Looked up from my crouching position in the gutter to see this luscious young woman who works in my local deli. Uh, I said, I’m just taking some footage of this water rippling down the stones… look how beautiful it is! I rescued these from the bins at work, she replied, holding out her armful of red roses and yellow day-lilies. Do you want a bunch?
Tag: Melbourne
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mansplendour
I was working in a cafe, head down, muttering the words aloud under my breath as I forged down the page writing for hours. The man next to me started to take an interest. I was unwilling to give over my concentration to him but gradually angled my screen away to avert his possessive interest, shaded the words with my hand, made it clear I was busy and it was none of his business.
Some men cannot bear to be shown they have no influence in some woman’s life.
As soon as his companion got up to go to the bathroom this man spoke to me. Loud and assured, in German. “Something something astonishing you are able to concentrate in here” – a pure ruse to get my attention, as by speaking of this concentration he hoped to dispel it. When I still didn’t look up but went on chasing the verge of the idea which 20 seconds later broke over me like a wave and transformed my expectations for the writing I was working on, he was visibly, audibly miffed.
It reminded me of a man in Melbourne I had met only because he came to stand alongside me as I sat at the bar in an overfull restaurant, filling rapid pages with my thoughts. He stood there for a while, as I realised later, and when I didn’t react he actually passed a hand between my face and my page. This felt like someone had reached their big hand inside my head and stirred it round. I reared back. “What?” Where’s the fire?
This man was smiling, jovial, his hands back in his pockets. He rocked on his heels a little. “I was just wondering. Writing in here – don’t you find it difficult to concentrate?”
All the responses I could have made buzzed on my tongue like flies. But he was blind to his blindness and deaf to his own noise. This entitlement is also of course where mansplaining, manspreading, street harassment and rape come from.
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mouth bandit
Some days I really miss my cat. She is grey & downy and is a right little snuggleupagus. She’s also a kind of miracle cat because she got lost one night, this was in inner Melbourne, and stayed lost for five months until one day someone rang in response to one of my posters, saying, I think your cat is living in our backyard. She had survived as a street cat and was thin but unharmed. Whilst not living in alleyways she likes to harvest unattended hair elastics from the desks of working poets and will carry them about in her mouth for hours, tirelessly playing fetch…. like a little dog. I love her but we always had two separate piles: mine (to hold my hair back) and hers (a bit manky from being scuffled and chewed).
One thing I love about cats is their ambition. I would see her crouched at the foot of a wall, every fibre bristling with concentration as she sighted up a browsing mosquito or a shadow under the ceiling. “I can take that, I can totally take it!” And yet they seem to have no other desire than to laze. Most important of all is: be comfortable. Always be comfortable.
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you sneak up, & I’ll sneak
Years before I had driven from Adelaide to Melbourne with my then partner. We towed behind us the tower of terror: all of our possessions lashed to a homemade trailer. His possessions were mostly tools and mine were mostly books.
In a seaside town we stopped with his best friend and her husband. They had a four-year-old boy and he and I fell in love. The grown-ups strolled on ahead down the wickety dunes, talking and idly watching the seagulls wheel overhead, and the two of us scampered and bolted, climbed under and hid. We found things in the sand which have no name. We found soft glass and seagrapes, rusted and tasting salty.
We burst back onto the roadside with its sparse traffic, three heads disappearing far out in front. In a rush of inspiration he turned to me: “I know! How about, you sneak up on your daddy, and I’ll sneak up on my daddy!”
I remember the feeling of protective love that washed me in that weird warm moment. I was so frightened of seeing the hope and ambition, the trickery, fade from his eyes and their expression subdue and dim. I was frightened he might suddenly realize: Ach no! You’re one of Them! But we did it. He sneaked up on his daddy. And I sneaked up on mine. Ambush!
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gaga for vintage
Today I found a vintage store which glowed like a lit jewel box. Tried on this swishy 1960s poolside gown and just as I was leaving, with it wrapped under my arm, an intricately worked savagely pelted weskit of some ancient skin seemed to wiggle itself in the window at me. It was hairy. It was red that had faded to pink and indescribably beautiful. I took my coat off again and unwound my scarf. “You can tell people you bought it in the store in Copenhagen where Lady Gaga shops,” said the elegant girl. “Really?” I said, “Lady Gaga was in Copenhagen?” She said, “She made us close the store because there were too many fans. After that we kept seeing our outfits turn up on stages right across Europe.”
I told her the story of a cute guy who worked at the swanky local grocer’s in Melbourne, how I burst in there one day saying Guess what! Yoko Ono is following me on Twitter! And he said, unimpressed, “Lady Gaga’s following me.” I checked it out and it is true. He has ten followers and her blue-ticked official account is one. He is incredibly good-looking and perhaps he caught her eye. Because beauty is like royalty: one in the eye for the beholder, or beer-holder, depending on circumstance.
