New Poem, and director’s commentary.

I walked to bondi from the city today.

I used to walk to work in the city from bondi when I was working at a law firm. I’d wake up at four thirty and walk in as the sun rose to get that window of freedom and quiet before I went to not-fit-in at a place. I’d listen to Dolly Parton’s 9-5 on loop and be like yeah, they DO let you dream just to watch them shatter, I AM just a rung on the boss man’s ladder!

Walking back to bondi via Liverpool st towards oxford street, you go past my dad’s old office building, when he was heading up the Copyright Agency Ltd and we’d visit him at work as kids. His shelves were full of unreadable legislation and business books, apart from William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’ and ‘Burning Chrome’ (notable for containing the first use and first popularised use of the word Cyberspace) and a book of stories of the life of Saint Columba (notable for discussing the ‘first’ copyright law judgment. King Dara’s Judgment against Columba for copying a work (by hand) without permission and taking it from the abbey. “To every cow belongs its calf, so to every book belongs its copy”). I read those books a lot. The windows of the office looked out over the war memorial, near my brother’s old high school. He got mugged there once; hit in the head with a bat and concussed.

Along oxford st lies the turnoff to St Vincent’s public and private hospitals. Where we would go with mum for her appointments, or when she was sick, and when she was dying. I tend to keep my mind deliberately blank for about two blocks there. But I smile at everyone walking near, just in case they need it.

Past there is the old Paddington reservoir, now renovated into a public park. I had a first kiss there.

Further on, Centennial Park, where I used to run with friends six times a week. I’d tell Lucy Polkinhorne and Megan Donnelley the plots to novels as we did our long runs around the edges of the park, to pass the time.

Beyond that is the Sydney Chevra Kadisha, where we had the memorial service for my great uncle - my grandmother’s half brother, and the only other member of her family to survive to Holocaust. He used to teach me the piano, but he’d always get distracted showing me how to play things and I’d just watch him play.

And that was where I pulled out my phone and wrote this poem, for a friend of mine who is heartbroken far away.

It’s about how we become a palimpsest as we get older, and if you don’t like reading poetry, maybe you’ll like the story of it, anyway.

Xx

A