neglect and spiders

I am at my grandparents' home, in the suburb where I grew up. As in real life, they are no longer alive, and the house is run down. I am staying overnight, perhaps longer, and it is dark - time for bed. I am walking around the house, shutting windows and doors, somewhat afraid of what lies beyond the walls of the house. The house itself is in semi-darkness and each corner, each doorway poses a new ordeal: is there someone hiding in the shadows? I walk out onto the enclosed back verandah and notice that I have left the back door unlocked and the window leading into the bathroom gapes open - a black hole. I steel myself and pull the window sash firmly down. From here, I can also see that the laundry windows are open. I step toward the dark doorway, but find myself caught in spiders' webs. Ten or more spiders have built webs that drape over the entrance to the laundry, all non venomous species, but large and frightening just the same. Spiders clutch at my skin. I backtrack, extracting myself from the webs, shaking the last of the spiders free, shuddering at the memory of their touch. I close the back door and then notice Snuffy, my grandparents' dog, sitting inside on the verandah. She looks neglected, her hair bedraggled and wet, her countenance sad. I thought she was dead. I reopen the door to send her outside, down to her bed, but as I am closing the door, I see her plead with me, lifting one paw into the air. I cannot send her outside. I open the door and bend over to pet her. I feel her oldness and her vulnerability and I want to take care of her. It is too heartbreaking and I wake.

spiders

It is the middle of the night and I am going home. Home is my family home, where I have not lived for over twenty years. I am late and I know my mother will be worried; I hope she is not waiting up. I am walking down the street towards the house, urgent to arrive. As I approach the house, I can see that the lights are on. I check the letterbox and there is mail for me - a lot of letters crammed into the box, dated back months, even years. I particularly notice a hand-addressed yellow envelope and I am keen to open it. I go to climb the stairs to the front door, but there is a large spider in its web blocking the way. It is too dark to negotiate a way around the web - I am not certain where it begins and where it ends - so I make my way around to the other side of the verandah, to the other entry stairs. There is more light here and I can see more webs and more big spiders, blocking my way in. There are giant Gold Orb-Weaving spiders and spindly St Andrew's Cross spiders, all passive in their webs. I break a stick off a small tree in the garden and wave it around and around, winding the spiders into their own webs, clearing a path to my home. Later, once inside, I am holding the yellow envelope and I tell my family about the spiders. They notice a spider bite on my hand; I had not noticed it before. There are two punctures on my palm, quite large, most definitely from a spider. I do not appear to be poisoned.

strangers

I was living with my parents in the house we built when I was young. My bed was in their bedroom - 'the main bedroom', as we called it - and their bed was in an adjoining room, where the verandah was in real life. It was the middle of the night and, instead of sleeping, I was walking as quietly as possible around the house, looking at my artwork. I was trying to price the various pieces for sale, doing my best to set a good price with which I was happy, but that I knew would move the work. I noticed that the frames of several paintings needed repair, that the work inside had slipped. After making some decisions, I walked through the dark to the bedroom and lay down on the bed. The mattress was on the floor, as though I was there only temporarily. I noticed that it was warmer than it had been when I first arrived some months before, and that I no longer needed the quilt; it was heaped in the corner. Suddenly I noticed a light - torchlight - beaming about the room. I hid under the quilt and the intruders obviously thought there was no one home, for they immediately began talking loudly and switching on lights downstairs. They flicked on the television and the stereo and the house, in the dead of night, was filled with ugly noise. I went into my parents' room; they were waking, not sure what was going on. They were each holding a cigarette and a packet of tobacco was lying on the bed. They looked surprised, as was I, as neither of them have ever smoked. They put out the butts and we went downstairs to see what was going on. I went first, my temper flaring as I saw two people - a young man and his girlfriend - taking food out of the refrigerator, helping themselves. I raced up to the man, whose horrible energy betrayed the kind of person he was, and shouted at him: This is not a share house, this is a family home. You have no right to be here. Take yourselves out of here. Get out. Instead, he grabbed me around the throat and pushed me up against a wall. I could feel how strong and wiry he was, how pumped up with aggression, and I knew that I was in an extremely dangerous situation. The girl kept laughing, louder and louder. Her mouth was open, screaming with laughter. My parents stood to one side and I knew my father was about to intervene.
Later, I was on a beach. I could see my family (my extended family) swimming in the water, but I sat up on the sand. Finally, my father came to fetch me. We walked down the sand and stepped into the water, which stretched out under a ceiling of rock - a cave of sorts - before continuing on past the cave, out to the ocean. Under the arch of rock, the water was in semi-darkness. It was quite scary, not being able to see properly. I felt bits of weed and other creatures brush past me, and I was not sure that I liked it here. My father assured me that it was alright. After a while, someone came to usher us out. It was another family's turn to swim in the sea. We filed out and up the sand, while a Maori family filed down the sand and into the water. They were also going to give a small performance for their extended family, later in the day, and I wondered if we were to stay to watch. I saw a woman sitting to one side, someone I have not seen for twenty years and whom I was excited to see. I ran over to say hello, but she didn't recognise me. I reminded her of our connection, but she was entirely unenthusiastic. I wished her well and walked away; as I went, I could hear her laughing behind me.

