Melbourne Mornings
An Essay
Our morning walk today was a long one, all the way from Spencer Street and Southern Cross, to the Fitzroy Gardens and the MCG Grounds. On the way, I look at all the trees on the way, and the smiles of people, and he watches the buildings and streets, and holds me back from sailing into traffic, because I am not looking at where I am going. As usual. It has become so much second nature for him, that he doesn’t bother being exasperated anymore. Besides, I don’t seem to notice, so what’s the point?
We have agreed to disagree, and our conversations are a study in mutual co existence. I think after 40 years of marriage, we owe it to ourselves, the man I live with, and I, to disregard everything the other says. It is a state of Nirvana devoutly to be hoped for. We pursue our own trains of thought, and there are brief flare-ups, of course, and it helps, to look injured and hurt from time to time. That is something I have honed to perfection, the look and the drooping air. Sometimes, I think, the man feels that I am putting it on, but 33 years of standing in classrooms facing astute and critical teenagers has helped polish up the act, and there are no more chinks in this armour.
We sit on one of the many occasional benches in Fitzroy Gardens and he watches the small dogs on leashes that pet owners have brought for a run in the Park. He is fond of small dogs: I like big ones, like the German Shepherd. From afar. I am terrified, on principle of all dogs. They don’t seem to like me, either.
I remember one of Bill Bryson’s inimitable anecdotes about his fear of dogs:
Studland village is a pretty little place scattered among trees, with a Norman church and some fine views over the bay. I followed the path round the edge of the village and up the hill towards Handfast Point. Halfway along, I met a couple out walking two large black dogs of uncertain genetic background. The dogs were romping playfully in the tall grass, but, as always happens, at the first sight of me their muscles tautened, their eyes turned a glowing red, their incisors grew a sudden inch and they were transformed into beasts of prey. In a trice they were at me, barking savagely and squabbling over sinew and nipping at my dancing ankles with horrible yellowy teeth. ‘Would you please get your fucking animals off me!’ I cried in a voice that sounded uncannily like that of Minnie Mouse. The owner loped up and began attaching leads. He had on some stupidly jaunty flat cap like Abbott and Costello would wear in a golfing sketch. ‘It’s your stick,’ he said accusingly. ‘They don’t like sticks.’ ‘What, they only attack cripples? ’‘They just don’t like sticks.’ ‘Well, then maybe your stupid wife should walk ahead with a sign saying: “Look Out! StickCrazy Dogs Coming.”’ I was, you may gather, a trifle upset. ‘Look here, sunshine, there’s no need to get personal.’ ‘Your dogs attacked me for no reason. You shouldn’t have dogs if you can’t control them. And don’t you call me sunshine, bub.”
We stood glowering at each other. For one moment, it looked as if we might actually grapple and end up rolling around in the mud in an unseemly fashion. I restrained a wild impulse to reach out and flip his cap from his head. But then one of the dogs went for my ankles again and I retreated a few steps up the hill. I stood on the hillside, shaking my stick at them like some wildhaired lunatic. ‘And your hat’s stupid, too!’ I shouted as they huffed off down the hill. That done, I smoothed down my jacket, composed my features and proceeded on my way. Well, honestly! Bill Bryson: Notes From a Small Island
It was a sunny day, a day meant for walking and being out of doors. A day that the dark clouds and the first winter rains stayed away.
We sat on a bench and lifted our faces to the morning sun, opening up, like flowers to warmth and heat and light, revelling in being a part of the trees and grass, the birds and the fountains playing merrily along the small boulders and tree roots on their busy way.
Thank God for the eternal, the unchanging, the permanent. For a moment of selective amnesia in the midst of wars, deceit, economic collapses, and fiscal and mental depression.