pick one with longer fur on the orange stripes, shorter on the black; you can actually feel the stripes as you pet her. Rough-sew the dorsal fin and start on the crest. My mer-tiger has a cockatoo-like crest on her head, partly just for the look--it echoes the dorsal fin--and partly a reference to a story I read at age nine about "crest cats", intelligent telepathic cats on a jungle planet (I forgot the title, but it's by James Schmitz--his first Telzey Amberdon story.)

2014/10/9
Bike to the fabric store and get a yard of lovely bluish barred-feathery fur. Like a falcon, or a gryphon--part mammal part bird.

2014/10/27
Ailura the catgirl: re-sew her lower back & butt with more sway/curve. And much smoother-feeling. My hand sewing is now smoother than machine--used to be cruder. Learning!

2014/10/31
Fabric store, try to match Ailura's light spotted belly fur, get more. No, but they have several good cream furs, if I want to redo her whole front. I suspect she'd look better. Should I totally redo her?

2014/11/3
Mer-tiger: sew tail--but just underlayers. Still planning coloration, just draping fabrics on.

2014/11/4-5
Mer-tiger--cut & pin half the fur.

2014/11/9
Switch to Silky the cattaur! Decide to tackle her wobbly right-front ankle. What's the problem? Peel the fur back up her shin like a snake shedding skin...

Hmm. Its cabinet hinge is OK, but it's ripped out of the wood! Tiny screws. Put in a long strap hinge with huge screws, sew up her leg... and she stands firm again. It's clear now that every single cabinet hinge must be replaced by a big strap hinge--not because all the cabinet hinges are bad, but to accomodate big long screws. Ohhhh, that pun's getting sohhhh old...

Still can't decide how to do Silky's hands--use gloves? Nor the soles of her feet--need serious traction!

2014/11/10-12
Back to the Mertiger: cut pin & sew fur on flukes.

Bike to the fabric store and get cream-white fur for the belly of the mer-tiger (and to redo Ailura--it's on sale, and I don't have enough of the duller offwhite fur I have to do both).

My cashier is really cute. On impulse I tell her about the creatures. She likes the idea and wants to see photos. She's right--I've barely shot any. Should record the stages. You can't go back and take more pictures of your childhood later...

2014/11/13-16
Ailura the catgirl: sew the new cream fur on her belly/breast. A new crisper look--higher contrast. A new feel too--she IS supposed to be as much a tactile sculpture as a visual one. Paradoxically, the bold new fur has a softer, smoother feel. Mmmmm...

2014/11/17-20
Mertiger: sew dorsal fin. Then I cut out and start to sew the trailing part of her crest, along her neck.

2014/11/21-24
Mertiger: sew the blue feathery curve of her dolphinish hindbody, then her reddish tail flukes. Big, but simple. Just listen to an audiobook and trance out...

2014/11/24 dream: HALF'S HARD

Iron shanks stud the dead field, wan-lit by moon. Statues aborted, robots slain? No: not all Undone. One done--parts all here! And human-tall But human not at all--a feline feverdream. Yet I met that leopardess. Portrait of a real! AND a sex toy. Riven. A yard-long arc of steel Torn loose: one flank and tail. A vexed boy Leans on an engine dead, ponders how to heal Panthera somnis, but his erection steel-hard Distracts. Desperate to fuck NOW. Needs the pard. He burns too much to safely weld. He glares at her, at me, frustrated. Mute-waves a monkey wrench At the loose wind-rattled wedge of wench. Says "Half a vagina's hard to fuck." Jagged, ow! I guess. Impasse! It whirls, it weathervanes like this: Sex vexes repair, but the needed fix blocks sex.

DREAM NOTES

• This surreal dream plays on the myth of Pygmalion-- a sculptor falls in love with his creation and the gods grant her life. Variants around the world aren't always sculpture--a Chinese version has her step from a painting, The Purple Rose of Cairo has him step off the movie screen... though this is more The Bride of Frankenstein.
• Add a long curved wedge to a statue of a creature: the big curving tail of the Mertiger.
• Big cat, broken: Silky the cat-taur's recurring joint problems. Need to replace ALL those flimsy cabinet hinges in her ankles and hocks with stronger gate hinges.
• "Half a vagina's hard to fuck": he said this, precisely--not the easy pun of "Half a pussy's hard to fuck", which'd even scan better. But he used the formal word. I think the dream's saying: no joke. Not playin' around tonight in the Field of Broken Dreams. So...
• Who's really broken? me. I'm still trying to diagnose my recurrent fevers--suspect Lyme plus babesia or bartonella, but can't be sure it's not glandular or viral.
• Frustration: the illness discourages dating--I hurt, AND worry my mystery infection's communicable. The dream confirms illness creates sexual frustration, but points out the stress of the frustration aggravates illness, too. Feedback loop!
• ACTION: Break the loop. I can't risk giving others an unknown illness, and vibrators don't do much for me. So build sex toys that DO work! Dreams approve of building Silky and the Mer-tiger. But also, I think, the dream warns me that healing myself will take close attention precisely applied--like the concentrated fire of welding! To get well, weld.

2014/11/27
Mertiger: sew her hindbelly--tail, waistline up to labia. Start on her dorsal fin, too.

Sculpt four small breasts and pin cream fur over her forebelly.

2014/11/28-9
Mertiger: sew hours. Her headcrest, then the long shaggy seams on her waist and attendant fins.

2014/12/6
Mertiger: finish one side-fin, start the second.

But over the next few days, I get a Lyme attack--headache, low fever, shakes, sweats. I'm tired & in pain all through the holidays. Have to quit sewing--my joints are just too sore.

2015

2015/1/1
Sew mertiger's neck and forequarters. Then I get another infection. Too achy to sew for weeks again! Fever and joint pain...

Go through my journal and chart my health last year. Concentrated attention, like the welding dream said. Shocked at the pattern. A couple dozen attacks! And I lose 2-3 days each time. At least a sixth of my life devoured by illness. I knew the fear of triggering attacks limited me a lot, but this many days in pain...

Dream: MENDELIAN CHIMERAS

I visit Mendel's monastery and the peas he crossbred to work out the laws of inheritance. Monks using his private notes have carried his experiments much further in recent years... crossing plants, animals and people. More extreme chimeras than anything secular science has made! And the church has used them to seek secular power.

I argue with friends (both in and out of the Church) that the agent who largely caused the Great Change a few years back, when so many of us crosses and chimeras went public, had a complex secret agenda involving the Church.

Me? I'm a were-creature. In my animal form--forgotten exactly what species, but a furry thigh-high quadruped--I sneak into a petting zoo. Find a cageless space and lope around meeting human kids and various creatures. Fun!

But my wandering's not idle. I'm here looking for a sentient creature hiding out from the Church--maybe from the secular government too.

Meet a girl about twenty years old who's a crossbreed: part human, part furry creature (the same species as me and the sentient creature hiding out)... and part peavine, from Mendel's garden!

Even when she shifts to human form, she looks subtly odd. The round, dark, nearly whiteless, very wideset eyes of an herbivore, delicate chin, upturned nose, sprouty twiny hair...

As a half-human myself, I find her adorable.

Later in my kitchen I argue with some friends and co-conspirators about the nature of the Change. Lyme disease, which I've had to live with for years, has taught me to notice how my abilities wax and wane. During attacks, I get clumsy and abstract thought gets harder; but unlike Alzheimer's, it all comes back a few days later!

Most folks can define themselves as who they are and what they can do--that doesn't vary much over time. But I can't neatly define myself by the current state of my abilities. They change. I think that's taught me to notice some things healthy people have glossed over.

They still do; twice I try to explain what I suspect lies under the Change's visible skin, but they just space out, or roll their eyes, bored, and change the topic. They've seen, and accept, physical shapeshifting; but mental fluctuations from genius to animal and back? They just don't believe me. Yet such fluctuations have become my life.

