I.
I have orthopedic surgery on my leg and Dr. Wilson, who is an orthopedic specialist and also my former boss (important detail: at a veterinary hospital), is my surgeon and doctor.
Then we are trying to find our seats at the opera, which are supposed to be all 3 of us in a row but there's some confusion and then when it turns out to be a free-for-all, devolves into the standard Grace-can't-find-anywhere-to-sit-because-people-are-everywhere situation. The diva sings the "Queen of the Night" aria from Mozart's "The Magic Flute" because it's the only aria I know well enough to hear it in my sleep.
II.
I'm explaining to some neighbors of the Flowers' from church basic animal behavior and why they shouldn't think that the Flowers' dog is a bad dog because she acts aggressive towards them - fear and fight/flight response and such.
Then some asshole has rented an elephant and leads it up into the church parking lot where the Flowers children promptly do all of the things I told the neighbor to NOT do with the small dog and spook the elephant which sends it into a frenzied stampede that leaves a trail of blood and mangled bodies in its wake. The scariest part is right when I know that it's about to stampede but there is nothing I can do to stop it and the perpetrators disregarded my advice that would have prevented it. The elephant starts to buck like a horse, only every time it does so the ground quakes beneath my feet and because I know what's about to happen, my heart drops into my gut at the same time. The Flowers children are immediately crushed, whereas in a grainy, intellectual indie movie they would have been the lone survivors but this is my goddamn dream. Among the many dead is Mackenzie Ings, and when I find out I have a bunch of heart-wrenching flashbacks to my memories of her as a little girl.
The entire dream I am torn between being scared out of my mind of the stampeding elephant and feeling an intense sadness and compassion for it because it is a beautiful creature that was not only forced into servitude but provoked into this reaction by the ignorance of others, and yet I knew that when the dust settled, it would come out looking like the villain. There was no good way to express solidarity with the elephant while also saving my own ass from being trampled. (It was an unnaturally huge elephant, like a mammoth-sized elephant. Larger than an African bull elephant but I don't think it had tusks.)
