In my childhood I was a fervent worshiper of the tiger: not the jaguar, the spotted 'tiger' of the Amazonian tangles and the isles of vegetation that float down the Parana, but that striped, Asiatic, royal tiger, that can be faced only by a man of war, on a castle atop an elephant. I used to linger endlessly before one of the cages at the zoo; I judged vast encyclopedias and books of natural history by the splendor of their tigers. (I still remember those illustrations: I who cannot rightly recall the brow or the smile of a woman.) Childhood passed away, and the tigers and my passion for them grew old, but still they are in my dreams. At that submerged or chaotic level they keep prevailing. And so, as I sleep, some dream beguiles me, and suddenly I know I am dreaming. Then I thing: This is a dream, a pure diversion of my will; and now that I have unlimited power, I am going to cause a tiger.
Oh, incompetence! Never can my dreams engender the wild beast I long for. The tiger indeed appears, but stuffed or flimsy, or with impure variations of shape, or of an implausible size, or all too fleeting, or with a touch of the dog or the bird.
4 comments:
If I were not so well behaved I would quote the book entire. My heart's desire is to read it at volume, perhaps while standing on a chair.
Tigers must dream too, possibly on how to cause a giraffe, possibly on the mystery of what uncauses the long blondes once they've been devoured.
Dreamtigers should be on my bookshelf -- just in case I have a pressing need to cause a tiger myself again, at some point in the future.
Long blondes reminded me of this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TS_P2YKZVwc
Imagine the girl's voice wavering, egged on by her peers, as if she's unaccustomed to demanding to be first, and we're on the same page.
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