Australia // Sydney - New Year's Eve 1963: The Bogle–Chandler case, part 1

-- My sToRy -- 

Buongiorno mondo! It is such a long time since I last spent a word on my lovely Sydney.

I miss you every now and then ... I can't believe it was 5 (almost 6) years ago...

Tonight, I'd love to talk about a particular district of Sydney - The Rocks...

I won't tell you about the history of this area, maybe in a later post, I'd rather tell about the lives of the people there. Margaret Chandler. 

'I believe we secretly love each other'

The Rocks - Summer 1962

Margaret Chandler

With one hand to Joe and the other to the bag, Margaret was struggling to walk through the crowd. Her heart was beating too fast to catch what was happening. 

Geoffrey, her husband, might have been late that night for dinner and she desperately needed him to be there. He was a researcher at the CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, just at the very beginning of his career. 

Margaret was a housewife, bringing up their children, taking care of their house... well she knew how to 'behave'. 

Her heart was now up her throat.

'It struck me that perhaps a lot of the people you see walking about are dead. We say that a man's dead when his heart stops and not before. It seems a bit arbitrary.' - G. Orwell, Coming Up for Air

"Haaaah", Joe and Kathrine were fighting and her head was too noisy to catch what was happening.

She turned on the TV and finally she managed to be there. 

She saw her slender figure walking with Joe among the crowd only a few moments ago and she realized in that moment what was all that mess: WOMEN RIGHTS FOR A BETTER FUTURE. Well, she might have spent a word on that too. 

Their house started to become claustrophobic. The life of a housewife was not really what she was dreaming of. 

Acting - That was her ambition. But Geoffrey didn't seem to like it that much, so she just went on...

till one day... 

it was pouring with rain... Joe and Kathrine were at her mother's place.. she was bored of that rain... she entered the Governor Hotel for something strong. 

A voice from the back: "Margaret..Don't drink alone. People always find out, and it ruins a reputation"

Margaret: "Oh, Gilbert..." - Gilbert to the bartender "Nevermind.. I'll take the same".

Gilbert Bogle was physicist at the CSIRO. He was a colleague of Geoffrey.

They spent a good two hours in front of their margaritas... talking about everything... It was like fresh air for Margaret. She would have never left ... but the children were waiting for her. 

Walking back home ...  the sound of his voice coudn't leave her. 

[to be continued...]

'There are a lot of people like that. Dead minds, stopped inside. Just keep moving backwards and forwards on the same little track, getting fainter all the time, like ghosts.' - 

G. Orwell, Coming Up for Air

Italy // Capalbio - How Niki came back, Part 2

June 1983, Florence - platform no. 9

"Painting calmed the chaos that shook my soul."

I love looking outside the train windows. Even if I usually have work to do.

I love trees, grass, houses...that run away. They are so fast, while I am just sitting in my train compartment. 

At that thought... I stood up all of a sudden. 

I had the urgency to move in the movement of the train. 

So I walked through the sliding doors, as if I were chasing after something.. till the handle of my bag got stuck in those unfriendly dirty doors. I pulled .. I walked on... memories came flooding back.

Never mind I didn't have much time to think.. 

That day I had to make some studies for my book .. I ended up into a waiting room of my physiotherapist and I saw her.

Here it is

That was her name. 

Niki de Saint Phalle... almost 20 years later and again that face. 

I was curious. 

I grasped the art magazine and looked for her page:

An Artist, Her Monsters, Her Two Worlds

I ripped out the article.

At home I started reading:

"LUNCH is about to be served at the country home of Niki de Saint Phalle, and there is a worm on her chair. "Yeuuch," the French-American artist says, recoiling in horror. "Do you think you could remove that?"

It is a modest worm, quite still in the summer sun. When one remembers that this is an artist who created a sensation in the early 1960's by firing a gun at her canvases in performances [...] and who has since sculptured myriad serpents and many-headed monsters, the creature appears risibly innocuous. But there is genuine alarm in Ms. Saint Phalle's cavernous blue eyes. 

