an attempt at nostalgia

As autumn intensifies into winter, I too am about to make a transition of the seasonal kind, leaving the chill of winter for the gentle approach of the European summer. Farewelling Melbourne for a while to enjoy the discovery of Berlin.

As I make my transition, I wonder about how one says goodbye to a place. My experience of my surroundings and awareness of those things that make my daily routine a pleasure here have intensified. I roam my neighbourhood streets, now carpeted with desiccated gold and red leaves, and attempt to imagine them without me, continuing, as they will, regardless of my presence. I stand still and try to commit the feeling of Melbourne to physical memory, as if I can line my veins with the essence of this city. But the experience of not being somewhere is difficult to preempt; my attempt is a theoretical take on a visceral notion that is troublesome to replicate. 

And so, my attempts at creating nostalgia in my final days have come closer to treasuring moments of the everyday, or those that are somehow iconic of my years in Melbourne. Sometimes these are obvious, sometimes they are glamorous, sometimes they are as prosaic as breakfast. Speaking of which, unsurprisingly, given Melbourne’s culture and my own predilections, many of these revolve around food and drink.

Here are a few ways in which I have so far tried to say goodbye to Melbourne:

* An exhibition at the NGV International

* A dumpling feast in Melbourne’s Chinatown

* Lychee martinis at Double Happiness, a drinking den on one of Melbourne’s lovely laneways

* Scrambled eggs with avocado salad at an old favourite café in Fitzroy

* Swimming laps at the local pool

* Buying sourdough grain loaf from my local baker

* Attending a jazz gig played by a friend

* Riding my bike through the leafy streets after dark/on a sunny day/in the rain/when racing to make an appointment/home drunk from a friend’s place (but not too drunk, of course)

* A picnic with friends in the Carlton Gardens, in the shadow of the Royal Exhibition Building (and staying till after dark)

* Coffee, coffee, coffee in as many cafes as possible

* Making a mental catalogue of street stencils

walking is in the mind

By day: the contemplation of punctuation

ON a recent day walk, we follow a sign along a steep leaf-strewn path shaded by forest canopy to Camels Hump. Or is that Camel’s Hump? The birds obviously agree with the analysis of a missing apostrophe, having perfectly placed a grammatically correct dropping between the ‘l’ and the ‘s’ on the park sign. My companion argues for ‘hump’ as a verb. We contemplate the likelihood of camels being adjectival. We discuss the correct punctuation of no-nos. And goat’s cheese. Matters of great editorial importance. The forest’s rutted paths and towering autumnal canopy become written to memory through our conversation, forever inscribed with wayward punctuation.

 NAVIGATING a muddy, uphill climb through damp, sunless forest, we labour over Alexander the Great and the conflict between Greece and Macedonia. About which we know little. Our classical and contemporary history gets dredged. We piece our individual understandings together into a ragged quilt, missing a number of stitches. This process of discussion and articulation, the recalling of facts, names and information we thought were lost engages us. The creative knitting together of history and ideas. Conversation is a free-ranging group effort. Gaps and misinformation are tolerated. We’re equals in discovery beneath the spindly gums, amidst the knee-high ferns and grassy scrub. 

THE TERRAIN we cover is beyond the physical path we embark upon; we roam and climb and discover more than we had planned for.

By night: the indulgence of voyeurism

A CITY night. Electric hues. The moon scuffles with skulking, pallid clouds. Silence. And then a car door slams.

A NIGHT walk is a different beast. Like the day walk it satisfies curiosity but indulges too a longing for solitude and a tendency towards voyeurism. A desire to spy the in-between world that night-time reveals. To watch objects shift shape in the shadows, surrealistically bathed in halogen and moonlight, fused into an unlikely harmony of artificial and natural illumination. In the darkness of a suburban street, wandering on our own, we bear witness to other people's domesticity: lamp lights diffuse through net curtains, a blind half-shuttered allows a vertical slatted view of a kitchen scene. There’s the thrum of TVs, stereos, dinnertime conversations, children crying. 

A LAMP-POST droops a sad neck with its lonely light. A picket fence leaps from the shadow in illuminated white paint. Everyday objects transform in the darkness, become enlivened, embellished by the blaze of autumnal moonlight and the eerie glow of suburban street beams. The inanimate becomes personified. There’s also a hint of melancholy. But perhaps that is our own projection.

CONVERSATIONS on the night walk are internal, complex and laced with emotional details that resist words. You find connection in isolation; reflection in stillness.