Melbourne

I go to the National Gallery of Victoria (the state Melbourne’s in) and see this Picasso painting called Weeping Woman. As Wikipedia tells us, “a famous event in the history of the gallery was the theft of Pablo Picasso‘s painting Weeping Woman in 1986 by a person or group who identified themselves as the ‘Australian cultural terrorists.’ The group took the painting to protest the perceived poor treatment of the arts by the state government of the time and sought as a ransom the establishment of an art prize for young artists. The painting was returned in a railway locker a week afterwards.”

I also see some excellent Rembrandts, Manets, Monets. but Picasso’s is my favorite. They have some Japanese silk screens, those paper thin removable walls, like a divider you’d set up to change behind. That’s not exactly what the Japanese used them for. They meditated on them.

A 24 year old guy from Sydney sleeps below me one night. 3 years ago he was tossing a tennis ball with a friend and he dove into a sandbar to get it. In the process he fell on his head and broke his neck. He was paralyzed at first but only in his right side. Wow he can walk but his right side looks like it’s asleep so he’s in a wheelchair to get around. He carefully shows how when he walks and maybe sticks an arm or two out he looks just like a zombie. We both laugh about this for a while, with our other roommate looking at us as though he thinks we’re at the very least drunk, and then head up to “The only pub left in St. Kilda.” It’s not really the only pub necessarily, but most other places double as a restaurant even if they have rowdy pubs. So this place, the Greyhound Hotel, prides itself on being the only place that doesn’t shovel food at its drunks. They listen to live country music most nights and act like they’ve known you forever and talk about anything you want.

As soon as everybody sees the guy I’m with, sitting in his wheelchair, they all come over and clap us on the back and start talking to us. The bouncer is really apologetic that they don’t have a wheelchair ramp and helps to shove the chair in through the little doors. Then he follows us in to make sure we don’t need anything else. I think we got cheaper drinks too. As my new friend says, he’s in it for the parking.

I go to the Melbourne Zoo, the Royal Botanical Gardens. Many days this is where I sit and read or write or stare at the weird flora and fauna here. The left picture is a bottle tree, my favorite odd tree here. The right is of a random path in the gardens. Next on the left is a random gardens picture. The next looks like a Whomping Willow. Most of the plants I’ve never seen before. Birds too, most of them are foreign to me except seagulls. Damn seagulls. They swarm you while you’re eating in the park and you have to fight them off. It’s actually worse at the zoo, where they come up onto your table and balance on it while you chuck it around trying to get it to fly off and his buddies steal your fries (they call them chips). They try to attack the small children carrying them because they don’t hit back as hard as the adults. That’s my theory anyway, because I didn’t see anybody over 10 being attacked by the crapping birds. Bird crap flying all over the place while they eat!

I go to the Shrine of Remembrance, a world war memorial. Even though the memorial part is closed the gift shop is, of course, open! There is a wall of medals representing those wounded and killed in the wars, a uniform, photos, and then the rest has paintings by different artists depicting the same memorial highway. That is confusing, but I make it to the postcard stall and don’t find any good postcards of the actual memorial — they’re standard Melbourne tourist postcards. They’re forgiven because it’s free. I won’t ever condemn a place if it’s free. I hope you can tell from my description that it’s a must-see in Melbourne. You need to go.

I start my first Charles Dickens novel, Nicholas Nickelby, when I realize how horrible it is that i have a degree in English and have never, ever in my entire life, read a Dickens novel. I’m not sure what that says about what, but it can’t be good.

I have realized that I have underestimated my legs for most of my life. I walk a lot here because I get lost and have to wander around to find my way back to places, or i just set out to walk around the neighborhood. It must be adverse to my body’s nature because it screams at me in the morning when I try walking to the bathroom or making breakfast (very strange-tasting generic fruit loops). But we’ve been making peace with one another.

I’ve gone up to the city many times but I greatly prefer the area I’m still in, St. Kilda. It has much fewer people and is less chaotic, or at least a better kind of chaotic. The musician/artist/local kind.

I have to catch an 8am bus tomorrow to Adelaide, 10 hours away. Next time I’ll fly. As for now the bus tickets are non-refundable, so at least I know that I have something I absolutely have to do tomorrow, which usually leads to some kind of interesting adventure. People in the hostel say there’s not much to do in Adelaide when they come back from drinking all night. as much as I hate to go to a place with a “bad” clubbing scene, it just doesn’t sound too bad to me.