rat

I am with a friend on the corner of Wolfe and King Streets in Newcastle. We are trying to catch a rat that is in a drain. There is a large rectangular grate on top of the drain and the rat keeps poking its head out an opening to the side of the grate. The rat looks more like a Tasmanian Devil than a rat. We cover the drain and the grate with our quilt. The quilt is queen-size and filled with feathers, without any cover on it. I can see the diagonal diamond shaped stitching and the yellowing of the quilt. We have a conversation with some people and arrange to leave Newcastle for a few days. We collect the quilt, checking to see if we have caught the rat—we haven’t—and take it into the apartment building on the corner. As we carry it, I notice rat droppings on the quilt and shake it out. We take it upstairs and into an apartment, but there are two young men sitting in the armchairs in the lounge room; we have walked into the wrong apartment. We go into the next apartment but this isn’t the right one either. We climb the stairs and check all of the apartments, but none of them are where we live. I remember that the access to our unit is actually on Wolfe Street not King Street, so we walk back down the stairs, out onto the footpath, round the corner, and in the door on Wolfe Street. We return the quilt to our apartment and decide to get it dry-cleaned upon our return. I look out the window at the blue sky over the ocean and wonder why I am leaving. We decide to go to one of the restaurants across the road for a meal, but I can’t remember which ones are good. I realise that it has been a long time since I lived here.

purple & slavery

I was sitting at a low wooden table in a beautiful candle-lit room. A low-set brown wooden table was covered in ornaments that I had bought to decorate the room: amethyst glasses, aubergine vases, violet cushions. I was dicing a purple onion. My friend and another man came to visit. I was so very pleased to see him, but he was somewhat distant. He told me stories about the women he had spent time with on his birthday.

Later, I was walking through my old high school with an old friend. We were between classes and were not sure which class we should be going to next, so we decided to go and have a coffee or a drink. We walked around the edge of the school yard until we reached the other end of the sprawling set of buildings. We walked in and out of school rooms that had become shops and cafes, looking for somewhere to sit for a while. We inadvertently ventured into a crowded bar playing loud music and immediately went to leave again. My friend A was ahead of me and went through the swinging wooden door. The door swung back and I was trapped inside for a moment, before I pushed the door open and joined her outside. Two men followed us out of the bar and forced us to join them; we were being kidnapped to be sold overseas. I objected and told them I was almost forty, but the men were certain that we would fetch a good price. My friend walked down the stairs and I observed how beautiful she looked. I followed close behind, but rather than walking on the stairs, I floated slightly above them. One man said we would need to do something about my crooked toe, but I looked at my feet and couldn’t see any bent or crooked toes, and felt fearful that he would break and reset the bones of my feet. My feet looked normal to me, although I was floating down the staircase.

flying & swimming in blue

I was in an apartment, high up, overlooking a city and the harbour. I watched as a man, who was somehow an extension of me, stood at the window and made large circles with his hands which were resting just above the glass, not quite touching the pane. The heat from his hands caused steamy streaks to appear, leaving circular patterns on the window. It was evidence of his aliveness, of his life. I passed through the glass and flew out over the harbour. The sky was bright azure and the water below was a deep cobalt blue. As I crossed the waters and reached the opposite side of the harbour, I saw an ocean baths below. I turned and flew above the baths, noticing the white diving blocks at either end of the pool. There was a solitary swimmer lapping the pool using a freestyle stroke. I was excited that I had discovered the pool and decided to swim there in the future. I swooped down into the water outside the baths in the heart of the harbour, plunging into the cold blue. My body immersed in water felt wonderful. I could see a school of fish swimming by. I reached out and closed my hand around a small fish. I could feel it flicking against my palm until I opened my hand, releasing it.

child & broken house

I am walking up the hill to visit an old friend, an old love. I am inside his house along with a group of other people, mainly youth. I am the outsider but I am interested in seeing where he lives and what he is up to. I take a seat with the group, around a table in a space upstairs looking over the living space and divided from the living area only by the height difference and a large bookshelf with square holes to house books and ornaments. I am sitting with my back against the wall, facing the bookshelf, and can see through the square holes, down to the room below and the street outside the house. A small animal or child (I am not sure which) edges along the other side of the table, to a particular shelf in the bookcase and begins to push the ornaments – red glasses and crystal vases – out of the hole so that he can sit on the shelf. My friend catches the ornaments as they are dislodged, patient with the creature and kind. Suddenly, the animal/child dislodges something crucial to the structure of the house and everything begins to fall down; the upper room, the bookshelf, the table and all of the ornaments, avalanching down the walls and landing in the living space below. Smashing and crashing sounds fill the room for a moment. Everyone is alright but the house is wrecked. Broken glass and shelves are everywhere. The child (that is now definitely a small boy) is standing, pale and abashed. I ask him if he would like me to hold him, and he curls up on my lap. I cradle him in my arms, against my chest, and rock gently. He is upset and I tell him that it is OK, mistakes happen. Everything will be alright.

