a most peculiar place

Falling Slowly Sing Your Melody

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:48:00 +1100

The grass beneath their tired feet has all worn away. Now there is just dry, loose dirt, that coats the toes of those who dance, congealed in geometric conglomerations around their toenails. The sun bores into them - there will be skin too sore to touch tonight. Under the undulating white canvas she sits and pulls grass from the ground so that the bright green root protrudes. She fingers the green there and the tiniest seed falls into her lap. Laying back upon the only cool surface left, she feels the beat course through her. She closes her eyes and imagines the drummer pedaling her heart as if it were the base drum. Red and flesh and the explosion of every sound of every chord. The next song is a familiar one and he remembers the way the banjo comes in on the eighth count. And when it does, my does his heart soar! There are so many fingers between the strings I can’t keep track. This place does that to you. It’s something about the height of the pine trees and the way they huddle along the banks like wise gentlemen talking about the time you kissed a boy beneath their branches. When you believed in a certain kind of love and that the waves would take you far out to sea, too far and you’d come back to shore bloated on everything that the world holds. It’s got something to do with how safe you feel and how your toes are actually hanging over the precipice of everything you pretended could never be true. Just a fairy step away.

I Left The Wolves Behind That Night

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 00:22:15 +1100

The taste of freedom fades with every other bite.

Taken for granted, taken it all.

It’s been so long, I can’t remember the way my wings felt

folded into that cage.

Rappelez-vous madame?

Looking at these things I've seen so many times before

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 23:34:00 +1100

Have you listened to the sound a kookaburra makes? It warbles, and that is precisely the sound it makes as it swallows the ‘a’ and then the ‘r’ of the very word, as if it were saying the word ascribed it. That sound makes me feel at home, reminds me of waking up in my parent’s tent, back when we were small enough to all sleep inside it. The seagulls would foot print their star-shaped feet over the white canvas roof as the first sun of the day began to warm the air, and you could tell it was going to be hot, you could almost smell it and the eucalyptus that it diffused with its heat.

“Mummy why is that girl not wearing her shoes, mummy?

Only here could I walk to the next suburb and feel the earth beneath my bare feet. I smile and wish that little girl wild adventures far from this street in which she has grown. I smile her many a train trip across foreign lands, and swims in water as clear as glass. I invisage her sleeping in other people’s houses, perhaps sharing their bed. I feel her heart tug, just a fleas breath, as if the finest thread of silk connected it to something, or someone else, when she is called home again to all this. To this land where the kookaburras warble and the sun turns brown her skin in a way that makes her feel it is holding her. Tight. And I imagine her back here in this street, leaving her home and her shoes behind and answering her own question, twenty-three years from now.

Have you ever marveled over the way a kangaroo holds itself upright as it hops along? The way it looks as if it must keep moving lest it stop and ruin its balance-defying momentum? This is not the first I’ve seen but I stop, on my Christmas morning run through the farms of the Fleurieu Peninsula, and watch it until it has hopped too far into the paddock for my eyes to follow. I study its legs and notice that they are exactly like the illustration on the tail of QANTAS planes, the ones I stared at till my eyes watered, willing my plane to keep its wheels upon this land.

Further up the road is a tree full of cockatoos and I wonder till my head aches, why I feel I’ve seen this very scene before. It isn’t until the third, cockatoo spotted tree, that I realise. These trees are real life versions of this very Leunig illustration that I had stuck to the ceiling of my bathroom. I can’t recall ever seeing this sight before - a flock of twenty, heavy-set birds, all positioned perfectly upon the branches as the Christmas baubles upon a David Jones tree, and yet it is an image that I’d seen every morning, and every night as I brushed my teeth. They take flight as I run by and I smile and think about all the presents under the tree back at the house, and how they will never be as precious as this right now.

