Image by Midjourney
DREAM
I am at a retreat, and my friend says that a lot of people don't want the daily task of caring for a pet, but he loves to nurture them. I pray a Buddhist-style blessing over him, saying things like "May you be happy, may you be free from physical and mental suffering, may you live with ease," but also saying, "May you never be conned."
The retreat gets into gear. It combines the high emotionality and theatricality of Pentecostalism with theatre. A class of us analyze film and talk show business.
I ask an actor what's wrong when he freezes. He doesn't go into detail when I prod him. I tell the head of the program that I hate what he's doing, because it tells me he dislikes something he senses other people will like, so he's afraid to stand alone.
Then I imagine myself being perceived with this new identity of independence, like Catwoman. I try to imitate and nail her voice. Then a spaceship boards ours and tries to take our captain hostage. The captain refuses to go quietly, so the woman interrogating her transforms into an alien with huge claws. It looks like she is clawing out the captain's insides, but without doing physical damage. So it's all for show.
The alien is called away. Then they board our ship and take us all hostage.
In our cages, we pass notes to each other that now's the time to mutiny. Alternative notes are passed telling us not to do it, but we do, and the walls come shaking down. We win the hand to hand combat, then throw a bomb which destroys the alien ship in their dimension. But they're cloaking their damage, so we can't tell how much we've hurt them and how weak they've become.
Their ship looks like a house in space now. We go through our own ship/house knocking on doors to assure the aliens aren't leaking into our dimension.
Then I'm in a bunk bed, and I consider kicking the bedding out of the top to be the finest act of preserving a democracy.
