Thinking about things that make me happy

DRESSES

On my last day in Melbourne, I was walking down Little Collins St when I saw a dress in the window. Like a deer caught in headlights, I stopped dead, inched closer and almost pressed my nose to the glass before coming to my senses. I once described my first sight of Bondi beach as a sheet of silk dyed blue by god - and there it was, personified! It was beautiful. A perfectly cut, knee-length, white silk dress whose bottom hem had been dipped into blue dye up the waist. I couldn't help myself - I stepped inside and started fondling it. The shop-person saw how obviously enamoured I was, and very nearly managed to convince me that I absolutely needed it, regardless of the price (of which we shall not speak, except to say that it was more than double the cost of a certain tattoo). Now that I'm home, I still think about that dress. I dream about it, and in my dream I'm wearing it while I walk down the beach - alone or with a close friend, or with someone I love; at the end of the walk, there's the promise of a good dinner, with several bottles of white wine and conversation deep into the night. It is very likely the dress I would wear to my (very very) hypothetical wedding. So I suppose... the shop-person was right.


ART

On my last day in Sydney, I spent the afternoon walking around King's Cross with my friend Steve Smith. We sat down in a beautiful cafe where an ancient (but incredibly sharp) old queen was holding court. I ordered an ice-tea, to which he sniffed, rolled his eyes and told me to get it myself from the fridge next door. Steve ordered something like green tea and got a latte instead. You just have to know when to back down. So we sat there with our drinks and he showed me the drawings in his sketchbook. I didn't know what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what I saw. I flipped through page after page populated with intricate, strange, deformed characters. They were tattooed, they were having passionate sex in very uncomfortable positions, they were old, young, they played music on the street, they had funny pets, they flew airplanes and lived in derelict boathouses by the sea. They were all a little scary, but wonderful, because they were so full of life. It was like the circus I had waited for all my life to come to town. If it had called, I would have stayed. Yes, I would have left all this - friends, family, country - and jumped into the page. Then and there I promised myself I'd buy a painting of Steve's one day. He doesn't know it. One day...


CURTAIN

During our second visit to Magick River in KKB, it had been raining and the river was fuller than I had seen it before. There was a little spot in the rocks where water was gushing with such force that it created a shimmering silver curtain, behind which I sat in a privacy more complete and peaceful than I have ever known. It seemed I could hear my own heart beating; and I thought I could grasp at the heart of the river too - which isn't loud or gushing or tumultuous at all (although parts of it are all those things), but is deep and quiet and powerful.


MIYAZAKI

The music, the care and craft. The slow, human pace of his films. The lack of good and evil binaries. Lightness. I read somewhere that in the Miyazaki museum, the cinemas where they screen his films are not dark, but full of daylight - because he didn't intend his movies as an escape and also because children liked it better to watch films like that. I think I would have too, as a child.


LIGHTNING

On a recent trip to Penang, me and a friend attended a performance staged outdoors on the seafront. Although the performance was give and take, as I sat there on the mat, I delighted in the wind that whipped my hair up and harried at the edges of a desire that will likely never leave me, and that is to always be in motion. I loved the setting and I loved the lighting design, which consisted of mere bare lightbulbs, swinging from the branches of a tree. I thought about people - people making things, people sitting down to watch - in the dirt, under a tree; being awake, talking and using language. After the show was over, I stood staring out to sea, above which the sky was storming. The lightning moved randomly across the sky and amongst the clouds like some divine dragon dancing on the wind. Someone I no longer care to remember once told me that he would sometimes get an erection when looking at waves breaking in the ocean. I couldn't understand then, but now I think I can. I could have watched the lightning forever.


BUSES

It was night time on the bus ride back. They had just turned off the lights and my friend let me put my feet up on his lap. I was perfectly content, half-awake, half-asleep; rocked gently by the bus, just as I used to be rocked in a sarong as a baby... on the straight road home.