Had another birding dream, where I see tons and tons of birds and frantically try to identify them all. (Generally there’s a lot going on in and around it–in this case I was a shapechanging member of the X-men named “Iron Man”* framed for burglary who eventually saved the day by turning into a large plastic sheet and foiling a great white shark attack. Don’t ask me to explain how THAT worked. Meanwhile, birds.) The only one I recall clearly was a gull-like bird called a “sea mare” and an absurdly tiny blue bird called a “lapis bunting.” (Well, there are lazuli buntings, so it’s easy to see how I got there…)

Then I wandered for awhile through the canyons of Arizona and wound up at a strange little field with pools of water in it. A strange bird, somewhere between a great-horned owl and an indri lemur, watched me from a tree trunk, while three foxes wearing black headdresses trotted across the field. “Do you see that too?” I asked James, who was there. “Yeah,” he said.

Then the dream went off into the nonsensical horror that one might expect from playing Rule of Rose before bed. Hmm. Wary as I am of all dream interpretation, there’s a couple of recurring dreams that I have that I think have some significance–I dream about shopping for fish when I’m worried about money (don’t ask me why…) and there’s the teeth-falling-out anxiety dream, and I have the usual run of con anxiety dreams before every convention. I have the seeing-strange-birds dream often enough that it’s obviously some kind of mental trope. Mind you, I don’t know what it might signify–anticipation? longing? Get-up-off-your-lazy-ass-and-go-birding-damnit?

*I did not, so far as I know, have a drill for a penis, but the dream was admittedly rather vague on that point.

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