It's mirror mirror time.

I woke up straight out of this dream early this morning. It was really creepy, but kind of sweet also. You can decide for yourself, my memory of it is fairly vivid and I wrote it down fast so I am able to prod the 'ol noodle for recall.

First, the dream is a cartoon. At least it starts that way. A Dr. Seuss cartoon to be specific. If you aren't that familiar with Dr. Seuss, I suggest you check out some of his work, this will help with visualization. And I assume you are familiar with The Simpsons, there's a touch of that as well....

The dream starts as multi colored Seussian birds fly across the sky. Everything about the dream seems peaceful enough, the birds smile and have big eyes with eyelashes. They actually look a bit like fish, in that their tails are vertical instead of flat like real birds. At some point they cross behind a tree and this tree has one branch. From my point of view the school of birds is framed in the area above the branch and to one side of the tree trunk. At this point the birds, all of them, say to me, not with their mouths, but they think this directly into my head, "It's mirror mirror time". All of their voices at once sound like some sort of discordant harmony, like too many notes too close in pitch to each other, played on a piano at the same time. The voices were rather effeminate and nonthreatening, at least in tone, but it was unsettling somehow. At the time they say this, a duplicate school of fishbirds fly in under the branch, in the opposite direction, and upside down. Both schools, while continuing to beat their flippers/wings actually hover in place now, on one side of the trunk, each respectively above and below the branch.

Now, at this point, I become aware of some kind of singing below. I can't make out the words, but the music sounds like it's some kind of parade. I look down toward to the ground. I can see where the tree and the ground meet, just behind a sidewalk. There is a house off to the side, I can't see all of it. And the street where this parade may be happening is below me, although I can't see much of it, and I don't really see any parade. At first there are people on the sidewalk, singing in tune with the parade, and on top of their singing I begin to hear the birds, also singing. The two songs are very similar yet the words are different, and I realize the birds are singing not only directly into my head with their minds, but also into the minds of all the people on the sidewalk. I can see on the people's faces the slightest hint of change, where they go from mindlessly following along in unison with the parade, to the point where the singing of the birds in their minds begins to influence them.

It seems like it's here that I realize that I can no longer see the people. They have vanished at some time, and as dreams are wont to do, it didn't use any logic for the change. They were there, then gone, and of course you silly, that how things work here in dreamland. I never saw the birds again, but I sensed their presence just off to my left. And they, with someone's hands, maybe mine as they were in front of me in the dream, started laying down napkins on the sidewalk. Their scale relative to the sidewalk was huge, I'd guess 5x5 feet square, and they were the kind you have for BBQ's, and also came in a variety of colors.

These napkins are laid out on the sidewalk and then opened up by these huge hands, as the singing continues. And as the singing of the people, and of the birds begins converge in unison, I am finally able to make out some of the words. They are saying "We don't know what we sing is hurting us" and "It's time to repair the sickness and the hurt". What I got from this, and it's impossible to convey second hand, because that's just how dreams are, is that, somehow, what the people were singing, the words they were saying and planting in their own minds, and in each other's collectively was like planting a seed and then watering and nurturing it. Of course I couldn't make out what they were singing originally, so I can't say for sure just how bad these words were. It was a sort of innocuous self perpetuating self destruction. Something that started so small and so simple, as to go unnoticed, until it's dark and evil vines had rooted themselves so deeply and completely within the people, that they didn't even notice. They didn't even wake up one day and say "Hey! what the hell is that?" No, it was as if they were zombies already, happy and content in their lives without knowing they were already enslaved, in the minds, and in their souls. An empty body carrying a parasitic, unseen host that fed directly on their souls.

I am reminded here about how Steven King often presents the evils and related characters in his books as something beloved and endearing, something a child could love, something that should care and ease your worries and pains. And it lulls you.... and also of Lovecraft, were perhaps a Shoggoth may be sucking and feasting on the happiness from your catatonic mind for a thousand years....

And so it seemed to me that these birds, in a strange way were massaging the minds of these people.

At any rate, the napkins were being laid out, and opened at each new line of the song/chant. The napkins represented the words, but were in fact blank like an ordinary napkin. As the music/chant/words progressed, they became more disturbing. Each successive napkin opened, at first revealing nothing but the napkin itself, then one by one they began to open on progressively more grotesque things, such as pus filled meat and diseased flesh.

Of course, throughout the course of the dream, at every step here, I had an emotional reaction. I could feel the birds in my mind just as the people on the ground did. It wasn't uncomfortable in that it hurt, but it was in a way like, if you were 40 years old, and had never in your life ridden a bicycle and then one day got on one and rode around all day long, you have used parts of your body, muscles and tendons and the like, that you didn't even know existed. You have become aware of more of yourself, not a good or bad thing, but you have exercised and exhausted yourself and these new parts.

I took the diseased meats to represent the injured and shunted minds and souls of the people, and with the progression of the bird's song this dis-ease in their souls was slowly being cut away, like a cancer from the body.

And as always... this is where the dream fades, I don't know the fates of these people, perhaps it is yet to be writ....

I suppose that's enough anyhow. It's lot to take in.