Spring is almost here.
I know that because the first flower of jasmine popped open yesterday.
It smells amazing.
Loaded with memories.
When I was a teenager I used to come up to Sydney from Canberra.
Canberra is very cold in the winter, ice and fog and layers of clothes, and I used to come up to Sydney and think it was a tropical paradise.
A real city with trendy punks, legendary live venues and exotic jasmine perfume. The stuff don't grow in Canberra.
A lot of stuff doesn't grow in Canberra -not back in those days anyway.
Sydney was a different place back then.
It wasn't yet an international city.
There was squats full of artists,cheap rent and a hint of danger and neglect -in other words a perfect city for a coming of age.
squatting is almost extinct in Sydney now but it was big back in the eighties.
There are laws about the use of disused property especially government property and you basically had to find an empty building and move in.
Sometimes the owner didn't mind too much as it meant someone was looking after the place.
I had friends who squatted in a huge old pub on William street, they used to have these famous parties and all sorts of people used to turn up. Artists, musicians, models and designers, street people and wayward youths, dealers and derelicts.
They didn't even charge a door fee.
I can see their faces and zany haircuts and I wonder what they are all doing now.
Some are dead and some are working for the man doing very well no doubt.
I wish them well through time and space.
Thanks for those parties.
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2 comments:
"In my life...I've loved them all"
Being in Minnesota, I too miss out on some of those sweetest of life's little pleasures, like the scent of a blossoming magnolia tree. Travel 4 hours south by car and springtime is a heady brew. I once traveled to Florida in the spring and got to smell blossoming orange trees, that was amazing! Oh, Minnesota has it's charms, certainly. Your brother once told me, "Minnesota, it's always grey there". Bad timing, I guess. Peace.
What a beautiful blog. I have to remind myself of where you are; I thought spring???? Ah, Southern hemisphere...
Jasmine is my favourite scent - it holds great memories for me as well. It seems to smell the best for me at dusk, in early summer. I walk by, I smell it, and it's as if it holds my whole life in its scent. Amazing.
Truly, this was lovely to read. Fascinating that people who don't know each other, living in different countries, different hemispheres at that, can have such similar experiences...
denise : )
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