strange

Dreamed mid March 2007
I went into a very large toilet cubicle. There was a young Chinese man standing inside with his back to the toilet. I was wearing a white singlet top and a voluminous bright yellow silk skirt. I raised the skirt, the folds of fabric slipping against each other, making a whispering swishing sound, and sat on the toilet seat, exposing my thighs. The man turned, and told me that he liked male anatomy. I answered that I am happy with who I am.
I left the cubicle and was in a small book and music shop. There was music playing—a female vocalist singing about a blackbird and the lost horizon—and a grey-bearded man of about seventy was standing behind the counter, serving customers. I went to the counter with my purse and waited my turn, not knowing what I was going to buy. He turned to me and put three cds in a bag, all by the same female vocalist, and wanted me to take them for free. I felt I must buy something from him to warrant the gift, so he helped my look through the shop for something suitable. He went to a wooden stand by the street-level window and pulled a video off the shelf with a picture of a mountain and a valley on the front cover, asking if my family had a video recorder. I told him that they did but it was old and made a scratching sound. Instead, he pulled an atlas from the shelf with a blue cover, and I felt certain that this was the book to buy; it cost around $30. We went back to the counter whilst we made the transaction and by now he had changed into a woman of the same age. She was trying to tell me something and I was trying to listen to her, but there were two old women on my left, both on my side of the counter, talking loudly, their voices penetrating, even hurting my ears. I tried to quiet them, telling them that I wanted to hear what the saleswoman had to say.
Next, I was in a bedroom, sitting on the carpeted floor, a couple of metres from the foot of the queen-sized bed. I was playing the cds that the man/woman had given me. There was a young woman asleep in the bed and I was concerned about disturbing her. I decided to move my things—the cds, some bottles of nail polish, a couple of bottles of perfume, and the atlas—to my own room. Brenda helped me move them and I remember worrying that we would make the room untidy. Brenda told me not to worry, that everything would be OK, that it is fine to leave things out of place. She also said to notice the season.
I realised that summer was changing into autumn and, although I love the cool, I felt the pang of time passing, the regret of losing the summer afternoons, the warm days shortening. I was then outside, following a train track though travelling above the track, just moving through the air. I was travelling through the suburbs where I grew up, watching the angle of the sun and seeing the backyards of very suburban houses. I saw how much the area had changed, how what used to be a scrubby creek haunted by dragonflies and mosquitoes, had become houses perched either side as though it were a kind of waterfront. I could see an old woman with dyed black hair sleeping in the sun, propped on a worn couch in the yard, half sitting, half lying, with her head lolling to one side. I could see buckets and pieces of car, scattered in the yards.
Further along, I saw a billboard that was playing an advertisement for the area. It talked of regeneration and the environment and featured a species of green frog that was apparently enjoying the new development. The advertisement ended and the billboard returned to a still picture depicting the frog hiding under a leafy plant so that only its eyes were visible. They looked creepy, the eyes possibly belonging to another, more sinister creature.
I then realised that I was no longer travelling above the track but I was moving through very shallow water—I was floating, sitting up, down the creek between the backyards, surrounded by bush, and there was someone with me. I could feel something wound around my back, perhaps a vine from one of the trees, and it pulled me faster through the murky water. I then saw that it was a very long brown snake, its body curled around me, its head and tail disappearing ahead in the water. I felt mounting terror and my body though moving forward, was immobilised by my fear. I wanted it away from me. Suddenly I was freed and I was enormously relieved.
I then noticed two babies playing in the ankle deep water – one blue-eyed, the other brown. I felt protective of them however, at intervals they transformed into strange brown snakes which watched us, poised, waiting to strike, at times rearing up behind my back—I felt horrified. One snake turned back into the brown-eyed baby whilst the other snake slid over and stared at me with blue eyes. Knowing I might anger it but not knowing what else to do, I threw a grey blanket over the snake but it kept slithering out. In desperation, I grabbed the snake, gripping it around the throat with my right hand, jut below its head, my left hand holding it further down its body. Its teeth could only just reach my fist and it tried in vain to bite my hand, its body writhing violently. A large pink protrusion like a tongue began to emerge from its mouth, poking out and then dividing into three sections – a forked tongue. Its tongue lashed at me, one section sticking to my fist like a leech and burning my skin. It became a test of wills and, despite the scalding sensation from the snake’s tongue still sucking at my hand and its furious thrashing body, I held onto the snake.