Pieces of Wednesday

Waking up with the same headache that put you down is grossly unfair.

I follow Sam around the house chanting "Shame. Shame." He remains unrepentant concerning the dog poo he left on the back ramp.

Salicylic acid is not a lipid.

In the tree outside my bedroom window, a grey miner bird calls out. Again. And again. And again. And again. For hours. My headache beats with each cry. My headache too is annoyed by the bird.

In another room, a brief call to Malaysia.

The Unchanging Ginkgo

We had a Ginkgo biloba plant when I was a child. It sat in a pot on the front verandah by the door, where it was mostly neglected. It always fascinated me. A book on dinosaurs had told me that this was a relic of prehistoric times, that this plant was kicking around millions of millions of years ago with dinosaurs (everything is a dinosaur when you're a kid). It was a living fossil. 

This confused me to no end. I'd stare at this small plant which was shorter than I was and wonder how could it possibly be that old. Especially since it was dead, I mean, they'd found it in the fossil record. Maybe this was a cutting from some ancient behemoth ginkgo, but then, where was this monster dinosaur tree? How did such an incredible time-travelling plant end up on our front verandah? What if we killed it? Oh gods, what if we killed the living fossil? Took me rather a long time to realise that 'living fossil' simply meant it had not evolved from that form in the intervening millennia. Even the smartest of kids have - often peculiar - intellectual blindspots.

We did end up kill the living fossil. Poor plant.

Because of this misunderstanding I've always viewed the ginkgo with awe, and it is a plant that lends itself to awe with ease. Those leaves are so simple and elegant, reminiscent of nothing in the neighbouring yards or the school playgrounds. Their lack of complexity in form and placement evoke an era of evolution that is only visible to us in fossils. The hint of what is to come, what surrounds us now, in their texture.

As an adult, I appreciate the living fossil for what I perceive to be its stubborn indifference to the passage of time and the incredible changes wrought in the world around it. The supercontinent of Pangea no longer exists, but this plant does, unchanged. While its surrounding peers figured out how to do flowers - flowers! such complex, deceitful structures! - and changed their leaves and skin to suit the environment, the ginkgo just sat back and said, "Nah, I'm good." Admittedly, it's likely that the ginkgo is extinct in the wild and has survived these past centuries only due to the practice of planting them at temples and shrines, shared by many cultures around Asia.

This ginkgo tree is planted at the Tsurugaokuhachimangu in Kamakura, Japan. I visited in 2007, and did indeed get to see a ancient behemoth ginkgo. From the wiki:

The ginkgo that had stood next to Tsurugaoka Hachimangū's stairway almost from its foundation and which appears in almost every old print of the shrine was completely uprooted and greatly damaged at 4:40 in the morning on March 10, 2010. According to an expert who analyzed the tree, the fall is likely due to rot. Both the tree's stump and a section of its trunk replanted nearby have produced leaves.
The tree was nicknamed kakure-ichō (隠れ銀杏 hiding ginkgo?) because according to an Edo period urban legend, a now-famous assassin hid behind it before striking his victim.

...Oh. I wasn't aware the old fella had toppled. I'm glad its bits are thriving. It's around one thousand years old, which is breath-stopping to consider. Very glad I was able to see it whole and proud.

The assassination in question:

Under heavy snow on the evening of February 12, 1219 (Jōkyū 1, 26th day of the 1st month), shogun Minamoto no Sanetomo was coming down from Tsurugaoka Hachimangū's Senior Shrine after assisting to a ceremony celebrating his nomination to Udaijin. His nephew Kugyō, son of second shogun Minamoto no Yoriie, came out from next to the stone stairway of the shrine, then suddenly attacked and assassinated him in the hope to become shogun himself. The killer is often described as hiding behind the giant ginkgo, but no contemporary text mentions the tree, and this detail is likely an Edo era invention first appeared in Tokugawa Mitsukuni's Shinpen Kamakurashi. For his act Kugyō was himself beheaded a few hours later, thus bringing the Seiwa Genji line of the Minamoto clan and their rule in Kamakura to a sudden end.

One thousand years is a long time, but when considering a time line of 270 million years, a handful of centuries is nothing.

(When anthropomorphising Evolution as some sort of deity artisan, for which their every project is a work in project, forever being tinkered with, it's easy to imagine the ginkgo as a work that has sat forgotten on a shelf somewhere for the aeons of the planet's life, gathering dust but still perfectly functional, while Evolution considers the merits of iridescence in plant cells.)

When I spied this wee plant at the Growing Friends' Nursery Sale at the Botanical and Rare Plant Fair, I forgot all the other lovely plants I'd been eyeing off, picked it up, hugged it, and brought it home. A dinosaur plant of my very own! With such fine, healthy leaves, and that rich youthful colour!

I was told I shouldn't be buying trees, stop buying trees, Tessa we do not have any room for trees, but it was mine now. Mine mine mine. 

