Dream of Taking a Taxi to Town on Thursday when Dad had a Meltdown and I Comforted Him

Dad had a meltdown. We were taking the taxi in to town on a Thursday. He was angry and anxious. He sat in the drivers seat and was going to drive the taxi. The taxi driver sat in the passenger seat. Mum and I sat on the back seat.

‘You can’t do this,’ I said to the taxi driver, ‘if we have an accident you won’t be covered,’ and then further, ‘he’s a bad driver.’

Then came the meltdown. Dad got out of the taxi and fell down on the road. It looked like the Elizabeth Bay loop. I saw three windows from an old building. That was our office building.

I comforted him. She was struggling.

‘We can take Thursday off,’ I said. ‘You have nothing to worry about. You are in the top 1% of people on this planet. You have a real skill unlike me.’

He was crying.

‘We’re going home,’ I said to the driver.

We’d be closed for business today.

Welcome back to Sydney. My return from Wagga Wagga dream. I am the taxi driver. Dad is a bad driver. I protect him by driving. But it’s hard work. It’s breaking me in two. Into chauffeur and passenger. Mum and I are captives of his will to work. The Meltdown. That’s me. No H E L P (February 2023). If it were up to me I’d sell the city offices, buy an apartment on the loop, lock it up and disappear. If I had his money I’d do things my way. The 1%. They’re not free. They’re there because they work work work. My dad was lucky. He has a rarefied skill. A Swiss watch expert. It’s paying dividends 60 years on. Unlike me a 21st century man. The techo-narcissist-capitalist what-ever-you-want-to-call-it tyranny cannibalised everyone and me all skills and art post-World War II. Dad was born before war’s end so he’s not swimming hard against the tide. Nevertheless I consoled him. I’m working on compassion. He’s getting old. For some that’s hard. The end of consciousness. It was Thursday. The fourth day of the working week. The number four the quaternary in dreams. Totality. Ah, what he lacks is wholeness. His life is ruled by time a conscious construct (August 2021). She was struggling with that. She is he. Dad is alienated from the unconscious which is both feminine and timeless. He hides from it in work work work. Out of sight. Out of mind.

His neuroticism is robbing me of mind. It’s bringing me down. To three then two then one.

Therefore,

I’m taking Thursday off.

I can afford to. I’ve got time. I’m not in the 1%.

Dream of Platform and Replacement Bus Problems at an Underground Train Station and No Help to be Found Anywhere

We were out for after work drinks. Dad was among us. We came across Merv when walking to the train station. He was drunk and talkative. I’d never seen him that way. Then when filing into the train station I had to go the other way to Kings Cross. I saw Pia from behind. In order to get to my platform I had to slide down a series of long ramps. The first slide was fine. The slide was well constructed. It resembled a makeshift fire escape chute. For the second ramp, which led down to the train platform, an attendant helped me turn on the lights inside the Kevlar-clad chute.

I slid down.

There was a man a red head directly outside the chute exit on a set of stairs that then led to the platform. He was sleeping. A blanket covered his body. It was cold. It was 5 am.

‘I have a theory about the cold,’ I said. ‘It’s because of that volcanic eruption in Tonga. The biggest since Krakatoa. After that there were cold summers for years.’

‘Great …’ someone near me said.

I then realised no train was coming for 1.5 hours. There were replacement buses instead.

So,

I ran up the stairs past people to the road outside the train station. It looked like Haymarket. I couldn’t find the replacement bus. There were normal buses but no replacement bus.

It was daylight now.

Then I saw a long bendy bus. That was my replacement bus. It was pulling out. I had missed it.

‘Great …’ I heard a girl say. ‘If I knew about these buses I would have been home hours ago,’ she added.

My bus had left. Confusion. No help to be found anywhere. Should I walk home?

Dreamt at 5 am.

I dreamt this dream in mid-December. That’s how far behind I am, again. I’m gonna have to skip some dreams.

But not this one.

At its surface this dream is merely a bundle of reactions to stimuli encountered over the course of a week in the life of one Paul J. Sintic. I was cold in bed at 5 am. I needed a blanket. I made it so. It’s been so damn cold this summer. I blame Tonga. The biggest volcanic eruption since Krakatoa. I went out for after work drinks last week. Dad wasn’t there. He’s at home my limiting factor. Nor was Merv. Mum said she hasn’t heard from him. Is he okay? Drunk? No way. He’s a Baptist teetotaler. He left a box of Earl Grey in our office. I drank the lot. That guy with reddish hair sleeping by the fire escape was a drunk too. I was a little tipsy that night when I took the train back east after drinks. Everyone else headed west. If only I lived near Kings Cross, I thought, then I could take the train directly home no need to catch a bus or drive my car. Remember; as you think so shall you dream. I don’t like pubs. I’m no drinker. I’m like Merv. I drink tea. Then there’s the fire alarm system in our city building. The workmen have been busy installing new lifts. They had to turn off the fire alarm yesterday. Great. No escape. Pia was one for all those building committees. A seasoned resume hunter. I can’t play that game. But our building manager is a patient man. He’s on to me. He wants me to join the owners committee.  

