man, joke and mouth

We were in another place, another city, far south of here. I had not been there before but B seemed to know a little about where we were.
I met a dark-skinned man who was dressed in white. He showed me a short story that he had written, typed on several sheets of white paper. I read the story, excited both about the story and about meeting this man with whom I could see a long friendship. I imagined how he would look when he was old and felt that t we could help one another on a creative level.
At dusk, B and I walked the streets, heading to a club. Once there, we sat in the glass-enclosed foyer, waiting to go in. People outside looked in at us as they passed. I felt quite conspicuous. A car pulled up and suddenly we were in the back seat. The driver, whose face was obscured by the shadows, was familiar to me. She had something in her hand that she passed back to us - a tiny photograph - and something about her mock-secretive manner instantly gave her away. It was our good friend C. We all laughed as though she had played a great practical joke.
Next, still in the same city though now in daylight, we visited the man's home. He played loud but pleasant music as he moved about the house, doing his own thing. At one stage, he sat down on the internal stairs and invited me to come over and listen to his heart. I knelt on the steps below him and placed my ear to his chest. His heart beat in time to the music and I could hear his breath, in and out. He then asked me to listen with my other ear. I placed my left ear to his chest and now his heart beat backwards. A clock appeared in the air in front on me and I watched the hands tick backwards, in time with his heart.
Later in the day, as we were preparing for a gathering at his home, the roof of my mouth felt strange, as though there was something stuck to it. I put my fingers in my mouth and pulled out some bones that resembled the rib cage of a bird. I removed more and more bones from the roof of my mouth until my mouth felt normal again. The bones fitted together to form a complete arched skeleton that I reassembled on a white plate.
Later again, in another part of the house, my mouth felt strange once more. I realised that I was chewing gum and so I went into another room to remove it. I pulled at the gum but there seemed to be so much of it; the more I pulled out of my mouth, the more there seemed to be. It was wedged behind my teeth and stuck to the roof of my mouth. I pulled at it until it was all out, a huge wad of chewing gum about the size of my fist. I took it out to show a few people as I was amazed that I had been able to fit so much chewing gum in my mouth. No wonder my mouth had felt strange.

eating hair and transformation

My friend took a huge handful of her hair from her head and began to eat it. I was terribly concerned and attempted to wrestle the hair out of her mouth, but realised that she had already swallowed some of it and I would choke her if I kept pulling at the remaining hair. There was nothing to do but let her finish eating her hair. I told her that next time I saw her eating her hair, I would call a psychiatrist. Immediately, she changed her cavalier attitude and became quite serious. She called a doctor and made an appointment to do something about her health.
We then went into a booth, much like a sound booth, where we began to do some work. Through the glass windows, we could see into the next booth where a group of people were working, though it seemed that they could not see us. We waved at them but to no avail. My friend visited them in their booth and told them to turn off their lights so that they could see us. They did so and those of us remaining in the lighted booth waved again. When they turned the lights back on, it was evident that they had seen us from their enthusiastic response. I too went to visit the other booth. Their equipment was extremely high tech. I recognised two of the men as two boys from my childhood; they had grown into lovely men. They showed us around the incredible equipment, playing wonderful music that was charted on big screens and totally interactive. As we listened, I became aware that I seemed to be fighting gravity, that my body, particularly the crown of my head, was drawn toward the electronic equipment. I had to brace myself to remain standing erect. I was amazed that no one else felt the pull and, so as to see what would occur, I succumbed to it. The top of my head was drawn like a magnet to the equipment and the rest of my body levitated off the ground so that I was almost parallel to the floor. With effort, I could 'climb' down and stand normally, but as soon as I relaxed, my body was lifted off the ground and the crown of my head drawn toward the source of the music. We played around with this for a little while, experimenting with distance from the source, and even when beginning by standing on the other side of the room, my body was attracted and drawn to the electronic equipment. My head felt light and buzzy as though the energy waves had altered my own brain waves.
After we left the booth, I immediately felt my centre of gravity return to normal, though my head still felt light. We walked outside and down a hill overlooking a beach and the ocean. Everything was brilliantly coloured: the sky, the sea, the mountains, the faces of people passing, were all illuminated and rich with vivid colour. I felt transformed by the music/gravity experience and as though now I saw everything anew; everything pulsated with life. We continued down the hill until we were on the shore. A tall hill appeared before us and we wanted to climb the hill for on top was the best place to be to see the sea. My friend climbed the hill easily but as I approached it, the hill changed into a wall covered with tiny pebbles. I felt it was impossible to scale the wall without injury so I approached the hill from a different angle, taking the longer route, winding up a grassy slope. Finally, I arrived on top. People lay naked on the shore, basking in the sunshine, and others paddled in the shallows. Still the colours of the landscape and the people were divine, in fact, the whole scene was heavenly. I stripped off my clothing and lay naked on the sand, relishing the sensuous, delicious experience.

shared spaces - no place of my own

I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor in a vast room, the size of a small church hall. Other mattresses were laid out on the floor all around me in neat lines; the room seemed to be a bedroom for about thirty people although no one else lay sleeping on the mattresses. I roused myself and crossed the room, stepping over the mattresses, into the adjoining room where other people were stirring, and then outside to where other early risers were going about their early morning business. I looked briefly around for my good friend and, upon not finding her, went back into the room where I had slept, determined to go back to sleep. While I had been outside, a few people, both adults and children, had gathered and were sitting on my mattress, talking and laughing quietly. I decided to move to another mattress so as not to have to move them on, but found that I was now unable to get back to sleep.
Next, I was living in a small apartment with my entire family plus a few other people. The apartment had a few security issues and we were all a little on edge as we listened to groups of drunk people pass by our door as they searched for their rooms, up and down the corridor. At one stage, my father ventured outside in order to check the hall and safeguard our apartment. I was concerned and followed him out so I could be by his side to face whatever we must face. Another group of drunken louts rioted down the corridor and mistakenly attempted to enter our apartment, thinking that it was theirs. We blocked the doorway and did our best to move them on, suggesting they try the next floor up. They left and we closed and locked the door. I leant against the door, looked at my father and told him that I was not sure that I could stay here very long, that I wanted to move somewhere safer.