It has proved to be endlessly entertaining. Fast growing in the current heat, it gobbles up our ridiculously strong sun. Whereas eucalypts appear to have evolved leaves to mitigate the ferocity of the Australian sun (being largely scythe-shaped and hanging long and vertical, so that the high sun mostly hits their edges, and it is the morning and late afternoon sun which they make the most of), the ginkgo holds out its leaves like hands waiting for more. The birds leave it alone. The pests leave it alone. A small spider has made a home in a curl in the lower canopy. 

All the care guides I read indicated that the ginkgo does not take well to transplanting, and does not at all like having its roots disturbed. Moving it into its current pot was anxiety-inducing. I tried my best to remove the entire plug from its original bucket and not shift the roots at all, but that didn't happen. The soil slipped and everything fell apart in my hands, the roots wrenched about and naked and pretty much exactly what I was trying to avoid. Potted it up best I could, and for the next couple of weeks watched it like the natural worry-wort I am. 

I'm not sure what the fuss was about. This plant had exactly zero reaction to being repotted. Possibly its fussiness about its feet was overstated.

It's quite a communicative plant. It gets very, very sad when the soil is dry. It wilts. Not like most other plants, whereby wilting means a drooping of the leaves and stems. No, the ginkgo folds over entirely, like a toddler putting on a show, like a melodramatic pout, like there is no point in going on, I give up, go on without me. Once the soil is wet again, it straightens up within an hour, as if nothing was ever wrong. The leaves don't dry out or crisp up, no colour change, nothing. Just pure drama.

Dad went hunting for some vegetable or fruit he remembers being in the family congee when he was a kid. Asking at a store led him to a vacuum sealed parcel of creamy white orbs, which turned out to be ginkgo nuts. They went into his latest batch of congee. They're similar to fungi and mushrooms in that they have that crisp and firm snap and resistance when being bitten into, but then a smooth buttery texture that follows. It isn't until bitten that they release any flavour, which is distinctly sour. This sourness isn't quite strong enough to be unpleasant, but is none-the-less sour which I associate with being unpleasant, so on the whole, the flavour is quite confusing. 

It makes sense. I'm guessing these nuts developed before the creatures that ate them developed had developed a sophisticated palate which needed to be bribed with delicious flavours, if the tree was even using animals as distribution. Now the ginkgo is all, This is the way I've been cooking my nuts for longer than your species's grandspecies existed. Ain't got time for your tastebuds. Be grateful for the protein and begone.

No one knew if my ginkgo was male or female, so I'll just have to wait and see if we get a home-grown source of ginkgo nuts. 

It is a species that has survived asteroid-impacts, extinction-level events, the end of so many worlds. When I look at young trees I see giants. Already a living fossil, in this scrawny trunk is a future ancient. One day, perhaps my ginkgo will be a behemoth. It has that potential. I will never see it, but it is a dream both the ginkgo and I share.

The Books of Yesterday, Messing With You. Still.

My desk is against some book cases, as if I can't have a window, a wall of books provides ample static life and colour. This time, I was looking at the spines of my olde Dragonlance books, omnibuses and anthologies, cracked from being reread more times than any other book I have ever owned.

And it just occurred to me, wondering if I related more to Kit or Laurana, that the reason these books caught me in the first place, more than the dragons or the fantastic and impossible landscapes, was Tanis Half-Elven. 

At first read, I had a significant crush on him. Because he was half-elven, and as a girl I wasn't immune to the glamour. He was also biracial, and bullied, discriminated against and ostracised for that, and I think that there is the first time I had seen my own story in fiction. 

I'm not twelve anymore, and Tanis is to me now one of the more irritating characters, suffering from an understandable overabundance of self-pity which never pays respect to the true complexity of an identity born of rejection and defined by what it is not. 

I could champion this as an example of how "inclusive" the speculative genres are, that I could find myself reflected in them as a child. But seriously, come on. As a twelve year old girl the only could-be-interpreted-as representation of myself I could find in all the books I devoured was a white older man of a made-up Uber-Aryan-Magic-Race, who wailed, found some dragons and then got intimate with eville gods. Then wailed some more. Seriously, Tanis is super annoying. 

Of course it wasn't a straight projection into Tanis, being as he was an older white man and as I was a hormone-struck straight child I was often torn between wanting to marry him and live happily ever after, and wanting to be him. Of course this meant that my relationship with his relationship with his "half-sister" and fully elven Laurana was equally as conflicted, being as I wasn't sure if I wanted to be her, in order to marry Tanis and live happily ever after, or loathe her utterly, for being fully elven, fully accepted and completely belonging to her elven culture and elven family and she was also a royal princess and she and Tanis weren't actually related by blood (much), and she was essentially everything I could never be as these were things that were set in motion at birth, and could not be altered. 

