life is a maze and love is a riddle

who isn’t genuinely tired of the question, “what am i doing in australia?” let’s just assume from now on that i’m asking it every day. i think i do at least one thing every day hoping the answer will be lying in the experience. i can’t put pen to paper without trying to draw a map for myself. i analyze everything.

if we’ve talked, i’ve analyzed our conversation later on, waiting on a corner for the tram to come rumbling up the street, or walking to the library to use the internet every day, until we finally get this modem set up in our apartment. (ivy and i are so perfect for each other, i think, because we are equally scattered about these things and over time, none too bothered about it.) or wandering a park, or sitting in a food court eating a sushi roll by myself. or doing a price-comparison on cereals. i’m deciding if saving 70 cents is worth the possibility of a bland breakfast, but i’m also looking for meaning in that thing you said to me that i pretended to not hear.

in related news, i’ve started this twelve-week self-guided course called “the artist’s way.” jay did it, and not-always-gently insisted i start it for months before leaving new york, and i always said, “okay, okay, yeah, i’ll try it.” i kept thinking, “but the book is on your bedroom floor, it’s yours, and i’m going to want to cuddle with it at night.” nevermind the book i’m using now is on loan from the aforementioned library, and i’ll have to extend the loan period at least three times in order to complete the course, but still. i think it just wasn’t the right time. i needed to come to australia, shake off the fixings of my life, like layers worn in winter weather, and then put it on.

it’s related news, because it’s required me to write three pages every morning of essentially anything that comes to my mind. it’s a blank canvas for analyzing. i am generally incapable of free thought. all of my thoughts are quite constrained to the requirements i have for any of my writing. it has to be somewhat linear, it all has to serve the purpose of one topic, everything has to work. the point of these “morning pages” as they’re called is to get all of the thoughts blocking you from writing out onto paper and out of your way. the book suggests this might be hardest for writers doing the course, as they will have to resist actually writing. i have to resist writing and editing, and forming a thesis, and tying it all up in the end with some clever line that somehow references how this all began. (the method to my madness with this blog, mind you.)

but i’m five days in, and i’m slowly accepting what needs to be done. i have had terrible writer’s block for a while, and it’s been an effort enough to write in this blog (hence the two-week break at the beginning of this month) and my theory—which is hardly original or groundbreaking—is that my writing and my personal life are inextricably connected. certainly that’s been manifested entirely in the mere fact that i am writing a personal blog, but when it comes to fiction or playwriting or anything else i might attempt (hello, poetry, my old pen-pal from childhood! i have not written to you in ages!) i think the groundlessness, the aimlessness of life right now is constantly leading me astray from whatever source of creativity i am able to tap into when i feel like i’m growing from roots in the ground.

but i think this is much like the stages of grief, insomuch that there are stages. there are rooms we must pass through to get to the next room to get to our rooms, a place we can relax and call home. the way i look at it right now, it’s like i’ve just moved into this house and taken all of my stuff out of the bags and boxes i moved it in, and now it’s all scattered around me and waiting to be put somewhere. i’m sitting in the middle of my new living room floor, looking at the pieces of my life, and saying, “okay, where am i going to put everything?”

and with all of this newness, a very particular brand of homesickness sets in. i’ve come to romanticize new york, in particular the couple months before i left, but certainly even the times before that, the rougher waters. in new york, i thought, “in college, all of this was some exquisite agony, because i could just skip class and order pizza and lay on the couch, and it didn’t really matter.” but now i look back at new york and think, “what exquisite agony, because i had my work to focus on, and my friends at work to keep it fun, and i could spend hours in central park, and order pizza and lay on the couch, and no one had to know.” i don’t quite know what the idea is here. perhaps the lesson to learn is that every stage of life is full of comforts.

certainly here, while i’m still unemployed, i can wake up whenever i want, lay around the house, go to the library, go get lunch, go for a walk around the neighborhood, and eventually catch up with someone for a drink or dinner or a night out. i think it’s not that i don’t have plenty of life’s comforts here in australia, it’s more like learning how to translate another language into the words you didn’t realize you knew all along.

and the more of this new life i continue to translate, the more i answer the question, “what am i doing in australia?” right now, today, i’m translating. i’m learning the language so i can start to speak it quite fluently, and soon, discover that it always made sense.

i just had to keep with it. even if that requires a fair bit of analyzing. obviously, the question, “what am i doing in australia?” is far simpler than the answer. there will be dozens of answers, as i will discover a year or so from now. so maybe i could just accept the analyzing. it’s my purpose.

i came to australia to analyze everything.

even that thing you said.