I wake knowing I've been told something important.

Notes the Next Morning

• Gregor Mendel, church: saw a travelog on Tallinn showcasing eastern-looking churches. Mendel's genetic experiments were far off (in Brno, Czech Republic), but Eastern Europe's all one big goulash to me...
• Crossbreeding, were-creature, I'm attracted to a chimera:
  1. I just read some stories by Patricia Briggs full of humans, werewolves, were-coyotes, vampires and elves crossbreeding in unlikely ways
  2. Today I sang First Impressions, a dream-song about falling in love with an earthworm-giraffe-woman
• Church seeks secular power: I just finished Brian Sanderson's Elantris, on a country threatened by religious nuts.
• The Great Change: the travelog I saw emphasized how fast Estonia's modernized since the Cold War.
• Petting zoo, kids: in Ysabeau Wilce's Prophecies, Libels, Dreams, a girl named Tiny Doom visits a midnight arcade and nearly gets sold as a slave/changeling/pet.
• Girl with wideset eyes: Elantris has a child prodigy with similar features. So she probably means genius. I was a child prodigy and never was treated as normal. Might as well have been part wolf--or part vine.
• Lyme lesson: my freaky childhood brainwashed me to define people by ability and expect to be misunderstood except by the very bright. Lyme has forced me to modify such snap judgments. Abilities can change!
  
• They don't believe me about variable abilities: I get this a lot from doctors about Lyme. They do a spot check and assume I'm always like I am that day. Patient support groups all know about intermittent "brainfog"--you get stupid, you get smart again.
• ACTION: give Obamacare till the end of the year--complete my Mendelian experiment--but if doctors go on failing to treat me or even methodically test me... quit.

Footnote: 18 Months Later

I stuck with Obamacare all year. Wish I hadn't. Cost me $12,000 and got me nothing but misdiagnosis plus a series of nasty iatrogenic infections. I'd have been healthier with no care at all.

March 2016, I finally faced the dream's diagnosis that Western medicine's as out of touch as the Catholic Church: patriarchal, dogmatic, deaf. HMOs are built for the majority. But chimeras--rare conditions? Clinicians don't see us, won't treat us, don't believe we exist. What good's a health plan that covers everything but what you've got?

Reader, I quit. Now (September 2016), I treat my fevers with diet, supplements, herbs. Anything but doctors! And I'm slowly improving at last. Attacks are shorter & milder. Time will tell... but so far I'm healthier without the tender care of the insurance industry. Were you taught in school that one-third of all modern illness is doctor-caused? Even if your problems are common, there's good reason to be wary; but if your condition's unfamiliar, doctors are a health hazard.

Oh, I still hope to meet a Mendelian girl. But to stay alive long enough to find her, I have to face that I'm a Mendelian guy.

2015/1/late
Mertiger: sew her neck and belly. Only her forearms, throat, face and ears to go...

2015/1/30 dream: SILKY THE WALKING TOY

I leave our local library, start walking home. It's level at first. I'm not alone, exactly. I'm chivvying Silky along. She's a furry sex toy--a mare standing 140 cm tall with a wood skeleton, dense foam muscle, variegated fake fur. Doesn't just stand, but can walk if pulled along! Her legs spring enough to alternate, supporting her. She walks like a rather sleepy living creature.

I have to go a bit slow, but amazingly she walks a long block without tripping, and at the corner even steps down successfully from curb to street and crosses it. But on the far side, she can't step back up to the sidewalk; trips, folds legs, collapses gently to lie half on her side like a resting cat.

Sighing, I lift her up. Not human-heavy, but still nearly ten kilos (20 lbs). That'll get tiring, if I have to carry her all the way home. I'll try walking her again in a block or two. Best to alternate--I use different muscles to lead and to carry.

But slowly, she gets heavier, hotter, bigger, becomes... my sister Miriel! I don't think I can carry HER. Funny how the sextoy, whether carried or walking on her own, was a lighter burden.

DREAM NOTES

• Silky walks: sex play with Fiveheart Unicorn today; then just before bed, I walked Silky the cattaur, biggest of the Foam Furs, across my workshop floor, rather than carry her. The dream mare was neither unicorn nor cattaur exactly, but had similar foam muscles, wood bones & functional joints. The dream captures how the Foam Furs in motion feel active, even willful.
• Sister as heavy burden: at bedtime I saw a book review of Vanessa and her Sister, about the Bloomsbury Group--how painter Vanessa Bell and her brothers struggled to manage their brilliant suicidal sister Virginia Woolf.
  I want to read Vanessa! Not many portraits of families like mine, where everyone's gifted. Clinical studies of the gifted emphasize parents & assume siblings were normal--or absent. One gifted child IS way more frequent, but when all siblings are gifted, the pattern shifts! Instead of sibling rivalry, you get a solidarity that verges on a sort of group mind--powerful, nurturing, but potentially incestuous. Think of the Brontes!
  Will the Bloomsbury sibs have lessons/warnings about the limits of mutual caretaking, the dangers of the hothouse?
• ACTION: Don't make Ailura or Silky TOO heavy in pursuit of realism! Keep her under 10 kilos.
• ACTION: And read Vanessa. Dream suspects there may indeed be lessons.

2015/2/1-5
Mertiger: ears, then cut, measure & sew tigerstriped fur on her forearms. Then make silk forepaws. Toes...

2015/2/6 dream: I'M A WERE-PUMA

I'm a werecougar. I like a human girl. But there's political tension between our species, if not open war. So I have to establish I'm NOT an enemy. Scenes where I make sure we go out in the wild and work together, in both forms. She's got a hidden side too--doesn't change shape, but has a paranormal ability she has to be discreet about--freaks the normal humans.

I'm making progress. It's clear she likes me too. We rub and snuggle affectionately, especially when I'm a big cat. But sex? Patience...

DREAM NOTE

• I'm a big cat curling up with a human girl: a Foam-Fur's-eye view of me? But this dream's imagery echoes (and I think refers to) an older dream, years before starting the Furs: Adopt a Son to Win a Mate. In Adopt, the key to finding love was first taking good care of an orphaned boy who seemed to be... my neglected body. My health.
• ACTION: I'm trying, I'm trying!

2015/2/8-17
Mertiger: start on face. Sew her jaw. But eyes are next, and I'm nervous, fear I'll botch them. Delay.

2015/3/20-21
Mertiger: finally replace her original round tiger eyes--staring glass buttons, fairly realistic but a bit opaque--with blue oval crystal cabachons. I think they work.

2015/3/21-23
Mertiger: sew her face--cheeks, brows, eyelids, lips, nose. Still seems melancholy & somehow weak. The low brow, the lack of chin?

2015/3/24
Mertiger: work on mouth & throat. She has to be more than a vivid-looking sculpture; she has to be a great-feeling sex toy too. Is it just fetishism talking? Or when one sense gets stuck--can't get her face to look quite right--do I just instinctively switch to a different sense? Maybe perversity is sneakily serving art here, not the other way round. Tangled braids!

2015/3/31
Sew mertiger's face. Did I make her lips too tight? Mmm, almost... but I think she'll loosen just enough. Twice today I felt suddenly, insanely horny, fucked her half an hour or more, then just felt satisfied and stopped without orgasm. Strange. Has been happening often lately.

Is this a Lyme oddity, or a way to unlearn sexual guilt and worry? Learning to feel normal and comfortable erect, fucking, male... instead of illicit, thrilled, but slightly in denial and out of body. My alien boy-body.

I ALMOST inhabit it now. Adopt a Boy to Win a Mate.

2015/4/2
Mertiger: sew her labia. Two colors of silk, hidden in white fur and bluegray feathers.
Nearly done? Take a break on Mer-Tiger, then, to reassess. What about the others?

2015/4/8
Back to Fiveheart Unicorn: rework details, add foam padding to one of hearts and a foot. Considering tweaks on catgirl too.

