“What are you doing that for?” he said.
“To make people think” J replied, “and make their own meaning.”
He paused for a second, then said “you know in the 30s there was this fellow who used to write the word Eternity in chalk on the pavement. He did it for years all over Sydney, the same word over and over again.”
“That’s one of the ideas behind this work” J said enthusiastically.
“I could think of better things to do with my time” he answered. “But it was nice talking to you” he said as he walked away.
So what did happen to Stash #1? It didn’t stay long under Simon Perry’s cushion. Did it get handed to the info desk at Linden Gallery or did somebody hand it to the police because there was money inside?
I can just hear the conversation now. “Has anybody lost three, one pound notes, a lock of brown hair, and an ad from the ‘Missing Friend’s’ column, all bundled up in old piece of mattress cloth?
What would the ‘old boys’ who used to live in the boarding house have to say about that (Linden used to be a boarding house until the early 80’s).
Found: Balaclava Station
The sound of a Sunbeam frypan will always be the spitting fat of a Sunday roast cooking in my mother’s suburban kitchen. I still can’t stand the smell of roast lamb. Will these memories ever fade?
Found: Vegout Community Garden
This is a remant of the old bowling club that used to occupy this space. It’s a bit of low growing lawn that has spouted in somebody’s vegie plot. In other life it was the perfect surface to make those black balls roll further. Now it’s a weed.
Five years ago a man broke into our house. It was around midnight and I got up to go to the toilet. I was half asleep. As I walked into the bathroom I saw a figure move. I said my husband’s name P, but there was no reply.
I walked out of the room and went looking for P, he was in another room. I said “there’s a man in the toilet”. P looked at me as if I was dreaming and pushed ahead. I stumbled behind, searching, “why is that man in our bathroom?”
At that moment a hooded figure burst out of the room, hand raised. As he brought the screwdriver down, I was sure he was here to kill P. I screamed and begged “please don’t hurt him”. As he looked at me, I realised it was a bungled robbery. I got between them and flung open the door. “Get him out, get him out”, I shouted.
A couple of months later I found this note in the letter box. I was terrified, now I just laugh.
Last year there was an article in the Sunday Age about how St Kilda was fucked, taken over by the yuppies. The writer who used to live here had come back for a day visit. She had a litany of criticisms that was backed up concrete evidence; like no political grafitti. It seems everybody has an opinion about St Kilda, especially people who have moved out. So many flats, so many people moving in and out.
Two more mattresses, this time in Carlisle St, J gets stuck on the past lives stuff again.. Love, pain, birth death, dreams, nightmares, if only a mattress could talk. They are single beds, she starts thinking about child abuse – J is glad they are mute.
She gets a text message from P.
Mtress alert Balaclava Stn. The camera batteries are flat.
She’ll have to miss this one.
J is taking a photo of these chairs, she loves the blue. Would anybody take them and reuse them? From this position they look like they are humping, rather fitting really. T with the fabulous bosom who works at the corner of Carlisle and Mitchell St used live there for a long time with her horrible dealer boy friend. Sometimes she’d stand at exactly that spot and tout.
A voice says “it looks better now it’s painted”. J looks up and realises that the flats have a new coat of paint.
She can’t help herself and says “it looked pretty good before”.
“Yeah but now my Mum might come and visit me, she didn’t like me living in a slum.”
J thought about her own mother’s response when she moved to Fitzroy in the early 80s.
She nearly said “mothers never change do they?”
It seems like the single mattress has gone……. but it has moved again, this time it’s in the laneway. J starts thinking about D. He used to be homeless. He used to sleep out sometimes. J wonders if he ever went looking for a street bed to add a bit of comfort.