This Is What You Get

How quickly life falls into routine. Runs towards it without a moment to stop and digest what was, and how abrupt the change. How can everything around me suddenly seem exactly the same, when inside I feel so different? 28 years of travel, and I haven't learned my lesson.

My warm skin has disappeared since I returned, tan lines long since lost to layers. I even sleep in long sleeves and forget what lies beneath. My hair is covered by thick knits, my fingers, my feet. My accent returns to its comfort zone, my pace quickens again to its familiar rush. The simple joys of new discoveries seem buried under a mound of gray snow. You can run forever but at some point you will be stuck in the slowest check-out line at the grocery store and a heavy dread will catch up to you. There is nowhere to turn. Australia feels a hundred years away and there is nothing to do but wait patiently and pay up when the register rings. You can never go back, only forward, onward, and hope that something just as delicious will appear around the bend.


I miss the feeling of you on my skin. I wish I remembered how it felt.

New York, New York.

The dog smells of winter and burning woodchips. The streets are slow, navigating mounds of slush and deceptive pools of icy water. The snowfall picks up again. After hours of Brooklyn laughter, I made my way down Hudson Street to nestle in my jet lag and my home. White Horse lay quiet and cosy on its streetcorner, the bright red sign like a beacon of familiarity through the falling flakes. Last night, by the time I was on that E train riding towards Manhattan, the car filled with so many different types of people, all united by their place in the city, already I felt at home. Already, the beautiful trip of sunshine and new faces, of family and escape from reality, was dripping off my skin and disappearing into the gutter. How quickly it happens, and I almost wasn't sad to see it go.

Hours later, unable of course to sleep despite the promising start, I lay in my own bed, in my own sheets, with orphan puppy nestled into my armpit, tickling me with her content, deep breaths, devouring music like I had been starved for a month. (I suppose, in a way, I had). I could barely force myself to wait out one song before jumping to the next, trickling through playlists like they were Baskin Robbins flavors handed out on plastic trial spoons, letting each one slide down my taste buds and fulfill my senses before it was gone and I was on to the next.

Perhaps, tomorrow, I will remember what I until so recently had, that my feet danced on Australian soil and my life had not a care in the world. But as my Home seeps in to my pores and words yet again run rampant through my head, I can't help but giggle, my heart can't help but sigh. That is the magic, of home.

That is the magic, of New York.

And So.

Hands gestured on the sandy shore. Fingers pointing at wrists and imaginary watches. Time to go. I began to walk slowly to where the bodies were waiting. Leave the ocean once and for all. Wrap up. Say your goodbyes and return to the cold from whence you came.

I caught a surf the last few feet, tumbling awkwardly onto the shallow edge. Ungraceful last words. But then how hard to get out of that water, how difficult to take the last step. I turned around and ran straight back into the sea, diving with ferocious eagerness into the crashing wave and swimming, swimming back out. Just one more dive. I dipped my head under the surface, let my legs kick into the air and push me down to the rough sandy bottom, swimming through wave after wave. I'd come up for air and dive again into the warm water, immersing myself not only in its soft wetness but in all that it has meant to me these last weeks. Every time I tried to get up I ended up running right back out, like a lover torn from her object of affection at the airport gate and unable to leave without just one last kiss, one last violent embrace. But once more is never enough. I never will have had enough.

Bags lie packed in a hotel room outside Adelaide. Bottles of wine, trinkets of memorabilia and sandy beach towels fill suitcases, while piles of warm winter clothing lie ready for travel. The end is nigh. A month of Australia dries on my skin, mingles with the salty sea, the sand between my toes, with white eyelashes and brown shoulders. A month of Australia lingers in my accent, the slowness of my step, the quickness of my smile.

They say in New York another snow storm has shut down the city. I arrive thus like I left, amidst flurries of uncertainty in the remnants of winter's havoc. It seems fitting somehow. New York does not ease you into anything. You should be glad it lets you back in at all after such an abandonment. I take a deep breath. Start over.

Go Home.

Reception Lost

It is half an hour before our receiver can pick up any signal to get us to the internet. Four adults in a parked car on a street somewhere in South Australia, a computer in each lap, quietly busily whiling away precious minutes with the outside world.

The days in between are spent in the hammock, on a hike, watching dolphins, writing television, watching the sun set from a panorama window, taking pictures, getting angry, getting giddy, sleeping soundly, showering outdoors from the rainwater tank, mentally preparing for a day when this is all over.

Surprisingly, none of these days are filled with words. Surprisingly, my pen lies still by my bedside table. And however much I love this trip, part of me misses the person bursting with words. Part of me misses me.

