13/4/2009

last night i dreamt of park rd, grafton, a street that exsists in many of my dreams and dreamlike childhood memories. i was with a posse of drunk art school friends and we were being destructive. we were hungry and animal-like. in one empty loft room high above a bamboo garden we found an overwhelming hanging curtain made from gold filament. the room was lit by floor length open windows and fluorescent disco bulbs. the breeze in the room was lifting the tinsel like hair and scattering light across my friends' beautiful faces. later, we were happened upon by the owner of a pink californian bungalow, and i was torn as to whether i should run for help, or use my complex digital lomo to document disturbed, misplaced, spilt milk seeping from the kitsch-ey fridge onto the floor of the tiled kitchen.

22/3/09

last night i dreamt i was on a precipice. it was exaggerated with one point persepective, like in a roadrunner cartoon. the rock face was yellow ochre and devoid of vegetation. i could not see water or ground below although i could feel sea breeze on the nape of my neck. i was aware of iminent death if i fell, but my usual debilitating fear of heights wasnt crippling. i was wrapped around a greying white sheet in the same way an acrobat uses a ribbon. above me was a man, and below me, a woman. they were strangers but i felt a familiarity with the man that possibly meant we had a sexual relationship, a loveless one. the repulsion i felt towards the man, tinged with instense attraction, and the fact he was trying to kill me, felt like drinking a potent, hallucinatory cocktail. i watched the chunky threads of the dirty sheet unravelling and ripping like a gauzy bandage stretched over a wound. and i saw the scene from afar and i was a beautiful heroine.

15/9/08

last night i dreamt i went bmx biking. my brother and i were down by the coast, along the sand dunes, next to the cliffs. at first i was apprehensive about riding the bike although i did it without complaining. my cousin arjun was there and he teased cruelly about my falling off repeatedly. i would jutt the rubbery front tyre into the grippy sand and propell myself face first into the ground. the sand was soft and filled my mouth and eyes with ants. but then i was riding like a professional with speed and agility and i left my boyish companions far behind and i was suddenly in a rousseau-ian jungle the bmx trail lavishly covered in maroon velvet like a film premiere. like a marc jacobs show with a sonic youth soundtrack i was as graceful as a catwalk model clearing the jumps like a panther.

16/3/08

last night i dreamt about solving a crime. what looked in every way to be suicide i could only believe to be murder. the murder took place outside a white villa, whose walls were exposed to the streetfont as the road level was lover than that of the basement floor. there was a lone tree bare of leaves. i knew my friend was dead and i watched and rewatched the super eight footage of her stabbing herself in the chest with a blunt pipe but all the time i could feel no sadness.

5/03/08

last night i spent my dreams within architectural spaces. the characters inhabiting my dreamscapes are now vague to me i think they were my family and i have a sense that we were all arguing. mainly i remember the cityscapes and the three novellas are punctuated with buildings and a garden. the first was an apartment building with a penthouse floor connecting to a tiled road by a circular boarded walkway. the boardwalk was made from beautiful dark stained wood. i recall having an animated conversation with a person about the merits of this particular design feature. by this time i had already overslept and the breeze through the open window was making the curtains rattle on their plastic rod. i was in an outdoor space and it was rundown and overgrown with an abundance of turquoise painted concrete and open sky and i was beside myself with worry. someone read out loud from a script "your dad died." i was in an escher like office full of perilous stairs and escalators and elevators. again i was role playing i was a princess whose blonde hair is familiar. i was carrying a book or a bible climbing grey stairs in an open mezzanine lit with natural light. the rail was slippery and cold. i reached the top floor and they told me i wasnt authorised to attend the meeting. it felt like the episode of the simpsons with springfield's 'escalator to nowhere.'

30/12/07

last night i dont remember falling asleep. i dont remember the strange space between sleep approaching and wakefulness. i was lying awkwardly in the strangely familiar bedroom with stifling shared air and my right knee was pushing the wall outwards as if into the pantry on the other side. i felt like i would always be awake yet awake in the dark and in a solidary solitary position. the rectangular light at the foot of the bed was spinning in a clockwise spiral towards the kitchen and around again and then at some point i rolled over and was not conscious of the change in light while the temperature felt indifferent to my clammy body. it was new years eve eve and i was intoxicated. i did not dream and awoke to voices feeling as if i had been without rest for many days.

5/11/07

last night i dreamt i was wendy. i was living in the world of a fairy story and captain hook was coming down the carpeted red hallway to get me. in an effort to confuse him and escape, i smashed the gas lamps burning dimly as nightlights on sconces. he had already seen me and the terraced house was on fire. my hair was long and bouyant and tied in a blue ribbon and after that i cant really remember what happened.

