Night after night, my spirit flies to an enchanted Arabian or Persian castle, to visit a princess under a spell.... or so she seems. She's really a spirit caught here in mortal guise, who's supposed to tempt passing knights. But she's haughty, looking down on mortals, and sly, too, and with a temper.

Still, she's not dull. And very sexy, and VERY magical. I like her, flaws and all.

I keep visiting her as a spirit, for I can't fully manifest in her plane. Still, I keep trying, and get a bit solider each time. She's bored alone in the magic castle and is always glad to see me, no matter how much she tries to hide it. Attracted to me, as much as she can be to a knight of ghosts and shadows. I could win her love, if only I were all there!

And at last, I make it through physically--sort of. I'm a dwarf! Well, myself scaled down--about hobbit-size. She teases me, but is still intrigued. She's so bored and horny--or is it curiosity? She's curious about her new material body, I think, and itches to try it out. She teases "Can you even make love, in that scaled-down body. You scanted on clay, I think, when you shaped it. Did you even add a...?"

I tease her right back. "Come find out!"

And this queen of spirits tears off her robes! I have none. Yes, my body works. Oh, yes. We make long, slow, delighted, surprised love. I wish I had my full size, but this is a lot better than nothing, and it may anchor me more soundly for my next manifestation. Even as we are, she a spirit barely used to a body, me in a strange half-self, we come and come... So what if she's not human and I'm a dwarf from another cosmos? Everyone has baggage.

But when I pull out of her at last, a change is triggered. An angel invades her body, I can sense it--even name the invader: the Archangel Miryam. What's she done with my girlfriend's soul? I feel furious, helpless--and a fool.

You see, in transit a while back, I overheard some angels saying Miryam would soon be doing a stint on Earth. I failed to see the implication, the warning. The Archangel Miryam, ancient times, the desert country... You see it now of course--how we were set up. Not by Miryam, she's just middle management. The CEO's responsible! Mister Yahweh. God.

Miryam takes over the Princess's body. Now she's ready to do her part in the foreordained story: she's a virgin, for SHE didn't have sex with me. Yet she'll be a mother. The Virgin Mary.

So I'm the father: the Holy Spirit! And I don't even LIKE Christianity. Oh, we were set up.

Worse yet, what happened to the princess's own soul? She was vain, she had her flaws, but did she deserve this? Is she still in there, suppressed, her body jerked around like a puppet, bred like a cow? Or was she thrown out? Either way it's body-theft! How's that different from murder? And they made me an unwitting part of it.

So the Christian miracle, the Virgin Birth, is founded on this! On... betrayal. I know, as a shaman, that the force of historical necessity may require a miracle at this time and place, but I sure resent it being at my lover's expense.

Let the gods pay for their own games.

But they won't. We get to. Used!

NOTES ON WAKING

• Princess = I've been reading E.R. Eddison's THE WORM OUROBOROS: a spirit-lady in the ruined castle of Ishnain Nemarta grants Lord Brandoch "anything on Earth"; he wishes for her. She gasps "How dare you! Am I of Earth?" etc... but under that, she's excited, and soon gives in. They spend one night together--or a week, in the mortal world. When he leaves, to help save a friend, she begs him to stay, and curses him for leaving her. My spirit-princess is the Lady of Ishnain Nemartra, a haughty spirit with a definite temper, yet lonely, sympathetic, even loving.
• The angel Miriam echoes Queen Sophonisba in that book--a holy virgin ready to re-enter the world. But Sophonisba was sweet; Miriam's a flunky, complicit in a deep injustice.
• Christianity = when I was little my uncle flipped out. He said he was Christ. Here, I'm suckered into becoming Christ's dad, yet I'm not God, and the whole religion's a scam. But... a socially needed scam? Was the Old World at a stage requiring monotheism? It all parodies Erikson's theories of development and psychohistory, which I've been reading.

THAT MORNING

I wake up, write the dream, and speculate about Eriksonian theory and all that. Then I go out to the kitchen to find my housemate Valerie home from vacation, a day early. She looks miserable. She broke up with her girlfriend Sam. "I saw a side of her I'd never seen: she's arrogant! She kept flirting with men, playing power games. She and Lisa were competing to fuck this guy, she wanted Lisa to share him... Treated him like just a walking penis--just how they hate men to treat THEM. They said 'Men aren't worth being honest to!'"

Valerie was willing to have an open relationship with Sam, but now... she feels used.

The references to spirit travel and space/time travel now seem literal... I think my soul flew up north to their camp, in a long-distance link with Valerie's pain over the loss of her proud princess Sam, finding Sam's soul is, for Val, fatally flawed.

I had half a dozen dreamlets earlier tonight, full of parks, canyons, rocky streams, and winding roads... just like Harbin Hot Springs, where Val and Sam camped. Northern California's sex-game oasis! I should have guessed.

Why did I care so much, follow Valerie in spirit so far I stretched and faded out and shrank? Well... I too am a fool for love. Attracted--but too shy to tell her.

No, be honest. Valerie may be a fool for love. But me? Love's not my first love, dreamwork is. I'm a fool, but a psychologizing fool! Over & over I "explain" a bizarre dream with theories as twisty as Freud's, only to learn later it echoed the next day's news--or my best friend's pain.

Get used to it. Comedians have whined for years that reality keeps topping their satire. Why should dreamworkers have it easy?

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