Photographs - another essay from Rep

I'm sitting here looking at the photographs I took a few years ago on the wall of my office - they are sepia shots of Sydney I took before the Olympics and I can see in the silver and brown tones moments compressed into a montage of images, words, encounters and emotions. I can feel myself walking past the harbourside restaurants with sunshades made from swathes of white cloth. I can recall myself settling down to a table, selecting my wine and requesting my dinner. Theres the familiar feeling of the silky texture of my glass of Shiraz, the flavour of my rare fillet steak and the port and garlic jus, the crispness of the steamed green beans and the flouriness of fine mashed potatos. I can sense the carbonation of my Santa Vittoria along my tongue and throat as it is sipped and faint aroma of my companion's cologne.

I can't recall seeing her face clearly but I can feel every word from her lips and every piece of language like the well-worn pages of my favourite paperback. I can picture what she wears, her accessories and her jewellery - but the most vivid image is her mouth and the words and the faint feeling that her body is saying something different. I feel I should be saying something or feeling something but I'm detached from the scene - like an observer on the other side of a television screen or someone watching an interview in a darkened alcove through a one-way mirror.

I can hear the clatter of dishes and the sound of cutlery on plates accompanied by the rhythmic burble of conversation of so many
diners. There's a faint seabreeze and you can almost sense the waves lazily caressing the seawall. I can feel something slipping away but it seems unimportant at the time. The message is there but there's this fuzz and fog and I'm not comprehending the message.

And then in the next moment, I can see the inside of The Australian, a old pub in the Rocks, drinking a handle of Tooheys New and listening to that mixture of rockabilly and covers that is a pub band. I can taste the acrid smell of stale tobacco, I can feel my eyes blink in the smoke of rollies and tailors.

The threadbare carpet does little to hide the grime and the spilt beer but it's not the reason I'm here. I can see a blackboard with our names on it next to a pool table - drinking with my mates and enjoying every minute.

There's a bunch of roughies seated on the stools playing the pokies and I look up from my pool shot and get the eye from one of them. I'm tempted to look away disinterested but it's one of those times you grin for no reason. She's all of nineteen years old but her eyes tell me that she's seen more in her lifetime than her years betray. And then I line up the black and take aim...

The next flashing image is me wandering down a cobbled path back from the pub singing and yelling at the tops of our voices. Feeling
ten feet tall and invincible - and wondering what the world will steer me in the next few hours. Looking for the next drink, a kiss, possibly something more and convincing myself to forget for a moment the dinner conversation from the night before... There's the faint sway of her hips in a short skirt as she walks backwards away from me with her arms in front of her inviting me... She's siloheutted against the headlights of an oncoming car and it's such a contrast to the austerity of my previous evening companion and encounter. I think I should feel guilt but the alcohol and testosterone flowing through my veins is overwhelming...

I can then see this all brings me the concrete and river pebble interior of a restaurant back here a few weeks ago. There's a candle
flickering in a frosted glass on a ebony black table. The walls are stark raw concrete - industrial and functional, unadorned with decoration. I'm sipping a glass of Sauvignon Blanc, consuming the final parts of my portion of Tempura - the vinegar and soy sauce contrasting with the sweetness of the battered onion. And again I can't see a face but I can see the smile of my companion, she's grinning and contented like a cat warming to an open fire. This time I can't hear the words nor recall what
the words meant but I can feel that this was a moment that passed me by again.

And then again last night, I'm driving home in the dark after a long and frustrating day in the office. My cellular peeps with a message and then I find myself sitting consuming dinner with my companion. I can taste the sweetness of my seared scallops, the crispness of the crackling of the pork belly, the spiciness of chorizo sausage, the comfort of garlic mash and green beans and the contrast to the funghi on my crostini. I'm washing it down with a glass of Santa Vittoria again - and I can feel moments of connection and I can see the mouth and I can hear the voice but there's something in the message that I can't recognise.

And I'm beginning to think that my life is becoming recycled encounters. My life is becoming a blurred series of the same encounters
I recognise the circumstance, the events unfolding before me like it has before I cannot find the urge to act enough to find another door from the passageway I am walking down. It's like a freeway with no exits - I'm moving with the flow because to resist would be fatal but there seems to be no way out and the road wants to take me somewhere else.

And that's the thing about the photograph, it's one that most folk cannot place in time - it could be the past but there are elements that mean it is not too far past but yet there are disconcerting elements that refuse to allow one to be sure it is the present.

Perhaps this is the true nature of tedious familiarity, that irrational feeling of deja vu where there events of the future present seem to be echoes of the past. It seems like my life is a series of stolen images like my photographs that are being endless copied into the pages of my future life.

Another beautiful piece of writing with no deep meaning for anyone except the author. Would be interested in the message at dinner that you could not decipher?

Oz

The essay is based on some events that happened to me...

The first is a dinner @ a restaurant at the Rocks where someone was trying to tell me things were over between us - I can hear words but the meaning seemed to drift past me other than I felt something being lost... with this surreal feeling of numbness but with every other sense being heightened

The second was the night after when I went to drown my sorrows with a bunch of mates and beers. And being lured away by the promise of something and the desire of wanting to find someone else's bed to forget about the previous evening...

The recent dinners keep reminding me of the dinner @ the Rocks... I have dinner with my companion but I get this overwhelming sensation that I have done this before. The venue is different but there some strange but familiar feeling about being dislocated from the reality - the connection between us is there for fleeting moments but it's like a dodgy cellular line - we get garbled signals and only hear bits of the message from each other.

And I have this feeling that I have done this all before and the photographs are like your memories - they are stolen images from yours and someone else's life and that my memories keep reappearing like badly xeroxed copies in the way my relationships and life keeps unfolding...

A thouroughly excellent conslusion. I know exactly the experience you speak of, sadly enough. I can relate to every word.

May I ask the venue's of these places? I'm at the Rocks every other weekend. Been to the Orient, the Lowenbrau. Phillips Foote etc?

Another excellent piece of literature!!!:eek: AF at its best!!!:cool: :cool: :cool: I understand what you're talking about; I hope you find the necessary closure to continue victorious in your journey! :grey:

Proof that a picture is worth a thousand words.. Or 1093.