Medical Report

Broken fifth metatarsal due to walking in to furniture bare foot at medium speed. Suspect temporary failure of navigation systems. Navigation system failure occurred as result of inebriation, fatigue and negligent use of light switches in hallway.

This has been an excellent use of the internet.

Cataclysmic but slowly and not without joy

We were up to our necks in love. Well that's what it felt like to me as I danced across the kitchen and down the hallway while about a dozen people sang their hearts out in my lounge room. 

The idea was simple. I wanted to drink some and sing a little. Gemma had the bright idea of throwing a singing party at The Peach, so I did. 

The night was dark and stormy (I have always wanted to write that and mean it). Some guests arrived drenched and shivering, clutching a guitar under one arm and a six pack under the other. Some swanned in shaking out umbrellas holding bottles of wine and one or two appeared in the kitchen as though teleportation was possible.

The singing began slowly but the chorus swelled until we were delirious and not one person was silent in the house. We had three people with guitars, Spencer, P. Street and Jeremy Smith, Robert on the floor with a tambourine and a snare and enthusiastic singing from no less than one dozen people at any one time. We wandered recklessly through musical history and modes of good taste, anyone got a go, anyone from Samantha Fox, David Bowie and Robyn Hitchcock to The Pixies and even Counting Crows. No one was more surprised than me to realise that all of us, without exception, knew all the words to Mr Jones.

Someone started up a Neil Young song so Spencer grabbed his bag and tipped eight harmonicas onto the ground, testing them drunkenly one by one to find the right one, he emerged from the floor in the nick of time to perform a note perfect solo. Wild applause erupted from the kitchen where some were making mulled wine and others danced as they poured chips into bowls and piled baklava onto plates.

The weather, jetlag and tour dates kept us to a small and merry band. From time to time one of us would look up and around the room and get a little misty because while we were singing just for the hell of it we were also saying goodbye. At midnight I gave a toast to The Peach and all who have sailed in her because Grizelda and I are moving out, for good.

Mr Oddweird the landlord has gone and done it this time. He has defaulted on his mortgage and The Peach is being repossessed by the bank. I have lived in fear of the day we would be forced, by one disaster or another, to leave this house but when the day arrived I surprised myself. I don't really mind. 

When I first came to The Peach I'd been most thoroughly shredded by the tragic end of a long and dramatic relationship. I wasn't sure it was possible to feel worse than I did, perhaps not even possible to feel like I did and stay alive for a whole day at a time but I did. It hasn't always been easy here in The Peach but I have loved it, every difficult, horrible, euphoric moment of it since I first walked through the door carrying nothing but a game of boggle and a plastic bottle full of water. 

Its been almost seven years since I signed the lease and handed over all of my savings for bond and two weeks rent in advance. The cat and I were both astonished by the light and noise of what we call the city when we first moved in. The cat spent the first fortnight in my wardrobe refusing to come out for anything but to use the litter tray or take a small drink of water. Now the cat roams the house freely and I can sleep through just about anything.

Mr Oddweird has let me down as a landlord over the years. The water has been turned off three times because he didn't pay the bill, he took off with the inside front door handle four years ago and never brought it back. The back door has never had a lock on it and he failed entirely to make any repairs to the bathroom after the mirrored cabinet crashed to the ground and smashed about six years ago.  Last year he began renovating the flat underneath The Peach (which has been vacant the entire time I have lived here) by removing the floors, walls, kitchen and bathroom and digging large holes in the now dirt floor. But this time I suspect he has mostly failed himself.

It seems strange to me that I am almost looking forward to the move. I'm ready for a new adventure. Grizelda and I are headed just three suburbs away but around here that's like a whole new country. We'll be setting up shop in a beautiful little house with polished floorboards, a dishwasher in the kitchen and a neat little courtyard out the back where I can plant strawberries and herbs. Sylvia the cat and Grizelda's new pain in the arse kitten Oscar will be making the move with us as will Edith the gold fish and most of our stuff.

I've been giving away belongings, throwing things out, selling furniture I've carried with me from relationship to relationship. Junking all the built-up useless things and jettisoning the ballast. When I pack my bags and make my way to the new house I'll probably be carrying a few little heartaches and a head full of memories but I'm going to put my teapot in the cupboard anyway and see what happens next.

The ideal height of a front fence is the same as the height of a good pony

The urge to walk always comes as the sun sinks. I used to walk south-west, down the short hill towards the tall footbridge where a person can stand and think with a proper horizon, one that curves with the world and doesn't end with a building. Lately though the urge to walk comes accompanied by an urge to skim near the homes of friends. Just glide by the entrance to their street or glance up at a window and see a warm glow behind curtains.

I thought it was enough to navigate around just knowing where friends will come back to at the end of each long day but I'm not sure now. Last night I swept under the grim railway line, hollow train sounds, flaking posters and a dankness not justified by the climate push me out the other side, fast. I turn up beside the railway track and follow the cyclone fence along its little journey guarding concrete sleepers bolted into beds of sharp grey rocks and the place where I imagined I once saw a severed finger.

I look hard at the street sign for Baltic St, named I guess for my ancestors. I looked hard at the dinner party guests on the weekend too, no salt from the Baltic detectable in their outlook, only the high sweep of a cheekbone or curve of a nostril would give you any idea at all.

