Tell me a story about a toucan looking at scissors.
The phrase "A toucan looks at scissors" came to me in a dream last night. I don't know what it means, but here are some fragments of the dream itself:
I was wandering around an art museum with my friend Avery, and we were trying to find our way out into sunlight (it must have been morning). We got lost inside one room full of tall glass cases containing various kinds of sculptures, most of them pretty ugly but not all -- there was one case that contained only very beautiful things (and as usual, when this happened in real life, it is more impressive in the dream because it happens so much). ("Look," said Avery, pointing at something he found particularly striking; "they even made you like it!" And indeed they had.) There were also plenty of ugly things on display which weren't worth commenting on except for how funny it seemed that so many different sculptural styles could be displayed alongside each other without anyone finding any of them especially compelling.
Anyway, eventually we managed to leave the building through a door hidden behind two or three framed prints (the idea being that if you can see the print, you can turn your head sideways enough to look between them), then went outside and began walking down a street near campus. The road was flanked by trees whose leaves looked like brightly-colored mosaics, but once again, I didn't think about why they looked like mosaic tiles until after waking up from the dream.
We saw people who had turned themselves into animals and gone on walks while doing so. They wore these white suits over their clothing, sometimes with parts of their hair tied back, and had little paws instead of hands. They walked slowly along the pavement, looking kind of dazed and sleepy. In another dream long ago, someone told me that this was normal behavior among transformers, since they needed to regain strength before transforming again.
Then suddenly we noticed that everyone else on the walk was also wearing white animal costumes. It was late autumn, and the streetside grasses were still greenish underfoot. Most of us were dressed like cats or dogs, though some others were birds or reptiles. As far as I recall, no one was human anymore. Someone asked where we should go next. "To the zoo?" suggested Avery. He was a dog. Soon we arrived at a large park area covered mostly in dense vegetation, and scattered throughout the woods and fields were numerous small shacks or cabins that looked like they might be inhabited. These buildings were built roughly according to whatever style they felt like following at the time. One had a rustic roof, another was just a box shaped like a birdhouse, etc., but none resembled anything used as a dwelling today. All were painted in primary colors, except for one that appeared to be gray concrete, and several that were decorated with murals depicting the process of transformation from personhood to animalness. I remember seeing someone change into an eagle in front of one of those murals. Inside the buildings were various tools for making transformations happen, including some sort of strange contraption involving jars labeled "Eggs." None of the transformations took place immediately upon entering the structure, but rather required sitting quietly in a chair for a few minutes first. Someone would ask if you wanted to become a cat, and if you did, they would lay their hand against your forehead and wait patiently for the magic to work its effects. This whole scene reminded me strongly of the world of Robert Heinlein novels, although I couldn't explain why, exactly.