2015/4/21 dream: TIGER STUDENTS

I've returned to college. Run from class to class. Long, busy dream. I'm in a graduate program in art, music or writing? All THREE?

I keep running into a classmate in my program, in most of my classes: a talking tiger. He's friendly, but male; he scents immediately that I need a mate, and introduces me to his tiger friends--but at the moment only a couple of males are single; nearly everyone's paired up.

Still, I find the mated females so attractive, and get along so well them (better than my human classmates!) that I have new hope of meeting a single girl I'll like.

A tigirl.

After a week of fatigue and isolation, hope!

2015/4/28 dream: THAT SEXY HERBIVORE

I meet a pop star.

Strange that everyone calls her black, when she isn't, she's brown. And inhumanly skinny. And FURRY. With a wolflike muzzle. And big wideset eyes with no whites, just big gold and black orbs. She's not human.

In fact her eyes are so wide-set, like a squirrel or deer, that I suspect she's an herbivore always scanning for predators. She lacks that carnivore's forward-facing stare I find so intimidating in normal humans.

She used to look human, though. She's changed.

And I don't think this is a one-time change; I think she could always shift back and forth. It's just that for years she took care to look human--in public. Until she just got tired of... passing.

I think she's adorable.

Lately I hear she's facing criticism for baring a breast on TV.

Though, with her fur, I can't see why anyone fussed.

DREAM NOTES

• Fuss over brown girl baring a breast on TV: must refer to Janet Jackson at the Superbowl. But I'm no football fan, I didn't watch; so why'd my dream bring her up? And I haven't tracked her musical career, so I doubt she means music any more than scandal or football.

• Called black when she's brown: That sounds more like the fuss about Michael Jackson's surgeries and skin jobs, lightening & feminizing him. Why'd my dream bring him up? Could he mean drastic self-reinvention? Racial & gender dysphoria? (I'd be happier female, but am I unhappy with my color too?)

  Hmm. I suspect my Foam Furs would disturb mainstream America as much as Michael Jackson's sexual, gender & racial transgressions. I hadn't even noticed before that with their multiple colors and patterned pelts, they send mixed race signs along with the gender- & species-bending I focused on.

• Fur hides her nipple: practical advice! So far, I've hesitated to make the Foam Furs' breasts more realistic--they're small and have no nipples. Want the Furs to seem like giant children's toys at first, only revealing their sexual side on close inspection--but the dream points out they ended up with longer, more luxuriant fur than my original plans. That disguises breasts and hides nipples. Unlike humans, Foam Furs are in a way both clothed and nude simultaneously. A matter of viewpoint!

• ACTION: add nipples to one figure and see how the fur hides it--or doesn't.

Cattaur's hand at last

2015/6/8
Back to Silky the Cattaur: tackle her hands at last! I tried staining some gloves (all night in a bucket of dye), but it stiffened them; they feel too rough, more like a foot.

So instead I try sewing a hand out of fur and silk from scratch. Inside, foam rubber lined in pantyhose. Complex, slow, but I'm a more experienced seamster now, I can do this.

Want some weight and bone in them, not just soft foam. For fingerbones I can't find anything sitting around with the right heft, so I go browse at the hardware store. Just can't find anything heavy and fingerbony. At last, I buy some long skinny bolts and a box of 200 hexnuts. Thread a whole stack of nuts on each bolt, to fatten them to fingerbone width.

Slowly I work these inside each finger. The foam resists, as always. Hot sweaty job.

But it works--now they don't just LOOK like hands but FEEL like hands...

2015/6/29 dream: MOLLY'S FLINCH

Mollie, our family's nervous sheltie dog, lies on the back patio of my family's old house. I pet her, but gently, cautiously; she's an affectionate dog but a careless touch can make her flinch now. She must have an injury, not visible, but never healed right.

And she's old; she has, I suddenly know, only three years to live. During those last years I'd like her to be happy. My sister Althea and I have flown the nest, but Miriel our little sister is still around, though she'll soon be going off to school too.

I suspect Molly's sticking around, despite her aches, to give Miriel some vital emotional support. God knows she can't rely on our parents for it.

And when Miriel goes, I think Molly will. With relief. Shepherding job done!

I know the feeling. I flinch too. Correcting for the difference between dog years and human years, I'm no better off than Molly. A few decades left. Loving, but I can't tolerate much closeness, due to internal injury others can't see and don't believe in--exhausted and sore from decades of untreated infection. There's a REASON I'm frustrated, and it's not neurosis or self-sabotage--I'm in a body with severe limits, and if I do more, I hurt more.

I want to give others as much as I can but respect those limits--treat myself gently. And finish my art--I'd feel wrong leaving work half-done.

But then, when the job's done, let go. With relief.

DREAM NOTES

• Molly the shelty: NOT our family dog! She was the dog of some friends back in college. She was indeed shy and nervous, but one night when I was sleeping on their deck she started French kissing me. Not doggy licking--sticking her tongue down my throat! Weird. But no weirder than my response. I got turned on. She kissed better than my girlfriend! And then the sun rose and she went back to acting skittish and shy.
• Internal injuries make a loving dog flinch: in the book I'm reading, Sally Green's Half Bad, a boy is beaten, caged, and tortured for being a witch. I got flashbacks to my being bashed as a kid. Okay, maybe the dream is pessimistic. My society is hard on witches and weirdos like me, but it's not like Half Bad's vicious, racist theocracy. Not here, not yet.
• Fragile animal: grim, but realistic! My health is no better. And absent that, love & wider artistic success are infeasable--I just can't get out and do much. So record my songs, finish my stories poems and paintings. Leave my money to my sisters & nieces to further their more-viable lives.
• ACTION: I'm a flinching, dying dog. So be the best flinching, dying dog I can be, I guess.
• 2016 FOLLOW-UP: I fear this blog has created a false picture, by selecting dreams of art, sex & healing. Not the whole picture! I have plenty of dreams like Molly's Flinch--mourning my disabled past, my painful present, and despairing for my future. Molly correctly anticipated a wretched winter, one of my worst ever, with multiple painful infections. Yet in 2016 I've improved steadily. My mood still ranges from the resignation of Molly to the transcendence of Spirit Chorus (see below).

2015/7/1
Headache and fatigue return all morning. Lyme attack! Too achy to sew, so I read my poems from 25 years ago. Horrific! Well-written, but such pain. Like Plath at her bleakest.

A psychiatrist misdiagnosed it as depression, but meds didn't help, because it was realistic MISERY--about pelvic/genital inflammation & pain that forced me to stay home jobless, sexless, broke, with no future but more pain. Of COURSE I felt bored, mad, sad, lonely, scared.

In 1993 I found a therapist who helped me tackle my feelings, but that didn't help the physical illness. It ebbed only in 1996 when I quit gluten. I still had Lyme-or-something; but not Lyme-or-something PLUS celiac disease!

Stressful even to read this stuff. I recalled the physical pain but forgot the feelings. BOTH have improved! Back then, just reliving such pain like this would've sickened me. Not now--mild aches unchanged. I take an aspirin and they fade...

But am I cured? I may think I'm well now when I'm just half-healed; I forget just how bad I was!

2015/7/1 dream: SILKY AS A KRELKIN, or, PRETEND WE'RE STRANGERS

I have to conduct some political negotiations. I meet the opposing representative at last. She isn't human. She's a deer-size creature with a lean greyhound build, white fur but black equine mane & tail, clever hand-paws not hooves, and a rather catlike face but with hints of coyote too. I've met these krelkins many times in my dreams, but never one with a horn on her brow... She must be part unicorn!

To me she's stunningly beautiful.

But also... familiar. I recognize her aura--she's my spirit wife Silky in a new body! But for the purposes of this negotiation, I must act as if she's a stranger.

Sexdoll's dreaded giant breast?