Conversely, my relationship with Kitiara, Tanis's eville human lover who was a bad influence and constantly led him astray and broke his heart, was fine. I admired her for being confident in herself, in what she wanted and how she was going to get it. She could do much better than Tanis, in my opinion, and did. (Dalamar is the subject for another post.) I was in awe of her, wanted to be her but knew that also wasn't ever going to be the case because dude, no one kicks that much arse unless they're fictional.

This rather binary dichotomy of the conflict between the two races in Tanis's blood being embodied by the conflict between his two rather polarised lovers is telling. There is never any suggestion of reconciliation and harmony; Tanis must chose one, and in doing so also align his morality. 

So Tanis gets his pure-blooded elven princess and Kitiara dies a horrible death and I wonder why sometimes my view of the world is a little off kilter.

I'm glad the biracial kids of today have the books of today. 

Represent and respect.

$30 for 20 minutes

The memory washed in with the warmth; first through my nose, down my throat to rest cozy in my lungs. My cheeks are next, as the only thing that can be done with arms full of clean washing fresh from the dryer is to bury my face into that soft, comfortable warm pile, and hug it to my chest. Let it warm my bones.

It was getting last night's tea towels out of the dryer that was my first waypoint for a standard housekeeper's day in Ullapool. First came the cleaning of toilets, wiping of windows, incessant mopping and buffing; interspersed by dashes to the laundry in the little country garden out back to switch the loads over. Most of the time it was bloody cold, because a Highland summer is a wonderful thing, but not a particularly searing one. After having my hands immersed in cold waters, grabbing all the towels out and flomping myself over a bench and them was the purest of delights. I was overly fond of them, in a weird way. After all the weird stretching and bending and scrubbing, being able to stand still and methodically fold the same square of fabric in the same fashion until the pile before you is a pile no more was peaceful. It did not involve other people's bodily fluids or uncomfortable strenuous activity. Just nice warm hands. The folding of the tea towels also indicated breakfast time. We'd fold them, have them sorted into their colours, and drop them into the kitchen on our way to the staff hut. Lovely cup of tea with the sound of the village waking up and the first ferry coming in from Stornoway.

I don't miss housekeeping. But I do miss Scotland. 

Wedding Cake Island

The wiki article tells it all. It's a pile of rocks in Coogee Bay

What the article fails to mention is that it moves. It must move. Every time I look at the sea and it is in view it isn't where I expect it to be. Even just walking down the hill to the shops, which is my most common view of it, it isn't where it should be!

I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

The floating island in Discworld was a temporary build up of gas, which, when it dissipated, caused the island to sink again.

Doctor Doolittle's floating island was in fact a giant snail. Or wait, tortoise? I think he went along the sea floor in a giant sea snail.

This island is a pile of rocks.

And yet.

Dear Diary

Today was brilliant. I didn't sleep in too far, and gave myself a slow enough wake up/get up process that I felt absolutely fine, instead of shellshocked. The sun wasn't too hot, but lovely and deliciously warm and bright. The roll I ate while I walked was also delicious. We saw a cormorant fishing the rocks by the Clovelly cliffs, as if the dashing waves were just a dream. Clovelly was calm, with no swell and slap-happy waves, and so clear. The water bit us cold as we dove in, but Clovelly is full of different waters, and we passed through warm and cold waters alike. Right by the stairs, as if waiting for us, was Big Bluey, the dominant blue groper. An entourage of wrassers and bream followed him, and then smaller striped fish, toad fish and the odd goat fish. Such a glorious velvet blue. I'd never seen him before. Well over one metre long, big enough to grab and throw whole fair sized rocks while grazing. He was unfazed by our presence, and simply continued doing his business. Saw another two smaller females, and a smaller male. Each with entourage. The garfish have grown and grown, and the school is full now of thick ribbons of silver weaving away from me. With the water clear and the sun bright, their subtle colouring became vibrant. Blue shot through the tail, red down the dorsal. Never alone. I saw a small groper missing its upper jaw. Not an open wound, all healed. It was hiding in a crevice. I could see its teeth. Little nubs of enamel, four of them. We sat on the warm concrete and let the sun dry us and cuddle the cold from us. "John's Seagulls" were in court near us; two gulls who get handfed by John pieces of his sandwich, and who do an excellent job of keeping every single other bird away. This exchange takes place apparently every day. One of these gulls had white talons, which in its red webbing looked odd. Then we walked to Gordon's Bay, and clambered over barnacle-crusted boulders. The water here too was calm, and clear, and so deliciously warm. We waded in with ease, until I fell off the drop off. The sand of the seabed was pale and perfect, with small dunes laid down by the waves above, and goat fish leaving frenzied calligraphy on those dunes with their two chin whiskers as they fossicked for snacks. More wrassers, more bream, and many dark wrinkled medium sized fish that simply lay on the seafloor as if terribly depressed. We went looking for the stingarees, but none were to be found. The water was clear and the sand so bare, like floating over a pristine desert. And then I saw it, first thinking it was a clump of seaweed which had broken its mooring, turning to look at it and seeing a sea turtle. Gliding against that white sand backdrop. It caught sight of me and changed its path to give me a safe berth. The gropers of Clovelly have spoiled us with their relaxed and non-threatened nature. This turtle was shy. Once it figured out we were following it, it put the speed on, and without flippers we could not keep up. Extraordinary and completely unhoped for. We tried to high five while treading water and it didn't work. A couple had joined us on the rocks, with an 11 month old Great Dane called Julius, a younger Great Dane pup with enormous feet, and a wee Jack Russell called Troy. They were standing waist deep in the water, trying to get Julius in with them, and he wanted to, he so wanted to obey his human, but this water business. He just didn't know about it. He started barking and wuffing when his humans got too deep for his liking, poor silly boofhead. When we got out, he came over to say hello. Had no idea how big he is and stepped all over us, tried to sit on us. Lovely floppy dog. The puppy was adorable, and Troy came to sit next to us in the sun and get a good back scratch. There's nothing that can cause a grin like a happy dog, let alone three. We basked in the sun some more, and then parted ways. I feel so incredibly buoyant and clean and fresh. 

