When I began writing this book I had no idea the direction it would take but it seemed if I kept on writing the ideas and plots would develop naturally anyway.
No one would publish me in the beginning and so Josefin thought that if no one would accept my submissions then
we would accept our own. That was how little narratives came to be. And when we had drunk too much wine or were otherwise high we would say it with such enthusiasm and pleasure! There were, perhaps, eight of us that, at any time, could edit or subtract or add or alter in some way to the collection of mutual ideas found on the blog. Originally I had wanted ideas that represented certain ideals about change and travel and the growths that come from new situations. It seemed these themes were always changing and it became difficult to focus on any one thought or particular movement but the writing was unique and so were the photos and such early ambiguity was fine with me.
Those grey Sydney afternoons were always covered in clouds. They would shift and move and pour until our streets were filled with gloom and rain. The rain would drizzle and in the brief pockets of time that the clouds held we could run down along Burton street and there would be warmth and cushions found amongst the people who frequented Pocket. Pocket was a cosy little cafe that, during the evening, would grow crowded with drinks and chatter but during the day it served as an escape where we drank coffee and talked about ideas and things for the days that followed. Louise and I normally sat in one of the back corners where the walls were red brick. There were Japanese minimalist works hung and other little oddities like tiny figurines hiding about the bolts that connected light fixtures to the ceilings. She would drink a cappuccino and type away on her lap top and sometimes she would stop to brush her hair that fell blonde from her face and her eyes would slightly scrunch up like Swedish buttons, as if made from Swedish paper, but then she would smile again, and I would think to myself her the cutest thing in the world. I would sit next to her and think about doing some writing but all the ideas that would come seemed contrived or fake or I would think that it had been said better by someone else of the past, and when I couldn’t even think of a subject I sat there with my last cup of coffee and tried to savour it because I didn’t have any money left. The waitress would walk around. She was Russian and I knew that because she had told me on a previous occasion when I had asked her if she knew any Spanish. I was doing an assignment where I needed to write a diary in Spanish. She had just smiled and said ‘I am from Russia.’ She was cute. She wore black boots and cheap Monday’s and she would normally give us little chocolates when we ordered things from her. One time I had asked her for a job at Pocket. She said she would speak to the manager, but later she told me that only girls were employed as floor staff. I didn’t mind all that much because I really liked Pocket and if I were forced to spend time their then my attitude would probably change and what a shame that would be because I would stop going and then who would give out little free chocolate treats? Louise looked up and shut her Macbook closed. She has these bright smiley blue eyes that would glint and laugh all on their own and then she made little fish lips with her lips and that meant she wanted me to kiss them, which of course I did. When we left the skies were black and it was hard to imagine that so much time had passed. We stood under a street lamp and waited for the cars to speed off somewhere else and Louise looked upwards and said ‘no stars tonight,’ though it sounded more like ‘nouu staars tonighttt!’ which was cute and we hugged even closer perhaps because of the cold or perhaps for other reasons.
It started to rain and we were tired of waiting for the traffic lights to change so we ran across the road and back up through Thomson Street. Louise was ahead of me and some thunder struck somewhere over the tops of the terraced houses and it was her blonde hair against the darkened skies and I thought the whole situation was quite poetic. Puddles had formed all around us though we managed to miss most of them and then we went inside. The house always smelt damp or stuffy because my housemate would smoke two packets of cigarettes a day inside, and in the winter the windows and doors would be closed so that the heat was trapped along with us and everything else. It wasn’t that I was opposed to cigarettes; even though I had cut down it would still be sometime before I would actually quit, it would just have been pleasant to come home and be able to open the front door and have the air inside smell and taste as nice as the ones that blew around in the clouds and the trees. Louise followed me into the kitchen. I boiled some water. There was a black cat that sat hunched outside. We could see it through our window, which was wide and large, and would most certainty have been a feature had it not been for the views of our neighbour’s fence. Louise then poured tea for us and when she turned back around she had already found herself in my arms and I picked her up before she knew what was going on! And then she was spinning around and around and of course I was with her because she was in my arms and then she said ‘well I did not expect to board a merry-go-round in your kitchen!’