Have you ever spent Christmas morning running toward the blue of the sea? Early in the morning before everyone wakes up and begins to tear the paper? Have you reached the turn off to the beach and found your sister and your cousins emerging from the trees, legs bare and white, shaded bums peeking out from beneath their bather bottoms? Have you ever watched them from on top of the hill and cried so happy that your muscles no longer ache? And have you watched as they spot you up there on the hill and beckoned you down? Have you ever run all the way down to the jetty, over the bridge, over the black car park that will burn the soles of many come midday, and ripped off your shirt and shorts? Shucked your sweaty shoes and socks and stood upon a pylon whilst your little cousin counts down from three? Have you ever plunged into the cold, morning water and not been cold at all? Warmed with the sheer happiness of being where you are, with the people you are on Christmas morning? Have you ever looked at the things you’ve seen so many times before and realised their worth?

The Fall

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 20:04:00 +1100

If you close your eyes, you won’t even see the fall. If you believe in water, in waves and sand, you’ll be caught and held above the truculent ocean floor and all its unknowns, and then you will come up for air. If you count down from three, on one you will take another step, just like the one that got you here, but there will just be air for a while. Just nothingness for a moment whilst you fall.

I'm Coming Home

Sat, 29 Dec 2012 20:26:00 +1100

I’m catching a plane tonight. I left quickly and probably left behind more than a strand of hair in the room that I called mine. I filled my water bottle up with one litre of cask water, knowing that no one will take it off me tonight. When they call us to line up, I’ll call my sister so she’ll know when to leave home. I got dropped off here and I’ll be picked up at the end of the line. No last trains to race to, new transport systems to master, no new languages to decipher. My bag doesn’t do up, in fact it gapes open and threatens to spill all my hurriedly shoved-in items. I let it gape, right open, tempting all the pick pocketers that won’t sneak their hand into my bag. Tonight I’m catching a plane home, but I’ve already arrived.

Sitting in the same chairs they were sitting in last year

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 23:46:00 +1100

The word ‘Thursday’ pierces through the rubber of my earphones and I look up and recognise the furrow of skin between her eyebrows, or can imagine it there underneath her sunglasses, only the second pair she’s owned since I’ve known her. Her hands are out, as if her animated gestures will make Dad remember the intinerary she’s devised after she’s finished speaking. But Dad’s eyes are fixed on the road, his service-station sunglasses worn over his prescription frames because it’s cheaper that way. He has tuned out. I can tell because his lips are pursed like they do when he is concentrating and he is looking straight ahead, concentrating on the road. He has the same look we do whenever we hear the word ‘Thursday’ or any other day, time or month. I wonder if she knows she’ll only have to repeat it on Wednesday night when we ask what the next day has in store? Maybe she just does it for the same reason people write lists - to map things out, get them out of the dark depths of our minds so that they seem tangible. I don’t hear the rest of the conversation, the road and iPod noise drown it all out, and when I look back again she has given up - her mouth gaping in her sleep, catching up on the hours she forfeited for the Christmas pudding. She’s making the most of it because she knows that soon Dad will reach over for her knee, wanting to swap drivers. The car is quiet now, everyone but the driver is asleep as we coast on toward our destination. Somewhere between the chapters of the book I’ve been absorbed in, we’ve left the city behind and now there are only tall, old gum trees strewn, unplanned, in the paddocks by the road. The simple beauty of it, the 39 degree sun in my eye and the haze it creates on the never-ending highway makes me smile. “Welcome to Beaufort” the sign reads. I remember a friend who grew up here, lived her whole life here before moving to Melbourne for uni. I met her at work and then stayed with her and her husband in London where they now live. I remember that weekend being reminiscent of a Baz Luhrmann film - a blur of feathers, and sequins, drugs and alcohol, punctuated with a lightening fast trip back home on the train. I look at her home town outside my window and imagine her here, far from the Cuban nightclubs, and 24 hour gyms of London, and wonder if she’s come home for Christmas this year. I think about Beaufort and London and think about how the two places are just the same; filled with people - 70% water, 30% pride.

Audio

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 10:01:11 +1100

who needs that sentimental bullshit anyway

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 00:30:00 +1100

Another plane caught, another bag through security. Another stamp, another time you’ve locked the door behind you. Ten minutes down the road you forget and try to retrace your actions, it’s just another day, just the same old route. Another email, another message, another frosty morning on the freeway and ten more skeletal trees out the window. Another time another unknown place. Another airport and ten more places to empty your credit card. Another departure, another arrival. It’s just another arrival.

