Once more, and with feeling.

Airport this afternoon, heading West, and then Wester still. In Sydney there’ve been walks by the water under sun and moon, the art gallery on a drizzly Saturday, a neverending stream of baked goods on the kitchen counter, a scoop of lychee rose petals while the stories unraveled. The baby is, in the truest and best way, a bean.

In Singapore, there will be the mad happy rush of lunch dates, and dinner dates, and, quite possibly, tea dates. And then— and then I trade in the Times for the Guardian, Park Slope for Covent Garden, the subway for the best seat—front row, upper deck—on a big red bus. Chances are good the starry eyes stay the same.

I’ll be taking a break for the blogging for a bit, ’cause sometimes a girl just needs a moment. Excuse me while I powder my nose.

I miss him, sometimes, and I miss her, and out of nowhere last night I remembered the snow falling softly in Brooklyn. And I don’t remember now why I left New York, or what I’m looking for in London. But that’s life, I suppose, or something like it.

Sometimes I think about my life, and it appears, in my mind, a long panoramic reel from left to revealing right.

Besides my not having an office or, um, a paycheck or anything, this week so far has been JUST like having a job, seeing as how I’ve been going into the city every day. I was planning my itinerary early this morning—if the baby is up at ten to seven, we are all up at ten to seven—when CC said, “You could even go now, with the rush-hour crowd.”

“I have no intention of going with the rush-hour crowd,” I said, and it is here I may have snorted.

“So it’s not at all like you have a job, then.”

“No.”

Very well.



These summer-winter days are nice for forays into the city, a Japanese printed cotton tunic among the pinstripes at lunch. The 507 dropped me off exactly where I wanted to be, minutes from a courtyard in the sunshade, a crusty baguette sandwich, and a grenadine-Perrier in a frosty frosted glass. On the way out, a small bag of ten dark truffles had the pleasant heft of magic.

Across the street at the Museum of Contemporary Art, contemporary art was multicolored neon rain falling down down down. Down down down the hall there was a grey window looking out on a grey scene, but I followed its pull to find the window was no window and the shadow was no shadow, and I remembered when we were in Las Vegas and the full moon was shining so brightly against the winking, blinking backdrop of the city as to be but a simulacrum, and I was lost in wonderment and marvel and fatigue, not even knowing if we were real ourselves. We walked up the Strip and down the Strip, and when I caught sight of the moon, it took me by— — it just took me.

This is shaping up to be the summer of meeting bloggers or something, what with me meeting, well, all two of them. Hallo, Cour Marly! Hallo, Saffron!

What is a good way to meet a girl for the first time is at the fance-o-riffic Lindt shoppe on Martin Place, where the storegirl took one look at our red Chinese slippers (Saffron) and pink billow skirt (me) and steered us away from the tables of corporate crows in serious suits—“They’re all having meetings”—to seats at the bar.

Cheh! Call us not a meeting?

And what a meeting, too, with nonstop chitchat about travels, about cupcakes, about funny mothers; and with beauteous presents of the freshly baked kind, thank you, Saffron, for the dark chocolate-blueberry slice and the polka-dot paper cups of cookies. I was beginning to feel a little inadequate with nothing homemade to offer, when CC phoned to say she was on her way. “Bring something, quick,” I said, listing the two-weeks-old half-loaf of banana bread or the remaining picked-at carcass from last night’s roast chicken. Our reputation was saved, though, somewhat, when she pointed out the toasted coconut brittle she’d made yesterday. Genius.

I see now that it seems a little crazy what I am saying, but, YES, it is true, we brought our own treats to the Lindt shop, even though the Lindt shop has mirabelle truffles, and Champagne macaroons, and cake macerated in orange liqueur. But you see it is not crazy at all, because it only means treats for now and treats for later, which is the best way to handle treats.

We had dark chocolate drinks all around, and then I checked out the toilets upstairs ’cause I had a faint hope that liquid chocolate would come out of the faucets—but it was only water like all in a day’s work.

With nowheres to be and the company sweet, we sat from the breakfast menu till the lunch menu, then the city chilly-willy and the 441 coming ’round the corner.

Home in time for Ben Harper, a biscuit, and a cup of Stockholm Blend, she’s only happy in the sun.

I am roasting a chicken!

This is announced with the brass band in full swing, spotlights glinting off golden trumpets blaring, because I have never roasted a chicken before. When I told Matthew this evening I’d be roasting a chicken for dinner, he said: “Easiest thing in the world.” This is what I hear, but the last time I was in the proximity of someone roasting a chicken as if it were the easiest thing in the world, that someone was Schmio—and if Schmio knows something, it is her way around the kitchen, so she hardly counts.

