Eating the book

I dreamed I was somewhere away from home -- in a hotel room, I think, with some family members -- and I was reading a book. This was a very thick blue or green paperback, and on the cover was nothing but an oval-shaped black-and-white photograph of James Joyce. I don't think the book was actually by Joyce, though, although it was certainly thick enough to be Ulysses. Something about the typeface and punctuation gave a strong 19th-century impression, and when I tried to picture the author, I got an image of a professorial-looking man from that era, with a receding hairline and a heavy beard. I though it might be either William James or Éliphas Lévi. I don't have a clear idea of the content of the book or even of the language, but I'm sure it was a modern European language (perhaps English, French, or Italian), and that many of the paragraphs began with em-dashes. Reading it gave me the exhilarating feeling of seeing puzzle pieces fit together.

I decided to eat the last page of the book. It came apart in my mouth like pastry and had a light honey-like flavor. For a moment I reproached myself for this stupid mistake -- How could I finish reading the book now that I'd eaten the last page? -- but then I remembered that I had another copy of the same book at home, so it was no big deal.

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The idea of eating a book and having it taste like honey is biblical, and this dream may have been influenced by my fairly recent (February 22) reading of Ezekiel 2 and 3:

"But thou, son of man, hear what I say unto thee; Be not thou rebellious like that rebellious house: open thy mouth, and eat that I give thee."

And when I looked, behold, an hand was sent unto me; and, lo, a roll of a book was therein; and he spread it before me; and it was written within and without: and there was written therein lamentations, and mourning, and woe.

Moreover he said unto me, "Son of man, eat that thou findest; eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel."

So I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that roll.

And he said unto me, "Son of man, cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll that I give thee. Then did I eat it; and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness."

And he said unto me, "Son of man, go, get thee unto the house of Israel, and speak with my words unto them. For thou art not sent to a people of a strange speech and of an hard language, but to the house of Israel; not to many people of a strange speech and of an hard language, whose words thou canst not understand" (Ezek. 2:8-3:6).

The language of the hand being "sent" also parallels what Daniel told Belshazzar about the writing on the wall:

And thou . . . hast lifted up thyself against the Lord of heaven; . . . and the God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified. Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written (Dan. 5:22-24).

John of Patmos -- whose Revelation is, among other things, a synthesis of the various Old Testament prophets -- reports an experience similar to Ezekiel's:

And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud: and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire: and he had in his hand a little book open . . . .

And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, "Go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth."

And I went unto the angel, and said unto him, "Give me the little book."

And he said unto me, "Take it, and eat it up; and it shall make thy belly bitter, but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey."

And I took the little book out of the angel's hand, and ate it up; and it was in my mouth sweet as honey: and as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter.

And he said unto me, "Thou must prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues, and kings" (Rev. 10:1-2, 8-11).

Unlike Ezekiel, who is specifically told that he does not have to speak "to many people of a strange speech," John is instructed to "prophesy again before many peoples, and nations, and tongues."

I think the honey-like flavor of all these books is probably an allusion to manna -- "the taste of it was like wafers made with honey" (Ex. 16:31) -- which symbolized the word of God:

And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live (Deut. 8:3).

Recent syncs have implicitly brought up the idea of eating a book, as the golden plates of the Book of Mormon have been connected with the breakfast cereals Kellogg's Corn Flakes and Hidden Treasures. (see "A chameleon (or salamander) shifting trees -- this is cereal, guys!") Just as Ezekiel and John must eat a book before prophesying, Patrick tells William Alizio that he must finish eating all the Hidden Treasures before he can deliver his message (the message being "We have come to take you away").

Just yesterday I was at the supermarket to buy cocoa powder, and I saw that they had two kinds of Kellogg's Corn Flakes for sale: "Classic" and "Honey Flavor."