Tuesday, July 29, 2008

After a month of susceptibility to every winter germ on the market, the colour has gone out of the world somewhat. I have finally succumbed, admitted that my immune system is unequal to the task of eight hour work days, and made the decision to abandon fiscal caution and spend three days at home. The most beautiful part of these days is the morning sleep. Alone in the bed (a blissful condition), I wallow in the morning sun that pours in through the blinds. I wake and read for a while, drink some tea, sleep again. This sleep is populated with swooping circular dreams which inevitably include the plot device of at least one bicycle theft. It seems that this event has replaced the exam nightmares and concentration camp dreams of my early twenties; as if, entering on the decade of greatest solidity, the most fearful prospect is the loss of material possessions.

On this subject: facing unemployment (or underemployment) and the prospect of another six months in the country, I'm forced to meditate on a recent penchant for buying clothes and hoarding money, activities which give me a disproportionate satisfaction. I consume therefore I am. A growing wardrobe renders me a person of consequence.

I suspect it all means that regardless of my blessings I feel fundamentally unsafe, and wonder if love and luck carry their own dark burden of fear which cancels out the joy. Ahh, the manic-depressive counterpoint of my third decade- a steady drumbeat of prospective loss shadowing the high hopeful strains of possession.

Friday, July 04, 2008

There's something magical about my weekend rides with Marcin around the city. For him it is still a strange land, and he swivels his head, open- mouthed as a showground clown, taking everything in. We sail lycra- clad through the suburbs, stopping to admire an indoor swimming pool enclosed in a high glass cage and drenched in light, a narrow-edged building wedged onto a street corner like a slice of cheese, a lozenge-shaped house perched on the cliffs looking out over the blue wind-whipped Pacific. We explore the brown, oily reaches of the Parramatta River and find a tree with a strange, thick-skinned bulbous fruit on it; we pick one, stomp on it and poke it with a stick to see what's inside. In the space of a single evening we see a fog sculpture ( emitting an atmospheric hiss and a cloud of steam into a stand of casuarinas in Olympic Park), a crowd of football supporters and a Bangladeshi boy band.

The seedy, foul and merely depressing are transformed by his presence into the stuff of adventure. We go to the industrial hinterland around the airport and watch the planes take off. One day we find a mound of dumped oranges near a fruit wholesalers on the ring road sending off an acid smell of mould so strong you can almost see it floating by in a blue haze. In the grass nearby there is a rampant crop of zucchini plants running down to the banks of a malodorous canal. We are democratically excited by both a flock of ibises picking at some kind of biological waste, and a 360 degree water view.

Only a particular kind of companion can enable you to understand the wonders of rot and sprawl, smoke stacks and industrial waste, freeways and plastic-littered mangroves. On the occasion of our second wedding anniversary, I can confirm that Marcin Ojrzynski is that kind of companion.