Senza Fine

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 19:00:00 +1100

Dear dearest ones,

How simply superb it is to be back in Italy yet again. I love this country and its people so very much, and the way that the sun is always shining, even now in November. It is a bright holiday sun and it warms my face - the only exposed part of skin I have amongst the coat, gloves and scarf. I’ve left my sunnies at home for this trip and now I have a headache from all the squinting I’ve had to do.

I’m finding all the Italian things coming back to me, like how to say thank you, and the way they answer their phones - “pronto.” I’m in love with it all! This morning I woke to the lap lap lapping of the Canal Grande against the gondolas and fishing boats, and it was the only sound I heard. Who would have thought that Venice would be so peaceful? But don’t fret, for there is still the usual din of Italian horn honking of a day, even if there are no cars here. My airport taxi driver used one hand to hold the horn down and the other to gesture frantically at other boats that got in our way. You know the sort, fingers meeting at the thumb, and metronomic shaking of the wrist.

Oh and the churches of Italy! Built and decorated as if they were grand palaces, and the way one can only see so many before they become less breathtaking and more superfluous. Like eating too much of something sweet. This afternoon I was walking by one on the hour when it began its deep, yet tinny tolling. The man in front of me paused on the bridge we were crossing, closed his eyes and just smiled. I couldn’t help but take a photo of him, his greying hair in perfect contrast to the water and colourful buildings behind him.

That is another thing that I love about the Italians. They may be stressed drivers, but generally they know how to slow down. Like when they smoke for example. They stand there staring up at the sky thinking all their grandest thoughts. I can just imagine Da Vinci doing the same. Or sometimes, they gaze into the water, which is unlike the dark and smog imbued filth I’ve come to expect from city water ways - The Yarra, The Seine and Thames. No, Venice’s water is as deep blue and inviting as the water of Second Valley, and I can just imagine how tempting it would be come the Italian summer.

Oh this place is just magic. If only for the novelty of everything being aquatic - the freeways, road signs, ‘metro stations’, lanes - all on or in water. Tomorrow I’ll wake and have my breakfast upon the balcony, overlooking the fish market; all the boats arriving with their fare to sell. And then I will pack this bag of mine for the last time, I’ll walk through the streets and resist the urge to buy something tacky that would make you cringe, and then laugh. Then I will cross the Rialto bridge, laden down on every one of its steps by tourists and shops selling everything they think they need to believe that they were really here, that all this exists. I will pause at the summit and take one last photo, not certain that the thousand and four before it caught its essence - the way the sun always seems to be either rising or setting - turning the city gold. At the other side of the canal I will hail down the airport taxi and speed away from all this, find a post office and send these words your way.

And by the time this reaches you I will be home and the lusty sheen of my affection will have worn off. But remind me to come back here, to keep traveling and uncovering such paradises. Let such experiences drag on through our lives, reminding us of all the other places we have fallen for, and all the places, beneath the moon and stars, still for us to explore. Never ending. Let the exploration be never ending!

Said and Done

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:00:00 +1100

She has to go back one last time. Just to collect a few coats and CDs she’s left behind. She gets off at the same stop, it’s such a tired routine yet the feel of it, deep down in her bones, is foreign. It’s been that way far longer than the day she decided to leave it all behind. Just one last time she tells herself. One more ticket, one more train. Once more, the end.

And You paint quite a silhouette walking into the setting sun, on your way to get you some

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 05:00:00 +1100

I can picture you now

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 20:05:00 +1100

“Your girl is lovely Hubble.” I smile and imagine Barbra Streisand reaching her hand out to touch Robert Redford’s cheek. The Way We Were. The way you were, here in this place that now sings after you, lyrics you wrote together - the melancholy melody that shines through the trees. Like tears, their leaves confetti down upon my every footstep here in Hyde Park, and I imagine you with your notebook, writing out all the words you would send me. I can see you here in summer, over there in the clearing of grass, with a picnic basket and friends of yours I’ll never meet. Oh sweet friend this place is yours.

