I'm in a secret spy organization called Peace Terror. We prevent wars with spectacular stunts--thefts of military secrets, penetration of dictators' private refuges. I feel good about the work and even the organization, which is not a typical spy hierarchy. The operations turn violent now and then, but mostly they're fun in a weird way. We're international, though we can usually get small-scale air support and technical help from NATO if we ask quietly.

Only this time we blew it. An error of ours caused a crisis to worsen not improve, and some reaction to that caused a group to set off a huge explosion--not nuclear but it's enough to flatten a good chunk of downtown.

The explosion shakes up reality itself. One consequence: I'm in a series of big halls filled with splintered stuff hard to identify. Out of the shards rise hissing ghosts. They float like fumes, like ball lightning. Till they see me! They attack at once, swarm at me hungrily.

I do know how to discharge their energy. Vigorous motions and emotions destroy the ghosts. I must maintain a happy mood; hard for me usually, but the explosion also knocked me silly. So all I have to do is maintain my giddiness, and totter giggling through the halls in a cloud of glassy monsters. If I don't let them upset me, they can't hurt me.

I slowly dissipate the ghosts... but there are other repercussions, slower to manifest, and harder to clean up.

For example, snow falls, though it's June. I hate snow, I'm a skinny native Californian: it's too cold for me. But here I am, suddenly slogging through shin-deep snow, around the end of a ridge. Alongside me walks a Peace Terrorist with Pentagon connections. We argue about the US air cover for our failed mission. They sent a jet fighter, as asked. We think it went down. Even if the pilot survived, that one plane cost $200 million! Wow, talk about pork. She says "Bet they won't send us much backup on the next few missions." Yeah, probably true.

Jets and snow, jets and snow.. That reminds me of a strange story. I tell her, "The longest fall any human's ever survived was a Russian pilot shot down in World War Two. His parachute didn't open. He fell 19,000 feet. But the air was icy, which made it dense, slowing him a bit; and he slammed through some branches of tall pines, slowing him a lot, then plowed into a deep soft snowbank on a steep slope. So snow has its uses!"

"Come on! You fall from the sky, you die."

"No, this really happened." But she refuses to believe me, though it's true!

We emerge from the trees into a ski-bowl. Squaw Valley, near Lake Tahoe. Lines at the lifts, and streams of skiers snaking down the mountains like bright pixels of orange and blue.

These people appreciate snow!

My comrade says goodbye. I must go on alone from here. Those are the rules.

Did I mention I'm a child, about ten? Oh, don't act shocked. Haven't lots of terrorist groups recruited kids and teens? You grownups figure we're so ignorant and easy to brainwash! But the Peace Terrorists are saving lives. Not in a very nice way, sure, but assassinating politicians who start wars has this funny effect of preventing wars, admit it! Grownup thinking didn't work, but this has.

I start up the far slope to the left of the ski-routes, toward a pass. Only a little way up the slope, a snowbank suddenly rears up before me and shapes itself into a rough, massively muscled stallion. He's gray and pink, as if stained by snow algae. He shrieks angrily at me and slashes at me with clear ice-hooves. He's blocking me from leaving Squaw Valley.

Two more horses, one blue and one gray, rise out of the snowbanks by me. Snow mares! They nip at the stallion, seem to be on my side; but the stallion has size and the high ground on his side. I flounder around, but the snow's too deep for me to move fast; I just can't get by him.

I retreat to the bottom of the valley.

What if I RODE one of the mares out, could we get past him then? We outnumber him. But stallions have experience herding mares...

And suddenly the snow-scene fades, and I'm my parents' house, reading a half-done poem aloud, to my dad and one of his professor friends. My poem tells a dream about a mermaid actress who plays the role of a water-dragon, and it starts her on the path to becoming a REAL dragon. She tells me she's happy: "Dragons may look fierce but they have great souls." But I can't end the poem--stuck.

