Anoche cuando dormía
soñé ¡bendita ilusión!
que una colmena tenía
dentro de mi corazón;
y las doradas abejas
iban fabricando en él,
con las amarguras viejas,
blanca cera y dulce miel.

Antonio Machado

At the airport I collect my bag from the conveyor belt and step outside the domestic terminal. I join the queue under a large sign that proclaims, "Skybus". Alas, there is a small arrow below the sign which I fail to interpret until I notice that the queue ends when passengers and taxis converge. I push my way out of the queue and sprint in the direction of the arrow. The bus driver looks at me through the glass door of his bus and pulls away. I join the queue in front of the kiosk to purchase bus tickets.

The elderly lady ahead of me in line is nervous and irritable and demands much explanation and soothing. Four employees stand in the kiosk, but only one is interacting with customers, and the second window is closed. I watch the next bus pull away before I am able to make the brief transaction necessary to purchase a ticket.

The bus delivers its passengers to the Southern Cross station under the looming walls of downtown Melbourne. I walk through the labyrinthine station and emerge to twilight uncertain which direction is north. Trams run by, but I set out on foot to determine where I am upon the grid of city streets. I need several data points to pinpoint my location in two dimensions and identify a vector that indicates my destination. In the end I hike grimly through faceless city streets with a bag upon each shoulder, for I am far more certain of the direction of the hostel than of tram routes and the etiquette of ticket purchase. Darkness settles over the city as I walk.

The youth hostel called The Nunnery sprawls through three Victorian townhouses with sweeping wooden staircases, red velvet carpets, stained glass windows, and swooping marble cherubs. Alas, there is neither toilet paper nor water pressure in any of the bathrooms.

It is late. I am exhausted, dysphoric from lack of food. I boil udon noodles, add a packet of instant miso and fresh crisp green mangetout. I sneak the bowl up to the dorm room and eat perched cross-legged upon the rickety top bunk in the dormitory.



The youth hostel serves free breakfast in the morning. I spread a bland spongelike wheat roll with greasy peanut butter and saccharine jam. I lace the strong black tea in my thermos with white sugar from a jar. White sugar tastes queasily sweet to me, these days, but I need the comfort.

I ride the tram through the empty streets of downtown Melbourne with their skyscrapers of mirrored glass to Saint Kilda. It is early morning yet, but in Saint Kilda music blares upon the beach. Leggy bronze young women in scraps of courageously straining elastic set and spike in a leisurely manner upon the sand. An announcer crows about each play of a beach volleyball tournament. Jet scooters rip fiercely at the shimmering waters of the bay. The sand of the beach was groomed this morning, before the first walkers crossed it in bare feet.

I walk down the Saint Kilda pier, past the Russian emigrants with their fishing lines, past the curious Victorian teahouse, down a wooden walkway close to the water. An elderly man with a German accent beckons to me. I walk silently upon the balls of my feet. "They aren't shy," he says. A fairy penguin sits unperturbed under a rock next to the wooden stairwell.

I crouch upon the pier and watch the penguin. It is downy, with a multitude of soft short feathers, a gleaming pearly breast, a sleek steel grey back. It has a small snub beak and bright eyes. Occasionally it turns to regard a chick hidden further back within the rocks with a long, loving arrrrrrrrrrrr.

The old man and his friend are fishing. I move out of the way as they twirl and cast their lines. The old man pulls a starfish out of the water with an expression of disdain, and casts it onto a boulder to lie upon a pile of dessicated starfish corpses. Starfish are an invasive exotic species, he tells me. A single starfish can decimate native populations in the harbor. They are brought into Melbourne in the bilge water of visiting ships.

I have come to Saint Kilda in search of thrift stores. My first candidate has closed, and the storefront is now occupied by a different business. I have more success in finding the Salvation Army, and I buy a grey sweater. Acland Street is lined with gelaterias, stores hawking glittering sequined spandex, cake shops with bay windows groaning with pastries and petit four glistening with fat. Sniff hard in Saint Kilda, says Lonely Planet, and you'll catch the scent of cakes, pasta, beer, roadies, sex, yoga, hair product, and the sea.

I lie under a tree in the botanic gardens and eat sashimi and drink my saccharine sweet black tea. I watch a beautiful dove grey crested pigeon with a pert sprightly topknot and blushing apricot wings. Mr. Pigeon walks up behind a second pigeon and fluffs the soft feathers upon his breast, spreads the long feathers on his wings to reveal inner surfaces of shining burnished garnet. Mr. Pigeon bobs his head. Mrs. Pigeon fluffs her feathers until she looks very plump and round and gives him a coy look. Both birds return to pecking to the tanbark for grubs. A trio of young men begins a dangerous game in my vicinity involving a frisbee and a rugby ball that cross midair. As I walk away I hear a groan from a group of people lounging upon blankets on the grass, and a cheerful unrepentant apology from one of the young men.

