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Cat-Scratch Signs

Dreamed 1973/11/9 by Wayan

A white cat on a nest of cat eggs; Chumash rock art in background. Dream sketch by Wayan. Click to enlarge.


Star Trek. We beam down to the alien ruin. One team drives its perimeter, mapping. Our team probes inside. Climb warily up the stone front steps and between the columns. We find a sky-bare room with designs scratched deep in a linoleum-tile floor, like tigers have been breakdancing. Or clawing graffiti.

Sulu's eager to go on to the next room, but I examine the scratches: I suspect if we can translate them, the room will transport us into the cat dimension. Ahhhh.... some are angular but recognizable letters. The first few say "S-VOLC 348"--southern volcano? Are the digits degrees? 3 and 48, or 34 and 8?

Next are three Yi Jing trigrams: Li (clinging, fire, sun, light, warmth), Kun (receptive, earth) and Gen (stillness, mountain). Together do they mean volcano again?

Next: three Chinese characters saying "qiguai shi" (strange business).

That does it! As I read them aloud, reality starts to quake. Around us columns lurch and swirl. Nine waves later, we find... we're in a house on a slope, and carved into the stony bank behind it are Chumash pictographs--sun, rain, creatures. Linoleum scratches no more!

Oh, and we're all turning to cats. My cousins from next door show up with a white cat they all harass. Our recon team pulls up in the rover, parking clumsily, since they're all cats too. No thumbs.

The white cat makes a nest and lays eggs. But a spiteful cat-couple attacks her--cracks her eggs before the kittens hatch! Mean. They've been enemies across space and time--all these transformations and quakes arise from the war of egg-crushers and mother cat. And now they've pulled us all in! We all feel... discatisfaction.

"It is not logical," says Spock, "but nonetheless true."

NOTES IN THE MORNING

50 YEARS LATER

LISTS AND LINKS: Star Trek - other worlds - archeology - riddles - languages - oracles - volcanoes - you transform inside a dream - transformation in general - animal people - cats - birth - eggs - violence - family values (shudder) - book-inspired dreams - dreamwork

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