DREAM NOTES

• Silky: Silky's my spirit wife, who likes to show up in my dreams in various bodies, teasing me, seeing if I'll recognize her. I'm not sure what the pretense is about...
• Why'd she take unicorn form? As I fell asleep after an achy day, felt a sudden rush of sexual energy and fucked Fiveheart Unicorn--not just a sex toy but a dream-figure too.

2015/9/
Switch to Ailura the Catgirl today! Redo her belly-fur & breasts, adding nipples half-hidden in the fur, as suggested by the dream That Sexy Herbivore. They look natural.

My worries, I now realize, arose from an unquestioned cliche in my head about Awful Fetishists Like Me--we always create sex-dolls with huge, gross, embarrassing, inflatable breasts. Because, well... tradition!

Encourage by the normality of a nipple, I dare to try a drastic change--this one internal and invisible, but palpable! I add stone bones--marble wedges, broken off flagstones, tied inside socks. They make fine shoulderblades and pelvic bones.

Ailura's much realer-feeling now; still lighter than flesh-and-blood (just 9 kilos, so she's still easy to burrow under in bed) but with a lifelike heft that shocks anyone who expects a mere stuffed toy.

2015/12
Ailura: redo her nose, and add more bangs. Definitely more soulful with lots of dreadlocks. They help shape her face.

2016

Jar-openers for souls! I mean soles.

2016/1
The Cattaur's soles have arrived at last. Wait, I just read that aloud; it sounds cultish. As if centaurs have multiple souls like ancient Egyptians with their ba and ka etc., and they've all arrived at enlightenment.

Well... they arrived on my doorstep, at least.

See, I'd found the ideal pad for centaur feet in our kitchen--a round red jar-opener with unbelievable traction. But I had only one, and I didn't buy it--no idea where it came from. A gift? Left from some party? I biked around town, but couldn't find any like it in local stores. At last I ordered a pack on the the net, but they were 3000 km away and took weeks...

I did say the Foam Furs were mostly made of recycled & found objects... not totally. You have to allow Doktor Frankenstein occasional online purchases of kitchenware.

Anyway, up till now Silky the cattaur has had soles of pinned-on bathroom traction-mat--that rubbery mesh you put under a bathmat. They do help, but they're still way more prone to slipping than a human sole. We forget how much of that miracle of bipedalism isn't balance but sheer grip.

No? Try ice skates for the first time! You know how to balance, right? So why'd you just fall on your butt?

Traction. Well, the sudden lack of it.

I slip the red jar-openers under the cattaur's paws, and magically, all slippage stops. Firms up her stance as much as a year of tinkering with springs.

2016/2/early
Five Heart Unicorn: resew her belly with new, lighter, longer cream fur.

2016/2/8 dream: SPIRIT CHORUS

I'm in the dark, in the back of a van my parents are driving. I drum on a hollow thing small as a lemon. It has a hole I can leave open or cover or part-cover with my fingertip, to get different tones--surprisingly rich big ones from this tiny thing. Looks like a mere ocarina, but rings like a huge gong! I work out how to do a whole myxolydian scale of overtones.

At the end of a long musical ride, the tones start lengthening, persisting. Now they sustain as if independent, as if the drum only wakens or summons them. And they sound like voices. A chorus of spirits! They chant three words--I only recall two now: 'deliver' and 'enemies'. I'm uneasy--worry this means spirits are always watching us, and I'm sick of being watched, I have been all night. But excited too. They sounded helpful not vengeful. Fierce, maybe, but on my side.

An explanatory whisper, as if one spirit is apart, more human, a commentator who knows I may not have understood that: "They may do it." Sounds like he thinks it's not certain but likely.

Then I feel a rush building through my body. Not adrenaline. Tingling, electric. In a wave, all my nerves discharge built-up static. Shocking, strong. Whoosh! It's been years since I felt anything like this wave--and that was from Rolfing or shiatsu. Clears out a lot, and I feel immediately better.

I guess they did it. Whatever "it" is. Unless this angelic spring-cleaning is just prep work... for something more.

DREAM NOTES

• Parents are driving, I'm in the dark: uh-oh! Their training is steering me again.
• Drumming on ocarina: details are weird, but the general message that music heals me is clear.
• ACTION: Go on recording with our band (The Krelkins) but maybe add some solo work.
• Clear stuff out: swabbed out a fungus infection in my left ear with vinegar (folk cure from the Web). Stung, but the gunk is out and it feels better now. No more waiting for doctors...
• Deliver, enemies: fighting infections? My mom was a hardcore feminist pacifist. I grew up ashamed to fight, and reluctant to call anyone or anything an enemy. Now I wonder--am I so extreme about "no one's an enemy" that I suppress my own immune system? Refuse to kick out parasites?
• ACTION 2: Think seriously about my reluctance to fight or even ask for help if it means harming poor, innocent infections! Try "Deliver me from mine enemies" as a mantra... and see what happens.

2016/2/18
DREAM 1: MUST PAD AILURA

Examining Ailura, my catgirl plushie. Lower back and a few other spots lack fur! When I sewed fur on, I used a sort of duct tape here, tape with leopard spots. And under, no padding! Wait, foamrubber clings, it can't migrate like cotton stuffing. This means I FORGOT the muscle/fat layer here!

And failed to notice, all this time? That makes little sense. I would have. Just duct tape between me and the stone bones of her pelvis?! Ow!

Well, however long she's been like this, I HAVE to change it. Intolerable. But I'm a bit squeamish about doing surgery NOW. You see, a girl I know and like is watching me... and from her viewpoint, I'm already fondling a sex toy in public.

That's false--if only for the moment. What I'm really up to right NOW is artistic problem-solving.

• ACTION: Do work on Ailura, but don't sew till I'm clear on what she needs.

DREAM 2: DIAGNOSTIC MASSAGE

Now I'm the one observing. And the one being examined isn't a soft sculpture but a real girl--human not cat, and teenage--and the examiner is a craggy thirtyish man in a suit. A doctor? A masseur?

She tells him "It's a deep ache in my pelvis, on the right, in back, but inside the glutes." Rather than go straight to the sore spot, he touches and then massages cautiously on her back and thigh--starting on the left side, working in slowly, warily, toward the center of the pain. Makes sense if it's knotted muscles around an inflammation.

She feels tender, ouchy, but finds his careful touch okay. He gets to the ache at last but hasn't figured out the cause--yet--when I wake.

DREAM NOTES

• Pelvic problem, slow cautious testing: I had decades of pelvic pain. Doctors said "see a therapist". I did. Didn't help. It vanished overnight when I quit eating gluten. Which wasn't impulsive! Spent a slow patient year charting pain levels, testing foods and allergens. I think the dream's arguing for the same methodical diagnosis of my recurrent fevers. Whether viral bacterial or parasitic, it'll take time & close attention--since all the common suspects have been eliminated.
• Ailura, hips: I AM thinking of adding a fat/muscle layer on her butt, then softer leopard-spotted fur. Her current fur is rough & seamy--some of the first sewing I did, and crude. And her stone pelvic bones do poke a bit.
• ACTION 1: Do it. Dream approves. Just take it slow.
• Ache inside my right hip, under glutes:
  1. I get just this deep pelvic ache if I grossly overwork at computer.
  2. Today I got mid & upper backache from bending too long over Fiveheart Unicorn as I sewed hard-to-reach bits of forequarters & throat.
• ACTION 2: Take responsibility for health. Methodical diagnosis. Expect that to take time. Patience...
• ACTION 3: QUIT OVERWORKING!

2016/2/19
Ailura the Catgirl: follow the dream's advice. Redo her butt and one thigh (crude early sewing), add a thin layer of "fat", then a softer leopard pelt (richer brown too) to back, shoulders, and thighs. A smooth color-transition now from cream on her belly through light cheetah-spots to darker leopard-spots then chocolate. And a much nicer feel to it than the old coarse fur. Mmm, velvety...

