(12/13/04) fragment in a musuem

(Entered in paper journal at 5 PM at some Starbucks.)

Dream 1

FRAGMENT --

I was in a museum, taking care of a mammoth skull that had some deformities. I worked under some nice woman whom I could never see too clearly. The museum was long, dim, with nice wood floors and softly white walls that were wide apart. The mammoth skull was tall and narrow, with enormous tusks protruding. It was very elongated, almost like it was melted. Many edges seem to have been broken open -- they exposed the rough porousness beneath the smooth surface of bone.

I was doing something like removing blemishes from the skull, not patching up these exposed portions of bone. But now I did something wrong. I backed away from the skull, both embarrassed that I had messed up in front of the public, who were walking almost inattentively back and forth through the exhibit hall, and worried that my boss would spot me and criticize me for my mistake.

The skull was only a couple feet above the ground. The legs were lowered so they spread out in front of the skull like a dog's when it lays on the floor.

I felt like I should combat my feeling of embarrassment and get back to working on the mammoth skull.

I walked back up to the mammoth skull with more of a sense of being self-assured. But then something else happened that did one of two things; 1) the work on the skull had to be stopped for technical reasons; 2) I was filled with a sudden dread of the skull and was compelled to back away from it so I could see the whole thing, including the tusks.

As I backed farther and farther away I realized how large this animal must have been. Its tusks were almost as long as its legs, which, I realized, reached about thirty feet. The legs ended in tiger paws. I no longer wanted to be in between these legs or in front of this ghostly, deformed, anamorphic skull.

My dread increased. I could feel the mammoth coming back to life, struggling to stand back up. I got away from it. It did now seem to be standing. Behind it was another mammoth skeleton. I rushed now to get away. I could feel both these animals coming to life. I knew these two animals in particular could kill me.

I now saw a dinosaur just down and a ways to the right, past a few other fossil skeletons. There may have been a skeleton of this dinosaur, but also, under a spotlight and in a huge, glass case, was either a model of the fleshed out and scaled dinosaur or else the actual dinosaur, which had grown flesh and life back back onto his skeleton. It seemed at once enormous, maybe eight feet tall and fifteen feet long, round-backed as a turtle, with a long, brush-shaped spiked tail and a short, flat head; and small, maybe like a three-foot-long model posted vertically sideways on a glass wall. I knew if I could get to that dinosaur everything would be fine.