THAT DAY

I'm reading Rags And Bones: New Twists on Timeless Tales, an anthology of tweaked versions of old tales. Uncaged by Gene Wolfe is a letdown for me. It's a horror tale inspired by "The Caged White Werewolf of the Saraban" (timeless? Never heard of it.) In Uncaged, African farmers believe a woman's a were-leopard. Her character as portrayed makes no sense; in human form she acts appalled by the nocturnal murders. Is she lying, insane, or amnesic after her cat-fits? None of these convince me. Purely aside from the ethics of killing other sentient beings for mere FOOD... why would a smart cat go after humans? Of all the prey to avoid!

Wolfe's tale really leaves her a cipher; he focuses on our white-man narrator's guilt for protecting her despite her apparent crimes. He's helpless, poor man! The sex must be downright killer. Woman=siren=animal=sex=death. Men project their fears on all us weirdos with fur, third eyes, tits...

Thanks for explaining that straight white males can be unreliable narrators, Gene, but I already knew; I grew up bashed.

The only character who interested me was the werecat. I wanted to compare notes--since I too am a soul who barely manages to pass for human. Gene's too busy skewering Great White Hunter (yet again) to let her talk.

And so it goes.

THAT NIGHT...

I'm a cat person in a high-tech world dominated by humanoids--not humans, but they can almost pass. I think they're the people humans called the Fair Folk or Elves, mistaking fey technology for magic. Recent human progress has shrunk that gap, but one sharp difference remains: the Fair Folk can time-travel! Though you do need a permit, and they're rarely granted. The Time Bureau fears someone will saw off our own branch...

Our status as cat people is ambiguous; neither citizens nor quite pets. We're content with it, since we're welcome and yet exempt from fey laws. Most importantly: they time-travel by machine, but once we cats went along on a trip or two, we learned how to do it. Not with time machines--we just step through time! And the humanoid travelers haven't tried to criminalize that. They couldn't stop us anyway, after all. So we roam free, changing history, where they dare not.

And why not? No problems ever arise from our journeys. Slight changes, yes, but no disasters. We instinctively bury our tracks, follow the timestream's flow.

Naturally, as a cat person, I groom a lot. But not always my own coat--right now, I'm grooming the fur of my world as a whole. To my eyes and paws, we all seem a messy white frizz to be combed smooth. Each fine thread is an individual lifeline--the crooks in the thread being our bends in time, whether natural or machine-assisted. At this scale, feline and humanoid paths look the same. I smooth down the snarls and try to get everyone going where they want more directly...

Strangely, the whole frizz sits like a barrister's white wig atop a low bookshelf. It's all science fiction and fantasy paperbacks. As if our society grew out of fantasy! Specifically, out of a row of James Branch Cabell fantasies, like Figures of Earth.

As I comb Earth's timelines, I discuss Figures of Earth with my sister--comparing its literary description of world-gates with the our real knowledge that There Are Doors to other worlds and times. Though I also recall reading him as a kid and missing the point of many scenes; I didn't have enough life experience to recognize what he was writing about. Not sure I do now.

At least, not enough human life experience.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Cat person: from Gene Wolfe's Uncaged. My dream agrees I'm a cat for whom ape rules don't work--but disagrees with Gene. I got ethics. Not all us cats are biters.
• Groom and comb: I sewed & unsnarled the mane of a big soft-sculpture I'm making of a five-hearted unicorn I met in a dream.
• Compare paranormal abilities in fiction and reality: I just read Jeffrey Kripal's Mutants And Mystics, a study arguing that fantasy & science fiction often reflect authors' and readers' real paranormal experiences. Sure has been true for me. "Fiction" can validate, spur and shape reality! Like women's fiction, queer fiction... It's just as true of us freaks.
• James Branch Cabell's Figures Of Earth: In Rags And Bones Charles Vess sketched a scene from Figures of Earth and wrote an appreciative page on Cabell, who I did read extensively as a kid, though he was too adult (and worldly) for me. Kind of like Gene Wolfe.
• There Are Doors: the only Gene Wolfe novel I really like. One more clue the dream's about his story Uncaged.
• ACTION: use my willpower and ESP freely--it's not monstrous or even cheating to look ahead and steer/shape my life. Within cat-limits! As long as I groom time gently and don't leave a mess as I slip through the cracks. Don't panic the monkeys!

NEXT DAY

I drive down to my cousin Barbara's birthday party. I walk in to find... she's a cat-person! Someone bought her electronic cat-ears that read your brain's electrical fields and move in response, like living cat-ears.

My cousin goes round sticking her cat ears on guests' heads. They wiggle. She walks over and sticks them on me... and they go dead.

It seems my head is empty. Or at least, to software used to human thoughts... unreadable.

POSTSCRIPT

I'll watch for more of these self-flagging dreams, and start a list of them

• Dreams mentioning lucidity, prompting you to go lucid
• Dreams mentioning telepathy that turn out to be telepathic
• Dreams mentioning clairvoyance that turn out to be clairvoyant
• Dreams mentioning time-travel or prediction that turn out to be predictive... like this one.

Have you had a self-flagging dream? Email me.

You hear me, O Reader's Unconscious? If you want to flag a dream so that stupid Conscious Mind will get it... mention what sort of dream it is in the dream! Why not? But be patient. It's amazing what that Day Brain manages to miss.

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