As Ebeneezer Scrooge said about Christmas, I keep Superb Owl in my own way.
I dreamed I was staying my grandmother’s house, in Enid, Oklahoma, my mother’s hometown. I have dreamed about the house of my mother’s mother many times, but the house of dreams is rarely like the small two bedroom white frame house that my grandma actually lived in. Once, after my mother was killed, I dreamt of following my mother, who had transformed into a naked, blond little girl, around the corner of the unpainted barn the house had become, into the backyard, where we both climbed into an old fashioned clawfoot bathtub full of sparkling clear water, and talked.
In this dream, the house was large and ramshackle, with many rooms. We were having a family reunion, and many people were staying at grandma’s place, but instead of my actual family, the guests were all people I know, including people I only know through blogging. We stayed up late, talking, eating, and drinking. Sometime after midnight, I stepped outside into the backyard to breath in some cool night air. In the clear, moonless sky a large comet was blazing low over the western horizon. At first the comet maintained its position, but soon it began to move all around the sky, shedding pieces of itself as if it were breaking up. I went back inside and went to bed.
In the morning, a bunch of us that were staying at grandma’s went out for breakfast at a local café. This restaurant was owned and run by five Greek brothers, and was called “The Owl” because its specialty was dishes featuring owl as the main ingredient. But when I was given one of the rather large menus, every time I tried to read the menu, or even point at an item on the menu, the black letters would run off the page, rather like iron filings pouring away after a magnet is moved. I remember several of the brothers, large middle-aged men in white shirts, standing around me gesticulating. I felt embarrassed, like someone who can’t pronounce the names of a dish in the native language. I never did get to eat owl.
In waking life, my mother collected owl figurines. She never said why, and I have always assumed that they were totems of her dominant archetype, a chthonic Athena. I don’t have any of those figurines, haven’t seen any of them for decades, so their images sit in niches in my ramshackle memory cathedral. My mother and my grandmother are long dead. They are my owls now, my maternal archetypal inheritance, full of meaning I’ve never been able to articulate. As David Lynch’s Twin Peaks catchphrase had it, the owls are not what they seem.
To celebrate Superb Owl in my own way this evening, I ordered a replica of a 5th century B.C. Athenian Owl Tetradrachm from a dealer in the Czech Republic. It’s made of tin, not the Laurium silver of the original, and very inexpensive. A tin replica of this famous ancient coin is somehow appropriate.
I understand there was a football game tonight. Who won?
Dr. Omed's Tent Show Revival 