Cycling

I see boys whizzing by on their bikes, fed with the fresh country air. There's insufficient traffic to impede them.

Here, whatever may be thought, it's quiet. I feel that no-one wants any trouble.

Perhaps I'm among people who've had enough trouble and are simply mending.

The bus stops outside and a door bangs. Someone decides to do some gardening.

The voices might be gruff. There are undertones and overtones.

I belong here, here in a life where a warren of gold mines once made this the most prosperous of corners in the known world, but where the human beings beside me are grappling with the everyday.

Or handling, it's better said, as I am handling the everyday. We are handling whatever it is, our place, in a cycle. For me, it's a whole new one.

Eureka!

I'm seeing my transition to Wendouree in Ballarat in the light of Derek Jarman's to Dungeness, less distinctive as the experience and outcome might be...

Unable now to afford anything liveable in Melbourne's inflated rental market -

unable, at 56, to find employment - as a bookseller, or as anything else; and with an effecting health condition:

I last year applied for Public Housing and was recently informed that I'd got it.

Where I am might seem to be neglected or down at heel but I don't feel threatened whatsoever. I'm not only happy: I feel blessed.

Whatever my past has been, this is an altogether new life I've been given, at a new site and with a new sense of what life is capable of being. I've begun humbly but safely, with considerable freedom and considerate neighbours...

...the world began after nothing, and then there was a spark.