A Moment of Clarity

I was still feeling a little off yesterday evening, despite the exhilarating ride to Rocky Gully and back.  I had enjoyed the steak sandwich I had there.  It had come with lettuce, tomato, cucumber and beetroot.  Despite an active day, I did not feel like eating an evening meal so I took my pills with tomato juice.  Through the evening I drank orange juice and a lot of iced water.  I finished the day with a small glass of Port, retired early at about 8:30 and so did not upload the pictures I had intended.

This morning I awoke early as usual, and felt ravenously hungry at first.  Sunday is the day for a special breakfast.  I prepared scrambled eggs with parsley and smoked salmon, to eat with fresh bread.  A few bites and I found I could not eat after all.  I was still unwell, my insides complaining.  I put the rest into the refrigerator to make sandwiches later.  I drank coffee.  My best freshly ground Altezzano. I could manage that.  After trying to complete a few chores I gave up, took a cold shower, headed back to bed.  I topped up the reservoir of the humidifier attachment with de-ionised water, fitted the nasal pillows, pulled the sheet over my head and quickly fell asleep listening to Bic Runga on the stereo.

I dreamt.

I was in Fiji.  The letter arrived from her lawyers.  In a moment of cold, clear clarity I wrote back, advising that the house was now entirely hers.  There was enough equity in it to equal the modest superannuation fund I had put by, and more besides.  Anything left over could be used to set up the girls in their own place.  I wrote to my bank in NZ and informed them that the house was no longer mine and to the bank in Fiji cancelling the fortnightly transfers of most of my salary.  As simply as that everything was settled.  I closed my Facebook account (why that features in the dream I have no idea).

Time passed as it does in dreams.  At the end of my term with SOPAC I renewed the contract.  Work was going well.  I was actually achieving things.  My international travelling enabled me to develop my photographic skills which now, in the dream, was what SOPAC had actually hired me to do.   Life was good.   My salary was now my own.  SOPAC was paying most of the girls’ education fees.  Continuing to live as cheaply as I had before, I found the money now piled up in the bank.  I calculated I could retire at 62. Life was indeed Good.   A strange sensation of joy and pleasant anticipation.

I awoke in a sweat, a strange rushing sound in my ears and tears leaking from my right eye.  Something was blowing a cool gush of air across my face.  The room was hot.  Billy Joel was now singing: Goodnight Saigon.  For a few moments  I thought I was still in Fiji.

The odd noise bothered me, until I realised that it and the air flushing across my face was  caused by the ResMed mask blowing into my eye.  It had been displaced as I slept.   The room was very hot.  Hotter than I had ever experienced in Fiji.  A warm breeze blew through the screens, scented with sheep-yard and eucalyptus.  It dawned on me that I must be in Australia.  I was confused at first.  The dream had been so real.  Katanning. Shit. I am still only in Katanning.  Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle.  This room in my little flat is laid out almost exactly as my bedroom had been in Beach Road, only it is smaller.  I had never noticed that before.

Gradually I returned to reality.  As I thought about the dream from which I had just awoken, I realised that I am indeed a fekwit.