Dream 3 October 2010

 I had heard there was to be some sort of warfare and the government had called in all its troops – army, navy and air force – to do a reckoning.  I sat in my car at the entrance to the freeway waiting for the first of the army trucks to pass.  One squadron after another rumbled y, huge trucks and lorries with wheels the height of horses. 

 At first I was content as I waited for the soldiers to pass – patience as my civic duty – but after ten minutes, as aeroplanes flew over head and in the distance I could see a flotilla of navy boats in the bay, I began to feel impatient.  Would it ever end?

 Then I found myself at the airport about to get off a plane.  I dragged my hand luggage off the walkway only to discover that I had not packed it properly or that it had come unstuck during the flight and my underpants fell out of the top of the case onto the ground.  I grabbed them back in embarrassment, hopeful that no one would notice.

 I found myself in a motel room where the bar fridge was stocked with all sorts of beer, wine and face make up.  I wondered whether the make up might be free, part of the hotel deal. 

 A glamorous woman walked into my room.  She was connected to the hotel chain and began to use the makeup from my fridge on her face.  I followed her example.  It was the type of makeup my daughters use, blusher and foundation.  I do not usually use this makeup myself but I was impressed with the way the blusher shimmered though I needed to blend it in well, otherwise it stayed on my cheeks like a clown’s painted dimples.

‘I’ll have to be careful,’ the woman said, as she smeared the foundation more vigorously into her skin.  ‘I don’t want a chin line’.  She had a chin line I could see.  In fact she wore her make up so thickly she looked comic, more like a transvestite who tries too hard to look feminine than the young attractive woman she was.

 I thought she should not try so hard.  Several other women arrived, visitors to the hotel, and the woman in make up began her sales pitch, about the benefits of holiday here. 

 My alarm went off, the start of Daylight Savings. 

Dream 1 October 2010.

 Last night I dreamed I was driving my car loaded with children and people from my past and we were having trouble negotiating our way through the traffic on Tooronga Road. 

 To get out of tight corners there were several times when I needed to reverse at full speed while lorries and trucks rushed past in what is only an ordinary sized suburban street.  Somehow I managed to avoid hitting a single parked car, or more amazing still, I managed to avoid all the other cars and trucks that raced along in the busy morning traffic.  The sensation was one of being out of control and it was purely by chance that things did not go wrong. 

 The whole time I was behind the wheel travelling in reverse I expected to hear the crash of metal on metal, the smash of breaking glass, the squeal of tyres on the road.  It was a dream and therefore perhaps I did not imagine much by way of blood but several times during this hair-raising journey, the people in the back of my car exclaimed in horror when they saw that another car had squashed a large lizard that had been wriggling its way across the road.  It was a frill necked lizard, the sort that usually sun themselves in the centre of the Australian dessert.  It's significance came to me slowly in the dream.  My husband sometimes nicknames me, Lizard.