sydney, the city, the emerald city is aptly named, it's stunning, watch the beautiful people adorn the beaches, the shopping is all glamorous marble malls and opulent window displays, everything here has a high price tag, even the $2 shop's are really $5 shops, the restaurants and bars packed with the eternally young wealthy sating an appetite that can never be met, a city that is good looking on the surface, sexy and expensive, glimmering with personalities and media grabs, everyone get's more than their fair share of 15 minites.
it wasn't always like this but the powers that be have turned sydney into the playground for the global rich. in sydney if your a banker, solicitor or real estate agent you are made, keys to the city, probably have good teeth and own at least two properties, one with a water view. 
well these young millionaires swarm the emerald city, and if they are not fabulously wealthy they are massively in debt, credit card eyeballs roll back with every chop it makes because cocaine is the urban poison of choice at this level, alcohol the one below.
every girl will whisper their secret desires when they are half naked, on their hands and knees, sucking a weekend line from their pocket mirror. they all want the sydney dream, to stay young and glam, to find a loaded cashed up uber rich man. to have the sex and the shoes that go with it, to star in their own soap opera, to drive the personalised number plate chic hybrid sporty 4 wheel drive, to be popular, desired and under the thin façade of some authentic sense of boredom they follow some spiritual wave but never disciplined enough for humility, the days spent sun baking on boats, the nights are champagne explosions, forging the memory with a movie like experience so far removed from any thing real, love becomes the cynics sword. 
yeah the emerald city of oz, superficial and over priced, spiritually bankrupt and corrupt to its shallow core. 
but like an inverse diamond the flawed city has some pockets of genuine beauty, it has light shining through the glamour, it's in the geography, and those in tune with it, you just gotta scratch away the surface sheen and get your fingernails dirty, you have to not look, you have to see.
i see you.
practice some detachment, avoid the cool and trendy fuckers, exhaust the hedonistic impulse unless it kills you, explore inner space, stay true to what you discover in your heart, acts of loving kindness open doors, it has currency you won't find on a stock market floor or in jimmy choo, it's all over sydney as the spirit fights back and it's guardians are the lovers, poets, the writers and musicians, the unholy, burning madmen, the jokers and the fools. and like every city that teems with people one has to find ones own tribe, and although mine is small it comprises of people whom have transcended the blind impulse of being something they are not. yeah i have some kooky friends, scattered throughout the place. down in south sydney val works deep in his laboratory, half evil genius, surrounded by chemistry sets and bass guitars, on the northern beaches are evan and gravy bones, completely unique and glorious individuals, true angelic beings. 
yeah a city is a city but when you have friends it's something else, a playground, medium, conduit, whenever i go out into sydney things happen, i meet someone, have an extraordinary experience, small interaction, a seed grows, chance encounters, serendipitous events, the dots connect, and after so many years a pattern forms, a picture reveals itself, sydney and i developed a relationship, i can access it, tap in to its information network just by walking the street, glebe point road, kings street, york street and the botanical gardens.
i'll often spend time in the bookshops of sydney, certain coffee shops, there's no uncertainty in sydney for me, i can travel through it's geography alone yet connected, people connect with me, strangers on a train, random encounters in the street, a throw away smile, a gaze across the road. sometimes i will loose myself in the gardens, down past the opera house, this is my favourite spot in sydney, summer time i will go with a book and just walk around looking at the trees and plants, watching bats, boats and people, caught up in the beauty of it all. sometimes i'll find a bench and sit and read until some one comes and joins me.
inside the emerald city, far removed from the world, a smug cocoon, amniotic fluid with beach and waves, yes sydney i am a child of the universe but on earth i inhabit sydney.