So.

I am roasting a chicken, and it is going so well I am down here on the computer instead of upstairs by the oven, wringing my hands. (Or, happily, a chicken’s neck.)

It probably seemed like maybe things were not going to go as planned when CC came into the kitchen earlier and said, “Is it done?” and I said, “Please. I have only just now found the scissors to open the packet with.”

But soon I was rubbing the chicken down with half a lemon, and then stuffing it with garlic and thyme and a couple of handfuls of diced bacon. My hand may have been getting rather friendly with the chicken when CC said, “Do you feel funny?” and I said, “No,” because it is true, “it feels good.” I like to work with meat, is the thing, and if I’m going to be rubbing my hands against something, I’m quite happy for it to be a whole chicken rather than a bed of nails.

I’ll say, though, I felt a little bad when we flipped it on its side to go into the oven, ’cause it looked like he’d just put his glasses on the bedside table, turned out the light, and, all peaceful-like after a hard day’s work, rolled over to go to sleep in a bed of parsnips and carrots.

We were watching a DVD tonight, “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”—

this is a brilliant movie, really brilliant, the kind of movie the movies were made for, and what better way to watch it than—if not eight months ago on the big screen—with pizza and gelati, and on the new sixty-eight-centimeter flat-screen television Matthew and CC got the other day when Matthew was home sick from work. He was lying on the couch groaning about some upset stomach or other, Matthew was, and I said, “Can I make you some soup or something?” and he said, all groany, “Nooo.” He may have clutched his stomach at this point, or wiped his feverish brow, before he said: “What I need is a new television.” And just like that they drove off into the sunset and “Hi-ho, Silver” referred, two days later, to the shiny new Panasonic the delivery guys brought to the door.

But, anyway—

oh, wait. Just one more. May I take this moment to say that Lemony Snicket is played in perfect typewriterly fashion by the backlit shadows of Jude Law, oh, hurrah, and I know the word on the street is that he is a philandering cur, but I, as I told my friend Jazon, when I move to London I WILL BE THE ONE WHO MAKES HIM COMMIT.

Hum. So.

CC and I were watching “A Series of Unfortunate Events” tonight, and at some point I looked down at the table and found that the words printed on the side of the pizza box were: DON’T DESPAIR.

It is this sort of moment that makes you aware there is suddenly a prickle on your neck. At this moment, if you were a fourteen-year-old girl inventor—the best fourteen-year-old inventor around, uncontested—and if you were in some sort of tight spot, and if you thought you might be about to give up because all was lost—if all this were the case, the moment of seeing DON’T DESPAIR printed on an unexpected surface would be the moment where you realize that the answer to your dilemma is, if not right in front of you, at least around the corner.

And if you are not, in fact, any sort of inventor, if you are not in a movie with artful clothes and the dusty-gorgeous atmosphere of a fantastical film set, if you are only a girl muddling your way through a troublesome bit of life, well, DON’T DESPAIR, black on corrugated white, is a pretty nice thing to see.

We were taking an affogato break later, and I was mulling over the pizza shop, wondering if they had a whole selection of pizza boxes with unexpected sayings. MAKE MERRY, perhaps. DON’T DALLY. LOOK UP. FORSOOTH. And CC said, “If your cupboard’s bare.” I was delicately pouring espresso onto a scoop of tiramisù gelato so I distractedly said: “Mm?” and it turns out the four sides of pizza box put together read: “If your cupboard’s bare / Don’t despair / Give us a call / We’ll be right there.”

Oh.

I’ll tell you a secret. Sometimes I like to read the horoscopes.

I like buses and I like maps, so it all works out ’cause sometimes a girl’s got to get places.



Yesterday I hopped the 442 up George Street to an architectural walk in the city, you cannot say I am not clever and serious. Okay, well, actually it was because the promo literature said the walks are led by young architects. Everybody likes a young architect!

Oh, stop. I care DEEPLY about architecture. And if it just so happens that I now know architectural things because a bright-eyed curly-haired young architect told me them, ALL THE BETTER. For example: There is sandstone under much of New South Wales, sandstone that leaches rainwater and nutrients from the topsoil, so that local florae have to be hardy and cunning in order to survive. The plants emit poisons, then, that keep animals from eating them, and when the trees shed, come tree-shedding season, (I know it seems like this story is getting nowhere fast), (his eyes were very nice), (and he had small cloth-covered buttons on his shirt), when the trees shed, the leaves, INSTEAD OF DECOMPOSING ON THE GROUND, SIT ABOUT AND EMIT POISONS. West of Sydney, the Blue Mountains have been attracting squirrels and, I dunno, wombats, and nature lovers for years. That smoky mountainy blue, that mysterious enveloping blue, that, my friends, is THE BRILLIANT BLUE GLOW OF PLANT POISON IN THE AIR. And perhaps this does not seem architectural, except for the architect who told me it, but it is part of a whole story about a whole city, and every story has to start somewhere, and sandstone is just as good a place as any.

