City of the Amazing Sky

To make up for last weekend's drearyness, Sydney showered us with sunshine on Saturday. You were quite right not to feel sorry for us, Miss Fancypants Dedakis; we were feeling far too sorry for ourselves. But this weekend has more than redeemed us.

Saturday was brilliant, glimmering with heat, sparkling with breezes, and gorgeous. Craig and I chose to remind ourselves that we live in a beach town. After a late picnic breakfast (of tofu scramble, coffee, and apples...so perfect) in Redfern Park, we hopped a bus for the coast. It took about twenty minutes before we were at Coogee, and Craig resumed his ancestral jig in the Tasman Sea.























The water was ridiculously cold, but it didn't stop tons of Sydneysiders from getting their feet wet. I even took off my hat! You can tell it was hot because you can see my hair. Even though the water was cold, it felt really good to be outside and enjoying it. I lie down on the sand with an odd pile of sand digging into my back, and I wondered at the ability of sand to be rock hard and completely malleable at the same time. I was once again struck by the idea that some people grow up going to the beach all the time. What a marvelously different childhood. Those people have already dealt with the strangeness of sand. They would be totally nonplussed by my wonder.























That amount of sun completely wore us out, and Saturday night was spent watching Mythbusters, a documentary about Nick Cave, and a Danish TV show generally in the line of Bridget Jones called "Nynne." SBS is outstanding. I feel so lucky to be able to go to the beach just for a few hours.

On Sunday, we intended to go to the Brett Whiteley studio, the preserved home and exhibition space of a famous Surry Hills artist. We woke up to the dreaded sounds of rain, why is the rain always trying to destroy my weekend, why is the rum always gone??

Figuring the day was shot, we made pancakes (which is to say, Craig made pancakes) but by the time pancakes were ready, it had stopped raining and was bright enough to enjoy breakfast on our patio. Surely, the rain was over, and we'd be fine to head out to the studio.

Of course, it began pouring buckets the second we left the house. Ugh. So we stayed in and watched Sanjuro, a brilliant Kurosawa samurai flick. Mifune rules. The interesting thing about not having a car is how dependant you become on weather. In Atlanta, the most rain I actually had to deal with was between the house and the car, between the car and a building. If I needed to go do something, the rain could rarely stop me; I had an airtight box. But here the rain completely changes what I can/am willing to do in a day. The risk of ending up soaked for hours is enough to keep me in, because it is a very real risk without a car.

Late afternoon showed some grace, finally a gap in the rain long enough for us to stroll up to Moore Park.

And there we found the amazing sky.