Paper Boats

It rained all night, with that appealing pitter pat on the tin roof, pitter pat, pitter pat. I was very happy about that, as the place had heated up and heated up, to steamy summer nights where it was hard to sleep, even if Sam and I slept like babes. But, we'd all begun to complain. It’s almost a national pass time now – whiney Aussies, no longer laid back and sun bronzed. It’s been very hot, suddenly, it seemed, for the last few days. Too hot, really.

Who still denies climate change? Surely that is just stupidity? Or self interest? No intelligent can really deny it, as our temperature has changed in Melbourne and generally the change is hotter. We are now more humid.

It was much cooler, this morning, but, I think, the humidity was way up in the high percentages. It felt kind of steamy, almost tropical, in that warm, embracing way that tropical is, where the air is wet and thick.

Sam rubbed his excess face moisturiser onto my face, as per usual, as I lay in bed still sleeping like something suddenly wet on my skin, as he got ready. And when I opened my eyes, he sang,

So, you are going back to the salt mines, you are going back to the salt mines, you are going back to the salt mines.

And then he smiled his gorgeous cheeky smile and waited for me to respond.

I screwed up my face, one eye open, one eye closed. I blew him kisses, which were more like sucking at the morning air. He waved me good bye. Then he was gone. I lay there and thought, this is the week. This is my last week. It is all coming to an end. Boo Hoo.

I walked to the shop first thing, to get coffee beans, as the coffee bean bag was bare. Rats! It was the first thing to do, before the day could really begin, get going in earnest. I'm sure I'm not one of those need-coffee in the morning people, some people may think my actions say otherwise, but it's a choice, I swear, not a need. I dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and got an umbrella, it was wet and warm and muggy. The rain was still falling... clearly.

I got to see my down pipe not leaking for the first time, in the first rain since the stocky, someone's mate, plumber climbed his 3 story ladder to discover the source of the leak. 

"It was completely blocked, mate. I don't know where the dirt all came from, way up there?" 

It was truly magnificent to see the pipe dry other than by the rain that was actually falling onto it, as a posed to pouring out of it.

I was pleased. It had been on my five year list and I was relieved to be able to cross it off.

The day was warm and sticky and bracing in its body level temperature, body level heat, my bare skin exposed to the day felt held and embraced and touched by warm air just like me.

The footpaths and the fences and the house facades all felt hot, all radiated heat. I could have taken off my shoes and socks and have walked just as comfortably. In fact, it seemed more appealing, that warm wet earthy way of going, feeling the wet on the souls of my feet, if I hadn’t had to carry my shoes and socks to do that.

The gutters ran quickly with water.

I moved dams of leaves wedged between car tyres and the bluestone gutter. I found a tree branch, stripping its leaves to make the stick bare and straight. I dug the leaves away from the entrance to drains and the huge build up of water behind the blockage drained away quickly and furiously, gurgling in its going. I watched the huge back up drain away with a sense of achievement.

I wished I’d had paper to fold into boats to race on the fast moving currents. Tooth picks for masts, card board for sails.

At first, I watched out to avoid anyone else’s gaze, but with my success I cared less about who saw me. A few people did, but it was still raining gently and none of them were hanging about, particularly, taking notice of what I was doing. But by then, I was on my knees digging out the clog of leaves with my bare hands, tossing them on to the road away from the water flow. I loved it. Is it because it reminds me of childhood, reminds me of a simpler time? No doubt.

I settled in and did my old blogs, when I got back, with hot, steaming coffee in my hand. Lovely.

The fucking down light stopped working again in the kitchen for the third time in a month since it was fixed. I called the electrician again and he said he may be able to come on Wednesday, since I told him I’d only be home Monday to Wednesday.

Then I changed the globe for the 3rd time and it worked again just fine. Stupid thing.

I pissed away the afternoon. I’ve got plenty of things to do really, if all of this finishes on Thursday. I didn’t paint the walls in my spare bedroom. I didn’t pay the bills, which are now due for the month. I didn’t call my sister back, she called and is keen to do some financial things. Oh, who can get interested in that? I should have called her back, ignoring her doesn't achieve anything.

It rained all day, the humidity was high, sticky on my skin. The day light was on dim, with its cloudy skies overhead

Shane cooked sausages and rissoles and green salad with peaches, and pumpkin salad with chickpeas and feta cheese. Yum!

I watched a program on Walt Whitman. Amongst many interesting details about him, he used to like frequenting a famous Bohemian "chop house" at 647 Broadway that flourished between 1860 and 1875 called Pfaffs.

In one of his many accounts of the time he spent at Pfaff's Whitman said, 

"I used to go to Pfaff's nearly every night. . . after taking a bath and finishing the work of the day. When it began to grow dark, Pfaff would politely invite everybody who happened to be sitting in the cave he had under the sidewalk to some other part of the restaurant. There was a long table extending the length of this cave; and as soon as the Bohemians put in an appearance, Henry Clapp would take a seat at the head of the table. I think there was as good talk around that table as took place anywhere in the world. Clapp was a very witty man"

Whitman, like several other bohemians, experimented with the boundaries of human sexuality while at Pfaff's. As Ed Folsom and Ken Price write in their biography of Whitman, "It was at Pfaff's, too, that Whitman joined the 'Fred Gray Association,' a loose confederation of young men who seemed anxious to explore new possibilities of male-male affection" Whitman appears to have developed a particularly close relationship with Fred Vaughan (one of the members of the Fred Gray Association), a relationship that has been speculated to have sparked Whitman's homoerotic Calamus poems.

Whitman left New York and Pfaff's in 1862 to work in the hospitals of the Union Army in Washington, D.C., during the U.S. Civil War

So, was there a certain freedom of sorts for gay men in New York in 1860? Really? I thought that back during those times gay men were all repressed and wouldn’t ever dare to admit they were gay let alone frequent bars together.

I stayed up until 4am writing old blogs, then headed to bed.

I dumped everything on my bed and went and cleaned my teeth. I came back to my bed and knelt on my glasses and bent them completely out of shape. I was tired. I was cross. I held them in my hand and gritted my teeth and held my breath and tensed all the muscles along each arm and shivered with mini rage through my skeleton, not quite believing what I’d done. Stupid. I bent then back and bent them back and bent them back gently, slowly and then I put them on my face and they were high on the left and low on the right and kind of leant away like an undercut jaw. Down my nose.

I love staying up late, though. I love going to bed when I feel like it and not because I have to. I can go to bed in the wee small hours and still get up at 9.30, 10.30. It’s not like I have to sleep all day if I do. I’m going to miss that.