driving, rebirth and pointless tasks

Scattered, strange dreams ...
I was driving around the inner city streets of Brisbane when a man jumped in the car and sat in the passenger's seat. He wanted me to take him to the Convention Centre so I drove around the block and dropped him off at the corner, close to the entrance. I pulled out from the curb and resumed driving but found I was now in the back seat behind the driver's seat so that my vision was extremely obscured. I did my best to navigate around upcoming obstacles, peering out from behind the seat and reaching around to guide the steering wheel, whilst I considered the best way to stop the car without being able to reach the peddles.
Next, I was at my grandmother's house (my grandparents are no longer alive) watching a documentary on "Little Red Riding Hood" and other stories, explaining the symbolism of each character and their character traits. I felt excited about the depth of meaning behind the stories and, somehow, the newfound understanding helped me to make sense of my own life. I was particularly affected by the section on "blindness" of characters indicating that those characters were not only visually impaired but blind to what was going on in the story. In an adjoining room, a group of people were gathered - some old, some around my age. One of the old women had earlier left the group and had taken up residence in a smaller second house, nestled in the back yard behind the main house. I knew that it was time to visit her, that it was part of my duty. I went down the back stairs and into the second house and, once there, several days passed. I had become ill and repeatedly vomited into a plastic container. Eventually, I staggered out of the second house, down the sandy shore of a nearby beach. There, someone showed me a portrait photo of myself that had been creatively treated: my photo, just head and shoulders, was in black and white, and there were hundreds of tiny coloured clocks studded across my forehead and lots of brightly coloured mobile phone faces around my neck. The person who showed me the photo asked me what I thought it meant. I answered that the clocks represented time and the phones technology, that I was racing time to keep up. I noticed that someone had drawn an enormous grid into the sand, that the entire shore was divided up into small squares with a small mound of sand in the middle of each. I quickly ran around the shore, using the last of my energy, stepping in and out of the grid, as I understood I was meant to do. Exhausted, I levitated my body, rising about twenty feet above the shore, and resting there in a vertically upright fetal position, so that I could view the happenings below without being involved. Time passed and people came and went until I was ready to join the world again. I landed on the soft sand of the shore and, now, I had a very young, brown-eyed baby girl in my arms, swaddled in white and pink. I cradled her as some close friends, both older women, came to welcome me back. One of them offered me a sparkling wine to celebrate but, considering the responsibility of caring for a baby, I declined. I was not sure that the baby was mine, seeing as she had simply appeared on the shore at the same time as I, and was about two months old. Suddenly, in a very young babyish voice, although obviously beyond her stage of development, she said that she remembered living in the circus. Both disappointed and relieved that she was not mine, I now accepted the offer of a wine to toast my rebirth.
Next, I was with my family in the first house that I lived in as a child, tearing up pieces of white paper into similarly sized rectangles that I then dipped in oil, covering both sides of the paper evenly, before stacking them on a plate. I repeated the action again and again, until I felt urgent about completing another task. I cannot recall what that was, but I finished it and resumed tearing up the pieces of paper and dipping them in oil, although I did not know what the pieces of paper were for. My mother asked me if I thought that I was using my time wisely and I was not sure, I just knew that I had to finish the tasks.

skeleton in the cubicle

Walking through a public toilet, along a row of cubicles. Each toilet was full to overflowing and quite unclean. I ventured into the cleanest cubicle but was put off and decided to go elsewhere. Some other women came into the bathroom as I exited the cubicle and I hoped that they wouldn't think that I had left the toilet in that state. They too walked along the row of cubicles, searching for a clean toilet. In the cubicle I had visited, there was now a skeleton torso - the skull, shoulders, chest and ribcage - sitting on the floor in front of a mirror, so that the skeleton, which was painted yellow and black, was reflected. The whole scene was rather eerie.

hacking at hair

I was sitting in my bedroom, secretly cutting my hair. Instead of using scissors, I had a pocket knife with five different blades, each entirely unsuitable for the job. One blade was serrated, another corkscrewed, a third blunt and so on. I hacked at the ends of my hair using all five blades at once, aware that I was damaging my hair, but strangely enjoying the process.

river and boots

I stood on the edge of the Brisbane River and felt utterly compelled to dive in. Though I knew it was not entirely suitable for swimming, I succumbed. I left the bank and shot through the blue-green water, surfacing around the middle of the river. I saw a shadow pass across the river to my right; I was not sure if it was a shark, a crocodile or a person, so I continued on my way but lifted my body out of the water so that I skimmed the water's surface. At the other side, it was shallow and murky. I decided to swim back but had to navigate around the musicians that appeared, performing from their vantage on the river bed. I swam around them and made my way back to the other side. There, I noticed that a couple of younger people had followed my lead and I felt terribly responsible, as though I had followed an irrepressible urge that had somehow led others astray.
Later, I was at a cobbler's shop, somewhere in a tunnel under the city. I passed the female cobbler my boots that I wear everyday and discovered, to my horror, that they were absolutely worn and full of tiny tears and holes. I couldn't fathom that they had worn out so rapidly, or that I had not noticed they were terribly made and of the poorest leather. My boots, the shoes I wear to walk around each day, had worn out.