Great Expectations

My thoughts seem frozen mid sentence as the chill from a cool wind blows across the suburb where I live. They stuff their rolled-up fists deeper inside their pockets, walking at a brisk pace now to get the blood flowing. Goodness, its cold.

Overhead a grey-templed Sydney sky is unmoved by anything and anybody, alot like a suburban Bank Manager toying with you as he feigns a reluctant loan approval, but gives you what you want and what he always knew he would … a variable or fixed headache depending on your pain threshold.

The silence is deafening in the backyard, I’ve been looking for Blackey all day, he must be feeling the cold and has stayed indoors. So here’s the thing, I’ve been looking for weeks but I can’t find bird’s nests in the inner city trees where I live. When did birds stop building nests? I feel so out of touch.

The stocktake has had its first casualty of war … projections (mostly others). It’s strange this preoccupation we have, to behave with such Bowerbird (a native Australian bird renown for ‘collecting’ colourful, usually blue items with which to line its nest) precision.

Like Bowerbirds we can become hoarders of other people’s expectations of us, and it happens so insidiously we never realise how much has stuck to our feet until one day we realise we’ve pulled up lame and we’re limping. A stocktake I realise is not for everyone, but shouldn’t everybody take one sometime? I’m encouraged by my own small steps today.

I keep wondering about Blackey, mostly where he goes on days like this and I realise too, there are people who come and go in our lives in much the same way and I wonder about them too. I hope, at least for now, they’re warm and out of the cold, it’s hellish outside.