On an afternoon in September, 2020…
CC & I are standing in our backyard. CC is filling up her bird feeders while I smoke a cigar. She opens up a fresh package of suet, and then suddenly realizes that the green metal cage which holds suet has disappeared from our bird feeder pole. I look over, and my mind confirms that yes, the suet feeder is in fact strangely absent. We both put forth theories on its disappearance. Did a raccoon or possum pull it down, and then run off with it? CC searches the yard for it, but can’t find a single trace. Suddenly, we both look over—and it is inexplicably back. Dangling right where is should have been, like it had never even left.
A Dream by CC, from a few months earlier…
“I fill up a very large new bird feeder that I am excited about. It has lots of different containers for seeds that flow into a common trough. I come back to check it and discover that some little mice have gotten trapped in the seed containers. Two of the mice have died already, and I feel terribly guilty. The one mouse that is still alive is very beautiful. It’s fur is orange and it has big round ears that kind of glow a peachy color in the sun. I manage to get the mouse out and set it down, but out of nowhere, a bunch of cats come running and I can’t tell if the mouse got away or not. I feel very distraught. I lay my hand on the ground palm up, take just the detached head of a hatchet, place a sharp corner of it against my palm, and use a mallet to drive it through my palm. My hand is pinned to the wooden surface below. I pull it out and look at my bleeding palm. I also see that I have a large cut on the inside of the same arm, which spurts a little blood with each heartbeat.The world starts changing around me. Parts of furniture and trees start to disappear by slivers at a time, but I am the only one who can see it. I demonstrate what is happening to other people by putting my hand in the blank spots. To them it looks like my hand is passing through the object. I have sex with a person who looks like my father, which makes me feel sick to my stomach. Afterwards, I look in the mirror of an old brown vanity and don’t recognize my face, which looks longer and greyer. As parts of the world continue to disappear, people start disappearing, too. I realize that I need to learn how to take care of all the animals in the sanctuary in case I am left alone in the new dimension with them. So I start with a wolf who needs his nails clipped. I sit the wolf on my lap facing outward and put my arms around him (like I would do to clip my cat’s nails). I inspect the first paw and discover that his nails are completely overgrown. When I go to clip them, they bleed and the wolf starts to struggle. I find that one of the claws has grown so long it is digging into his paw pad. I tell the others that it is too bad, and he will have to be anesthetized so we can do surgery. They say it is impossible and just take him and put him back in his cage by throwing him over the fence. The fence seems much too short to me. The leash gets stuck in the gate and a guy goes in there to unhook it. He gets attacked and eaten.”
