This gets complicated.

There was some kind of meeting with my older brother, C. And I found out he didn't like me very much because he thought I was irresponsible. He thought I just had fun and partied a lot and he didn't respect that. And he was steadfast. As angry as I was, as hopping mad and indignant, there was no convincing him otherwise. And this is why we hadn't been friends in a while.

At the same time there was also some kind of little baby. Only the baby talked like an adult. The baby asked me to find his father. As it turned out I knew who his father was and it would have been inconvenient for the father and I knew that the father was not interested in claiming the child. I had to lie to the baby because I knew the father didn't want it. I don't remember who that father was now.

The dream kind of went back and forth and time and mission got very intricate and weird.

My older brother and I are meant to fly somewhere. Somehow we've got something to do. It all had the feeling of, say, two distant brothers coming together when a father dies to sort out the will or something. Only I don't think that was it. There was no plane so it turned into a road trip.

There was a room we had to transverse only I guess it was just me. It was more like a building or a network of hallways and of course it was a maze. There was a crucible room. I think that's the right word where there was an important plaque that helped find the way through but if you looked the wrong way or didn't feel something at just the right time you couldn't make it through.

I finally made it through. I was on my own at this point though still working on the quest I had started with my brother.

I make it to some far off distant town. It had that other country feel. It felt foreign. Perhaps Germany, Austria. Clues later made it more like Australia.

I parked the car near a school ground. The schoolground seemed foreign and wrong when it was empty. I wandered around this empty schoolground. There were boys – and maybe girls – that felt foreign and important. I didn't know why I was there but I didn't feel lost. I felt on a mission. I walked by a portable which has transluscent walls and discovered that the person sitting at a desk inside was C.R., an old friend I don't have contact with anymore. But he was in a class. He could barely see me and I could barely see him. It felt like I had found at least a part of what I was looking for.

But I couldn't really communicate with him and waiting until he could come out didn't feel like a viable option. A paper that he had had fallen through a crack in the wall and I was walking around outside and I picked up the paper and slipped it back through the wall to get his attention. I couldn't write on it. But I understood that he would understand that it was me. There was a fear of getting caught. The class was for something very odd like knitting or needlepoint or something. But that didn't feel odd either.

When I had made this contact, I left. C., my brother, lived on this street and he saw me. I don't think I wanted to be seen. He took me to an apartment. Maybe it was his but since we were on the same quest, it must have been temporary.

He was still mad at me but we had to talk about something. Again, it felt like a mission. I don't remember the terms of that mission. But it ended badly. I didn't want to see him again and he didn't want to see me but I still had to accomplish something so I didn't leave.

The teacher from C.R.'s class showed up very mad at me for disturbing his class but it was controlled anger. I told the man that I used to be a teacher and that I was terribly sorry and he seemed to feel better. He gave me some information or he allowed me to stay which seemed like a welcome.

Time goes back and forth here and it's impossible to say which happens in which order. I went back to the school grounds. And when I left this time, I really didn't want my older brother to see me but he did. But this turned out to be a good thing. Somehow we managed to reset our mission and we were getting along.

Suddenly a girl. I don't know who she is or where she fits. But she understands our mission and tries to help. I never get inside the school which seems like a very strange and forbidden place.

There's a scene where we're preparing for something. There's the obligatory scene where I get suited up for something to happen. I get dressed in very strange clothes. I'm wearing layers of clothes that don't make sense. One is a braided vest of some kind. It felt important but inexplicable.

There's some sort of crafts room or art studio where we meet to discuss and plot. I don't really know who the we is. I'm not sure I did know. The girl is there. Someone is in love with the girl. I'm very grateful to the girl and it feels like deep affection and I kiss the girl. I get caught kissing the girl and someone is very displeased. That person, my brother?, C.R.?, doesn't trust the girl and thinks that I am making a mistake.

I'm a photographer. The boys leaving the school will look very handsome and photogenic and I want to take pictures but I can't get suited up fast enough and I can't get my camera ready fast enough and by the time I'm ready, the school grounds are empty again.

There's also some very handsome boy standing by an open fridge casting a blue light and it's supposed to be gorgeous and I want to photograph it but I'm again too late and there's no point trying to recreate what had happened naturally.

C., my brother, has a boss. And he has towed my car. It was to do me a favour but it felt like duplicity and I understand the C. has a mission bigger or different than mine.

