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Monday, March 10th, 2008
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7:11p - Lost time from the lovely Lex - left at Hoyts, Broadway*
Each week, a decorated matchbox with a tiny present hidden inside is left by a girl (and sometimes willing friends) somewhere in her travels. It's a random act of semi-artistic kindness aimed at disrupting someone's day in a tiny but positive way. That's if they dare to pick it up...
I remember the very first time I met Lex. March 2004, it was our first day studying fashion and textile design at UTS and we had both been placed in Group B. A group of about 20 of us sat around old wooden tables that had been cut into one too many times by wayward and overly enthusiastic Stanley knives.
Icebreakers and introductions ensued. I physically shuddered each time a girl said that she had a ‘passion for fashion’. And then it was Lex’s turn. ‘Hi, I’m Lex,’ she started, ending memorably with, ‘..and I don’t think I want to be a fashion designer because realistically, hardly any of us in this room will be.’ Insightful and to the point. Intimidatingly so.
Over the next year we would shuffle around each other in pattern making class, meet up occasionally at the ironing station in construction, eat lunch together in the hall between classes with another girl called Emily. We called ourselves the Seed and on my 20th birthday she brought me a rich square of chocolate cake and slipped me a hand drawn birthday card. It was a picture of a seedling.
I left uni and we lost contact for a while, one night meeting up for dinner in Chinatown. We have been inseparable ever since, star sisters living parallel lives, with our very own lexicon and matching pink star pajama pants. We draw and cook together, read, listen to music. We make each other themed talking tapes and eat milk and cookies sitting on the kitchen floor. We tell each other stories about our respective childhoods, we talk about relationships – prospective, current, dying and past – at length.
Lex is like the best friend you had in school – the one you want to share everything with, without inhibition. It feels natural to do everything and nothing together. You feel safer because you have another you.
And so the contents of her matchbox is so appropriate. Despite being an instinctive and incredibly talented illustrator (in first year fashion she was already being commissioned to draw for the final year collections) she returned the box filled with tiny leaves. To be released from a great height was the instruction. I tipped it out immediately, having spotted handwriting down the bottom. ‘How do we revisit the day when we first found these amazing?’
Thanks to her, I'm already back there.
x
* Fittingly after seeing Be Kind, Rewind. The sweetest movie I've seen in a while. Walked out smiling like an idiot.
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