10/11/04
Cosmas The Ill & The Map Of Mackinac


It was nighttime and Ma and I were at home; I'm not sure where Dad was. At some point I believe I heard Cosmas, the cat, meowing, and Ma said that he was ill. When I asked her to explain she did so.

"His meowing's different," she said; I do think it was deeper (in reality Coz has a very high-pitched, effeminate voice); "and his eyes have changed. He's going blind. It's the same thing that went wrong with Pepper."

I looked at Coz as he walked by and felt very sad. Pepper was our old cat who died in October 2001. She went deaf, then blind, a long while before she died; during her blindness her eyes changed slightly, and reflected reddish rather than green or yellow when light hit them, and you could see veins in the back of them if you peered closely. (I'm guessing the red haze to her eyes had something to do with the blindness.) Then in the week or so before her death she became very ill, bloated and lethargic, until we had to put her to sleep. She had been with us for nearly twenty years. :*( To this day I feel angry and guilty that I was not there when she was put to sleep; see the dreams I had during that time period for more on this incident. In my dreams, Cosmas and Pepper often combine or switch roles in a very odd manner.

Anyway, in this dream, Cosmas was apparently dying of the same illness that had threatened to take Pepper. (In reality I think it was mainly her old age that made her ill--her bodily organs, kidneys, bowels, were shutting down, etc. I do not think it was a specific "disease," but in this dream it was.) And I felt very saddened by this. I think there was the slight implication that it might NOT necessarily be terminal, but it was severe. "I'm going to keep an eye on him and do what I can," I vowed, determined to do everything in my power to keep Coz from dying. Even though I didn't really know what I could do.

At some point I went to go to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet, Coz came in or else was in there already; he turned away from me and sat down or squatted on the floor beside the tub for a minute. I stared at him, wondering what he was doing. When he got up and walked away I noticed that he had urinated and defecated all over the floor!! There was a big long puddle/stream of urine, as if it had spread out a bit, and near one end of this were some little runny smudges of feces, almost as if he had diarrhea; it was yellowish colored. (Sorry for the grossness of this.) I didn't even see the feces at first, until I looked for it specifically (I was thinking, "He PEED on the floor!! Did he crap, too--?"), and it looked like several little bits of it smudged onto the floor. I got the thought that he had been running his butt along the floor as if to wipe it off of himself. I know, this is incredibly disgusting, but it's what I dreamed. >_< (I have written down "weird look" but I'm not sure of that--maybe he gave me an odd look before he did this?) My first instinct was to be angry but then I reined myself in. It was probably because of his illness. Pepper had done the same thing, going to the bathroom in odd places in the weeks before she died; it's a sign of distress in cats. I waited for a little bit, considering simply leaving the mess there for some reason (maybe for someone else to clean it up?), then decided it would be best to just get it over with. I went and got the paper towel roll.

(I cannot overemphasize the yellowness of the mess he'd left. Like a dark kind of mustard yellow. Even his excrement was mainly this color; very odd. I have no clue what that means.)

The roll was maybe just under half full. I started pulling off paper towels and mopping up the mess but the puddle of urine had spread across the floor to seep under all my shampoo bottles and stuff standing beside the tub. (They seemed spread out all along the side of the tub, on the floor, rather than concentrated at both ends as they are in real life.) I hated that they were getting so dirty but couldn't help it. I tried soaking and wiping up as much of the mess as I could. But I was really using up these paper towels and there was still more mess to get to! It was so hard to clean it up and I was getting frustrated. I ran out of paper towels, in fact, and didn't know what to do. It's as if I pulled some sort of long plastic sleeve from the garbage bag beside me. It made me think kind of of the plastic tubes that Pop Ice comes in (flavored ice you freeze, then cut the tube open and eat), only bigger and sturdier, maybe as long as my arm. It was slit down the side to make almost a C shape. On a whim I just dropped this on the floor and scraped it over the tiles in the hopes of picking up the rest of the mess.

Wonder of wonders, this worked a LOT better than the paper towels! Only now instead of urine and excrement it seemed to be vomit I was cleaning up--thick and kind of foamy in texture, like a mix of cat hair, spittle, and grass, only not lumpy or anything like that...it was mostly white and foamy like when a cat coughs up hair. Again, apologies for the grossness. Now Coz seemed to be standing in the tub right before me, watching in curiosity as I used the plastic tube to scrape up this mess and deposit almost every remaining bit of it in the garbage. I felt impressed and relieved by the ease of this. There was still some remaining under and around the bottles on the floor, but at least I'd gotten most of it! *whew*

