I'm an alien here on Earth, but I'm used to it; our ship crashed years ago. I can pass for human, especially in rainy weather, when my wings look just like a rain-poncho. Most of the other survivors live together, still trying to fix the ship; I went off and explored human society.

At last, I go flying home, with my daughter. No, it's not safe to unfurl our own wings around humans, but I was inspired by that kids' movie FLY AWAY HOME, where Anna Paquin flies a tiny ultralight plane to lead tame geese along a flyway south. So we fly solar-powered ultralights. The next best thing to stretching our wings!

Now we've made it out, and land safely. That evening we go to a ceremonial hall to hear a lecture. But first the Secret Service or its local equivalent must make the building secure for a visiting politician. I hang out by the doors--in fact I hang by the doors, idly swing from the hinges. Hard for me to forget my aerial habits, I still tend to climb and perch. The speaker was a client, but became a friend. I'm a doctor or medical researcher, that's been my work among humankind, and the speaker benefited from some radical treatment I promoted. Had to have it a couple of times--he was insane before. Now he's just... eccentric.

The guards worry he's still crazy, may try to kill the politician! It's true he still comes across as weird to humans ignorant of the physical causes of his condition. But that's a long jump from weird to homicidal maniac! Very unfair. The guards tell me that there are two signs that always mean trouble: when people's bodies start smelling like citrus or some Mediterranean herb, they're dangerous! Well... but what if they like falafel or Greek salads?

I leave early. It's getting harder to pass as human, especially indoors. Walk then run down a narrow hall. Put my arms out, spread my wings, grab air with pleasure, and start skimming down the hall. So cramped my wings can't fully extend; can barely skim with great effort, rowing the air. Try to remember how--it's been so long--twisting my alulas and primary feathers for maximum lift near stalling speed. It comes back to me slowly... then the corridor ends, and I'm out in the open. Soar! Circle a green hill, soar, roll with joy to be flying free again.

Years of slogging through gluey air in dreams! Slow-mo frustration, till I learned that thick resistance could be climbed! Treading air. Slowly I learned to skim and flap, barely staying up, till at last it became easy and I could soar like this. My heritage regained. My wings no longer look like a cape, but that camouflage I adopted as a child has taken years to develop and then to drop. So gradual, such trial and error--in ten thousand dreams. Like Tolkien's mythology, stewing and recombining, slowly evolving his themes from snippets and chance words. I clearly remember all those dream-flights, practicing for this day, this day when I could drop all pretense, spread my wings, and soar.

But as I open my mouth to speak... a ring of men stands up. Armed men. Surrounded! Guns on us. They announce "You've been captured by the Klu Klux Klan!" But... they have no hoods. Naked faces. No fear of being identified, none at all. That's chilling. We won't live long.

In fact their leader invites them one by one to step forward and introduce themselves. Each one does a little dance step, so pleased to have caught the alien monsters. They plan to shoot us and pickle us as soon as we've all been properly introduced. Roswell is doomed as a tourist site, this'll be the new ufology mecca. Oh, they have big plans for us. Us pickled, at least.

At the last moment the old county sheriff pulls up with a fleet of deputies. Suddenly the armed circle's circled itself. The Sheriff calls "Let 'em go, and you can walk out of here free--as long as I never see your faces in this county again. But fire one shot, or show your faces around here again, and you're dead men." The Klansmen hesitate. He adds "You boys reeeeally wanna shoot it out right now?" The men begin to disperse... Looks like my crewmates will get home after all.

Me? My daughter? I just don't know. Such a beautiful world, and for her, it's home. And the people--so brutal, so kind. Gunmen in the ring, and those lights in the towers, to aid two strangers flying.

NOTES ON WAKING

• Stranded alien = Just read THINKING IN PICTURES, by Temple Grandin, who's autistic. Her perceptual world, and the behaviors that help her orient, were all familiar to me--they weren't much differerent from mine. The book convinced me I'm subclinically autistic.
• FLY AWAY HOME = one of my housemates asked me "what films have made you cry?" I was surprised that this kids' film was the first that came to mind.
• Downdraft = sinking feeling about my girlfriend Raven--are we breaking up?
• Dream says stay on same course for now, don't change anything.
• People help in crisis = at a party tonight, Raven got shaky strange and ill; people were kind, protective.
• My daughter, not my girlfriend: do I see Raven this way? Protective toward her, certainly...
• Cure a crazy lecturer who the guards think is dangerous = experts said autistic kids were unemotional, asocial, hallucinating, but Temple Grandin says it's just sensory distortions making her a social geek--she could see the problem, just couldn't mimic normality. I feel that way too.
• I climb on doors = Temple Grandin used doors to rehearse symbolic transitions in her life, like graduation. Needed concrete images, so she climbed on the college roof... not crazy. Just needs to act some things out.
• Narrow hall = Temple Grandin designs cattle chutes and feedlots. Understands animal mentalities better than human--as I do.
• Wings, being alien = autism? Admitting it to myself and others...
• Wings disguised as cape = dreaming itself. Image from an old Incredible String Band song: "...we fold our wings away--in the day."
• Sheriff = slow-witted old cop in the screwball comedy BRINGING UP BABY, which I just saw.
• Wings, flight, vigilantes: echoes a dream that changed my life: Vat Messiah.

A FEW DAYS LATER

My friends drag me to the movie LONE STAR, which turns out to be about a Texas sheriff who blocks racist killings of aliens (Mexican not Roswellian, but still...).

Some scenes felt so much like the dream that I think back to it and wonder if it was psychic. I'm still not sure.

But then, do all psychic dreams have to be knock-down obvious to be real?

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