thunderbird

I dreamed of oceans and birds last night. In the first dream I was living in a house by the beach. There was a door in my kitchen that led to another dwelling space next door. Two separate houses that could function as one. Apart from walking around the house, dragging my toes through the sand, I don't remember much about this dream.

There was another dream, perhaps an extension of the first, but the beaches here felt more tropical than the first. I felt imbued with more jungle energy, I suppose. There was a man. He wore a shirt made of thin strips of leather knotted together. They trailed out behind him as he walked. I stood on the shore, facing the ocean. I looked down to notice my hands had been bound with thin white rope. The man approached me, but the sunlight was such that I could never quite see his face. I knew only that he was no threat to me.

The man attached something to my bound wrists, then walked toward the water and retrieved a large, flat board. He began moving rhythmically, his hips slowly bucking. He raised the board and moved it through the air in a stylized fashion, like I imagine I might if I were working with a sword, or a fan. He was moving in the service of something. Then, the board seemed to become an extension of his arms. His movements took on a wave like quality and he lifted into the sky. His strength rippled through the air toward me and I realized that I, too, was lifted up. His hands directed the board and the full length of his body snapped to attention with each wave. Each wave transferred to me and my body moved in time with his, though I trailed behind him as we moved higher into the sky. My heart was full and I felt happy, bound, as I was, to this man.

Then I dreamed of a bird. It seemed this (part of the) dream was a return to my house-attached-to-house at the beach. I found this bird in the front yard. The sun was low in the sky. All the colors of light were reflected in this bird's eye as it looked back into my own. Something was wrong with its wings; they'd been bent back, so while they were not, technically, broken, the bird was unable to fly. I leaned in close and spoke to it softly. I don't remember what I said, but I know my intent was to let it know I was going to help and to trust that I was not aiming to cause pain, though pain was probable.

I placed the fingers of my left hand at the top of its spine, at the base of the skull. I ran the fingers of my other hand along either side of the spine, which grazed the injured part of the wings. The bird's body immediately went into spasm. I paused and took a deep breath. I whispered something, almost a kind of incantation, holding my face low to the bird's back, as though I were trying to infuse its body with my words, my breath. I felt the light on both of us. I used my fingers to elongate the bird's spine. I dug into the space beneath its shoulders, to lift the scapula away from the spine so that I could create enough space to reverse the direction. It continued to spasm and its eyes locked onto mine. I don't know how I knew what I was doing, but I knew it was necessary and right.

I can't describe the horrible sensations I picked up through my fingertips as I did this, but I was able to return the wings to their correct position. The bird went limp in my hands and for a moment my breath caught in my throat because I thought, perhaps, I had killed it. Then the bird began to vibrate, small movements, but more and more quickly, and as these vibrations increased, its body filled my hands with heat. The heat transferred between us and soon there was a ball of light between my hands and I could no longer see the bird. And then a bright flash, the sound of thunder, and my hands were empty. I looked into the sky and saw my bird was there, flying, fine. And it was only at that moment did I realize tears had been streaming down my cheeks for several minutes.