A global taleBy M. JOHN LATHAMEarth, locale, people in motion. An ordinary Sydney chap, whom I call Bobby Dazzler, lived with his inherent inclination toward enhancing an already superb environment ... Looking to facilitate and celebrate the magic of people in this world he became aware of unrealised potentials and heart-felt frustrations among people across the four-corners. Bobby's house was pretty ordinary. But then so was his breakfast. "There's something very special and global about these ordinary things," he thinks as he oils the pan. "Everyperson everywhere rises from bed and swallows breakfast. But only I have this particular frypan, these fingerprints and....". Somebody had spoken and he'd gone into a dream. He grabbed his coat and grabbed his hat, found his way downstairs in seconds flat. He stepped out. Quickly tracked through nature's vegetated surrounds. From the bus he glanced back at his house. It nestled in the grotto with a backdrop of contemptible suburban heater haze. He loved his home though, and his neighbours flanking his two acre nature nook in the suburban sprawl. Through the unecologic repetitive shambles he could see the world collapsing - and the intrinsic beauties of the monotonous urban character. Trees going to rafters and smoke - just part of the fact. Wide eyed he dreamed of people in India dieing of tuberculosis caused by the dung smoke in their quaint huts. Under their feet across the Earth Mexicans were clambering back to their slums in preference to alien modern buildings. All of the characters on the bus were off to work with the compassion of their mortgager as their first awareness. Bobby's thinking broadening from the egg in his frypan, acknowledged the sullage drain and foundation trench, moved across his suburb and vehicular locale, across the coastal strip and the mountain spine, he drifted up through the stratosphere looking, he saw... Good earthy resources are being converted into unsustainable things at an unsustainable rate. Beautiful life-support landscape being eaten by the orthogonal houselocusts. As well, the houselocusts were running out of this food and their bodies chemically mutating - less organic, more plastic. A fellow passenger unaware began relating ecstatically to the dazed dreaming Dazzler. About her partly finished new house. Rich, earthy brick, clear sheets of glass, corners, shapes and room. Amenity, utility, surfaces, constructional handmarks alive. Architectonic. It would transform her daily self into accomplished freedoms. Open whole new vistas of personal life. He faced her with a cooking oil stain on his shirt, knowing the house location; "It's horribly good ...that. I hope we can afford replacement pasture. I'll be designing a whole new suburb this week. I know what you mean, but.... I read the news today. Oh boy! Its a global tale - horribly good." Bobby reeled as he sought options to throw his effort toward a "supremely good" scenario. "Horribly good" is not real. Certainly an ecological scenario was a bare minimum. A clearer than day bolt of truth. He would have to leave his job, but he couldn't. His job was horribly important. It was perpetuating the melee while it was paying his mortgage. He was hamstrung. By his own house. To hamstring, is no aim of the house builder. His tasks and priorities at home with his companions had him snagged. Domestic politics must be done. Is it better to contrive your family's lives around your house and locale, or to bring your house around your lives - or both? Is there time to build, or is it better spent in some dolphinian way; is the unenhanced spear better than the microwave? This was an issue also for sociological and ecological politics. Bobby was most perplexed by the complexities, problems, mysteries, lures and misconceptions as the knowledge moths fluttered to his illuminating enquiry; the politics of housing weighing against his love for his sunlit Australian lounge-room and what it offered. His mortgage was an integral part of his housing process. Housing process. The getting of the house. The process is frustrated. Frustrated. He was happy though; if he cared to be complacent. Bobby was straining at the leash. He wanted it all. He wanted everybody to have it all - perfect dream houses all round please, my shout. "But I was sure I had it all at breakfast," mumbled Bobby from his haze. "I just can't wait to hang the Picasso print," retorted the fellow passenger, basking blissful and lost in her own interior. "House bound!" she looked forward. "House bound," Bobby saw the blinkers. And with others they continued in the bus. The driver's name is Global Pale. His address was originally Eden.
M. John Latham is an architect:
RAPID RESPONSE EMAIL: What do you think? Saturday, November 6, 2004 |