Sunday 1 December 2013

Dream: driving to work through the sea, and giant purple macaroons

In this dream I am driving to work. I'm dressed in my usual casual clothes so I must be going to do anaesthetics, and I'm driving alone in my little car.

It could almost be a scene from real life, but I quickly notice the differences. There's nothing on the side of the road at all - a landscape completely devoid of features. As such I can't tell where I am or where I'm going. There are also no cars on the road, and no lane markings on the road. It seems to go on forever, just a smooth grey skinny strip of gravel.

Just as I start to feel vaguely bored of this, a foamy wave catches the corner of my vision. I look over to the right but there is nothing there - I feel like I must have imagined it, and continue to drive. Soon it happens again, and again until I start to see little waves washing up on the side of the road. They look so small and unthreatening though, that I am not disturbed by this at all.

As I continue to drive, the waves seem to come a little closer, and soon I can see the sea, a shimmering mass of blue on both sides of the road. I marvel at the genius engineering of this road which allows me to drive through the sea.

Soon the waves start encroaching on the road and I think, hold on! this is not supposed to happen! This is the road, where cars drive. Waves are supposed to stay just where they belong, in the sea. The waves seem to be getting larger with each tide onto the road, and soon I am driving through patches of water, which don't seem to have any pull to them. Though the car doesn't seem to be moving away into the sea, I am alarmed and look up ahead.

I can see only the sea, a tall homogenous blue stillness that I cannot comprehend. I decide to go back home, but as I start doing a 3-point turn, I realise how silly it is to do a 3-point turn in the sea.

I am shifted in the next scene to a country town I do not recognise, but I think it may be in New Zealand. As I wander around I see an old fashioned butcher, a fruit &veg shop and a paper shop. I come to a shop with a sign "Everything is $5!" and decide to poke around inside. It's full of junk like a $2 shop, and I wonder how the price has gone up to $5 so quickly. I pick up a few kitchen utensils but put them back when I realise they are made of brittle plastic. There are a few American soft drinks like Dr Pepper, and bags of snacks I don't recognise. In the bakery section I see these macaroons which look nice, so I pick some up for a closer look. On closer inspection this pair of purple macaroons are positively huge, each the size of a discus and as tall as a big mac. They look grotesque, as if they were macaroon models that have gone wrong.

How do you fit your mouth around these? I think, and then am transported to the next scene within my own ICU. It's 7:30pm and I am trying to handover to the night registrar. We are standing in front of a ventilated patient hooked up to a bunch of things, obviously a complex patient as I am describing whatever it is that's wrong with the patient. After a few minutes I realise there is a look of utter incomprehension in this guy's eyes. I wonder if maybe he doesn't speak English, so I try to speak to him in Chinese, but all the words come out like pidgin.

This man no good, he die soon. Is the equivalent of my words. Then I wake up. 

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