A New Three Laws of Motion

I night not tell you if I win the Prime Minister's Literary Award for Non-Fiction, but there will be signs.

Ha ha, I'm fully kidding. I did win it. The news was everywhere anyway. I was a push notification!

I've discovered in the course of this week that there is no tone that seems to adequately walk the line between gracious acceptance of massive, life-changing prize that also acknowledges the capricious nature of awards; no way to playfully embrace this wonderful news while also inhabiting my more usual Millennium Drought levels of self-esteem. I told a friend a variation of my longstanding refrain: I have the short term imposter syndrome of a writer and the long-term unearned, aggravating confidence of a journalist. Trying to praise me is like attempting to extinguish an oil fire with water.

Of course, people who cannot take a compliment are the most annoying people in the world, perhaps second only to people who think they will be the ones to successfully take a worthwhile picture of the moon on their mobile phone.

But this is not a post about the award, or how I feel about it. I feel good. And bad. Relieved and aghast. We shan't dwell on it, a brief nod is all that is required. Like passing a kangaroo on the side of the road at dusk we will slow down, acknowledge it – perhaps even lock eyes with the animal for a moment to will its fixity – and then keep driving, scanning ahead for unknown terrors.

I've started running outdoors in Paris more often now that the autumnal humours have set in. The air is taught, as cables on a suspension bridge, and there are so many flights over Paris that the vapour trails dissect the sky, when it is not drizzling rain at least. It's as if somebody has taken a box cutter to a blue cushion until the stuffing has come out; aviation as scalpel. The official end of summer was actually rather sudden, and brutal, and I found myself promising to take more advantage of the cool and clear days when they came back.

And then they came back and I rue-d so hard my feet almost fell off.

First I visited the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont which was created from an old quarry in 1867 under the city-shaping reign of Napolean III. Sidebar real quick. I always wondered about the second Napolean, of whom not a peep, and learned that poor old Napolean II, son of the little general, technically reigned as emperor as a toddler for two days in 1814 and then, on his father's return from his first exile a year later, for another 20 days and even then only in theory. Couldn't so much as parc his butte on a throne let alone remodel a city. He lived out the rest of his short days in Austria where he died, presumably with some relief, of tuberculosis at the age of 21.

Anyway, spectacular park from the cousin. It has a (real) suspension bridge leading over a lake to an island with a temple on it which sounds like the kind of place a storybook hero might get tricked into visiting by a cantankerous witch. Not me though. I'm built different. Also the bridge and temple are currently closed for maintenance and the Brothers Grimm don't fuck with that kind of realist civic horror. Shame, because Buses Replace Trains would curdle a few souls.

The problem with running outside in Paris is that one wants to keep stopping to take it all in. This is the opposite of running.

A few days later at the Jardin du Luxembourg I jogged past a pair of older women sitting on chairs surrounded by the broadening rust of autumn and decided that I simply had to take their picture. But I had only run 1.4km at that stage, far too little, and couldn't bring myself to stop. Instead, I hoped that they'd be still be there after another lap and ran the single fastest kilometre of my life in the process of getting back to them (5 minutes, 01 second for those not asking at home*). The women were still there, huddled over a brochure for a hammock (??) and I was grateful that my legs could carry me back in time.

*I beat this again on Friday when I ran 3km in under 15 minutes, two of which were under 5-minutes with the fastest being 4'45''

When I rested later, very near to the same spot, I noticed that I would occasionally end up in the background of other peoples' photos, too. I like it when there are figures in my photos for reasons of scale or, if they're putting on a coat walking down a dusk-lit street, flickers of action caught in time. A man reclined near an ornate fountain on his own, staring at the thing with a cigarette hanging limp from his right hand as ribbons of smoke coiled away from it. What was he thinking about? An argument he'd had with a lover? Restoring the grammatical integrity of the Romance Languages to vulgar Latin from shortly after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire?

Similarly, as I find myself in other peoples' photos, I try to inhabit the body of a mysterious man with unknowable thoughts. At the very least I endeavour to offer a figure in repose; an interesting shape or series of lines. I will not pick up my phone, for nobody wants photos of other people taking photos. A Klimt would just not feel the same if, somewhere in the background, a pair of arms hoisted an iPad.

I consider this situational awareness a basic kindness, and wish it were returned to me. Alas, this is not my journey.

This wasn't my first time at the Jardin du Luxembourg but it was the first time out of the white heat of summer, the light from which is bounced directly off the crushed gravel, sand and whitewash that covers the paths and back into the air such that a picnic in the park becomes a squinterie (as I imagine the French might call a store trading in squints) and nobody is quite sure where anybody else is or what, in fact, they are looking at. Also I was with friends and their two young children and we were largely preoccupied with making sure they didn't wander into a giant fountain. Keeping children away from renaissance art is a form of renaissance art, as it happens.

In autumn, however, your senses are totally arraigned before the court. Heightened, as it were, by the impending trial of noticing things. In the late afternoon tracts of light that cut across various parts of the gardens the Parisians – for I was certain they were all Parisians – had collected chairs to line the sides of the footpaths and they read. Books and newspapers, or each other. But they read. I am convinced that no one else in the world can sit like a Frenchman. It is a way of being, mastered and deployed with the confidence of a people who have been sitting for thousands of years. I think it might have something to do with all the statues. The Italians could have been better at it, were it not for the need to talk with their entire bodies.

As much as I might try to augment the background styling of a stranger's photo by composing myself, it is all artifice. You can tell I am Australian because I am sorry about it. Not actually sorry, for Australians are never actually sorry, but chastened.