I’ve walked along all the streets you told me to. Passed by Selfridges and Harrods and been to markets roofed in the bunting that they seem to love so much, here in your place. I thought I saw your face in every quaint café, having your coffee fix before you catch the Tube home. But it wasn’t you, so I took a ride on your District line, and I pictured you there as the train staggered and swayed through the tunnels to the place you called home in this city. My bag contains the list you wrote me: Borough Market on Friday and Saturday, Brick Lane on Sunday, I look at it and feel the emptiness beside me in the hustle of this city full of everyone busy crossing off their Christmas lists. Because this place is not just a city, it is your city, and your city is lovely, if not a little lonely without you here in it.

Et ça me fait quelque chose

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 11:28:00 +1100

The cars make their way ever so elegantly around the chaotic mess of traffic at Place de la Concorde, and the sound of their engines fill the air as if there were speakers in the clouds. If you hold your breath and listen, you would swear the sound were engulfing you.

All around there are hands poised heavenward, praising this place with the snapping of their shutters. The trees around them have but a few leaves left now, and soon they’ll forfeit them all to the snow and the wind that will race down the boulevard, all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. But today there is sun and it is hard to envisage, amongst the backpacks and sneakers, the shorts and white tents of the Christmas market on Champs Elysées, that any misfortune occurred here under a razor blade.

On my lap is a green paper bag that contains my favourite kind of macaron. A rose one that tastes like a cloud would, if a cloud were made of rose petals picked at dawn from the Tuileries gardens. It is the taste of farewell today, though it is a secret I share only with the lonely, green bench outside the Orangerie gallery, next to the Rodin that I thought was an original the first time I saw it.

Today we’ve called a truce Paris and I. The Tour Eiffel, Pont d’Alexandre, l’Arc de Triomphe, la Concorde and the cars that keep spinning around it. And when I get up and head for the metro, I don’t have to look back to know that they are still spinning around that old place.

Darling This Scene Must End

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:30:00 +1100

You sat across the table from me the day I decided. I remember the way you held your coffee cup, your fingers through its arm as if they were hips you were dancing with to distract yourself from the realisation that this would be the last time I told you I wanted out. Oh how tedious respect is as we furtively made our way to the end of the line, trying to assuage the dying gasps of all that we had been.

I lay awake, the night, the week, the month before, I lay there, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the words to appear, but they’d always been in my head, in yours too, every moment before we made up. The floodwaters always found the hole we hadn’t covered.

But now that the decision has been made there are only the lovely things to look back on with the melancholy fondness you get when you realise that the days are now numbered. There is a certain kind of freedom that has grown here in the place where we planted the truth that day. Even a soldier will miss the camaraderie at the front when he is given his leave, and when I look in your eyes I only see every triumph.

I served this dish to you cold and calmed down and still there are so many things I wish I could pick out of it, but I’ve simply forgotten. Forgotten everything that led to this. The heart has trumped memory in forgiveness.

This has become enough for now.

Just A Few Honest Words

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 11:28:00 +1100

After all the wars

The grand balls and ballrooms

Somewhere along the way

We tired of corsets

and conflict

and questioned it all

till we got to this…

A Castle and A Cloud

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:44:00 +1100

There is a castle on a cloud of rock

And waves lash the stone walls as cold as ice

The town built in the sea, brought in to dock

By monks and pilgrims with but one small vice

They wanted just to climb to heaven, to

Face the one, to cheat life, your reward comes

Now, now, now amongst your stained glass, for you

Stone steps worn down with all your climbing, hums

Like the wind that blows past your ear, cooee

And it is gone again back to the land

Of salt and sand that no man could dare flee

On his knees crying an unheard demand

If this be for beauty’s sake, every stone

The castle on the cloud begins to groan

Early Risers

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 09:28:00 +1100

The world is quite a different place without a sun, something between a dog and a wolf. The air cuts ones nostrils with the temptation of danger and fills ones ears with the roaring of sleeping giants from makeshift beds on the metro stations, their tummies peeking out from under soiled clothing.There is friendliness before there is sun, friendliness in the invasion of what should be alone time, sleeping time, not-shoved-up-against-fellow-traveller time. The early morning darkness adopts the most disparate gully of RERers into its fold, those with their OPI nails and garbage collector uniforms.

