DEER EXHIBITIONISTS

I'm sitting at a sidewalk cafe table on a shoplined street. Two girls about twelve years old jog up the sidewalk and pause by me as they run into an adult friend. They enthusiastically tell her about this video they're making.

The two girls are startling and strange. They look human, but have the auras of deer! Genius deer.

And... they're naked except for capes they've made out of sheets.

I try not to gawk but it's hard not to; I find them disturbingly sexy. Is it all the skin though, or those gentle, alert, nonhuman auras? Amazing.

I notice their friend doesn't warn them "Be careful not to put nude photos of yourself on the net." That worries me, so I decide I'll sketch their aura-forms instead. Unlike their pet adult who didn't seem to care, I feel wrong putting their human forms naked on the net, even if they're dream figures not corresponding to anyone I know; I can't be sure they aren't real somewhere.

The notion that dream figures are always just parts of wonderful special you is an unproven theory. I find it just as plausible we all wander shared dreamworlds and these two were friends sharing a dream I blundered into (well, the other way round; I was just sitting there sipping coffee and sketching).)

I suppose I'm being inconsistent here. Over the years I've drawn lots of other nude dream characters--even underage human ones. But they often clearly are me.... With these two, I felt reluctant. Maybe that means I was surer than usual that they were independent beings. I don't know.

Case by case, I guess.

NIP OFF HIS NOSE

Nearby, in a wooded park, I meet a man linked to the deer-girls' video project. We talk a bit, and then...

I impulsively reach out and pull his nose off. No blood, no resistance--it pops right out like a cork stopper on an empty bottle.

I keep talking--like a magician's patter--talk as if we're in a scene from his own video, providing suspense... as I tease him with his own nose, waving it around.

Will I give it back? Oh, yes, eventually--what do I want with a disembodied nose? But only once we've milked the scene for all its potential drama! That's video for you.

STAN'S A KILLER!

I just learned that my very first boss, a guy named Stan, has been convicted of murder. Stan was weird and in denial about some stuff, but... murder? I'm shocked.

Suddenly underage nudity and nose-nipping fall into perspective. There's crime, and then there's... crime.

GROUP INTERPRETATION: WORK CAUSES BACKACHE

I wake and tell the dreams to two amigas of mine. They're not so sure about the meaning of Exhibitionist Child Vloggers (though they may just mean me, putting dreams on the net), or Reversable Nose-Theft (I'm stumped!), but they ask questions that slowly lead me to conclude that Stan means work.

Ohhh! So... "Stan commits murder" means "overwork is killing me!"

I've had a sore back for weeks, but I just wouldn't admit to the obvious correlation between hours on the computer and inflammation.

OOPS. NO, REALLY, I'M AWAKE NOW...

Wake AGAIN to find that whole dream-interpreting session was a dream too. All those dream notes on my pad are gone. Gotta write them down all over again! And no such friends to talk them over with... sigh.

But the diagnosis is clear enough.

• Girls make videos: recurring theme in THREE books I just read, Lisa Yee's Absolutely Maybe (good), futurist Ray Kurzweil's Danielle (failure; she's a mere authorial mouthpiece), and Wen Spencer's Wood Sprites (love them, brattiness and all).
• Adorable nonhuman auras: turns out the sisters in Wood Sprites aren't entirely human.
• Wooded park, odd gesture: in the BBC mystery Vera, a deaf guy lives in a wood, uses sign language--maybe one sign looked like pull-off-your-nose?
• Nip off his nose: MY nose may as well be gone. Bad allergies for weeks--I can't smell a thing. (Or is it Covid? Losing sense of smell is a symptom.)
• Stan's a killer: trust those dream-interpreters! Stan is work, overwork's a killer, and like him I'm in denial.
• ACTION (immediate): REST tomorrow! My back will flare up if I overwork again.
• ACTION (longer term): Get tested for Covid soon as I can, in case this loss of smell ISN'T allergies.

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