INTRODUCTION

When I first built the World Dream Bank I favored story-like dreams showing dreamwork was more magical, beautiful and fun than people think. But now I'm going through my old journals and finding a lot of apparently predictive dreams like this--dreams not resolving neatly as stories, but evidence that the waking world is rather more magical than people think. Too.

THAT NIGHT

After years, I finally found my Career Track. It's a steep trail from the mudflats by San Francisco Bay west over the mountains toward the sea.

The climb is hard, but I slog up to the pass. Here I leave the settled lands of the Bay for the near-wilderness locally called the Watershed. It's a climate-border too--from summer heat and dry grass to early Alpine spring, with pale new grass poking from snow. Wow, that's some divide!

To the south is the mouth of a valley nearly as rugged and scenic as Yosemite. Curious, I detour--explore this Career Byway. It soon branches, and long lines wait to climb each fork. Three choices--shall I head on west, or wait for one of these two paths? Then I spot a fourth choice. Little-used and steep, but no one waiting. It zigzags right up the cliffs... Like the Sierra Point trail in Yosemite proper. A dead end, but what a view!

North, across the trail to the sea, I see a dot on a snowfield. The Fox! There's only one of course. Foxes were locally extinct for decades, and a lone fox got reintroduced here just a year ago--as a survival test.

Then I see a second. Can't be! But it is. A mate, in winter coat. White on white.

My sister Althea shows up with two mules. She's heading down the canyon to the sea. Says the mules are Spicy and Shaggy. "No, you misheard me", she corrects--"Spice--not Spicy--is a nickname. Spice's true name," says Althea, "is Althea." No, not quite--a Polynesian name with lots of A. Ale'a, Akala?

I use magical power to encourage the mules to hurry down the river to the sea.

In the river, I see lines form. Arcs. The arcs form an eye! Sauron's eye, red, flaming. ACK! I nearly fall in.

Then I look up. The First Fox runs across a snowfield, leaving an arc as a trail. A bird flies overhead, leaving another. These two arcs form a second huge eye! Pink and gold, not red. The Eye of God! And this eye banishes Sauron's eye of fire. A relief.

Angelic creatures wheel around us. I feel joy; from now on we won't journey alone.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Career Path: my boss loved a career workshop she took. I don't care. For me, love and health are more urgent than a career.
• Foxes, melting snow: play and sex? My abuser Kay froze these in me--I nearly died, was convalescent for years. At last they're coming back.
• Forks, blocked trails: in The Lord of the Rings, the trail over Mt Caradhras, blocked by snow.
• Spicy in The Dolmop of Dorkling, a kids' book by Mary Palmer, Spicy's a court counselor. Also a zebra. Quite sensible, but zebra-feisty. Can't stand arrogance.
• Zebra: I saw an ad for Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, in a fur bikini, riding a zebra--well, a spraypainted horse; real zebras kick you off. So the name hints at sex too.
• Spice (not Spicy) is overtly sexual: in The Golden Horn, a postnuclear coming-of-age tale by Edgar Pangborn, "Spice" is that society's pet name for a lover, like our "Honey".
• So I mistake this mule for hot temper, when s/he really means sex/love/intimacy.
• Shaggy: probably the wise mule in Michael Ende's The Neverending Story.
• Two supernatural eyes: In Lord of the Rings, Frodo looks in Galadriel's Mirror, and sees the fiery Eye of Sauron hunting him. Later, Frodo's on the Hill of Seeing, and again the Red Eye hunts him. Gandalf calls from afar, counters Sauron's compulsion, leaving Frodo free for an instant to take off the Ring before Sauron locates him.
• The bird helping to manifest God: in shamanism, a bird in flight means a shaman's soul voyaging through the spirit realm; i.e., dreamwork itself.
• The fox: foxes in my dreams often mean play, sex and love.
• ACTION: Unsure. Such odd images! Not having been raised religiously, I rarely dream of God. And why'd magic animals in the snow make God's eye manifest? Still, some things are clear. For me, unlike my boss, healing and spiritual issues are more urgent than career. And dreams, play, love and sex lead the way.

THE NEXT DAY

I read Richard Lupoff's The Triune Man. It's full of images from the dream!

• A man splits into drastically different selves who follow conflicting careers, like my forking life-paths
• A cosmic archenemy like Sauron
• A jackally man (Anubis?) in place of the fox
• The face of God (literally, as in the dream!)
• and on the world of Sravasti, angelic creatures in the snow.

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