I cannot now comprehend the sadness of leaving this land. But I anxiously await the happiness of homecoming. If I don't write another letter until then, I don't think it matters, in the end.

Unhappy Hipster

Every inch of the house looks like an image from an urban architect magazine describing hip rural living. I giggle at my own captions before diving into a 1000-piece puzzle with my mother. Me, laying puzzles. Unheard of. This is vacation, what it does to you. As the car gets packed up with technical gadgets and telephones for a trip to the civilized world, I stay behind, turn up the sound system, and let my soul pour its heart out.

It seeps into the cracks of the hardwood floor. It trickles out onto the porch in the afternoon breeze. It spreads across the olive trees, the birdbath, the yellow fields and the ocean below. I sing along to the music until my chest trembles, I pretend to lie down in the hammock but my legs long too much to run.

I know my return looms in the suddenly much nearer future. I know I need to start working, catching up, getting back in touch with those back home who expect my correspondence and my schedules. A large part of me misses New York something terrible and cannot wait to run through its streets again, back in the company of those I love. The word begins to rummage about my bowels, asking but a minute of my time, asking to come to the surface. But for now, how sweet it is. Just to revel in this land, this air, this sun.

How did life get so good?

Mantra

Every morning a new pillow, a new layout for the mapping. We wait for our next flight and cannot for the life of us remember if we’ve been there before. In thirteen years too many places seen and every ocean looks the same. This looks like that time I was living in Spain. This looks like when we drove through California. Tastes like chicken. Remember?

And still all I keep thinking is how little of this world I’ve seen. How short the life and how long the road.

If I want to see it all, I’ve no time to settle.

I’m grateful the question's been put to rest.

Civilisation

Once again tall buildings, wide streets. Unknown people and sprawling suburbs. We spend a relaxing evening with friends by the barbecue, chatting away the hours in our quaint and relaxed settings while the sun sets on beautifully groomed plumerias and quietly landing airplanes.

The warm water of Darling Harbour trickles through my lungs and revives me again. I miss the ocean the minute I get out. It occurs to me again that I am not cityfolk. It has been occurring to me for the past three decades.

It doesn't make me love New York any less.

I suppose, in the end, that's the trouble.

On Travel

We rescued a frog in our bathroom today; my mother suspected it came out of the drain. I stepped outside the house several times to follow the nightly feeding of a giant spider who’d caught a dragonfly in her net. When I stuck my head out from under the roof to get a different view I nearly collided with another of its kind. Their webs span entire stretches of the yard. At dusk, the bush comes alive with kangaroos and birds and other wildlife; Seventh Avenue seems quiet and calm in comparison.

Overall, Seventh Avenue feels terribly far away. Like a dream I had of another life, and then you wake up in the morning in your real world and can’t believe how lifelike it all seemed. I saw a picture of Greenwich Village houses along the West Side Highway in a magazine today and couldn’t quite comprehend that that was my city as well. My accent changes slightly to adhere to local standards; these round American words that come out normally don’t quite seem to fit. I imagine that this is my life, this is my home, and the thought isn’t entirely farfetched. If an Australian voice only spoke softly enough into my ear I believe I could be convinced to stay.

Perhaps such is the magic of travel. A reminder of possibilities unrealized, a reminder of dreams within reach. I could get rid of all my things, I could get up and go. I long to clean out my fifty square feet and prepare to pounce. I long to be ready. If someone, anyone, said Let’s go, I’d be out the door in a heartbeat.

Although the tradeoff would have to be something immensely appealing.

Australia, darling, when will you tell me let’s go?

On Sand

Beaches. Stretching into foreverness, beaches. Miles of sand, squeaky sand under my toes and we never reach the end of it. We pass by the beach with the lifeguards; it is crowded. We learn to read the rip tides and stay on our unprotected stretches in solitude. It will tug at you, but if you survive, you are glad you went there.

We move in to the only inhabitable restaurant and bar in town; when they try to close up, we try to order another bottle. We end up bringing it with us when it's too late to stay: how young the bartenders. This is youth; we are too old to do it over. Stepping lightly onto the beach in the dark, we bring our screw cork with us, and the light house in the distance guides us. Somebody has built a fire but we stay in the black ink of our corner, drinking dredges and filling our clothes with sand. Bruises appear on my body but laughter bubbles in my chest. How dark the night, how light the evening.

If I could stay in this alternate reality forever, perhaps I might. Perhaps I should have, when the chance was offered.

What I've learned so far, is it's never too late to take your chances. It's really only you, who stand in your way.