The dream seemed to switch focus here, though it was still the same. I guess I went to my room then, no longer worried about Cosmas (maybe the illness had resolved itself?), and decided for whatever reason to look at a book I have, Michilimackinac by David A. Turrill. This is a real book I own but have never read; I've only browsed it. It recounts, in historical fiction format, the events leading up to, and after, the massacre at Fort Michilimackinac in Mackinaw City, and the fur trader Alexander Henry's escape to Mackinac Island. The book is sexually and violently graphic in parts and the rape/mutilation and death of one of the characters depressed me so much that I could not ever read the whole book, and in fact put it away for a very long time (I really overempathize with fictional characters sometimes). In fact it was the excessive violence and such that made me get the book in the first place, when I was a teenager; I actually browsed it at Old Mill Creek and put it back, then had my parents drive me to Mackinaw City for the express purpose of buying a copy there, later on. And I only just realized it, but I think the graphic scenes in the book kind of contributed to some of the writing I do nowadays.

Well...in my dream I decided to look at it, maybe to see if it had any information about Mackinac Island which I had missed; I've been very interested in learning more about this place lately. I sat down near my bed and looked at the book. I saw the author's name on the cover and was immediately confused. The name was like the word Manitou, which is the Ojibwa Indian term for a spirit (and is the name I gave to my own, fictionalized version of Mackinac Island in my writing). It was more like an archaic or alternate spelling, something like Muneedoo or Munedoo, but I knew what it meant. I frowned. I hadn't ever noticed it before, and I was pretty sure the author had a regular name. Had he changed his last name to this when publishing the book, in order to garner attention? You know, like how if somebody writes a book about sex or something, they'll give themselves a sexy or porn-star-sounding name. I felt like scoffing this author now for pulling such a stunt. If he was a truly good writer he would not have to rely on such devices!

Well, I opened the book, seeking information on the author's true name. And in the front pages I found my answer. The Munedoo name, in fact, was the name of the publisher, the company or outfit which had published the book. NOT the author. (The oddness of seeing their name on the front, rather than the author's, never struck me.) Okay, that made more sense. I had never noticed it but then again who really pays much attention to that sort of thing? I flipped through the book and now found a map of Mackinac Island, and was immediately thrilled. I began to study it to see if it referred to any of the older landmarks which are no longer included on current maps.

I think the map was a new one, made for the book, but it did refer to some odd things. I noticed firstly some sort of trail or path in the vicinity of Rifle Range or Arch Rock Road, called Charbonneau (or Charboneau) or Charbonneaux (Charboneaux), only at some points it seemed to bear a shortened, bastardized version of the name, something like Charbonno or Shabono. I knew this was an important trail running up in that area, but I think it was no longer included on new maps; maybe it was out of use or no longer in existence, though it was possible it could have still been there. Not sure. I kept thinking of "Charlevoix Heights" and "Forest King"--these are two things listed in a Fifties Mackinac Island guidebook I have in real life, which are in this area, but they apparently no longer exist. At least, they are not listed on any maps I know of. I think this Charbonneau was identical to "Charlevoix Heights," whatever that is.

I looked over toward the other side of the island, toward Point Aux Pins. And here was listed something called the "Shelter." On the map there was now an illustration of a little set of steps leading inland straight from Point Aux Pins; it was like this map was much closer now, and I knew this little set of steps led up an incline to a bluff or overlook or something just inland, set back in the trees. It's like this was somehow illustrated on the map--it was more like a map you'd find in a computer roleplaying game, when you look down on things from above. It was a kind of golden-sandy color. I understood now that this "Shelter" was in fact the Coureurs De Bois Shelter, another site which is listed in the Fifties guidebook but not in newer ones. In reality I think the shelter was just a space in the woods or on a bluff or something, but I harbored hopes that it was a cave or an actual building from that time period, and this dream seemed to indicate that, with this set of manmade steps; it was where French-Canadian coureurs de bois (woodrunners, or unlicensed fur traders) would hang out. My dream seemed to be mixing fact and fancy here, and since I do not know much at all about the actual location (which according to the book is actually on the OTHER side of the island), I can't really clarify.

"I'll have to go looking for that the next time I visit," I thought, looking at the set of steps leading inland--it's like the land was cleared here in a big swath. I was excited to find such new things. I then turned my attention back toward the middle and east parts of the island and now saw an odd thing written in the vicinity of Sugar Loaf Rock, a natural formation not too far from Fort Holmes. Instead of reading merely Sugar Loaf Rock...the map said something like fragments of Sugar Loaf Rock.

