I show up late for my class in interdimensional dreaming. No wonder I'm late--lug two huge heavy cases. One's my synthesizer. The other's even heavier--what is it? By the weight, books, papers or rocks.

The lecture hall is huge, with raked wooden benches like indoor bleachers. Our teacher pauses, recognizes me, says "Chris! Glad you could make it at all." She knows, then, about my current responsibilities elsewhere. Musical and... otherwise. She waves me to an empty seat just three rows up and on the near aisle. I put my burdens down.

She resumes her presentation, on a woman who sees flashes of a second reality--an alternate Earth where business rules all, and the language, though English, is full of terms and concepts alien to our time-branch, which developed along anarchist-cooperative lines. To us, money is peripheral, a mere index of resources; projects happen here when they pass a threshold of attractiveness and credibility, not capital.

"But" says my teacher, "on that alien Earth, money is everything. Economics and profit drive art, politics, religion. People scheme for it, fight for it, kill for it. Like killing for degrees Fahrenheit, or inches!

"So this woman's visionary reports are hard for us to grasp, let alone empathize with. A world with monomania, full of byzantine schemes all about one thing, is nearly impossible to describe except in its own insane vocabulary. Which, thank Goddess, we lack."

To my teacher and classmates, natives of the sane world of my dreams, late capitalism, my waking world, was literally a world too weird for words.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Late to dream-class: I neglected my dreams for weeks. Tonight I made an effort, and did succeed in recalling this one, even if it's brief.
• A world of anarchist cooperatives: literal! I barely interact with corporate capitalism. My food's from two co-ops and the local farmer's market; my entertainment, from our library, a nonchain bookshop and three independent movie theaters. We mostly generate our own power. I own a car but it mostly sits; I bike. My art materials are mostly recycled stuff--or digital, not physical at all.
• Alien money-obsessed world with its own jargon: literal too. I've been settling my mom's estate. An alien world! Realtors, contracts, A&B trusts, capital gains, pages of tax gobbledygook. And now that the taxes and shares are sorted out I still have to invest my share responsibly.
• Those heavy cases I lug: my responsibilities. Dream portrays two beyond dreamwork itself:
  1. Music! Not just songwriting but finishing and recording, which I find hard.
  2. The paperwork for the estate? I suspect so, by the weight. Tax and legal forms!
• ACTION: Face it--I bear triple responsibilities: artistic, financial AND spiritual/dreamwork. Give each its due. Learn the specialized concepts & jargon needed to act wisely in each.

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