Ivy and the ST Balcony

Ivy is a place, not a person, not a plant. Ivy is a construction zone. It's an outdoor place, so you can smoke. Because it's an outdoor place, it's quite cold.

We'd started with a bottle of cheap pinot on the balcony. We'd started wondering how the hell we're going to get to New York. For those of us who aren't married it's somewhat less complicated.

Zoe talks about having her mum back, of a pacemaker buried in her upper chest creating a bulge near her shoulder. It's a pacemaker for her brain. She describes the wires which are underneath her skin but able to be seen in outline stretching from the pacemaker up the back of her neck. They have a remote control to adjust the pacemaker but they're too scared to touch it. They don't care. Her mum is back.

We end comparing the lining of our jackets with those of the boys drinking something and coke and smoking furiously. It's because of them that we're cold. We've eaten betel leaves and then been removed from our table. Molly Meldrum's white sweater matches his hat. I'm sure he feels at home in the decor.

Today I learned (learnt? - someone help me here) that macchiato is the easiest coffee to carry.

One thing I learned (learnt?) today is that the Motels' Total Control has a saxophone solo near the end. That's certainly not how I remember it.

Ashley

A frustrating morning, and then this from Ashley, our driver and eccentric semi-regular company group emailer.

We shall never cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

-T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

Besides the fact that it's beautiful I can't believe that T.S. Eliot only died in the 60s.

Usually Ashley's emails contain quotes about dancing because apparently he loves to tap. In red. Always red type. When he's about to have a day off work he sends notes and sometimes they say things like: please don't look for me tomorrow because you won't find me.

He used to be a taxi driver.

Vale Sam, The Nude Gardener

One night in January 2003, might have been February, it was early in the year - humid - a boy stripped naked and jumped from a wharf near a famous bridge into the black harbour as the opening night crowd watched, their elbows resting on the balcony railing above. One of them was me, wondering how to live carelessly like that.

Years afterwards he became the Nude Gardener, glimpsed from the Georgina Street kitchen window. Naked again. Tending plants in the rain. A share house next door. Cups of tea sitting on the wicker-sided sofa under fig trees out the front. Seedy, sunny mornings.

Later we told him, I think, standing around the bar at Sydney Theatre, late on another opening night. Told him that he was and would always be the Nude Gardener. Or maybe we didn't tell him. But it was a story we spread around.

Later again we ran into him outside The Hub. He was with her. His girlfriend. The mother of his children. He told the story of giving Noonie a lift home. Of slowing down in his van as she waited at a bus stop on Cleveland Street. Of how she got in to the passenger seat and he knew that it was only after getting in she could see that it was him. How we laughed at Noonie's near-sighted expense.

It's New Year's Eve and we're sitting in a kitchen with a green lino floor pretending to be rock stars. He's there too, wearing a vest over a singlet and pants with braces. He pulls a handful of safety pins (?) out of his pocket. I can see his outstretched hand in some kind of orange party light, can hear myself saying something party clever and useless.

The next thing I see is bright light above white shiny stairs. Sydney Theatre again. Robyn feted, and the Christmas Party. He's sitting on those stairs and he says that they've broken up, him and the mother of the children. Maybe he says he's not at the Georgina Street house any more but I'm drunk and I can't really remember.