the haunting

Last night I dreamt I was a ghost who haunted a video store run and owned by Pakistani migrant who smoked too much, with an ashtray brimming with ash and stubbed filters; but he was friendly to his customers with a real passion for cinema and sometimes when the store was closed and there was no one else around he would talk to me the ghost and would watch films with me. I would listen in wide-eyed amazement at his vast knowledge of movie trivia but I was a lonely ghost and a selfish ghost who was not satisfied with living life in the shadows. I was a ghost who knew the video store owner had lung cancer because ghosts know the ways of death and I said nothing as he smoked and he smoked and on the day he went to hospital I knew what the diagnosis would be: I would have company all day and every day.

the last I dreamt

God bless you Kenneth Branagh

For the last few nights I've been waking just after three-ay-em on some odd numbered minute, suddenly and gasping for air as if in my sleep I’d forgotten to breathe. It feels as though my heart stops… and I panick: hot white panick and I am bright awake. It takes me maybe forty-five minutes, curled-in-a-ball-on-the-floor, muscles twitching to calm down enough to sleep. In fact I've found a safe and drug free method to do this that might peak the curiosity of you holistic medicos and aficionados out there. I've found that by watching the BBC’s documentary Walking with Dinosaurs I can fall asleep with in the hour. There is something about Kenneth Branagh’s voice I think that soothes me, calms me down and rocks me to sleep… I’m not sure what it is or why it works, but it works and so I go with it. Maybe further research is warranted, although not by me. At times like this I try not to think about it too much. Thinking is the problem; thinking just loops around and accelerates until sub-thought particles reach just sub-light speed.

Did you know that death is odd numbered?

I’ve been dreaming a lot too. I can’t remember them all that clearly (although the previous post is an example of one) but when I wake up the following morning I feel like I’ve barely slept. Then over the day I find myself being hit with multiple sensations of déjà vu, feelings of having seen and heard it all before, in a dream, some mundane dream derived from equally mundane precognitive powers. Or perhaps it's a side effect of working an endlessly repetitive day job: a job that's the intellectual equivalent of a brain slip-sliding about on wet concrete. That as a coping mechanism my subconscious is repressing my memories albeit with a small amount of seepage, that in fact I have seen and done it all again and again and again.

Note to self: I must think about buying Walking with Beasts. Again God bless you Kenneth Branagh.

footscray zombie

I dreamt this Friday last week:

It was Saturday morning and I was on the way to my English student’s house in Maribyrnong, a suburb in Melbourne’s west. I’ve been doing this recently, been helping him get his licence, we’ve been meeting at his house first and then driving to school once his wife had plied me with enough fruit and juice and tea. It was a wet and green morning, trees dripping, the rainwater collecting in the imperfections of the footpath and road. The Maribyrnong river was deep and reflective and swollen clouds moved away east. The streets around me were deserted and I found myself in front of a modest community hall, maybe built around the 1930s or 40s and long ago it might have held the Saturday night dances of the working-class. Low-pitch noises from within attract me, conversation that’s heard through solid walls. Forgetting what I was doing I investigate, walking around the building to locate an open door: I enter. The hall has been converted into an unpresumptuous Buddhist temple, reds and yellows; monks sit on cushions in what I assume is quiet contemplation. I am noticed. Their faces turn and I am hit with montage of dead faces: pale and sunken, blood clotted beneath the surface skin. In George Romero style I am surrounded by the living dead, zombie Buddhist monks moving towards me, grasping mindlessly.

The sun was hidden by cloud and the day grew dark and I found myself running along a strip of shops, all closed, all abandoned, pursued by an increasing number of these creatures, climbing out from the edges of my imagination at the prospect of new flesh. I am grabbed from behind and dragged into one of the nearby shops (perhaps an old milkbar or spice shop) and I am surrounded in this blacked-out store not by zombies but by four or more women, short but well built women who exude confidence and competence. I am told in eastern European accents, maybe Polish, maybe Greek, Russian and even Italian that the plague of undead is not as it seems. There are forces at work whose expressed intension is to push the old residents out of the west. “Gentrification my darling,” one said. “You must have noticed the new development going on around, land prices are skyrocketing out here. It’s housing for the rich well-to-do and they want the old residents out!” Perfect symmetry to have some succumb to the horror of zombiism and leave the rest to be consumed, devoured, and eaten by their neighbours.

The women drag out an old fire extinguisher with a hand pump used to build pressure. “We’re not going to abandon them, our friends, our neighbours and we’re not going to kill them either. So forget decapitation. We have devised a cure instead darling. The cure is alcohol based and all we need to do is spray it on the zombie and pow!”

At this point I woke up.

postscript: while some artist licence has been taken (such as the dialogue) the events portrayed are as good as I can remember them.

the last I dreamt

stories from the line - part I

The handset of the public phone swings in the anaemic yellow glow of Flemington Bridge train station. A man in blue cap and DADA streetwear, wiry and stretched paces to-and-fro on the platform opposite: citybound. Darting about with the intensity of an amphetamine fuelled frenzy, his face red and eyes scrunched up blinking, his hand metering out some beat with a nervous tic or toc; he turns away, flinging himself at the phone, grabbing the receiver, screaming soundless obscenities through copper and maybe fibre optic channels of the telephone network. His anger converted into little electrons and photons passing countless k’s to some poorly formed object of my imagination: a girlfriend, bestfriend, dealer or customer. I don’t know... maybe all of the above. A day of intellectual RSI in my nine-to-five (more like seven) has all but rendered my imagination inert and I am left with other people’s ideas and stereotypes to plug the gaps. I cannot be bothered thinking.

Gesticulating with the finesse of an epileptic, the man throws the receiver back down. The handset swings on its taut cord as the man returns to his pacing, counting, composing himself for another round. I rest my head against the train window removing my beanie to feel the cool glass against my forehead. Who is on the other line? Are there recomposited sounds of tears, pleading, apologies, lies or just more screaming? Referencing Don Delillo: it’s all just waves and radiation.

My eyes burn from behind with exhaustion and the train pulls out of the station. I watch the man pick the phone back up and resume sending.