Angels on pinheads

I've been living and working back in Melbourne now for four months. It was going to be three ... but then I've never been especially good at estimating the amount of time something will take.

Since I have been back, I have interrupted the lives of some wonderful, dear friends. We have sung and danced around the messy details of our mid-life crises and I have often wondered where in the journey of my life I would 'be' now if it hadn't been for the Fag, Interrupted-esque sojourn in the harbour city for seven years. But as James Goldman, in his The Lion In Winter script, puts it: "'What if ...' is a game for scholars. What if Angels sat on pinheads?"

I am constantly moved and provoked by the (in)different circumstances of many of the people I knew almost a decade ago. One of my dearest (and most reliable) co-bar-propper-upper-ers is now on heart medication and rarely drinks. For he and I, it's recently become something like an arduous garden-path kind of a walk to our local for two ... or more. I think about calling him and asking him out to the pub a little less often - especially now that it appears to be a matter of life or death. For him, in any case.

And some of the people I have known in this lifetime are achieving truly wonderful things ... and like a ratty little mongrel puppy, I yap and nip at their heels - celebrating their deserved success: like this extraordinarily beautiful work.