Aftermath

Vacation turns my mind to mush, words trickling out of the back of my head and I can't remember there was ever a story I wanted to tell.

But I read through words already written, unedited scribbles in a long scroll, large icebergs of tales longing to be melted and merged into one continuous whole, and I can't help but feel I am onto something.

My body revels in Australia. My skin darkens, my body wears itself out in the currents, my mind relaxes from its obsessive grasp on reality, and I am content.

But I read through words already written, and they remind me of their sparkle, of my incessant love for them. Vacation is beautiful, living out here could save my life, but oh, how New York carries the sparkle. Oh, how New York is home.

Sentiment

"If the world weren't such a beautiful place, we might all turn into cynics."
-P. Auster, Moon Palace

Tides

And then the clouds cleared, the sun returned and all was well with the world. I forgot my concerns, my impatient pacings around the living room carpet, and threw myself into the sea again with a laugh. We sat on the neighbors' balcony and let the sun set over the beach, over the cicadas in the bush; I forgot there was ever rain.

But sleep was short, before the storm raged through my open windows and woke me. Hours pass and I find no rest. My teeth worry me, my life worries me. I am wide awake and hungry.

It's such a cliché. How my mood rises and falls with the movements of the clouds. I hang on for dear life.

What other option is there?

Twist

It rains. Tiny, slow droplets descend like tropical mist onto the trees, the house. Hours pass slowly, and still much too quickly. I think of returning to New York and dread the thought. How pleasant to linger in the dream. My skin tastes salty, sand and seaweed mingle in my hair.

I was giddier when I was younger. Am I too old for sparks and stardust, now?

Bright Lights, Big City

A soft rain crawls through the valley. The sea is warm but tempestuous; my swim is unusually short. I dive instead into the pile of books I brought. Already, too few remain to sustain me. I pretend to ration them, knowing full well I am bound to fail.

I read over my journal, instead, trying to make sense of the months and the year that have passed. I realize large parts of them were omitted. Heart-wrenching episodes ignored, and I hypothesize that, being left un-recorded, in time they will become untrue. Good riddance, perhaps, if it is that easy.

In my latest book, so many familiar street corners. The Village butcher still run by the same name. The bar unfazed by the years. New York is constantly changing, ever a tide of people and places eventually swept out to sea and replaced, but it is still, perpetually New York. I take more comfort in that fact than in any other constant in my life. There aren't that many to begin with.

Now I am here. Wasn't I just in Times Square? he asks from the other end of the earth. As the days turn to months and to another year, I wonder if he will begin to doubt, if his life here will become untrue. Years from now, New York will fade into a distant memory. Will he know it from a trick of the lights?

Good riddance, perhaps, if it is that easy.

New South Wales Nights

A day of bad weather, but all is relative and the sun still shines for half of it, the breeze is still warm and gentle. The beach empties of all but the surfers, some people have proper jobs and pack up, the holidays over. I sit in a plastic chair behind the house with my own words, trying to edit, trying to do something useful with this time spent out of the water. But my brain will not function.

Somehow everything took a vacation and all we do is sleep. At nine-thirty I am fighting to stay up, and I forget what my normal evenings look like in their refusal to tire. I revel in the luxury, but something in me begins to itch. I haven't a word to mull over, I haven't a thought that cares enough to be processed. I am empty, and when there is time to contemplate that, I miss it. Perhaps I have to sink slowly to the bottom of this delicious, sandy, salty, breezy, warm space, before I can wind my way out of it.

It's not a bad place to be, while waiting.

TwentyEleven

The night seemed so endless; we couldn't make it to midnight but collapsed in a cocktail of jetlag and exertion hours before the bubbly was to be drunk. I awoke at the cusp of dawn, the sky a fiery red over restless waters and thought Happy New Year, then. The days all seem the same, after all.

My skin changes color, my hair. My back straightens in the fresh air and my mind unwinds. I forget what time it is and don't bother to find out. I exhaust myself in the tides, circle the computer but calmly. The sights, the scents, the sounds, permeate my being until I dissolve into them and they flow unhindered through me.

Perhaps, perhaps I will pack my things together and come here. How many years have I already dreamed it? How real the possibility seems when my feet are already planted on this earth. A new year begins, a socially constructed clean slate, to match the blank page of this journey. I think It is possible and consider my options, while my sister pleads with me to not run to the ends of the earth. I suspect this place has been calling me forever.

New Year. New You. New experiences on the horizon. New opportunities to do that which you did not before. We are not too old. We are not too late.

Now is the time for revelling in the life you've let yourself build.

Now is the time, to live.