Tuesday, August 26, 2008

but he's got the worst taste in music, if i didn't know this i'd lose it


as entirely tempting as it is to spend this post recounting the drunken antics of this weekend (with some largely unflattering picture proof floating about on facebook now), i think i can sum it up in one photo:


everything else can go unexplained for now, but suffice it to say, i've decided to remember it all as "shame-pagne weekend." (do note the bottle in hand is not my lovely assistant, vodka.) at least with vodka, i remember much of what i did, no matter how embarrassing, over the top, or trashy. champagne is clearly just fancily-served rohipnol, as there are large chunks of time i do not remember, and actions i hardly recall but in retrospect, maybe wouldn't have done. though, the good news is...i could have done a lot worse. (and in nights past, certainly have.) i guess i have a fair bit of time left here in australia to break my old records. or maybe reclaim my dignity.

but let's not get distracted by the main course here. it's been a heavy couple of posts lately, i think, trying to chronicle this transition. i've made some mention of the food, the weather, the people, the general shifting of tectonic plates in my life. the picture also speaks to the clothing (yes, look at that vest and deep v-neck shirt--and not from h&m, it's a brand new feeling), but what about the music? more specifically, what about australia's terrible taste in music.

now, i don't genuinely mean that. i think from a new york--hell, a general american--point of view, it might be considered terrible. not quite as bad as much of europe (david hasselhoff, et al), but one of the things that surfaces as the jetlag fades when you first arrive down under is the reigning royalty of kylie minogue. and the almost historic reverence for abba. and all the remixes!

naturally, i'm in heaven.

i had forgotten how permissive australia was about, truly, my own terrible taste in music. as i mentioned in an earlier post, i am generally ten steps behind everyone else on the path towards coolness when it comes to music, and often get sidetracked in a glut of remixes, which i reckon is much like an audio k-hole. what a relief, in this case, to be out of new york and in a country so far from the rest of civilization that marches to the beat of its own drum (machine).

say hello to some of the latest additions to my ipod:



to say nothing about the homoerotic overtones of the video, i've grown quite fond of the presets, with what seems to be standard fare in oz, a good electronic base to their music. but this song ("this boy's in love") totally wins me over with the melodrama of that plinking piano and the wailing vocals.



this song will always remind me of australia, even if the singer is swedish. this song is so australian. feel free to search for remixes of september's "cry for you," and you can get a sense of the newest playlist in my itunes.



i had heard of these girls before, the veronicas, but this song ("untouched") totally won me over. throw some well-placed strings in a pop song, and i'm sold like a used car. it's one of those songs that feels almost anthemic when you've got couple drinks in you. which, sometimes, i do.



this is currently huge in australia. i'd never heard of sneaky sound system before, but "kansas city" is growing on me. it's just one of those songs, with all that electronica and the 90s dance-pop vocals, that wouldn't seem to go anywhere in new york except buried in a remix. the video's fucking weird, too.



i know, i know, totally drinking the kool-aid here, but it's a rite of passage if you're going to live in australia. you have to sort of actually like kylie, too. and i have to say, the song ("the one") totally works, and the video's pretty. also about as soul-stirring as a gospel choir when you're drunk on champagne and dancing on a podium at 1 am. or so i hear...

and finally, because i think it's only appropriate, my latest musical obsession. it is, of course, an abba remix. with a bonus: check out the brilliant answering machine message at the beginning. and then sink into musical bliss.




feel free to watch the original video and song as well. feel free to fall in love.

Friday, August 22, 2008

you as a sound just as silent as none

i finished writing a play today.

i can't be entirely sure it's a fantastic piece, but i can say it's a start, it's a step in the right direction towards becoming a writer again, or fulfilling my personal duties as a so-called writer. not to discredit this blog, which truly has become my most heartfelt project at the moment. but there's something to be said for this deep introspection and subsequent shoveling of emotions onto the page.

you begin to get a little lost in yourself after a while.

before i left new york--and this could be redundant, really--i became very focused on me. (i know, my god, we get it.) what i mean is that i stopped reading any fiction, stopped writing anything altogether that did not have to do with personal growth. it seemed everything i was doing, my entire life, was twinged with this hunger for reclamation and reinvention of myself. and quietly, without any fanfare or drama, i'd say, it was this thing i did to and with myself. i think i'm reiterating this point a bit now because i miss that so desperately, this sense of climbing up a mountain in great leaps and bounds.