Fitzroy is seedy. Several people stop me to ask for money. I find a health food store that sells high quality fruit. A basket of fingerlimes sits upon the counter. I purchase a single fingerlime, and eat it as I walk down the street. The fruit is the length and width of my finger, poison green, filled with tiny grapefruit pink citrus globules, and tart enough to pucker the mouth.

I buy a salad and carry it back to the youth hostel. The other women in the dormitory room are making plans to go out. I smile noncommitially and find a nook where I can eat undetected by any garrulous stranger. When I return to the room they have departed, and I clamber onto the ramshackle top bunk with relief.

I pack a knapsack with sushi, fresh cherries, a bottle of cider. I change into running shoes, thinking ahead to the long walk home through the alleys of an unfamiliar city. I leave my wallet upon the desk in my apartment, taking only a credit card and a little cash. I suspect there will be pickpockets amongst the crowd. The plein air production of les pêcheurs de perles this evening is where I would go if I had slim nimble fingers and a need for quick cash.

My heart is light as I lock the door behind me and walk eastwards past the wrought iron filigree, past the graffiti of a melancholy boxer wreathed in flame and a white-sailed ship upon a wine dark sea, past a red brick factory and the greyhound racetrack where gaunt muzzled dogs stalk and peer, past the scruffy corner store that advertises chicken peace's and chicken rips, through the underpass under the highway that smells of stale beer and egesta, past angular fountains set in a concrete landscape, past the Chinese Garden where couples sit entwined upon wooden benches, past the ping-pong tables and the gelato parlors of Darling Harbor, past the glorious Queen Victoria building, all flourdelis and vitrail in a little spitting rain, past the gucci handbags in mirrored display cases and the beggar kneeling at the corner, past the fountain depicting Apollo with fierce plunging horses and a lyre, past Diana of the groves with her bow, her faithful greyhounds, and a graceful stag, past the young god Aristeus of field and fertility with a ram and a goat, past brawny young Theseus wrestling the minotaur and happily leaping bronze fish, past the cathedral to the park called The Domain.

Half the city is here already, perched on benches, on blankets and on folding chairs, with wine glasses in hand and picnics of crackers and cheese and beeping cell phones and wailing babies. Hopeful street vendors hawk satay and martinis. The orchestra stretches, flexes itself like a limb, cracks a few knuckles.

A gaudy turquoise car occupies center stage. The opera is free to the hoi polloi, sponsored by mazda, and mazda is raffling one of its own. The director calls the winner onto the stage, and the winner drives the car off stage. The crowd is occupied with quaffing libations and snacking on crackers, and applause is desultory.

An aboriginal tribal leader welcomes the audience to Cadigal land. He asks the chattering cellular citizenry to respect the land as his tribe does, to engage in good stewardship. He asks the listener to cherish the myriad stories of the families that traveled across continents and centuries to meet here at this moment in time. The crowd ignores him. Mazda raffles an espresso machine and a vacation in Santiago. In the dusk the flying foxes circle lumbering above the trees.



Zurga is young and stern and proud and unyielding, clad in white. Nadir is rumpled, with a shock of dark hair that stands straight up and a surprised mien, clad in black. Leila is slim and straight and sheltered behind her veil. Six supple and largely naked young women with honey skin and masses of dark shining hair dance about. The girls sway and writhe. The hair sways and writhes.

I suspect the great unifying theme of all opera is sexual frustration. The plot of les pêcheurs de perles is that Zurgon wants Leila, who is not supposed to want anyone because she is a virgin priestess, but who secretly wants Nadir.

Long ago Zurga and Nadir swore to renounce their mutual love for Leila, for they knew it must tear their friendship apart. Afterwards Nadir broke his vow to Zurga and courted the priestess secretly. In the temple Leila swears an oath of obedience and chastity. She will pray for the safe return of the pearlfishers until the fishermen return home. Nadir comes to her in the temple at midnight. No, she tells him. No, no, no. ...On second thoughts, yes, but we're both gonna die for the privilege 'cause I'm a virgin priestess and I'm not supposed to indulge. Nadir is apprehended as he leaves the temple, and the fisherfolk demand that Nadir and Leila be put to death. Zurga is torn between jealous rage and gratitude to Leila, who saved his life long ago. In the final act Zurga sets fire to the village and releases Leila and Nadir, who flee.

After the last act I walk through the georgian sandstone courtyards of the rum hospital, through Martin Place where Occupy Sydney squats on a twelve foot square scrap of cobblestone, past the cenotaph and the scagliola, past the romanesque and the gothic and the beaux-arts, past Burberry and Lindt and Lulu Lemon. I worry a little about the odiferous underpass and the great dark park, but the underpass is well lit by several recessed lamps, and a pair of lovers sit on a bench in the park. The greyhounds are silent in their kennels.