20/10/07

last night i dreamt a storm was raging on the house. my window was billowing out and blowing the clothes all over my floor up and around my face. screaming sirens went past on the main road some way off. i was buried in my bed. the sound of the rain and debris against the tin roof of my old house was like the yelling of a crazed person and felt like someone throwing me off a cliff.

??

one night, many years ago now, i had a dream that still haunts me. it was some time during the french revolution (or something) and i was standing in the line for execution. it was a really sunny bright day and i had dust and glare in my eyes. i guess there were many murders. there must have been, as when the hooded figure pushed my head onto the wooden stump my face became instantly slick with warm blood. it was no longer bright, my eyelids glued shut. my body bean shaped my hands tied behind my back. the darkness enveloping me made the sensation of the axe all the more pronounced. the hacking in my back was agony, not painful, but incescent and heavy. being in such a deep dreamscape as i had never been before there was no escaping or fleeing the tortue. i was awake. soon though, there was an end, suddenly i could see and i turned and faced the man, whose hood didnt disguise his disappointment that i was still alive.

National Geographic December 1978

we unpacked our survival suits, much like wet suits, unzipped them and threw them over. as they fluttered down they looked like human shapes swirling above the clouds. i can only imagine someone on the ground watching them swoop downwards, and i wonder if tales of banshees were told that night.
from every village and town, farm and roadside, the flash of mirrors sparkled up at us. everybody was shining mirrors, it seemed, everybody. so were we.

16/10/2007

last night i dreamt that my grandfather tried to kill me. in the minutes between sleep and wakefulness i saw him, sitting on an orangey coloured velvet couch. he was telling me something, something inane. then he was telling me something else, something i had a hard time agreeing with. then he was coughing spasmically, his frail body doubled over and his face on the seat cushion, close to mine. i held his arms tightly and he said something hopeful and profound although i knew it was hopeless. i tried to smile. he had strength all of a sudden and i felt cheered that i could get away on a good note. i hugged him and he started crying. his arms around me felt like the crushing power of a machine, a steam roller or a junkyard compressor. i couldnt breathe awakening to find i was wrapped like a mummy in my duvet.

9/9/2007

last night i dreamt i was an fbi agent working for the x files department. a suspect framed me for a murder case my partner and i had been investigating and i had to escape the parking building to get away from the security guards who would turn me in. i knew i had to find some evidence to exonerate myself. i was creeping behind the cars in the parking building and threw a white plastic body bag full of tissues behind me to distract the guards who were chasing me. i could sprint really fast i think my body was bionic. but the guards out maneourved me in the dark and grabbed at my ankles and clawed at the sensitive tissue on my neck. they stabbed crudely with their fingers and i felt a strong sense of despair in the murky room.

12/10/2007

30 minutes ago i was dreaming. here, i was experiencing nothing distinctive, but pressing myself for an explanation maybe this could be described as a landscape of weightlessness, a water like substance that had a cooling or numbing effect. sometime during my slow steady descent into this deepening pool the people pulled me up, and back. sounds penetrated the third wall of my skull and here manifested themselves nightmareishly. particularly jarring, the music and unpredictable voices reverberating inside the cramped space seemingly hateful and sexual and grating. reminding me of the mood of a darkened city park and myself as the main lynch character stumbling blindly, feeling alien to herself. all at once dreaming and conscious and dead and alive and numb and vicious. if tiredness was felt in terms of weight and mass and sound. pushing against this outer membrane like an impending aging process and a deep panic.

25/8/2007

last night i had many dreams. last night i dreamt that i stumbled upon a big hall filled with silent people. i saw on old childhood friend and i hugged her and started laughing and she told me 'terry and david are dead' and i wiped the tears from her face. last night i dreamt that pauly shore climed into bed with me and stuck his tongue in my mouth. last night i dreamt that i watched a baby die. it was tottering around at the top of a big flight of stairs (which may or may not have been at the newmarket movie theatre) and i watched it sort of trip off the edge. something about its movement was like a jump, or a take off and i emitted this gutteral sound from my throat. my parents were sitting down near and told me calmly to go after the baby. i started running and i felt movement behind me that i thought was likely to be the toddlers parents but i didnt turn around. my gaze was fixed on the somersaulting child who seemed to be gaining momentum. running down stairs isnt physically exerting but its difficult to keep your balance, it felt as if i moved any faster i too would be falling. i saw the baby land with a sickening thud and i knew by the skewed limbs and the glassy reflection in its open eyeballs that the creature was dead. my first thought was embarrasment by the awkward situation, was this, like, my fault? then what i assumed to be the bereaved sister appeared just behind me and i turned with eyes filled with tears expecting the worst. i felt so traumatised, what a blemish on my clean life. instead the young girl was crouching next to a laughing puppy or toy that i had not noticed before and she was smiling, she was relieved, she was singing. i picked up the deformed baby and it was nothing but an unblinking doll.