Breaking Free

I feel so much better after getting out of Melbourne. At the weekend I trekked down the Great Ocean Road with a coachload of wrinklies and backpackers, saw the twelve Apostles, proper surfing waves and some two-dimensional seaside towns. I took photos, nibbled buttery fish and chips on the beach and stared out at the ocean. Now I feel revived, reinvigorated, and I’m almost afraid to admit why.

Because it was beautiful. And Melbourne just… isn’t. Fed Square, Flinders Street Station, Crown Casino, the Arts Centre; all paragons of architectural ugliness. It’s all new and sharp, angles and concrete, blocks and sprawling roads, and – what I hate the most – the tram lines everywhere, dissecting the sky, like giant fishing nets to hold us in.

Above

vl 27
Originally uploaded by crumplestiltskin.

How often do you look up? When do you ever break out of the horizontal planes that millions of darting eyes wear thin, day in, day out? Of course, unless you spend your time flying kites, being crapped on by pigeons or plane spotting, there’s no real need to look upwards, which is precisely why I like it. It’s more likely that I’ll see something that’s never been seen before. Imagine being the first person to see something, ever. Imagine if nobody had ever seen what you saw; that wind, that sky, that light, imagine if it had always been hiding there, waiting for you to see it.

Look up today.