Sitting down to write this, I can’t tell which way it will go.
That’s a warning, I suppose; You can’t prepare yourself for what this will be if I don’t even know.
I feel I should start with a bit of recent chronology…Yesterday I came home and watched the OC, went to bed early and watched Sunset Boulevarde (Oh my god I love that film), then got up again at 11 to meet Seabas for dinner at Corelli’s. I was starving and awake, ordered a tea with dinner, drank the tea and the sleepiness caught up reallllllly suddenly. I didn’t touch my food! Waste of my last $10, I’ll tell you that much for free. Then James and co had been to MGMT and stole Seabas away, and he wasn’t returned to me! The cheek of it. Then I slept in.
Today at work Belinda and I, as per, worked with one eye on the weather and a lot of banter. I really enjoy working with her, we’re quite different in a lot of ways but it’s quite complimentary I think, and it makes the similarities that much more charming. Our window more or less overlooks the harbour (as much as it can from the Pacfic Hwy) and the city skyline, and a huge expanse of sky. We’re part pay officers, part meteorologists. It’s nice, being that aware of nature. You don’t normally have the opportunity to be when you work in an office. We watch the clouds come over from the east, almost always moving north east, or the north westerly winds rushing through the trees outside our office.
This evening I met Seabas, Aleese and Truc and we trekked through Hyde Park and up Oxford st in the rain to Realperspective, an exhibition at the TAP Gallery curated and featuring works by the lovely Tony. I really enjoyed the exhibition – the collection was based on the artist’s different vision of the world, quite literally. In some physiological/conceptual sense, all the artworks were about how we see things. Then I parted ways, and walked through the rain listening to Patrick Wolf, and visited Stef, Jack and Kim (and Matt and Andy…Full House, man, I half expected Danny Tanner to walk down the stairs and deliver the moral in the last 5 minutes of the episode), then walked home, again listening to Patrick Wolf.
And this is the other way this entry could have gone. Patrick Wolf gave me a moment. I haven’t had one for a little while, and I’m not sure if you’ll know what I mean when I try and explain it, but sometimes the world comes together in such a jagged, messy, tight way – like you’ve shattered a beautiful vase into a thousand pieces, but those thousand pieces are perefctly preserved and able to reform. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s a crystelline, perfect feeling. I was walking down Erskineville rd to Stef’s, listening to Patrick Wolf, the rain was so sheer but you could see it well if you looked up at the orange street light, the street was mostly empty, nothing that i had done or could ever do was wrong, or regretful, or silly. I tried to explain it as though I was at the end of a long, perfect life, and looking back and every detail is perfect and serene. As difficult, as heart breaking, as warped, as wasted as events might be, in those moments it all makes sense for a few overwhelming minutes, and you have no need to ever question or fear the world. And it’s not a religous epiphany – if anything it helps cements my impending athiesm – but I do feel changed for a while after it.
It’s a really fine line, though. It’s an immediate kind of peace and acceptance of the world, but it’s flip side is becoming very aware of your own mortality, of the limited tme available to make your life right, makes you awfully comfortable with every aspect of living – including death. When I die (when I’m old and happy and at the other end of an incredibly full life), I want to be buried straight in the earth. I don’t want a coffin. I would like to be placed in the earth and return to the dirt.
But Patrick Wolf. He should be revered. He breaks my heart.
What does this mean for us?
Does it mean that I can never change my ways?
And that’s why, love, you shouldn’t stay
Still you will and love me
Like a mother, or a maid bringing you down, down
Down on your brazen knees
Watering the worms and weeds
Thinking, why does love leave me so damn cold
And I’m getting old
And is this what it should be
Well… Is it?
Oh! My Augustine, Augustine!
Oh! Is this forever, ever? Oh, oh
Sweet Augustine, Augustine
Do we kill this one tonight?
And now come the tears, heavy and hot
It becomes clear, this is all we got
As I hold you to my bed
Like a cancer or a curse
Be my loving nurse
As we fall back into the impossible dream
EDITED TO ADD:
aaaaaaaand THIS is William Holden, who I fell in love with through last nights viewing of Sunset Boulevard
I know exactly EXACTLY what you mean when you explain your moment, and you did it so beautifully… “when everything comes together like at the end of a life” – that’s a perfect analogy. I tried to describe it once as “seeing infinity”.
There can never be enough of those moments.