I'm run out of town for some reason. I'm meant to see my own way out. For some reason I know my way even though I'm in a foreign place. I take someone with me. Perhaps the duplicitous girl. I pass a gorgeous little church. It's a tiny church in a small glen and I'm overcome with the desire to turn back and take a picture of it. I remember that turning the car – or was it a motorbike – around, I was sure I was breaking a lot of laws and I was afraid of the consequences but I had to get a picture of the church. I also remember that it was going to be a very long journey back home and there was some feeling of urgency but I still needed that picture.

I also knew that going home now, I had failed. When we got back to the church I was suddenly overrun with untamed dogs. Chasing me. Barking at me. I couldn't get the picture. I was imperiled but I didn't feel imperiled and I was rescued and brought back to town. I was important after all and was again welcome to stay.

There was another getting ready bit. This time somebody gave me a jacket. It was a courier's jacket or something. Quite plain. Back at the schoolyard for what felt like the climax. It was too odd. There was a group of us standing outside. There was some sort of nefarious meeting inside. It was winter now. There was snow and ice.

Outside we were eavesdropping. There was a woman, like a big Filipina woman (something like the Maid from Will and Grace) who was outside. And it was clear she had served as the lackey of evil. She was one of the bad guys. There was some wood. A tree trunk or a carved thing beside the woman. While the plotters inside were speaking, and while we were eavesdropping, and while the plotters were incriminating themselves and the Filipina woman, the wood transformed itself into a car. But it was an odd car. It was still wood, foremost. But all the dials and knobs were crudely carved and painted so that you might have all the pieces of a car but it clearly was no car.

The evil people had revealed the woman and themselves. There was a van. It ran us – it felt like three people, perhaps myself, my brother C., and my friend C.R. – down. The only escape was to run toward the precipice at the back of the school yard where there was a big frozen lake. Someone fell in or nearly fell in but they were helped out and up.

And silence and breath where we felt like it was over. But the van came back. Perhaps with another driver and we were forced into the water. Below the ice. And I felt the experience but I also understood I was being played by Matt Damon. It wasn't terror. It was the satisfaction of a finished destiny. And we sank. It was ice and it was white and blue but it felt warm. We sank slowly and understood we were going to die.

Now that I think of it there were only two of us. And we hugged on the way down to our watery grave. And I remember that it made a beautiful picture. My companion was Ben Affleck. And I don't know who he was playing. From the deep, from the bottom, where we were supposed to die, we could still breathe and we could still hear far away voices.

And at the place where we were supposed to give up, where we were used to giving up and resigning to death, I caught a shine. The shine was a collection of coins. The coins were oddly stamped with weird engravings that felt important.

We would live. For some reason the courier's jacket I had been given – was it by my brother? – had saved me and we could make our way back to the top. It was as if a bullet proof jacket I had been wearing but didn't know it protected me from a gunshot I didn't know I was going to receive. But it was all preordained.

As we made our way to the top we could make out the voices more clearly. It was now a play set of the same school yard. We were in a play. This perhaps explains why I could never go into the school. It was a set.

But rather than emerge from the icy lake that wasn't cold we continued to watch. We couldn't make out the tinny words but I understood what I was seeing. Someone, with his gestures, was indicating that this had all happened 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 times before. I'm not sure of the number. It might have been 11, it might have been 12, it might have been 14. But what was clear was that everything we had just experienced we had done 13 or 14 times before. But not like players in a play. Every other time we had failed and died as we were meant to but this time we had lived.

We emerged. There was no audience to the play. And there was no surprise from the players either. But we had felt like we had succeeded. We had accomplished our mission. There was some feeling of denouement. The girl I had kissed has revealed herself. Yes. She had been playing us. And didn't she play it well? She had made the coins like props for a play. She had made one wrong and I had noticed it when I was back in the deep.

It was the jacket that had saved us. It was the one thing that was different than the former 13 times. We stood above on a scaffolding for all of this.

But it was clear that this was a movie now. It was a movie about a play about a story. There was a journey home. I was reunited with my brother and we understood and respected each other.

There were many questions. If the characters in this story had done all of this before, how come they did everything so slowly? How come they didn't get right to the point? What did the markings on the coins mean? There were still unanswered questions.

But we had accomplished our mission. And this time we had done it without dying. The journey on the way back was uneventful. The plaque in the crucible was and had been a movie poster for this story.

The movie poster looked like a Spanish movie. But the locations in the movie looked Austrian or German. But there were indications – indications I don't remember - that the story had always been in Australia.

I don't know why there had been a fridge that cast a blue light in the middle of a school yard. But at the time it seemed as super-ordinary as a baby asking me to find his father.

SS