THAT DAY

MORNING: I upload additions to the World Dream Bank for the last two months. Tedious bug fixes. But less than there used to be! Not bad this time--for hand-written code.

AFTERNOON: bike to Japantown for an art opening--Jenny Badger, Henry Sultan and Paul Kensinger. My housemate Lily arrives, and nags Jenny "Put up price tags!" Jenny says "I read the guidelines and they forbid pricetags." Lily, who's shown here too, says "I know, but when I hung MY show, I challenged it and was told it was obsolete and to go ahead." Jenny doesn't. I go on talking about this, angering Jenny who found just hanging the show stressful enough. She snaps at me and I leave ashamed. All the way home, I beat myself up for my insensitivity, until, climbing Bernal Hill, I notice I'm having weird persecution/punishment fantasies: "the cops will ticket me for some trivial bike infraction!" Guilt sure is my weak point. I'm stoic about other unpleasant emotions, but...

My conscious has figured out beating myself up is unhealthy, but now it has to convince my habits. "A mistake's just a mistake! Conflict's part of growth. If you avoid risk, you stagnate."

EVENING: watch Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Surreal...

Dream 1: BEG ANDRE NORTON'S HELP

My sister & I are in high school together. She's being bullied or framed by some mean girls. I'm trying to get allies to help her. A girl suggests I get the help of two classmates developing witch-powers. Leads me to their stronghold--a bedroom full of books. Ask their help--feels like pleading a legal case. One girl's older, taller, reserved. I don't know her well, but I like her. Smart and sexy.

But the other... We met in fourth grade, and we've been close friends since seventh, when I saw her scribbling notes on an Andre Norton book--well, printout. For years we've passionately argued fantasy & science fiction books. It turned out she wasn't annotating but WRITING that story. We swapped & critiqued our fan manuscripts. Her pen name is... Andre Norton! She's just a fangirl. And for sixty years, she's stayed one--an eternal schoolkid churning out enthusiastic fanfic. And living on it.

Short, odd and slouchy, Andre acts out her feelings very physically; she's currently bonking her face into the sofaback as she recalls those early, awful manuscripts we wrote.

But we wrote them. So we could write the next one better. And better. Over a sixty-year curve.

NOTES

• Must help sister: Dirk Gently, Elijah Wood's guilty & feels compelled to help his sister Amanda
• Emotional girl: on Dirk Gently? The holistic assassin, or the blonde spellcaster, or the shy rural cop into obscure bands?
• 4-7th grade: I switched schools every single year from 4th to 7th grade. Always a new kid. Isolating! Science fiction & fantasy were my refuge.
• Taller calmer girl: probably the bodyguard on Dirk Gently.
• Andre Norton as a weird little eternal fangirl: Hah! Kinda true. Her books were strangely impulsive & digressive, diving into her latest enthusiasm, whether it's Siberian shamanism or Asimovian/Toynbee historic cycles or Ice Age archeology or ESP research. They range from grim crosstime thrillers to culture-clash romances to mystical feminist adventures to furry fantasies. Her style's all over the place too. Uneven? Yep. But her best are a lot of fun--Moon of Three Rings, The Zero Stone, Star Man's Son, Ordeal in Otherwhere, Three Against the Witch World--and she kept at it, pioneering feminist, ecological, furry, and xenophilic themes, inspiring and mentoring so many women writers of the next generation that they wrote her a festschrift: Moonsinger's Friends.
• ACTION: Do my thing. So what if I'm a shy weirdo? My work's the real me. I can inspire others, even if academics ignore or pan me. The artists who inspire aren't the polished ones; they're the weirdos off in the corners, baring their passions.

I'm in a magic program I secretly see as a bit corny and fairytale. Possibly since we all dress up like bad opera--capes, robes.

Go to the graduation ceremony marking our ascent from novices to journeymen. It's in a big hall with a marquee sign that scans you magically and blinks your appointment time. Mine is 21:25. Quite soon. I hurry in and find my Niche. Stone steps up to a rocky nook just 50 cm wide and deep, less than 80 tall (about 20x20x30"). Tight! I squeeze in--gotta hunch my shoulders. But I needn't stay long--no midnight vigil. It's more like the Hogwarts Sorting Hat. I should have guessed it was a Harry Potter sort of world from the robes...

My nook reads me. I anxiously wait to see if it manifests my graduation gift. That can take up to half an hour. If slow, that implies work still to be done; occasionally no gift at all appears, and you don't graduate. You can't appeal. I don't want to be held back a year!

My gift manifests within a minute. Fast! A relief. A friend picks it up and blurts "Cute!" Unlike the usual awards--useful journeyman tools like a wand, a reference book or a magic helmet--my gift seems a pure reward. At first it's a small, jeweled, Cinderella carriage--a Fabergé miniature! But it gradually, magically flattens into a big round box. Chocolates? Wait, really? Open it warily. Three horizontal sections, each printed with fine text, but with a short bigger message scrawled atop each like a last-minute title. Not candy: prophecies!

And the first one is something about... my girlfriend? I'm going to have a girlfriend! And fairly soon; all three prophecies will have to manifest during my journeyman program, in the next year or two.

What a wonderful present! Or rather, what a wonderful future.

NOTES

• Graduate: caught how I clung to guilt for angering Jenny till it triggered a persecution fantasy. Let go--persuaded myself to forgive. "Discomfort's part of growth."
• Operatic fairytale look: in Dirk Gently, a gay prince with giant scissors stumbles out of such a fairytale world, a child's creation.
• 21:25
  1. The 2nd Dirk Gently episode ended about 9:25PM (21:25); I had enough, but my housemate played one more. Swayed, I stayed. Got reeeeeeally tired. So 21:25 probably means listening to body/soul, knowing your needs, not overdoing.
  2. Or maybe it means I'll die, graduating to a higher plane... in 2125! Aw, gee, I only get a century more? Sob.
• Narrow nook: dreamwork? I'm squeezed in my bed between giant dream-plushies, the Foam Furs
• Gift: may be a reward for finally updating the World Dream Bank--not procrastinating further. A prod to upload more often!
• Magic, graduation: a self-flagging dream! May say "this isn't symbolic but actual prediction"--many of my dreams showing magic later do turn out to be predictive.
• ACTION 1: Don't self-punish. I caught & fought guilt over a mistake with Jenny; I bet that caused my promotion to journeyman. Now I must practice such forgiveness. Because tolerating & letting go of emotional mess is a pre-requisite to love.
• ACTION 2: Quit assuming I'll be single for life. I haven't even been looking, because I felt too fragile for love. But the dream says that's changing.

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