Dream - The bird-boy, the Christmas pageant, mall shopping, stolen presents, and the award

On October 4, 2008, I had either one very, very long dream that was in two parts, or two dreams that seemed later to be connected. Either way, they were both interesting. Even though the part I remember is very long, the actual beginning is forgotten.


In the dream, I went into a small shop, a gift shop of some kind I think. It seemed to be part of a mall or plaza. I think I was just going to look at things quickly and then leave, but they had some kind of strange new bird that somebody had brought in, a type of bird that had been discovered a little earlier and was just now being reported to the world. The reporting itself was a news story and not part of this shop and maybe not even about this particular bird, though it seemed to be one of the first ones that were brought in.

There was also a second bird of some type in the store, on the other side of the room next to the wall, on some shelves or some piece of furniture or display. It was smaller and different from the first and much more like a bird in appearance, and I didn't pay much attention to it.

The first bird, on the counter, had a head very much like a human toddler, a little boy. Its body was also vaguely like that but its legs, which I never really saw clearly, were bird's legs. Sometimes it seemed to have hands and sometimes little white wings. Its neck was a little long for a boy and it had wrinkles like an old man. Sometimes when it moved its head down and smiled, the wrinkles moved into its face, otherwise its face seemed smooth. It was a little smaller than a human, perhaps only fourteen inches tall, not counting its legs, which were in any case very short and I think dark colored. It was brought in by a man in late middle age and I think with a woman with him, probably his wife. The bird/baby boy was being propped up by the woman behind the counter. I had looked briefly at things in the store and then gone back to it. The man and one or two other people were there at the counter, women I think, talking about and oohing over the bird. I talked some to the bird, too, like one might talk to a baby or even a little dog. The bird looked back at me and sometimes made little sounds, not much and not anything meaningful.

The bird's body was originally wrapped in a pale blanket. This was taken off and I was confused that the bird apparently had two pouches across its lower stomach, one above the other, tight against its body. This was like a marsupial, but it was supposed to be a bird. Then they lifted it out and it turned out to be just a leather pouch it was in. Out of the pouch, it was revealed that the bird was wearing a white diaper.

I kept talking and making sounds to the bird. Eventually we went to the back of the store, where a few tables were set out for people to eat at, though we didn't use them. I was standing talking to the bird, which was flying and hovering in the air, moving its tiny wings. Sometimes I was on my knees partly looking up at it. It was getting better at making sounds and seemed almost like it was making words. I said "Goo-goo" one time to it and it said the same thing back to me. The man at that point came over and tried to discourage me from doing it, saying that they were going to be putting it in some kind of school shortly, maybe in a few months, I'm not sure. The impression is that he didn't want the bird learning nonsense sounds, he wanted it to learn real words.

The man sat down at a table while I continued to look mostly at the bird and sometimes talk to it, while I also talked to the man, usually continuing to look at the bird and only giving the man occasional glances. I wondered how long the bird could live and how old it was and how long its childhood was. I asked the man how old he thought I was. He was saying something about how he didn't know and I could be blah, blah, or could be blah, blah, etc. I said I was 55. He said he would never have guessed.


I was in a big mall, then. Thousands of people were in a huge room sitting in built-in seats watching a performance, apparently a Christmas pageant, though I'm not sure how much of it actually directly related to Christmas. My mother and one or two people with her were in the seats, also watching it. She sent me out to shop, holding a list of things to get, mostly gifts for my brother. I visited various small shops, getting almost all the presents. They were almost all in clear plastic bags, separately, though one or two bags may have had more than one thing in them, and an item or two did not have a bag. All of the items were very small, including a camera.

I went to the far end of the mall where a movie theater was, visiting a restroom. It was getting late, and I was getting concerned about dinner. I started heading back finally to the huge section where thousands of people were seated watching a performance. Middle-aged women in makeup and jewels and fancy clothes crowded around the entrance with me, pushing against me, smiling, talking to themselves and sometimes to me. Inside, people were singing, and some of them were going down the aisles and through the rows singing and doing various minor performances and interacting with the crowd.

I finally managed to get away and make my way back along the shops, stopping every few shops and sitting down at little tables just outside the shops, and going through the collection of bags and looking at things. I thought that I should combine some of what I had, and put the items without a bag, there were perhaps only a couple that way, into the bags, combining them with whatever was in there.

The last shop I stopped at, some kind of eating place, there was someone at the back, a relatively young, short, thin person. It seemed like it might be a man and then it seemed more like a woman. The uncertainty went back and forth for a while, even later after we had talked some, though finally near the end it seemed that she was definitely a woman. She was a little like Rachel Maddow at MSNBC, short hair and all.

Now, at the beginning, she was at the back, behind the counter, saying something sardonically about someone saying something about Stephen, and that her name was Stephenson. I perked up and became interested at that point, because my own name was Stephen, though I hadn't said anything and it didn't seem possible that I was the one she was talking about. I called out that my name was Stephen. She seemed interested and said, smiling, something about it being a coincidence and went to her right and exited the counter and the room. She came back into the store, then, or maybe appeared just outside it. A woman in the store and I think another employee were singing and going to this place and that, sometimes popping out of some different place unexpectedly, at least once appearing outside the store. The first woman was part of this performance and also singing and popping out of different places. This didn't go on for very long before fading back in intensity and then mostly stopping. I wondered if this was something they did there frequently.

