THAT DAY

I have very few dreams from 2003--it's a big gap in my journal. I was sick, broke (looked too sick to hire) single (looked too sick to date), writing songs I couldn't play alone, and designing an ergonomic instrument called the Coil that I couldn't build alone. I was building the World Dream Bank, alone; the one side of my life going well.

That day, my friend Alder had told me "You seem totally stuck. Why don't you ask your dreams what to do next?" So I that night, I did. And I was answered.

THAT NIGHT

I'm back living with my parents, though I'm adult. My friend Mike visits. He says his housemate Scott (who's rather shy) got a steady job now and is dating around, looking for a girlfriend. But Mike also says "Scott's trying to have a baby."

I'm puzzled and joke "All by himself? Isn't that difficult?" I really don't know what Mike means--is Scott trying to adopt a kid as a single parent, or actually get pregnant?

Mike looks angry and offended and walks out the front door. I follow, still unclear what he meant and puzzled at his anger. Maybe it's just too close to home--Mike and his wife are trying to have a child but don't seem fertile. Apologize, though I still don't know quite what set him off.

Mike calms down at last and asks about those small plasticine creatures I made as a teen, to use in claymation films. He liked them. "Aren't they stored here? I remember that blue mermaid, she was graceful." Funny, I scan my shelves but can't find her. "And there was a centaur, and a not-quite-human girl..." But my shelves are nearly bare. Spot just one figurine, and it's polished ceramic--professional work--a Guan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion. But MY figurines... while I lived on my own, did my parents store them away or throw them out?

Maybe I could remake the figures Mike remembers. Find some plasticine. But not a brick or lump, a horse-leg! Slowly I soften it. Could I mold it into a hand and wrist?

Then I find a complete figurine--the centaur! She's standing, so at first I assume she's whole. No. Her left hind leg is just leaning against her torso. Damn--broken loose at the hip.

Now, plasticine isn't as sticky or forgiving as normal waterbased clay, so re-linking this won't be easy--have to massage and warm the existing torso and the hip end of the leg, then damage them, making flaps and gashes--an interlocking dovetail joint. Only once they're relinked with lots of surface area and mashed down to a ball can I reshape the joint into a centaur flank.

The plasticine horse-leg I'm warming in my hand isn't a duplicate of the broken leg, but it's the about the same length. I line them up side by side, and find to my surprise that they fit together, molding around each other to form a much fatter leg! Too fat? No, oddly enough, the two TOGETHER seem to be about the right amount, even though each one looks like a spindly but nearly adequate leg. Well, I often underestimate the volume of clay needed for anything. Like most folks, I'm more used to one- or two-dimensional measuring. But scale up a 3-D thing just 25%, and the volume almost DOUBLES. I really do need to meld both pieces of clay to make a leg stout enough to bear the centaur's weight.

So I start molding the two legs into one. Becomes a formless mass... but it's the right volume. Shape later! If I want the centaur to stand firm and strong, I have to put twice as much into it as I thought--and go through this shapeless phase.

Hmm. No metaphors here.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Mike = active, traveling, married, solvent--he has much I envy. But he and Nic are childless, and doctors can't see why. A stuck area.
• Scott = shy and locked in habit--mostly stuck, like me.
• Scott trying to have baby = me trying to have a life: money, health, girlfriend, music...
• "How can he have a baby alone?" = I need others for next steps--work/money, dating, the Coil, a band.
• Mike mad at joking question = the side of me working hard with no results is angry, resents even discussing the problem.
• Figures I sculpted as a teen = real. But they also mean sublimation of social, sexual, artistic and spiritual frustration. In school I was shunned, bullied and isolated. No mentors, no dates, few friends, no artistic collaborators, so I made claymations frame by frame, alone.
• Plasticine work tends to get brittle and break = my current habits are obsolete, brittle, and need reshaping
• Most statues gone, melted back into clay = most of my old habits are already gone.
• Guan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion = Someone I can ask for help. My therapist Shelley? I see her tomorrow.
• Goddess is NOT mine, NOT plasticine = the Goddess isn't a sublimation, she's real
• centaur = wholeness, unified animal and spirit
• four legs = four Jungian functions--sensing, thinking, feeling, intuition.
• one leg broken off = one function's busted; no wonder so little works in my life.
• hind leg = a nondominant function, probably sensing (also body/health)
• leg just leaning against figure = going through the motions disconnectedly does no good
• leg I'm shaping into a hand = helped my friend Joy today make photo ads for her home-made product Hot Hands. Help friends, but not myself.
• Leg in hand = art skills? digital skills?
• ACTIONS: Patience! During inner surgery, I'll go on being crippled. In short term, I may get worse--must damage hip to replace leg. I underestimate the time & effort needed; put in TWICE as much and I can be whole!

15 YEARS LATER

Today this dream seems more literal than I expected.

• Scott: didn't get pregnant, but as the dream said, he got a steady job, found a girlfriend, and seems pretty happy.
• Mike: doing well but still childless.
• Guan Yin figurine: literal. My sister has it on her piano.
• Figurines I used for claymation in my teens: they really DID go missing. While I was at college, I left a few boxes of my stuff on a high shelf in my parents' garage that they never used. One held the figurines. My mom eventually called to say another box fell and crushed them. Implausible, since the box was quite solid and not much was above them, but I took it at face value. But when I mentioned it to my friends, they all thought she finally wanted the storage space, opened the box, got upset by the furry nudity, threw them out... then lied to me, embarrassed. Anyway, they're gone.

  Oh, well. They were crude--just claymation figures, no more graceful than Wallace and Gromit. I didn't know much anatomy yet. Only one photo's survived...

• Me: Huge improvement! Still single, but mostly happy; way healthier, rich enough not to need a job, and recording my first CD.

  So did I "put twice as much into it"? More like thrice! I faced huge resistance to changing lifelong problems--not just the normal stuff but bizarre bad luck, vanishing paperwork, malpractice. I had to methodically work on one messed-up leg of my centaurian life at a time, concentrating on it for a year or two. But eventually the storm of weird resistance would wane, and things improved. And then I'd move on to the next leg...

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