old neighbourhood & niece

I was in the car with my family, driving around the streets of our old neighbourhood – the neighbourhood of my teenage years. I was sitting in the back seat, on the left-hand side, where I sat as a child. We drove up the road around the corner from our house and observed that the people who lived in the houses lining the street—large brick houses with concrete verandahs and brick arches framing them—were standing or sitting outside, filing their nails whilst eavesdropping on each other. We drove around the corner and parked on the street outside our house. We hopped out of the car and I looked up at our house; it seemed much smaller than it used to be and much older. I could see patches of vivid green moss growing on the walls and dark water stains colouring the brick. We walked up and around corner of our block and stood on the other side of the house. The car turned into a smallish bus and I was standing with my family talking about presents for my niece. I realised that I had not given her the present that I had bought for her last year, and now, only a year later, she had outgrown the present – it was too childish for her. I stepped off the sidewalk, climbed the couple of stairs and went into the bus. My niece was inside sorting out her things and I noticed that the present was dropped on the floor. I picked it up and gave it to her – it was unopened. She opened it, unwrapping dark pink satin fabric studded with diamantes, to reveal a gold necklace: a fine chain holding a pendant of her name, written in a cursive script. I asked her if she liked it and she said that she didn’t; I was right, she had outgrown it. I found her honesty refreshing and asked her what sort of things she liked, what her tastes were. We sat next to each other on a seat that ran along the side wall of the bus, my arm around her, and flicked through the pages of a beautiful magazine. We looked at clothing, décor, food and more. It was exciting and I was happy to discover that I enjoyed a similar aesthetic.

rock pool

I am in the water, far out at sea. The ocean is dark, brooding. I swim under the water for a long time and I breathe easily. The night is cool and clear as I swim up to the surface. Although I am still hundreds of miles from the shore, I find an intricate series of rock pools. I stand on a rock in the black glassy water and gaze down into one of the pools. Something moves. Someone is next to me and she says it is a great white. I wonder how a shark that big can fit in the small rock pool, but realise that the pools are all linked under the water by connecting tunnels. The shark may be swimming from one rock pool to another, through the maze, finding its way back into the open sea. We have to go back under the water, but before we go, we arm ourselves with a heavy rocks, one in each hand, selected from the shallows of the rock pools. We will throw the rocks at the shark if it attacks us. I wonder how the rock will have any impact, how I will throw it with any force, under the water. We dive back into the pool and swim down through inky chambers, through weed and cold currents of water, into a cavern under the sea. Although the cavern is submerged deep under the ocean, the floor is a carpet of rock pools and the rest of the cave is filled with air, not water. We emerge from under the water but stay standing in the rock pool. There are two women sitting on a rock at the rear of the cave. They seem preoccupied. We ask them if they have seen the shark but they do not hear us or acknowledge us.

trapped

I was walking down a street late at night. The street became an alley and the alley became a narrow lane. A group of young men crowded the lane and I had no way of escaping. The leader of the group cornered me and injected me with something, the needle not shaped like a standard syringe, instead having several points like a spur. He rolled it across the skin of my stomach, the barbs piercing my skin and the poison flooding my system. I was horrified that some unknown substance was in my body. I could feel my stomach and the right side of my face swelling. I tried to walk out of the lane but the group walked with me. I pretended to be at ease with them, even enjoying their company, but I was afraid and repulsed by their closeness and their scent.

Later, I was in my home and the leader of the group was hanging around the windows, looking in. I wanted to be rid of him. Even when he left with the group, I walked into the kitchen and there were his clothes, dirty and rank, lying on the bench. I could smell him.
I went to seek protection. B and her new friend Lan, a Chinese martial artist, decided to eliminate him.

