Wide open road versus the long slow belt home
We had our friend T visit, 2 years and 11 months since I'd seen him-Christmas Eve. Then I was living interstate, and he was briefly in Adelaide. I can remember thinking I wouldn't benefit from his relocation, as he wouldn't be in the same state... woosh, 4 months later, engaged, pregnant and back. What a year...
So, he's in London. Found out he'd been having a good life there, in the days of the boom, in the financial industry, living it large with restaurants and bars and wordly work associates and misses those days. I wonder how many of these associates were women, with children at home.. yes, when he told me that story, I thought all about myself and the pressure to do the childcare pick up every day after work..
The day that he left, would have been the greatest example of contrasts between our lives. I was driving through the wheat fields and rolling hills, where Yorke Peninsula meets Southern Flinders Ranges-a yellow landscape, listening to The Triffids. The town I visited, was made up of wide wide streets, a country town made large by industrial investment, with high silos, large bridges, industrial cranes, an old jetty to swim off, and wonderful examples of late Victorian architecture: railway station, cathedrals, post office and the pubs. It was Australiana to me, and intriguing to note my sentimental attachment to industrial port towns, how I find them picturesque, despite their environmental legacy.
His day, if you made a movie of it, was probably a long conveyer belt of walking through airports, anonymously, filling time, surrounded by white noise, crossing time barriers, suspended above clouds, reclining in uncomfortable chairs, tuning out the overhead announcements. I gave him a letter to read on the plane ride home, but I should have given him pen and paper to write his own letter instead.
So, he's in London. Found out he'd been having a good life there, in the days of the boom, in the financial industry, living it large with restaurants and bars and wordly work associates and misses those days. I wonder how many of these associates were women, with children at home.. yes, when he told me that story, I thought all about myself and the pressure to do the childcare pick up every day after work..
The day that he left, would have been the greatest example of contrasts between our lives. I was driving through the wheat fields and rolling hills, where Yorke Peninsula meets Southern Flinders Ranges-a yellow landscape, listening to The Triffids. The town I visited, was made up of wide wide streets, a country town made large by industrial investment, with high silos, large bridges, industrial cranes, an old jetty to swim off, and wonderful examples of late Victorian architecture: railway station, cathedrals, post office and the pubs. It was Australiana to me, and intriguing to note my sentimental attachment to industrial port towns, how I find them picturesque, despite their environmental legacy.
His day, if you made a movie of it, was probably a long conveyer belt of walking through airports, anonymously, filling time, surrounded by white noise, crossing time barriers, suspended above clouds, reclining in uncomfortable chairs, tuning out the overhead announcements. I gave him a letter to read on the plane ride home, but I should have given him pen and paper to write his own letter instead.
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