st kilda timezone

At around 4am I started drafting you a love letter in my mind. This is where all of my best love letters have been written. The thing about insomnia is that the night breeds wild notions that are dulled by the break of dawn. There is always disappointment that the daylight cannot deliver on the promise of your waking dreams.

By that afternoon I was crouching on the street in st kilda beneath a tangle of rain clouds & tramlines. I decided that you were too far away to remember. I would have to establish a new timezone to explain this absence to my body. I could not accept that we could possibly be in sync across this distance, that we could both be eating vegemite on toast together, but in different kitchens, in different cites, under different skies.

I have established various new timezones over the course of my life. The most successful of which was one I drew across your face, a line starting at the tip of your left ear and finishing at the tip of your right ear. This created a situation where each time you closed your eyes the sun would set. Each time you opened them a new moon would rise.

For the st kilda timezone I used a small polaroid camera and a street directory. I took photocopies of every page in the directory that incorporated either of our names. This included last names, middles names, nicknames and abbreviations. I placed all of the relevant maps side by side in a tessellated pattern. I used the polaroid to capture our new city. I could see the streets gradually developing like glimmers of fish beneath the water. The time would never change in this city. We would throw away all the clocks.