Katja Petrowskaya: Dreams within the snow | EUROtoday

Snow fell on the town, lulling it in time as we nonetheless made plans for the brand new yr. The starting of January was quiet in Berlin, empty and white, like a narrative not but written. There had been folks wandering across the streets who did not know why they had been there. I had the sensation that the world had turned a brand new web page – and now it was in entrance of us, a brand new, unwritten web page, as a possibility, an choice. I let myself be carried away by this magical starting, however I concern that my textual content has neither a plot nor new phrases about horrifying world occasions. I want to let you know about three nightly occasions that arose from the impossibility of direct speech.

As the snow fell over the town and all the things turned extremely white, I had an odd dream. In my native language they are saying: “I saw a dream.”

It was additionally snowing in my dream, which lowered the gap from actuality to a minimal. I crossed an enormous, snow-covered courtyard in a neighborhood of my childhood – there have been enormous prefabricated buildings all over the place. The snow was untouched and I left tracks, white on white. Suddenly I noticed 4 little birds organized on the corners like on a chessboard: two fats sparrows, very fluffy, as if inflated, had been within the entrance, a tit and a swallow had been within the again. They had been useless. Frozen. I used to be neither shocked nor frightened, as if this lethal discover had been a part of on a regular basis life within the courtyards of my childhood.

I made a decision to take the birds with me, within the imprecise hope that they might come again to life within the heat. I simply needed to do one thing. My effort was as pure as the invention of her dying. Maybe the thought of ​​saving her got here to me due to the swallow. In the dream, the reminiscence of a fairy story appeared: Thumbelina lived in a mole gap, discovered a useless swallow there and wrapped it in a heat blanket. Against all expectations, the swallow steadily revived. She later rescued Thumbelina from the darkish mole gap and introduced her to the land of the elves, simply as a fairy story ought to.

Then the swallow stirred in my dream, as if it had additionally remembered this fairy story; a remnant of life nonetheless glimmered in it too. I attempted to gather the frozen birds. One of the sparrows caught to me like a chunk of sweet, like a head of marzipan, as if it had rushed again to life “with all its paws.” An disagreeable feeling came to visit me. I needed to heat my expenses at house, who had turn out to be specimens of themselves. But they had been already beginning to give clumsy indicators of life, in their very own means. I believed: If you are going to be saved, please behave properly! At the identical time, I used to be embarrassed that I used to be forcing my concept of ​​“survival” on the birds.

When I awoke, I used to be amazed on the dream with the little birds that I did not see by means of to the top. I used to be amazed that there have been 4 of them, as in the event that they stood for the cardinal factors, as if my coordinate system had frozen with them, the complete orientation on this planet. Because there are fires in each nook. An limitless struggle is being waged and tens of millions of persons are freezing with out electrical energy or heating. On the opposite nook, a revolution is rising and protesters are being massacred, scores are being shot. Elsewhere there’s a hunt for people, and a girl named “Good” falls sufferer, as if the violence had turn out to be an allegory of itself…

How shocked I used to be when a buddy informed me her dream, with the same chook motif, as if our desires additionally linked us. She descended the mountain in an enormous mountain vary. The path was tough, with wounded, exhausted birds mendacity all over the place alongside the trail. Did they fall from the sky as a result of it now belongs to drones and missiles? At some level she could not take it anymore and determined to kill a few of them to finish their struggling – a tough however maybe humane resolution. It was solely when she reached the summit that she met a magician who defined to her that her “help” had been untimely. There is a salvation for the struggling chook inhabitants, he stated, however it solely turns into clear after the mountain. But does this “behind the mountain” even exist? Is it accessible to us?

The two desires involved the query of motion, the longing of people for magical energy. They appeared to have emerged in opposition to a background of abused peace negotiations and a spiral of violence that makes your blood run chilly.

Then my outdated mom referred to as me and she or he additionally informed me about her dream. The finish of the struggle was introduced. She remembered the top of the Second World War and bumped into the road as she had then, however there was nobody there, not a single particular person, the streets had been empty and chilly, and solely then did she get up.