I head toward home through a dream San Francisco. Ride an airmattress down a creek--but not always down. Through some passes, the stream runs uphill too!

Eventually I convert the airmattress into a big skateboard or small wheeled surfboard, lie on my belly, stick swim fins on my hands, and paddle through the streets, pulling with my flippers, then coasting. Worry I'm overworking my arms, while my legs get no exercise. But so far the slopes are with me; I mostly roll and steer, rarely needing to paddle.

I wear a bright red outfit and an orange football helmet. With my flipper-arms I look grotesque. People stare; a guy yells "What are you, a goddamn lobster?" There was a recent death here, so anything strange raises suspicion. Perhaps rightly. No women on the street, only men; and a lot go armed. Despite the heat I shiver. This isn't San Francisco, it's Karachi! Corrupt, patriarchal, violent.

At last a steep knoll eats my momentum--halfway up I stall. I get off and walk my stick to up to... a border station! Ahead is a higher realm. Feels like I'm leaving Pakistan to enter India--similar land, culture, poverty... but freer. I know it's no national boundary, that's just an analogy. It's really the threshold of a higher reality.

On this new level, no guns, fewer men, women walking freely. People in robes and saris, not uniforms. More an Earthly Paradise than a full-on Heaven, but... sure beats Pakistan. A bit weird--half the locals are slate-blue and have a third eye, but that's just a convention to flag them as deities. I can't complain--I look pretty strange too, with my football helmet and flipper-hands.

Uh... those do come off, don't they?

At first, fresh out of Pakistan, I'm shy with the local gods and demis, just slipping by as I keep scrabbling up the path like a turtle up a beach. But their auras feel much like mine--lively, but not saintly. Just... sane. So things mostly work. Good enough for me to call it Paradise!

Slowly my wariness eases. Maybe I can fit in here. I can peel off my armor, at least. Maybe ask directions, make friends, date. Gods or not, these Paradisians feel right.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Recent death on streets: saw an ambulance and cops at the freeway overpass below our hill.
• Red outfit, orange helmet: today I wore a red bike helmet & red hoodie while doing demolition--we're installing insulated windows.
• Overwork hands/arms: True. Chipped and hand-cut two studs out of my wall today--making a frame for a new window.
• Flippers over hands: tomorrow wear gloves, dummy!
• Reach a higher level:
  1. Our band practiced. Music, trust, & the spirituality of my bandmates. What a contrast with Vince the cynical handyman who's leading the windows installation. Experienced, but grouchy and stinky (a chain smoker). And spacy; transposes numbers, so cuts go wrong.
  2. But it's bigger than this. Our whole WORLD feels fresh outa Pakistan. Centuries of kings, famines, wars... and suddenly, in most lands, the streets are kinda... safe. Disorienting!
• Hindu/Buddhist paradise: two bandmates are Hindu, one Buddhist; I'm a dream-shaman. All positive, all smart. Unlike Vince's cloud of tobacco-bitter nihilism.
• ACTION 1: Uh... gravitate to positive people? Prefer women to men, weirdos to fundamentalists... pacifists to gun nuts?
• ACTION 2: Patience! Climbing to a higher level is incremental. For me and for the world. Ignore the news hysteria. The stream runs uphill.
• ACTION 3: Let my freak flag fly. Remember--I climbed to Paradise not by self-restraint but by letting myself look ridiculous.

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites