Dead Dad Dictum

  The joint was in my friend group for around 25 years, a rundown, ramshackle white weatherboard house opposite the beach in Narrabeen. Tenants came and went – and sometimes came back again, unable to resist the gravitational pull of cheap rent, a great location, an acceptance of personal quirks, and the idea anything was really possible.   On the odd occasion a spare room came up and a random moved in, they were quickly indoctrinated into our micro-lifestyle, its values, vices and ways of doing things. We called this ethos “NLEG”, the Narrabeen Lifestyle Exponents’ Guild, and it was built around the idea of courtesy, a concept underpinned by a belief that what goes around, comes around. If you were broke and waiting for payday, someone would sling you a beer, or a line or a cone, with no ledgers being kept. But you had to uphold your end of the bargain too, and offer courtesy to others when you could and they needed it. And while we were very liberal when it came to substance...

  I stood in the darkness looking out over the smooth, inky waters of Broken Bay, the streetlights on the headland at Palm Beach reflected below. I could make out the silhouettes of moored boats, some with illuminated cabins. “There are people in those yachts,” I thought, suddenly overwhelmed by the sheer mass of humanity. It hit me that every one of those folks has their own hopes, fears, and dreams for the future. We’re unique, but in some ways the same.   As I gazed at the streetlights across the water, the realisation came upon me: those lights spelled out a message from God, a personal communication from the creator to me.   I lingered a little longer in the shadows thinking about what I’d seen before walking back to the low stone wall at the West Head lookout where my friends sat passing a joint back and forth, chatting in low voices. My turn came around, I took a deep drag and held the smoke in my lungs before slowly exhaling. I didn’t tell my friends what had happ...