opportunities lost, obstacles and snakes

We sat down in the cinema, on the right-hand side towards the front. As we settled, for some reason, I removed my boots. The movie was soon to begin. I looked around in the semi-darkness and saw my friend sitting alone in the furthest seat of the same row, over on the other side of the cinema. My heart leapt. My partner left for a moment, perhaps to buy something to eat, and because I’d already removed my boots, I decided to text my friend. ‘I can see you’, I attempted to type, but all the letters turned into emojis and my message was indecipherable. I erased it and tried again but again my message changed. My partner returned and announced there was something wrong in the projection room. It became clear the movie wouldn’t be screened so people began to file out. I hurriedly tried to put my boots back on but the process of lacing them took longer than usual. My friend rose to leave and walked up the isle. I called out but there was too much noise in the theatre and she left. I felt disappointed because I miss her dearly. It was an opportunity lost. I finally finished lacing my boots and left the cinema. My partner was nowhere to be seen.

Outside, I realised I was on a vast university campus and I couldn’t remember the way out. There were market stalls set up around the place and I had to walk through them to navigate my way across the courtyard. I saw a beautiful striped shirt hanging on a wire hanger at the end of a rack of clothing in one of the stalls. I doubled back to take a better look but it had gone. I continued on but the courtyard merged into corridors, which merged into vast auditoriums, then indoor swimming pools, then more rooms with stairs and elevators. I slumped on the ground, exhausted, trying to fathom my way. A couple of young women gave me directions and so I continued. More courtyards, stairwells and such, then, finally, I found myself at the edge of the campus but, now, night was falling and no one was around.

I hesitated and turned around, thinking I might go back to try to find my partner but stopped in horror. My path was blocked by perhaps a hundred snakes of different sizes and colours. None were moving; rather, all were poised as though ready to strike, their bodies frozen mid attack. I knew one false move and they’d be upon me. In particular, I noticed one enormous brown snake, his head almost as big as mine, his body long and powerful, each scale defined, his eyes alert. I daren’t run. I couldn’t move forward. Instead, I instinctively raised my arms and hands in front of me – a double stop signal – and commanded them to go away. ‘Get back,’ I said. Nothing happened and I felt I needed to say it again, more loudly, with more conviction and power. Again, nothing happened. Instead, the most dangerous of the snakes, the king brown, advanced on me, threatening to attack. His face was only a couple of feet from mine and I stared into his eyes. I straightened my arms in front of me, spread my fingers as wide as I could, summoned all my power and desperation, drew my strength from the earth, and this time yelled at the snakes at the top of my lungs, swearing loudly, my true feelings clear.

Immediately the snakes recoiled, each into its own brown paper bag. The ground opened beneath them and they fell into a pit. The pit was so wide, a couple of young women stumbled at its edge. One fell in and I caught the other and dragged her away from the hole to safety. I looked over the edge and saw all the snakes writhing away, ushered by men in white uniforms into a white room like a laboratory. The young woman who’d fallen was standing upright, calling out to say she was fine, she’d not been hurt, but rather than helping her back up, the men ushered her away with the snakes. As they went, before the door closed behind them, I saw her body begin to transform: her ribs extended out from her body, stretching her skin taut like an alien. I knew she’d been bitten and was changing form.

rising up

Two dreams:
I was rising in the air, flying or floating upward, away from the Earth, towards the stars and planets. I experienced a knowledge that I was about to disperse, the atoms of my body and the energy that makes up me were about to scatter and converge with the energy of the universe. Still rising, and regretfully, I remembered the many things I had to complete, the things I had to do, and so I turned and headed back to Earth.
I was in the back yard, clearing green rubbish, banana leaves and such things, with the help of a couple of  others. It crossed my mind there may be a snake hidden in the waste pile, but we continued gathering armfuls of debris. One of my friends walked quickly to the bottom of the yard and threw something long over the fence - a brown snake. I was amazed at her calm. Another snake, a giant python, came out of the pile and weaved its way across the yard. My friends retreated and I, instead, floated upward, above the scene. I was aware of the concentration required to remain in the air, knowing that if I ceased to believe, I would fall down into the yard with the snakes.

home burned down and snakes

I was sitting on the ground beside a very shallow stream. I was facing the stream, my back to a dead-end area - a small open space flanked by rocks. I was aware that something seemingly catastrophic was about to happen, that a building or a place was about to die, to burn or some such thing, and that the hundreds and thousands of snakes that had inhabited the place needed to flee and that they would be travelling down the stream. I held a stick in one hand and waited for the snakes. They began to appear. First, hundreds of small sandy-coloured snakes swam downstream, following the course of the water. I brushed my stick across the ground at the shore, hoping the vibration would shepherd any stray snakes back into the water, so that they would pass safely by. The snakes doubled, then tripled in number and variety. Striped snakes, green snakes, pythons and more swam down the stream, travelling somewhere. I continued to brush and tap my stick on the shore until I noticed that there were simply too many snakes, that their perpetual writhing motion had caused a rivulet to form that branched off the stream and wound around into the dead-end space in which I sat. Some of the snakes continued to pass by in the larger stream, and some now followed the rivulet and became trapped in the cul-de-sac. I had to leave and the only way to go was up or down stream. I decided to go back to face the disaster, or whatever had occurred. I was grateful that I was wearing high black boots as I stepped into the stream. I waded up-stream, stepping with great trepidation but also a certain calmness, as the snakes passed by me. I was alert for poisonous snakes - brown snakes, red belly black snakes and more - but I did not see any. Most of the snakes appeared quite innocuous, and some were barely snakes at all, more like long leeches. Indeed, some of the leech-like creatures darted out of the water at my legs, most slipping off the wet, black suede of my boots. Again, I was grateful. As I climbed further up the hill, wading through the water, I passed increasingly frightening-looking snakes: huge black snakes with pronounced heads and flared nostrils, snakes with visible fangs and canny eyes. None, however, struck out or bit me. Finally, I reached the top of the hill and stepped out of the stream. I lifted my skirt to check for leeches and, sure enough, there were plenty, attached like barnacles to the area behind my knees and further up my thighs. I set about plucking each of them off, their long green bodies coming away but leaving their mouths still attached to my skin, which I then, with a little more difficulty, pulled off. Their must have been about fifty or more leeches, but, finally, I had removed them all. I looked around me and took in the nature of the disaster: I was standing outside the shell of my first school, which I also understood to be my family home, the place of my roots and my foundations, which had burned down. It was destroyed. I prepared to go inside and salvage what I could, if there was anything indeed that needed to be saved. I was not sure if I felt utterly devastated or greatly relieved, as though now, at last, I could enter a new phase of life. My phone rang. It was my brother, calling to check on me and to tell me that the only thing he wished he could have saved was his music. I told him that I was going in and that, if his music was still there, I would save it for him.