Dream of BellJew Hill

from early hours of 1st January 2009

Dreamt I had an argument with Matt Kameron, a young maths teacher at the school I taught at. He was a store owner selling wallets, and I had bought a large quantity of these wallets from an assisstant and at home discovered two were blemished and was returning them, and

he was politely arguin that it was not a given that they take them back, and I was politely arguing that they should and must, and although my voice was reasonable and my arguments coded in logic in my belly stirred the fears of the irrational - that he would get onto my Jewishness and ascribe that as a possible motivation for wanting to return the wallets, which indeed he did in an oblique polite sort of way, discussing that I lived in Bellvue Hill and Highlands North (my old South African suburb, which Matt has never been to!), and the expectations that would engender in me, and then asked what shul I went to, to which I replied: " why do you assume I go to shul? Do I assume you go to church because you are nominally Christian??"

(All of this paralleled real life exchanges I'd had at one time or another in SA)

I woke up still caked in a thick muddy sleep, my eyes gummed, my head heavy, my throat dry...