I take the last few steps two at a time and emerged from the underground station. The glare of the brilliant morning sun hurts my eyes momentarily. Eyes adjust and I inhale, bathed in the beautiful radiation beaming down and bouncing off concrete. A stream of golden fire which evaporates the night’s clumsy mistakes, moves along all the destitute, and absolves the world of all yesterday’s misgivings. A spring in the step of all, adorned in crisp suits, lined with ambition. The freshly ironed shirts of the morning seem to hold an intrinsic good. Cuff links and mini-skirts, palm pilots and brief cases, Herringbone and Manolo Blahnik. The day beckons to be explored and the masses oblige - cafe latte in hand.
I pass a man nearly every morning, he sits quietly near one of the few cracks in the pavement at the Paris end of Collins Street, verbally asking for nothing and rarely making eye contact. A small hat in front of him asks the question which leads to so many more. A collie sits with him quietly and greets the kindness of strangers. A number of people always stop and talk with the man, but I have never stopped.
On the corner of Collins St and Spring Street there is a small cafe hidden away, the only thing betraying its existence is the thick wafts of coffee beans being percolated and the sizzling bacon and eggs which pour from a vent, covering the streets like a sweet invisible treacle.
An angry shout gets my attention, ahead an infuriated man, actually he is more then infuriated, he is close to foaming at the mouth. And is attempting to walk against the stream of commuters, an angry salmon, swimming against the dark pin-stripe stream of suits and skirts. His rants increase to a point where the seas part in front of him, but what an eccentric performance. "Excuse me you dropped your crazy." The 80-20 rule applies (according to Jon), 80% of people are not aware they make up the weird 20% ...wait I may need to think about that one a bit more.
The elms on Collins Street spring out of the grey concrete squares they are designated, in a protest to the uniformity the roots branch out and celebrate their freedom in patterns that personify chaos theory. The two tone colours match well with the blue stone hue that is Collins.
Paris End Cafe makes the best coffee in the area, the barista is a beautiful woman who calls me "love" and "darling" and I always leave there with an increased heart rate and alert feeling. This helps fight the tendency to feel like a number or a small cog in the machinery of the city with all the grey, the charcoal, the bluestone, and not an angel headed hipster in sight.
In saying that, uniformity of appearance doesn’t suggest uniformity of mind, thought or expression. Brad Pitt in Fight Club told me I am not a beautiful and unique snow flake and that I need to hit bottom and be freed from clever art, but I love clever art and I want to start producing some. I love the painting Collins Street 5:30 by John Brack and want to produce a modern day copy. I am sure it has already been done but I don’t care, I am doing it again. I guess I just need to add a few iPhone headphones a couple more homeless people, a bumblebee tram and we are done. Vincent Van Gough did about fifteen copies of sunflowers, and when Paul Gauguin came to stay with him he put about five copies in his room. Yellow paint must have been on special that week.
Collins Street is a beautiful place at this point in time, an ever changing bustle and mortar. It only has two tones if you squint your eyes, but the detail is where the charm and beauty is concealed. It is a constant background to contrast people against. The cracks in the street like the rings of a tree, "Here I was born, and here I died, and you never noticed."
Next time you are there, stop and appreciate the architecture in the city. Sometimes we forget to look up. And like Oscar Wilde correctly states, "we are all in the gutter, just some of us are looking at the stars."
Jonathan Nolan
