Perspiring prose

The months between February and November in this city pass only to soften the memory of how hot the summer is, how persistent the flies are, how loud the cicadas sing. In November there comes a warm day when it seems like every dormant fly egg hatches, and you remember with a sweaty lucidity what summer in Sydney is like. You remember the swearing and swatting of the mosquitoes, the bubbling and peeling of the soles of your feet, you remember the sweet smell of crisped pine needles. Faded tinsel makes a reshow and in every district there is a wealthy street where the neighbours can afford to engage in healthy competition with their Christmas light displays. At night cars drive 3km down those streets and families walk through to see the various arrangements of spitting speckles on strings spasmodically illuminating the drawn curtains and venetian blinds in the windows. It must be hard for them to sleep. Santa flaps around, inflated by a strategically placed fan or flops on the tiles, withering.

It’s hard for anyone in Sydney to sleep in summer. Even at night you can coax egg whites into opacity on the red bricks of fence tops. In the right suburbs, the soulless ones, night time is abuzz with languages and laughter and dawn brings a warm stillness despite the petering out of chattering people. The sun opens its tired, billion year old bloodshot eyes to see us heating up. The moon passes over like a plate thrown across a party – most of us are too busy tossing and turning trying to sleep or having sticky sex to remember its movements. I like summer here, because we all go a little insane, we’re all a little tired from the year. We just want to go to the beach, even if we don’t like the beach.