When I considered, as I did extensively, why I was having my red dreams, these were dreams I had nearly every night for several years, they featured redheaded men and women, red dogs who protected and took care of me, they were red shoes and red hats, red wigs and polished red fingernails, these dreams persisted night after night after night, and I could never understand, why, why was I having these red dreams? I took them to Jungians—what is the meaning of these dreams?! The second Jungian posited that it signified the third phase of the great work, the red phase, or rubedo. I listened, but I didn't follow. It is not news I would have been unhappy to hear, and I am certainly someone who believes that the work of our life is alchemical in nature, we are ever purifying our spirits for divine integration, et cetera, et cetera, but it didn't punch me in the gut, as it would have had it been the One True Answer. Later, of course, when I came to red, when I arrived at cadmium red (in conjunction with, but prior to, my life-altering meeting with LB), I began to think the dreams had been both prophetic and suggestive (naggingly suggestive), without feeling as though I had hit the nail exactly on its (red) head. There was more to the red story to come, I felt certain. Rather, I will write it this way: There is more to the red story to come, I feel certain. For that is where I am right now, that is where I am currently situated in this red story, with much of it behind me, but with the certitude that some of it is still ahead of me. It is a long unfolding story! Last night I dreamed of red. But it was a red that frightens me! I was walking with some man through a Los Angeles that was on fire—everywhere, fire! I do not want this to be the meaning of the red dreams, that the city I love will die by fire! When I examined and interpreted the red dreams in the past, of course I considered fire, fire was always in the forefront of my thinking about these red dreams, I was, of course! (?) on fire, but only metaphorically, I do not actually want to be on fire. Yet there is this as well: In the past week, I have been working on a painting of a woman holding a lit match whose flame reaches for her hair. I see it now as reckless, I see it as dangerous! I do not mean to invite real fire, only metaphorical fire—but I do not wish to invite anything, it was commentary, not invocation! I was making my obscure commentary, I was saying that I think the gods were mean to Prometheus! That is all, that they were mean to him, because who wouldn't take fire wherever they can find it, that was my meaning, and it was not real fire I was talking about—we have had that for millennia—I was talking about inspiration and its passions. But the gods are mean, and now I worry. Now I worry. How do we make our sacrifices so they will spare us more (real) fire?