I had gone forward into the place at first to get a little closer after I said something to the woman and she started talking to me, and then I went back out as they were performing. I went back now to where I had been sitting to get the bags and try to sort through them and find good places to put the items without bags, and found almost all of them gone. Someone had stolen them. I started searching an accordion-like briefcase I found on or by a picnic table-like seat by a small rectangular table just inside the business. A man sitting there and talking to a person on the other side of the table partially turned towards me and was upset that I was looking through his briefcase. I continued looking but didn't find anything but some papers and other normal stuff. I finally stopped looking in it. I had to leave, I had to search elsewhere for them now. I went back out.

I sat at a very small, round table just outside the place and looked through what I had left again. I came across two knives I had picked up along the way at different places. One of them had maybe an inch and a half broken off the blade, and I had earlier used the square corner at the break to carve something in the face of a soft brick-like thing, kind of a message, though I think the carving looked almost like runes. It was way back where the thousands of people were watching the performance, in the seating area. The other knife had a wavy blade, like it had been bent and then straightened out, and it had some big raised smooth dark areas like old rust or old food.

I considered just leaving them on the table. They would be picked up when the tables were cleared, but I worried if someone should find them, maybe even some kids, and get into trouble with them. I finally decided to take the broken one. It seemed for some reason to be more dangerous, the other one seemed old and worn and weak. I left it there and went out into the mall.

I looked briefly at some places nearby, and then started flying sitting up, partially cross-legged. Some people were beside me to the right, following on the ground, mostly women. As I went on they came closer, touching me with their shoulders or heads, oohing and aahing and making little appreciative comments about my flying. The mall seemed much larger now, and had aisles go off at angles to the one I was on. I was flying back toward the movie house at the far end. I had to go to the bathroom and thought I could use the restroom there and look for the missing stuff on the way. It was getting late and I would have to go back to the others afterwards and we would have to decide what to do about the missing items, to try to get them again or get something else instead or maybe just do without them.

The aisle was much bigger and longer and fancier than it had been. It was paved in different areas with different kinds of paving stones or tiles. Some areas had large tan shiny brick-like tiles, some had smaller brighter squarer ones, etc. A largish shiny brick-like one of one kind or another was predominant, though. The mall aisle had a gentle downhill trend with a series of a few downward steps every few hundred feet.

At a place where an aisle crossed this one, I saw outside through a large window area a giant Wizard of Oz-like head pushing its way through the dirt with hands sticking up by its jaw, palms out, coming toward the mall at an angle. Like the Wizard in the movie, it had a scowl on its face. It went to the mall near the intersection of aisles and got inside. I thought it was probably a hologram and part of the show. Inside it met another head coming the other way and they stopped, facing each other a few feet apart. I flew over and around them, and as I did they faded to a grainy semitransparent blueness, confirming they were indeed holograms. I felt satisfied by this, and as I flew I saw a large dark bronze lion head on the outside wall of the other aisle, filling a doorway. I felt that it was also capable of movement, particularly facial movement. I got the impression that it was somewhat amused, but it didn't seem to move much, if at all, while I was watching it.

I went back to flying down the aisle and soon came to two tall, short buses, one immediately behind the other, and heading away from me, apparently used for tours of the mall. A very tall, very hairy man was laying on top of the bus closest to me. He was probably seven or eight feet tall and dressed like a street thug from an old movie, even having I think a soft cap. I wondered if he took the things I had bought and I think asked him about it and pulled or pushed him by the shoulder, turning him partly over. I saw part of a large clear plastic bag or two under him. He said, "Hey, what is this, I can get a gun!"

I pulled him off the top of the bus and he fell flat against the ground with his hands and arms partly under the end of the bus and his head against or at the end of it. The bus had stopped. I fought an accomplice then, a much smaller man but much larger than me, who also said that he could get a gun. They were both dead now, or apparently so.

The police came and a detective questioned me. I told them what had happened, that I had done it, that they had said they could get a gun. The detective immediately accepted it then, happily, and said something like, "Well, that's it, then!" and the small bus was found to have a lot of stolen loot in it. Most of it was other people's, but they happily gave it all to me, happy that the case was solved and they had gotten all the loot back before it could be gotten rid of. In fact, most of the stuff that was mine was still missing, so presumably they had gotten rid of part of it. They were happily giving everything to me, though. I wondered if I should say anything and worried about what would happen if they found out later. They kept going on about it and it was getting more and more awkward to bring it up.

I was being congratulated and about to be given an award, including prize money. It was going to be given, they said, by Bill Maher, but I had Regis pictured in my mind and associated with that name. I was pointed toward an ornate box the size of a small room, in the street that was the mall aisle. The room/box had heavy raised simple designs on it, and was apparently made of dark brass with a door of the same material and its own heavy raised simple designs. A person stood guard there, acting as a doorman, dressed in court finery from around Shakespeare's time. A crowd had gathered, everyone was happy. It looked like I wasn't going to be able to get to a bathroom right away, though I glanced somewhat wistfully around the area as I flew toward and around the box/room, waiting for the door to open and the person to come out with the award and the prize money.