I am sitting in a traffic jam on William Street. It has taken minute after grinding minute to get through the Kings Cross tunnel and I am beginning to curse the ignorant driver of the Audi Q7 in front. Why is the driver ignoring me? Can’t he see how important I am and how quickly I need to get to my crucial destination?
Western values of sustainability, earnestness and mistaken resilience
We Sydney women and men put so much value in status and being busy.
Sigh.
Shake of the head.
And bang, I snap out of the funk of self-importance and really listen to Nick Cave baying at me on my Dapper Dave Spotify list and finally see that the Wild God is in me and I need to honour a sacred life.
Life is Sacred.
And here I sit on a heated car seat, in my vacuumed car, heading to an appointment I am blessed to have, thinking that the world and all in my inner orbit owe me something more than I deserve.
‘You need to walk David and get off self. You are not that important my son.’
So, I change lanes and drive up the small road behind St Mary’s Cathedral, turn right, drive past the Art Gallery and park the car in the Royal Botanic Gardens. The metered, parking fee is disgracefully expensive, but I figure the resultant meditative stroll, will remove me from the maddening crowds in Martin Place and place me in a humbler head space.
As I put the burning debit card back in my wallet, I decide the charge is an investment in goodwill.
You see, I don’t want to feel like this.
Be like this.
See the world like this.
So, I walk, and each step into the park is a step in the right direction even though I do not follow a distinct path.
I am following my heart, and it beats, and beats again, and beats yet again, and the following footfalls caress the soul and my mood eases as the cockatoos squark and yell in the trees above.
The loud, white winged, yellow coned rascals are ripping leaves and branches off the superbly manicured plants and trees, but the gardeners don’t seem to be overly bothered so neither am I – it feels natural.
Even at the sharp end of a cantankerous cockatoo beak, life is sacred, and the passing and renewal of energy is another way life will run its course.
I smile and pick cracked pinecones from my hair and think of my sons and their wives, and my wife and my sisters and my mum and dad, and my gorgeous grandson, and my friends and my work colleagues and my belligerent, irreverent hound and the world is not on tilt anymore.
Off self and onto life.
Life IS sacred.
All it takes is to put space between the stimulation of the world and my resultant behaviour.
People, places and things can be a distraction. Good and bad.
And distraction is noise.
God exists in the silence, and I don’t need social media to tell me that.
Just nature and noisy birds.
And yes, even the cockatoos have fallen quiet.
And in the solitude, I remember I had everything, then lost everything and everything is nothing without love.
The respect.
The reputation.
The house and car.
The much trumpeted pension.
Nothing, without love.
And I wind deeper into the park and the constant craving; the restless itch of importance is forgotten and the emptiness I try to fill with whatever is at hand is no more.
Calmly I traverse the width of the gardens thanking the rangers for the cyclist and dog embargo, and arrive at the stone stairs leading up to the pioneer memorial garden and cupid fountain. This garden sits on the site of the central dome of the old Garden Palace, which housed the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition and was destroyed by fire in 1882.
The garden was built in 1938 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of European settlement in Australia, serving to commemorate the memory of the nation’s pioneer men and women. The cupid fountain is also a favourite morning hang for Sydney’s own feathered philosophers: the ibis. Or, as they are known to the office workers of the city, the bin chicken.
The ibis in the cupid fountain are a vision of purity. They wash and frolic in the crystal clear water, wings immaculate, necks curved in quiet contemplation. These are birds who live by a natural code of minimalism, mindfulness, and the occasional worm or summer cicada. Their lives are measured and clean, their bodies lean. They want for little and carry themselves with the grace of creatures who remember they were once sacred in Egypt.
But as you cross Macquarie Street, you will quickly be accosted by the street ibis or yea, the bin chicken.
Nasty, nervous, persistent feathered vermin.
Lured by fast food, Pepsi Max and the oily lullaby of a discarded Zinger wrapper, they have devolved into a junkie pantomime of their healthy Gardened brothers and sisters. Bloated, greasy, and jittery, they stalk the bins of the city with the desperate energy of a 1990’s foreign exchange trader prowling the Customs House Bar on a Friday evening. The feathers, once white, now match the dull grey of a Martin Place foot tile.
Watch them for five minutes and you will see the grandest display of modern capitalist behaviour: the twitch of withdrawal; the squawk of rage when a rival gets to a rubbish bin first; the persistence of a bird who would rather lose a beak than miss a half-eaten chicken salted chip.
The contrast is alarming: in the Botanic Gardens, the ibis is a white feathered Zen monk cavorting in a mountain stream. On the streets, it is a sweaty, overindulged hand puppet.
And as I sip coolly and calmly on my piccolo in Circular Quay, thinking I may write a thesis on the man made ruin of the ibis , I thank my creator for the Royal Botanic Gardens and the leafy contrast of taking your time versus rushing into a vortex of self-indulgent Sydney city panic.
