Dreams without a specific date

Earliest Dreams.

My earliest memory was period of ‘night terrors’ I had when I was around four or five.  I was trying to crawl through an imaginary hole in the wall the escape the ‘creatures’.  My father comes in had slaps me three or four time to wake from this nightmare.

With the exception of the above, there is only one specific dream I can remember and some disjointed images.  The dream is also a reoccurring nightmare.  I can place this event at a time when my father was doing work in the lounge room, either painting or laying carpet.  I would have had to be around five or six years of age and the black and white TV had been moved into the parents bedroom while the renovations continued.

The actual dream sees my brother and I in my parent’s room watching the television.  The TV is not working properly I call for my mother to come in and adjust it.  She leans down to see if the plug in the wall is in properly.  All of a sudden, she is electrocuted.  Watching, her body burns black instantly, standing there with only the whites of her eyes looking at me, before her ashened body disintegrates.  On two separate occasions, I awoke from this dream screaming and crying.  The only other memories I have of another childhood dream is of driving my Pops old Morris Minor when I was about ten. 

Finally, there is the ‘man with the big head’, a drawing from  ‘Cole Funny Picture Book No 1’ that also gave me nightmares.  Many older Australians would be familiar with this book.  Published at the turn of the century, my mother would get out the copy she had as a child for my brother, sister and I to gaze at the bizarre and marvelous pictures it contained.  The picture of ‘the man who picked the bad boy out of the mud’, a ‘dark’ man with an oversized bulbous head was so intrusive that it appeared in several nightmares as a child.

1988-89.

I am in the compartment of a turn of the century passenger train.  Seated opposite me are Mahatma Gandhi and Carl Jung.  No words are spoken.  Gandhi looks up at me and puts his hands together in anjali, the traditional Indian greeting.  I awake, very moved by the experience.

Late 1991.

I am in a crowded city street, under a clear blue sky.  The street is lined with stone buildings that rise above the market stalls below, windows look out from above the heat and dust.  A voice cries, Jesus is coming![1]  For a minute I am disorientated, Jesus?  This must be Jerusalem.  Crowds line the narrow street to see him coming.  I must be very small or young as I push through the crowd to the front, as everyone is the size of an adult.  Palm throngs lie underfoot as a man on a donkey makes his way through the pressing crowd.  This is my chance to see what he really looks like.  I can see him approaching, close now and as I look up at his face I find that I cannot see it.  No matter how hard I try I just cannot see his face.

Now the scene is one of a large paved courtyard and once again I am pushing through the crowd towards the front.  High on the balcony at the fore is Jesus and surrounding him are officials, there is lots of jostling and shouting and looking up I can see him but once again I still cannot see his face.

I follow in the crowd through another part of the city, I am following Jesus to the Golgotha, determined to get a look at his face.  The Golgotha is a barren piece of land that lies a way beyond the city walls and here, ‘like he always has’[2], is to be crucified as a criminal.  This is not a good place, I can see him not far, I just want to see his face[3], I can now hear my one-year-old son crying in his bedroom.  I am trying to hold on to the dream images but they fade as I wake distracted by the crying.