Sorry for your outpouring! A factory down the road? What house used to be on the corner? When did that new pram access crossing get built? And when did that perfectly round dark freckle land on my forearm? I can barely keep pedestrian pace with all the comings and goings.
Sorry to hear you’re holed up with gastro, Jacinta, hope you’re back on your feet (and staring into vast distances) soon.
As for the keep-left proposal, ahh yes, the great Melbourne menace: pedestrians incapable of grasping the blindingly obvious utility of a simple social custom. I’ve always thought it so basic it shouldn’t need signage, let alone legislation. Still, laws? Really? What next, penalties for the wrong side of the escalator, or a licensing scheme for supermarket trolleys?
I do wonder how the Lord Mayor might cope with the finer points of quadruple-parking in an Athenian backstreet. If Melbourne footpaths need regulating, what does that make Athens: advanced anarchy or simply a higher form of civic art?
Jacinta — even through gastro’s grip, you’ve turned a hotel room into a watchtower of wonder. You write landscapes the way others write love affairs: ferries slipping out of view, umbrellas shivering in the wind, Maria’s laughter carried on the air. You’ve caught what travel really is — not the monuments or the ticket stubs, but the sudden astonishment of having your eyes handed back to you.
For me, noticing has always been stitched into the bone, I was a non-verbal infant up until the age of two, so I learned the world first in silences, in gestures, in how shadows slid across a wall before I ever shaped a word. So when you write of the eyes waking again, I know that territory well. Some of us never lost the gaze; some of us were built from it.
And still, reading you feels like stepping onto a balcony at dawn — the same streets below, yes, but washed in a new light that makes me linger a little longer, smiling at the small theatre of it all. As one of your fellow, equally luminous ABC announcers would say: go well. May the days of illness be already behind you, & the days ahead, bright.
Gastro sucks, hope it resolves soon. Something that saddens me in Melbourne (coz that’s where I am) are the people walking their dogs while they are glued to their phones. I get there may be an emergency, but I see people with adorable dogs whose lives are so comparatively short, and I think, one day you’ll kick yourself that you barely remember those walks after puppyhood and before Rover’s old age, when your heart clutches with each slow stroll, hoping its not the last time.
I share the same annoyance, Michelle. Surely not every waking minute needs to be sacrificed to that content-hungry, glowing infant, when right there beside you is a creature who craves your attention — eyes bright, tail writing entire novels of devotion across the pavement.
Hope you’re feeling better soon JP, there is nothing quite as bad as getting sick when you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself, or sitting on an aircraft for too many hours!!! I love the experience of a new view, the turning of a corner to find a magnificent vista open up in front of your eyeballs! The difference in air, the smells the tastes, the sounds. Unfortunately, I feel that it is imperative to be immersed in our day to day drudgery in order to appreciate the newness of anything. Amplecti novum
Sorry for your outpouring! A factory down the road? What house used to be on the corner? When did that new pram access crossing get built? And when did that perfectly round dark freckle land on my forearm? I can barely keep pedestrian pace with all the comings and goings.
Sorry to hear you’re holed up with gastro, Jacinta, hope you’re back on your feet (and staring into vast distances) soon.
As for the keep-left proposal, ahh yes, the great Melbourne menace: pedestrians incapable of grasping the blindingly obvious utility of a simple social custom. I’ve always thought it so basic it shouldn’t need signage, let alone legislation. Still, laws? Really? What next, penalties for the wrong side of the escalator, or a licensing scheme for supermarket trolleys?
I do wonder how the Lord Mayor might cope with the finer points of quadruple-parking in an Athenian backstreet. If Melbourne footpaths need regulating, what does that make Athens: advanced anarchy or simply a higher form of civic art?
Jacinta — even through gastro’s grip, you’ve turned a hotel room into a watchtower of wonder. You write landscapes the way others write love affairs: ferries slipping out of view, umbrellas shivering in the wind, Maria’s laughter carried on the air. You’ve caught what travel really is — not the monuments or the ticket stubs, but the sudden astonishment of having your eyes handed back to you.
For me, noticing has always been stitched into the bone, I was a non-verbal infant up until the age of two, so I learned the world first in silences, in gestures, in how shadows slid across a wall before I ever shaped a word. So when you write of the eyes waking again, I know that territory well. Some of us never lost the gaze; some of us were built from it.
And still, reading you feels like stepping onto a balcony at dawn — the same streets below, yes, but washed in a new light that makes me linger a little longer, smiling at the small theatre of it all. As one of your fellow, equally luminous ABC announcers would say: go well. May the days of illness be already behind you, & the days ahead, bright.
Gastro sucks, hope it resolves soon. Something that saddens me in Melbourne (coz that’s where I am) are the people walking their dogs while they are glued to their phones. I get there may be an emergency, but I see people with adorable dogs whose lives are so comparatively short, and I think, one day you’ll kick yourself that you barely remember those walks after puppyhood and before Rover’s old age, when your heart clutches with each slow stroll, hoping its not the last time.
I share the same annoyance, Michelle. Surely not every waking minute needs to be sacrificed to that content-hungry, glowing infant, when right there beside you is a creature who craves your attention — eyes bright, tail writing entire novels of devotion across the pavement.
Hope you’re feeling better soon JP, there is nothing quite as bad as getting sick when you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself, or sitting on an aircraft for too many hours!!! I love the experience of a new view, the turning of a corner to find a magnificent vista open up in front of your eyeballs! The difference in air, the smells the tastes, the sounds. Unfortunately, I feel that it is imperative to be immersed in our day to day drudgery in order to appreciate the newness of anything. Amplecti novum