money

I was in my sister’s bedroom, in the house our family built and lived in when we were teenagers. I was looking in the top drawer of a chest of drawers. Jewellry boxes and crystal bowls holding necklaces, rings and brooches were neatly arranged inside the drawer. Behind one of the boxes, discreetly stored toward the back of the drawer, was a bundle of money. $50 and $100 notes placed on top of each other, curled around into a tight wad, held in place with a rubber band. There looked to be at least $15,000 - $20,000. Folded neatly amidst the notes, was a small envelope with the top torn open. I knew that the money inside the envelope was mine and I tried to remember how much I had left in there. In need of money, I removed the envelope from the rest of the notes and replaced my sister’s savings in her hiding spot behind the box and closed the drawer. I opened the envelope, expecting to see a couple of $50 notes, but was dismayed to find a stash of monopoly money, lots of black & white $1 notes and a few $5s. I tried, but failed, to count the money, noticing that each note was printed on one side only. Just then, my sister came into the room, opened the drawer and added a few more $100 notes to her savings. I wondered how she had managed to save so much whilst my money had not only dwindled, but turned into a useless currency. She looked radiant in the early morning golden light that was streaming through the bedroom windows, and I admired her discipline. I vowed to find a way to, with discipline, work and save.

pink party

We were on the verandah of a house in the suburb of Newcastle where I grew up. I have never in waking life been into the house, although I had childhood friends, identical twins, who lived across the road from the house, and I used to go their house to play when I was young. B and I were standing under the awning, talking about the party we were hosting that evening at her restaurant. I had forgotten about the party until that day, and I was trying to remember if I had contacted everyone. I was not sure if I had actually invited G, the person for whom the party was being held. B, very unusually, was wearing pale pink eye shadow and mascara. I asked her about it teasingly and pinched her. We went inside and there were three old women sitting in armchairs in the living room. I realised that they could probably see and possibly hear B and I when we were talking outside the window, and felt a little embarrassed as our interaction had been private. I went into the kitchen and a few people who were coming to the party arrived, bringing trays of food with them. They were people I haven’t seen since my teenage years and they had brought food I haven’t eaten for about thirty years – lolly pink coconut ice and slices topped with glazed artificial cherries. Sweet pink things.

word play

Last night I dreamed I was in a classroom, sitting at a wooden desk in the front row, toward the right hand side of the room. There were a few other people in the class, seated at the back on the same side of the room. We asked the teacher to teach us something of words. He wrote the word SPICE in capital letters with white chalk on the blackboard at the front of the room. He wrote it in such a way as to disguise the word: the letters undulated and there were other added lines around each letter, like the patterns of bark. The idea was to recognise the word, to read it though it was camouflaged by pattern. He then drew a picture of a head that had a few sets of eyes and had what looked like three hives growing from the face. Insects (bees or wasps) buzzed around the head. It was a pun on the word HIVES, which he wrote in capitals next to the drawing; the person had hives.

[There would have been nothing remarkable in this, but today I was looking at Qweekend, the colour magazine included with The Courier Mail, and there was a cartoon by Storti depicting just that: a man at a doctor’s surgery with a hive for a head and some bees flying around his head/hive. The doctor said, “The bees are nothing to worry about. They’re just one of the symptoms that tell me you’ve got hives.” Why why why? Is it just coincidence or a dream of significance; and if significant – how?]

shoe game

I was at a party in a large room. Everyone there seemed to be someone from my past, friends and acquaintances, primarily harking from my teenage years. There was some sort of game beginning. Each person had to remove one shoe and place it on the ground. Someone else would pick up the shoe, unaware of its owner, and find the person to whom the shoe belonged. My friend C removed her shoe and I noticed that it had mud on it. I wanted my shoe to be clean, so I raced to the bathroom and removed my shoe (ivory high heels quite unlike anything I own in waking life) and washed the heel and sole underneath the tap in the hand basin. I went back into the crowded room where the game was underway. I realised that I was too late to play.

crows

I was in the bedroom of the house that my family built and lived in throughout my teenage years. The wall between my sister’s room and mine was not there—it was one large space with windows on three sides. It was very early in the morning, around dawn, and I was lying in bed, gazing out the window, watching some crows that were flying outside. I observed the shape of their wings as they flew, the outline of their feathers against the sky, spread out and scalloped. I noticed the shape of their feet, tucked back and blown about a little by the wind. I admired the jet crows and the azure sky.
I decided to take some photographs using a zoom lens and moved across the room to another window where the crows were now circling. I aimed the camera, focusing on the crows, but as I looked through the eyepiece, they moved out of focus and seemed to be coming toward me. I looked without the camera and they had flown to me and were sitting on the window sill, eyeing me curiously and looking around the bedroom. I closed the window enough that they couldn’t get through the narrow gap, but I liked their presence. I then noticed some cows that were mulling around at the edge of a grassy reserve down below the house. I pointed the camera at them, zooming in to take some close up photographs. Upon zooming in, I could see that the cows had very unusual patchwork hides in appealing shades of creamy pink, light brown, sand and mud white, and they were slightly elongated or abstracted in shape. I photographed the cows.
The crows circled in the sky once more and I enjoyed watching them quietly.

soil

I was very anxious. I knew that I needed to be calm and I thought that if I could go to the nursery, walk into the cool air of the fernery, and stay a while in the green shade with my feet on the soft black soil in the company of the plants, I would be calm. There I would relax, breathing deeply, in the seclusion of the garden. I thought this but I did not go there. Next, a woman was walking barefoot on a wooden bench that was anchored to the ground in cement, balancing as she stepped toward me. I reached up to help her step off the bench and down onto the ground—I wanted to help her balance. As I extended my hand to her, I could see that my arm was covered with soil up to my elbow. My arm was strong.

crocodile

There was a small crocodile, about a metre long, scuttling about at my feet. We, a friend and I, were trying to walk up the hill but the crocodile kept snapping its mouth open and shut, like a wind-up toy, trying to bite us. Its jaw was slightly disjointed, unhinged, so that it rattled a little with each bite. I was trying to stop it from biting us without hurting it in the process, so I repeatedly grabbed its snout, clamping its mouth shut, and threw the little crocodile a short way away, throwing it in such a way as it would land on its feet. Again and again, it ran back toward us, snapping its jaws at our heels.