While I cut, pin & sew, listen to an audiobook: Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week. School gossip turns deadly in an alternate 20th century where witches like me still get burned alive. And today, unlike a generation ago when she wrote it, it's literally true in much of the Old World. It's a rough ride getting to the (mostly) happy ending.

After dinner, I tackle a book I've always been a bit afraid to: A Vision, by WB and Georgie Yeats. The result of decades of mystical experiments in & out of the Order of the Golden Dawn. It's a system for classifying all human personality types, with 28 moon-phases that we cycle through (rather like the 9 types in the Enneagram system). But slowly--you may live only one phase per lifetime, may even repeat a phase for a few lives, spending a couple of millennia per cycle; and you may repeat the whole cycle several times before escaping. Two of our four basic constituents always wax while two wane. He uses a 3D model rather like two intersecting Einsteinian lightcones to illustrate this. But it isn't clear why it should be so, or what our consituents are, exactly.

I don't fit well into Yeats's phases either. The creative arc, but where? I find Jung's typology--sensing, feeling, thinking, intuiting--much clearer. Yeats admits he's no teacher; methodical exposition isn't his thing. I find his raw experiences more interesting than his theories explaining them. Flashes of startling imagery! But only flashes.

I'm left with a sense of profound intelligence in some areas and amateurish groping in others. Per Amica Silentia Lunae was better for me--clear advice from a working artist-shaman to others of his kind. But Amica's focused on work--how to create visionary work--which Yeats knew firsthand; Vision wants to be a map of all types of consciousness, by a brilliant but nonsystematic guy.

That's my conscious judgment of course. What's my dream think?

Dream: STORIES, DOLLS, LANDSCAPE, BODY

A bright schoolgirl writes stories all set on the same landscape--the hills around Jerusalem, I think--which is also a sprawling body! The golden grass and low trees are fur--I think the sleeping figure is Ailura, the catgirl currently sprawled on my floor with a new layer of pinned-on fake fur. The girl is gradually altering the landscape with her stories, much as I gradually alter Ailura.

There's a fourth layer too--body, landscape, story, and DOLLS. All this girl's story-characters manifest as tiny figures, homemade dolls or soft sculptures, who wander the golden hills of Ailura's sprawled, purring body.

It's a long dream, in which each of these views/aspects comes forward to dominate the dream for a while. Stories, dolls, landscape, body--the Phases wax and wane.

DREAM NOTES

• Schoolgirl who writes: probably Nan in Witch Week, born to write. Or to burn alive, if her delightful society gets a chance...
• Jerusalem: Utopia--social justice--as in Blake. Yeats loved Blake, and A Vision echoes Blake's weird poem The Mental Traveller.
• Each aspect rules a while: I get to live thru the phases in Yeats's vision and Blake's poem, and implied in my Foam Furs: dream figures who are simultaneously art, fetish, autistic healing devices, portraits and robotic experiments...
• ACTION: let my sewing/sculpting obsession rule! None of Yeats's 28 phases is the Geek, Otaku or Autistic, but I'm clearly in that phase. And it must bloom before it can wane. (But do rest & stretch while obsessing!)

A NOTE TWO DAYS LATER

The dream was probably cryptomnesic! I've been transcribing old journals. Today I stumbled on a dream from 1983/7/19: My sister Miriel and I tour Jerusalem, see stony dry-grass hills around town. I'm pretty sure my unconscious dredged up the memory of a 33-year-old dream I was about to transcribe!

That's one hell of a filing system.

2016/2/26 dream: SILKY THE CATTAUR

I'm in the sunny but small back yard of a dumpy wooden house, on its east side, backing on a rocky hill and more fences and yards. Dryish; east side of San Francisco.

I'm talking to a friend who lives here--a tall thin white guy. My girlfriend Silky is just leaving through the side gate. Try to keep up my end of the conversastion, but get so distracted watching HER end as it sways sexily. She flips up her tail, flashing me flirtatiously--she is, as always in cattaur form, clad only in her own fur.

She heads out... I sigh and return to the conversation.

And yet I know she's still just a plush sculpture, though with bones & joints now. But this is new--lately she's been moving on her own, acting on her own.

But is she a self-aware AI, or just programmed clockwork?

She's already sexier than most human girls. Sigh!

DREAM NOTES

• Cattaur: today some passers-by paused, pointed up at Silky the Cattaur in my bay window looking down at them.
• Sculpture sexier than live girls: true for me. Sewing Ailura today, tangled up with her, felt as sexy/comforting as snuggling up with any meat girl.
• Small yard: familiar from prev dream (when?) = Homebound? Lack of privacy? Thinking small?
• Not alive/organic, yet she walks: echoes Silky the Walking Toy, that dream a year ago of Silky as a soft sculpture; but SHE turned into my sister Miriel! Dreamed after I saw a review of Vanessa and her Sister by Priya Parmar, which I'm now reading. A family like mine: siblings all gifted, parents absent, incest tension. In Parmar's view at least, Virginia Woolf wanted total support from her siblings, including incestuous lesbian sex. She resents outside friends, lovers, kids--anyone who threatens to come first in the lives of her... support network! And yet Woolf's no mere taker--she gives back. She's the heart and soul of the Bloomsbury Group, nurturing a wide circle of bright oddballs.

  Come to think of it, that's what my sister's trying to build in Berkeley right now, and it's what I like too--but am too shy/introverted to build. Or am I just allergic to all that hothouse drama?
  

  Ailuran Odalisque (with a little help from her friends)

  Instead, I build... creatures.

2016/3/12 dream: PHOTOS SUMMON SPIRITS

Photo session! Of a sort. I'm carefully staging my giant furry sex toys so they look lifelike. Take care--they can't just be good record shots. I need GREAT photos--because truly convincing shots can summon the real spirit of that being to inhabit the soft sculpture and animate it. The statue comes alive!

I'm conflicted about the staging, though. I like sexy, revealing poses--after all, the Foam Furs aren't kids' stuffed toys, but anatomically complete furs. But I worry any sexuality will offend or repel others--maybe even the spirits I want to lure into them! What if a spirit feels she's being offered an incarnation as a sex toy ONLY? I don't want that any more than I want sexless teddybears!

So for balance I try to shoot some modest pictures too. But that turns out to be hard. Because these bodies were built to flirt. They want to show off!

I'm posing Ailura the catgirl, modestly, and she keeps wiggling around, waving her cunt and begging. Trying to seduce a strong soul to... enter her.

Bodies have their own agendas.

DREAM NOTES

• Staging photos: not just about the Foam Furs! I'm staging more Cendancer dioramas, photos of centauroid dancers, this batch non-Barbie ones (of three species, natives to an alternate Earth called Abyssia), with sets by my housemate Lily--fabrics, decorated treebranches & miniquilts... Seems my dreams love the idea.
• Sexual versus sexless: I just saw the Celtic animation Song of the Sea--for kids, kept carefully sexless, but beautifully stylized and quite mystical. In contrast, the disc had an ad for an animated feature about a clique of girls in Monster High School. Sexy but pedestrian-looking--like all they HAVE is sex! No art, no politics, no intellectual or spiritual lives, nothin'.
• ACTION: try staging photos when the light improves next week (I use natural light, and it's stormy today). And shoot whatever the figures want, from chaste to blatant, in the same session. Why not? Don't let humans decide what's tasteful! Always a terrible idea.

Silky the cattaur wiggles on my bed

Samples from the Cendancer photosets I shot over the next few months:

Pina in Gift of a Rose

Pina in Wing-Envy

Pina, portrait, Love in the Grass

Dzoa in Caryatids

Dzoa in Sargasso Mirage

Dzoa in Gift of a Rose

Hashi in Desert Light

Hashi in Tree of Time

Hashi in Burst Through Old Snow

2016/3-4
In mid-March I learn by accident that my health plan dropped me weeks ago without even telling me! Over the next weeks I fight with them. On April 1 I gave up trying. I'm uninsured now. Strangely, I feel like a heavy load's off my back! For me, Western medicine didn't just fail to help, it made me worse--stressful tests, toxic meds, iatrogenic infections. From now on, I vow to on what I can do: exercise, diet, vitamins, nutrients, and nonprescription herbs.

