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I hadn’t realised until I’d arrived home yesterday that it had been a bad day for bushfires. I suppose I must have felt it in the air when I wrote during the day about summer's early grip. Today has been cooler though, the southerly breeze has remained with us all day however there is still no rain, but the cool air is enough relief for the moment...
However there are still some notes I wish to transcribe from yesterday written when I was heading into town and the weather was still hot and languishing. Perhaps my thoughts themselves follow the change, the soft shift of the wind into the cool southerly change…
She’d asked me weeks ago if I loved the way the heat wrapped itself around you like a lover, an intoxicating embrace that poured through every sensation of your being. I was hesitant. I hated the muggy heat and had not considered it as a lover or an intoxicating passion. Yet the way she talked... I promised myself to try and notice this lover when summer arrived, a steamy dangerous love affair with that whom I had abhorred…
Train monologue…
My back pressed against the wall of the train, rocking back and forth in a lazy lilt along the tracks, it shudders and jarrs when I try to write, we almost screech to a halt as we reach the station, a gentle lazy breath of warm air trickles through the doors. Someone has sat on the other side directly in my line of vision, sunnies, bright backpack and grey striped socks on the seat jarring against the soliloquy I felt before, the muttering of practising his mandarin, learning phrases that disturbs the quiet of the trains rumblings, I hope he gets off soon. Perhaps I should draw him, he might go away then… Instead another obstruction, dusted down in plaster and browned hairy skin and torn jeans has also joined the obstruction… I draw them anyway, well at least part of them… the chatterers have arrived too, further down, a babble of voices quite intrusive. I mainly drew obstruction two’s backpack, dark brown with white marks, a well worn handle of a workmen’s tool protruding out from a corner, some battered notebooks in the front pocket, I imagine the tool to be a chisel, it feels as though it should be a chisel, a large one maybe, perhaps it might otherwise be a paint stripper… Shifting my back against the wall I return to thinking of the train as a building, it has four walls in each carriage, doors, windows, two storeys with connecting stairs, surely it qualifies then as a building, I suppose a car is a building too, only it doesn’t seem like one, it’s a little too small, more like a cramped room than a building, a train feels like a building, you walk around in it, you sit in it, stand in it, the only thing unusual about it is that it moves from one location to another, but you barely notice that, well I don’t at the moment… Obstruction One looked at me uncertainly, I stared back as I continued to write, he’s getting edgy and now he stands and moves out of our carriage, I almost spoil it with a laugh. Obstruction Two I think has noticed me writing or drawing as I look at him, but he avoids looking at me and stares out the window, but solace is unavoidable right now anyway… Some other fat guy in black and white tries to turn the seat infront of me round to expose me and wall himself in instead, I move it back, after all I was here first, people always still try to do that though. Its still been peaceful though, I haven’t heard any mobiles go off or anything, and the babblers are quieter now that one or two have got off and the train is returning to its lilting along the tracks. Obstruction Two isn’t as bad as Obstruction One was, and I might just close my eyes a little now… And a mobile phone goes off before I’ve even had the chance to move my eyelids, it’s a message for obstruction two, I watch him reply. I’ll still try and find peace, attempt two at closing my eyes and drifting away… I’m most aware of the guttering on the roof shaking and rattling, buildings are not meant to travel I suppose. The jarring thud of something heavy like a glass paperweight rolling down the isle suddenly sends my eyes flying open, and I close them again… How come the guttering only seems to make such a noise when I shut my eyes… My back begins to throb badly now, but I’m almost there, next station and I change trains to circular quay… I hadn’t noticed quite how prominent Obstruction Two’s adam’s apple is until now…
And time is soft and still…
A wander through the rocks, under the harbour bridge pylons and along the harbour foreshore
I’m wandering under the bridge now, and its so wonderful. The rumble overhead, muted echoes of some other world. A field of grass beneath foot. Look one way out to the roofs of a few buildings, the harbour, the opera house. On the other side, one row of neat brown sandstone terraces, shades of caramel on the buildings on both sides. All is in harmony and up above, just below the underbelly, walk a line of bridge climbers, suspended against a clear blue sky. I made the right decision to come up here before the lecture and there’s a cool breeze blowing… The figs ahead around the corner are lit with the afternoon light, that glowing white light that seems so pure and heavenly. A girl up ahead sits perched on the end of a canon looking very content. I wish I could sit there too. Everyone around me seems to have a camera and for once in my life I am content with my paper and pen, and the only thing bothering me right now is the fly that’s trying to get my attention… But I’ve found something very interesting, it is a tiny spot and uncomfortable to sit and write on, but anyway it is a tiny semicircle of view where the harbour slinks up against a shore, rather than the sandstone sea wall that lines the harbour. There are rocks, and slated, old sandstone blocks as tiles. I think there is a wall further up, but the sea doesn’t reach there, instead it slinks up and down naturally, a little sand amongst the sandstone blocks. It’s low tide too, black shelled limpets cling to the base of a support pillar for the hotel restaurant above, but oh do I love it, a caved shore for our ocean to rest in and out against… As I get up and walk away I noticed that the tiles end and a small expanse of dark sand beach lies behind it before the wall is enforced… If I ever want to runaway I wish to sleep under there. If I ever want to commit suicide I want to drown in our harbour, to climb down one of the ladders along the dock and just sink…
