Trees Full of Starlight

Out of the four days of class I have each week, only Tuesday ends before 6:15 in the evening -- I have a late tute on Mondays and rehearsal on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Nevertheless, today, rather than heading home at 3:15 after my Medieval & Early Modern Music lecture, I popped over to the computing centre to print out some (okay, more like 80) photos to put up around my bedroom.

Grateful that I'd dodged (most of) the rain, which so often comes and goes in Melbourne, I headed out of Union House to head home just before 5:30. Dusk had settled quickly over the city and brought with it a brisk chill. This morning it had felt more like autumn than winter; as I crossed Royal Parade 9 hours later, it was definitely a winter evening. It was just cold enough that I wondered if I could see my breath -- a bit of a novelty for me, since it is August and traditionally very hot. I let out a long exhale to see if I could spot any wisps of breath, but alas. Not quite that cold (yet). The streetlights, the headlights of passing cars, even the lights from the trams were dancing over the still-wet pavement, glinting here and there in shades of peach and champagne.

I've never lived in an actual city. Bridgewater is technically a township, and it's mainly highways anyway, so I would never even think of walking anywhere except maybe down the street to a friend's house or maybe across 202 for a popular event at either North Branch or Duke Island Park. Granville is even smaller -- it's actually a village. I can walk anywhere I need, which is really only up and down Broadway to the CVS or maybe, if I'm feeling adventurous, down to the IGA for some groceries.

Sure, I go to New York City often when I'm home, and generally go to Columbus a few times a semester, so I know my way around a city. I know how to hail a cab, how to use the subway. I know how to get to Central Park, or Times Square, which way is uptown and which way is downtown. But actually living in a city presents a curious dichotomy between being surrounded by people all the time, yet being very, very alone.

It's always an interesting experiment to smile at or say hello to someone you don't know, have never seen before in your life, and will never see again. In New York, if you get a reaction at all, it will be an odd look and then they'll be gone forever -- a brief moment of interaction between two human beings, and yet not really any interaction at all. I haven't tried it yet in Melbourne, but something hopeful inside me says that maybe I'll get a few smiles back. Certainly they're far more open and willing to approach or even help out strangers; the other day a man on a bicycle asked me if I knew where Grattan Street was and how to get there (always a nice ego boost, since Grattan is one of the few streets I do know!). When I first arrived in Melbourne, my friends and I occasionally stopped people on the street to ask directions and they were always very friendly.

At any rate, I haven't had to ask directions in a while -- my daily commute to and from uni wasn't difficult to begin with, and has become even easier in the last week and a half or so. I always pass by a few hospitals on Royal Parade (or perhaps just many buildings of one hospital) between RMIT Village and UM, and they're always busy, regardless of what time it is. First thing in the morning, heading to classes, in the middle of the day, popping back to the apartment for lunch, walking home from class or rehearsal in the evenings, and even late at night on a run to the bottle shop across from Trinity College. There are always people coming in and out -- visitors, paramedics, all sorts of people.

But there's one woman that I see constantly -- nearly every time I walk by, as a matter of fact. She's outside the Royal Melbourne Hospital in a garishly pink robe and fuzzy slippers clearly not meant to be worn outside a building. She's older, probably in her 50s or early 60s, with hair that's dyed a burgundy red and roots that need to be retouched. All of this aside, perhaps what is most obvious is that she is always alone, smoking a cigarette, and never smiling. In fact, it's not even that she looks particularly unpleasant; just on the older side and a bit eccentric, and she strikes me as being very resigned to her fate, whatever it is.

I wonder about her. What's her story, where is her family? In the short week and a half I've been here, she's become a fixture on my daily walks. Is she, likewise, a fixture at the hospital? Or will I stop seeing her in a week or two? Why is she always alone, and why is she at the hospital to begin with? How many times does she come outside to smoke each day? I see her so often on some days that I wonder if she's gone in at all, or if she's just been sitting out there, smoking one cigarette after another, all day long.

Tonight she was sitting alone on the bench again, puffing away at her ever-present cigarette, a look of intense concentration on her face as she took slow drags, examining her pink robe in the rapidly dimming light. I'd known she was there before I could be sure it was her -- the smell of cigarette smoke seemed to carry better in the cold air. She was even more alone than usual. Normally there are other people milling about the bench where she sits, but tonight it had gotten dark very quickly, and combined with the rain it seemed like a good guess that most of them were inside. It was cold; I'd misjudged the weather myself, finding myself wearing only a (fairly warm, but not warm enough) rugby shirt and jeans. These last few days I'd been dressing warmly only to find out as soon as I stepped outside that I didn't need a jacket or even really a jumper; though the camisole inside was too thin for me to be able to take off the jumper, a t-shirt would have sufficed. Today I'd grossly miscalculated; I was underdressed in anticipation of it being warmer than I expected, when in fact it turned out to be just as cold as I thought it might be, and then some.

I wanted to stop and say something, to ask her name. She looked cold. Her robe definitely didn't seem thick enough for her to be out in the cold drizzly evening.

But she sat there, resolutely puffing away, picking at her robe, and I walked on, surrounded by people and yet feeling very alone, on this cold Melbourne evening.