August 2021

“…the definition of myth is noun,

the idea that any one creature can ever hear another.”

- Sumita Chakraborty

The other night, the electricity went off in our place for about an hour. At first, I thought the lightbulb in my desk-lamp had finally given up—I’ve had it for many years, and I’d been curious to see how long it would hold out. I don’t know if this is safe, but I love flipping all the light whenever the power goes out, so that they all turn on at once when our electricity returns. I’ve been doing it since ever since I was tall enough to reach light switches.

After going through every room in the house and switching the lights on, I went outside, and found a few of our neighbours huddled around a flash-light. Someone called out but I didn’t catch what they said. My housemate joined me outside and pointed out a streetlight a couple of houses down from us: it was the only point of light on our entire street, except for the faint glow from the moon. As I watched it, it flickered off and a few seconds later, it flickered back on—along with the rest of the streetlights. Up and down our street, houses were suddenly glowing yellow, and turning around, I saw that our house was also lit up inside. I went back inside, my eyes stinging from our bright porch light. I went through the house, turning the lights off one by one.

I have a compulsion to observe things, I think, which has become intensified over the past year. The pleasure lies in witnessing a moment of change, however brief. I think the shrinking of my world has a lot to do with this—I’ve spent more time alone over the past year than at any other time in my life, and the way I move through the world has changed as well. I don’t know the full scope of this change: I feel slower, less confident, less capable of negotiating disquiet, but I also feel comfortable with silence, with time, and I am more aware of small things.

It’s almost the end of winter, and we’re about to head into spring, a time of year that rewards close observation. There is much to see. In the corner of our backyard, little white flowers peek out from the grey branches of an old plum tree; a small beetle slowly makes its way across the back of my hand after hitching a ride on my sleeve; the sound of birds returns with the changing light, and it becomes warm enough to sit outside in the mornings, watching and listening.

My neighbourhood is also changing, although for different reasons. My latest fascination is a house on our street that was recently torn down. In its place are now the bones of three houses—small, two-story units extending all the way into the former backyard of the property. I walk past it most days, lingering each time with my hands clasped behind my back. Occasionally, I will meet the eyes of one of the young men working on-site, and we’ll exchange nods. Very rarely do I stick around after being acknowledged; it is as if a spell is broken, and I am suddenly aware of myself in a way that I wasn’t before.

I’ve come to recognise the carpenters and bricklayers by their cars: the carpenters drive Hilux utes and the bricklayers drive Ford Rangers. I don’t know enough about the culture of tradies to speculate as to the significance of this, except to note that they are both fine cars. One day, on my way home from the IGA at the end of our street, I saw a truck back into a fire hydrant, and within moments, half the street was flooded. When I got home, I filled up a few jugs of water, before walking back outside to watch the accident unfold. A few hours later, our water was cut off and our street was swarmed with City West Water’s night crew. A couple of the residents from the retirement home next door were gathered around the scene of the emergency repair works. One of the residents, Peter, nodded at me as I took an empty spot next to him. We shared our landlord; the rotary club that ran the aged care home.

‘What do you think?’ I asked him.

‘It’ll take all night, water’s out. What do you expect?’ he said. I nodded and copied his pose; hands clasped behind my back. This was only the second time I’d spoken to Peter. I suspected that his unit was the one that faced the fence at very end of our backyard, where I keep a small tub of alyssums under a stone fruit tree. I’d been trying to grow alyssums for years, over three separate houses. The light was bad at my old house, and things tended to wither there. Seedlings would grow pale and leggy, dying before they could ever put out flowers.

The City West Water repair crew had their headlamps on, even though the sun had only just begun to set. The tipper that had caused the accident was long gone, and in its place were sewer and road maintenance vehicles. One of the trucks, a paver, barely fit on our narrow street, even with a third of its width jutting onto the footpath. Several men and women were setting up a temporary traffic diversion system to manage the traffic on the remaining usable lane. The water had stopped gushing out by this point, but there was still a lot of it around. There was a man wading through the flooded side of a street, wearing thick boots and a raincoat.

I went back inside. When my housemate got home and discovered that our water was disconnected, I showed him the jugs I had filled, as well as our fridge’s water reservoir, which was fully topped up. I told him not to worry, that we had plenty of water. Our house is also due to be torn down soon. Peter let me in on our landlord’s plan to tear down both our homes and build who-knows-what in its place. He told me it was only a rumour that was going around the retirement community, but not three days later, I came home to find a couple of surveyors walking around the front of our property, so I guess that’s it.

When I tell my friends that my house will soon be demolished, they’re sympathetic to my plight. It's a classic one many of us have been through: rent’s too high and you’ve no choice to move somewhere else, where it will probably be higher. My housemate and I have taken this as an opportunity to indulge ourselves: we’ve added a shelf to the pantry, usually a bad move if we wanted to see our bond again, but in uncharted waters, many things which previously weren’t possible suddenly are. Sometimes, when I am in the mood, I find myself curious about the future: a year from now, ten years from now, who knows where I’ll be?

I’ve been in a rut for the past year

Is it more compelling to watch something get built or to gazing at ruins?

A friend of mine once told me that she doesn’t mind renting; leaving a place behind and finding a new place. I wanted to reply with something boring that would puncture her statement, something about precarity and capitalism or whatever, I don’t know.

'They’re tearing up the whole street,’ I said to Peter. He looked like he was permanently sucking on a lime. I suspected that his unit was the one that faced our backyard fence, toward the very end of our yard where I keep a small tub of alyssums under a stone fruit tree.

Peter nodded, and told me that he reckoned that they’d be at it well into the next morning.

‘Do you think they brought the paver out a little early?’

‘Looks like it. Those things can’t be cheap to keep running idle,’ said Peter. It was getting darker, and the work crew were occupied with enlarging the gaping hole they’d dug into the gutter. One of the men was torso deep in the hole, shouting something to someone else. He then braced himself and descended until his white helmet was just poking out of the hole. The night was a humid one, and our street was awash in artificial light. From the