There is so much time before the sun, the closest one will ever get to nothing time, to stopping the clock, as if the hands hailed only the first sign of light on the horizon. But before there is that first light, when there is no telling where the air and earth meet, the streets are somehow less menacing. As if the darkness that they are veiled in were not day old, dangerous darkness from the night before, but freshly squeezed. Yes, just before the nine of nine to five fame, the streets are homely as a pillow come dawn. Because before there are masks and masters, there is an honesty that rivals the rousing of your first espresso for the day bought at the corner pub, where the bar tender pulls stools down from the bar, his eyelids at half mast.

The thing about the early morning is that it is so close to the night and so much a part of the new day, it can sometimes be hard to tell. But the lovely thing about the early morning is that if you let your eyes adjust you’ll learn something about its dear friend the night too. Because the world is not so different without a sun, the sky is never black, it’s simply a deeper blue.

I Belong With You, You Belong With Me, You're My Sweetheart

Sun, 21 Oct 2012 11:19:00 +1100

He is there waiting for her when her train pulls into the station. He is standing at the top of the stairs smiling, leaned up against the blue pole, soaked in rain. She is for him, no one could deny the smile she tries to suffocate in her scarf, and when she reaches him she wraps her hands around his like they belong in no other place. There is a mist-like rain caught in the headlights as everyone makes their way out of the station, and together the two of them zigzag their way through the cars in synchronized strides.

Up on the right, they turn down a lane bathed in shadow, and she squeezes his hand. Under a streetlight as round as the full moon, he pulls her to his side and croakily at first, he remembers the start to her favourite song.

“Dum dum dum.” His voice is irresistibly awkward.

She smiles up at where she thinks his face is in the dark and joins him on the third line of the verse. By the time they reach the chorus their voices are so loud that she can no longer hear the rustling of leaves in the woods beside them, nor the howling of the loups.

And then they begin to dance. There in the middle of the deserted road that goes on and on in the dark, they just start dancing. Each foot the beat they’ve created with their voices that bounce and bound into the echoing trees. The wind whips tangles into her hair and dries her throat as he pulls her along, coat tails flapping. He pulls her through the air her feet barely touching the ground and her arms outstretched like a paper man chain - an infinity of hands holding on.

He carries her all the way to her door, and waits with her till she finds her keys at the bottom of her bag. And with the door closed behind her, she smiles and thinks about how he’s the one she’ll miss when the day comes.

But I Always Take The Long Way Home

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 09:28:00 +1100

Your words have no pull on me, let them roam

I’ll only turn around, set sails to see

Because I always take the long way home

Those blue Mary-Janes, a buckle in chrome

You’d chosen but we never could agree

Your words have no pull on me, let them roam

Path full of cracks, head a whispering dome

If I fall, pretend it was meant to be

Because I always take the long way home

Come knocking, you things of bubble and foam

You all tried - played your hollow melody

Your songs have no pull on me, let them roam

And I’ve seen it all, written my great tome

Never was what I wanted it to be

Your words had no pull on me, how they roamed

Because I always took the long way home

"As the leaves take in their final breaths, Clutching at existence, at identity, Clinging to the..."

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 08:36:00 +1100

“

As the leaves take in their final breaths,

Clutching at existence, at identity,

Clinging to the last strands of seasonal pride,

At a summer that was impossible to forget,

Yet was always destined to.

Familiarity, which acts as refuge, as shelter,

Yet hurdle and barrier, prolongs progress.

A blurring of the truth, as if the coldness were to continue forever,

Albeit a thin layer of frost at every dawn.

One forgets the cycle.

That it always has and always will be this way.

Often lost amongst the woolen coats, pots of tea, dooners and conversation.

Change is near, always with the faintest air of promise,

But always unwelcome.

But it comes, it always comes.

A greening bud, an icy crack, a muffled yawn, a ripened fruit.

The fear and darkness in the dreams of hibernation are all but forgotten

Pardoned, replaced, forgiven.

Conceiving growth, warmth, life and hope

Spring is, again.

”

- J.D