Canberra, better pronounced Can Berra. A circle without sound. Or, city sounds in the key of hush.
Jotting beside the lake, which floated itself and my vision, cautiously, steadily, towards the real sea. The water sounded like a blank page of writing paper.
I’m have transported The Red Room, to Canberra, for a night and two days, to meet up with an academic from ANU. Our topic is Tagore and, over dinner we cover cotton shirts, Communism, divorce and pollution. The dinner was of spinach, rice and fire. The waiter looked like Fonz of thumbs up fame and had a desperate amount of chest hair sprouting from his black shirt, so much so that it wriggled under the blow of the air conditioner.
One of our esteemed directors, Mr Henry Ergas, tells me ‘No Country for Old Men’ is part of the opening line to Yeats’ Sailing to Byzantium. This poke of knowledge improves the film even more, and more was much before knowing such trivia.
The sleep tonight is in a hotel room, the space more silent than hole in the middle of the word ‘room’. Outside, I peek, the sky is padded with curly clouds, the moon splices her light closer to the balcony, which I’m typing from.
Tomorrow, Red Room makes the first move on installing our time capsule, from last year’s ‘Sustainable Sydney/Red Room Remains, project, with a visit to the National Gallery. Here I will meet with the gate keepers to discuss how we will save and install our collection of poetic visions about our future.
This Thursday, 23 years from now, place too frightening to contemplate with a body so sore from having walked 4 kilometres, by mistake, or because the Cloak Room Mistress claimed my hotel was close, quote : easily within walking distance, to the gallery.
