7. the wind that made the city restless, that cannot be described
it was one of those strange windy days that hits the city all of a sudden, the wind that made the city restless, that cannot be described, but that lifts & shakes the city as it hurries through, it brings things apart from the city to the city's attention & the expert city dwellers like us are beginning to question ourselves, it shakes in the city before our eyes & the tv aerials & rosebushes are shaken, saying 'describe us, describe us', & the wonky letterboxes sway a little, & flimsy wirescreen doors bang on their hinges, until you must get up out of bed, in order to stop them, & always a lonely backyard dog is whimpering somewhere out there on the wind, it could be a kilometre away, deep in the black & chilly heart of melbourne, it is a cry of a dog that is not free & the wind reminds it of its desperate loss, until that dog touches us with its grief, this is the kind of sudden wind that stirs us up inside, bringing the old old stories from our past, it's like our history comes racing along a timeline to invade us, almost immediately we think of the future as the wind tries to race us forward, & everything is moving too fast, an empty container lifts & skids down the road, making that loud crackly noise of plastic on tarmac & something about it has disturbed me & set my pulse racing, so that i want to be alone inside myself, so that i see beyond the shape & size of my city habitation, meanwhile, the city stands still & closes its eyes & battens down its senses & hopes that the wind will pass through, this wind that has made us all so restless |
