A couple of symbolic figures approach. You can tell they’re symbolic by their names. Abstract names like Lust or Greed. From archaic categories that shouldn’t concern us now. But they do as we flounder about without an ethical stance.

The moon is rising over the city. Where has it come from and where is it going? Two people are walking up the street on their way home from the city. Winter in Martin Place. Always windy and cold. I’m looking for you along the colonnades of the GPO. On both sides of the columns. You aren’t there but then you jump off a bus on the other side of the road half an hour late. You appear. You make appearances like this. There’s a feeling of energy all around you. You are passionate and virile. I wasn’t expecting it. You stroll around the city in a relaxed way. We walk into a deserted bar and drink. Then we walk all the way down George Street to the Water Board building bus stop. This is a public appearance, but incognito.

I can’t understand why you writers are so disturbed, you say. We’re Sydneysiders. This is our city. We use it. You’re on the brink of new discovery, a new life. This is a finger of fate pointing at you. I grow sentimental about it and reminisce about the inner journey. The excitement I first felt when I came upon the idea of the inner journey. Then the excitement of politics and sociology. We walk on to the restaurant. The people sitting at the tables are checking each other out. You’re teaching me how to set up an independent life. You prove that privacy and seclusion are necessary for creative work. You say it again and again. Your energy creates a private space around you. Sometimes you suddenly fix it on someone and it frightens them. As soon as you eat you jump up and move quickly to the cash register. I hate it. I hate having to run after you as you stride off down the street. You treat me like an offsider. When you say goodbye you don’t wait for a reply. You turn around quickly and shut the door behind you or stride off down the street. I don’t like it when people leave their clothes at my place by accident. You do this and I don’t see it as an accident. I can’t take it, being spoken for and claimed, staked out like a piece of territory. I want to choose. I know I can walk in the opposite direction and catch a cab home. Those tactics work every time, but I want a life without tactics.

– Love is the thing you feel for someone you understand not the thing you feel for someone you can’t have, I say.