Chinese Astrology Needs a Raven

Image from Earthsong Tiles

Hearing people's dreams is boring, less boring than watching vacation videos, but still...
Having said that, instead of wishing you a happy Chinese New Year, I will now tell you of my last night's last dream, but only the bit that matters:

Inside a large house whose floor was inexplicably scattered with leaves and twigs, I was horrified to discover myself walking over the severed wings and halves of dead ravens. They were cleanly split into mirror images as if they'd been made from molds like chocolate rabbits. I began screaming, even knowing it was useless and silly, and only screamed louder after finding a gray dove snacking on one of the impeccable cadavers.

After I awoke and checked my e-mail, Reference.com which has just enhanced its On This Day feature, informed me that Edgar Allen Poe's poem, The Raven, was first published in the New York Evening Mirror on this day in 1845. Ooooooohhh.

The whole entry was interesting, but I found it most fascinating that Poe identified guilt not as specific regret but as perverseness, the desire for self-destruction. Follow the link above for the text and MP3 of the poem after a great overview, interpretation, publication history, and list of who's been inspired from The Alan Parsons Project to The Simpsons, also includingTerry Pratchett's Quoth, my favorite raven, who's only in it for the eyeballs.