I had one of those dreams last night where I find myself taking care of a huge number of birds.

I had one of those dreams last night where I find myself taking care of a huge number of birds.

The dream often goes like this: I discover that, unknown to me, there is another bird in the cage with Lester, and that all this time I have been feeding and taking care of only Lester, and not this other bird, who is almost dead. In the dream, I always nurse the neglected bird back to health, but there are always close calls. Sometimes the extra bird, or birds, are not in Lester's cage, but in some other part of the house--frequently under the bed. Once, I was on a pirate ship pitching and heaving in the middle of the storm, and I had to prevent several parrots from drowning and going overboard. In another version, I'm swimming through rough seas while two parakeets sit on my head, singing.

In last nights dream, I heard parrots outside, so I went out to see them. There were two hyacinth macaws sitting in the tree about the apartment building dumpster. They looked quite ragged, but I eventually coaxed them down and took them into our apartment. I found an extra, hyacinth-macaw sized jungle gym and put it in one corner of the room. The macaws began to play on the gym and settle in quite happily. Lester didn't mind them, either. After the macaws were relaxed and preening, Mark came in with two rainbow conures. I found a large cage for them and some extra toys, etc, and soon they were settling in, too. Some version of this kept happening--either I'd go outside and see two parrots and bring them in, or Mark would. At a certain point, our entire apartment was filled with parrots--two to three in each cage (Lester was the only one not sharing his space).

The last bird that Mark brought in was a huge pelican--but in the dream it looked more like a cross between a pelican and a stork, since the bird was very tall. The pelican's beak was cracked, and there were stitches all around her neck. We nursed the pelican/stork back to health, and eventually removed the stitches.

A few nights ago, I dreamed that Mark and I were at the Embarcadero in San Francisco to meet Nicholas Manning (someone I only know, to the extent that I know him at all, through blogland). The Embarcadero was more like a souk--a lot like Fez, actually. While we were wandering around, I saw someone that looked French. This was my dream logic, because I can't actually describe what Nicholas looked like in my dream. He only vaguely looked like his blog picture, but when I saw him in the dream, I knew that he looked French and I walked up to him, touched him on the shoulder in a very formal way, and said "you are Nicholas Manning." He had a friend with him who had glasses but other than that was completely inconsequential to the dream.

After this greeting, the four of us walked outside to the deck of the market, but instead of San Francisco bay was a beach that looked more like the Carlsbad State beach. The light, sand, and water were a kind of rich golden color--a dreamy sort of late-afternoon pre-sunset color. Nicholas said, with great drama, "Ah, it is the Nile! Let us bathe!" In my dream, I had a moment of Wait, this isn't the Nile. Oh, maybe it is. Why not? I was reluctant to swim but then eventually did.

After that, we went back into the market/souk, and Nicholas began talking about rabbits and cats. He said something like "there is no animal better matched to the cat than the bunny. They are equals in every way, especially strength and ferocity." In response to this observation, I pulled out a series of wallet-sized, color holographic images of all the animals I've ever known--pets, friends pets, animals I've seen and remembered, etc. I put these pictures out on a card table in a way that suggested I was telling someone's fortune. We all examined the pictures.

I noticed that there was a bird sitting at the end of the table. The bird was Lester and also a tiger-colored tomcat I used to know named Benjamin. I noticed that the bird/cat had some pin feathers, so I reached out to scratch his head, and this is how the dream ended.

I dreamed that I was apprentice to a typesetter.

Together we lived in a huge crumbling mansion across the street from the well-kept mansion of a bishop, or some kind of bishop-like religious figure. He would appear in the early mornings dressed in a red robe and nightcap to collect the papers on his front door.

The typesetter I worked with was potentially a murderer, and the whole building was full of creepy Victorian scientific equipment as well as printing machinery. There was one machine that was like a huge typewriter, but for shapes and flourishes instead of letters. Sometimes a larger version of Lester lived in the house with us, and he looked very very green against the dark gray colors of the print shop.

At one point, the typesetter and I were giving a tour of the shop to someone--perhaps someone who knew that the typesetter was a murderer and was trying to secretly find some evidence. I remember thinking that I would have helped him find the evidence if I knew what it was. At the far corner of the print shop, which was in the huge attic of the mansion, was a door. The typesetter led us through the door and said, "And this is my master suite bedroom." The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered with loose type, and there was loose type rolling about on the floors, unfixed. At the back corner were a series of metallic frames that looked like old bed frames, but were also pieces of type, somehow.

Then my alarm went off, and I got up and ate some high fiber high protein cereal with blueberries.