Dream: Looking for Snakes

Dream 20021120, 4:30 AM:

I’m at a stage production; I think it’s the Turtle Creek Chorale. Chris is here, and I think that it has something to do with him being in the show. There’s a lot of song and dancing, and we’re doing a dance routine. I’m giong to help in this one particualr dance routine. Melissa is there, and she and I are in this routine, or we’re standing in for the people who are going to be in this dance number. We keep walking through a figure that is like a couples siding or couples arming – there are 3 couples, and we keep going through the same figure again and again. The figure reminds me of John Tallow’s Canon, the part with the swirls.

There are a bunch of people on the edge of the stage, and poeple keep coming up on stage and going through moves blocking and organizing space. For a moment, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be here, like they’re about to open the show for real, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a rehearsal.

Later, I am floating around the back yard of the Kingwood house, about a foot off the ground face down, looking for snakes. I feel like I have to watch for snakes; I don’t have any particular feeling of a reason for this, just that it’s what I have to do. I see what I think is a baby copperhead, with a thick body and a round head – it’s more like the shape of a big fat tadpole. When I get closer, I realize that it’s really a thick-bodied green lizard, like a tropical chameleon, but its skin is slick like a salamander’s. Then, I see another one, and realize that they’re a family. They have spines on their backs like Stegosaurus, and they change design and shape a couple of times in the dream. I pick one up, and I don’t know if it bites me or I scratch myself, but I have blood on my hand. I pat the other ones, and they’re very very slow, moving like salamanders. The mother has long ears that flap backwards, the father has spikes on his back.

Then, I’m going around the yard, and now Chris is here, and I show him the lizards, and I say something about how they’re a little dinosaur family, and I had thought they were snakes at first. There are some turtles in the corner of the back garden, half-buried under some mulch, and I pick up Vervain. She keeps nudging her head under my hand, like Kego does. I turn to Chris, and say, “You were there, right? We took them to the river, right? And watched them walk away.” He thinks, and says that maybe they’re like dogs and cats, and they find their way back home. I tell him there are streets, and miles of space, and there are are creeks and everything between there and here. Vervain keeps doing the push-under-the-hand thing, wanting to be petted on her neck. I pet it, and the skin of her neck is very soft.

I fly over toward where the dog run is, and explaining to Chris that I’m looking for poisonous snakes, and say “And this wasn’t one,” as I pick up this thing that looks a little like a snake, but also a little like a huge millipede, with fluffy big antennae like a moth. It’s about nine or ten inches long, about as thick as my thumb, and light brown.

I’m pulling myself along with my fingers pulling at the grass. I listen to someone explain that floating around the back yard is not a very effective strategy for finding the snakes, that walking is better because it puts your head at a better elevation to see what’s going on, and is more likely to catch the snakes effectively.