gathering feathers, forked & split, plucking out

The past week has been full of feather-collecting.

First:
Was in a run-down tree house in an over-grown backyard.

The space had light filtering through the dusty windows, spilling onto the warped wooden interior & tinting everything a warm ocher. Ancient wooden furniture and tattered papers littered the dirty floor. It appeared no one had been there for quite some time.


I exited the building, and as I mounted the wooden ladder and began my descent a great blue-gray eagle swooped down, its long wing feathers grazing my arms. I turned to watch and saw that he was in pursuit of a blue jay, its shrill calls obnoxious and piercing.


The eagle opened his great beak and I saw his tongue was forked. He flew gracefully into range and snapped his jaws shut on the jay's torso, severing it perfectly in half.

I finished my descent & proceeded to gather the feathers of the dead bird as the eagle watched from the branches of a near-by oak.


Second:
Was standing at the fence that bordered the property of my high school and the adjacent church's back parking lot. (I used to park there, just off of school grounds.) I was looking down at the mess of leaves and branches that collected along the fence and spotted a bright blue feather.


When I bent to pick it up, I found an entire blue jay wing in the leaves.

I began to pluck the flight feathers one-by-one, inspecting each closely before moving on to the next. The feathers gradually turned from blue with black stripes to red with solid black markings. Towards the end of the wing (the side closer to the body), the feathers were from an entirely different bird. I know I have dreamed of these very particularly-marked feathers before, but do not know what bird they are from (see: "Honoring the Owl"). The last feather remaining was growing in backwards. When I pulled it out, I saw that the black surface was dotted with hundreds of tiny red eyes.

I began rummaging through the leaves to find the rest of the bird. At some point, I found a severed head buried under the leaves.

The face was most definitely that of a man (I could feel the stubble on his face), his skin a sickly gray. His flesh was still very pliable, and I parted his lips to inspect his teeth. Each tooth had small buds on the ends, and when I scraped away the thin layer of flesh covering the buds, feathers emerged.


I gathered these feathers and left.

taming the horse

was walking through a wooded area much like mima's mississippi. while following the paths, i was told that the animals wouldn't run away if i was calm and present in myself. small birds crossed my path, as well as a pair of porcupines which danced around me in a clearing.



as they danced, their bodies transformed into toucans, their long beaks awkward and clacking.



i walked away after they dispersed and came to a clearing that ended in a ravine. when i looked across the divide, there was a very large animals with black and white markings.



at first i thought it could be a cow, but it was so wild. the thought of a great dane crossed my mind, but before i could figure it out, the beast leapt across the ravine and galloped to me, it's head lowered in a threatening way.

i could see he was a horse. a VERY large horse. i became aware of the forest around me, filled with many wild horses. this was a very important horse among them. he spoke to me, however i don't remember what he said. he was testing me.

he leaned down and bit down onto my neck. i was overcome with the smell of the earth and his musty sweat. i instincively returned the gesture, my mouth full of his skin and fur. i could see his coat covered in dust and fleas. i contemplated each individual speck for a very long time, his flesh between my teeth & his smell in my sinuses.

when the embrace ended, he knelt down and told me to get onto his back. i climbed on with a little difficulty, his size so monstrous even with him crouched. as soon as i was on, he stood quickly and broke into a gallop. i held tight to his overgrown and tangle mane, the gallop hard and wild.

we rode for a long time through the forest. once i started getting used to the rhythm of his steps, we came to the path that lead back home. my mother stood at those crossed paths, her will overpowering that of the horse. he stopped, and she told me to climb off and come home.

as i climbed off, the horse and i shared a gaze. while he still was wild, something in him broke. he turned and galloped back into the woods.

nests, giants, the starlings stayed with us

I was in a large one story house that sprawled out in all directions. There were many rooms, but one stood out the most. It had a very high ceiling and the walls were made of cliffs. On some of the cliffs nested shore birds, whose clattered at each other and stained the rock face with shit.



On the top of one cliff sat a giant gazing down at me. I felt I was not supposed to climb these walls, so I walked on down the cavernous hallways.



Suddenly, the person who was sleeping next to me appeared in the dream. We walked to a door that led out into a green courtyard. There were groups of teenagers throwing a frisbee and avoiding the small furry animals crawling all around the ground. I know some of them were squirrels & rats, but I think there were larger ones like badgers.



As I stepped outside, I looked into the trees that crowded around the skyline. Every branch was heavy with starlings, their golden markings shimmering. As my friend stepped out behind me, the birds hunched down as if to spring into flight. I turned to my friend and said, "Keep your spirit still."



The birds remained in the trees as we looked on.

seeing the holy man

I found myself outside of an old sandstone building being eroded by an almost-desert clime. It felt very old and the buckskin colored landscape was highlighted by the occasional aloe plant or other small succulents.



