Althouse: A real dream.

April 24, 2007

A real dream.

I see a bright turquoise bird hovering at about eye level. "That bird is really good at hovering," I exclaim. Instantly, the bird drops straight to the ground, dead.

27 comments:

Maxine Weiss said...: Can I change your dream? It needs to be re-worked.

"I exclaim"---can we change that to "I exhalt" ?? Exhaltation. Or, how about "I exhort".

You gotta get more enthusiasm into these dreams.

Peace Maxine; 4/24/07, 10:27 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Exhalt" does that mean to stop halting, ie, hovering? Or do you mean "exalt," as in formerly Alt(house)?; 4/24/07, 10:33 AM
AllenS said...: Quick! Says someting good about dave.; 4/24/07, 10:57 AM
reader_iam said...: Following my sharp intake of breath, I exhale in exaltation.

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.; 4/24/07, 11:45 AM
bill said...: In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

I think you know what's on my mind. Oh. Yeah.; 4/24/07, 11:51 AM
KCFleming said...: Me? I'm shorting Jet Blue.; 4/24/07, 12:00 PM
Anonymous said...: LOL !

::poor kid ::

still LOL-ing; 4/24/07, 12:07 PM
Anonymous said...: Jet Blue? Oh, that's too obvious.

Let's have a little bad Edwardian epic poetry to muddy the waters:

As hovering bird, when mortals should partake
The day's refreshment of their kindly food;
Which the odorous bosom of the foster mould,
Of ever-ripe and pleasant fruit, brought forth:
Then it was eve, and men did timely rest.
Sith wheeling his fire-wheeled, swift-teamed, gilt
chariot,
He heavens remounted, in new morning-red.

An hell-wolf, with those giants, his ancient bands
Had burst....
—Charles Montagu Doughty, The Dawn in Britain, 1906

There. Cryptic, boring and obscure. Moves things right along, no?; 4/24/07, 12:19 PM
Ron said...: The Bird is clearly RLC's love life. It hovers prettily, then he retreats from his spiritual Stalingrad, and -- whappo! -- Personal Pan Road Pizza!; 4/24/07, 12:41 PM
reader_iam said...: Bill:

If that link had taken me to a weiner stand, you'd have been dead meat.; 4/24/07, 12:55 PM
PeterP said...: Obvious really. Dream is telling you to keep quiet for a bit. See something interesting/beautiful - enjoy but don't talk about it.

Blogger's break. Two weeks in a nunnery is the doctor's order.; 4/24/07, 1:05 PM
TMink said...: Sometimes a dead bird is just a dead bird.

Or it is your sadness about the curly head guy getting canned from Idol.

Trey; 4/24/07, 1:22 PM
Ruth Anne Adams said...: Bill: Are you sure you're not really Glenn Quagmire [giggity giggity]?; 4/24/07, 1:35 PM
bill said...: weiner stand? That makes no sense. Other rejected choices:

a piston is a lubricated sliding shaft that fits tightly inside the opening of a cylinder

The Detroit version

Whack a mole

Squeezebox, The Who.; 4/24/07, 1:45 PM
bill said...: ruth anne adams, did you just compare me to something on the Family Guy? If so, you are dead to me forever.; 4/24/07, 1:48 PM
Synova said...: It's schrodengers (sp) cat.

The act of making the observation killed what you were observing.

What that *means* I really couldn't say. ;-)

Unless it means something about the impossibility of being an uninvolved observer.; 4/24/07, 1:52 PM
Mark Daniels said...: You made a complimentary assessment of the bird and its hovering abilities. Then boom, it fell to its death.

Never pay me a compliment, Ann!

Mark Daniels; 4/24/07, 3:30 PM
Ann Althouse said...: "Obvious really. Dream is telling you to keep quiet for a bit. See something interesting/beautiful - enjoy but don't talk about it."

Why do you assume I don't have many things about which I don't speak? I mean, look at this blog. I may write a lot but there are obviously things in my life that I don't write about. Even if you're inclined to assume I have an unusually empty life, you at least know that I teach law school classes and have many students and colleagues. Do I write about them?

But you are right, as is Synova, that the dream stunningly illustrates the idea that the observation ruins the thing observed.

I think it could also mean that "hovering" is deadly, similar to that idea -- I don't know if it's true but Woody Allen says it in "Annie Hall" -- that a shark must keep moving to live. To stay in one place is deadly.

