but now i'm gold...

i've been to australia before, y'know.

sure, i've done the "down under" thing already. saw kangaroos, experienced vegemite's salty awful wonder, drank like it was a sport, watched sports the way some people drink (excessively), realized the brilliant combination of potato wedges, sour cream, and sweet chili sauce, and never quite duplicated it in the states despite having all necessary ingredients. i understand now the allure of "big brother," the royalty of kylie, and an alternate meaning for the word "root" that has nothing to do with trees or hair, unless you're into that sort of thing. i adore "kath and kim" as if they were reflecting my own piss-elegant upbringing, as if it didn't take multiple viewings and a number of kindly translators to tell me the punchline. i know what a holden is. i know not to ask about the aborigines. (i know, they apologized. good on ya.) i know how to respond to the question, "how ya going?" (and the answer isn't, "i don't know, i'll probably take the bus.") i know foster's is toilet water, even if i do drink passion pop with little shame. i'm all about the word "pram." total fixation.

in a little less than six months, i managed to drink too much, work too little, travel not enough, and generally regret only occasionally. i made a lot of really fantastic friends, crossed paths with an interesting carnival of men, and maybe even fell in love. but i had a return flight in the middle of july, right in the slow-beating heart of a melbourne winter, and i had a life back in america that needed to be lived out. so i told the friends, the boys, the sights, the sounds, the tastes and smells, that i would be back one day. let's just keep in touch.

it'll be exactly two years in about a week and a half. about this time, i was maybe still in sydney, for an extended visit with someone who i thought would be my most salient souvenir from a country and period of time that completely changed my life. about this time, we were probably having a conversation in his car and deciding that we would just let life play out however it did, and if this thing was meant to cross oceans, it would sprout wings and do just that.

two years later, maybe i'm saying the same thing, having the exact same conversation. but it's a whole different scenario now. i'm alone now, quite blissfully, and this "thing" with wings is so much more than that ever turned out to be. this "thing" with wings, how treacly poetic, is me. that's all. that's a lot, but that's all. my baggage has been checked, my past has been forgiven, and my future is just a wide-open sky. in about four weeks time, i'll be cleared for take-off.

i've made the decision--or perhaps discovered it, already made and ready for me to take--that i will be returning to australia. the decision has been greeted with mostly wowed excitement, followed by a series of fair questions: why australia? what are you going to do there? are you going to work? how long will you be there? do you realize what you're giving up by leaving new york?

(ah, that last one, a perhaps not-so-generous paraphrase of my last therapist's own skepticism. suffice it to say, she and i are no longer acquainted.)

i guess i don't really know the answer to any of those questions. and to be entirely honest, it feels so fucking good. the last thing I want to know right now is the answer to anything. i have a sense of the answer, even to the last question. do i know what i'm giving up by leaving new york, the great xanadu on the hudson, the metropolis of promise, the bastion of all hopes large and small? well, besides a handful of really very wonderful friends, a job that seems to mostly offer promise for next year but general malaise for this year, and pizza at any hour of the day or night, i think i'm giving up nothing. i'm letting go of a lot. that's for sure. but the sacrifice i'm offering up hardly honors the cause.

* * *

in light of leaving, i can't help but think of new york's proud little slogan, or rather, what people outside of new york say about it: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. facetiously, i wonder what that means if you can't make it here, if you are in fact doomed down the evolutionary ladder until you find some tiny midwestern hamlet where you do, indeed, finally make it. and what does it mean to "make it" or not? it seems the real theme of living in new york is that you're never quite there. you're always climbing, reaching, striving.

with my exit right around the corner, i have to resist wondering if perhaps i have not made it in new york. but that, of course, is ridiculous. i totally made it in new york. i could continue to make it. as i knew would happen, in the eleventh hour of my new york life, i've started to see a softening around the edges of this life i've been cobbling together for over a year now. i'm making and keeping and developing terrific friendships. i'm excelling at my job even if i do largely hate it and probably would have quit if australia did not give me a good enough reason to recently give a three-week notice. i'm single and off the scene for a while, and it has been incredibly restorative. i think my perceptions of sex and relationships have matured and developed, and it's a genuine relief to not be fucking the pain away anymore.

in short, lately i've been really getting my shit together, and if i had to make new york work for a few more years, i have total confidence that i would be able to. but i don't want to. my heart does not want to. and i guess maybe life's just too short to pass up the opportunity to truly listen to your heart and see where it takes you.

it just so happens my heart is taking me to australia.