I bought something. As in, I went out of my way to purchase an item I didn't need but wanted, with money better spent elsewhere. Strange, that I always feel a need to confess such transactions, as though unnecessarily participating in the capitalist consumer society was a thing to be ashamed of and be held accountable for.

Especially if it is a blank notebook.

I have so many beautiful, blank notebooks waiting to be bashed about in my bag and violated by my ink. Another is unnecessary, so unnecessary. But it was cute, with differing designs within the pages, and it had dimensions the heft of which called to me. Not burdensome to carry, but not light enough to miss respect.

It's funny that I keep them. And keep using them. Just as I continue with this blog. The notebook is the jurisdiction of the writer. For writing. And I am not a writer. I have not written in years. In years. Yet these accoutrements of a writerly life appear stuck to me. The notebooks continue long after the last story dried out. You know I choose them thinking of what the person who comes after will think of them. As though there will come, in the future, scholars to pour over my scribbles and journals and confessions and analyse this and debate that. As if these writings were ever going to be of interest, let alone import.

Pretend.

We were watching a movie. Only ten or so minutes in. Without turning his head, J said, "You should write more fiction."  His words pushed all the angels of physics out of alignment and from then on the perspectives of the room were never quite right. I couldn't say "stop the movie" as that was too far along the train of thought. "Hit the space bar." That was what I needed. Not why. So I could ask him why he said that, what had he been thinking, to think to say that, right then, and he said I was crying, and I was. I was.

I am scared. I am tired. 

"This is it, isn't it?"
They are two men, not old, in the water behind me.
"This is how we die."

The water is jade. Sometimes cloudy and occluded, other times like glass, but always jade. We float in this wealth and majesty and it does not deign to note us.

"Wait, maybe it's this wave we die on."

From behind clouds came the sun, reclining in the long angles of afternoon, and below me the sand danced. White, jade, and lost seaweed, and the fingers of a star tracing their paths.

Fight.

The first indication of Poppy's thawing was the call outs. She didn't want anything to do with us, until we made to leave the room, and then she would call out. A specific tweet, projected, definitely a question. 

Here, where there are no dogs and she has run of the flat, she has no second thoughts about following us out of a room. She'll call out, and if an answer isn't coming off she goes. 

She still calls for J, but for me she started to make much softer, meeker, sleepy little pips, which begin as my face is turning away, before my feet have moved. Warm little fuzzy squeaks which cuddle my heart snug.

In the last couple of weeks she has come to discover that fingers, too, can be used as scratching posts, are in fact capable of doing all the scratching themselves, and allowing me to so scritch her funny little feathered head until she croaks from bliss. She'll contort her head impossibly to get the best angle, pause to nibble at me furiously before slamming her wee forehead down on my knuckle, ready for the next scratch. 

She brings me such delight, such delight.

I do so miss the dogs. Dogs and birds provide the same, immensely uncomplicated love, but differently. I can wrestle with a dog. I can chase a dog around the table then touch their tails. I can curl up with a dog and feel the warmth of comfort. A love you can wrap your arms around. 

Dream Drool

The last two nights I have had such cruel dreams. Because my dreams are so far from the norm they are always semi-lucid, I am never unaware that this is a dream even though I never quite gain full control over events. Probably the writer in me has too much respect or expectations of the narrative. A wasted faith. The narrative of a dream is shoddy at best.

