Dream: The Thief of Perfect Things

Dream 20050504, 6:00 AM:
There was more to this, something about being at the Kingwood house, and Dad having a little house inside a drainage culvert between the house and the Basses next door.

Then, I’m sitting inside the house with Mom and some other folks. There is a table at a front window – but it looks like the window of a shop, not the windows in the house; like the window you’d expect at the front of a nice restaurant, with a table of decorations. There is a set of ceramic Victorian caroler figures on the table (we had one of the sets when I was growing up) – and I see a woman walk up the sidewalk next to the window, and reach her hand nonchalantly through the window and grab the woman figurine out of the group, and slip it out through the window. I point it out to the other people I’m talking to, and say that the woman reached through the solid glass like it was smoke, and she stole the figurine.

I run outside, and chase her, but lose her. Later, I see her walking somewhere, and follow her to an apartment building, like something in New York from the turn of the last century. It’s in a very old building, all wood floors and dark brick. I follow behind her until she goes into an apartment, and I call out to her, and tell her I saw her steal the figurine. She seems kind of shifty, like she’s afraid of being caught, but she doesn’t seem sinister or mean. She invites me into the apartment, which is set up like an attic workshop. Another woman is also there; they are sewing and working on little clothes that would fit the figurine. The woman explains to me that she had to take it, because it’s a perfect example; they have to steal perfect examples of different kinds of things. They are working on some kind of spell or enchantment that would turn the doll alive; at one point, a woman that looks a lot like the caroler figurine runs down the hall, and I wonder if it’s her.

Later, I’m in a sidewalk cafe with the woman, and another younger woman, but not the one that was in the apartment. The young woman orders something that comes out in a little glass with violets painted on it, and along with it is a tiny glass bottle all in shades of purple, like a fancy glass perfume bottle. She looks at it, and her eyes widen a little; the other woman realizes that she’s figuring out that it’s another perfect thing, and they might need to take it. I remark that I can see the fascination, but what I really feel is a need to crush it beneath my heel. I speculate that I may be part of an opposing force, working to destroy perfect things while they’re working to preserve them.