Dream

 

It is a known fact that everyone dreams about the Queen. Dim-witted journalists looking for a story ask why we grieve for someone we’ve never met. These writers should consult their dreamlife, their fifteen volumes of dream diaries, their inner self for the last time they interviewed her in an intense five-part series sitting opposite each other on fluffball clouds, no subject off-limits. I couldn’t count the number of times the Queen has shown up in my dreams, but then I’m not counting. Sometimes I cannot remember even meeting her the next morning, which I don’t put down to brain fog, or a temporary lapse, or denial, but the simple fact that we don’t remember most of what we dream, even when it’s a very pleasant conversation about horse racing and whether to put the cream or the jam first on the scone, with the Queen, beside a teeming skateboard rink surrounded by an arrangement of some hundred gold-edged teacups and saucers. There is no reason to have a survey asking have you dreamt about the Queen, even though there have been plenty of them, especially in England, because over a brief lifetime of seventy years the chances of the Queen showing up even just once are statistically 100%. I have found her reassuring since she first entered consciousness, she keeps to the point and is always dressed appropriately and well for the occasion. Heads of state speak of her enquiring mind and innate curiosity and I can corroborate these attributes from my own subconscious world summits, as we gaze (this is in another dream) around the orangery and through its hundreds of well-fitted panes with looks of blank amazement, sipping a very pleasant Indian brew. People who know about these things say that Queen dreams signify feelings of power and being in charge, that we are leading toward some victory in our lives. I suppose that’s right. Apparently these dreams can be about channelling my female energy and well who am I to argue, with the Queen? It makes perfectly obvious sense that someone we encounter every week in some film or newspaper or novel for decades, someone who is a living dream that we but see passing by, would blur in the nicest way imaginable into our own dreams, which is why it’s always perfectly normal (why wouldn’t it be normal?) to have the Queen come around the corner of our already hectic schedule, fix us with a hard stare, tell us we must sit down and have a cuppa and scones with strawberry jam, because truly she has a number of things that need saying right now. Having covered major issues confronting all 56 Commonwealth nations in about four seconds, the Queen departs via beds of daisies saying it was good to catch up, even as a voice can be heard from another part of the house saying Wake Up Australia, you’ll be late for work.      

Dream

 Dream goes in vapours. Or rises in rivers. There’s an occasional avalanche. Wetsuit chainmail sarong optional. The ocean is coming. Dream rolls steadily downhill. Emerges into an orchestra. Everyone playing at once. Studies the program notes. Written by a child. Dream comes to order. Stands for the judge. Listens to the evidence. Sneaks out for cigarettes. Walks into a mirror. Her name is Memory.  Sometimes dream is square. Immerses azure with vermilion. As you were will. Means what [dream] means. Goes meets the zeitgeist. Gets the gear off. Walks along the shore. Only you and me. Wakens like a birdcall.

Dream

Bridie's costumes for Tom Snout and Francis Flute, including Snug's very own Lion costume (far right) for Act V. This sonnet echoes one of Puck's beautiful farewell speeches, "Now the hungry lion roars..." 
 

Now tawny frogmouth glooms its night refrain

And owl its one hoot like a distant train.

The neighbour’s dog stops shouting at its ghost

And ants through cicada shells about are, most.

Possums click roofing to scuttle in gutters,

Hightail boughs outside deadset shutters.

While that rustle of metal and garden shed locks

Might or might not be a visiting fox.

Each interrupts inhabits my dream so slight

Alike as our tiny tiger April might

Snoring light in the doona of the night.

Likewise hunting early outside unbidden

Goes our proto-panther Obsidian

As the world turns slowly again viridian.

Small (February)

In my dream Melania has grown to twenty foot tall. Her expression remains conventional expressionless. Either she’s Alice in Wonderland, or it’s me. It must be me. Her husband’s the height of Melania’s shoe. He yells loudly the whole time but all that’s heard is a squeak. He’s really small. Melania asks is this February? She’s grown as tall as the Empire State Building. Soon she will be a rocket to Mars. When she reclines she’s the Mexican wall. Melania’s husband gets smaller. He’s a bullet without a thought. He’s an atom splitting over the Korean Peninsula, a Microsoft microdot.

Tennis (February)

In my dream the Australian Open is being played in backstreets of the suburbs. The documentary shows leafy avenues and old-fashioned verandahs, with players fending for themselves on vacant blocks or concrete carparks. One game between champions is on a dirt driveway covered in leaves. Balls struck into rising ground are retrieved by the contestants, who slip about on uneven gradients. There are few spectators, with possibly a referee. A voiceover makes neutral disingenuous statements like, “These  conditions are very primitive.” Games go on for days, right into February, as the camera pans to more shots of home beautiful flowerbeds.

Quote (December)

In my dream the most remarkable set of quotes is being collected. They drift into view and I copy-and-paste them, computer-like, into a box. Even in my dream I know that if I wake the quotes will prove childish, possibly meaningless, but that now they have only to be arranged right to form a stunning poem. The quotes are made not so much of words as colours, or unnamed extraordinary calligraphic shapes, or planes of perception. Some quotes are more a hot December day at Wye River before storm clouds; a face; an old movie. Frustrated arranging, I wake up.

Dream (August)

I dream of timepieces that change shape and colour according to the season. A watch that is a forest turns brown as autumn approaches, blossoms effervescent wattle in August. Corresponding amusement at expressions for time. Time is running out as it scampers through the night across a clockface. Time is of the essence, as clocks and watches distil into large, disproportionate droplets of indeterminate liquid. Later we are in a city forest. A colleague has gift books that open upon glade statuary growing and changing shape. We must verify if these are Turners and obviously are the work of Turner.

Dream (July)

I dream of circles of people who may have committed the crime. They move about, I could name them by name, but they are soon forgiven or exonerated, or are anyway innocent, and vanish. To be replaced by other circles of people who did not commit the crime, but know about it, and have to be named to be released from their implication with the crime. One circle group reads ‘Centenaries : the Magazine for People over 100 Years Old”, July Issue, sapphire-blue cover. This appearance and disappearance goes on, peacefully, of circles formed of people related to the crime.