Last Time For This Year

Amazing to think that tomorrow will be the last day of 2011, isn’t it? How did that year go by so quickly?

I thought I’d share with you some of the photos I have encountered on my walks around the neighbourhood, lately, and what they made me think about.

How gorgeous is this? Look at the waterfall and the contours on the rocks. Some of the street artists around here are very talented. If I was a poet this type of scene would inspire me to write a haiku, but sadly, my poetic skills are lacking and the closest I can come is a very bad limerick….

A lot of people tell me this bakery is very good but every time I see the sign for some reason I think of Sweeney Todd and how the victims were put in the pies and I wonder what this bakery is putting in the cakes. It seems like a bakery that would exist in a Stephen King novel, so I think I might pass on it for now.

Beautiful blooms brightening up the street. The local council plant them. You can’t help but smile when you see them.

How sexy is this graffiti girl? Look at the lips and the eyes. She’s painted on a door. I bet a lot of people wish they could open the door and there she’d be, for real. Is it just me or is she really hot?

What is it with me and birds? This duck looks like he wants to kill me. If you click on the photo it will enlarge and you will see the glaring intent in his eyes. First it was the crow and now it’s the duck. I feel like I’m in an Alfred Hitchcock movie….

I like the city skyline taken here from Blackwattle Bay. It is all blue and gorgeous. Hail to thee fair Sydney!

This is probably my favourite boat on the bay at the moment. I love the shape of it, the colours, the size. It seems to invite stories about sailing alongside dolphins and going to the best spots to catch the sunlight on the water.

I had to have a sunset for the final shot. This shot has it all – the water, the light shining through the clouds, the fading hues of evening, and of course, CRANES. Who could ask for anything more?

Thank you for coming with me on my walks this year and for indulging me in my quirky, photographic observations. It’s been fun for me. I hope it has for you too.

Brand New Door

There’s a sweet melancholy that comes after Christmas. Glad it’s over, sad it’s over. Christmas evening leaves me standing in a hallway – a door at my back, a door at my front. Both doors are slightly ajar; the one behind me still claiming me even though very soon it will close and push me across the corridor through the door to the front of me. To the newest of years. It is a moment of both rejoicing and regret to walk through that brand new door.

Sometimes in books when something really dramatic happens you might read that the character’s heart sank. I’ve often wondered if that is possible and what it feels like. Well, it is possible and it feels weird, unsettling, like your heart has fallen out of its place in your chest and is plummeting like a pinball through your lower organs.

My heart sank on Christmas Day when my husband refused to go to my parents place for dinner. I understand why he opted out – it has been a really tough year for him, they are notoriously difficult to please; but it put me in a position I didn’t feel like being in on Christmas day.

So there were my son and I driving south, knowing we were getting further and further out of the city as the bushland began to touch the road and we saw the houses change in style from Victorian to Federation to Californian bungalow to Prefab 1960s.  As we passed the house with the flock of stone flamingos on the lawn and the sky blue shutters we knew we were almost there.

Nervously, we pressed the doorbell, calling out: Merry Christmas with as much vigour as we could muster. My sinking heart was lodged somewhere between my liver and my spleen, still beating, but still sinking.

But sometimes people surprise you – even the ones whom you think incapable of surprising acts. My parents were fine about my husband being a no-show. They didn’t make a fuss about it at all. It was such a relief I felt my heart begin its ascent to its usual little chesty nook.

We had a quiet Christmas dinner, but a nice Christmas dinner. However, the thing I noticed, the thing that killed me, was how sad my parents were, as if they knew what they had done but didn’t know how to fix it.

I hate when people are sad. It’s the thing that upsets me the most. Even when people have hurt me and angered me, I still hate to see them sad.

My parents may have thought they couldn’t fix the situation but I decided I could. I would. So I forgave them. For all the nastiness and judgement and backstabbing. Usually it’s hard to forgive in one fell swoop but I think the little journey my sinking heart took loosened up a bit of the malaise that rents out space in my stomach and suddenly all those thoughts that plague you after you have pressed the process button on the Forgiveness App in your brain such as –

• but what about when he….
• But he told me that I was a ……
• But she said….
• But he said…..
• They had no right to…..

just disappeared.

Does it matter what was said in the past? The sadness showed me it wasn’t meant; at least not any longer.

Driving back to the city we exclaimed at the colours of the sunset as we crossed the river. And then the birds rose up and over the bridge –shorebirds, plovers, sandpipers, stints – their long delicate beaks catching the orange and pink light and casting it over the road as if they were wielding magic wands.

They flew in an arc, untethered as angels, their exultation everlasting, then disappeared into the fading light. Just as my plaguing thoughts had.

The sunset pulled us home, carefree, effortless; pushing those things that lurk under stones out into the air. And suddenly it became less scary to walk through that brand new door.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Wishing you all a super duper magically jolly Christmas.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for commenting.

Thank you for being there.

Much love to you and yours.