There was such abuse, cruelty. It was bullying, a word which will always bring to mind, first, the school yard. This is a dangerous distraction. Worse bullying happens much, much later. I was the victim, and I watched the victim, and so experienced simultaneously the terror of being targeted, hunted and toyed with, and the helpless empathy of the audience unable to intervene. I don't want to remember the details. Only that when I woke, even I found the dream to be out of character for my treacherous sleeping mind.

Today I had the fate of all souls. Some green vials, for the pure. Blue for the good. Red for the mean. And there was so much red. I had to decide how to disperse these colours over the course of history. The first, simplest model was to release them one at a time: green first, then blue, and then red over took all the lights in the cube. There was no way to recover from this. We'd distract ourselves, hiding in folded pockets in buildings for which there was no physical space, while the people whose souls we were determining went about their primary school graduation parties. I tried mixing the colours, all at once, but there was too much red. There just wasn't a way. The cube of light always ended red.

Helpless. I had the power to decide the fate of the world, but was unable to change a thing. 

City Unknown

There's something in the Moreton Bay and Port Jackson fig trees which line the streets and parks of Sydney, some shuttered tension which, while still, is not waiting. A motion that is unaware of its stasis. As though these trees, with a sprawl of roots and shapes that can only be described as tendons and sinew were frozen mid-pour. All thick dark leaves, waxen and lush.

When I think of Malaysia I always recall the threat of the green. There is no stopping the growth, it overflows and erupts and encroaches and yet, the whole country carries on living perfectly functional ordinary lives as though no one has noticed the floral occupation. Sydney emulates this luscious creeping.

Then there are the frangipanis, which don't seem to know how to stop blooming. I can't relate to these flowers. They are, to me, sugar and marzipan, perfect replicas on the pages of a Woman's Day birthday cake cookbook. Yet here they are, lying crushed on the footpath, as if it is not an atrocity. The air is always thick with their joy, and it limns that sublime salt crush with rich smiles.

Magpies. They're half dressed here, having started the day wearing only their white hoods and not the accompanying cape. Other than this there is no difference in their carriage or attitude, yet this one, small, irrelevant thing unsettles me each time.

The streets twist and turn. Melbourne is a wonderfully forgiving grid, with main thoroughfares clearly marked by the presence of trams. Sydney, Sydney is, I think Sydney sneezed and ruined the topography, geography, cartography. I've never had a sense of direction, not in either side of the equator, but straight lines and landmarks have always served me well. Not here.

Melbourne now should be lovely crisp days, fog sneaking around in the mornings, cool evenings and turning leaves. My body expects this, and is flummoxed by the wet season. This is not the time of year for rain, and yet.

It isn't yet two weeks. I will learn to swim with these new currents. Eventually.

A Little Story

For once, my unconscious was kind. She was crawling up my leg when I woke, and I knew it was her. No flailing and slapping in a frenzy of "WTF IS THAT?!"

I don't know how long she'd been trapped in my room. I only discovered her when I returned from Sydney. When I broke the darkness with the bedside light she fluttered against the wall in a panic, a moth large enough to mark her impact with a shy "thud, thud." I couldn't catch her then, nor the following nights. She'd tumble down beneath my bed and there she'd remain, until the next night, the next time I turned on the light.

She was weak now. It was all she could do to climb onto the hand I offered her. Her feet were large enough that I could feel the small hooks she used to cling to my skin, the timidest of prickles. A thick wedge of a rich deep brown with only the faintest ghost of a texture, two vivid grey eyes her patches like the eyes of a storm. A fur collar like a luxurious lady in a luxurious coat.

She was so tired.

I carried her to the bath room, opened the window and let her out into the dawn.

We all have days, weeks, months, in which we're a confused and exhausted moth. I hope kindness finds you.

Later that day, as I stepped onto an escalator I looked down. Another moth, similar in size and colouring, lay against the grill like a crumpled leaf. Hands clasped, wings to the floor. Kindness did not find this one.

Visible Output

I've been kicking around a couple of short story ideas for half a year now. So many pages scribbled while sitting on trains. Aware of the awful clunk and lack of grace in my sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and aware that I have neither story nor plot, but one thing at a time.

So the desire to speak has not been felt for some time. While this may simply apply to social media, this vacuum of motivation is sucking on my hopes of writing like a gummy shark. A writer must have a voice. At least one.

This post by Fox Woods I could have sworn was written just for me. I can't say I necessarily agree with it (some of us are unique, most of us are not), but point is...I chose to believe it. Here. Now. Because I need to.

Being as I tick several 'minority' boxes, I do have things to say which are worth saying, and might even be worth hearing. This can and will bleed into fiction. I just have to practice using my voice, again.

Hopefully, this will mean a higher frequence of posts here. Hopefully, I'll reclaim the joy and thrill that comes with using a voice, and that will in turn make the stories less shy. Hopefully.

This still doesn't address that need to not contribute to the noise of the world. Silence is a precious, fragile thing, and there is no way to project silence. Perhaps in trying to cultivate silence around me I am too forceful, because I've silenced myself in the process.

