The central metaphor for this long weekend and quite possibly our lives turned out to be a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle someone found in a draw with some other old games. According to the image on the box, the puzzle was of Sydney Harbour. We gravitated towards the dining table that night, for the purposes of drinking wine and vodka, while we talked and began sifting through the mini landfill of puzzle pieces which had been dumped out on the table as a joke. But later, the moment came when, one by one, we had to acknowledge the fact that we'd all become inexplicably obsessed with the completion this puzzle.
If this were a novel or a collection of interconnected short stories about us, about our weekend and lives, the house and the beach would make for a good Australian setting, someone concluded, as our hands moved the pieces across the varnished table top.
At night, the windows of this rented beach house turned black and the crashing surf produced a continual roar of white noise. During the day colourful hang gliders were visible above the headland, corkscrewing slowly down on thermals to land on the beach. The house itself was situated in a shaded gully bursting with spiky subtropical plants. The road led down to the beach and in the other direction, to the shops up on the main highway. Cans of fizzy drink, pies, dream-catchers and lumpy pottery objects produced by a local artist could be purchased here from 9 until 4. We’d brought our own supplies down from the city. We had overstocked the house with grog and food.
At night, when not consumed with the puzzle, we watched reality TV and tried to play 'Crimes Against Humanity'. We watched a show in which people bought cramped but expensive homes in the British countryside. Real people who changed into television characters. These TV couples craved the kind of light and space us city dwellers could only dream about. Or rent for the odd weekend here and there. For me, balancing out this fantasy of leaving the big smoke behind was the fear that the country might be stupefyingly dull. Four days was one thing...but for the rest of your life?
We drank, ate and swam. We swam in the rock pools. The plunge into the cold salt water felt like electricity licking your skin head to toe. The sudden immersion made your heart shiver violently inside your chest. To get back to the carpark, we had to traverse rocks and sand. Small creatures turned like soft gears in the tidal pools between these rocks. The land was in pieces, being broken apart, a geological puzzle, right down to the granular level. These tiny pieces ended up back in the rental house collecting near the drain at the end of our hot showers.
We read fashion magazines and books. We looked at our stupid phones. We cooked meals. But mainly it was about the puzzle. About pattern recognition. About sorting and organising the pieces of one's life into some kind of recognisable order. The collective assembly of corresponding shapes and edge pieces. People trading stories as they tried to work out the tacky big picture.
We joked about how wild we were, with our reduced calorie intake and our metered out drinks. Every top up was carefully itemised and translated into the seedy language of the following day's hangover. We tried to adjust severity through hydration. We joked about our exciting holiday puzzle. Crazy right?
People came and went. Friends with their kids. A teenage brother and sister who looked down at the puzzle taking shape on the dining table and smiled politely at our misplaced enthusiasm.
The image of the Harbour Bridge, of Luna Park and of the apartments clustering the North Shore had taken shape by that point. The clouds and the rippled harbour waters were proving to be far more difficult. A ferry occupied a single puzzle piece but resisted being fitted into its proper position.
We talked about our relationships as we worked. Past and present. About the interlock dynamics of males and females working together, trying to make a combined life. Minor tensions mounted and abated. People checked their messages and talked about how grateful they were to escape the evil rat race. A fat possum appeared on the deck looking for handouts.
On Sunday, the puzzle was nearing completion. The sky was still proving to be a challenge. All that flat, ozone depleted New South Wales blue just wouldn't cooperate and come together. To the left of the Bridge, you could make out the Opera House like a pile of sharp bones. We talked about the missing pieces of our lives. The jobs we wanted. The pipe dreams we'd abandoned. The unfulfilled creative pursuits. The places we still wanted to see. The missing children. The houses we wanted to build. The doors that were already shut.
On the final morning, we had to clean the place up and repack our bags. The puzzle was complete minus one fucking piece which some of us looked for, flipping the lounge cushions over, getting down on our hands and knees, peeling back the rug, opening the vacuum bag before finally giving up. Even though we joked about it, the sense of disappointment was surprisingly real. There was a hole up in the sky, floating up above the Bridge. The metaphor had extended itself in an unforeseen way. The picture would remain incomplete. And maybe that was the point all along. The lesson we needed to learn.
We packed the luggage into the car. As instructed, the key was returned to the same spot under the pot plant.
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