This afternoon the 378 took me to the fashions of Paddington and back. If you are just quick enough, you can see, from the bus, the questions along Oxford Street: Have you seen Francis? Have you seen Timothy? Have you seen love?

And if you are quite eagle-eyed, you can even see, from the bus, CC and the baby waiting outside the video store back in Balmain so we can go have a sunset gelato in the park.

Two weeks in the suburbs and CC’s already found me, twice, standing about at home with what she calls my “desperate housewives” look. Y’know: gazing-like, in the stillness, out toward the horizon. Once I might even have been drinking vodka straight up. Except that, because I am me, it was water; and, instead of a purple Pucci-print flounce, I was probably wearing pink pyjama pants.

Two weeks without the Internet may have had something to do with it. But! Late yesterday afternoon a little excursion up the street unveiled the treasure that’d been under our noses the whole time. It’s quite possible that, after we found out the local Starbucks offers a wireless connection, we skipped all the way home.

This morning I am camped out here with the prams and the weekend papers. The barista has called out, at least once, that someone’s babycino is up.

I could be here all day.

I am reading, on the balcony, in the sun, with a Monte Carlo biscuit, Murray Bail. Eucalyptus. Ask me what it’s about. “It’s about trees,” I’ll say. “It’s about beauty.” These two go hand in hand.

“I L-I-K-E Y-O-U” is what I was starting to write on CC’s arm with my finger; except that my finger started to write “I L-I-C-K Y-O-U.” And the thing is, SHE KNEW what was coming BEFORE I wrote it. My finger started writing “I-L-I-C-” and she said: “I LICK YOU, I knew you were going to write that.” And I, because even I didn’t know till my finger started writing it, I said, “But how did you know??” and she said: “I just knew. You are so odd.”

Well. At least the BABY seems to appreciate the higgledy-piggledy songs, the hubbudy-bubbudy songs, and the stories of the Hurkish taxi driver who came to Australia with no more than a sock and twenty-two Hurkish cents.

Living on the water means that, nights, we can take walks on the quay while the stars hang low and bright over a city of twinkly lights. There is one star in particular, lower and brighter than the others, straight ahead, and at the tip of a pointing finger.

Living on the water means that, afternoons, we can stroll through the mishmash of Birchgrove waterfront architecture to the wharf, and take the ferry downtown. This afternoon, we picnicked with fish and chips on the lawn outside the MCA, while the gulls closed in on us. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I have no love for seagulls, these Dr. Evil birds with mean, beady eyes. I called “Kla!” at them while gesturing madly with a plastic fork, but they are hardened criminals, shrugging down low to swoop in and steal a potato scallop. CC says their brash nature is because they live on the open sea and have to deal with whales.

In Stephanie Alexander’s rainbow-colored Cook’s Companion, the chapter on ham begins:

The delicacy we know as ham is an example of necessity becoming the mother of invention. An oversupply of feral pigs in Roman Gaul (France) meant that methods had to be found to preserve this excellent food for the winter. Salting and smoking was the answer. The rest is history!

Say it with me, children: FERAL PIGS. Mmmm.

Yesterday morning, there was a suggestion of pumpkin soup for dinner. A small brainstorming session later (“I don’t like pumpkin soup. How about pea soup?” “Meh.” “Pea and ham?” “Mmm.”), we’d settled on the menu. The rest is history!

Pea and ham soup means we get to stop by the butcher for a ham hock, and this is good for two reasons. One, I get to say the words “ham hock,” which I never say, because I have never made a pea and ham soup. We like these words, “ham hock,” because these are words that are salty and hammy all at once. Nyup, nyup, nyup.

Oh! I am now remembering that episode of “The Facts of Life” where Blair is in some play, and she reads the review in the local paper, and they say that she is, as an actress, I think, “like a ham and cheese sandwich with neither the cheese nor the bread.” And Blair says, with great indignation, “Me?! A ham?!”

And, oh!, I am now remembering that at the Museum of TV and Radio in New York, there is a whole archive of TV shows you can watch. When CC and I were there some years ago, we picked one “Muppet Show” and one “Facts of Life,” now you know something about us.

But.

Reason number dos, with the ham hock, is, we like a butcher, because they have all sorts of handy things to say about meat. Sometimes they have ruddy cheeks, too, which is also nice, but I may be remembering from children’s books rather than from life.

