I'm biking up Tail-Tail-Tailgater Street, toward a steep little hill. My goal's on the far side; I must climb over this cinder cone. It's not erupting, but it sounds like it: crackling with gunfire. Hunters sprawling on their backs on the bare cinders, firing at the sky. No. At the beautiful birds flying one by one above us--huge birds with wide tails rather like peacocks, held fanned as they fly. Phoenixes? Whatever they are, they're falling one by one, drifting down like psychedelic snowflakes.

I feel bitter. Show a little beauty and magic, dare to soar, and you just make yourself a target, they try to shoot you down.

Ahead's a burned-out Volkswagen hippie bus. Yeah, that era's dead, all right. Goodbye, peace and love! I feel tired and disgusted and climb inside the empty shell. Or is it empty? I'm a shaman--I can summon spirits. Why not try? Don't cars have souls too?

"Oh Spiiiiiirit of the Vohhhlkswaaahgen..." I chant. "Caarrry me ohhhhver this cohhhhhne..." Suddenly I feel a presence and my duffel bag jerks like a nervous dog. The bag rises and floats a yard off the ground. I straddle it, and find I can ride it. I leave my bike there in the burned-out bus and ride my levitating bag over the mountain! Down the far slope, following the path of an old slide, till it ends in spindly pines near the cone's foot.

The path leads into a complex of monolithic buildings, plazas, fountains and pools. Slowly the bag weakens till it's sagging between my legs and I waddle along like a kid with a droopy diaper. My clothes feel heavy too... I start tearing them off. Drop the bag last, and go on naked--flying again! I just had to lose my excess baggage. Volkswagens always were underpowered, but they'll go on forever... guess it's true of their spells too. Reach a drop-off and stand on the railing. A man sees me, a naked nut about to jump. I worry he'll try to stop me, but I greet him cheerily and leap straight out... and fly. Head north through the maze of buildings.

Spot a friend, Owl, perched on the shore of a big carp-pond or fountain. He keeps ruffling his feathers in a way that says he's upset, near panic. So I land and ask "Hey Owl, why aren't you heading on north?"

He says "The enemy holds the far side of the pond, and they've got a submarine in there, patrolling." I look again at the carp in the deep part of the pool. Yes, a small periscope pokes out and blinks at me.

Owl does have a plan to neutralize the sub; now that I'm here to back him up, he invokes the spirit of ice. The pool's face glazes white, then cracks and humps into a massive berg in the middle. Pale aqua pack-ice bobs in the shallows. That should block the sub from our end, at least a while. Thanks, Owl!

I walk round the pond under iceberg-cover and come to the boathouse. Movement flicker in the mail slot by the door---an enemy spying on me! Instantly I fire with my squirt gun and splat the eyes. They weren't human--large animal eyes, highly intelligent. Some... creature.

Creatures. Eyes appear in all the shadows round me. Uh-oh. Too many to stop with one squirt gun. And I know flight's an invitation to be shot... I've seen the phoenix fall. I'm trapped!

I hate to do it, hate to waste my wish, but it's time to use it. I summon a friend whose life I once saved. He's called a Bug, though he isn't--just local slang for a small fire-dragon. Instantly, he's here--no bigger than a cat, but his fire burning hot as a blowtorch. My stalkers flee so fast I wonder... did I squander my wish? Maybe I could have handled them on my own.

"On the other hand," I think, "do I have just one wish? My friend just said "Call me if you need help." I treated that like a shamanic bargain--not a friendship!"

Now, unbidden, my godmother Joan appears, to lead me on. Through an empty parking tower, out onto a beach. She urges "Chris, you should study Navaho and teach poor kids English as a community service." Huh? She rattles on about loving and giving. Some kids and college students pass us, walking on the beach; she looks at them and says "How ugly, how flawed." Ugly? I felt envious--one of those students had a great body. Sexy. Now Joan starts listing MY flaws. "You let friends drop away, you never call." For an idealist, my godmother sure is critical! She has an encyclopedic knowledge of my history, more than I do, and has followed up on all my ex-friends, knows all their tragedies. God sees each phoenix shot down... She says "Better die young, before the tragedies pile up and you lose everything." I start to wonder if this is about me at all--is this her way of threatening suicide?

Even if not, she's not acting like a reliable guide, here. More like my next challenge!

My maternal grandfather walks up the beach. He's going on ninety, but compared to Joan, he's brimming with energy. He says "Life can be good despite pain! Take the initiative. Make the changes your heart prompts, no matter how much it hurts now! Like MY decision to divorce your grandmother, after nearly seventy years..."

"You divorced Gramma?" I'm amazed. Well, good for him. She was always a bit of a bully.

And I wake having learned something: the strongest spirits come unbidden. The Volkswagen of perseverance, the Dragon of fire and friendship... they did help. But serving is my bane, and initiative's my savior.

Grandfather has spoken.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Cinder cone = a short-term perspective? At the foot of Mt Shasta, looming right above the highway, is a steep cinder cone parodying the main peak. Much smaller but much closer, it dominates the landscape for a few miles than shrinks to nothing next to Shasta. So... something that looms large now, but soon won't.
• Phoenix = fire, passion.
• Peacock = sexy, showing off. I just had my first art show, in a cafe on the Stanford campus. Dream paintings--personal, colorful, some sexual.
• Hunters killing phoenixes = critics of my dream art--most of the cafe patrons ignore it and some mock it. It's something of a sports bar, and that crowd disdains what I do.
• Crawl into dead car and pray = yesterday I saw the film All Dogs go to Heaven; little Ann Marie, lost in a junkyard and sleeping in a dead car, prays for her parents, not herself...
• Volkswagen bus = This was our family's car. They ARE underpowered but they DO run forever. Also: my dream-art does unapologetically invoke a hippie spirit.
• Soar when naked = I was driving to a friend's house yesterday when I suddenly noticed I was nagging myself to go and be social. Suddenly, the worm U-turned. I drove home. Honored my feelings, not my inner critic.
• The Owl felt a bit hapless--less idiotic than Howland Owl in "Pogo" but a bit like him. Nerdiness? Naïaut;veté? Yet this Owl still helps me.
• Small dragon whose life I saved = ??? (but see 2007 NOTE below)
• My godmother Joan = ??? She was always a positive figure in my life--consciously. I think the dream is warning I've overlooked a negative influence--she did nag me to be social even when I didn't want to be.
• My maternal grandfather = ??? I did like him better than my grandma, who was bossy.

2007 NOTE

My godmother Joan appears just after a small dragon whose life I saved. When I dreamt this I didn't know SHE'd dreamed she KILLED a small dragon and regretted it deeply. She wrote the dream up as a poem, With Wild and Turquoise Eyes, and gave copies to friends; her only surviving dream, as far as I know.

But now I suspect I don't know what I know.

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