Friday 21 September 2012

Betwixt spring and city, I wander.

From Lygon st at around half past eight, I walk idly through the sleepiness of a warm spring eve, hands in the pockets of my unbuttoned jacket, and through my headphones The Middle East yearning in a lilting cadence of The Land of the Bloody Unknown.

The thin trees lining the sidewalk glow in a luminous halo, their fresh leaves lit bright green by amber streetlights rebounding off sandstone churches and grizzled asphalt.  From the cosy warmth of a bakery window, a blackboard sign proclaims in multi-coloured chalk, WELCOME BACK, SPRING!

A euphoria fills me, sets my heart to tingling, and wondrous awe takes me over; I peer at the world like an infant, or a tourist, and giddily find evidence of the changing season everywhere, lying over the world like a thin sheet draped comfortably across a naked body on a tepid night.

I grin dreamily and unashamed, and slow my step to glance lovingly along streets that swathe the suburb in a cross-stitch, each seam pressed by solemn buildings all thin and packed up hard against one another.

They seem to me like totem poles laid out on their sides; each a face with eyes closed and mouth slightly ajar, as if sculpted thus while offering a prophecy that has long since been dutifully scooped from out that yawn by the ancient wind - like pollen from newly budded flowers, to be carried away on the currents and populate the world anew with secrets and hidden memory.