Tracing Toorak

I walked around Toorak today. It’s not where I live, or even usually visit, it’s just where I was staying these past few days, on a trip to Melbourne for a course. I donned my yoga pants and walking shoes, some raggedy yesterday t-shirt, and gave myself nearly an hour to walk and look. I saw lots of churches, jeepers that suburb has a few, a saintly school, with well groomed children being dropped off, some so tiny it seemed criminal to abandon them with strangers in such an institutional setting, lost as they were in their large blazers and stuffy shirt. I saw a row of gum trees with thick clear plastic tree guards to stop possums from going up there to roost. I thought about this, about being a gum tree nigh on 100 years old perhaps, and missing the feeling of possums climbing over you, the familiar tickle or trace of life up your limbs, the trees rendered empty for the aesthetic preferences of the people living on the ground who have little to do with the workings of trees.

I saw an abandoned sock, brown and striped and crumpled on the foot path. I saw a girl walking her dog, in what I at first thought were sheer leg ins with knee high socks over the top until I got closer and saw that this was some custom built exercise pant with sheer mesh around the backs of the knees and zippers and angled panels. Oooh, fancy. I revised her in my mind, from disaffected teen walking family dog in street wear to serious older lady with training goals. All because of her pants.

After my walk my mind was very alive with ideas, lots of quirky things I thought I would write about. Now, at the end of the day I can barely remember what they were, that seemed so rich and boundless.