THAT DAY

I work all morning on my alien world Pegasia: add eight landscape sketches. Expand the tours, and improve the maps for Continent 8, and prepare a couple of pages for intelligent species.

Noonish, work on my dream-painting The Berry Dance, and try to illustrate a disturbing dream-poem, Praise The Dancing Goons. Get stuck--I can't draw beefy thugs...

Afternoon: switch to sculpture. Trim the feet of my centauroid dancer. Hard to hacksaw through her coathanger bones. But she balances better now.

Rest and read Polly Horvath's Corps of the Bared-Boned Plane. Two teens lose their parents in a traincrash; they go live with an uncle on an island off British Columbia--a deeply withdrawn guy. Their family dysfunction is scarily familiar--distract themselves from emotional pain by diving into obsessions. I do it too--mine are artistic and thus more productive than most, but still...

In the evening, watch a video: The #1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Mma Ramotswe faces Note, her ex. A rival detective brought Note in deliberately to rattle her. He demands money or he'll spoil her engagement. She does some research and finds Note already had a wife when he wed her! Even that was a lie... She confronts Note, but rather than tear into him, urges him to get off the drugs. "You're a real musician, don't waste that gift..." Her generosity surprises me--maybe surprises her.

THAT NIGHT

Most of the time, I block and tangle up my own power. But today, I have a phase of clarity--I get out of the way and let it flow. So naturally, I can levitate now.

I explore a half-built house, just floors and roof without many walls yet. Safely float down stairwells and up chimneys... even hover outside and look in.

But suddenly I'm surrounded by three levitating men in dark trenchcoats. I'm nervous--not just outnumbered, but their auras have a scent of formidable power.

No problem! It turns out they're on my side... this time at least. They want my help in containing a powerful, malevolent guy I've been fighting for some time. Alone, I've barely held my own against him. They confirm what I suspected: he's a devil, a major one, passing as human. No wonder he's so terribly strong!

But I feel his equal. Of course it won't last, for I'm mortal and will lose this fierce focus; I can't maintain it in a body for long. But at my best I CAN pin him down. And now, if I can, these guys can do more--can carry him off.

Because they're immortals like him. Not devils. Angels. And not just any; archangels! Gabriel, Michael, Uriel...

And it takes three archangels to hold him! To do what I've been struggling to do on my own--and holding my own. Against... who, exactly? A devil or THE Devil?

One thing is clear: it's high time for me to re-evaluate my own power. When I don't muddy it up.

NOTES NEXT MORNING

• Scary raincoated men: from Ladies Detective Agency--the rival detective and Mma Ramotswe's abusive ex-husband. Yet they do her an inadvertent favor: help her overcome old fears. So problems I find threatening may really help me...
• Three fears? In three areas of my life, I've feared that I run from my feelings like the family in "Bare-Boned Plane." But do I?
  1. I've been slow about dating. But I need to be: figuring out my feelings takes time, and I don't want to repeat the mistakes of my last relationship.
  2. I've also been slow to offer more help to my mom, who's terminally ill; but I can't cure her, and too much time with me (or anyone) stresses her as much as the illness.
  3. I've been slow to market my art, too--but I need creative time, and time spent on business and publicity eats into it. Which matters more, money or the art?
  I try to overcome these three reluctances as if they're flaws. Jungian shadows! But what if they're guardian angels?
• The devil I've been fighting: my own chronic illness! The dream warns it's serious, even deadly, but my resources against it are equally formidable.
• I can just hold my own alone, if I focus: when I really apply the food/herb/vitamin/rest/exercise regimen I developed, it blocks attacks.
• ACTION 1: Accept help! I'm wary of men, doctors, experts, just as I mistrust the figures in my dream. But I can only maintain the status quo--to heal will take help.
• ACTION 2: forgive myself for caution in dating, caretaking, art-selling. Maybe my reluctance is not sabotage but survival.

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