people having fun downstairs

or is it upstairs, i can't tell through the earplugs.

they fall over each other laughing as they come home, voices echoing up the crazy-paved stairwell - what i reckon, yeah i reckon ...

belting out the words to their favourite songs, one after the other until somehow sleep takes them. i can't remember the last time i did that.

train river, car river, river river

i nearly clip a pedestrian as i come out into Kerr Street tucking fingers into mitten-tops and thinking: did I take my asthma spray? Am I masking early-onset alzheimers if I find a trick to remind me of this twice a day?

Weaving around construction workers and a splattered takeaway coffee at the ICI roundabout, hard right onto napier past the soccer field in the shadow of the commission flats. The first stretch of green for the morning. Everything is singing after the rain.

Through the hospital sector, orderlies unloading cardboard boxes while the fitzroy gardens shine orderly on the right.

Leaving the injured behind. Overtaking the human racehorses training in full-body onesies at the G while baby grand pianos go out of tune in front windows, underneath chandeliers, behind hedges.

Up up on top of the train river, over the car river where once a fox followed me home in the dead of night. And then, the river river. A reporter with noosed scarf warms her hands while the camaraman sets up a shot of the city.

That’s definitely a peacock calling from the botanic gardens … scooby doo and his gang would be huddled on this hill in their mystery machine punching cones and summoning the guts to leap the fence if they could only find a goddamn park amid the champagne-coloured cars.

A wedge of fawkner park appears before the wedge heels, knee-high boots and soft ponytails of south yarra.

And then I’m at work. Flanked the whole time by green. Uphill to go home, but then it’s all downhill from there.

at tiamo, in our 30s

'are you seeing anyone at the moment?'

'yeah, my counsellor. she's awesome.'

'cool. i found a new naturopath in northcote, she's amazing.'

meals on wheels

sixty-nine years, we've been married. if he went, i'd be ok. i don't know what he'd do without me though. a couple of weeks ago i just thought ... i've cooked every single meal, every day, breakfast, lunch, dinner. for other people, for 69 years. well i'm sick of it. someone else can do it. meals on wheels or something.

beaming

magpie, i love your scrambled digital signal.

kelpie on kerr

i shook the snow dome but instead of glitter it was filled with rocks. in this new dome i'll keep an eye on the sparkly stuff and the nearby bluestones.

pocket money

in the morning fog on gertrude street, a 40-something tradie paces the footpath in his fluoros. he's on the phone, holding it hard against his head. all the muscles in his body are tense, his eyes red.

'You never gave me pocket money!' he says, sucking back tears like a five year old.

the way there

the way back

anzac day, high street

'what's this, a crime scene, is it?'

'yeah. i take photos of crime scenes with my mobile.'

joe's organics

new car. well not new, but from 1993 and not 1983. i drive it home from camberwell with both hands clamped on the wheel, thinking about geography, the cover note on my insurance and how bright lights are when you look into them.

stop off to get some organic bubbles and veggies for dinner. joe asks me if there is some reason to celebrate. ordinarily, there's no special reason for bubbles. but tonight ... maybe my grin betrays me. the same grin as with Nessie, and she ended up parched, smoking, towed and scrapped after three weeks and 400,000kms.

so joe says, 'i wish someone had told me this when i first started to drive. you must look in the distance as well as in front of you.' He repeats it over and over in different ways. 

i'm pawing the potatoes. thumbing the tomatoes. i repeat after him each time, the same way i nod when people give directions, hoping they'll stop talking soon so i can work it out myself. someone else taught me that. i pay. he donates a bunch of goddamn mouldy bananas that'll have to be baked before they liquify, and takes me out on the street. i have the box in arms, and he is pointing at the traffic lights about three blocks away. they're green. 

'you see?' he says, making a sweeping gesture that forces me to take in the entire horizon. victoria street northcote and everything above and beyond it. 'look at what's close, but also at what's far away.'

i go home, cook up the tomatoes, watch the last of madmen series three and fight with my girlfriend.

greek easter

made in reservoir

thornbury to croxton

an analogue TV falls face down in the cooch,

near a chair with the wicker kicked out of it

sick of each other, the watcher and the watched

futons and inner springs commingle in a stack

cottage cheese spills from a plastic milk bottle

saying come back to bed, we fixed you a warm drink

flirting on mitchell

An old man shuffles along the footpath, pressed beige pants hoisted high on his belly, tufts of chest hair peeping over a white singlet.

He's gently waving a giant net, like one for catching butterflies or something the BFG would find useful in the place where all dreams is beginning.

'Come on, come on,' he coos softly, just out of swishing distance. His half-hearted comb over swirls in the smoggy vapour. There are fires burning somewhere in the state.

A little bird, uneasy in the big wide Brunswick, permits the courtship.