I guess I'll just have to ensure the sounds I make are meaningful.









Quack.

Daughter, Music, Ghosts & Souls

A church in Reykjavík, Iceland, with uncushioned pews and people standing in the aisles. The music had become applause had become blurred voices shufting winter coats scuffed shoefalls as the audience changed shift. I did not stay. 

A town on the other side of Glasgow, Scotland, but the supporting act was not who I thought it was. I did not buy tickets. 

The Corner Hotel, Richmond, on a Tuesday night. Some threshold has been crossed and now going to a gig is an ordeal. I'm tired, it's late, I don't want to wait stand be crowded make the long trip home. But I do. 

Daughter played an extraordinary set, one of the best shows I've seen a long time. Summoned back for an encore they hadn't planned to play, they kept a crowd silent, attentive, devoted. 

The skeleton is designed to drink music. I tilted my head and stretched my throat, and the beating heart of every song was played out in my breastbone. The heart cannot help but beat in time. 

She sang,

"I want you so much"

And the hanging guitar dropped out of hearing as she sang,

"But I hate you guts."

And we heard ourselves sing those words, alone and as a crowd, and a self-conscious laugh tremored across the room. In that moment, the number of people present had doubled, as before each of us stood the spectre of the one who had rent us asunder. 

You were my ghost, standing among so many ghosts. But this song is years too late. There are no scars I bear that you can lay claim to; to survive you, I had to change my shape. A shape I chose. 

When you are jostled to the surface of my thoughts, it is with affectionate exasperation I hold you. I forgave myself long ago. 

Music, this music, has power over space. Instead of watching my heart from the outside, the music sat me well inside, and this unpredictable meaty box became a grand ballroom by vaulted chambers with tiled floors and ornately-framed mirrors. The candle chandeliers are unlit, covered, curtains and veils and shadows, and there is naught but to watch ribbons of pale green music thread through these cavernous spaces, filling each room with exquisite emptiness. 

She sang,

"If you're in love you're the lucky ones..."

I stepped out into car lights, street lights and a brash moon. A train takes me to another train and I go home. 

To you.

Tuesday in Shanghai

"Dance like no one is watching."

I've always liked this sentiment, although of late the internet has turned it into some pithy Hallmark ideal meant to express our inner butterflies or some such. At any rate, I never dance like this. I'm either dancing like everyone is staring at me and I'm dreadfully uncomfortable with it, or I'm dancing like I Do Not Give A Fuck, which is exactly what I did in the Melbourne International Airport baggage hall, next to carousel 7, while we waited for our backpacks to appear amid the suitcases and boxes. It's the exuberance that comes from finishing 28 hours of flying and 1 and a half years abroad. It's the only home-coming dance that matters. (Internal soundtrack provided by Beyoncé and All the Single Ladies.)

Being in this room, at this desk, surrounded by these things, is surreal and bemusing. All these things. I remember each item, but the placement surprises me. Why is there half a bottle of cooking sake on my bookshelf? Why do I have so many boxes of stuff? All these clothes, what are they for? Do I really need these stacks of paper on my desk? I don't remember where these figurines came from. This box is a mystery. The contents of these drawers are unfamiliar.

This is the room of another person, yet I'm comfortable in it, and I'm comfortable using it, and the soundscape that slipped in the window at night was more home than any of these items.

No one knew what to expect of Sam. How does a dog react when his human, who has moved in and out of his home sporadically during his life, is missing for a year and a half? Would he even recognise me?

He didn't greet me as a stranger, there was no hesitation or trepidation in his approach. He and Sophie were all bounces and leaps and tailwags, as they always are. Yet he was confused, a little unsure. In fact, I'd go as far as to say he was blanking me for most of the day. I'd reach for him and he'd suddenly be distracted by something on the other side of the room that needed his attention immediately. J got more attention out of him than I did. However, when I crashed out and went to collapse on my bed – my bed! – he came with me, curled up beside me, and it was as if the intervening nights apart had never happened. He lunges at possums outside and out of reach and I scratch his belly in the morning.

Noisy mynahs in the eucalypts down the side of the house, being noisy. A flock of cockatoos has taken up residence down in the valley and were absent-mindedly raucous during the evening. A magpie warbled as I stood on the back verandah with a cup of tea in my hand and breathed that home air. The lorikeets morning chorus was slept through and I'm looking forward to the evening session.

I looked down on Australia as we flew over the red centre, which was lines of dunes and dust to the horizon, giving way to fields flattened by generations of ploughing, a lake whose water level was low and yet higher than I expected, and a colour palette that spoke of thirst and dry hearts and a heat-beaten brown I didn't know I could miss. In all the countries we've visited there was a wealth of water beyond our comprehension. Still, I cannot in good conscious waste water. Showers are not for loitering in. Don't flush on a number 1. The grass in the backyard is green, but as patchy as mange. Summer has not been kind.