2016/5
Unicorn: unstitch her butt and repad cheeks with softer foam like a layer of fat, and her wrinkles magically disappear! It seems that fat heals all. The instant cure shows me it wasn't bad sewing as such--the fur pattern almost matched the foam armature--but my guesses at a complex 3D shape were a little off.

2016/6:
Mertiger: Raise her forehead (the original stuffed toy had a realistically low tiger brow) and revise her nose, lips, throat & labia. Add a row of rust bangs/dreadlocks. They give her a more soulful Raggedy Ann look. Could use more, maybe. Pin on a second row. Yes, better. She really looks like a different character now. Still odd, but a different odd.

Also make her feather crest uniformly blue not rust & blue, it was too much.

And add four small breasts, almost invisible, but with nipples just peeking out of the fur. And poking me in bed. Teasing.

2016/6:
Unicorn: add small breasts & nipples to her too. And redo her labia to look more heartlike & fix one slightly ragged heart--both in stouter silk. Resew & pad the heart a bit, long as I'm there. Heart=labia=heart. Love=sex=love. What can I say? I'm autistic. For me it's hard to separate them.

2016/6/13
Tear up my room, beg a blue sheet and a bamboo pole off my fabric-art friend Lily, and make a backdrop. Photograph all four plush creatures, and the tower of Barbie cendancers too. Get decent shots of the soft sculptures (though all are bluish, they need color correction) but all the Barbie ones are overexposed enough to white out the light bits. Can't see why. Will have to try again tomorrow morning in better light.

Dream: AICORN'S BANANA

In a future so near you could text it, I'm a song- writer's personal assistant. She's one of the first artificial minds. Sings on stage as a holograph--translucent rainbow tease! She has a body though--a unicorn with faux fur, wood bones, muscles of dense foam like Fiveheart Unicorn, my sculpture of a dream. She dubs herself AI-corn, "eye-corn". My star adores embodiment. Incarnate, nay emplushed, she can fuck her human fans. Not just boys. Girls too. Not just doing, gettin' done. Naugahyde traction-paws and silken tongue, but her hottest throb is from mounting fans like a stallion-- not with a strap-on, a stick-in! Aicorn's lithelier than meat folk--can twist her cunt forward, so that her vibrator belovéd, plaintain-thick and some forty or fifty centimeters long, half stuck in, becomes a lurid lemon luminous banana-shlong! So long she can mount you, stretch you, peg you, fill you... as she full-fills too. Orgies are normal for a popstar now, of course-- robot, human, uni, yoni, horse. Groupies adore. Me too, in bed with her & a lucky fan or three. I've learned a lot! But... into every idyll comes a but. The firm that wrote her code ignored her nightlife till now; but her sponsor, a fruit tycoon, was replaced by a pocket chocolate maker and a vendor of phones formed as slender dolls just fifteen centimeters tall; set to vibrate, oft slipped into workers bored in the mall; pleasure discreet and small. Aicorn's makers know all publicity's good; why quell orgies the public loves to watch and smell? Just urge her to peg with sponsored candybars & dolls, to spurn her beloved monster. But Aicorn prizes size! Won't turn to wimpy plastic girls or bars. Pale fun, after her fill of plantain-plantin' thrill. The firm insists. Firmly. "Look, you learned to like banana, what's your beef?" True--at first 'twas a mere product placement--till she truly placed it, felt the sheer oomph of stretch. Fame's lonely, but dildocity can ease by sharing climactic summit in reciprocity's thrust, trust and tease. Aicorn just won't divorce her fetish. I agree. Sex play matters--roots one in the body. And joy just may let her (and carboniferous fans & friends) best play on level field. All peeled! Oh, I've dreamt it all before. Last time I ended on the lam with her Banan, to escape corporate con- fiscation. Did what I must to defend her robot right to love as she felt fit. But can I, will I, be that brave for me? High time for it.

DREAM NOTES

• Holographic popsinger: saw an article on the first holographic popstar "touring" the USA. Just an animation, not an AI of course. Not yet.
• Big furry sextoy/sculptures: today I photographed the four Foam Furs, meant to be both art and giant sex toys. They're not AIs though... yet.
• AI-corn, "eye-corn": a pun on "eichorn", German for acorn, a word my dreams have years punned on to mean the clit.
• Small doll: a Barbie collector I know gave me some smaller Mattel dolls (Skippers and Stacies) that I can fuse into armatures for two baby Cendancers--the centauroid Barbies I've been building.
• "To peg with sponsored candybars & dolls": 'pegging' means penetrating a lover with a strap-on dildo. Aicorn likes a shared oversize dildo so both partners get pegged equally; the phone-dolls & candybars her sponsors want her to use are too small to share. Capitalism tries to keep its consumers separate and lonely! But Aicorn wants more. Wants to share.
• Size matters: ??? Oh! I noticed that Mer-Tiger is still a bit bulletheaded, and her mouth's too small. Looks pursed & prissy, and feels stiffnecked & reluctant. Unsexy. Not yet fabulous enough, huggable enough OR fuckable enough.
• ACTION I thought all four were finished, but... re-sew Mer-Tiger. Slenderize her neck, raise her forehead, add dreadlocks & bangs for a softer look, and a fuller, more inviting mouth, generous enough to welcome a large... banana. Because Aicorn says: "Size matters!"
  Wait--was that Godzilla?

2016/late June to early July
I do rework Mertiger's face. Slow improvements...

2016/7
I decide to write up this blog documenting the Foam Furs' creation. This'll sound strange, but at first I doubt they are dream-creatures--the only one I'm sure of is Five Heart Unicorn because that dream made such a big impression on me. But as I reread my journal, I'm shocked to find how many dreamlets appear, urging me to create all four--dreams of girlfriends who are cats, horses, centaurs, cattaurs, dreams of dolls and statues and fursuits come alive, dreams of being a big furry sextoy...

The only one that really wasn't a dream figure, where her form wasn't anticipated/suggested by dreams, is Mer-Tiger. Yet even there, dreams urged me to buy a big stuffed animal to shade my bed to improve sleep, then urged me to turn her into a sex toy, then encouraged me to make her art as well--to come out of the furry closet.

If I was ever in it.

VIXTORIA

2016/8/23
Catshall, who gave me the foam mattress that became the four Foam Furs shown above, just gave me some smaller dense foam pads from a reupholstered chair--enough foam for one more smallish creature. And I have quite a bit of leftover fur, too.

I think I'll build a foxtaur. Smallish, red-blonde, with big ears and a brushy tail...

For obvious reasons I'll have to name her Vixtoria, though I'm sure Her Majesty would not be amused. Or aroused.

But this Vixtoria, like all foxes, will like to play. In bed and otherwise.

2016/9/1
So far Vixtoria has had the fastest gestation of any Foam Fur, by far--probably because I've tested the construction techniques. She went from three small foam pads to standing shakily in just a week.

I expect the detailing and hand-sewing to be slower, of course, but just a few months, not years.