i had something of a mini-crisis--or a rather, it came to a head, or at least a shoulder--the other day. i had gone for a walk to see the royal botanical gardens, but i stopped in a fairly mundane park probably a quarter of a mile from the actual gardens. i just needed a park, really. i missed central park at that moment, the great meandering expanse of it, the "unmissableness" of it, in that i always knew how to get there, and where in the park i wanted to be. i'd spent a number of hours there during the past summer, eventually often in the same spot, by the same tree on cedar hill, which i loved. it was wide-open and yet close enough to be among people. still, everyone kept to themselves, and there were no frisbees or baseballs to dodge, and there were trees and curves in the hill. so much character, so many spots to claim as your own.

and i remember, one time the summer before, much more lost, and so much more disoriented about my entire life, i was wandering the city and eventually the park, and eventually grew incredibly, inexplicably tired. i think it was actually on the bottom of cedar hill, close to the exit onto 5th avenue, that i laid down with my ipod and just fell asleep. it was such a banal and open place to lay down and sleep--and a terrible idea, i don't know why i still have this ipod, how no one thought to pull it out of my dead hand--but it seemed to be all i could do at that moment. i remember this feeling of being so very far away from home, wherever that was.

it was a similar feeling earlier this week, except much colder, and i was not tired so much as incredibly agitated. i was sitting on a bench, adjusting and readjusting my position. and eventually i'd have to move because whatever leg i was leaning on had fallen asleep. i was writing in this notebook i've done all my new york writing in, trying to settle in so i could just ramble and figure out what i was feeling, what the words were i needed to say.

i know i get to these points of revelation in my stories--the ghost of the past i saw in the subway, what my petition actually said--and i don't actually tell you the most interesting details. so without transcribing--because i knew as i was writing that i did not want to be married to these ideas, but i did want a brief torrid affair with them--i will admit that i essentially was asking, "what the hell am i doing here?" i was questioning why i would leave a life so on the road to completion in new york, a life that in retrospect was coming together quite beautifully, and come all the way here without a plan or an idea of what the point was.

we don't need to spend any time counterpointing this idea. i eventually got myself to the point of saying, "you're here for a reason. and you need to be patient as this reason reveals itself to you." and then i got up and kept walking, and went to the royal botanical gardens, and they were beautiful and unlike anything i'd seen in new york, such natural and yet well-attended beauty, surrounded by developed civilization. walking along, i saw a small placard that said "yearning for home," and described how these gardens were built for the europeans who had come to melbourne in the 1800s and were homesick for this kind of landscape amid such a rough, undeveloped terrain. i loved the idea of having a space to re-identify yourself in.

i ended up staying out the whole day, eventually meeting my friend john in the city, grabbing some dinner, doing a bit of window shopping, and heading back to craig's. and the next day, i sat down and picked up where i left off on this piece i had started back in new york, something that had come out of an idea for a bit of dialogue and grew and developed from there.

and fair enough, there were, let's say, some autobiographical elements to the piece, and one of the characters may have essentially been me-ish. but i wrote ten pages, and another five today, and may have very well finished the damn thing.

between that sense of accomplishment, and the fact that the melbourne writers festival has just started, i do sense my creativity getting stoked, my desire, among all this literary appreciation and analyzation, to be heard as well. i suppose all this to say that one of the main reasons i came to australia in the first place was because i could focus more on my writing. and one of my fears was that i would get all the way here and find only the same writers' block i experienced in new york.

to cap all of this, i found it very interesting what one author was talking about at a discussion this morning. someone asked him, if he were teaching a college writing course, what he would tell his young, developing students. and he said, "i'd almost recommend going out and doing something for ten or fifteen years--really live a life--and then write. so many young writers haven't done very much with which to write about."

the other woman in the discussion disagreed, had said that you didn't necessarily need life experience to be able to create characters and situations, that children were often incredibly capable of that. and he agreed, but added, "i just think there's a certain depth that can be reached with life experience."

and i think maybe, in tackling the great iceberg that is the reason i moved to australia, part of it was to have experienced this complete uprooting of my life, to have moved to the other side of the world, to reclaim my self-imposed title of writer, and then have someone say, "life experience will enhance your writing."

and then to go home, and to write.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

oh, so i drank one, it became four

it starts with a drink.

or it starts earlier than that. it starts with, "i want to feel this, try this tonight." and it's then ceremoniously baptized with a drink, an edging towards the rabbit hole down into wonderland. brace yourself, alice.

