rescue

I was with my family, driving along a road in the late afternoon. It was a grey day and the waning light was casting shadows across our path of the tall trees growing either side of the road. We started to drive over a bridge crossing a river, wide enough for only one car. At the crest of the small bridge, a car sat, blocking the way, its doors open and with no-one inside. We knew that whoever had been inside the car needed our help—we knew they were in the river. We all hopped out of the car and ran to the edge of the bridge to the right of the car and, sure enough, we could see something floating on the water. We ran down to the river and my father and mother jumped into the water, urging me to stay on the bank. My father rescued a woman with long brown hair and a very pink face, whilst my mother pulled out of the water a little girl with blonde hair—the woman’s daughter. When they were on the bank I connected particularly with the little girl; I felt bonded to her. They had a terrible problem with a man, who I understood to be a family member (possibly her older brother or the woman’s husband) who terrorised them. Suddenly he was there, dragging the little girl away by the arm, and I called after her to get a restraining order, to get out. We couldn’t stop them being taken away. I began to cry and my mother affirmed the connection I had had with the child. We went back to the car.

church

I was inside a small church with a high ceiling, stained glass windows and sandy cement rendered walls. There was a fireplace built into the wall at the front of the church, directly underneath the largest of the stained glass windows, where an alter would usually have been. I was tending the flames and trying to catch the small sticks that had tumbled out of the fire and onto the stone floor, catching alight the tinder that was scattered around the hearth. There were other people milling around the fire. Finally, I seemed to have the fire contained to the fireplace, so I stood back, toward the centre of the church, and looked up to the central stained glass window. There was light streaming through the window, red, yellow and colourless glass creating a pattern like a mandala. Suddenly, there was a great shift in the feeling of the room and the heavy wooden frame of the window dislodged from the wall, the building rumbling with movement. Everyone began to scream and I raised my voice in a kind of singing wail, both to echo and to sing the sound of the walls collapsing. The window began to cave in, glass shattering and creamy gold walls turning to rubble around me. I woke with the sound of my voice still ringing in my ears and a sensation of something like pins and needles in my whole body.

house on the corner

I was driving down a street of my childhood neighbourhood, past a house on the corner that I often seem to visit in my dreams. The road was blocked by logs and debris but I was determined to get through. There was a man on the upstairs verandah of the house signaling to me, the father of the girl I knew who actually lived in the house, and I wanted to avoid his eye. I stepped outside my car, picked it up easily as though it were something light, and placed it on a path just wide enough to accommodate the car. I drove away.
Next,I was at a wedding that seemed to be set in the backyard of the house in the prior scene - the same neighbourhood house. A friend of my mother’s was there, hosting the wedding. She was warm and hospitable but I was worried about being there. The crowd seemed to have a protocol and dress code that was beyond me. I found some yoghurt and mixed it in a bowl with some honey and almonds, eating it as a sort of comfort food. I stayed for as long as was necessary and then left, aware that I was leaving at the earliest opportunity but feeling as though I had done my duty.

lolita

Lolita as an old, old woman, is the muse for an elderly painter, a woman in her late seventies. I can see them interacting in the home of the painter. Her paint tins and brushes are around the rooms of the house and, prominently, there are splashes of deep blue on canvases and walls. I am not sure if Lolita is alive; I think she is a ghost. She sits in front of the large wooden framed window which is open, and the white curtains are billowing gently in the breeze behind her. She watches the painter, large eyes in a wrinkled face, following her movements. I am somehow connected to the women although they cannot see me.

snake of sleep

The great white snake of sleep uncoiled from where it was resting at the foot of the bed. It slid across the floor, its huge python body winding its way through our home and out the front door. It slipped under the next door neighbours’ front door, silently gliding into the room where they were awake, after midnight, watching the television. I could hear them laughing from where I was still lying, eyes closed, in my bed. I could see the ghostly snake with its big head and flickering tongue, as it moved up the back of the armchair and slowly wound its vast length around the ignorant body of the loudest neighbour. It curled up and around his body, gradually tightening its coils until the sleep came. In the following silence, the snake of sleep slipped back down onto the floor and slithered around the skirting boards of the apartment, under the doors and back into our bedroom. We heard the neighbours again, the volume up on the television. The python turned and wound its way, faster, back through the rooms to where the neighbours were laughing. This time, the snake coiled around one body, constricting firmly, and lowered its wide open mouth over the head of the other, swallowing him whole. Silence fell on their household as they fell asleep. The snake returned to our bedroom, looped its vast white form into a curl at the foot of the bed, and closed its eyes.

cooking for people

I was serving two old women who were sitting at a round table in a room, much like the ‘sunroom’ of the house that I lived in with my family when I was a teenager. They were waiting for me to give them something to eat. I suggested a delicious soup that I had cooked made from zucchini, broccoli and other green vegetables, and another dish that I had cooked earlier. I saw my parents in the hall, so I also asked if they would like food. I went to the kitchen to prepare the meals and discovered that there was only a very small amount of food left, only enough for one person. I was anxious as I didn’t have enough time to make anything as good, and so I rummaged through the refrigerator, trying to find something that I might add to the soup so as to be able to feed everybody.
Later, after a whole chapter of the dream that I cannot clearly recall now, I was again searching for food related items. I was staying somewhere where there were quite a lot of other people, living with them in dormitory style accommodation. I was walking up to the kitchen block, set amidst the Australian bush, treading carefully as I was barefoot and nervous of spiders and other insects. I climbed the few steps to the verandah and crossed the wooden floor, into the kitchen area itself. It was run down and there were kitchen utensils everywhere. I handled a pair of tongs, again worried about spiders hiding in the crevices of the tong handles, as everything had been abandoned for some time, and opened cupboards and drawers nervously. I wanted to find the right things – tongs, saucepan etc – so that I could cook for the people at the site.

boat

I was standing in a small row boat with B. The boat was rocking on the waves, tipping; a gentle and rhythmic seesawing. I was trying to iron a white, long-sleeved business shirt. As I was ironing one sleeve, the other would dip into the water. I would try to iron that sleeve dry and another part of the shirt would be lapped by the ocean swell. Eventually, I put the shirt aside. As we talked, B and I could see a young boy in an even smaller boat than ours, a little further out to sea. He was facing the shore, looking back at us. Behind him, a giant grey and shiny-scaled fish was moving through the water, as long as the largest of blue whales, but most certainly a fish. We watched as it passed behind him, rising up and diving down, so that its gleaming back and fins arched above the water’s surface. The fish seemed to go on and on, inspiring our awe at its mammoth size. All the while, the boy, unaware of the huge fish so close to him, watched us from his little boat.

death

I was observing an old woman whose husband had been dead for some time. She lived in limbo between life and death, resigned to life being something that separated her from her love and must be waited out. She waited for death, wanting to be with him once again.
She had long grey hair that she tied in a knot at the back of her head and was wearing a simple blue and white cotton dress. I watched through the doorway of her bedroom as she straightened the blankets and sheets on her bed. The walls and floor were made from stone, the ceiling from thick wood. The doorway and windows were just open spaces left when building the house. Suddenly, there was a change in the feeling of the room, a shift of vibration, and a low rumbling sound. The old woman sensed it and knew it was her time. Jubilant, she threw off her dress, crying out to her husband that she was coming. She ran across the room toward the door as the ceiling caved in, falling heavily in a slab, on top of her. She died instantly.
I looked at what I could see of her jutting out from under the fallen ceiling and felt sad for her. I wished that her body could have remained in tact—old and beautiful—for her journey to meet her love.

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.