"I tend to paint things I am terrified of," she says. "Worms, snakes, spiders, that kind of thing."

I fell asleep with my cup of tea still full. I never finished to read that article the day but the thought of that female figure with short-fringe hair couldn't leave me.

[end of part 2, to be continued...]

Italy // Capalbio - How I met Niki, part I

April 1955 - Barcelona, platform no. 23

The train was early that day. For sure not me being late ;) I jumped on it..just in good time..so in time that my luggage got stuck halfway through the train door.

Funny.

I was sitting on the floor..struggling with my bag and my thoughts... "my life is quite often stuck halfway through something..cannot explain how" - I smiled.

I stopped pulling and in that moment - with my back leaning on the toilet door - I decided just to enjoy watching my bag halfway through. Inhaling something new.

Exciting.

In that very moment the toilet door opened. My back was now down to the floor...

A female figure came out with short-fringe hair. Graceful manners. She helped me to stand up and called the train conductor to get my bag unstuck and she walked away.

Hypnotic.

I finally took my stuff and and got to my seat. The woman I met before was sitting right at the window of my compartment. She was reading some international newspapers and out of a sudden she started saying loudly:

"Come early tomorrow, for we shall do very beautiful things". She looked at me.

"Pardon", I whispered.

She continued. "Gaudì said that in one of his last days just outside the Sagrada Familia". She smoked.

Majestic.

I couldn't help watching her. She looked like lost in her thoughts...yet talkative. "A fatal tram accident killed him... I often wonder about life, creative intelligence, sensitivity, coincidences, moments of impact..", she continuted. "As our meeting outside the toilet...a few moments ago...you know.. I can see people", and still..

"Do you know Parc Güell?". I nodded. 

"I want to build something like that one day". 

Next stop Marbella. Next stop Marbella. [voice-over]

She threw her cigarette, took her bag and left the compartment. My eyes followed her silently from the window. She suddenly came back and said: "Niki, Niki de Saint Phalle, nice to meet you. Please... come early tomorrow, for we shall do very beautiful things..". 

She turned her back and left. 

[end of part I, to be continued]

Australia // Sydney - The Baxter Inn

Some folks call her a runaway
A failure in the race
But she knows where her ticket takes her
She will find her place in the sun - T. Chapman

I am not actually a whisky drinker, but after this post I think I'll try to gain some knowledge about that. At least because I know a few whisky lovers who told me it is something worth a try.

If we think well... history is plenty of famous whisky drinkers, such as Bill Murray, Frank Sinatra, the baseball legend Babe Ruth, Margaret Tatcher, Humphrey Bogart, Winston Churchill, Walter Scott, Mark Twain.... I could go on like this for several lines... I guess.

Today I want to tell you about a very nice place I was once in Sydney: The Baxter Inn.

You wouldn't know this place was here unless someone told you about it. At the time it was my friend Nicolas, now it's my turn to inform you about its existence.

The entrance was already a nice adventure... you know it looks like one of those weird places you are not supposed to enter unless you are in search of some troubles... well something like that :)

You go down this alley off Clarence street, through a tatty door with no sign at all, walk down some narrow stairs and through an old cellar... you really think you have got to the wrong place but after opening an old door.. you will feel like Alice in Wonderland. I felt in this way.

Alice: How long is forever? 
White Rabbit: Sometimes, just one second.

You enter another world. Crazy.

The first thing I noticed was the wall full of bottles of whisky. The menu board starts at the very top of the ceiling and it sneaks down under the counter and it goes even further.

The second thing were the well-coiffed bartender, simply magic.. they were definitely belonging to another time...though from today (see their "pants"). They look like they have just stepped out of the Great Gatsby movie.

The atmosphere was amazing, people everywhere, top shelf music.... in a perfect prohibition-era style.

If you go to Sydney, please have a look to this place.

You will find it here > Basement 152-156
Clarence Street, Sydney 2000

It's all for now. A big big hug :)
[ed. remember the healing power of hugs / if everything looks hard, go and hug ;) - oh... well... soon after the covid-19]


“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.”

- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby