My Fingers Are Like Ice

On these cold mornings – and by god hasn’t it been cold these last few mornings, that cold-like-I-am-cutting-you-with-a-blade Melbourne cold. It’s been cold ever since I read the department of meteorology say that the cold winter weather was behind us – Buddy likes to climb into my lap as I sit at the coffee table at my laptop. He cuddles right up to get warm. It is really cute until I loose all sensation in my feet, and my legs start to cramp, then he is usually, very unwillingly, slid to one side.

I’m drinking coffee and eating kaya toast, wrapped in a blanket.

There is a milky, morning sun. It is freezing.

A coffee, sweet breads, my beanie, my bulldog, my thick woollen jumper, we could be in a Paris cafe. Cobble stones, 2CVs. The clank of early morning. There are always whistles and car horns. The smell of a damp, big city, before the sun hits. Paris smells like rotting sandstone and the smell of fish mixed with dust. First thing in the early morning, when the big city is just basting in its own big city juices, before the early morning sun hits and the day breaks and the smell of bread makes it all new again.

Good morning. 8am.

Buddy and I wrestle for the blanket. He is like a hot water bottle against my left leg.

Jean Carne sings Love lessons.

Buddy snores. 8.30. He has some how rapped himself in most of the blanket, leaving me a very short corner. He doesn't object when I pull the blanket off him. He moves his head around, for quite some time, under the blanket like some crazed dwarf ghost, as we adjust, before he comes up for air. Big brown eyes. Big pant. Followed by a herumph and a collapse to the ground again, still with most of the blanket. My fingers are like ice.

We're almost out of fire wood.

I text David, Siberia. He was just telling me that he didn't think he could live through another Melbourne winter. He's thinking of moving north. Going to Mark & Luke’s at Xmas is a part of his research into finding work up there. He’s met some Guru who is willing to take him on, or something. You know, tap into the school of the hopeful, in the area, whatever dialect he chooses. Yoga. Transpersonal whatever. Then he’d think about buying a house in the area. Living up there, working down here, or something. It doesn’t really matter where he lives if he keeps doing the retreats. They are all out of Melbourne, often overseas. He’s away, then he’s home, it doesn’t matter where he comes home to.

Karise Eden sings Halleluiah. The 10am sun shines through my window and I am blinded. The joint smoke catches in the bright sun’s rays and curls and curls in a smoky veil.

I catch my bespectacled reflection in the laptop screen, Stay with me baby roars out of the speakers, Where did you go… My lip curls in the brightly lit reflection, the only discernible movement. Another billow of blue smoke obscures the screen.


I pull away. I am blind. My face is warmed. My world turns silver in the bright glow of the morning sun, shiny sparkling crystals dancing in my corneas.