Australia

Dreamsourcing

By Bob Boldt

The Dream. I was packing up some ten or twelve equipment cases of various sizes and descriptions with cameras, lights, cables, and costumes from a feature film shoot we had just completed in Australia. There just didn’t seem to be enough room for everything. I was in the process of collapsing a huge down jacket – compressing it to remove the air – when I thought of something I had left behind in the hotel.
    The ballroom we had been shooting in had been taken over by another party. Security guards were standing at the several doors to the room, denying entry to uncredentialed persons. Somehow I managed to elbow my way past the guards and found myself in a British penal colony Down Under. I remembered meeting two trekkers earlier in the lobby. Kyle was a young Bavarian fond of smoking cigar-sized spliffs of pure Jamaican weed. He was well dressed, tall, and blond. His friend – and less formally dressed fellow traveler – Chris, half a head shorter, was descended from the powerful, original Englishmen who were the first of many brutal occupiers of the Australian continent. Kyle’s hair was longish, while Chris’s hair was dark and curly, almost nappy.
    We had spoken briefly during the time our set, in the now vanished ballroom, was being struck. I told them I had a secret that would blow their minds if only we could meet later and discuss things. I told them I had discovered a secret about the world and our place in it that had only been guessed at until now.
    Anyway, this penal camp Down Under had a series of crude cells for prisoners, made out of packing-crate lumber hammered together with only narrow slats between the planks to allow ventilation. This holding stockade was only occasionally punctuated by three-inch holes drilled in the sides and the doors, presumably through which messages and small morsels of food could be passed.

    I had found Chris’s medicine packet I had hoped to return to him. It sort of reminded me of a deflated basketball, only made of some kind of rough fabric with aboriginal designs painted all over it using that unique application of circles and dots they had developed. I had not looked at the contents.
    I began rapping on the doors with a stick, one at a time, calling out “Australian? Australian?”( I had temporarily forgotten Chris’s name.) Sure enough, he soon immerged, his eyes blinking in the bright sunlight. We proceeded to a large ceremonial hut built by the aboriginal tribe. It resembled a giant cabana with sides open to the sun and surf.

    Some kind of funeral ceremony was taking place for all the past dead elders, chiefs, and others who had fallen prey to the British conquest of the land so long ago. Soon the rhythmic chanting became a long, low, sustained wail. This dirge continued and grew almost unbearably loud. Then I realized that the sound was not coming from the mourners but from the sky above. The ancestors were reaching down with the power of sound, reaching down to their children, inviting them to join them in the sky.

    I looked at Chris, who now had transformed into a nine-year-old aboriginal boy. This boy was to be the savior of his people and assist in their metamorphosis into the space children they would become. As I watched, he began to rise in the air, seemingly on the vibrating air currents alone. This sound was powerful enough to change the structure of matter itself. Looking out over the expanse of sand and sea in the distance, I saw, high in the sky over the ocean, a huge craft beginning to switch on and off like the flicker of some kind of a projector beam. It looked very dark, almost a silhouette, composed largely of the kind of plant materials, tree limbs, leaves, and grasses reminiscent of those mock aircraft the cargo cult used to build to recreate the planes they hoped would lure the American cigarettes, canned goods, and metal implements back to their island after the end of World War Two.

    These people had assembled a huge space saucer, an exact replica of the kind that had brought them here eons ago. Somehow the sound, and perhaps the will of their ancestors was now causing the craft to be transformed into a true space-going vehicle. It was materializing right there in mid-air, ready for boarding. It was huge, perhaps a mile across in size. As it began to hover closer to shore, ready to take on passengers, the sound deepened and became even more intense. It was even loud enough to wake me up.

Copyright © 2016 by Bob Boldt