Outside my front door is uniform chaos. An untidy little street, crooked and jagged that zigzags through suburbia like a fracture. Here all the streets are circular, loops that intersect and perform pirouette’s around three suburbs. The shortest distance is a straight line between two points, but nothing here is ever straight. Nothing.
In this place, I am reminded of other places. Other pieces of suburbia. Pieces I have lived and shed, only to find them somewhere else and slip them back on like a pair of favourite jeans, they’re frayed, see through in the arse, have holes and smell slightly mouldy, but you still can’t bare to throw them out.
This is my life. I shed suburbs like a semi-urban serpent. I slither from suburb to suburb, different towns, different states. I watch tv and see a false suburbia. One where every body knows everybody. A surburbia of my youth. I know it does exist. But it’s unattainable for the likes of me and mine. We are gypsies. Military transients who slip from town to town with stealth like precision. We move in and out before you even know our names.
I grew up in a small town. The kind where people don’t lock their doors. There’s no need. No one sane would ever venture that far out into the bush.
My father instilled suburbia in my veins. Holidays spent with him remind me there are places like tv. Streets where every body knows each other. And every body stops to say hello. Streets that are straight and orderly. Where they all layout nicely like a grid. Soldiers of mortar and brick all standing strong, resolute and to attention.
I think that’s why I like it here. It’s fractured. Streets are broken and bent. It’s spontaneous. No grid lines. No Truman show. Just 20 paces east, a hop, skip and a jump north, 14 paces west and a leap south. There ‘X’ marks the spot.
Spontenaity at its finest.
And for a gypsy like me, spontaneous is home.
