Ethel Ivy's Archive

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2008-04-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

I'm back at my old job with the stockbrokers, and people are surprised to see me, but pleased. It's nice to be back, things are clean and organised and well-designed. I know what I'm doing, and I do it well.
I look out the window at the city. We're high up in a sleek plate-glass building. I feel a massive jolt, and look around in a panic. It's an earthquake. I back away from the windows, wide-eyed. I kneel on the floor and look out at the city. Buildings are swaying, our building is swaying. Some of the taller buildings begin to collapse on themselves.
The office is in a panic - noone knows what to do and there is a rush for the fire escape. I am left alone in the sleek modern office, kneeling on the carpet. The floor begins to tilt to one side. I hear metal groaning and windows breaking, and still buildings out in the city are collapsing.
The floor gives way and I am plummeting. This is it - goodbye. Goodbye, everthing. I am frightened, but calm. I feel like I should have some profound last words, but all I have is goodbye. Goodbye.

I open my eyes and I am in bed, in a hotel room in Perth. I am awake, and not dead or at the bottom of a pile of rubble. It is 5am. I am reassured and I roll over and pull the white hotel duvet tight around me.

I am back in the office. Analysts are surprised to see me and give me good-natured ribbing about coming back to the job I left. Buildings in the distance start to collapse and topple over. I can see people leaping out the windows, diving towards the ground headfirst. I feel the floor start to shake and tilt, and then it stops. The floor now points downhill and I don't think the office tower can last much longer. I head down the fire escape stairs, carefully, conscious that any sudden movement might topple the building and send me out the window to my death.

Subterfuge/train to where?

2008-04-05T17:17:00.000-07:00

Two nights of strange dreams...

I'm setting up my autocue stuff for a conference, and the laptop bag with the cables is missing. I can see it in my mind, but I can't find it - so I can't hook my stuff up and it's getting later and later, and I've got that cold sweat going on. Someone's moved the chairs that should have been at the techs' table, and the bags aren't anywhere. I look in the function room, behind a stack of speakers, under the blacks, I can't see them. I have people with me and they're being useless, gossiping and not helping me. I think one of them has hidden it on purpose.

Someone's been killing people - and I know who it is. It's one of my freelance operators, who has had it out for me since I started. She's on the run and I'm following her. I'm telling lies and acting like I don't know what's going on.. but I do and I'm following her. And I'm hiding, lest she get me too. I track her through buildings and balconies and I ask careful questions. I finally catch up to her by following quietly through a building by the sea - right on the waterline. It has steel doors and green rock slime coming up through it. I don't remember what happens when I find her.

Someone's been having a party in my room in the house where I grew up. I've got to go and find them and tell them that's my room. I find a track to the house through the bush, off the gravel road where I grew up. I follow the track, which becomes a narrow chute carved through rock, and find a lift for ferrying glasses to the dishwasher. They're lined up on white racks, like an industrial dishwasher. I climb in and wait for it to ascend to whereever I'm going. At the top, I enter a long concrete tunnel. People are walking to and from the party, so I follow it and come out at my house to explain that that's my room, and I need to sleep in it.

Waking this morning, I've been dreaming about Michael, the South African guy I knew from Auckland. I haven't seen or heard from him in eleven years.
He's standing on a train platform. It's Christmas, and I've been trying to please my mother, who has nothing but criticism for me, because I've been stuffing everything up. I've been trying to cook a fish, but I can't get it right. It's crumbed, and I'm trying to fry it, but I keep messing up - I'm using a saucepan, I'm using a too-small frying pan, I've failed to turn the gas on. I think I've spoiled it but I'm determined to get it right.
I haven't put my laundry away and my mother is on my case to do it, because it's Christmas; can't I behave like a normal human being, just this once?
I need to get out so I send a text message out to a few people. I want to meet up with Lincoln, but I think he's meeting my former flatmate. I try to get in there first, because I could use the company. I get on a bus, and realise I have $5, but that my wallet is at home and I might need more money. I get hold of my wallet and look for another bus. I book one on my mobile, and they give me a webcam feed of where the bus is, so I can be sure I won't miss it.
I make my way to the train platform, and there's Michael. He has the same hint of an accent - not the typical obnoxious Jo'Burg Saffer one, more of a diluted Cape Town one. He's dressed up in a suit and starts tellling me about how his life is now. After a while I realise that he's giving a powerpoint presentaion on it. I tell him not to be so silly, and I run up to him and jump on him, hugging him. He lifts me up and tells me he's glad to see me. Trains come from both directions, and people crowd the station. I get on the train that I think Michael is on, but it's going somewhere I don't want to be. I want to be in the city, and this train is going somewhere far far out. It's for some sort of event, everyone on the train is really excited. But where can I get off, so I can find Michael before he leaves again?

Mean Girls and Shellfish Smoothie

2008-03-25T18:54:00.000-07:00

Something I dreamed this morning....

There was a party being thrown for my sister (not surprising, it was her birthday yesterday. I called her, as we live in different countries). The party was at the house I lived in as a child, and was being thrown by the family – my parents and me. We were to give her a present in two parts. I think it was a bike – we had the first part all wrapped up and under the tree (I dunno why a tree, there was no other Christmas element in the dream), and I was to sneak the second part into the house so we could produce it after she’d unwrapped the first part.

I managed to sneak the part up from the garage and hide it successfully, and the guests started arriving. The guests I think were all from my Dad’s side of the family – aunties and uncles and cousins. There were nibbles on the coffee table, and I got up to get something, and felt tired. In my dream I fell asleep, and woke up after the presents had been opened. I was sorry to have missed the presents, as I felt I’d worked hard on my present to my sister.

I sat in the loungeroom for a while, and at this point I remember saying to someone how I needed a couch for my loungeroom, because the couch here was always full of people I didn’t like (people who didn’t like me, I think is what it really was). I do actually need a couch for my apartment, so I guess that’s where that came from.

I went out into the back yard where the party was still going on, and talked to some of the guests – one was my cousin on my mother’s side who IRL is kind of trashy (we kind of avoid lots of people on my mother’s side cause they’re a bit weird and they like to cause drama), but in my dream was somewhere high up in a bank. One of my other cousins and I went to get a drink.

We found a caterer guy who made her a fruit smoothie that had abalone (yes the shellfish! What on earth is a shellfish doing in a smoothie?) in it. While waiting for the smoothie, a parade of girls from high school came down some nearby stairs (we appeared to be in some sort of shopping mall now) all dressed up in brightly coloured dresses with lots of frilly skirts – kind of flamenco style. I remarked to my cousin that they looked like a bunch of peacocks, and when a giggle erupted en masse from the girls, I started squawking at them. They squawked back. I don’t remember what happened next, but I do remember the feeling that I was being verbally picked on and shunned by these girls.

The last thing that happened before I woke up (to realize I’d slept through both my alarms and was already half an hour late for work) was a group of my friends from school were standing around saying things like ‘I’ve been here for hours and I haven’t even seen her!’). I walked up and said “Here I am! Sorry, I fell asleep for ages!”, and hugged my friend Angela (who I haven’t seen in over ten years).

At that point I woke up, looked at the time, swore loudly and got up in very short order. I’m sure I’ve lost most of the details from the dream, but I still have that feeling of being ostracized by people who thought they were the cool kids. Don’t get me wrong, I never had a burning desire to be ‘popular’ – I’m just confused and hurt when people take a dislike to me for no apparent reason.