I'm in Middle Earth, in Minas Tirith, the greatest city of Gondor. Strange, it looks just like San Francisco. All those hills, that three-hundred-foot stone tower... Well, except for the lack of the Bay, and the snow-capped peak to the west, and the volcano on the eastern horizon. Oh, and the horde of monsters around the city wall, led by the worst of the Dark Riders, the Witch-King of Angmar...

Gandalf is here to fight him, and others from all over the West. Battle looms. I want to help. But that old prophecy about the Witch-King disheartens us all: "Not by the hand of man shall he fall." Yet I persist in risking myself to fight him. Tell Gandalf, "I'm a shaman, not a man. My song says so." For just as the Witch-King has a prophecy, I have a song. A song that defines me:

"No man is Island, so Men say--
I am not a Man!
Rock drowned in saltest Dreams
of Animals who Name..."

Wizards of Middle Earth have very different traditions, but they do concede: in Middle Earth, your song of identity really does define you--creates you, in a way. Since I'm a songwriter, I can be pretty much what I want by singing with enough conviction and power. I can deny I'm a man, declare myself to be merely borrowing such a form, declare what I've always known: I'm a shy, herbivorous, female creature, not even native to this world... just incarnating for a visit. My soul's not human, but krelkin.

But I have the sneaky feeling I'm really just ashamed of maleness, of men, that I'm denying my body more than affirming my spirit. And strength is not built on denial!

Yet the Witch-King's so powerful. No single being is likely to beat him. My help is needed.

So unhealthy or not, cost to myself or not, I define myself as not-a-man, and risk it. I sing my defining song, and make myself a creature who only appears to be a man for convenience. I sing myself away. For the community.

• Middle Earth = I've been reading stories by "James Tiptree" (Alice Sheldon); the intro has a Tiptree letter quoting Tolkien.
• Gender issues = Tiptree/Sheldon's stories are mostly gender tragedies. She was attracted to women but repressed it. Reading of her gender conflicts reawakened my own.
• "I am not a man": I haven't thrived in a male body. It feels borrowed. I'd have done better to get born female. Though, of course, "doing better" often isn't the point of incarnating. If there's a point. Why assume there's one point to life? Maybe you're here to grow spiritually via troubles that would make a saint's teeth ache, or to give some crucial gift to the world and THEN pick your toes for forty years, or to support a circle of friends you've been born with over and over... or half a dozen other purposes, or none at all! Asking why souls live on Earth is like asking why people live in New York.
• The defining song = the opening of a real song I wrote challenging John Donne's line "No man is an island": his claim we're really all the same. Because I don't think it's true.
• ACTION: In the dream, I do find a purpose, and sacrifice all to it. So stay alert for my life-goal when awake too. Or else take the dream's advice--declare myself a dream creature, accept I'll never learn to be human, and get on with my inhuman life!

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