Halfway up the slow hill Robert's Eyrie comes into view. Crazy cube of a building. I can just make out the vase full of knitting needles by the window. I only know what it is because I have a vase like that, on a shelf, full of drum sticks. From a distance they make the same pointed shapes, fat and flowerless stems.

Cutting through the meagre grounds of the old church I see signs everywhere, 'please don't steal our plants'. I wonder who would want to, desperate things hanging on to chlorophyll for dear life. I turn down alleys as it pleases me, heading North towards Spencer's strange house with its unexpected hallways and everywhere bathtubs and purple ceilings.

I come out suddenly on Probert St which sweeps a clear path downhill and back up again. Open and straight like a long wound cut by a scythe. Winter feels almost gone this night. The Frangipanis already ludicrously sprouting leaves from their bulbous ends, like trees drawn in crayon.

Crossing a thin arterial road I make a turn towards Abdullah's. His street offers me the opportunity of dodging the whip of tree branches before opening out onto flat industrial ground where his urban fortress sits in its unlikely locale. If I hadn't been politely ushered through the blank metal door in the flat brick wall I would never have imagined what lies hidden behind. Abdullah with his records and guitars and coffee machine that makes coffee the same way you get blood from a stone.

Finally I come to the banks of the loud metal river they named Parramatta Rd. Wishing as always that I could make this journey on a horse. Somewhere in my youth I became so accustomed to travelling on four legs that I exchanged my rhythm for their own. Every step missing the brother echo of a foot that doesn't exist.

I'm not sure now if navigating around where they come back to is what I'm really doing. If I could I would walk through the pulse of their words and songs. Walk slowly and breathe in something of their work as the words and rhythms float silently down amongst the gutters and fallen leaves.  I'm walking through ideas to make myself contemporary, with them, weaving my feet through something bigger than my own words.

The superpowers of logic and maths combine to make drinkable a sub-standard coffee with the additional benefit of Cosbys

Rainsoaked and wracked with freezings chills I diverted my path home to secure my tenth cup of Paper Cup coffee knowing that it would ease more than my saturated shivers but I was a little wrong. The new barista, under the watchful eye of the Scottish man who has perfected the art of coffee making, made my usual coffee. I clutched the cup carefully under the shelter of my umbrella as I walked home. The fury of the rain making it impossible to do anything but chart a careful course and hope to avoid being wrecked against a fence or parked car.

I took my first sip in the shelter of The Peach, it was disappointing, the milk had been scalded, not burnt but definitely scalded and this got me to thinking about maths. I am sure there must be some kind of mathematical theory about the tenth one of something being different, why else would metric have invented itself?

Then I got to thinking about things in tens and it occurred to me that if every tenth coffee was sub par it was part of a larger plan to highlight the perfection of the other nine cups of coffee. Like the idea of good needing evil or light needing dark. Then it occurred to me that this was just like 'The House of Cosby's', but in reverse. If every tenth cloned Cosby has superpowers that can save the earth then the other, the in-between Cosbys, are worth making. So it is with Paper Cup coffee, every tenth coffee might be flawed and listless on the tongue but it is worth drinking for the sake of the in-between coffees, the ones that have the superpower of making me feel good to be on this earth. If you think about it mathematically that's a pretty good equation, especially if you have a loyalty card that makes every tenth coffee come for free. Maths and logic, saving the day, for once.

Storm in a paper cup

I love the cafe Paper Cup, it has a map of the world, an excellent selection of magazines, an interior endearingly like an Ikea catalogue and astonishingly good coffee but is has caused more than one mild existential crisis on my part.

The Peach is situated in a position equidistant from two IGAs, one in Stanmore and one in Enmore. For almost five years my IGA of choice has been in Enmore, not that it is superior, it is just located in a place of greater possibility. There are at least seven thousand cafes, shops and people on Enmore Rd at any point in time and of course it is a short walk down to Newtown where most of my friends, my PO Box and the world at large resides. It was never a difficult choice to turn and left and head to Enmore, not until Paper Cup opened its doors.

I once had a coffee at Paper Cup that was so good I sat in astonishment, holding the steaming cup against my heart as an offering to my internal gods, who had never before that moment been satisfied with anything. It was a perfect cup of coffee, the kind of flavour that other cups have hinted at but never actually delivered. I have drunk nine cups of coffee from Paper Cup since that first moment and am yet to be disappointed, in fact I have begun to experience constant cravings.

Lately I have chosen to turn right and walk to Stanmore, purchase any necessary items at the IGA and then cross the road and once again experience the satisfaction of delivering my inner gods the perfect coffee. What comes next is the main problem. Stanmore, on that side of the tracks, is a terrible place to be, there is a meth clinic masquerading as a doctor's surgery, a pharmacy both ancient and over-stocked with lavendar powders, a primary school full of screaming children running about randomly like behatted fish in a barrel and the distinct absence of everyone I know. There is nothing to do there,  nothing new to observe, there is no one to talk to and it is double the distance to my PO Box and collecting my letters begins to feel like a chore.

Every time I leave the house in search of coffee or supplies I stop at the front gate and face a minor crisis. Should I turn left and top up an inferior coffee drink with the delights of the world or should I turn right and once again experience transcendence with the ritual satisfaction of inner gods? It is an existential crisis that needs to be experienced to be believed.