animal dreams

this exuberant pup goofily engaged in a rowdy game of fetch with his indulgent twenty-something tattooed male owner down at the beach this evening...seeing this makes me miss such uninhibited joy and uncomplicated love in my own day-to-day...luckily, though, fellows such as my friend in the above photo are a strong presence in the community; i get to share some of the doggie goodness this way :)

he got me thinking, though, as he ran after that ball again and again, charging over the sand and stones, plunging when required into the oh-so-chilly waves~ 'what is he imagining, feeling, right now? moment to moment?' i've always been curious about the shapes and scopes of the mental maps of animals; in a way, they seem so much simpler, blissfully, than my own. but at the same point, couldn't they just be that much more tangled? or more sophisticated?

in her novel ANIMAL DREAMS, barbara kingsolover characterizes the dreams of animals as being rooted in the ordinary, in the quotidian, saying that animals, humans included, can only dream that with which they are familiar... here is an exchange between codi, the book's main character, and loyd, her sort-of "suitor"...i love the idea behind it, that we can control our destiny through our dreams...

Codi says..."So you think we all just have animal dreams. We can't think of anything to dream except our ordinary lives."
& Loyd says in reply..."Only if you have an ordinary life. If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life."

this is perhaps one of my favorite novels, but i think b.k. may have underestimated the magic of the mindscapes of animals...the following poem presents some answers to the questions on my own mind in regard to this curiosity...so many surprising words and bizarre turns-of-phrase...this is one upon which to sleep, to dream...

Four Questions Regarding the Dreams of Animals
by Susan Stewart

1. Is it true that they dream?

It is true, for the spaces of night surround them with shape and purpose, like a warm hollow below the shoulders, or between the curve of thigh and belly.
The land itself can lie like this. Hence our understanding of giants.
The wind and the grass cry out to the arms of their sleep as the shore cries out, and buries its face in the bruised sea.
We all have heard barns and fences splintering against the dark with a weight that is more than wood.
The stars, too, bear witness. We can read their tails and claws as we would read the signs of our own dreams; a knot of sheets, scratches defining the edges of the body, the position of the legs upon waking.
The cage and the forest are as helpless in the night as a pair of open hands holding rain.

2. Do they dream of the past or of the future?

Think of the way a woman who wanders the roads could step into an empty farmhouse one afternoon and find a basket of eggs, some unopened letters, the pillowcases embroidered with initials that once were hers.
Think of her happiness as she sleeps in the daylilies; the air is always heaviest at the start of dusk.
Cows, for example, find each part of themselves traveling at a different rate of speed. Their bells call back to their burdened hearts the way a sparrow taunts an old hawk.
As far as the badger and the owl are concerned, the past is a silver trout circling in the ice. Each night he swims through their waking and makes his way back to the moon.
Clouds file through the dark like prisoners through an endless yard. Deer are made visible by their hunger.
I could also mention the hopes of common spiders: green thread sailing from an infinite spool, a web, a thin nest, a child dragging a white rope slowly through the sand.

3. Do they dream of this world or of another?

The prairie lies open like a vacant eye, blind to everything but the wind. From the tall grass the sky is an industrious map that bursts with rivers and cities. A black hawk waltzes against his clumsy wings, the buzzards grow bored with the dead.
A screendoor flapping idly on an August afternoon or a woman fanning herself in church; this is how the tails of snakes and cats keep time even in sleep.
There are sudden flashes of light to account for. Alligators, tormented by knots and vines, take these as a sign of grace. Eagles find solace in the far glow of towns, in the small yellow bulb a child keeps by his bed. The lightning that scars the horizon of the meadow is carried in the desperate gaze of foxes.
Have other skies fallen into this sky? All the evidence seems to say so.
Conspiracy of air, conspiracy of ice, the silver trout is thirsty for morning, the prairie dog shivers with sweat. Skeletons of gulls lie scattered on the dunes, their beaks still parted by whispering. These are the languages that fall beyond our hearing.
Imagine the way rain falls around a house at night, invisible to its sleepers. They do not dream of us.

4. How can we learn more?

This is all we will ever know.


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