I was preparing to see a holy man to ask him a question (which I can't remember awake). I waited in line in order to stand before a great stone basin. The basin was eroded like the building, and it was covered in lichen and moss. I took a pale blue robin's egg and cracked it into my mouth. I manipulated the egg's contents with my tongue, first spitting the yolk then the white into the basin. From this, I had prepared myself.



When I came to the holy man, he had a stout-looking mask on in the form of a bison's head. I presented him with my question, and he transformed into this giant spider-goddess. Her body was slender and wispy with lace-like hairs creating fractal patterns around her form. She began to weave an answer in words and in images in delicate thread produced from her body (as spiders are apt to do!).

honoring the owl, a salt & feather fetish, blue jay screams again

Was in Nanu's backyard, by the tennis court at dusk. There was a may-pole with two white snowy owls circling it. I climbed the pole to find the owls were mechanical. I knew Hazel had put them there. They were playing a song I knew well, but cannot recall awake.

I climbed down and saw shadows of birds circling with the mech-owls. When I looked up, there were about 6 real owls, some of them barred, some screech, some barn. I then realized that Hazel had put the mech-owls there to honor the spirit of the owl, and the owls had accepted. I showed this to Paul & he wept, recognizing something deep & holy.

One of the owls left the pole and flew to the ground beside some bushes. He plucked two feathers from his wings and flew off. I went to pick up the feathers and saw one standing up-right in a pile of crystalized salt with leaves arranged around it. The feather was smaller than an owl's with black and red markings. It had transformed.

I noticed an immature robin in the bushes who had been wounded by the owl. I picked him up, but he hopped off and tried to fly away. I walked off & came to a branch with a vividly colored blue jay. The jay fanned out her feathers and screeched at me over and over again. I felt enraged at her.

I then climbed up to a rooftop and found myself surrounded by old European-style relief carvings on the side of adjacent buildings. I had a camera with a zoom lense, & I was peering through the viewfinder at the carvings, focusing and unfocusing.

electrical mischarge, wading with my son

Paul's face was sunburned-- walking through White Station, stopped in a stairway to apply aloe. Very painful, he squirmed.

Found myself at my old house in the backyard. Bird's nest on the chimney, thought it was full of baby crows, then owls. Saw mamma Canadian goose come to feed.

A gigantic snake the length of the house came from the bushes. He wrapped himself around my father, preparing to eat. My mother was on the balcony with a long-distance stun gun. She had to hit the snake squarely on the head, then Dad had to discharge electricity from his body at the right time for the snake to uncoil. Mom's aim was perfect, but Dad discharged too soon. It killed him. Mom dragged off his body to perform CPR, but I knew it was too late.

I walked behind the house to find the yard submerged in water. I went into the lake & saw a large platypus/shrimp/mosquito creature feeding on plankton through a finely fringed mouth. My son was there with me. He was about 6 years old, but his face kept changing every time I looked at him. He was deeply comforting to me, and extremely wise. An old soul.

As we watched the creature feed, a gigantic carp the size of a school bus rose from the depths. Its scales were a transluscent, ghostly paleness. I felt its fin brush against my leg.


It turned and tried to swallow me. I rode its waves to the shore and hid underneath an azalea bush in full, white bloom.

The carp had two back legs and walked out of the lake, lumbering around and sniffing for me. It did not persue my son, who had settled in next to me, calming me down and telling me to be very still. When the carp was above me, he sniffed for a long time, finally saying, "No human, just blooms and leaves here."

My son handed me a card with 12 illustrations of the faces of ants. Each was the same face, but with slightly different colorations. He told me that these ants would play a role in the decline of human civilization. I then remembered seeing the same card earlier in the dream.

easing on death, foggy lakes, blue jay woman, and the woodpecker’s call

Was in a castle in the middle of a forest. I was part of a class that was on a field trip. I felt disconnected to all the people there.

I went into a courtyard where there was a woman standing next to a zebra. The zebra's stomach had a massive gash across it and its entrails were spilling out. She was trying to kick the people around her, and was in an acute state of pain & panic. I approached her, expecting her to kick me. Instead, she nuzzled me, and I stayed next to her and comforted her as she died. I tried to keep everyone else away to ease her pain.



I then walked through the castle to the back, where there was a series of wooden walkways built over a huge, misty lake. As I walked along the path, I kept seeing these mosquito-scorpions, their long hair and stingers raised in a delicate display. I thought they might bite or sting me, but they stayed where they were on the railing as I watched.




I then wandered through the castle again to a dining room, where many of my classmates were. I sat alone. There was a girl about my age with black hair and huge tits sitting about two tables away. She started calling me a bitch and generally being miserable towards me. I was truly hurt at first, but then I started hassling her back. She had a folding fan in her hands made of blue jay feathers.




I walked back outside and into the forest. In the sky was a flock of pileated woodpeckers. I thought about all the times I had heard their calls but never actually saw them. I was overjoyed.