This post is either going to seem a bit freaky or you’ll be like me and just smile and shrug and write it off to the random weirdness of dreams.  Sorry, but sometimes I just like to think out loud.  Maybe some of you have had odd little dreams like this and they leave you wondering too about what the hell goes on inside the human brain.

Nap dreams somehow just get weird more often then sleep dreams.  I don’t know why this is, other then possibly something to do with the fact that naps aren’t really part of the normal sleep cycle.  This afternoon, after unloading the car and getting my house back up and running, and putting a few things away, I felt suddenly like a nap.  After three weeks on the road it felt nice to just lay down in my own bed again.  It wasn’t a long nap…maybe about an hour or so.  But I had this really vivid dream.  Most nap dreams are pretty vivid for some reason.

In my dream, I’m wandering around the house getting things back in order after my trip.  I go into the upstairs bathroom and start washing my hands.  I notice there is a pipe next to the faucet I’ve never seen before.  It’s a copper pipe, about a half foot to the right of the faucet, about an inch and a half in diameter.  It comes straight up out of the sink top for about a foot, and then bends back down again in a severe ‘U’.  The pipe ends about halfway back down its length.  The end is open, almost as if it’s another faucet, except that it’s not over the sink basin.   If anything came out of it, it would end up on the counter.   I’ve never seen this pipe before.  Somehow, in the dream, that is not unusual.  I continue washing my hands and pay it little attention.  Then something starts coming out of it.

Feathers.  Tawny brown feathers…they look like a barn owl’s wing primaries.  Picture a Japanese paper fan, folded up, but instead of being made out of paper it’s made out of owl feathers.  That’s what slowly comes down out of the pipe next to the faucet.  I watch, fascinated.  The feather fan comes down out of the pipe…then slowly unfolds…then slowly folds back up again…then goes back up into the pipe. 

Well that’s really odd…I think to myself.  You know it’s a weird dream when its weird enough to realize the weirdness of it while you’re still dreaming it.  I finish washing my hands and go back downstairs.  When I get to the kitchen I notice there is a similar copper pipe next to the kitchen sink faucet.  I don’t recall ever seeing that one either.  I walk over to the sink, turn on the tap, and once again a fan of owl feathers slowly comes down out of the pipe, unfolds, folds, then starts going back up.  I grab it before it goes all the way back in.

I try pulling the feather fan back out.  Something is pulling it back up the pipe, but not strongly.  I feel like I could just yank it out, but then I’d break something, whatever it’s connected to on the other end, so I don’t.  Eventually I let it go back up the pipe.

This is very strange...I think.   I go down into the basement and check the utility sink.  Sure enough, there is one of those copper pipes next to the faucet there too.  I turn on the water, and another owl feather fan slowly comes down out of the pipe, opens, closes, and goes back up.

What the fuck…???   I look up and notice that my brother is here in the house with me (I was visiting him for a bit earlier in the week).  He’s a home improvement contractor and I figure he might know what’s going on.  He’s looking around the finished side of my basement.  I call out to him.  "Hey…Billy…come over here…I want you to see something…"

As he starts walking over I turn off the tap, and turn it back on, and the owl feather fan starts coming out of the pipe again.  It opens, and closes, and I grab hold to keep it from going back up the pipe before my brother has a chance to see it.  It’s a delicate operation.  I don’t want to break whatever it is, but I want Billy to see it.  He comes over, stands next to me.

"Look at that…look at that…  What is this…?" 

We both look at the feather fan.  And I wake up.

I wrote about another dream I had once, Here…and said that some dreams…"really show you that all your careful analysis of your thoughts and feelings amounts to nothing more then mapping the waves on a restless sea and you really don’t understand very much at all about what is going on in the silent darkness beneath them or what makes it all work."  Yes.  I think that’s what interests me about dreams the most.  Where makes your brain assemble the imagery in them in that particular way?

I’m not one to see Mysterious Psychic Prophesies in dreams.  Well…once I had one that worries me, even now.   But dreams are amazing things to me all the same.  I like to dream.  They make sleep worthwhile.  Otherwise I could do without it. There aren’t enough hours in my day as it is.  But dreams not only make sleeping worthwhile, they can be inspiring.  They can lift your spirits, thrill you, scare the hell out of you, leave you with a peaceful glow, or a feeling of dread, that lasts all day.  They don’t come out of nowhere.   Which is where the techno/science geek in me gets really fascinated.  I’m laying in bed right after waking up from this dream and wondering where the hell that image of a fan of owl feathers coming out of a pipe next to my sink faucets is coming from.  The ingredients have to be somewhere inside my own noggin.  But…where?  And…what made them come together to produce that dream?

I can account for some of it…I guess.  I just got home from a long trip.  I Have been wandering around the house, making sure that everything is okay after having been away for so long.  I had to turn on the water, since I’d turned it off, and start up the hot water heater again.  I tend to fret about leaks upon re-pressurizing the water pipes after a long trip, and so I go around checking things for hours afterward to make sure there aren’t any.  Owls are a favorite bird, and barn owls in particular.  And…in a Gallup trading post I bought an earring with a little barn owl feather made out of bone.  I’m thinking about getting my ear pierced later this month.  As I was unpacking, before I took the nap, I carefully put all the turquoise I’d bought away, along with the earring.  I also bought a owl feather wall hanging made of pottery, and I was looking for a spot to hang it before I took the nap.  How all that made this particular dream, if that’s what was going on, would probably be really interesting if I could fathom it.  And also a bit freaky. 

Do you really want to know…?  Yeah.  I really want to know.  Our brains are strange, amazing things.  The thoughts you know in the foreground seem sometimes like they’re just waves on a restless sea…and what’s going on in the silent darkness beneath them is a mystery…