in a way i'm yearning to be done with all this measuring of truth

I had a dream once. Nick Cave was in it. We were at a party, and he chose me. Now, over at PAN we've been having discussions of how you feel when people get the wrong idea about you. My particular hang-up, more so when I was younger than now, is when I'm wearing something really, really, really straight. Maybe as an experiment, maybe for work, and someone like Nick Cave sees me and thinks, Wow, that chick's really straight. I'm never going to talk to her. Whilst my (silent but rapidly beating) heart of hearts is crying out, but I'm just like you! I'm a goth on the inside! I'm tortured and angsty! This Amish cover is all a clever ruse! Then I sob into my scrunched up tissue, ensuring that, not only does Nick not give me a second glance, he looks away in pity and disgust. Or sneers. He's got quite the sneer on him.

It was more of an issue when I was insecure and in my twenties. Now that I'm insecure and in my forties I know for sure that no-one is going to mistake me for hip. Still, I don't want to be mistaken for a school marm just yet, even though I am one, except for the marm bit (guess that just makes me a school).

So, the important part about this dream is that it also featured a guy I was seeing a lot of at the time. In fact I was smitten. It's a shame that the feeling was not officially reciprocated. As our relationship progressed, I ended up having a dream where, like Ozymandias, he was this rather vitriolic talking torso, his arms cut off at the triceps, no lower body to speak of, but still spouting wisdoms - he was the very model of a very modern major talking head, or John Bobbit at the least. Vitriolic but no longer virile. Oh, and I know Ozymandias didn't talk, well his statue didn't, but I'm sure he was very eloquent when he ordered the artisans to sculpt his likeness.

Oh my, the Specials are on the radio, but that is an aside (just to show you that really, I am still hip by referencing bands from my teens that are maybe still influential. I like ska but not reggae - I don't like cricket, oh no...).

Anyway, before the talking torso dream came about, well, talking torso with head, we were at a party (in the first dream) and the one with whom (?) I was smitten had to go meet a Dr. Zhivago kind of train, such as the Orient Express, to meet his ex, who had basically kicked him in the head when she'd broken up with him. He met her because he rode a high horse of propriety (unlike me) and felt he had an obligation to do so (to meet her), and because of course, she was the very major model of some form of perfection (unlike me - not that I'm bitter. No, no, no. Special Agent Dana Scully was his perfect woman, and I cannot think of someone more unlike her than me. He wasn't going to meet Scully on the Orient Express, by the way. Remember, it was all a dream. Except for the Scully being his perfect woman bit).

I think Nick then picked me up, twirled me in the air. Hah! Dana Scully lover, that'll show you (he was a Nick Cave fan, too). And we talked about our favourite Abba songs. I am sure I was even wearing an old, and not really liked, but much worn, bright green jumper, pilled and unravelling. Daggy in the Australian parlance. I was back to being awkward and fourteen, at least in my dress sense. Nick was alluring and strangely down to earth (the radio is playing reggae Beatles now [not bad], just to spite me). Considering Nick the Stripper, Mercy Seat and so on, the wild heroin use, and the dark, dark psyche, Nick Cave is probably the same as you and me. Actually, my sister used to write these wickedly dark plays, but I knew she wasn't a wickedly dark person. Maybe they were just wickedly dark because I knew the background. Family maybe shouldn't read family's work (hi sis!). Not that there were any stretching racks or cat o' nine tails or stocks lurking around our suburban home. As I recall, her plays, like our house, were permeated with the smell of the spaghetti bolognese that our father often cooked. Anyway, back to the nefarious Nick. It could be that the arts is what saves many a wicked thought from being a wicked actuality.

Which is why more people should pick up paint brushes instead of guns.

And should allow women to give birth in hospitals rather than out in the open at checkpoints, surrounded by men.