***

one is never enough, but i always lose count at "too many."

***

there's a difference between being free and being out of control. i always remain on the border of the two.

***

until i start knocking glasses over and i'm just lucid enough to see someone give me a dirty look. what i must look like, i think. what this all must look like.

***

alas, i'm having an amazing time. and despite myself, i really quite like him. there's maybe three good reasons why i shouldn't be letting this happen, but i forget all of them with each conspiratorial look, this silent connection, this yes.

***

in new york, i sometimes went out by myself. looking back, looking at who i was at the time and what my life was at the time, i hardly believe it. it's not just a certain amount of bravery--and i don't need to mention the dirty mistress, vodka, who would visit when my marriage to logical reasoning was on the outs--but a determination, despite it all, to get out there and live and try and meet new people. i would say, "i always end up meeting someone." and i always did. and it never took long.

***

sometimes, and it doesn't take drinking to get me to this observational state, i watch the people who i know won't meet anyone tonight. i want to know their entire lives. i insist some misstep in life has led them to this point, standing along the wall with a drink, eyes darting from body to body. it's lonely, yes, but to be entirely present in the moment watching it, it's also something fascinating. i imagine being these people, and turning towards the thing i'd be hoping someone would distract me from. but they, and i, and all of us, simply have another drink instead. it's not sad, i don't think. we're all in this together.

***

you always know when you're going to kiss.

***

this isn't necessarily about what you think it's about, who you think it's about. this is so many nights. this could be any night.

***

i've forgotten at least one of the three good reasons i shouldn't be letting this happen. i've given up on another, and i'm just too drunk to care about the last one.

***

some drugs are supposed to make you hyper-aware of the world around you, to a point of induced enlightenment. say what you will, but that's why i stick to vodka. it takes the back route, by shutting down your awareness of the world around you, like closing all the blinds in the house until it's pitch-black, and there's nothing but the sound of your own breath, and the uncertainty of the next moment, and a complete disregard for what could be happening outside. with enough drinks in me, eventually it's just me and my totally uninhibited emotions, sitting together over a lit match squinting at each other. there seems to always be some moment, during these nights out, when i am alone with myself, and logical thinking has faded away, and i'm entirely taken up with how i feel.

***

we're not supposed to glorify drinking, or altered states of mind in general. and let it be known, that if i had the choice of finding enlightenment through, say, intensive yoga at an ashram or through enough vodka to kill a russian at a pulse-pounding gay club, i'd be on the first flight to india i could book.

***

in fact, i used to hate people who talked about drinking as if it could actually qualify as a topic of conversation.

***

to say nothing of the glorification of a drunken make-out session. no matter how good it was, and whether you'd do it again, even sober, in a heartbeat.

***

and one day, i'm going to settle into a life that doesn't always make for a good story to tell at parties.

***

also: i'll worry more about what people think after reading this than what they thought after reading about my petition. the contradiction is that i never want people to think of me as ridiculous.

***

but to be honest, i had a lot of fun.

***

and i think i'll see him again.


Thursday, August 14, 2008

hey lloyd, i'm ready to be heartbroken

this is not to say there's any current heartbreak to be had in australia, but in the spirit of gratitude (inspired partially by my horoscope today--you know my feelings!) i think it's worth taking on this new life with an open heart. there will be uncertainties, there will be questions, there will be challenges. there will be blood? no, there will not be any blood.

but it's important to be ready for it all as if it were what you came here for in the first place.

which in some ways, is true.

***

things happen. your money gets temporarily frozen in the states. you play a veritable hot potato with places to live, you maybe do foolish things with boys sooner than you can say, "oh, wait, i thought i vowed to stop doing this?" because you're just looking to land somewhere for an evening. and not necessarily a bed, just a situation, an experience that grounds you in existence in this place. you're not just wandering around with a dumb look on your face, you're doing something, something that's happened here, like a piece of evidence, albeit somewhat intangible, that you were here, you existed. you're not the man who wasn't there.

if that makes any sense.

it's been a week and a half. that's it. a fistful of days that could have passed by in new york with hardly as much recognition for the minutiae of life, the seconds in a minute in an hour in a day that hold so much potential for life, for change, for growth. i am so terribly aware of the time i waste, and let's be honest, in the last week and a half, i've wasted a lot of fucking time. i am trying my hardest to judge that--or rather, some seemingly uncontrollable faction of myself, the ministry of judgment in my mind, is trying its hardest--and coming up with only half-assed efforts.