Next, I was part of a family, a man’s daughter, but I was not myself and the man was not my real life father. We, my father, sister and I, were visiting another man whose house was very interesting; many aspects of the house were automated. In the garage was a false floor, suspended about a metre off the ground, made from ropes woven together like a net and stretched tautly across the entire space. The net provided a sturdy platform on which to lie or sit, but not to stand as our feet could slip through the holes. We each sat at different sides of the net, facing each other—my sister and I were against the long side walls of the garage, while the man and my father were against the two end walls that were both open to the outdoors. The two men were talking. Suddenly, the man pressed a button and the net began to rise up toward the ceiling. It moved slowly higher and higher and the men managed to slip off the net and go outside, whilst my sister and I were trapped, pinned against the ceiling. My sister wriggled her way out of the net too. I called out for help, again and again. Finally, they heard me and came back, but in the meantime, I rolled down toward an open-walled end of the room, the space between the net and the ceiling increasing as I neared the opening, and slipped out. I was embarrassed that I had had to ask for help and then not needed it.

flying

I was outside in a vast grassy space, very near the beach. I wanted to catch a particular bird, a grey pigeon, so I decided to fly. I had two pieces of beautiful red fabric and I held a piece in each hand. I lifted my arms and willed myself up, the wind catching the fabric and sweeping me into the sky. I was flying, using both the force of the wind and my faith in the flight. I flew up and around in giant circles, enjoying the sensation of being in the air. I spiraled over the ocean and up over the cliffs. I saw birds in flight: ducks, seagulls, and even a black swan. I flew over to the swan, wrapped my arms around its neck, kissed it on its bill, and told it that I thought it was beautiful. I then flew back down to the ground, still looking for the pigeon. I thought I would again alight and so I stretched my arms out, the red fabric acting like sails on the wind, and took off into the sky. I rode the currents of air, searching for the elusive bird. I could see far out to sea. I could see people moving about below. Eventually I landed and someone told me that they had seen the pigeon bathing in the ocean baths. I set out to find her.

moving house

We were moving house. Everything was packed into boxes, ready to go. A truck was coming and I was looking over everything for the final time.

Later, we were again at home, but this time everything was in its place. We were going out but there was a sense that someone was coming to look at the house while we were out—a landlord or a prospective buyer perhaps. I hid some papers in the cushion of our lounge; I simply swept my hand over the fabric of the cushion, the fabric parted so that I could lay the papers inside, and then swept my hand back across the cushion, the fabric closing over once again. We then made sure that everything was tidy and in order. Just as we were about to leave, I noticed some grape stems and other matter on the floor that needed to be picked up. I fixed it and we left the house.

cradle

I was sitting on the ground, cross-legged, talking to a child who was sitting on a bench, slightly above me. She was about ten years old; a beautiful Chinese girl. As I spoke with her, I became aware of a much younger child sitting on my right hand side, leaning into me and holding my hand. She was another beautiful Chinese girl, about four years old. As I spoke with the older child, I gently rocked sideways, back and forth, so that I was rocking the younger child, holding her hand. I wanted to cradle her so I picked her up and put her across my legs, and as I did so, she changed so that she was much smaller, a baby, inside a cradle that was shaped like a shoebox. She was lying in the deepest half off the shoebox, and the lid was hinged to the base. The cradle was made from wood. I held the cradle in my arms and noticed that there was an ornate silver mirror kept inside the lid. It was as long as the baby. I took the mirror out and saw that it was engraved with butterflies and birds, with some shimmering details painted in yellow. I put the mirror back into the lid and saw that there was liquid in the lid. I took the mirror out again and wiped under it to protect it. When I put it back in, I looked at the baby and she had changed again. Now she was an old, old woman, but she was still the shape and size of a baby, lying in the cradle. Her face was so old it was almost alien; a tiny bluish woman. I looked at the mirror again and now it was engraved with skulls and bones. It was still very ornate but it looked terribly old and mystical. The cradle now resembled a miniature coffin. The woman spoke to me, telling me that she was ready to die, and I was to rock her to death. I was to help her transition from this life into another.

dark clouds

We were walking along the footpath of Coronation Drive, on the river side, heading out of the city. Ahead, we could see dark grey rain clouds behind the buildings of Toowong. As we watched, the clouds multiplied, clouds birthing clouds birthing clouds with alarming speed. The clouds spread, baby clouds billowing out of larger clouds, rushing across the sky in a wave that quickly spread darkness over the entire city. It was incredible and we knew that something enormous, some huge event was about to happen - a powerful storm or the omen of change. We ran to a bus stop and boarded a bus, needing to get to our destination as fast as we could. First, we sat on a seat that was attached to the outside of the bus. A metal drawer came loose above me and opened, hitting me on the head. We moved inside the bus and sat on a seat on the left-hand side. Again, something hit me on the head. B was beside me and she was very tired. I was aware of contacting my loved ones to check they were safe.