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Exploding Swan

Dreamed September 2010 by Aleksanteri Nevalainen

Simple dream fable, but maybe with quite the moral...

So I find myself telling a tale to my younger brother. There's a snowy landscape before my eyes, open fields under a cloudy dark sky. It's a windy winter. I'm not sure if we are both somewhere there, and it's a third person dream, or if it's just my voice and his echoing in the landscape like the narrators of some movie. I just know it's me and my brother.

I'm telling him a quite Disneyesque tale (am I? Can't remember saying any words to him during the whole dream. I just know I was doing it) about a land where winter comes suddenly with the wind and the native birds simply freeze. I watch as some sort of dark birds (small ducks, maybe) freeze in their flight high in the air and simply drop to the ground, where they should await until spring comes. Simple, efficient, just as some bacteria and viruses do. But also somewhat sad.

The vision changes to under a lake which, oddly, starts freezing from its bed up to the surface. There is a swan lying in the lakebed, a swan with grayish blue feathers like the ice creeping around him. He gets frozen like the rest in an instant, remaining silent and still all the time. Maybe he was sleeping?

And of course, ice is less dense than water. The winter-ice in my dream lake seemed to have forgotten so, but the frozen swan doesn't. He floats all the way to the surface, and the vision focuses on his head as steel attracted by a magnet. As soon as the swan emerges from the water, he bursts in a flash of yellow light. I feel scared, fearful and scared, and soon wake up.

NOTES

MEANING

Maybe I'm afraid of sudden changes, maybe afraid of the death of someone I love? It would make sense. But a swan emerging from the water and exploding... it could be something else.

For a swan reminds me of the Ugly Duckling tale, which I can connect somewhat to my own life. A smart kid, with a lot of plans to the future, willing to grow soon and be someone very important in life, and shut up those who didn't believe in me when I was younger. Others fall when winter comes (a metaphor for adult life in this context) but I arise instead.

But is the swan afraid that when he finally emerges, he'll fail?

--Aleksanteri Nevalainen



LISTS AND LINKS: hot & cold - ice & snow - birds - ascent - explosions - fear - giftedness - Wayan dreams he becomes a Swan while Socrates's Swan predicts a famous friendship

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