These dreamtime trifles are meaningless. Call them the random associations of mind to daily life.

But,

There is the latent content of this dream the latest recasting of a recurrent theme that being train platform problems (January 2023). This time the feminine was unhappy about the situation. Great. It’s two steps forward one step back with her. And once again HELP was nowhere to be found. Now to that we can add ESCAPE. I want out only I can’t find a way.

So what’s the problem?

No H E L P.

I made a joke about the NRMA in the previous post about that HELP sign on the road (February 2023). I ignored the significance of that sign. That was remiss of me. The black man in that dream embodied all the aspects of me that have been repressed and cast aside these past few years. I blame the covid fiasco. It ruined my life. There is no denying this fact. Some of my friends say covid was a joke and that it did not impact them. They’re in denial. Everyone lost three years of his or her life. You can’t get those years back. For me at my stage of life those were crucial years. Because of covid my social life was effectively destroyed, my future plans were sunk, and as for re-integration into this Stasi state New Normal that’s almost impossible for someone like me who is opposed at a psychological level to all this meet-the-humans zoom paraphernalia. What kind of world have we created? I can’t see how people are happy with this outcome.

The big problem for me NOW is the REAL impact all this had on my elderly parents. The covid fiasco aged them (March 2022). They were independent before covid. Now they’re dependent. Those burdens have fallen onto me. And I’m struggling with it. I’m trying to be compassionate. I’m trying to be patient. But it’s hard. Real hard. And there’s no HELP to be found anywhere. It’s just me against the machine that being the system the way things are and always will be because it’s the best system in all the world don’t you know.

I don’t see a way out. This explains my confusion about which bus or train to take. It seems I’m looking out for an escape route. If one appears I may take it. I can’t keep that big black man down on the ground indefinitely. I don’t want to end up like that red head drunk down and out in the underground.

Dream of Cycling on Bunnerong Road with Mum when a Big Black Guy Cycled Passed then Fell from his Bike and Needed Help

I was cycling down Bunnerong Road. I had to do something for mum. She was on a pillion seat. I cycled round a few blocks because I was early. I noticed my left brake didn’t work so well. I then joined the busy traffic at the Beauchamp Road intersection. A big dark tattooed guy on a bike powered on past us. Then further down the hill towards Perry Street the black guy was down on the ground in the middle of the road. He had fallen off his bike. Two people, a man and a woman, were providing assistance. They had placed a HELP sign on the road. I started to brake. I did.  Then I pointed to mum. ‘I have my mum,’ I said. I couldn’t stop to help.

I’ve been having a hard time dreaming lately. That left brake’s not working so well. No unconscious control. It happens. I blame the weather. Hot one day cold the next. There’s no consistency and that’s what you need, consistency, to dream good dreams.

The dream recalled the old man I saw on the footpath opposite Botany Cemetery on Bunnerong Road (June 2019). He was quite literally on the footpath in that he had collapsed. A crowd had gathered round him and an ambulance was in attendance. I didn’t stop. I was in a hurry. I had to drive to the city to pick the parents up. They can’t walk. Especially mum. On that drive I saw two more ambulances attending accidents on Bunnerong Road.

What was going on that day?

I blame the weather.

Then on the drive back home on Oxford Street I came across a man with child on a bike. The child was in a children’s pillion seat.

‘He’s asking for it,’ dad said.

And so these elements entered the dream.

The big black man represents my neglected unconscious. It’s been ignored. It’s fallen from grace. It wants attention. Hence the HELP sign in bold red print. I was drafting my Paul Bowles Pablo Picasso white guy black guy dream the day before I had this dream (December 2022). That helped seed him too. He was big and aggressive. I don’t like tattoo-clad men. Low class thugs. I let him pass.

And then he fell.

A man and women were providing roadside assistance. The woman was the unconscious. The man I don’t know. The masculine opposite of the feminine unconscious?

‘Good,’ I thought, ‘ that ugly man’s been taken down.’

But then came feelings of remorse. That old man I saw. On Bunnerong Road. He looked helpless. Dead.

But I had to go. I had to help my mum. Doctors’ appointments. Orwellian Centrelink. Filling out forms for her Austrian Pension. I’ve been busy. No time to dream. My car broke down last week outside the University of New South Wales. I called the NRMA. I needed roadside assistance. They hung up on me.

No H E L P.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqMSemaZzc0)