Day 6
Breakfast: beans & tortillas
Lunch: vegetable curry with potato, pumpkin & peas (a new cook?), lettuce salad, pink lemonade
another lost dream - will it ever come back to me?
sore right ankle - Jack island - US led Israeli base - list of prices - warning 17yo guide - TW temple - giant TVscreen - escape from police - a tall fence - 2 guys - Japan hotel- where to next?
Day 7
Breakfast: granola, mango
Lunch: red kidney bean stew, spinach and pasta soup, mole sauce with bananas (utterly delicious)
1.
I am walking along Wulumuqi Rd in the northern direction, looking for a post office to post a map to Mongolia. It feels like I´m part of the amazing race and I am alert looking around for my competitors. Star comes up next to me and offers to help me. We turn right onto Fuxing West Rd but it is hard to see where the post office is.
We walk past a truck labelled Mr &Mrs Pizza with plastic models of fat mascots in the tray of the truck. Then we come to a playground where all the play equipment looks rather strange. I tell him that there was no such playground here when I was young and I wonder when it was built. On the other side of the playground is a swimming pool, with the weeds growing into the side of the pool. We walk closer to take a look and one end is 4m deep.
Such a deep pool right next to a playground? What a disaster. I think to myself, and wake up.
2.
This dream starts inside a boarding house. It is really dark inside as if the natural light couldn´t possibly make its way inside. The rooms are tiny and cramped, each stuffed full of furniture and children. I walk down the aisle seeing all the little kids looking sad and forlorn. I wonder where their parents are.
Then I see Barbs and realise that she is running this boarding house - of course she is, with her social work background and all. She looks older and more jaded. Her eyes have lost of her usual spark and she looks tired.
I gather some of the children including one little girl who looks rather sick, and take them up one level which looks like a loft. There is a big kitchen there and I set out to make a cake. The children gather around me and initially they are questioning, but soon they start joining in helping with cracking the eggs and measuring out the sugar. The recipe calls for coconut but there isn´t any in the kitchen - never mind, I thought, we will just have cake without coconut.
All of a sudden a big group of adults rush into the room and all the children scatter silently like a flock of frightened birds. A burly middle aged woman comes up to me and introduces herself as Rhonda, Barbs´ assistant. She informs me that this is a cocktail party for the people who donate money to the children´s shelter.
Good, I think to myself, maybe I can point out some of the appalling things that are happening here. Light music is playing and canapes are being served. As I pick up an impossibly small sliver of blueberry cheesecake on a skewer I realised I never cleaned up the cake mess in the kitchen. I duck into the kitchen and push the baking pan with the unbaked cake into the corner. It makes a strange noise and when I look closer, black marks are all over the kitchen bench.
Rhonda comes over and gives me an angry look, then I wake up.
Day 8
Breakfast: fried tortillas, gruel made from oats
Lunch: savoury mole with potato and turnip, bean puree, plantano with hibiscus
This dream starts in my car, pulling up into the centre of Berowra. I stop in the Woolies carpark (is there really a Woolies in Berowra?) and then I see a sign for a Vinnies in the same block as well and make a mental note to return.
I walk slightly down the road away from woolies and vinnies and come to an abandoned shop. It looks really interesting with all sorts of antiquey curios strewn around. At the other end of the shop is a locked gate, through which one can see a railway track leading into a tunnel. A man is there, photographing the railway.
He tells me that Berowra has changed so much since he was young, and asks if I had been to Berowra before. I tell him I used to teach there every week and he smiles. We walk down the road together and check out the ¨hip & happening¨ place in Berowra. There are a number of little shops around and we purchase sandwiches for $7. Around the corner is a store offering an eco village experience ¨try 20min of the beach for free!¨ Then we see an icecream shop but it is super expensive at $8 for a scoop.
We leave the block and walk back to Woolies. The shops surrounding the carpark have changed and now there is an army surplus store. There I see Shelley arguing with the man at the counter - over a refund of her earrings. One had given her an ear infection and she wanted to refund both earrings but the man would only give her $4 for one earring. I wake up at the ridiculity.
Day 9
Breakfast: granola, pineapple tea
Lunch: vegetable soup, couscous with chickpeas, cinnamony pumpkin mash
1.
I have been kidnapped and am kept inside a house. There are very few clues as to where I am but my captor is a lady. She is slowly torturing me, entering several times a day to subject me to all sorts of strange things like electrocution and plucking my hair out one by one. One time she is doing the crossword with me and every time I get a word wrong she would punish me somehow. It is utterly terrifying.
One day I become utterly convinced that she is going to kill me today. once she enters the room I decide I´m going to take her out. She punches me in the head and I fall off to the side, but I get up straight away and tackle her, then I step on her head as hard as I can and hear a crunch. I think I may have broken some of her skull bones, and after a while I feel safe enough to leave here there, an inert lump.
Then I run out the door and down some steps, at the bottom of which there is a phone. I call 000 and then look for the exit from the house, but I can´t find it. I run back up the steps and the woman is still lying lifelessly where I left her. I look all around the captive room though I know there is no exit from the room. I see a police car and an ambulance pull up to the driveway, and realise that they won´t be able to find me in the secret part of the house.
I bang on the window as hard as I can, but of course they can´t hear me. behind me my captor gives out a slow groan. I scream and wake up.
2.
I am in Shanghai for just one day and decide to catch up with Elsie. She takes me to a shopping mall that has just opened and we wander around the shops. We are looking for a haircut place because my hair is desperately long. She says we must explore all the shops but it´s hard to keep track of where we have been already. We are pretty much lost when we come to a beautiful pond full of blooming lilies, which makes us pause and take some photos.
Coming out of the lily pond, I see a subway station and think that I can take it anywhere so I can get to somewhere I know. I get on the train and it´s awfully crowded. After leaving the station it doesn´t move, stuck on the rails. I think I´m going to miss my flight, but when I take out my phone there is no reception. I am literally stuck. Then I wake up.
Day 10
Breakfast: bread
Lunch: pasta salad, lentil soup
Dinner: vegetable soup, rice, chocolate khir
No dreams on the last day, the end of the silence.
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