Finding the gold
I came home to find this beautiful gold leaf suspended from the bathroom ceiling.
It was hanging on a barely visible spider web thread.
I assumed it was a leaf that had blown in from outside.
Or a gift from an enchanting bathroom fairy.
It was beautiful and magical, I kept going in to check it was still there, this gold leaf, gently swaying.
It remained, suspended, for a few hours, and then dropped to the floor. I picked up it but it dissolved at my touch.
Days later, cleaning the bath, I found another one. Upon closer inspection I realised what they were. Clusters of mould from the ceiling that had dried and flaked into a singular piece.
One step up from lemonade from lemons, or the silver lining on a cloud ...
I'd discovered the gold in the mould.
Stars from the past
A Reding Universal Exercise Book, ruled feint, and approved by The Education Department.
Of its 32 pages, just 6 have been used.
On these pages a series of gold star stickers.
2 pages for my sister, 2 for my brother and 2 for me. The date beside each of our names: 1974.
After each installment of gold stars, a message, hand written in red pen, from our father:
A very good girl/boy (mine says 'wee girl' - appropriate as the youngest). The black stars have all been taken away.
And they have. There are no black stars to be seen. There are gaps where we can presume the black stars once were.
The only thing we don't know is what any of the stars are for and why there was a range of black and gold ones in the first place.
Were the black stars bad things we did? Or might have done? Or were about to do? I was only born in 1973, how many black stars could I have accrued in just one year? Or were they perhaps dark spots in his life that we somehow helped take away?
It will forever remain a mystery.
The story behind these stars from the past.
Bizarre love triangle
Running an errand in Greeves Street, St Kilda, I slow my car to look at street numbers. A blonde woman in a short black ruffle skirt mistakes me for a potential client.
Walking back to my car from the errand, a balding man in a hotted up, lowered, shiny red ute mistakes me for a potential worker.
Back in my car I sit a moment and watch as the two of them find each other, she waving him over like an old friend, he making sure his car is locked.
They adjourn together up an alley way, I am curious as to where they are going – a house, back yard, secluded garage?
I consider following, to add the final touch of resolution to my story. But common sense kicks in. I am not Trixie Belden, there is no mystery to be solved, nothing to be gained.
My minor part in this case of mistaken identity has been played. I drive away.
Click your heels
high heeled shoes are problematic
there’s no reason they should make you happy
but sometimes, wearing them at home, for no particular reason
raises the likelihood that something glamorous
or magical
may be just about to happen
Sunday
So much beauty and we are so lucky.
In the sunshine there is time to stand and talk.
The brown chickens peck at watermelon.
My niece asks me to try and catch her shadow.
We drink tea and smile at new neighbours moving into the street.
It is like a TV show but it is real.
For an hour on a Sunday afternoon.
explosions of roses
Spring rain has leaked into early summer. Have you noticed how many roses there are? Wedding dress white ones and monte carlo pink ones and lemon coconut icing yellow ones and red wine faded lipstick ones and flaming tea stained orange ones and bruised vovo ones and I wasn’t yellow enough so I started bleeding red at the edges ones.
They are spilling and tumbling and throwing and cascading and falling. They are thick with themselves and sick with themselves and dying on their branches and one single one is plucked and left on a concrete gate post and their petals are shed with abandon and the streets of Footscray look like a Paris florist where they toss petals with artistry to try and make you buy something but here it’s all for free they are so cheap and common in every household garden, that much joy and that much beauty so brazen in its ordinary everywhereness.
Out for a run their scent assails me, blown on the wind, seeping up from the ground, hurling itself between cracks in front fences, like so many drunk women swaying, waiting to be picked up or plucked, admired, treasured, taken away.
At home, a single white rose clutched in my hand.
Put it in a glass of water, place it on the kitchen table.
It is still unfolding.
I know it will wilt and die.
But not yet.
First night
The light on the trees.
Next door TV aerial glows pink.
We open the door but the air is no different out from in.
Fan blows a course through sleepless morning hours.
The first warm night of summer.
rain
A wet and green afternoon in West Footscray.
For the first time in a long time I am happy to be me. Not who I might become. But just this one exactly as she is.
I don’t know where this comes from.
The brown factory wall standing tall with small blue windows
The contents of someone’s living room deposited at the train station car park
Explosion of flowers (red, purple, yellow) in a small front yard
The creamy suffocating smell of wattle settling on my skin
My nose is red. My left knee twinges as I run.
It starts to rain before I get home.