There's a new fridge in the kitchen. I find I don't know where to look.

Hours spent talking with mum and my brother. Just talking. Just stuff. The internet, for all the damage it does to social dynamics, is a miracle and boon for those people far apart. I have not been out of touch with my people for all this time, yet nothing beats chatting about nothing while doing nothing. It's wonderful what has changed, and what hasn't changed at all.

I think I'm done for now. J has had his fill as well. We've put our bags down with the express intention of not picking them up again for a very long time. Every day for the past couple of months has been the unknown and unfamiliar. Every day learning how to cope with undrinkable tap water, how to best open the window to deal with an over-enthusiastic heater, what sign language is universal when attempting to identify meat at a restaurant, whether beer or wine is cheapest in this country. It's wonderful and confusing and frustrating and hilarious. It's adventuring small and large.

And now we are ready to be where we know the streets and where the best tea and pho is, we can drink the tap water and know what mixers are available and can send a shoutout to meet any number of friends at short notice and we know Melbourne, we know it and we don't have to think about it.

It is strange to be home.

I can't stop smiling.

On our last night in London we bought Tsing Tao beer and steamed bao in Chinatown. The streets were dry and a full of a cold wind which couldn't decide on how cruel it wanted to be. We walked down to Trafalgar Square, because there is something so wonderful about that vast open space so full of sky and surrounded by movement.

We climbed Nelson's Column and sat three tiers high on that grand monument to naval victory. The sun was down and London is luxurious with night lights and colour and light and colour and all double decker red buses weave through that round about, all out of town buses are pulled to that round about. We drank our rice beer and Big Ben donged the quarter hour. Other tourists climbed the lions and we pulled faces in their photos.

Overhead planes cross-hatched the sky.

Interestingly: the Victoria Memorial

Buckingham Palace is, well, yes. It is yet another stately building in a city full of stately buildings. Historians and architects alike may despair my plebeian ignorance and lack of appreciation, but apart from watching the guards stomp back and forth in an attempt not to lose their toes to frostbite, there really wasn't much to behold. The Queen wasn't in so it wasn't though we could pop inside for a cuppa either.

Out the front is, however, the Victoria Memorial, which is a very large ornate and ostentatious affair with statues and 'gifts' from various members of the Commonwealth which look surprisingly similar to communist propaganda monuments from the Soviet era. But with lions.

Presiding over all this is an angel of "unclear entitlement" (according to wikipedia) which could be both Peace and Victory. Wiki also claims that the statue is bronze, not the goldiest gold that ever golded, as I assumed.

The Original Bling, a photo by sirtessa on Flickr.

I mean, seriously, look at it. That's bloody gold, that is. No photo manipulation either. The winter sun did its thing.

Anyway, gold or bronze aside, you will agree that it is very, very shiny. And free of bird poop. 

London is obsessed with bird poop. I've never seen so many spikes placed upon surfaces to deter birds from perching. Spikes everywhere. Everywhere! On railings and fences and window sills and ledges and gutters and street lights and statues and signs and EV.ER.EE.WHERE.

This angel of "unclear entitlement" does not possess spikes. Nor does it wear birds or bird poop. 

We can only assume therefore that Her Majesty the Queen has appointed herself a sniper to sit atop the palace roof and take out the little buggers before they even make landing. If you look to the left wing you'll see a set of stairs on the roof, leading to a raised platform. Perfect position to preserve the splendour of Queen Vicky.

This is perhaps not the most illustrious position to hold, but it would be a sure sight better than being one of the guards standing watch by the front doors, with nothing to do but stomp back and forth in an attempt not to have their fleet fall asleep.  I suspect that the Royal Sniper may have had some practice in the gardens, as there are multiple signs about the place requesting that one does not feed the pelicans. One would be quite willing to oblige however one does find that actually, there are are no pelicans. One must make do feeding the swans, geese, ducks and squirrels instead.

Collecting Homes & Between Them

It's been only four days since leaving Glasgow, and yet it already feels like that moist cold flat happened to someone else in some other lifetime. Four days and three cities and three different sets of wonderful warm people. There was no snow in Glasgow, nor in Manchester, but the land all around is six inches deep in white and the powder growing as our double decker bus hurtled south. There's looking like a tourist, and there's gawping at snow hitting the window, stuck to trees and falling from the sky.

(The majestic turn of wind turbines made mysterious and magical in the blur of snow, against a snow-blank sky and anchored to snow-buried hills.)

Returning to places you do not know intimately yet have established a memory landscape upon is a curious deception. While I know the homes my friends have opened to me well, their city streets are hazy recollections. I have no idea of the layout of Manchester and Nottingham but managed to find tea shops I'd enjoyed in both and enjoy them a second time.