They ask what the theme is, hoping that'll unstick me. I say, to my surprise, "it's... it's about heroism in dreams, and maybe in life. By heroism, I mean... taking responsibility, trying to better the world. You can't expect spectacular rewards for this, because the main purpose of the universe in posing you problems is to make you grow; and for you to grow more, other problems will be needed. So you return to the dream world the next night, or to your daily life every morning, to find your epic sacrifice a little forgotten blip, your act of courage forgotten, your noble deeds garbled and nonsensical... Be glad if you find you're not actually REVILED. Results are not the point."

My father and his colleague start extending my poem, trying to resolve it. I'm shocked how much better poets they are than me. Especially since they're improvising! They just reel off original metaphors with a subtle feel for connotation, sound and rhythm... world-class stuff!

Now I feel ashamed I even recited my fragment... I'm no dragon, just some shy little mermaid faking it.

The stallions rear again. Nightmare? I'm the nightmare. Being herded back to my little world.

MORNING NOTES

If this dream seems a wee bit incoherent... you don't know the half of it. My notes for that night were pages long, with twelve scenes at least, and even more senseless breaks than I've shown here. I typed up the scenes that seemed thematically united; but I had to omit half a dozen more fragmentary, half-forgotten scenes. I don't normally take such liberties, but this was like a shattered Greek vase I had to piece together.

• Ghosts = I just read Dashiell Hammett's THE DAIN CURSE, about a cult in San Francisco owning a house that seems haunted. But the ghosts always tell guests to fund the cult, and they do...
• Snow = in THE DAIN CURSE the "cursed" girl was on morphine. Detective tells her "the white stuff protected you, all the deaths around you happened in a haze." So snow = denial, numbing myself.
• I'm only ten = when I was ten I WAS a soldier for peace! I was promoted early into middle school, where I got harassed and beat up. Why? I was younger, smaller, and I wouldn't fight back. Not out of despair or cowardice, out of guilt! My parents were radicals, my mom admired Gandhi, and I was trying to be him, not realizing that pacifism with scorching anger in your heart is not likely to work. And yet... I learned discipline. They broke my ribs and I refused to hit back.
• Climbing out of Squaw Valley = leaving Junkie Girl's passive, frozen withdrawal.
• Massive snow-stallion = machismo? The detective in THE DAIN CURSE was this body type.
• Advantage of the high ground = moral high ground! I should be nice--nice girls don't break the rules. Nice girls don't cause blow-ups... even to save lives.
• So the stallion could also be my brainwashing to be nice and passive... the same brainwashing that keeps most Americans politically apathetic. But the snow-stallion has a point. I was a terrorist of sorts. A decent one as terrorists go, but still--I was using fear as a tool to HERD people. So the stallion does to me what I did to others. And I HATE it!
• Snow mares = at least one must be Silky, my familiar. Sensual, creative, lonely, wanting a playmate (or maybe a Playmate: she's bi...) She wants me out of this valley!
• Male pink, female blue = when pink and blue babywear was introduced, pink (hot, loud, extroverted) meant boys, and blue (cool, quiet, shy) meant girls! They gradually reversed, and now everyone considers THAT color coding "natural." Stereotypes can always be justified after the fact, if you cover their roots with enough plausible-sounding bullshit.
• Life is a school that doesn't give a damn for results: literal, I'm afraid. The moment I said it, it rang true... for the physical world as well as for dreams. Don't expect results--the place is a school. A crappy school full of rowdy, half-civilized kids bigger than you. Forget Utopia; we're here to learn how to handle crises, and bad tempers, and desperation. Lucky us.
• The dream-poetry: My family did foster my sense I had creative talent, but I've been discounting that lately. "Just because my dad says my stuff's extraordinary... what's he know?" Well, enough literature to have a Stanford PhD in it, for a start! But as I free myself from my family's shadow, I have to question the areas where they built me up, as well as the fears they fostered.

Now, all I have to do is write that way awake... and not listen to butch stallions, even when they're Dashiell Hammett.

Because big old hard-drinking Hemingways aren't the only way to write.

Or live.

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