II

When she finally wakes up, she will feel as if she was lucky enough to have utilised the time sleeping to live. She will wonder whether dreams are just a compensation for the sad circumstance that you must stop (everything still happens) and endure ‘8-hour death’ every night to sleep. its really very unfortunate and dreams aren’t exactly ample compensation given that life is a given and dreams are sometimes remembered. So to the sleeper, there is no evidence, on some nights that they have actually received their fair compensatory sleep-life. The institution of dreams merely assures the sleep-liver that they have dreamed but as a malfunction of their memory, they just can’t remember it. If she ever gets the opportunity to work in the movie business, she will suggest this as a new way of selling movie tickets. User buys, and is then assured that they have actually seen the movie, however, due to their disabled memory functions, wont remember it. I’m sure that almost every time the patron will tell their friends; ‘you should go and see [insert movie here], what great fun we had.’

This is all said notwithstanding the fact that she did enjoy the honey-moon-death that sleep brought. She looked forward to it.

But this night in particular, she received sufficient compensation in the form of a dream about her lover. He was staying in an old house. the wooden kind, infused into a tea cup of wistfulness and warmth. She hadn’t seen him in a while and the nostalgia of an old relationship was building a blanket factory inside her skull.

Unusually, her clothes were bland. Upon meeting her lover at other times in her life, it would be the best shoe/dress/self forward, it was sheer trickery; she seduced him with lights and colours. it was fun. This time, in this dream, she was bland, just her suburban self forward.

They pulled up together at the old house. She followed him into a small room. The room had a single bed, shelves on the wall. the bed and shelves were overflowing with old things. Op shop selections were in piles around the room. Old suitcases, shirts with flowers, preloved items of the old world. history. the longing of old things to tell you how they have lived. the longing of the bearer to know secret stories.

They were gifts for her. he had picked them all out, scowered the city to find old things she could love and harbour in a fortress behind her eyes where he often stood. she was his Chariot.

When she woke up, she was lying next to her new partner, worrying she had given some secrets away while sleep-talking. everything seemed 0.K. (0 Kills). he got out of the new bed, into his new work shirt. he put on some faded old workpants and expressed his hope that someone would see his old pants and replace them with shiny new ones. As per company policy, he had a right to new things.

I

A young girl dreams. She is saving cash, working, trying to avoid unworthy purchases, skipping lunch, sometimes dinner. She has moved back in with her mother to avoid rent. She has tried to put her hand up for as many shifts as they will give her. She has set up rituals so that money will be saved every pay day. She hasn’t brought things; she is surrounded by people acquiring things. She needs to save $5000 to get her somewhere so that she can play her guitar, inherited from her father, jigsaw her poems into melodies and begin her campaign to be the feminine answer to the pied piper. Months, years pass. She craftily avoids perfunctory moods and sequential people so she can harbour her creativity. She practices scales. She tries to finger her heart into a sponge. She jumps in and out of obsessions in order to stuff the chicken of inspiration she is cooking. And it is almost cooked.

She wanders through her city; it is the night for night shopping. She is soaking up in the urban spill. Shops pass and suddenly she is transcending the scene, high above the mall she takes a large breath in; metal bars and cocktail bars are sucked into her mouth, the night sky wavers as though it too will follow, and she vacuums up the city. The inspiration is a succulent meat. She can taste the pavement.

But stop. One shop remains.

Her large eye focuses in on a sparkly thing. She is a bower bird and swoops from high above the city to the glass cabinet keeping the necklace. Everything is throbbing. She is a puppy to its sparkles. She exchanges it for her $5000.

And now, the chicken cooked, she is wearing a sparkling necklace round her neck.