 | 10:31 AM - snippets from two dreams 1. There's a small, brightly colored bird sitting on the edge of a wooden walkway, one of those walkways where there are long, worn, splinterless two by fours lining the walk at hand level. Someone (who?) tries to enrapture his bored audience by speaking to the bird; instead of copying him or responding with a wry comment, the bird squawks tunelessly and looks everywhere but at the man. Trying something new, he attempts a sleight of hand trick with the little bird, impressing no one. A taller, cockier 20-something man steps up and starts laughing at the bird; the bird, to everyone's surprise, cackles in response, sounding like a maniacal child. Using an arrogant look to get everyone's attention, this stand-in magician begins his trick to prove that he is superior. He folds his arms behind him, bends sharply at the waist, and captures the bird in his mouth completely. He stands straight up with a deliberately goofy look in his eyes, cheeks puffed out. Then he bends down, opens his mouth gently, and deposits the little bird back onto the ledge.
I had this dream the night before last and didn't think much of it, as it is just as strange as most of my dreams. Yesterday afternoon I startedreading Nancy's copy of The Magician's Assistant and came across this excerpt, which I hadn't peeked at before my dream. Bird-in-mouth isn't exactly a common literary theme.
"There were meticulous records of purchase dates and rates of exchange, employee 1040s that she thought she probably should send to someone. In other drawers she found notes on magic, mostly descriptions of other magicians, tricks he'd liked and wanted to figure out later: 'From his mouth he expelled eleven yellow finches, one at a time, his arms straight out to either side.' " -p. 32, Ann Patchett
2. This morning, between hits of the snooze button, I was having one of my monumentally long dreams that, in ways I don't understand, are related to my old house and neighborhood in Chamblee.
A teenage girl, one I knew somehow, was pissed off at her family since they didn't seem to want to do what she was interested in on vacation. She decided to go snorkeling on her own and took this strange parachuted trip over the ocean. She made the parachute collapse when she was over the coral reef and plummetted through the air until she smashed into the ocean, barrelling down into the depths quickly. I wasn't her, but I felt the sensation of not being able to breathe and of water rushing up all around me. An omniscient voiceover said something like, "Soon, you'll be lifted up and will start to feel air in your snorkel tube. You'll reach the surface of the water and begin snorkeling." She/I started to rise in the water, traveling so long that I thought my lungs would explode. I still grasped the snorkeling mouthpiece in my teeth, and soon felt it bubbling with air. The water was getting brighter, so I knew I/she/we were reaching the surface. Then, right when I thought I'd be able to take a deep breath, I was trapped.
Somehow, someone had deposited a GIGANTIC 3-D statue of a spacegirl-scubadiver underwater, complete with a bubbled-out, glass face mask. I was stuck under that giant bubble, and looked around to see many other snorkelers who had been dropped in the wrong spot and had never surfaced.
It went on and on of course, but that's all I'll report. Try figuring out that one, ladies and gentlemen.
No reason to write these down here except to...well....I thought they were very odd dreams and wanted to remember them. Might as well do so in a public forum.
 | Currently reading :
The Magician's Assistant
By Ann Patchett
Release date: 17 September, 1998 | |
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