8/25, skull inserted	8/26, platform assembled
8/28, platform freestands	8/31, whole armature briefly freestands
9/15, armature takes shape: tail, hands, face	SEPTEMBER: Search a junkyard for gooseneck lamps for her spine & tail. Link two end to end. Can't find a bolt strong enough so I use a spare chuck key. Put 14 steel springs in her joints & inner thighs to firm her stance. Lengthen her legs 2-7 cm, to even them. She's now 130 cm tall (4'), head to toe. Of course 'taurs are taller than their non-taur relatives, but if Vix were a non-taur fox, she'd still be at least 90 cm (3'). More coywolf than fox! Unexpected. Buy child's gloves for hands. Empty still. On the big cattaur, fingerbones are small bolts fattened with hundred of hex nuts; pretty labor-intensive. Must be a simpler way! Pencil stubs? Trim & sew kids' stretchpants, hoodie & sweater much tighter, to form a unified underlayer, with holes at joints as maintenance ports. Cut holes and use coathanger to sketch in fox-ears. Trim her blocky skull into an angular fox-face. To keep bones light up top, they're packaging (plastic not styrofoam; tougher, more flexible). Throat too--it's a bit of pool-float. Buy a yard of fake fox-fur. Took a whole morning! Lots of gaudy faux furs, but few realistic ones. Start planning fur pieces with paper mockups at quarter-scale on graph paper. I plan a simple countershade--long red-blonde fox fur for back, tail & legs, with shorter cream fur on throat, breast, belly, thighs, tail-tip. Maybe a few dark touches--ears, gloves, around eyes?

2016/9/10 dream: TRITONIAN FOXTAUR U.

I'll just summarize Tritonian Foxtaur U. here. I'd had a frustrating dream the night before--I'd failed to reach an island of magic animals. So next evening I asked my dreams to let me visit. They went one further! I found myself on a strange ice moon, with a ringed gas giant in the sky. Not quite Saturn's moon Titan; thinner air. The locals insisted it was Neptune's Triton. Yes, there were locals. They're methane-breathing foxtaurs, wolf-sized but more delicate in frame; most of their bulk is insulating fur. Surprisingly, they have nearly Terran internal temperatures--and why not? Their insulation's at least as good as our Arctic foxes, and enzymes work so fast in liquid water.

I'm an exchange student here, living on-campus at one of the few universities. Foxtaur science is roughly Victorian--metal's so rare, and fire's peculiar (the oxygen's in the fuel, the hydrocarbons in the air--hard to smelt or bake pottery), hindering technology. But I didn't come here for the science department. I came for two programs that lead the whole solar system: fine art and magic.

I don't mean stage magic.

I won't detail the middle of this long dream; it was a sweet romance with a classmate. That part's personal. I'll just say... despite appearances, it turns out humans & foxtaurs are emotionally and sexually quite compatible.

The climax of the dream is... an academic intrigue gets exposed! Fox society tolerates a certain amount of scheming--they're foxes, that side needs an outlet! But one dean just went too far. Foxes got hurt. He takes a deep breath of methane, stands foursquare, and apologizes to the grad students he slighted.

That's all. They don't need jail to enforce his good behavior. Foxtaur honor! That dean'll do whatever it takes to restore it.

And I know why fox honor is so strict. When magic works, when wishes come true... mind what you wish for!

A caveat that applies to technology too.

DREAM NOTE

• ACTION 1: Finish Vixtoria, obviously. The dream's already anticipating how she'll turn out.
• ACTION 2: Research experimental art and music grad programs (I'd apply to Hogwarts too, but...) My dreams think I may find not just a degree but love among other dedicated gifted weirdos... out at the fringe.

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER Pad Vixtoria's sides. Waist was too narrow for hips. Pin leftover white fur onto Vixtoria's belly. Try rough chocolate fur on her legs. Short fur slenderizes limbs nicely, but dislike color & feel. Want a coyote tan, shorter nap, and soft feel, like leopard fur on cattaur. Bike, buy some faux coyote. Cut/pin two legs with faux coyote fur. Hmm. Want darker socks/boots. Bike to Discount Fabric, find a maroon fur. Guy with amazing hat his girlfriend cut out of a simple flat leather oval, that pops up into a lacework dome... Measure rear leg and haunch, cut a sheet to fit. Or try. Hard! Those funny bends. Start sewing fur at last. Red boot, then slender tan foreleg. Listen to Jane Austen's EMMA on a BBC audiobook as I sew Vixtoria's other legs and red fur paw-boots. Several days. Pin Vixtoria's thighs with coyote fur. Scant. Wish I had more. Hit fabric stores. Multiple bolts of coyote two weeks ago, all gone! Buy nearest match I can find. Pin red furry ears on. Big ears. Cuuute. Experiment. The bigger the cuter--a linear relationship, extending to... is there no limit to the cuteness? AAGH! FINALLY finish thighs/haunches--sewn outa scraps. On to tail. Cut two big pieces, sew, pin on to test. Huge red-blonde foxbrush. Probably with a white tip.

11/22, fur in progress

Paws--toes to come

Ears--just pinned, unlined

Tail; will be white-tipped

2016/12/27 dream: SILKY THE CATTAUR, EXPOSED; HALF-AWAKE FOXTAURS?

I'm walking hilly residential streets above Cole Valley, on Mount Olympus in San Francisco. Winding, steep; ornate mansions. On a sidewalk, run into Silky the cattaur, my lifesize sculpture/sextoy. Just standing out here exposed to sun wind & rain! Stroke her fur. Her chocolate gloves are a bit rough-feeling, but they always were; the rest feels soft. Hasn't faded or gone brittle yet from exposure, no moss or other colonies I can see. But surely it's bad for her in the long run.

It's intriguing to think of strangers just encountering her. Another casual, unguidebooked San Francisco wonder... But if I really want to leave her out in public, a sheltered spot sans UV and rain will work better.

Yet I leave her out here and walk on!

Make it home at last--but it's not my waking home! Still on the north slope of Mt Olympus/Parnassus/Twin Peaks, near Silky the cattaur. The house is full of strange critters--big foxtaurs or coyotaurs made of fake fur with only rudimentary skeletons so far... yet they've come partway alive! Sleepy, but they move on their own.

Snuggle with them and go to sleep.

• Weathering sculpture of nonhuman woman in Cole Valley/Olympus: there really is one: the Tree-Stump Angel at the bend of Schraeder Street. I don't know who carved her, but she's impressive--one of SF's best street-art pieces.
• Cattaur exposed: this Foam Furs blog/journal outs me as a plushophile; do I feel over-exposed?
• So, exposed = web! My friend Catshall, who rarely publishes or posts much of her creative work, asked for help. I suggested "List all art projects you've finished in your life on one page. Take your time; it's easy to omit stuff; you tend to recall only recent projects. But to build a good online portfolio, you must consider what strangers will understand and like--not just your newest. It's ALL new to them."
• Half-done plushies are already half-alive, half-awake: Vixtoria's closer to done than I realize. Sewing goes fast when I DO it.
• ACTION 1: by our mid-January houseparty, put in the hours to finish Vixtoria & put the Cendancers in a glass case. Protect them from UV, rain, spilt wine, oily hands...
• ACTION 2: Add a blanket. Now, with critters on top, I don't feel their fur, feel less reassured, and they can fall off; if the critters are under coverlet with me, I feel better & dream better, but they lift the coverlet and create chill gaps & vents. As if I'M the critter left outdoors!

Vixtoria as of 2017/2/28

WINTER 2016 / 2017 Construction's been slowed of course by my gloom over Trump's election. Stopped for most of February. But I can't let a demagogue paralyze me. Tail firmed up. Still needs the tip done. Ears sewn on--still need inner silk lining. Chest in white fur, small tucks for breasts, pink silk nipples. Throat--white fur. Hand sewn. Butt--long strawberry-blonde foxfur. Hand sewn. Back--ditto. Neck & scalp: ditto. Head still looks a bit lowbrow; try adding a mane, as on cattaur. Shoulders & arms--medium brown, short fur (to keep arms delicate, slender). Need to fix one bad wrist. Hands--maroon fur on backs, done. Still need dark silk on palms. Face--complex shapes. Pinned, shaped, but needs sewing. And still need dark velvet nose. Mouth--buils sensual lips of silk over foam rubber. Light pink since surrounding fur is light. Labia, clit--two sets, a fore and hind. Silk over foam. Light pink because hiding in near-white fur. Vaginas need to be deeper pinks, reds. Silk. Eyes--lavender cabachons, black pupils, the rest silver-backed so they gleam in dark. Looking up, playful. Firmly in place, but eyelids need sewing.