Hum. I don’t know how I got here, but all I wanted to say is that after an hour or two of simmering on the stove, there was pea and ham soup last night, with big chunks of wholemeal bread and a good amount of butter.

I don’t know how we did it, but we spent a hundred and fifty-one dollars on groceries today. I think the shopping list included, like, milk, and peas, and maybe some rocket leaves for a salad. By the end of the afternoon, however, the bags held, among other things, a tin of English orange hot chocolate powder, a tub of lemon myrtle yoghurt, a packet of mungbean chips, a coconut-lemon-lime tart, a selection of fancy cheeses, and a couple of pink Turkish delights. Ah, hell. The pink did us in, it did, it did.

No Internet connection. I write a week’s worth of postcards.



Monday. The new house is on the quay. Stuff is still in boxes, but the sparkles on the Parramatta River come in through the windows, the white boats on the water bob in through the windows, and through the windows the sun fills the room.



Tuesday. I went out for the paper and I came back with forty-eight dollars’ worth of magazines. I hardly ever read Vogue, and I never read British Vogue, but I’m on holidays, so okay. There is a photo shoot in British Vogue to take your breath away. It is India, it is dusk, it is the hot sun, it is curving staircases and long dresses and colors like yearning, colors of the secret life in a girl’s secret heart.



Wednesday. There is a street named Darling, and we took it west to Rozelle, to The Barn, to great wood tables and mismatched chairs, to bacon sandwiches and bean soup, to fancy chocolate and honey yoghurt.

We were heading home and CC said, “If the baby falls asleep, we can go have iced coffees or something.” The baby lay down in her pram and co-operated, so then we went east on Darling, past the garden with the porcelain menagerie display; past the carpet of pink petals; past the lawn bowls and the old men with their bowling ball bags lined up by the fence; past the London Hotel and the two white pups on the wireworked terrace; down two hills, which meant later there would be up two hills; we went east straight toward the wharf, toward the Harbour Bridge curving beyond the orange trees.

At Thornton Park, the ferries came a-calling, Alexander and Scarborough and Charlotte, handsome in green and gold, and the baby smiled into the wind.



Thursday. I dream about ex-boyfriends and non-boyfriends, about walking down a path with lanterned lights, about Chinese students involved in an underground computer-smuggling outfit, about trying to find my way through a dank concrete building, about a bicycle ride in the dero-beauty of the Lower East Side. I wake up confused and tired, still.



Friday. The seagulls above Cockatoo Island circle like questions, like bits of white laundry on a spiral laundry line, like white confetti at a white wedding.

Once my friend Gab showed me a picture he took at a wedding. The image is black and white, and it is confetti all over, blurry and falling, and through the specks of celebration you see two grins, and a twinkle in the eye. And maybe I am remembering the photograph inaccurately, but certainly that is how it makes you feel.



Saturday. We turned right at the factory straight out of Chris Ware. There were smokestacks, even, but no smoke, because of Saturday.

Across the Anzac Bridge, the growers’ market in Pyrmont, the air smelling of hot coffees, of Saturday sausages and bacon on the grill. From white-topped stall to white-topped stall, there were samples of Christmas cake; of taro root; of pecorino; of salted butter yellow and thick and tasting of lamb.

When we left we had smoked trout in our canvas totes, and a fruit loaf fat with figs. A small container of fresh goat’s curd. A jar of raspberry jam, and strawberries smelling red, smelling sugar. We would have had a raisin snail and an apricot-almond tart, too, had we not eaten them, with hot coffees, on the lawn.

At home, I read in the Saturday sun while the water sparkled in the bay like Saturday.

Later, I was reading on the red sofa, and CC was reading on the carpet, and we are lucky to have each other. And she looked over at me and said, “Hello, sleepy.” “I’m not sleepy,” I said, and it is the last thing I remember, and then it was three hours later and I was stretching long and good and waking up, like Saturday.



Sunday. We danced to Otis Redding, me and the baby, and we danced to Django Reinhart. We danced to Bob Dylan, to his Queen of Spades, to her chambermaid. I sang her a song, a soft one, I rhymed “afternoon” with “bubbadoon,” she rolled over and she went to sleep. Me, I rolled upstairs to a slice of chocolate tart and a strong coffee in the sun. It was very warm on my neck. On page one-sixty-three I left a chocolate smudge and on page one-sixty-nine I cried.

When CC and Matthew got home from the largest IKEA in the southern hemisphere, CC made us French toasts. “That was tasty,” I said. “So it’s just bread and eggs?”

“And milk,” she said.

“Oh.”

“And cinnamon sugar.”

“Mm.”

“And fried in bacon grease.”

“Ahh.”