August 23, 2002

I'm getting ready to come home after my summer in Australia and regret the photographs that I didn't take.  Listed below are fourteen snapshots that don't exist, all imaginary kodachrome, 4 x 5.

1.  James and I are sitting on the porch of a small coastal pub on the Great Ocean Road.  The owner has stepped outside with strips of raw kangaroo meat and a kookaburra sweeps from the gum trees to snatch it from his hand.  Since they're snake eating birds, it swings its head and whacks the meat against the railing repeatedly before eating. The bird is out of focus.

2.  I'm walking home at night in the rain down a small cobblestone alley.  The rain glistens off the bluestone buildings and ornate Victorian ironwork while ink from the newspaper covering my head leaves black streaks on my face.  A tram rattles by, the bell sounds, the cables spark electricity.  In a doorway, a backpacker drifter with a guitar is playing "Don't Sleep in the Subway" in a minor key.

3.  I'm paused on a sidewalk in St. Kilda as two girls are sobbing. "This is it," they say, "this is the building from the secret life of us.  Please take our picture."  At the time, I didn't know that "The Secret Life of Us" was a popular TV series and take their photo, thinking they are just a nice sentimental lesbian couple.

4.  Four high school boys are explaining Footy to me as a match plays on the storefront TV.  It's a violent mix of soccer, rugby, american football, and brutal chaos...all played in absurdly tight shorts.  A boy turns to me and says, "That one's called 'Captain Cucumber.'"

5.  I'm eating curry in the Hare Krishna shelter with a 20 year old kid who did bad acid and became a follower.  His shaved head and ponytail clash with his baggy jeans and he hopes to become the first "hip krishna".  He's asking me if Los Angeles is near California.  The flash has turned his eyes red.

6.  I'm listening to a walkman on a train heading towards the mountains.  Three college kids board and begin to illegally shoot a film.  The rain against the windows distorts the gum and wattle trees blurring by.  On cue, the girl leans against the window and begins to cry, the camera pans left.  My finger is accidentally in the lower corner of the photo.

7.  I'm balanced on a spray of rocks jutting below the lighthouse at Byron Bay, the eastern tip of Australia.  I'm the easternmost man on this continent, a beam sweeps across the water, and I shout 'hello' in your direction altho you probably can't hear me for the waves crashing.

8. I'm in an internet cafe in Chinatown, every PC is taken over by asian teenagers who are playing violent computer games.  They're yelling, pounding their keyboards, and the sound of global virtual warfare is deafening.  I'm sending an email to my mother about emergency dental work. The flash didn't go off and all you can see are the computer screens.

9. I'm curled with a drifter from Madrid on a worn velvet sofa next to a fireplace in a pub.  I'm thinking that there should be a beautiful word for the type of love one finds while travelling, roads cross and continue on.  I look sad. The wind outside is slamming the rain against the leaded glass as we play every Dusty Springfield song on the jukebox.  It's a beautiful, dark photograph although my eyes are closed.

10. It's midnight and I'm lying on my back at the end of the old Victorian pier in Albert Park.  I'm imaging new constellations and, breathless from its beauty, I try to photograph the Southern Cross. The flash only captures the wrought iron lightpost.

11.  I've taken the bike path along the Yarra River up to Heidelberg, home of a rebel school of landscape painting 150 years ago.  This is a photo of my bike, placed exactly where the easel stood to create one of my favorite paintings.  It's beginning to fall in the soft loam and the timer went off just as I was running to catch it.

12. I'm dancing in a sixties subterrainian club with rounded wood and chrome.  It's 4:30am, the closing night party for the film festival, and James will leave in a few hours.  We're drunk, laughing, and falling over each other to bad lounge music with the exhausted festival staff.  The photo is blurred and only shows a patch of carpeting.

13. I'm on a cliff over Bell's Beach, the surfer's mecca, watching perfect waves roll into the shore.  Even, flawless, orderly, it is the most controlled I've ever seen the ocean.  The photo is black since I forgot to take off the lens cap.

14. James and I are following the Great Ocean Road and have been driving into a crisp rainbow for three hours.  I'm looking out the window, feeling wanderlust, imagining sugar on the highway.  We've given up on finding the pot of gold, and think maybe the road is its own reward.