The Egg

In this dream I found what appeared to be a root-ball that had been partially uprooted. Thinking I was doing a good deed I dug a shallow hole and planted it. I was told, shortly thereafter, by panicked locals, that this plant was a dangerous thing, highly invasive, so I dug it up. However, I was unwilling to simply let it die, so I replanted it down the road, in an unpromising stretch of overgrown, shaded woods.

I later saw terrified children digging it back up and depositing it gingerly - wearing protective gloves - in a dilapidated garbage pail, which was left there when they fled. I learned that this particular plant will take advantage of wherever it is planted and still be dangerous.

It seems that it is not so much a plant, in the way we normally think of plants, as an idea - an egg. It had been disturbed prematurely, wakened at the wrong time, and was now on a different path than it would have had it been allowed to ripen fully. There was no hope for it to revert to its former benign nature - the only answer was to keep it from rooting at all, and slowly die and be reborn.

These eggs, these ideas, when discovered just under the surface, must be either immediately recognized, understood and put to use - ripe - or immediately reburied before they could waken, as this one had, angry and vengeful, like a furious genii, dangerous to all. The markings on the surface could be read clearly if the egg was ready, and it was the grave responsibility of the finder to determine if the egg should be re-interred or brought fully awake. Sadly the one I had found had already been disturbed but not recognized for what it was, allowed to begin to waken and grow out of season. In a way it was good that I had found it, so it could be properly enclosed in a place it could not grow.

Nobody was happy if a disturbed egg had to be allowed to wither - who knew what great help it could have been if it had been able to complete its maturation. In its next incarnation it might be something completely different - still potentially useful, but the lost idea was mourned by all.