In a way it was the ideal timing for Gladys Berejiklian to leave office: just before Freedom Day, at a time when the people of New South Wales prepare for opening up, for haircuts, for weddings, for convivial gatherings in pubs where relieved hosts are stocking up on supplies. Dominic Perrottet was right to thank the people of the state he leads. It’s been their dedication to equity and an ingrained aversion to death and suffering that has brought us to this happy place, just a few short days away from liberty.
On LinkedIn I left unanswered a comment on a post a woman’d made about her time as Berejiklian’s speechwriter. Berejiklian was also in the habit of thanking people for doing the right thing. The LinkedIn comment came from an American who so deplored the lockdowns that he said our state was reviled Stateside, but when I went back to the page to find what he’d written later, days after I’d first read his words, they’d been deleted. I regretted his feelings of remorse because I wanted to be able to expose a brand of vacuous bravado – what we’d come to link with the orange liability – that’s tied to an idea of rights without responsibilities.
Never mind. It’s just my hunger to know why – like the thirst we experience when watching a crime drama involving death and destruction on Netflix – to give an outline to figures perceived peripherally in dreams, to put down in black and white a contour on the shoulders of which I can hang my wishes for a brighter future. My Transurban account shows no trips made in August and September as I didn’t use motorways during those weeks, so I still have a little over $50 in reserve to pay for a trip I plan to make this month to Richmond to visit my framers’ studio. Then I will go to Wollongong to pick up a painting.
Like everyone, I have things to do.
Comments