To Sydney and Back

I had a big delivery to Sydney in the middle of the CBD yesterday.  It is a challenge parking my black van somewhere and piling out gourmet baskets - especially when it is raining.  And the sombre, expressionless faces of all the business types waiting at traffic lights in the rain - always reminds of why I live where I live.

Sustainability is all about living within our limits and being mindful of what we consume, which is something I have been leaning towards over on my other blog Merewether Life.  I write about living simply by the beach and having chickens and gardens and all that.  Sitting in my garden is a profound pleasure of mine.

My Garden, (you can see my bedroom window)

So where is this heading?  As I drove around the city traffic, driving like all the other feckless, reckless dirty van drivers, I thought how unsustainable most of the inner city lifestyles are - being dependent on an employer, on transport, having no way of growing much for yourself, or being able to walk in nature.  This makes you disconnected from the simple ebbs and flows of life. And when I was disconnected I would find myself seeking the most convenient source of connectedness - alcohol.

And how there are pubs on every city block.  And watching the drinkers tumble out for a cigarette, 10am, the tingle of alcohol seeping through their veins like spidery rootlets of numbness.  And how I was always 'stopping by' or 'popping in' or 'just going over to' and having that first drink again and again at a half dozen pubs across the city by lunchtime.  Treading into the vinegar-carpet darkness and asking a different bartender for a beer as though it was insignificant, or minor, or inconsequential - 'just a schooner of VB'

And back in the traffic, flowing with the ebb and pause, the van my shuttle, zig zagging through the other cars, stopping, starting, homeward bound.  The city morning yawning, baring it's teeth and me flitting by, like a bird on a crocodile and safely home and sober...