I'm sketching with a soft pencil. Landscape first--Mount Shasta, the volcano bigger than Fuji that dominates the California-Oregon border, looming a mile above the lesser peaks of the Siskiyou and Cascade Ranges. As I draw, inner critics shout "that's clunky, that's ugly, that's all wrong" but I just keep going. And I'm right to--eventually it starts to look... not great, but good.

Then I start erasing a central patch where I plan to add a girl reading a book: but not a human girl. A dream figure called a krelkin: furry, part cat, part greyhound, part mare.

All the background lines and masses must focus inward on her expression--but not blatantly. I'm not good at subtle, but I can try. I can do this.

Or can I? The eraser's so dirty it smudges; clean it some, but it's still grubby. And I just can't get the paper clean. Like an oily stain. I need a clean eraser before proceeding.

And as long as I need to hit the art-supply store... this is my last pencil, and it's worn and blunt. I sharpen it, but the lead cracks. Start over. Down to little more than a stump.

I have the skills I need now, and I've learned to ignore inner critics and harness patience and persistence. But...

Dirty, worn art-tools can sabotage you too. The Krelkin's nurturing her spirit--yet I, her artist, seem not to be nurturing myself. Why this self-neglect?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Draw a dream creature: Antiques Roadshow had a centuries-old scribbly drawing of a unicorn... turned out to be worth thousands! Shows I'm not alone in my obsession. Furries go back centuries, even if human supremacists scorned and silenced us.
• Shasta: a gigantic two-headed volcano near the Oregon border. Cults ring the mountain; it's had a weird reputation as a portal to other realms for at least a century. In my dreams, many Cascade volcanoes mean specific things to me: Mt Baker, social life; Glacier Peak, solitude; Rainier, intellect; Hood, dreamwork; the Three Sisters, the Threefold Goddess. Shasta means intuition and paranormal phenomena, from ESP through UFOs.
• SHORT-TERM ACTION: get art pencils, a new eraser, and mechanical leads for fine lines. More: get a new keyboard for our band, as the power switch and control buttons are too worn to be reliable. For writing and coding, I'm relying on a 15-year-old computer (with customized, legacy software I know by heart. But when it dies?) In general: update & back up my working tools!
• LONGER-TERM ACTION: a dream fusing the sacred mountain of my childhood with my dream-guide reading--getting guidance herself?--suggests a little more than "buy pencils"! Something spiritual, paranormal, or both. What? I dunno. But I do know I need to clean out space for it. Fortune favors the prepared! And in my case that may mean... empty.

TWO MONTHS LATER

Phone calls and visitors and events, nonstop--except when I got sick, which I did with regularity whenever the busy-ness went on too long. I'm still struggling to say no, stay in, be quiet, give my krelkin soul some time to read the Book of...

...what?

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