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[FROM H.M. BOETCHET'S DREAM JOURNAL]
11th June
At my parents first house. I'm in trouble for doing something bad - don't remember what. Mother is yelling from the kitchen 'Come here Harold!'. I don't want to because I know Father will be there too and will whack me. I climb out a window a run down the street. Night. My legs don't feel like they're working as well as they should, considering I'm ten again. Parents chasing me. I'm clear of them but I know they haven't given up. Then it all sort of shifts and I'm not in Mentone anymore.
First I see it from a distance. (It's still night) Some huge city. It must be by a bay or on an archipelago - water in and around the streets, like Stockholm or Sofia(?), but not as much as Venice. I wander around the deserted streets for a while - it feels like 3am. I don't know where I'm going. There are darkened skyscrapers all around - dark windows. From a distance I see the family standing on a footpath - Mother, Father and my sister and both brothers. I think my mother sees me and I start to run again.
'Hey Harry-babe, I got the job!'
'Ah, wow. Well done, Jill. I thought you would.'
'Yeah! It's been a beautiful, strange and long year and a half, but I'm going back and now it's your turn to be the mummy for a while.'
'Yeah.'
'Oh, don't look like that. You n' Joany are going to have the bestest fun, going to play group and everything...'
'Yeah, I know. Aah... from boardrooms to nappy changing toilets.'
'-Restrooms. Look at it this way, you'll be giving all those boring-as-fuck Brighton mothers something to talk about.'
'Wonderful.'
'Y'know, we should cancel that appointment with the bank manager. We won't need an overdraft now that I'm waged.'
14th June
Woke with this buzzing through my head - so vivid - feel like I just watched one continuous eight hour movie.
That unknown city again. I'm on a school excursion there - year nine I'd say. We're spread out, walking on a street alongside the 'bay'. I'm halfway back, doing these little moon jumps, like a delicate bounce pushing from the toe and staying in the air a couple of seconds. It felt good.
Then, it shifts and the city seems awake. All the lights are on but, not quite sure because I'm facing the other way. No one is with me. I'm at the end of this gigantic pier, the type used for international shipping. Bert Bacharach is standing there, stony faced. He says to me, 'Do you know the way to San Jose?'. It's windy and the pouring rain is pushing me toward the end of the pier. The water's choppy. I want to get off the pier. I turn toward the city. The pier collapses from the middle outwards, like dominoes.
I fall into the water - and try to swim to shore. I get run over by a huge container ship.
The next part I remember I'm standing on the roof of one of the skyscrapers, looking down and around at all the other buildings - they're all asleep again. I see the orangy glow of sunrise reflecting in the black windows of a building as tall as the one I'm on. I feel like I'm going to fall off.
Then I'm in a department store - Myers or an equivalent - next to an escalator that goes down. It leads to an open area housing rows of glass shop fittings filled with small, ornate glass sculptures. I jump over the side and crash through all the glassware. I wait to feel pain but it doesn't hurt. I get up, brushing shards off my clothes, wondering how I'm going to pay for the damages. A teacher from the excursion, Mrs. Fry, the old economics teacher (who I never actually had for a class) appears and says, 'It'll be all right'.
'Hi, how was work honey?'.
'Oh, nothing unusual. They cracked the shits with me for thinking when I hadn't been asked to. You know.
What's the damage here?'
'Two crappy nappies and a pukey bib. Pretty good really.'
'Yeah? Hmm, Whatchya reading?'.
'I just picked it up today. Good Parenting Made Easy.'
21st June
I'm in an industrial size kitchen.
It looked like where I used to work as a kitchen hand on Lt. Collins street when I was 21. That day when the power went off and the generator packed up too. The dream was like that - dim light, no air con. or suction fans - clammy heat.
I have a bunch of French loaves in front of me. They look okay; crusty and browned on the outside, but their centres are all still runny sticky dough. I put them in one of the ovens in an attempt to get them right.
I climb the stairs and out of there and onto the street. I walk around for a while and realise I'm not in Melbourne. I get the feeling it's that city again. The direction the streets run is familiar. I find myself standing on the footpath of a narrow street, enclosed by highrises. The sky in between is a clear dull blue, as if it's seven in the morning. There isn't any traffic except for an old style steam roller.
I notice the glint of something shiny on the street. It's a pink jewel about the size of an avocado stone - a ruby maybe. I'm overwhelmed with this feeling of impending doom, as the machine looks like it's going to crush the stone. I want to run out to grab it but am scared of the steamroller.
I became lucid for a moment, and while in this dream, I remember the last 'city' dream where I got mown down by the ship - and how it didn't do anything to me. So, this decision almost felt like a conscious one.
I run out, scoop up the ruby and get across to the other footpath safely. It is very beautiful and warm in my hand. I come to a section of the city that is clear of buildings and look up. I see a very vivid looking aircraft ascending into the sky toward the rising sun. I hear myself saying, 'A jumbo jet, a jumbo jet, a jumbo jet!'.
I wake up saying it.
'Hi honey, how was work?'
'Who cares! Mmm, whatever you're cooking, it smells divine. So have you two been having fun today?'
'We sure have. Joany sconed some kid in playgroup today and Mrs. Richardson tried cracking onto me.'
'Ha ha, What did I tell you? I knew she would. So what did you do?'
'Ah, just messed with her mind a bit, told her I had nappy fetish.'
'Hur hur hur, ya weirdo. You really are a weirdo, you woke me up this morning. You were saying your name over and over.'
'What, Harry?'
'No, like how you write it, H. M. Boetchet. Where's Joany?'
'Asleep.'
'Oh, she's a little gem isn't she?'
'She sure is.'
Team Sunny Breaks, 1999