flowers in the city

the Sydney diaries

I’m sitting on the floor of my friends third floor apartment in Sutherland. She’s generously invited me to stay whilst I’m hosting a teacher training, thus making it viable to stay in Sydney for the whole week even though the training is only at weekends.

I have the entire place to myself. I’m watching the clouds form ever darkening layers. It smells like rain.

I’m very grateful for this time. I know it’s necessary even though I’m finding it strange to be away from the studio and my home. I’ve told myself this week is a ‘writers retreat’ and I’ve purposely left a lot of space.

Of course, I’m not already not doing as much writing as I want. Whenever I tell myself ‘I’m going to write’ it doesn’t happen. I’ve spent a lot of time walking, taking pictures of flowers, going to coffee shops, drinking tea and buying ridiculously expensive, delicious dates covered in chocolate from the Organic stores that don’t exist (thankfully) on the far South Coast.

Every time I leave the apartment I check I’ve got the keys over and over again. I’m terrified of locking myself out. I haven’t lived in a house with even one lock on the door for years. I cant remember the last time I carried ‘house keys’.

In this incredibly quiet, calm and ordered apartment there are many keys. Keys to open the windows. Keys to open the screen door. Keys to open the glass sliding balcony door, the door I watched the full moon rise from last night. Keys to the front door of the apartment, keys to the garage when I store my car, keys to the outer courtyard. I keep thinking about the potential burglars that would be game enough to risk all of this and then scale three floors to open an unlocked window.

I keep thinking about locks. If we stopped locking our cars and houses what would happen? Would people stop stealing things? Probably not. I think about the cave days. When we lived in caves, how did we secure our things? Maybe because we had less things there was less need to ‘lock’.

Anyway, I’m giving myself anxiety about the keys. It’s really not a big deal. It’s funny what the mind will obsess about.

I grew up in the countryside in a tiny hamlet called Norton Canon, population 200. When I was young my parents never locked the house. I guess they didn’t feel the need to. Who was going to drive down ‘Pig Street’ with ill intentions? It was so out of the way, the travel time would be very off-putting for thieves.

One of my many regrets * is throwing an ‘illegal’ party at my parents house when I was 15. I say illegal because they’d specifically asked me not to. I think my Mum could tell something was afoot, she kept asking me and I kept lying to her, over and over again. ‘No Mum, I’m definitely not going to do anything stupid like have a party.’

They were going away for a wholesome week in Wales. I didn’t want to go, because I was 15 and I only cared about things that were not wholesome.

* (on regrets, I love this perspective from David Whyte)

As soon as they told me their plans, I also started planning. I told all my friends. I told the whole school. I told my on-off-on-again boyfriend who was ten years older than me and told him to bring all his friends.

You can imagine what happened. A fight broke out around midnight, the police were called, all the bags of flour my Dad used to make bread were poured everywhere, furniture was broken, motorbikes screamed up and down the tiny Norton Canon streets at 1am. It was the most disruption the tiny hamlet had ever witnessed. I spent most of the party upstairs with my boyfriend. When I ventured downstairs in the morning and surveyed the carnage in my hungover state I realised for the first but not the last time, parties aren’t always what they’re cracked up to be.

A couple of hours in to my damage control mission I heard the worst sound in the world. The crunching of tyres in the drive. My family were back, days earlier than expected. My Mum had checked the home phone voicemail remotely and heard a message from the police ‘we’re calling about the disturbance, the violence thats broken out, please call back’.

The look on their faces sent me into a shame spiral. From that day on they started locking the house.

Luckily my parents are very forgiving people and eventually saw the funny side. My Dad still calls it ‘the teenage party from hell’. The day after the party I walked around the village knocking on everyone’s doors and apologising and crying profusely. The neighbours seemed to be sympathetic. There was nothing fake about my tears. I felt terrible for a long time.

~

In between bouts of somewhat unproductive writing, I’ve been walking. One of my favourite things about being in the city is walking and catching the train. Yesterday I went to see an old friend. I typed her address in. It was over an hour walk but I didn’t think twice.

It was raining. Not the normal Australian torrential rain, but a light mist that left my skin dewy, not quite enough to warrant an umbrella or raincoat, not that I own either. The mist continued and I continued, step by step, up Acacia Drive and onto President Avenue.

These streets are familiar to me. They bring sudden waves of nostalgia. This place, ‘The Shire’ was my home. I lived here in 2013 with my boyfriend and his Mum.

Memories flash.

I suddenly remember getting stung by a bee between my legs whilst riding my bike. There was nowhere to safely stop as I was on the highway so I had to endure the pain until I dived down a side street and pulled my tights down to get it out.

I spent a lot of time cycling in those days. I didn’t have a car so would ride my (non-electric) bike for an hour from Yarrawarrah to Cronulla to work for $16 an hour at a Greek restaurant called Opah. As I traverse these streets by foot, puffing up all the hills I look back with awe and admiration at my 29 year old self. I was so determined and always optimistic (call it delusional). I’d always think ‘I can do that, it’s not a big deal’.

I was determined but not so happy.

I didn’t notice the flowers back then.

I walk past an overflowing white Camellia bush that is erupting onto the pavement. The concrete is carpeted with petals, confetti for an invisible bride. I stand there for a while until a woman with an umbrella moves me on.

The next object of my affection is a native orchid, tiny orange flowers set against a vivid green backdrop. She dances delicately in the wind.

To the west a bougainvillea proudly displays her array of paper lanterns bouncing in the emerging sun.

A magnolia beckons. The sexiest flower there is. Buttery soft and voluptuous, the Marilyn Monroe of the flower world, without the angst.

What strikes me about the flowers is there is no competition. The Magnolia isn’t looking across at the pink Camellia wishing for more colour. The orchid isn’t wishing it had more of the bougainvillea bounce. They are all blooming, for no other reason than this is what they are destined to do. They bloom with abandon. They bloom until it’s time for the petals to drop, then they drop to the earth. They let go without shame. They’re not afraid to die because they know their death is a birth. The next round. Next season. Next lifetime.

Here we all are. Blooming for a time. Allowing our petals to fall, to carpet the earth. What are we leaving behind? What are we afraid to let go of? How can we learn from the flowers?

I remember my friend Saras words:

‘When you look at the flowers in awe and think how beautiful, they are looking right back at you and thinking the same thing. Look at that one! Look at that one! So beautiful. So beautiful.’