Favourite Colour

Last night K and I went to an excellent restaurant at the top of the Customs House on Sydney Harbour, with views of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge. Then a stroll around The Rocks, including a couple of galleries, some inevitable ice-cream, and a long and slightly romantic wait at the train station for her delayed train home.

Her drama group performed a play the night before and she was a little drained from her monologue. She was personally involved with Thomas Hickey's case before the riot, and saw him only a couple of weeks before his tragic death. I sensed too that she was grieving something about her mother. Her texture was sadness, and this was just as beautiful as the bubbling joy when we last met. I was drained from a very early morning rise and a whole day's strategy meeting at work. It was tough work keeping my energy going, but she refreshed me.

She is a painter - her main thing. She revels in colour. She sometimes works as a colour consultant - helping people find the colours that bring them to life. I asked about my choice of colour for her lenga. She said they made her look like a lifeless old witch. I laughed at my failure. How bitter-sweet it must have been for her to receive an expensive beautiful outfit like that, only to find the colour (the most important thing for her) to be so wildly wrong. She's going to dye it, but I might just find her something else.

I told her I was moving to Sydney. I hinted and she got that she was one of the attractions for me here. I occasionally asked questions about her past relationships. She's certainly lived a full life.

The price I paid for that information was jealousy. I'm back on that edge between claiming her heart and possessive neediness. It hurts and it's exactly where I need to be. Today the pain feels like a craving to smoke. I feel the possibilities flip back and forth: like two paths into the future.

I hate to admit this, but I was conscious last night of her being six years older. The workshop made us all feel younger, and the women look younger. As those effects inevitably and slowly fade I notice that I'm finding it hard to hold that open place. Deida talks about the inevitable masculine attraction to the young and fresh feminine, and how women can lose this as they are inevitably closed by the rough first stage masculine world. K's spirit is very very young, she laughs and giggles with the full surrender of a little girl, and she holds it all within the frame of this streetwise worldly woman.

I sometimes catch her blue-grey eyes and hold her gaze. In moments she quietens and begins to melt and flow over, around and through me. Her skin begins to glow and soften, her lips turn into a smile, and when she laughs the universe sings with her.