One way around this elegant sitting business is to keep moving. C'est moi. I sit, for a time, and then become self-conscious. Can't run forever, can't sit forever. But a secret third option. Walking. In the event, I do know I walk better than the French. A gay man transcends borders and always walks with purpose, even when he is void of one. I've often thought that if walking nowhere in particular, but as if one simply must arrive at nowhere in particular as soon as possible, then I would win. If I'm actually trying to get somewhere I almost never arrive. Which is why I love the French phrase j'arrive which means: I'm arriving but not quite there yet.

J'arrive, I whisper to myself. Works across the many theatres of life.

David Hockney, who spends a great deal of time noticing light and colour as I suppose one must in his line of work, likes to discuss the beginning of a Wallace Stevens poem called The Man With the Blue Guitar by way of explaining how our minds perceive the world. It begins:

The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, "You have a blue guitar,

You do not play things as they are."

The man replied, "Things as they are,

Are changed upon the blue guitar."

Almost Platonic, really, but without the naff hierarchy of perfection. Autumn is in the city, and the city is changing. I am in the city, and I am changing.

J'arrive.

Over the fence is another strip of parkland that runs up to the Paris Observatory – alright fine, L'Observatoire de Paris – which takes the occasionally long naming conventions of French to a satisfying level with its title: Le Jardin des Grands Explorateurs Marco Polo et Cavelier de la Salle. By the time I turned up the sun was rendering all about into richer shades, the light itself honey-coloured by the bronzed rows of horse chestnut trees that line either side of the garden.

Behind a statue of a man and a woman by the sculptor Gustave Crauk, called Le Crépuscule, a boy was hiding from another down the way who is peering out from behind an ornate column. The flowers are still in bloom. The photo I took is one of my favourite photos I have ever taken, I think. I can't exactly say why. Hockney will tell you at length that no photo ever really captures anything. Not things as they are, in any case. He likes to blend time when he paints, showing the ripples of water from a dropped stone over more than one moment but in a single image.

In a way, though, time is blended here, too. Seasonally, of course. And figuratively. The statue's name translates to twilight and there are three others in the park named for dawn, day and night.

Everything is always arriving.

Addenda

'But please refrain from using metaphors'

When I am not hyperventilating about the correct form of motion for an afternoon in one of the many beautiful gardens of Paris, or raiding the bistros of this great city for chardonnay, I can be found at my local cafe sipping on a flat white and pretending to work.

I've made friends there, even. Mostly with the dogs. Hudson is one of them. He's going away, though, until January. With his family, I believe is what his owner meant, not that she thought I didn't understand illness and death and was trying to protect me from the harsh fact of mortality. Also imagine if you told your kids their dog, who has died, has gone to a farm but only until January. That would make me think you don't understand death.

Anyway, how did I end up here. The cafe. I've made friends with the baristas (or at least they are very nice to me and I am nice to them) and after several weeks of being routine table neighbours a guy called Bartholomew who has an impressive colour-coded system for organising his various hard drives and a friendly vibe. He sings in a band called Mandelbro and also writes and shoots video. We have taken to discussing our various creative projects although, for what it is worth, he is actually doing his. Me, not so much. The other day, having left the cafe to go on my late morning errands (including my routine near 3km circuit around and over the big hill) I was walking back past the coffee house with my beautiful basil plant, pictured earlier. Bartholomew was still at his regular table by the window so, without so much as thinking about it, I raised the plant to cover my face and stopped on the foothpath looking in. When he glanced up through the window, I whisked the plant away so he could see me, laughed and then kept walking.

I think this is why I find it difficult to make friends.

Anyway, my table buddy showed me Mandelbro's new music video / short film he wrote and directed (and stars in as a great professor type in a lab coat) and everything about it is just a god-damned tonic. The visuals, the acting, the music. Gorgeous. It's now online and if you want a six-minute escape from [gestures around] all of this, I cannot recommend it enough. Especially for two moments in particular, one of which has lent itself to the sub-heading of this update.

Final (For Now) Word on Awards and Things

This is mostly a shout-out to my wonderful family who, when I was finally able to tell them the day of the Prime Minister's Literary Awards, marshalled in their various locales to watch the live stream of the event. Mum went around to her friend Helen 'the human efficiency dividend' T's house to watch while my sister Loz popped the feed on her TV on the cattle station she now lives on in remote NT.

Mum sent this photo through:

Helen really loves that particular shade of green on the back of the chair, for what it's worth. She might be the only one in the known universe. She also likes frogs, though, so we can get behind it.

My sister sent a video of my speech during the livestream and the moment my nephew Hugh realised his uncle was on the television. He paused for half a beat and then pointed and said 'Ricky!' And then he said it again: 'Ricky!' And then he ran over to the TV so fast he ran into the cabinet and fell over and then got up to stare at me. My heart!

Just about the cutest thing I ever did see.

I can't figure out how to host the video of my speech if you're interested in it. We only had a minute which was a creative challenge and, as always, one has so much to say. If you're desperate, and I'd suggest you might be if you're in this boat, then you can watch the whole ceremony here. Actually I'd recommend it for Michelle de Kretser and Geraldine Fela's speeches in particular.

And, finally finally, I heard this week that Mean Streak has also been longlisted for the Walkley Book Award alongside seven other tremendous titles. This will get whittled down to a shortlist of three soon and I do not envy the judges' work in this regard. I'm just happy this book is getting all its little stickers. I'm a deadset sucker for a sticker.

I'm Now a Nancy Drew

This just tickled my funny bone. I joined my (now independent!) friends and former colleagues again on 7am to discuss my latest The Saturday Paper piece about a particularly mysterious case involving university governance, a restructure and a missing spreadsheet. The title they gave it is A+.