I'm on a roof in San Francisco, on Mission Street in the slums of Soma. It's dusk. Big dirty buildings glow like old coals in the sunset light.

I watch the street below me, till no one's right under. Then I jump off. Not suicide: I fly!

I feel a bit guilty at how easy it is, while others have to walk below, in those shabby canyons.

Long ago it was hard. I beat my arms and swam thru the air; my utmost strength barely kept me up. But time and practice have made me strong.

Besides guilt, I feel a strange caution; it shouldn't get TOO easy! Flying's precious to me because it's so hard-won.

And I worry about jealousy, in this poor neighborhood: people have guns here. They could shoot me down. Because while they suffer, I soar. Even if my fall helps them not at all.

But still, though I hesitate... I fly.

1996 NOTES

I've been rereading Ursula Le Guin's ambiguous anarchist utopia THE DISPOSSESSED. Shevek's a genius struggling with oppression, but not of rulers or laws, just jealousy, conformity, laziness... habit.

My leftist parents instilled radical guilt in me toward have-nots. But this dream speaks of more than that, I think. Guilt toward my own hurt parts! Is this why I've let so many things stay stuck? I could progress more and faster, I do have the tools now...

But success might leave my hurt childhood feelings stranded behind.

But it's my need and nature to soar!

But...

2000 NOTE

I'd never been in this building... then. Three and a half years later, a friend took me to a lecture by Stan Grof. Turned out to be held high in this very building on Mission Street! It's the new home of the California Institute for Integral Studies, a hotbed of California shamanism. But I didn't know they'd moved! I thought the school was still out on 7th Avenue. Certainly when I dreamed this I didn't know about the move. I can't be sure if it was clairvoyance, or precognition, or neither. You skeptics can assume I read the new address on a flyer and forgot it, if you like. But what shocked me was the view: the lecture was at sunset, and those brick and asphalt canyons, sunset-lit, FELT exactly like my dream.

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