Femlin obedience

All night, I dream of complex interactions with a big group of people--and drastically change how I cope with them. I shield myself where I usually don't, and bare myself where I usually don't.

Complete reversal! It's quite unsettling, even scary--but when testing, why not be extreme? I can dial back the extremism in the future if it all blows up. Right now, though, I'm aiming for upset--if not total catastrophe. Test to destruction!

The result? So far, no worse than my habitual armor! I just feel weird, that's all. Like I'm not me. But apparently, I am. I still am.

The reversal loosens frozen pieces of armor, that's for sure. If I keep this up, it'll have social, sexual and financial consequences, though I can't predict what.

I feel the reversal not just emotionally, but in my body. Cool on usually clothed parts, warm on usually bare, cooler parts. Like, instead of clothing my body and baring arms and legs, I'm naked except for ballet legwarmers and long gloves.

This pattern reminds of of... what? Oh! That little cartoon sprite that Playboy Magazine used to have as a mascot--the Femlin.

Femlin inconsequentiality

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Patches of clothed and nude: probably literal and subliminal--I woke feeling simultaneously cold and hot in patches. Turned out I was sleeping under pillows scattered unevenly on my bed.
• Nude but for legwarmers and long gloves:
  1. Today I worked on a dream-comic, Perissa, starring a rather exhibitionist (but also political) centaur-ballerina.
  2. I also sketched some extra centauroid dancers who probably won't fit in the dream-comic, who wore only legwarmers and ballet shoes--their torsos, thighs and flanks bare. Though not bare skin--their natural coats. Still, the pattern resembled the Femlin, and what I felt in the dream.
• Feel like not-me, feel like a Playboy cartoon! Jung found that aspects of a dreamer they'd like to deny often show up as scary dream characters he called Shadows. He advised negotiation and alliance. But Jung doesn't write much on directly becoming your own Shadow, your not-self. The only dreamworker who has discussed it is Yeats, in Per Amica Silentia Lunae, his guide for visionary artists. Two of his four imperatives were:
  1. Tell your discontents and limitations and yes, sins--deprivation, suffering, and inner war DO make better art. Art without it is just good craft. It can entertain (and sell) but not transform.
  2. Push toward the exact opposite of yourself, your Jungian Shadow, all you deny and dread.
  Without recalling it, I followed Jung's and Yeats's advice in the dream, letting myself be about as nakedly not-me as possible.
• ACTION: Why not go ahead? Redefine myself completely. Try drastically uncharacteristic behavior around sex, success, health, and money. Reverse my self-image(s), shield where I'm now stoic, and drop my armor where I now think I'm vulnerable... What happens if I go as wild as a Femlin?

Femlin politics

Femlin religion

Femlin roots

TEN YEARS LATER

Did I reverse my self-image and defenses? Well, yes--though slowly, piece by piece.

• Money: in 2008 I was cash-poor and felt I was a failure. But... my total assets had grown 5-10% a year for THIRTY YEARS--I just started out broke. So I redefined that as success for someone sick and unable to work full-time! 2009, I got our shared house a great deal on solar panels. In 2010, my mom died; I was the executor, got the (messed-up) estate settled with minimal taxes, and in 2011 invested my share. It doubled. By 2013 I was a millionaire; my net worth is still rising about 10% a year. Failure, huh?
• Health: after decades of illness with no diagnosis let alone treatment (unless you count getting treated as a whiner), I did my own research. Diagnosed Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome plus a recurring infection that EDS may foster. Through reading then trial and error, made a protocol of antibiotic herbs that suppress it; I'm now about as healthy as a zebra (EDS patient) can get. Hopeless case, huh?
• Art: galleries shied away from my weird shamanic dream art. So I redefined me from "not good enough" to "too edgy for their timid little souls" and built my own galleries--the World Dream Bank, Planetocopia, the Foam Furs, the Cendancers, and songs with The Krelkins. Last time I checked, about 6 million hits a year. A few million more views than the galleries downtown. Not an artist, huh?
• Love: in 2008 I was torn between two brilliant women. Drama. Broke up. Found I was happier alone--friendships sufficed. Turns out I'm well past the clinical threshold for autism (EDS often causes high-functioning autism). Sex is nice but people can get... overwhelming.
  I read that autistic pioneer Temple Grandin built a device that squeezed her, to calm her down, so I built the Foam Furs, lifesize shaggy creatures I could snuggle with, burrow under, and mate with--both sex toys and working Grandin devices. Humans couldn't meet my contradictory needs for silence and solitude, yet presence and touch... but the Foam Furs do. Kooky? Kinky? Yes. But lonely? Less so than when I was trying to date... humans.

I certainly didn't expect to find Zen guidance in a Playboy cartoon, but enlightenment comes where it will. So my hat's off to you, Femlin.

I will, of course, resolve to be a good Femlin. Though a Femlin's definition of good is, by definition, not too human.

Femlin ambiguity

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