It is also impossible in the case of this bird. This wasn't a hummingbird but an ordinary, but very blue, bird. It shouldn't have been able to do that.

Ha, now I'm thinking of the cartoon characters who are able to stay in midair until they notice they have no ground under them, at which point they fall.

Anyway, I think a blue bird symbolizes happiness: the Blue Bird of Happiness. This happiness is amazing -- it can hover -- but if you become conscious of its amazingness, you lose it altogether. I don't know why I would think that is true, though. It was quite a stunning image, to see something like so impressive and to have death be the consequence of appreciating it.

Note to Ron: The dream was last night. I read Richard's post this morning.; 4/24/07, 3:35 PM
PeterP said...: Why do you assume I don't have many things about which I don't speak? I mean, look at this blog. I may write a lot but there are obviously things in my life that I don't write about. Even if you're inclined to assume I have an unusually empty life, you at least know that I teach law school classes and have many students and colleagues. Do I write about them?

Whoa there! The matter - the dream - is not the silence, but the words.

Reverse the Wittgenstein thing: "Whereof I cannot keep silent, thereof I must speak."

OK not nunnery then clearly. A silent week in Paris instead? No verbal commerce whatsoever.

We can go Dutch if you wish - though I prefer French in Paris. Kinda matches the one with the other.

Paix - as Maxine would almost say.; 4/24/07, 5:37 PM
Unknown said...: The bird is your soul. That's what I think.

Not meaning to say there's necessarily a religious meaning. Though dreams often can have a religious quality to it. But having a soul robbed, or given away, or caught up in some distractions just when it's finding a rhythm is pretty common. Sad and common, not least of all here on the blogosphere.

Something tugging at you that wants your identity? Or wants you to change who you are or give up what you love about yourself?; 4/24/07, 5:43 PM
Galvanized said...: I enjoy trying to analyze dreams. Wonder what this one means. Let's see -- bird: beauty or time(in a fragile state); hovering: remaining or standing still; dropping dead: obviously ending; your exclamation: observing objectively that temporal or strikingly lovely things, which once you obliviously thought seemed to last, come to an end.; 4/24/07, 6:47 PM
Galvanized said...: Oh, my Word...I think tmink is right -- it's about Sanjaya.Is that still really bumming you out? ;); 4/24/07, 6:53 PM
Chip Ahoy said...: Then what? Did you wake up right then or did you go over and examine the dead bird still within the dream? Was it as turquoise dead as it was alive?

Here's your rational mind lording over your artistic portion. The artist in you drew a pretty picture for you and your professor- self abruptly erased it. There'll be no unrealistically blue birds doing unrealistically things in your mind today. There.

Wake.

But it was pretty.

Incidentally, but still on topic with improbable birds, the "Climate change isn't going away" ad featuring the Photoshopped® ostrich is ridiculous. Ostriches don't do that. They can't, ground's too hard. The idea comes from cartoons.; 4/25/07, 4:17 AM
Bissage said...: Sharks do need to keep moving forward, sort of. IIRC, they lack operculum which is a boney gill covering that fish use to vacuum water in through their mouths and out past their gills. Sharks swim with their mouths open so the water’s inertia causes it to flow past their gills.

That said, some odd years ago scientists found some sort of underwater canyon where the sharks would gather to prop themselves up on the ocean floor to catch a snooze as the natural current kept the water flowing into their mouths and past their gills.

Underwater CAT scans revealed that the sharks, too, had dreams about a bright turquoise bird that hovers, is acknowledged, and drops dead.

Weird, huh?; 4/25/07, 6:25 AM
amba said...: I thought, "800-pound hummingbird of the blogosphere?" and then was relieved to discover it wasn't a hummingbird. (But was acting like one.)

It does seem like a rather Buddhist insight -- that to seize the moment, or even notice it too avidly, is to kill it.

I read Maeterlinck's "The Blue Bird" as a child and still often think of it as a metaphor: you could search in all kinds of exotic places, and not realize that it's the ordinary, drab-looking bird in your own back yard.; 4/25/07, 4:38 PM
amba said...: Buddhists manqué and new-agers like to quote this. I don't know if it's pertinent:

He who binds to himself a joy,
Doth the winged life destroy.
But he who kisses the joy as it flies,
Lives in eternity's sunrise.

~ William Blake; 4/25/07, 4:55 PM
TMink said...: The bird which can be described is not the real bird.

Trey - with appologies to Lao
T'zu; 4/25/07, 5:23 PM