Dear Inner Circle,

Chatting to a fellow at the front of our Op Shop I suddenly noticed some colourful flowers. I’m not the most observant person in the world, but I was pretty sure that the flowers must have been planted overnight. We don’t have volunteers who tend the garden overnight and this was a mystery. I didn’t mention the flowers but my face must have communicated some confusion. “Do you know Clover Moore?” the man asked. “Sure I do,” I replied. “Well, you should ring her and thank her for the flowers” he said. “Gosh,” I said with an ever increasing sense of mystery, “Why would Clover donate a single little bed of flowers like that?” “Oh,” said the man, “She doesn’t know she made the donation!” It suddenly occurred to me that the City of Sydney has had rather wonderful flower displays erected in the main street. If Clover or anyone from the City of Sydney is reading this, I offer my apology for your “donation”.

A weedy little bloke approached me just a moment ago. “Graham! I haven’t seen you in a year!” I was wondering if we had ever met, when he helped me by saying that I had officiated at his wedding ceremony. Slowly his face seemed approximately familiar, although the woman at his side seemed not to fit with my memory of the bloke. He quickly explained, in front of the woman, that his marriage had lasted only weeks. The necks and shoulders and arms of both people looked like they were covered with what we used to call “hickies” when I was young. Either these two had been involved in some extreme kissing or both of them had fallen into a pit of set rabbit traps. To my astonishment and still without introducing me to the woman at his side, he explained how many women had fallen pregnant to him in the past year. I stopped the conversation in order to introduce myself to the woman and to learn her name. It turns out this relationship was just days old and yet I could see its end looming. I walked away puzzled that the stories I’d just heard were told so easily and so quickly. I walked away puzzled because both of these people are clearly pursuing something with passion and desire so bold, so extreme, that it causes physical injury. I wondered if these people knew each other. I wondered especially if the man knew that attainment of a thing desired and worked for on the one hand, often means loss of its reality on the other. I began to think of this man as an artist who is so keen to produce a work of art that he almost skips the creative process. He is not a creator but a producer. His creation is a thing that can be defined and given a value but it isn’t a revelation; nothing is revealed, just possessed. This quite young man seems mad to possess something and the better he does, the worse he does.

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