houses

Dreamed the night of 4th April 2007
I dreamed of looking for a home. We, myself and another woman, were searching long streets of houses. We had found a house and were going back for a second viewing. Upon entering the house, it looked more shabby and depressing than I had remembered it and I suddenly recalled that I had lived there before. I had entirely forgotten about a year of my life in this house and I knew that I did not want to live there again. The loungeroom was at the front of the house, the floor sloping disconcertingly downward to the street and covered in a grey based floral carpet that was curling upward at the edges. I poked my head around the corner and could see an old kitchen under yellow light and remembered that the bedroom was down a hall to the left of the kitchen; an awkwardly designed home with no flow between the rooms.

There was a small girl with curling dark brown hair in the loungeroom. She was about four years old. She walked out the back into the yard and then into a different part of the house. I followed her and found her sitting in front of a fireplace, cutting her hair. She asked me to help her, so I took the blunt scissors and started to cut off ringlets of her hair, until it was quite short. Her mother came into the room and admired the haircut. I felt relieved as I thought she may have disapproved.

I then left the house, at times driving and at times walking, around the streets, looking for my home. I understood that I was in a suburb on top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. I found myself moving down a street that ended in a cul-de-sac curved around a park. There were families relaxing, children playing and groups of women talking in the park. I drove down to the end of the street, intending to turn around, but drove straight into the water, a pond that skirted the edges of the street. The women watched as I climbed out of the water, pulling my car after me, and drove away.

Later, I was in a house that Brenda and I were house-minding. The owners were due to come home and so we cleaned the house from top to bottom, taking everything out of each room, thoroughly cleaning the room, and then replacing the furniture, sorting any rubbish as we went. I was trying to make everything fresh and beautiful.

Lastly, I was in the passenger seat of a car and we were driving down a wide, undulating street toward the ocean, rising and dipping with each wave in the road. The waves were echoed by the waves of the ocean that we could see stretched out below us. Everything was vivid blue and sparkling, glittering even: the sky, the ocean, the very air. I felt very happy and free.