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.