Category Archives: dreams

dream

Instead of the Oxford Tavern, there’s an op-shop on the corner of Crystal and New Canterbury. Standing outside the shop is a cardboard removalist box. It’s full of rejected clothing, that even the op-shop itself doesn’t want. I pull up on my bike. Surely there’s something in here that can be salvaged. Standing casually, smoking a cigarette next to the box is the barber from The Locals Barber Shop. He laughs and says he’s been thinking the same thing about this box. We rummage through it together. It contains old crimplene dresses that are nearly interesting, but with patterns we just don’t quite like. At the bottom of the box is a eighties silk suit, brand new, still on the hanger. “What about this one?” he asks. I consider it. It has a peach and brown design, more brown than peach. It’s almost passable. He lifts it out so we can look more closely. On the back, the pattern changes from an angular abstract motif to a predominantly peach colour scheme, in fake Aboriginal dots and squiggles. We don’t need to say anything. Back it goes in the bottom of the box. Now we understand.

not the safest

A huge rollerskating party, but not at the Majestic. It’s in a grand old abandoned building with a cavernous open space. The floor is tiled, like my bathroom, in grey and pink. However, you can’t skate on those tiles. From the surface rises a handmade wooden scaffold. This ricketty structure projects up into the room, maybe a hundred metres, where it’s topped with a layer of plywood. This is where the skating takes place.

But I’m not at the party. The party has happened at some time in the dream’s past. I only hear about it later from Sunny, and I couldn’t have gone anyway, because the building is outside the perimeters of the ‘sham. I wonder why all these people who keep sending me emails wanting to skate at the Majestic don’t just go to this scaffold-skate-place instead.

In the dream-present, my Petersham project is over. Nobody and I go and see the building. It’s heavily guarded by security guards, but Nobody walks right in without being noticed. I follow. Soon the wobbly ply platform is full of curious trespassers. It occurs to me, in the dream, that this is not the safest place to be rollerskating…