World Dream Bank: SWAN (dream-comics version)

SWAN, or, I Was Dyed

Dreamed 1995/4/8 by Chris Wayan
small screen, slow connection? Illustrated text version!

THE ANSWERS

The curse of false labels = Two years ago an official of the Bay Area Dreamworkers Group spread false gossip about me to get me banned, because she didn't like my pagan pansexual dream-comics (curiously, I dreamed of it before it happened: see Badge Slander.) But there's a deeper, internal curse, as the wearing of the Orange Dress suggests. Childhood bullies taught me fighting back never works, and that's not always true. Faced with real malice, I either endure it stoically, or walk away. But sometimes, you should fight.
Wizard, malice, misuse of power = I just reread Ursula Le Guin's novel "Tehanu." A sexist wizard curses Tehanu's foster-mom Tenar so she can't think straight--but he scorns her as a barbarian, and when she thinks in her childhood tongue, a tongue the wizard never deigned to learn... truths leak in.
Caught in the lab = I retreated to reading old issues of Science News, today.
Swan = intuitive (think of their migrational sense!), and assertive (swans take crap from nobody). Getting turned to a swan? I fear I'm losing my humanity when I fight back! But anger doesn't always cloud your mind. It can clear your mind too--burning off all the excuses and compromises.