THAT DAY

Painted all day on the computer. Overdid it, I know. Art's so addictive!

Just before bed, I ask my dream-guide's help to go safely into a light trance and to lead me into a new, altered state I've never been in. This isn't that froofy--I had an epic dream four nights ago that said there are at least a dozen brain-states, not just the well-known four (waking, hypnosis, sleep, and REM). It seemed to be prompting me to explore others...

I try to breathe and relax, but can't. Feel sad and worthless tonight. And so bone-tired, I can't focus enough to visualize or frame affirmations...

So I ask my dream-guide Silky to help me, since it seems like the only place I can go is dreamland tonight.

And I get more than I asked for. I don't meet her. I BECOME her.

THAT NIGHT

It's the future. I'm a robot. I'm also a mom. I look a lot like Bev Crusher, the doctor on "Star Trek: the Next Generation." My son Wesley grows from an early teen to a young adult in the course of the dream. I've split my energy between child-raising and career. To my surprise, looking back, I must have done a decent job with both. I was a significant contributor to the social and later political movement that made dreams central to modern life again. Both as a writer and later as an activist and speaker, I helped society with my dreams. Dreams going back as far as my formative years as a writer, in the 80s and early 90s, before I ever published a thing. I despaired in those years that I'd ever amount to anything, that a robot could ever self-program feelings to the point where she'd become as complex as a real person.

I didn't let prejudice against robots stop me either--even though I've internalized that mistrust, always doubting the reality of my own feelings. It's particularly ironic considering how strong my personality is. I've become just like Silky, the spirit who guided me through my years of dreaming--emotional, whimsical, clever, idealistic, sweet but craving approval, a little shy, and extremely stubborn.

And on the other side, Wesley is brilliant; despite the social problems geniuses always have, he's turned out quite well. Naive, a little shy and easily embarrassed, impulsive maybe, but he's avoided all the pitfalls of a young genius--bitterness, nihilism and rage, all-out rebellion, conformity as protective coloration, smug superiority, rejecting his abilities, living only through his work... He's a good kid, and I've done well--especially for an android. No one thought I could do it!

And I don't just live for my kid. I love my work. I've been helping with a problem between humans and aliens, in a nearby star system. Personality traits I think of as weaknesses, like my naive acceptance of people's stated motives, are virtues among the aliens: these people trust me because I radiate trust. It's okay to be naive. People trust a truster!

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Bev Crusher IS very like my dream-guide Silky! And Silky is me--me in dreams, at least. I have no need to fear what lurks in my unconscious--I've become it!
• I'm an android = After an abusive childhood, I pieced myself together as an adult. A lot of my character began as recent, deliberately established habits. Given that I'm an artificial creation, I'm marvelously functional! I doubt my own reality, yet because I had to reclaim my body and feelings and thoughts and intuitions, I know them BETTER than those who owned them from birth.
• socially useful work = growing as a writer, artist and dreamworker. But such a career inevitably has a slow payoff. My creative medium--dreams themselves--aren't even recognized as an art form yet, let alone a socially valuable thing! But viewed from the future, what I'm doing now looks necessary and right, even if no one recognizes it yet as ground-breaking. Even if my innovation is wobbly and intermittent, I'm still doing it. Like Henry Miller I'm feeling my way toward a new voice.
• Wesley = my genius. I scored over 180 on IQ tests as a kid, and grew up stigmatized as "a brain." The dream says this side of me is still immature, but innovative. It's a reminder that genius is "Perhaps the most difficult task of social adaptation any human being is forced to make" (Terman.) Doubt this? Imagine you're a child raised among apes or wolves, using only their language... you're a wolf-child who SEES your superlupine abilities withering away, only imagining what your human heritage might be, clinging to scraps of glory, which the others snarl at as weird and geeky... The pitfalls really are there; the list in the dream is true. In Terman's longitudinal study at Stanford, his two examples of "perhaps the best adjustment that can be managed" by kids over 180 IQ were both dead by 35! Well, I survived; I'm not punishing the wolves around me; I was hit, but I didn't hit back. That's about as good as social adaptation gets, when you're a feral child.

As I know first-hand.

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