search and rescue

Last night I dreamt of a large gathering of family and friends in the country. We were staying several days in a big ranch-style house. The landscape was open, brown like goldfields country, and quite wild. There was a large, dangerous-seeming, brown river a short walk from the house, and in this river much of my dream was set.

Part of the family-fun was a competition of sorts; we were each to create a sculpture or some sort of piece out of the things we had found. This seemed to be an annual challenge - a well-loved tradition - and throughout the dream it seemed to absorb those around me. I had won the competition previously, and felt that people expected another triumph of me.

I wanted to make this thing, but there were crises at hand that prevented my even beginning it... even as I write that, I realise that all my passions in the dream were focused on the central crisis, and all that is connected with my found-objects creation is a sense of panic, dread, shame, and the frustration of disparate pieces that would not come together.

All my attention was centred on my bunny-rabbit - a small, dark creature who had fallen in the river and, I feared, might be dead. Notwithstanding this fear, I daily walked past all the busy and productive people dotted industriously throughout the landscape, and jumped in the river, fully clothed, to look for my bunny. I didn't want to fail him. The worst thought was that he would perish alone, thinking that I didn't care. 

People were playing in the river: water-skiing, making noise and disturbing the surface of the water. I remember my uncle, the artist, watching me from atop an escarpment above the river. I remember banging the screen door behind me as I left the ranch on the third day, and realising I had still not changed out of my jumper and jeans and had on the same underwear, despite their being soaked, daily. I was particularly aware of the cumbersome nature of the clothing for swimming in - the jumper a heavy, rainbow, hand-knitted affair - but it did not occur to me to take it off. 

At moments I had glimpsed my bunny but had been unable to reach him. 

On the third day, I found him, under a drain but not yet sucked down the hole - just inches away from certain death, shivering and drenched. I reached and took his little body in my hands. There was a panic and a struggle during which he nearly went down the drain - I had to grab at him roughly, and worried that I would hurt him, but finally he was safely in my arms, grateful. I held him against my chest and we chatted softly like lovers all the way back to the ranch.


It's time I got some drawing done.


My dream has reminded me that I need to find my poor, beloved little wild creature again, and nurture it. I have been dangerously, wilfully neglecting it. So! On with the rainbow jumper, and into the murky water go I...