Murmured in Dreams

I leave you with photographs pictures of trickery
stains on the carpet and stains on the memory
songs about happiness murmured in dreams
when we both of us knew how the end always is...



I had a starling visit me last night in a dream. The only other time, it was an owl who visited me.

It was a remarkable bird. Large and brown and unstarling-like in its size and so intelligent it was more like a brown Raven.

I was walking through the woods. Which made it already a wonderful dream. And this bird visited me (I feel like both starling and raven are wrong, so I'll call it Bird). It followed me most curiously. And was cuddling up to me like my old baby blue jay used to.

Well, I had a bag of candy with me and there was a nest of birds above in one of the trees. And I nonchalantly tossed the next piece in my hand (I had been casually walking and lightly and absentmindedly consuming the bag of treats.) up toward the nest. Well, of course it scored a direct hit and one of the babies within started to consume it.

And then I felt a panic. I realised that what I had thrown was a caramel; and I was suddenly terrified that I had just unwittingly doomed this poor baby to death. So I looked at the bird with me; and decided to climb the tree. The bird climbed the tree with me.

This is odd, of course, because birds can fly - and this one was perfectly healthy. Yet, he sat on my arm or shoulder and seemed largely unaffected by my climbing motions.

Once I got into the tree and closer to the nest, I could see better the type and quality of the morsel I had thrown and it was a caramel, but more like a marshmallow. And actually, it did not appear dangerous and it broke apart for consumption and the bird neither gulped it down in one bite nor had thick gooey strands to contend with.

I helped it come apart, and curiously, this part of the dream was the one with the most detail: the consistency of the candy, the nature of the tree I now found myself high within, and the behaviour of the Bird.

The candy, was like a tender marshmallow. White, but not a bleached white. Granular, but not gritty. I didn't taste it. But it's like I could - both through my fingers and through the baby bird who consumed it: like I was sweating DMSO. The bird seemed to enjoy the treat and wasn't bothered by my presence in the tree. It wasn't my Blrd's brood, nor were the parents present. There were three babies in the nest, but only one ate the piece of candy.

The tree was a tall one; it feels like a strangler fig. It's a dark sort of a forest so, it feels like maybe these animals are not the ones from my home and maybe the plants won't be either. But it has a trunk with vines, so it reminds me of climbing the old Banyans as a girl. I climb the tree with ease, so much so that after I help the baby, I continue to climb to a good perch. I semi-recline into a crotch of the tree and lean back against it. It's solid, but uneven. Instead of poking and being uncomfortable, I seem to fall into the grooves in the vines. And I realise that I'll need to be very careful when I climb back down.

The bird at this point, whom I had momentarily been scarcely aware of, reemerged into my conscious thought as he nestled along and down my left arm. He came to rest right against my chest and there leaned against *me*.

He ruffled, and preened and was quite content and nuzzled up against me in the tree.

Then I woke up.  



I'm not necessarily one to search for divination and meanings, though I "suffer"from pareidolia.

I'm of the mindset that dreams are a product a shadow of our consciousness. Though, arguably, my consciousness is atypical.

I had been thinking of this song, and I recall the lyrics, "I'll pull out my heart and I'll feed it anyone..." And am reminded of the morsel.  And the starling, a murmuration in dreams. And then, disintegration, and the Cure. So, it is interesting to me, the way my brain made cognates of reality present in subconscious thought.

And I welcome my return to this type of dreaming sleep, it has been a long time since I dreamt of peaceful things of benign and pleasant thoughts and things without danger. It's been a while since I controlled my flight, and even longer since I felt free.

I find that our lessons are what We make of them, and we divine what we seek - whether it is present or not.