Saturday, 26 September 2009

These Internet Bloggers' Blogs

Don’t internet entrepreneurs bug you. I mean they always seem to start their blogs by saying “Look at me I’m sitting in a café in some insanely cool part of town writing this to all you poor people who are sat in your office nine to five job bored and internet surfing! Aren’t I fantastic?”

I often think to myself that if its that easy and that rewarding being an internet blogger, then why don’t they write their blogs somewhere else? You know, somewhere more…inspirational?

For instance, and I realise that I may sound just as bad as them here, but I am sitting in the botanic gardens in Sydney writing this. Let me describe the scene., I am sitting on a bench, that for a change is actually named after someone who is…or at least was when the bench was sited, still living. There’s a path and a low stone wall in front of me and then I can see Farmers bay on Sydney harbour. To my left I can see the ferries leaving for Manly and the zoo coming from the direction of circular quay where the Opera house is. Following my gaze from left to right the far side of this modest rounded bay is closed with the far side of the park. This is where Queen Elizabeth first set foot on Australian soil incidentally in 1954. A hundred different types of trees, plants, grasses and birds are lining the shore of this silky water. Tall Palm trees interspersed with incredible gnarly ancient species that were brought here a hundred years ago or more by some keen, presumably British, botanist. The sun is I admit a bit weak today but its still warm enough and the light of the late day is slowly turning golden and casting its long shadows onto the path and beyond the trees and creating even more texture to the gentle colourful ripples of the bay.

My point is, if you are going to make people jealous by posting this, at least make it somewhere worthwhile. I’m not trying to make anyone jealous, rather I’m using this as a vehicle for describing where I am in a constructive way. The truth is that these internet bloggers are just as tied to their places of work as we all seem to be, I’m not sure why though, it cant be just the availability of internet..can it? In my opinion writing here in the gardens is infinitely better than writing in some city centre café getting high off caffeine. Next time I write might be from the top of a mountain or on a boat or maybe on the ever so cliché beach…who knows where. In the meantime, I will sit here until dark and then head off somewhere to find some wifi in order to post this thing….oooh I just realised, if you can type without looking at the keys you can actually look at the view while your typing!! Bonus!! I think we should all try it….

Trees

The knarled trees reminds me of fairy tales. Old and curved with a thousand crevices and knots and curves. Its leaves hanging low over the dirt path, its shade has stopped the grass from growing beneath its marvellous canopy. If I was an elf or a hobbit or even a kid with a plastic sword I would hide there waiting for the monsters to retreat…. When it rains I would snuggle into my cloak watching the leaves flutter with a hundred shades of green emerging and surrounding me while smelling the fresh wet soil being dampened by the downpour outside. When the sun comes out and it is too hot I would enter the cavernous undercroft and take shade while cracking bone dry branches beneath my feet and listening to the lone blackbird above me singing the lament of the day. The tree is protector, the tree is master of the forest, the old grandparent, wise and scarred from a hundred years or life and living. Its bark is tough and flaky but creates textures of amazing interest. Its branches are tangled growing low then rising up like a piece of thick wire twisted in many directions but still growing on. Its leaves however are still as soft when they first sprout in spring. Still as green on midsummer’s day, still as gentle when they fall from the tree, still as crunchy when dried by the sun and frozen by the frost.



When one has a camera in ones face, doesn’t it just give you the ability to play the fool. Rather like being on stage except now all the world truly is a stage more so than ever before. You can jump around in public places, kiss or paint or even hit people with the justification being that there is a camera there and I’m allowed to! The camera is the license to act to let go, especially when being directed to do so by the cameraman! Who knows where it will end…I just know that it has made me loose my thread….

Thursday, 3 September 2009

The Quality of a Public Life

Last night I was sitting on my own in a small run down coffee shop in central Sydney, gazing out of the window onto the bustling street outside with what must have been a very melancholy expression on my face. It was between my first and second sips of coffee that it suddenly hit me who I was at that moment in time. Gazing through the window, in a quiet world of my own taking time out from the hectic life of the city. It suddenley hit me that 'Yes, I was that person' that person who I have seen so many times before, that nameless person who you glimpse as you pass through our man made urban jungles. The person who, as David Bowie so stylishly observed, thought he saw in an ice cream parlour, drinking milkshakes cold and long. Indeed someone could have written a song about me last night and I wouldn’t even know I was in their song. I don’t know what it is that attracts our gaze to these people. They are usually poor wretches walking or sitting alone and I assume it is their stories that we are interested in, we somehow have a desire to want to know who they are and what their story is. But they are people who I always notice especially while passing by in a car, the windows up, almost immune to the dust, smells, noises and people outside.
It is an enduring quality of our urban environments that create such varying degrees of interest and cross pollination of views, thoughts and sights. For instance before I realised who I was last night I was thinking about what was on at the theatre. And I dare say if anyone did notice me while passing they could have been thinking of something equally as random. Ofcourse there is a small chance that they were actually walking around looking for inspiration for thier 70's inspired concept album but i doubt it. But with that my friend i can try to show why we love to live in cities…..unpredictability with interest and distractions on every corner. For all the faults and problems of urban living, it is undoubtably one of the most interesting places to be.