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Jan. 22nd, 2005
the faerie lands
Jan. 22nd, 2005 10:52 pmToday was sort of strange. I ran into Marinda on the way to bills for breakfast. We decided she should join me but when we arrived were told that their dishwasher had broken and they weren't seating anyone else, but the place was mobbed with the now surly breakfast scene and we decided to go somewhere else. We wound up at something or other new on Victoria Street that was distinguished by having the only dry scrambled eggs apparently to be found in this city (thank heavens, it was starting to make me nuts), so that was cool.
Then I got on a train and then a ferry to go to Double Bay/Darling Point which had been described to me as the ritzy part of Sydney, essentially equivalent to Fifth, Madison and Park Avenues -- Sydney's iteration of the world I grew up in.
The ferry ride alone was astounding, going right instead of left at the Opera House and heading out in the direction of what I've written about a bit here and at length in my journal -- but this glorious vision of a sea-going science fiction city. There were literally hundreds of sailboats out and the water was a bit rough and it was simply glorious.
( sailboats on the ferry ride to Double Bay )
Upon alighting at Double Bay I suspect I now know which way I should have walked to see the shops, but I wasn't there for that really anyway. Truthfully, I'm not sure why I was there, other than it was something else to see, and filled with the random anxiety that always fills me before a trip ends, I was just trying to find a zone and burn off some stressed-out energy.
( mansion just before docking at Double Bay )
I took a right past a park that had a polite little sign informing us when and how it was permissible to "exercise dogs in a controlled fashion" and headed up a street that seemed to turn into a dead end, but was met instead by a flight of stairs that I suspect was only well-camoflouged to someone unused to Sydney in particular and cities with this degree of folliage in general. This is actually apparently exactly how you get to Darling Point from Double Bay, but mostly I had no idea what I was doing.
( Creepy trees and folliage in Double Bay/Darling Pt. )
What distinguished the area from what I expected was how dead quiet it was. Utter silence. There was no one about, to the point that it concerned me -- some much of the area seemed so overgrown I had a number of paranoid fantasies about deadly bugs and snakes and no one to rescue me. I don't know where the fabulous people were at 1pm on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, but they were shielded from my view and the place was as still as New York in a snow storm. I took some great pictures both of nature and architecture and the neighborhood there, and the few times I saw anyone it was people in passing cars, twice expressing annoyance at me for photographing. I don't think it was until a few blocks later of more quiet and frightening trees that seemed to be trying to pull themselves apart that it sort of registered to me the degree to which this neighborhood was comparable to nothing in NYC, because our city precludes privacy in a way Sydney doesn't. And so after reaching Darling Point I hopped on a bus back to the city, because among other things, I was pretty damn exhausted by this point.
( ritzy houses near Darling Pt. )
I watched some tennis on TV and napped before heading out to The Domain for a free symphony concert. I made friends with an older woman from the Blue Mountains while there and we talked about politics, NIDA and weather (not in a totally lame small talk way, in a comparing climates way). The concert itself was spectacular and included two arias performed by Teresa La Rocca as well as a number of Holst's planetary tributes (I got to hear Jupiter sitting outside in fucking Sydney! One of several spectacular full-circle moments for me) and the 1812 Oveture (which has really grown on me, it used to annoyed me) with real cannons and fireworks from the top of a nearby building. At the very end they did the Star Wars theme with more fireworks and it was all sort of absurdly moving.
Towards the end of the concert and gaining critical mass during the 1812, everywhere in the crowd people held up -- not as they would do in NYC, lighters -- but sparklers which I've not seen in at least 20 years and I'm not sure even still exist in America. Everyone had them, and children ran from group of people to group of people passing the fire, and they all seemed like strange feral children from the faerie lands bringing gifts of sulphur and light and then shrieking in delight and crouching in the dirt as the cannons went off as the adults drank wine and held their hands too close to the sparks, smiling at the sting.
Then I got on a train and then a ferry to go to Double Bay/Darling Point which had been described to me as the ritzy part of Sydney, essentially equivalent to Fifth, Madison and Park Avenues -- Sydney's iteration of the world I grew up in.
The ferry ride alone was astounding, going right instead of left at the Opera House and heading out in the direction of what I've written about a bit here and at length in my journal -- but this glorious vision of a sea-going science fiction city. There were literally hundreds of sailboats out and the water was a bit rough and it was simply glorious.
( sailboats on the ferry ride to Double Bay )
Upon alighting at Double Bay I suspect I now know which way I should have walked to see the shops, but I wasn't there for that really anyway. Truthfully, I'm not sure why I was there, other than it was something else to see, and filled with the random anxiety that always fills me before a trip ends, I was just trying to find a zone and burn off some stressed-out energy.
( mansion just before docking at Double Bay )
I took a right past a park that had a polite little sign informing us when and how it was permissible to "exercise dogs in a controlled fashion" and headed up a street that seemed to turn into a dead end, but was met instead by a flight of stairs that I suspect was only well-camoflouged to someone unused to Sydney in particular and cities with this degree of folliage in general. This is actually apparently exactly how you get to Darling Point from Double Bay, but mostly I had no idea what I was doing.
( Creepy trees and folliage in Double Bay/Darling Pt. )
What distinguished the area from what I expected was how dead quiet it was. Utter silence. There was no one about, to the point that it concerned me -- some much of the area seemed so overgrown I had a number of paranoid fantasies about deadly bugs and snakes and no one to rescue me. I don't know where the fabulous people were at 1pm on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, but they were shielded from my view and the place was as still as New York in a snow storm. I took some great pictures both of nature and architecture and the neighborhood there, and the few times I saw anyone it was people in passing cars, twice expressing annoyance at me for photographing. I don't think it was until a few blocks later of more quiet and frightening trees that seemed to be trying to pull themselves apart that it sort of registered to me the degree to which this neighborhood was comparable to nothing in NYC, because our city precludes privacy in a way Sydney doesn't. And so after reaching Darling Point I hopped on a bus back to the city, because among other things, I was pretty damn exhausted by this point.
( ritzy houses near Darling Pt. )
I watched some tennis on TV and napped before heading out to The Domain for a free symphony concert. I made friends with an older woman from the Blue Mountains while there and we talked about politics, NIDA and weather (not in a totally lame small talk way, in a comparing climates way). The concert itself was spectacular and included two arias performed by Teresa La Rocca as well as a number of Holst's planetary tributes (I got to hear Jupiter sitting outside in fucking Sydney! One of several spectacular full-circle moments for me) and the 1812 Oveture (which has really grown on me, it used to annoyed me) with real cannons and fireworks from the top of a nearby building. At the very end they did the Star Wars theme with more fireworks and it was all sort of absurdly moving.
Towards the end of the concert and gaining critical mass during the 1812, everywhere in the crowd people held up -- not as they would do in NYC, lighters -- but sparklers which I've not seen in at least 20 years and I'm not sure even still exist in America. Everyone had them, and children ran from group of people to group of people passing the fire, and they all seemed like strange feral children from the faerie lands bringing gifts of sulphur and light and then shrieking in delight and crouching in the dirt as the cannons went off as the adults drank wine and held their hands too close to the sparks, smiling at the sting.