On that note, this blog consists of two parts,
- A short story that I wrote to entertain myself many months ago and left never quite finished. I decided to haul it out of the depths of My Documents and unleash it on the world. It's hard to say who's story it's telling, the story of the city or the story of it's narrator.
- A Minutemovie about wandering the streets, walking past people working, eating, drinking, talking, kissing, living, dying, breathing... and feeling miles apart from them, like a ghost in their midst.
My city and I
There is a city that stands alone, distant from all others, tucked away in a tiny corner of the globe. It’s a big city, with a small heart and its story begins with a tree. Well actually it begins with a ship and a man named Stirling but it was only after the felling of a tree atop a hillside and a few official words that the city was born. Some would say that was the start of the destruction, others that it was the humble beginning of development and progress. For every year after that first tree was felled, 1000’s more were cleared to make way for roads and farms, then freeways and industrial areas and above all, for large sprawling homes. The tiny colony of free settlers grew strong on the backs of convicts and over the decades the city grew wider and wider, aiming to take up as much space as possible with the smallest amount of people. That meant mandatory two-bathroom-two- carport-houses and no boat people allowed. The city was built on wool, saved by gold and made ever fatter by its metals. Before long the city begun to sprout large glass buildings which cast shadows much longer than their tiny colonial predecessors and yet still, it grew.
However, the story of that place on the river banks actually goes back a lot longer than that tree or the men who cut it down. The land around the river was very rich and was always home for many people. The people lived in small groups, and travelled great distances. Mooro, Yellagonga’s peoples land was in the north, to south of the river lay Beeliar, the realm of Midgegooroo and his warrior son Yagan, Weeip’s peoples territory was in the north east and the land to the south east was known as Beeloo. In the middle was Boorloo, the place where the city was born. They say it was Waugul, the rainbow serpent, who created the land. It was his journeys in ancient times, the dreamtime, which formed the rivers, hills and lakes. I don’t know the story so well and I am not the best person to tell it, but I know every hill and river bend has its story and the stories go way back, all the way to the dreaming. They show how old this place really is. Much older than 1829 when that first tree was felled. Yet the first people must have been able to make themselves invisible, because when Stirling arrived, he and his friends saw nobody there who owned the land. Only swans.
There is a girl; she is walking because she has nowhere to go. Because if she stands still it’s like she is waiting, for nothing.
The city that stands alone, distant from all others, is where I live. It is not where I was born, but it is where I have nearly always been. I ride the train here like a tiny blood cell being pumped through the body’s arteries and veins, under bridges, past houses and roads that forge out away from the city but always flow back to the river at its core. There are days when the city is bathed in the warm glow of a merciful sun, with high bounding clouds and a gentle breeze, and others when the sky closes in and casts a dense spell over the urban sprawl, until a distant lightning bolt allows the first fat rain drops to fall down. Today holds hope in its ambiguity. The sky seems awash with indecision as the rain runs gently along my window on one side of the train, while the sun shines indiscriminately on the other. The only constant is the wind. Whether it brings heat from the east or relief from the west, it is always there and it is always travelling in the opposite direction to me. At the moment it is flying in from the east, so fast it hasn’t brought the heat with it yet. This is the time of day when the most people are on the move. They are yawning in their cars, jogging along beaches, shuffling kids out of doors and standing pressed between strangers on trains like me and millions of people in millions of cities. I wonder when it is exactly, that people cease to be groups of individuals and become masses. When does a breath cease to be my own and become the city’s?
When she pauses, the city buzzes around her. If she stops for too long, she is certain she’ll never walk forward again, that she’ll become stuck. Just watching.
There is the sound of a Velcro bag, the ding of the doors closing bell and the turn of a page, before my attention is stolen by a petite squeak from the sunny side of the train. I listen unintentionally.
“So the tickets are booked then? We leave on the 5th? That’s exactly 3 months! I’m so excited! Hola Brazil! Oh I know. I’ve been reading up on Chile as well, you know my Grandad was born there. What? Hell yes! Only 3 months and we are outta here! Finally!”
The city is a place people like to leave, for awhile, forever. To go to other cities and sit on trains, enthralled by their unfamiliarity but perhaps dismayed in the end. People storm away from the city, swearing never to return. But somewhere far away they dream of its reliable wind. Sometimes I wonder if the city feels sad when they leave or happy when they return.