The sharing of such discoveries is a new thing for me, still. Perhaps always. J approves of one tea shop and disapproves of another. We both discover a retro game store and the oldest pub in England. He meets friends I have known so long yet have never met, and seeing that my friends also enjoy my friends is a cockle-warming delight.

This tour through England is something of a long goodbye, which is odd because it is Scotland that was our home. Somewhere between Glasgow and Manchester we crossed the border and it was a moment unnoticed and unmarked. I was probably dozing. Possibly snoring.

(J is intent on the 'hams' of England, having hit Birmingham/Burning Ham and Nottingham/Not A Ham and just now noted Grant Ham and Bing Ham on bus billings as they swing past the window.)

So many people- Wait, let me correct that. So many Scots asked me "Why Scotland?" There isn't really a neat answer to that question. It might have been due to Braveheart, or it might have been due to generic fat fantasy worlds harkening back to the shared delusion of what the Highlands are. Perhaps it was simply because it was far away, full of mist and crags and dark grass and all the things that weren't to be found in my backyard.

Now, knowing I won't set foot in that rich soggy land for some years to come, I can say definitively and certainly, it is because Scotland is my home on the other side of the world.

Bad Movies and Growing Up

Tonight I had my viewing of Showgirls and... I honestly don't know what to say. I can understand how The Room got made; all it needed was one man with determination and too much money. But how the hell did Showgirls make it all the way to cinema release without someone saying, "WE ARE MAKING A TERRIBLE MISTAKE."



It was featured as part of Bad Movie Night, and was spectacularly entertaining. For all the wrong reasons. Once released from the theatre we, a small posse of non-Glaswegians, roamed the streets quoting lines from the film and eventually settling into a pub for some 'old fashioned' cider. In this case 'old fashioned' means 'gross'.

These are the last days of Glasgow. Each night passing is the dying of an era. When we left Edinburgh for the last time, said goodbye to our friends there, the truth of our departure reached the end of its patience, stopped loitering hoping for attention and upped and tapped me on the shoulder. We are leaving. These beautiful people, they won't be a mere bus ride away. We'll be on the other side of the world, and when we say our goodbyes, these goodbyes will have to stand for ages. We won't see these faces for years.

Conversely, we're going home, where our families are, our animal friends, our human friends, all our loves. I'll return to a job that pays more than what both of us were earning here. There is a lot to look forward to.

And yet.

Part of me can't help seeing this as the last gasp. That going home will mean growing up, being responsible, being settled. That maybe I have developed new eyes, and going back to somewhere familiar and known will mean turning that once beloved place into something boring, uninteresting, dull, that maybe I will resent the place, yearn for elsewhere, and as such lose that precious sense of home I've come to treasure. Part of me worries that because of this I'll start being blind to wonder and forget to seek the delight in ordinary things.

There is no way around such flitty demons other than to build a fortress out of memories and incredulity. There are nights yet to come in which to roam Glasgow, stomp the ice growing in puddles and cry 'ewww!' at the puddles which don't hold enough water to freeze.

Glasgow hasn't always been kind to us, yet has been nothing but forthcoming about giving us stories to tell.

The Irrelevance of History

We're sitting in The Kenilworth in Edinburgh, a traditional pub with a ridiculous variety of whiskeys available. On the skirting around the bar island the fact that the building is dated form 1789 is written in a neat calligraphy in gold paint on dark varnished wood.

The first encampment establishing Australia as a penal colony of the British Empire happened on 26 January 1788. Thousands of years of Aboriginal culture carpeted over just like that. That is the Australia of today. 225 years old.

It is a surreal thing to have a pint and a pie in a place that is older than the nation you grew up in, especially when you have memories of the bi-centennial celebrations of 1988, of a school assembly in primary school, being tasked to make vaguely nationalistic posters and not entirely understanding why this particular date was so important, why you were given a special medal commemorating the anniversary, because at 7 years old you do not yet have a sense of time, of age, as at 7 years old you have not stood on the Great Wall of China, walked the streets of Edo, stood in the Cave of Hands, hid from a squall beneath Stonehenge, or come to understand how much you can learn in 10 years and how stupid you were 10 years ago.

Moments like these happen have happened over and over the past year. London was overwhelming. It seemed every building, every street corner, ever mail box had a little plaque commemorating this or noting that. The history of the place was inescapable, and so deep as to drown us all. How can anyone go about their everyday lives when there are tombs in the footpath? How are you supposed to pop down the store for a pint of milk when the building is advertising the fact that it was rebuilt after a zeppelin raid during the war? How can you do anything when you are surrounded by history which demands your attention and respect?

 I guess you just carry on, as everyone else here appears to be doing.

(Aside: Glasgow has shifted my sliding scale on what I consider eye candy, and whoa, there are so many pretty things walking around Edinburgh I'm getting whiplash. J is giving me a lot of shit for flirting with the bartender.)