Dream: Jess and the Butterfly

Dream 20020621, 4:30 AM:

Jess and the Butterfly

I’m at a zoo, I think a friend is with me. I am watching a little boy who is standing on the concrete wall behind the fence – his Dad has put him up there, and is letting him pet the animals. They seem friendly. Then, we’re in an exhibit space where the animals are on the same ground as we are; there is this one kind that is like a huge mule.

I spot the bright blue flash of a morpho butterfly, hanging in a spider’s web in a little alcove on a concrete building. I pull it out, gently teasing it out of the strands of the web so as not to break it. The body of the butterfly is gone, I assume eaten by the spider, and I what I pick up are the wings. They are beautifully blue. I put them inside the pages of a book that I’m carrying; I think it’s a zoo guide. There is also a blue-white swallowtail butterfly, seemingly whole, in the same web, but I leave it be. We walk along, and I see a dark bird with brilliant red-orange flecks on some of its feathers, and bits of the same bright morpho blue.

Now, the friend that I’m walking with is clearly Jessica Dawn; tall, strawberry-blond, ebullient. We go into a building; it’s like an office area. We go into a printer/s shop/design office, and we show the man in there the butterfly wings, which have gotten bigger and changed shape. Earlier, they were clearly the wings of a regular blue morpho; now, they are more rounded, and there seem to be extra wings beyond the regular four. One pair is elongated, shaped like winged maple seeds. On some of the pieces, written in black marker, it says “JESSES.” She is also carrying a rolled-up print with a bunch of little drawings of animals on it; we keep calling it the “San Juan Animals” picture, but someone jokingly refers to it as the “Marijuana Animals,” and we laugh. Jess puts down the book and the print on a file cabinet. The man says, “I think it owned you because it’s on newsprint.” Jess looks shocked, and he explains that’s the reason that it had such a powerful effect on her – the print seems to have really captured her attention.