I found these odd little creatures, hump-backed and club-handed, skulking through the forest. They said "You think we're deformed, wait 'til you get a load of this!" And there, with just its head showing, newly burst through the bright green moss of a gentle hill, was a beautiful baby with four eyes. It blinked and open all of them. I said "I think it's perfectly formed." The baby began to look around serenely, and then one of its arms rose from the moss; it decorously covered a yawn with a pudgy pink hand...

NOTES ADDED LATER

• It was such a happy dream! The creatures and the baby really did seem beautiful to me, not deformed at all.
• Reading the dream now, my grammar seems curious; I don't usually talk or write like that. Significant?

EDITOR'S NOTE

Strangely, a few years earlier, when I was first getting to know Xanthe (we worked in the same library) I dreamed I HAD four eyes, in exactly the same arrangement she saw in her dream. I don't think I ever mentioned it to her. Whether there's a connection I don't know, but I mention it for two reasons:

1. We did have other parallel dreams, like Xanthe's Tunnel, where coincidence, synchronicity, or telepathic spill-over (choose one that fits your belief system) was clearly running wild. So I tend to suspect parallels even in a subtle, doubtful case like this.
2. I haven't seen this image elsewhere, and I certainly hadn't then--except in my own dream. The few four-eyed faces I have run across have all had an upper and lower pair of eyes--a more compact set-up that would give you depth perception in two dimensions.

Jung claims that dreams of four eyes, and fourness in general, is a pan-cultural symbol of wholeness. Maybe. I found looking out of four eyes rather disorienting, myself...

--Chris Wayan

PICTURE NOTE

These illustrations are hybrids. Xanthe made pencil sketches when she woke, but these burned in a house fire. She'd sent me xerox copies, though. I scanned these and colored them in Photoshop from her description.

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