averting disaster

I was in my bedroom, toying with what appeared to be a paper shredder. There was a long slot at the front designed to receive paper before shredding it and depositing it in a tray. I had pushed my hand into the slot and was now desperately trying to extract it, hoping my fingers would not be mangled. My brother appeared in the doorway, but he was many years younger than his real-life age; in fact, he was just a child. I called to him and asked him to help. He quickly checked that the power was off and then we pulled my hand free of the shredder. I picked him up (he was only small) and he wrapped both his arms and legs around me. I kissed him on the head and told him I loved him, rocking him gently.
The scene skipped forward and we were both in a giant building made of ice. We understood that there was a tremendous amount of water stored behind the walls and ceiling, and that, though safe right now, the situation was quite precarious. Someone was singing and we moved about the space, gliding around as though on an ice rink. Suddenly, the person singing punctured the ceiling with what I think was a knitting needle, cracking the layer of ice between the enormous body of water above and everyone below. Panic. Everyone wanted to get out of the building at once. My brother (still a child) and I rushed to the nearest exit and began sliding on our bottoms down the narrow corridor of ice, aware that the wave of water behind us was mounting. The line of people sliding with us started and stopped, people getting stuck in crevices and snared by ice build-ups. When I saw that my brother was struggling, I started to sing a song about letting things happen, allowing life to take its course and energy to flow. Somehow it helped him, and others around us, and we all slid effortlessly through the rest of the tunnel, emerging into the daylight, safe at the end.

horror

I recall very little of the dream, except that I was both watching the goings on as though watching a film and, at times, in it. A grim group of men gathered in a hut in the woods, all big, powerful men, dressed in 'rural' clothing such as flannelette shirts, jeans, strong boots and thick jackets. The men had faced recent and ongoing hardship; they battled one problem after another and it was wearing thin. Their group had dwindled, a man killed, another maimed, another suicided, and they were buckling under the relentless pressure. Finally, the horrors of the last few days or weeks seemed to be over and they were, though now few, poised to leave the hut and go about their lives. I both watched them and was one of them: a man called Todd of great stature, with fair hair and enormous shoulders. The group of remaining men were standing around an old wooden table in the one-roomed hut, and I watched myself as Todd lift my bright blue flannelette shirt over my head, preparing to leave. At that moment, another man, who was chairing the meeting, interrupted the flow of his speech and asked, 'Where's Todd?' I had left my vantage from inside Todd's body and was now only watching the events unfold. Todd, who was still standing on the far side of the table, sighed and pulled his shirt back on, dreading yet another disaster. The sound of chopping wood was heard and the men opened the door and went outside to see what was going on. The view shifted to the source of the chopping sound: Todd was standing aside a tall wooden fence, wielding an axe; he had chopped his own head off. His body was still moving, just as a chicken continues to run after losing its head. His headless body continued to chop, one blow after another, the axe sailing through the air, hacking into the fence.

the way things should be

I was at the home of my closest friend, taking a shower in her old bathroom at the back of the house. While showering, I looked out the window, watching the goings on of various people in the backyard. I felt the line of my body, aware that time was passing. After, I walked through the house and saw two small pictures, cut out of magazines and stuck up on the corner of an old sideboard in the kitchen. One picture was of her husband and the other was of a man I admired, twenty years ago, in the years that my friend and I lived together. I realised that she had kept the pictures all these years.
Later, we had been to a formal event for which we had all dressed in our best clothes. The women had all donned beautiful dresses and elaborate jewels. I was now putting my clothes and necklaces away, smoothing the folds of fabric and untangling strings of beads. I came across a necklace and one matching earring that had been made from some of my most treasured jewellery; two necklaces, one consisting of several strands of black crystals, the other several strings of pink crystals, had been unthreaded then rethreaded so that it was now one necklace with both black and pink crystals. In the same way, two earrings, one adorned with black crystals, the other with pink, had been dismantled and restructured to make one earring, heavy with both black and pink crystals. I was dismayed as I didn't like the new jewellery. Where before the pieces were elegant and spare, they were now garish and overstated. My mother was in the same room, putting away her formal attire. I asked her who had done this. She suggested that it may have been one of my friends who had also gone to the ball, but I couldn't think of who. Then we realised that it had been my mother's dear friend, who, we recollected, had worn the jewellery and a matching pink dress. I was offended that she would take something beautiful and precious of mine and, without my permission, rework it to suit her needs, to fit her idea of how things should be. I determined to ask her to undo her work, to restore the pieces to their original form.

rabbits

Rabbits. I walked through the door, visiting an acquaintance, and I was greeted by rabbits. Several of them twitched and hopped about, each a different colour and size. An excessively fluffy rabbit with caramel and white silky fur stood on its back legs and put its front paws on my legs, just as a dog would. For all its softness, its little claws were slightly painful on my skin. I gently pulled its paws from my leg and it latched onto my wrist. Again, I removed its paws, noticing that it had more than one claw for each toe; in fact, it had many, many small claws, each pale and creamy but extremely sharp. I ventured inside and the various rabbits huddled at my feet, moving with me as I walked about the room.