Dream: Butterflies and Owl Man

I was walking by the Delphi plant (now Nexteer)--actually, on the other side of the street of it, down Holland Rd in Saginaw. I think it was night, but sometimes there seemed to be a little more light. A butterfly landed on my face, either my eye or mouth, and I tried to remove it. It was hanging on rather strongly, affixed similarly to the way a caterpillar might. It felt like a velcro-y microscopically shallow barbed line along its body. I didn't want to hurt it, but I wanted it off me. I found that grasping it by the wings and gently pulling it back at a particular angle removed it neatly, but it seemed damaged. I set it by the curb in the grass. It was a deep pink color but there was a another one nearby and it was blue, turning pink like a fallen leaf. They were like monarchs but smaller and obviously differently colored.

As I walked I noticed trees, maybe poplars? That were tall but very leafy throughout, leaves all over the trunk or on short stems tucked close to the trunks. I thought that they were trees Gleachel (catalyst character from my story) would leap out of, so I kept an eye out for him.

Another butterfly landed on my lip, and as I went to remove it, but I first felt my nail scrape its body, and thought that it was too bad, but I also didn't feel that bad about it, and finally figured out how to catch its wings and pull it off my lip. The feeling of it was exactly as it had been before. I set it on the ground, and its wings spread and it withered and curled up like a drying leaf. There were other butterflies on the ground, and I thought that they were dying anyway, maybe talking myself out of feeling bad. This one seemed quite damaged, so I thought to put it out of its misery, thinking about if it was its karma to end its life in this way, and that I couldn't do anything without the permission of its soul. What is the least painful way to kill an insect, I wonder...? Somehow there was now a rock atop it, and I pressed it down. A strangely colored cloudy liquid pooled around it, blue-pink without becoming lavender. As I straightened, I thought of my mother coming along and finding me killing butterflies like some sadistic child.

When I started walking again, there was what looked like the silhouette of a giant matryoshka doll, but when I was in front of it, I saw it was a huge owl with closed eyes. “Whooooo” I said to it, and its eyes opened. I had anticipation that it would be like huge glowing plates, like the one I remembered seeing when I was little, but it changed entirely somehow, like I lost attention on what was in front of me long enough for it to become what looked like a person in a giant owl suit—more like a puppet, large and ornate, but of a sort of almost felt fabric. We kept saying whooooo to eat other, and I see now that I was treating it as a sort of sacred being, even as it waddled over to a tree and climbed up into it. I knew it was using arms and legs to climb, but I can't, now, with my logical mind turned on, determine how it would climb the tree. I kept walking, not wishing to disturb it.