Waiting for Dinny
The Age
Friday April 2, 2010
RECENTLY I booked a trip to Paris, but I don't remotely want to think about it. I don't like wishing away time by looking forward to the future. The present is enough to contend with and is always all that matters. Anticipation I have trouble with. The tension between what will happen and what will not, removes me from the here and now, where I want to be. It takes me into unknown territory, which is what Paris is to me.I am going to Paris for the usual reasons €” to feel, to see, to just be. I want to reread Rainer Maria Rilke's fascinating The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in its setting. First published in 1910, its wonderfully sardonic first line is, "So this is where people come to live; I would have thought it is a city to die in." According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, "Rilke's Paris was not the belle epoque capital steeped in luxury and eroticism; it was a city of abysmal, dehumanising misery, of the faceless and the dispossessed, and of the aged, sick, and dying. It was the capital of fear, poverty, and death."Rilke explores love, death, childhood fears and how we experience time. His narrator is Malte, an impoverished young foreigner, the lonely occupant of a Paris hotel room. I adore Malte's ability to wait without anxiety. Wanting to turn his observations into art he stays superbly calm, maintaining a perpetual state of postponement, like a perfectly held breath.Patience is a virtue I do not possess. Immersing myself in the present I somehow manage to cope, but I have now encountered an unexpected problem to do with longing. Whenever I miss the Greek island of my birth, I reach for the internet and through the magic of a strategically placed public webcam, I am almost there. I can gaze over the large Venetian Square where I played as a child, see behind it the curved azure horizon against the sky's softer blue, follow a small white sailboat as it stutters its way across the Ionian Sea.Internet webcams are an armchair traveller's voyeuristic bonanza. You can "experience" the French Alps, stare at Egypt's pyramids or look out from the Sydney Harbour Bridge. One day, after screen-ogling my beloved island, I chance a peek at some Paris webcams. I find a panoramic view of the City of Light overwhelming, so I search for someplace I can more easily imagine myself into, possibly even visit if my desire is piqued. And so I come across a webcam overlooking a shiny wet courtyard, dark and empty. This evocative, melancholy vision quietly stirs me. A few days later I return and see the courtyard bathed in sunshine, teeming with people. Weaving its way between them is a black dog, chin raised, apparently happy. I quickly switch off my computer.This Paris webcam spies a cobblestone courtyard surrounded by a grand 17th-century building housing the popular dance school Le Centre de Danse du Marais. I smile at the thought of notoriously rigid-hipped Parisians learning the tango or salsa, attempting African dance and hip-hop. I imagine world music escaping through the windows, serenading those in the outdoor cafe. The screen refreshes and I notice that the black dog is gone.I lost my penchant for pets a long time ago. It is enough to lose people. Disappearing animal friends can, for a shy and lonely schoolboy at least, prove too much. I gave up on dogs after my black labrador Dinny ran away. I waited at our front gate till darkness fell but he did not return. I loved him beyond words and could not fathom why he would do such a thing. The scars he left are long and deep.The dog in the courtyard is a dead ringer for Dinny. When I first saw him I instantly felt the thump and sting of rediscovered hurt. I picked at the wound, casually watching the courtyard every few days, telling myself I was checking the Paris weather. But the webcam does not catch the sky so my reasoning is flawed. In truth I return to see the black dog, because in my mind it is, or has to some extent become Dinny. I feel vaguely entitled, for my squinting at the grainy screen has yet to reveal a collar. I see him almost daily through cyberspace. At other times I think of him often. I worry when he does not show. What is more, I wait for Dinny, sometimes for hours. And when he arrives, the fear in me goes.I collect screen snapshots of him. Here is joyous Dinny, playing with children; here is melancholy Dinny, lying nose to the ground; here is Dinny eating from a stranger's hand; and here he is, alone in the courtyard, looking up at the webcam.When I'm at my desk working, the live courtyard image flickers on my laptop. Watching one night I suddenly become disconcerted. On a sunny morning in Paris the courtyard is full of people. Dinny is there, running around. The webcam refreshes automatically every two minutes. Refresh €” the courtyard is empty. Refresh €” three people but Dinny is gone. Refresh - the courtyard is empty. Refresh €” it is still empty.Attempting to live diligently in the present teaches you not to think about time. So much can happen €” happens €” so quickly. In the infinite space of two minutes, everything can change forever. The regenerating webcam image becomes a nagging reminder of this. It makes the power of small time increments palpable and the significance of each isolated moment evident. Every two minutes a new reality is revealed. The screen refreshes and I yearn for Dinny to appear, especially after one of those long days when the small-minded, the selfish, the blind and the corrupt become too much to bear. When the world occasionally unsettles me, I worry for those I love, and for Dinny. Sometimes during a Melbourne day, when the courtyard is black with night and Paris sleeps, I wonder if Dinny is sitting there, invisible in the darkness.Like Malte, I prefer to remain serene yet receptive, to not pitch my thoughts too far forward. Except this one time. The dance school is situated in Le Marais, one of Paris's oldest districts, full of meandering narrow streets and old buildings which have become art galleries, boutiques and intimate cafes. The allure of its bohemian chic and creative vibe fosters an eclectic community. I want to be there, drinking coffee and ordering crepes in an old-fashioned French boulangerie, my well-worn copy of Rilke's only novel ready to be pulled from my bag and reread. I want to browse some of Paris's 792 bookshops, to visit the Picasso Museum, the Pompidou Centre and the Place des Vosges built by Henry IV in 1612.I sometimes let down my guard, allow my mind to drift, and find it has carried me all the way to Paris. I do hope I get there, for one never knows. I hope Dinny is there when I enter the courtyard. And if not, I know that I will stay there, waiting for Dinny to show.
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