Here's a photo taken from the side door of the house belonging my friend Beck, who took me in for about six weeks after I returned to Australia.
Here's one of many attempts, more hopeful than successful, to capture the near-and-far view from my mother's house in the foothills near Adelaide, where I stayed for a while earlier this year.
And here's the view from the Darlinghurst flat where I've lived for the past three weeks.
It's an unfair comparison, of course; I didn't pick the Darlinghurst place for the view. So I was startled to find myself, during the first week or so, standing much too often by the floor-to-ceiling windows and gazing out. What on earth is that girl doing to her eyelashes? I wonder what that couple has planned, dressing up like that on a Tuesday night. He really should have taped some newspaper to the wall before painting those planks. What kind of music produces those peculiar dance moves? And so on. It's alarming how far one can see into apartments like this with just a casual glance, even when the lights are switched off.
At first I assumed I could justify this kind of voyeurism on reciprocal grounds - that I'd be serving precisely the same entertainment function for my neighbours. (Hmm, new face on the third floor. Why doesn't she do something about those scummy tracksuit pants? Even I can do more push-ups than that. And so on.) But one behaviour I never observed was other people standing and staring, the way I did. Even if they were out on the balcony having a smoke, they had a characteristic non-committal gaze that seemed to slide slowly about without fixing on any definable point.
No doubt that's an important skill for living in such hive-like conditions, so I'm pleased to say I did seem to acquire it eventually. At least, I could glance out the windows to check the weather without caring about anyone's eyelashes. (Which brings me to the art of checking the weather without actually being able to see the sky - making deductions from the quality of light falling on the balconies opposite, and other subtleties. Some other post, perhaps.) I suppose it's very like the good geek's ability to fix someone's misbehaving email program without actually noticing the contents of the messages being displayed, which I've been able to do for years.
So having qualified myself to live amicably in a stack of shoe boxes, I'm now moving out. I write this post in the Customs House library near Circular Quay, with a neat pile of packed bags at my feet. Once I've figured out how to resurrect my blog, I'll be dragging my bits and pieces out to the railway station, and making my way to a new address. In future you'll be reading about the idiosyncrasies of a shared house in the Inner West.