First toes

Jar-openers for soles

Face roughed in

SUMMER 2017 Toes; now all four feet have them. Tail rewired--literally. Heavy braided wire extends gooseneck-lamp spine to make tail more posable. Cream tail-tip added after restuffing tail. Head: raised forehead over an inch. Just looked too lowbrow. Mane: strawberry blonde mane, as on cattaur. An extra layer to raise forehead more; almost like short bangs. Arms done; fully jointed now. Hands: palms are lavender child's gloves with traction bumps rather like real skin. Maroon fur on backs. Face--reddish silk nose, white fur cheekbones and chin patch, to help shape face. Mouth--fuller lips, wider mouth. Still a bit solemn--smiles are hard--but better. Tried pale pink, but redid in darker shade of silk. Eyes--basic lids sewn now. Eyebrows in blonde fur add expression. May add fancier eyelids someday.

Summer 2017, done!

Face and tail done at last!

In studio

Reclining, fore-kneeling

Sitting

STILL TO DO...

Ha. This once was a long to-do list. Not any more. Just one left...

• Silky the Cat-taur: Her hind legs still splay a bit under load, so do hip surgery--add gate-springs to lower back, to pull hind legs in and forward a bit. Then sew on the traction pads; I've been delaying that since access to the joints is easier with her soles just pinned on.

But otherwise... I think I'm about done. In a mere five years!

THE SCORECARD

Was building the foam-furs worth it? Did they improve my life?

HEALTH

At first, no--or a mixed blessing at best. Carving the foam and wrestling the bones into resistant flesh, I overworked--constantly cut & blistered my hands. And cutting all that fake fur worsened my allergies. But soon as they started sprawling all over my bed, the stress of construction was offset by better sleep--a darker, warmer, friendlier-feeling nest.

Once construction was done, the benefits gradually grew--or only became evident slowly! I'm healthier and more often pain-free. Not totally well, but improving. I don't know how much to credit...

1. Dumping Western healthcare in favor of nutrition, exercise & nonprescription herbs based on Stephen Buehner's anti-Lyme protocol plus trial and error.
2. A feistier attitude--based on dreams like Spirit Chorus urging me dump my pacifism and face I have enemies. Viral enemies, unicellular enemies, business-suited insurance enemies, enemies in labcoats who only treat cheap easy cases. I no longer "live with" or "manage" my "condition"; I'm out to end an entrenched infection--kick out invaders. And unjust rulers, too.
3. The creatures:
   1. better sleep
   2. physical comfort
   3. emotional solace
   4. sexual therapy
   5. simple exercise.

Certainly after decades of chronic illness that Western medicine failed to cure or even mitigate, I've unquestionably improved. It's hard to apportion credit, but the sheer variety of benefits from the critters convinces me they're a big factor.

Silky the Cattaur; hands at last

SEX

At first sex got worse too. I felt guilt/shame about this fetishism. AND, surprisingly, sex wasn't just healthy exercise: old pain & fear arose, severe enough to make me sick! Stuff I'd avoided for years "since I'm too ill to face it" erupted--no longer latent. But at least I couldn't project these problems on a human lover & make her miserable!

Also, issues that might have taken years in therapy did resolve--in weeks or months. Gradually, my guilty, even painful excitement unraveled into a simpler, joyful, calm enthusiasm. Sex changed physically, too--from a genital to a more whole-body thing. And more sexual stamina by far; instead of a quick release--a respite from the pain of illness--I'm now good for hours of vigorous sex, letting muscles and emotions work out. Less guilt and worry in the way!

I'm a lot more present now. I think I'll be a more relaxed & affectionate partner. "Be present for the cure", so to speak.

There's a mainstream belief that sex toys equal fetishism equals disinterest in real people. Not so in my case! The furs have encouraged me to roleplay and practice during a time when I was too sick to attract anyone--or sustain a serious relationship. "Practice makes perfect" isn't always true, but practice can comfort, calm, educate... and heal.

BODY IMAGE

An odd insight I noted: in fine-tuning the four sex toys, I tried to make every mouth or vagina I built individual, interestingly different, and they were--except for one thing. Every one was at first too tight, too small, because I underestimated the size of my own cock--both length and diameter. (The reverse of every guy in existence! Don't they all think they're more studly than they are? But I underestimated. Consistently.)

In retrospect, I'm not surprised. I grew up surrounded by sisters, with a female/androgenous body image--"I'm in a male body", not "I am male." Not gender-dysphoric enough to risk surgery; my intensest longings are for health and vigor that recurring Lyme denied me, and I focused on that.

Talk therapy undid much of my early training to assume I (and all males) must be suspect, sexist, always at fault in relationships [thanks, mom!]... but the dream Silky's Inversion warned I also needed to correct my body image. "Big cock. And that's OK. More than OK. It's good. Lots who like them, like them big."

Building my sexy creatures too small physically forced that re-evaluation. And note it'd be hard to be sure with a human partner--might've been bad timing, lubrication, poor communication, emotional factors. But with the Foam Furs it had to be physical--and a distorted body-image was the only logical reason.

AURAS, FURVERTS, AND INTELLIGENCE

One more issue that only mystical, spiritually advanced perverts will appreciate. Building really lovable sex dolls clarified for me how much of my "sexual" hunger wasn't. Nor was it the usual nonsexual suspects--fun, friendship and so on. I have friends and they feed those needs. Nor do I mean physical pleasure or an animal need for closeness--the critters really do supply those--they're both warmly huggable and working Temple Grandin devices, squeezing & calming poor autistic me! No, I mean something else such critters can't supply...

I sense (it's sort of tactile, sort of taste/smell) auras or energy fields. But only a small minority of humans have ones I like (by the way, this may be why I'm a furvert in the first place. Some animals have auras as strong--and as attractive--as some humans. Hard to convince me animals lack souls when I can feel them.)

As it turns out, the particular energy "scent" I find attractive is, in humans, strongly associated with queerness/sexual outsiderness, spiritual or religious oddity (nearly all turn out to identify as witches, pagans or spiritualists of some kind) and giftedness and creativity (every single human girl I get involved with turns out to have a Mensa-level IQ. I'm not seeking that or asking them. Some hide it from everyone; some didn't even know, and find out later. Yet they all turn out to be in the top percentile).

The correlations are lifelong and nearly perfect. These can't be coincidences.

So... now I'm a beast that knows my tastes. Few singles out there will interest me. But at least I'm clear who I like and why. I now understand that when someone (of ANY species) seems flat as a cartoon, they really are incompatible with me.

Dating them would be... well... perverse.

THE VERDICT

So all in all... would I recommend going this deep into your perversity? Well, yes. It was worth it... eventually.

---

LISTS AND LINKS:
Creatures: furs / animal people - centaurs - big cats - unicorns - mer-creatures - foxes, coyotes & wolves - sexy creatures - sex WITH creatures
Healing: chronic illness - dream advice on healing - autism - body image distortion - weird devices - a 1999 dream of building a Grandin device: Saddled with Autism
Dreams: dreamwork - recurrent dreams - false waking & nested dreams - dreams about dreaming! - John G. gets multi-year dream guidance Following the Elephants
Art: sculptures - dreams of living dolls - art experiments - hair/fur - bones - pencil, digital, photographic dream art - creative process - labs & inventing - studios
Sex: body image distortion - healing from abuse - nudity & exhibitionism - babes, hunks & sexy creatures - sex WITH creatures - Out of the Closet!
General: Kakalea, planet of the Cendancers - Abyssia, the foxtaur/cattaur world - nondream blogs & essays

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