You wake with the strange certainty that something has happened, although nothing that happened makes any sense.
Two magpies have been birthed artificially in a laboratory. You are observing the experiment, watching these improbable creatures come into existence somewhere between science and the wild.
As you leave the laboratory, coming down the stairs, a woman is sitting pressed against the wall. She is distressed.
One of the magpies is her new sister.
She has been an only child for fifty years and doesn’t know how to interact with her.
There is no explanation for how a bird can become a sister, or why this should be such a profound disturbance. Yet within the dream it seems entirely reasonable.
Later, the two magpies have been released into the park beside your parents’ place.
The existing magpies begin swooping them.
You watch and say, to no one in particular, you know magpies are territorial.
Across the park, somehow, you can see Los Angeles.
You wonder why the birds couldn’t have been released there instead, into the enormous city. They will become psychologists when they grow up.
Then another voice enters the dream.
These birds, you are told, are being trained to help people stay in their jobs longer.
And somewhere within the absurdity, a question emerges:
But doesn’t that show it’s the system that’s wrong?
Then you wake.
Notitia — attending to what appears before it becomes something you need to understand.
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