I dreamt I was at a Ferry Stop, under a burning sun. A racist man was talking to the ferryman. The ferryman’s opinions were unclear. I go to ask the ferryman which direction I should get the ferry, and he gestures me to the seat without him and the racist man. I sit, and want to draw but the sun is too strong and will burn my arms. I look up and see Miyajima at the mouth of the river, I hadn’t realised it was so close. I then realise however that there is an even more beautiful Torii gate on a rocky island right in front of me, two ruined gates leaning together, graceful in assymetry. I am headed in the opposite direction from Miyajima, the destination is unclear but there is a vague sense of it being Ipswich.

Then (or maybe earlier?) I am in the inner sanctum of a mossy ruin, battling a giant spider. I defeat it, and realise a lizard man is watching me. he has something very important to say but is too timid to speak. I go back in time, battle the spider again, shot from different angles, analysing where things went wrong, but the lizard man still is too timid to speak.

I am in a canoe paddling around beneath a great ship. It is the Titanic , but resembles an aircraft carrier. I glance up, and in an overhanging window see two figures; a woman in an elegant ballgown and a naked, aroused man. They stand apart, facing each other, their heads bowed solemnly.

Australia had been split in two, one half was the aboriginal world, before white settlement, the other the cities of the present day. It wasn’t a geographical split, but more like parallel universes, or fairy kingdoms. Each was aware of the other, but no one I spoke to knew the ways to cross the invisible barriers that separated them.

A Russian warship was stranded and slowly sinking off the coast. A small group of sailors in strange metal boats drifted towards the shore, seeking help for their comrades.

But horsemen appeared on the beaches, the immigration department. Though aware of the Russian’s plight and the urgency of their situation, they were forced by protocol to brutally arrest them.

But they had arrived in the presettlement world, and no matter how long they rode through the endless forests could never reach the cities to have their story heard by the beauracracy and their friends rescued.

One rider, one of the Russians (unnamed, though with the impression he was an unsavoury character) was thrown from his horse, and as he hit the ground a female movie narrator’s voice said “And thats how he died, just like that”

Cut to a close up of his face and shoulders, beginning to be darkened by raindrops. He is buried in the muddy water of the flood.

We all went to the shop where Michael works, only in the dream it was a restraunt. It was a long narrow room, full of low tables. A small lobby area was packed with people queuing for tables, but we were given one instantly, and served massive piles of chips.

One of the girls at out table was the manager, but then it turned out she was acting, and a blonde woman approached, the true manager, telling us how they had planned the clever ruse.

I was not hungry, so I wandered off exploring, outside of the first room the place was a mansion. Most of the doors had signs on them instructing me not to enter, because there were weddings inside. But there was one room left open, with a great mahogany table, silver cutlery, fine upholstery and views of the grounds. A room of English wealth.

Another room was unadorned apart from a projector screen, like an art gallery video installation. Black and white films were playing. I had a brief walk through the grounds, and found a balcony, where there was another projector screen. Looking through a window I could see another dining room, it was not so lavish as the first, looking like more of a break room at someone’s work. Yet it was decorated with wallpaper embellished with the most beautiful paintings of pheasants I had ever seen.

Through another window I could see a man in his messy office, nose deep in documents. He was the boss of this place. Walking back to where my friends were, I found a room full of cameras, my fingers itched to steal one, but was scared of the boss just down the hall. 

Instead I found a spiral staircase leading down into a completely different world.

The dusty undersides of floorboards stretched away above me to the limits of my vision, because the entire mansion and grounds were built upon stilts, suspended above a bustling Indian shanty town. Bicycles and crying babies and incence and dyes and temples and spices and bollywood. All the beauty and tragedy of Mumbai.

I stood floating on the rickety staircase suspended between two worlds, the silent restraint of the world above, and the colourful sweaty chaos below. 

Slowly, I ascended the stairs, and woke up.

I was somewhere in the Himalayas, upon a vast steppe, running wild with a herd of Llamas. We rode beneath a cold grey sky upon the brown grass, and I threw my watch away to show I cared not for time. And for a while there was silence, and the smell of wet grass, and llama fur.

We came across a villiage of sherpas and they took us in, and it was a pleasant peaceful life. But after a time I began to worry about home, and visa complications. I was wondering if it was time to leave. I had wanted to stay here a long, long time, but not forever.

Grandmother Sherpa comes to me with a bowl of steaming broth. She wants me to stay, wants me to think about the sweetness of life here. Wants to matchmake me with one of the villiage girls.

I hesitate, upon the point of agreeing, becoming a sherpa forever, but the the door is broken open. My llama rides in, epitome of valiance, and strikes down Grandmother Sherpa. The Illusion is shattered; for they are not sherpas but vulture-spirits in disguise, preparing to rip me lim from limb. Amid a storm of fleeing buzzards we ride out into the steppe, to take one last look at the wilds before returning to the enlightened cities of the west.

The demon stands before us, in the desert night.Huge as Godzilla, but strangely comical; A cartoon demon. The city has assembled on the terraces, and he crushes random citizens to demonstrate his power. People stupidly try to flee through his feet into the desert, and are destroyed. 

I, however, am cleverer. I slip out the back way, lie down in the shadows and creep, through all my deer-in-headlights coutrymen, to freedom in the desert. I have saved my skin. But then I see the demon abduct some of my friends, and flee into the night.

I am hiding in the carpark of a grand Opera House. From my vantage point, around the side of a pillar, I can see the demon’s car (It’s a fluoro yellow VW beetle, very demonic…) and it is empty. But then I see a second identical car, and it appears to have people inside. I hang wary behind the pillar.

Four Hasidic Jews exit the theatre, and stand talking in the carpark. Following them are a smattering of giggling flapper girls. As I wait the space fills with all manner of strange and random characters. A human menagerie. I am confused, unsure of how to proceed.

Then I turn around to view the other side of the pillar, and see Renee and Alex exiting a bathroom. They are in strange costumes. Alex is in something nineteenth-cuntury, and Renee is some manner of cross between a Sea Witch and Cleopatra. They tell me that the demon has fallen asleep. The opera exhausted him.

We enter the theatre. It is palatial. It is ruined. Chairs are overturned, you can here the sound of wine corks being popped, revellers are gathered around small fires, carousing. I look to the stage, the black velvet curtain has partially collapsed, obscuring the great body of the sleeping demon. It looks ominous.

We come across a waif. A small blond woman, wrapped in blankets and tears. She is strangely beautiful, if anemic-looking, and strangely familiar. She is the singer who sung the demon to the land of dreams.

“But I can’t do it anymore!” She cries, “I ruined my voice. I poured my heart into that song.”

And she huddles deeper into her cold blankets. More wine corks pop. I wish they’d all shut up, the demon is only asleep, not dead. The curtain falls away. The demon awakes. He is dressed in a tuxedo and top hat, he does somersaults upon the stage. The earth shakes, we are all doomed.

I can remember no more of the dream