18th October, 2011.
Tuesday

Earlier dream: joining in a game at someone’s instigation that entails running back and forth about the distance of a bowling lane and gathering something up.

“Strange Gathering and the Hard Diving Shark”

I’m with Rod and Louise and we’re dining at a café, discussing an upcoming strike. This causes Lou and me some anxiety but not Rod as he moved out of teaching. We seem to be there awhile and other things happen that I’ve forgotten.

They get up to go to the counter and I follow but when I see they’re getting coffee I decide I don’t want it and return to the table. The seating arrangement has morphed into long tables of greyed wood and a girl has started stacking chairs. A bunch of people, myself included, chastise her for doing so because we’re not finished and she has to unstack them again.

Now I’m in “my” bedroom, my house being continuous with the café. My bedroom is a very large room with windows to the floor and filmy curtains. I’m closing it up for the night and realise it has at least 3 doors so it takes a little time.

Then, for some reason, I decide I need to go elsewhere in the house and I’m upstairs turning off lights to the outside balcony. When I do I hear voices protest and realise there was a party going on and I turned out the lights, so I quickly switch them back on. They’re energy saving lights so they take a little while to illuminate and I wish they’d hurry up. I see the motley, unfamiliar group and gesture through the thick glass that I apologise. I use the Namaste signal and they understand.

Now, one of the women, thin, 40s, with a long brunette bob, is almost guiltily confiding in me that she’s put her baby on medication – the same medication her mother took. I reply that some things are genetic.

Now they’re on their way downstairs. As we pass through the entry way I begin to examine the floor closely. I can see there’s something wrong with it. It’s not the tiled area of my RL house and I’m not too sure what the surface is but it’s something earthen. There are small worn patches, little irregular depressions, and I think these must have formed from foot traffic. Outside, a plump, balding father tries to lift his little girl over puddles on the uneven cobbled path that leads away. I laugh when he places her sandaled foot right in a small pool of water and comment on what he’s done. Initially he’s about to deny it but then he laughs too as he places both arms either side of me and encloses me to the wall. It’s much too intimate for my liking but I’m playing it cool. He comments on all the wonderful space under the house. I look and can see under the house now and there is indeed a lot of space. I joke that’s where my husband buries all the bodies and the man laughs and is gone.

Now I’m further down the path and Matthew S is there with his sister Coreena. He seems a little younger and I sense my own kids walking behind me and there’s a feeling they’re younger too. Matthew is in a lot of pain and groaning. His belly is hugely distended and his naval is exposed beneath his t-shirt and looks weirdly white. I say to Coreena that she must get him to a hospital immediately and my children chime in agreement behind me but she says no, he’s booked during the holidays. Then, in one sudden, horrifying moment something falls out of Matthew. It might be bowel, it’s certainly tubelike, bumpy and grey, but it’s Y shaped and the bumps look a bit like spine. Coreena bends down, picks it up and shakes it about as she declares, “I know what this is: it’s a hard diving shark – Matthew must have swallowed it.”