??? Fragments of Sugar Loaf...? Growing alarmed and confused, I looked closer. Sugar Loaf itself was not listed, just "fragments" (or "shatters," or a word similar to this, meaning broken pieces). Either it was illustrated or I received the impression that there was a wide swath of broken fragments of rock spread out across the ground near where Sugar Loaf would be or had been. This was seriously perplexing! Sugar Loaf is still standing intact and well! I puzzled over this wording for a good long while before sighing. "He must mean just little pieces that have fallen or broken off over the years," I decided (meaning the author of the book). "Sugar Loaf is still there, it's just not listed; the fragments are instead." I have written down "near SL but closer to shore/bluff," so I guess these fragments were closer to the East Bluff overlooking the shore than Sugar Loaf is in real life, yet I feel they extended outward from the rock in basically a westerly direction, so maybe Sugar Loaf was closer to the shore. In any case I made up my mind that the author meant the rock was STILL there, but for whatever reason had decided to indicate the fragments on the map rather than the rock itself. A weird thing to do, but it made more sense than thinking the rock was gone! I thought perhaps the broken fragments had some bearing on the story; maybe they had come to be because of the actions outlined in the book. *shrug* Never found out.

Despite my confusion, all these discoveries filled me with anticipation for my next visit, which I feel was going to be soon, rather than next year. I would have to look for Charbonneau (Trail?/Heights?), the "Shelter," and the "fragments" of Sugar Loaf my next time there.

There was another shift in the plot and this is where it gets haziest. There was something that had to do with a line drawing of part of the inside of Drake's house or apartment, or else one room of his house. Drake is a fictional character of mine, from my serial Manitou Island (indirectly referred to above); see "Dinner With Drake" for more about him. In this dream, he was again his young, gawky age, fourteen, and he and Charmian (the female protagonist of the serial) seemed to be having some kind of informal argument over something. I think it had to do with this room or inside of his house. This seemed to be taking place in my living room, facing west, and was kind of like I was pretending it and kind of like it was real; I never actually saw them or an argument as I was staring only at this line drawing, but...well, I can't explain it. You know how it is in dreams. I studied this drawing very closely while they argued. I think Drake had a crush on Charmian but I don't know if that had a bearing on the argument. Maybe they were arguing about whatever I was looking at. It was a drawing of a wall, and set into it were some round and rectangular devices...it was a line drawing, but I sense the wall was supposed to be dark tomato red, or maybe brick red. These devices resembled a speaker and maybe a thermostat and such; there were two or three of them, at least, different sizes and shapes. I'm pretty sure one was a speaker so you could talk between rooms in the house, and I think Drake and Charmian referred to it while arguing. (Drake was being defensive, in a "Well, how am I supposed to know??" way. I do not recall actual dialogue.) The speaker had a crisscross grid over it. One of the round objects on the wall had a little knob of some sort protruding from its left side, small and cylindrical like a lipstick container. I was really studying these closely--I had the page right up to my face and was examining them in minute detail--so that when I awoke immediately after, I could still remember, if not the entire drawing, then at least that particular knob on that particular object. I do not understand why I was so invested in looking at this otherwise boring picture.

Real-life associations: I already mentioned the Mackinac guidebook associations to "Charbonneau" and the "Shelter." Although I may have had it in mind when originally picking up the book, I never did find any mention of the Fairy Arch (a missing landmark which HAS preoccupied me in real life). I also associated Charbonneau with a surname in this area, but the only Charbonneau (Charboneau?) I ever knew personally was a student I knew in elementary school, and he and I were never close. (I asked my mother and to her knowledge, we are not related to any Charbonneaus, at least in recent history.) I associate the alternate spelling "Shabono" with the name of Sacajawea's husband (Lewis or Clark spelled his name that way, I think, in a diary). Charlevoix, by the way, is the name of a city in northern Michigan, and I wondered a bit over why there was a place on Mackinac Island called "Charlevoix Heights," but I've seen no other reference to it aside from that one brief mention in the old guidebook.

I was recently considering browsing Michilimackinac again, if I could only overcome my depression about the plot. In fact I did browse it a while before coming to type up this dream, and was not quite as depressed about the contents as I used to be. The real book does not have a map and actually says relatively little about Mackinac Island's land features themselves.

In real life recently, I located a map of the island in a 1941 book at eBay, and was amazed that it actually listed the location of the Fairy Arch--this is the first time I have seen it on any map, and I immediately saved the image and took note of the spot on my current map. I've considered bidding on the book; there are/were three copies on auction, but the other two are from the Fifties and I wonder if they might not have the Fairy Arch still listed as it's likely collapsed. (My own Fifties guidebook does not refer to it; this 1941 reference is the latest I have found so far. Until then, I had thought it collapsed not long after 1906, which used to be the latest reference I had.) The excited feeling I got in my dream reminded me of how I felt when I found this real-life map, even if the landmark is no longer there.



2004 Dreams
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