Her feet pound against the path, her surroundings are at once familiar and despised. She wishes she was soaring across the waves, spurred on by a wind that didn’t oppose her every movement. She wishes her gait was light and her body on fire.
I lean against the door my feet wide apart and gaze from face to face, book to iPod, briefcase to sports bag. The headlines scream “34 more boat people intercepted” and a grey tied man huffs and puffs over the sports section. Ever since Stirling cast his royal spell on the land, the city has been a place people come to, from far and wide. It holds the promise of space, youth and vitality in its arms. It conjures up images of a reliable paradise, endless sunshine and perfect jobs. But for some people it just means a place with trains and buses, clean water and safe streets. Sometimes people put their savings, faith and lives in others hands, cross mountains and oceans in tiny leaky tubs, to arrive at its doors and be told no. There’s no space. It seems that arriving in ships has become outdated. It would probably be okay if they arrived on yachts.
While I’m busy wondering, the city moves. The city is childlike, known for its future. The first thing I do when I arrive in the city’s heart is look up. I see refurbished facades and terraces, hidden between the pavement and the tall glass boxes, tickled by pale blue sky. In the ebb and flow of its conversations people talk of no past, no tradition, only future. The people haven’t learnt yet, how to tell the city’s stories. But I have snuck up on them as they sit rusting away in big libraries, subdued in memories and smiling out of gift books. These stories rise and fall like the legends of much older cities. If you pay close enough attention, you can see them holding its bricks together. They tussle for space in the revised version of the grand tale.
In one corner of the city, a bold looking man stands statue still, looking out towards the distant hills, with a quiet cough he introduces himself, “C.Y. O’Conner”. In the city’s infancy the Irishman hatched a plan to link the city and its distant wealth, hidden in the dry, dry desert, with water. Only he never lived to guess at his triumph for in the summer of 1902 he took his own life and plunged it into the sea. I wonder how he would gasp now, to see a statue of himself proudly displayed in the city. Would he cry aloud, to think of his soul forever stuck in this distant corner of the globe?
In a very different part of the city, a different story waits. This is the saga of Yagan, a warrior they dubbed the courteous savage who walked this country both before and after the arrival of the tall ships. The tree incident marked the dawn of a new and dangerous time of war and peace for Yagan’s people and sometimes he was known as a friendly native while at other times he was a feared and fierce warrior king. It was inevitable that blood would be spilt and a fight would be had, but still the newcomers seemed surprised when it did and were so blind with rage, they sent Yagan’s head far, far away from its dreaming place. I think if he saw his land and people today, his heart would be heavy with the change, only the wind and the gentle whisper of the river would be familiar to him.
Sometimes she feels the city greets her, embraces her and returns her to its heart. Her name is written at the foot of its bells, she knows it as one does an old friend, she carries its hope in her hands. But its houses close in around her, and its veins coil tightly about her. She gasps for air but only the wind is there. Only the wind.
The city is nestled in a sort of shallow valley, and when the train bends in along the tracks from almost any direction, it offers the first glimpse of its small heart. As the train rounds the final curve and disappears into a tunnel I am reminded of something I was told once, by a man who moved to the city, from somewhere far away and fell in love with it. Now he lives just outside its borders, on the other side of the distant hills. “Every time I drive into the city,” he told me, a curious smile and happy glint in his eyes. “I come down those hills, and when the city is all spread out before me I think, there she is. Isn’t she beautiful...” It sounded like a question but I knew it wasn’t. Still I wanted to ask him what he found so beautiful about the city, to interject and tell him he was harbouring gross delusions. But with a little wave he left me where I stood, bemused and waiting to understand his curious smile. I wonder what makes a city a city. What makes a city a home? As I walk the streets of this city I watch it rush about me and I sense that it exists both inside and apart from me. Sometimes I wonder which of us is more lost.
With a final beep the train announces our destination. “This is Perth.” We flow out of the cities veins and arteries like ants streaming out of an anthill. My shoes tap across the pavers which conceal the earth where people have walked for thousands of years. Beneath me, the train travels silently onwards and high above me, the sky takes a big breath in, exhaling its strangely gentle breeze out across the city.
She is walking because she has nowhere to go. Because if she stands still it feels like she is waiting, for something.
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