THAT DAY

I go see a sampler of the plays in this year's San Francisco Fringe Festival. Crowded--I barely make it. Run into my friend Cameron, who's starred here other years. "Lately I've been forced to work dayjobs, but I have a short piece in the works." The lights dim...

Driven Bananas: Girl with a driving phobia inherits a classic car... develops too slowly though. ☆
With Held: Artist confesses to his best friend "Your girlfriend and I fucked." Disastrous. Honesty is NOT always best. ☆ ☆
StormStressLenz: scenes from Sturm und Drang plays (late 1700s). Insane, grotesque--unintentionally hilarious. ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Eating Pasta Off the Floor: Italian mom happily, obliviously tries to marry off her daughter in Safeway. Sick--and funny. ☆ ☆ ☆
52 Letters: Grimly relentless one-note protest that girls are kidnapped, raped, and pimped out. Uh... kidnapped? And no one notices?
Genie and Audrey's Dream Show: One plays accordion, one tumbles. They're cute. But dreamless. They promised dreams. ☆ ☆
Triskaidekaphobia: Thirteen Consumer Tragedies: Aren't our economic beliefs as superstitious as fearing the number 13? ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Fish Girl: A sexworker-activist plays ukelele & sings "Men are scum" in a mermaid gown. Why? Hey, it's the Fringe! ☆ ☆

THAT NIGHT...

My name's Silky. Love to run. Ponytail black. I'm on a sinuous causeway over the lake to unholy isle. The huddled horde ahead Watches, alarmed, but not because my track lies near-awash; here, cunning thunderclouds swoop and crush humans flat, if they draw cloud-notice by straying from the crowd.

But then I'm not exactly human, am I? I don't shift into my swifter form, a black nightmare--but I lope with stamina and joy from my immanent mare. Galloped a mile or so already--just a hundred yards more to the murmurcrowd ashore; now I can see individual faces watching me.

I'd rather canter unattacked to shore, to understudy these great thugs of air on this their headquarter-isle, before plotting to eject them--blue to black space, their source. But if they attack, I swear I'll kick them now to stratosphere! Improvise, fight back! For I don't crack under thunder. Nightmares don't crack ever never. Don't fear the air. Fight back.

• Silky is my spirit wife; a dream-guide, but now & then we fuse, as here. She often becomes a black cat or mare; hence her joke she's a "nightmare."
• Mile sprint: I get tachycardia in sleep, from what's probably Lyme disease. In most dreamers, the content of a nightmare causes hearts to pound; but some of MY dreams scramble to explain a heart racing for medical reasons! I call these weakmares. In the dream I'm a STRONG mare, call myself a nightmare, and literally run with that--enjoy it. The dream's saying "don't worry; tachycardia's no worse than jogging."
• Giants try to stomp me: this theme repeats a week later, in Godeville, or, Living with Cthulhu. Probably Lyme.
• Step out of the crowd and you get stomped: getting onstage, as at the Fringe or in our band The Krelkins
• ACTION:
  1. Ignore tachycardia--it's dramatic but in my case not hazardous. Focus on reducing pain & inflammation from Lyme.
  2. Perform--but keep it short, like Fringe plays. Sustained stress opens me to get stomped by a full Lyme attack.
  3. Be patient fighting Lyme. It's a persistent illness and takes a sustained campaign to beat.
  4. Go solo artistically for now. Sculpt, paint, write dream-songs. Free of the crowd, I gallop fast and tireless!

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