Thursday September 15, 2005

Photographers line up in the media room at Sydney airport waiting for the captain of the Australian cricket team ricky ponting and fast bowler Glenn McGrath. Put on earth to record. There had often seemed no other pont, no other raison d'etre, in the midst of the long nights, his ossifying body and soul. Now the colours, the textures of everything, were deepening. He could stand to stand without longing to be washed away. He could go out without instantly longing to drown in the crowd, to seek that magic moment at 3am when he and the dancefloor and the universe were one. Now, as years settled on him, funny little habits develped, hot milk, and despite the standard chaos of the day, a reluctance to change. These were embraced, these virtues of comfort, when all else had failed and he could no longer go back; he could simply no longer cope with the chaos of the past. That was why he clung to small platforms of stability, odd bits of routine in a not very routine world. There were still lost weekends, those days when he became everyman in the company of new friends, outposts of the infinite. Talking portals of the spiritual world.