I dreamed of making the soldier commit “suicide”.  At the time I worked through certain PTSD issues.  Part of me trained by trauma had to die.

I didn’t know at the time that a friend, who seemed to have dealt with PTSD much, much better than me, was falling apart inside, swallowing whatever people told her would shove away her issues to make her presentable, and, in about ten years, would become a full-fledged alcoholic and addict to anxiety meds.  My own fears took me in the opposite direction: hypervigilance, terror of the helplessness of intoxication, of the sensation of wearing a blindfold in the vicinity of a cliff, sabotaged in my capacity to defend myself, even as it would also impair my  ability to assess and avoid danger, and maybe even make any word I spoke a potential invitation to violence—thus my weakness, rather than my strength, forbade me to go down that path.  Perhaps dreams like this reinforced that fear for a reason: as devastating as my anxiety attacks could be, the proffered cure that lured a dear one to destruction would have been worse than the disease.

I did not dream that moment in Toulin with Corey.  I did dream of knowing what happened to Corey.  I felt tasked to discover why the Changewright would do such an evil thing.  Writings like these help fulfill the duty with which the dream charged me.

          I wrote the dialogue between Malcolm and Sanzio, but dreamed of Malcolm having a hernia.  At the time I transcribed for surgeons who often had hernias to fix, so my dreams found raw material in my day's work to borrow from.  As to what it could symbolize, Sanzio himself goes into that later.