may 22

Last night a dinner in honour of Liz's 21 st bit\rthday against the iconic backdrop of harbour bridge and opera house (so much Sydney that I didn't really believe I was here at all,) which left me bankrupt and with a great sympathy for the travails of transvestites who stand determinedly upright in fashionable bars in their killer heels as a matte r of routine, and not once every 21 years as I do. Unlike my tranny counterparts I didn't last the night and found myself mincing through the park with great relief on my way to my flannelette sheets at about 2 am- we had been to the Sly Fox karaoke the night before (Liz, Jack and I) for old times sake and I was labouring under a persistent seediness for most of the night. Jack by the way is mad as a meat axe and now that i have a Prospective Spouse has decided that he wants to have my babies-I'm not playing.

Thinking about my own 21st birthday, in the restaurant in Jerusalem. My co-slaves gave nme a lurid clock which I accepted with a performance that indicated I would be justified in pursuing a diplomatic career- I think that I worked a 13 hour day, coming home through the meat market around midnight and seeing a cat dragging a stolen liver stealthily into the shadows of the holy sepulchre. As always when I try to feel my younger self I have the sensation of running my hands through mist: and this is what it means to get older, a gain in density, a sense of solidification, the acquisition of accessories and habits that hold you closer to earth. At 21 I was unimpeded.

Now I'm not and this is the time for nostalgia- the summer is dying in a procession of sharp gold days so beautiful that I feel all the pain and loveliness of the world lying up against the frontier of my skin. Stranmge to remember that on the other side of the planet time is opening up and I am getting a vicarious whiff of spring down the wires from Warsaw where the sun is out and the vulgar European trees are putting on their party frocks. At this end, invece, I am retreating into fiction and flannie sheets and waiting for an unimaginable future to resolve itself on the horizon.