little by little, i'm able to stop caring.

and not that i'm not doing things. meeting up with old friends--picking up where we left off like it was two minutes ago--and making new friends, establishing this sense of familiarity i hardly believe. and despite the vastly unpredictable and largely miserable weather of a melbourne winter, trying to get out and about for a wander, which inevitably leads to getting lost in neighborhoods i don't recognize and waiting for the pieces to come together. i'm doing something every day, big or small, and for the sake of self-reporting (something to look back on at a higher, wiser point), i never feel like i'm doing enough. it's like i'm being hounded by some "seize the day" bumper sticker, and i just want to say, "yes, i know, i agree, but i'm tired today!"

i talked to sonam online for a bit last night, and it was probably exactly what i needed to hear, as only a few months earlier she moved back to india. funny how, in the early trials of my time in new york and now during the great adjustment in my time in melbourne, sonam has been right there. i was saying last night, "i want to tell everyone i'm having a great time, but i'm not sure i'm there yet," and she said, "the first month kind of gets lost in the haze. we'll talk about how much fun you're having in a month."

we also talked about when all the pieces come together, and you have that moment when you realize you've made exactly the right choice, that you're just where you're supposed to be. "i promise, that will happen for you soon," she said. i remember how it happened in new york--i don't know if i could pinpoint the moment exactly, but it was towards the end, of course. the feeling is so entirely palpable and authentic. i think it happened towards the end of my time in new york so i'd be sure to remember it when it happens here in australia.

i also talked to jay yesterday, of course just picking up as we do like it's no effort at all, because it's not. i feel like we both change so much when we're apart; i can't help but wonder why big, exciting, fun life changes can't happen when we're in the same room. it seems in the last year we were present for each other's crappier moments more than the good, but maybe that's intentional of the time.

though, as per usual, he cut through all my bs, and pointed out these cycles i go through of habitual behavior, which i think kicked in quite automatically when i got back here. all the things i did in australia that i wasn't keen on seemed to show up around the corner one day, and we recognized each other very quickly. but i'm actually quite grateful for that. i love that i have something to work on.

"don't give up on it," jay said. "you moved half a world away, and that's as good a place as any to be happy."

maybe that's part of the challenge i am taking on here. i walked away from so much of what made me happy, towards what could make me happy, and now i've got to do the work of converting "could" to "does."

i imagine that is the more interesting part of this journey, anyway. i don't particularly care--and i can't be sure you will--about too much of the actual journey. because if you want the mundane, i've got (a) i need to go clothes shopping, two of the pairs of jeans i brought are too big, (b) i love how sushi rolls here are handheld, seaweed-wrapped rolls, and they come with little plastic fish with screw nozzles holding the soy sauce so you can apply as needed, and (c) i forgot how much i missed oporto, solo, continental noodles, and of course, passion pop.

just so you don't think all i do here is have deep and meaningful considerations of my life while laying on the bathroom floor.

i do go out and eat as well.

Monday, August 11, 2008

the moment i let go of it was the moment i got more than i could handle

i don't believe in coincidence, necessarily.

i don't think life happens randomly. i sometimes think it's been planned down to the second, and even when it seems spontaneous or unpredictable, it's all written essentially in stone. it's just a very detailed sketch.

i've always had that bumper sticker slapped on my ass that everything happens for a reason, that there is a purpose to the bad as much as there is a purpose to the good, so much as that the bad is not "bad" at all, just bearing more weight, more lessons to learn, more opportunities to grow, more necessity to push yourself, to keep your focus on the light. it's so much easier to run with these theories when things are going well. much like how the last two years were "the worst two years of my life" but at the end of those two years--this passing american summer--I could just say they were very "important," we can always reflect better on the storm that passed through our lives when the sun has come out again.

that being said, i think regardless of the emotional weather we're experiencing, life is always giving us signs, hints, clues to the password. sometimes, you can even outright ask for it. like in "eat, pray, love," which you may remember as being my life story, when elizabeth gilbert finally puts pen to paper and just asks god to put an end to her divorce so that she can move on, or at the very least, start to move on. i know there are much more literary or even deeply spiritual works i could refer to, but i have not read those books. i have only read "eat, pray, love." and call me commercial, call me tacky, but at least you can't necessarily call me pretentious. and at least i'm not referring to "the secret." which i could, but that's far too much of a commercialization of these ideas for my taste.

and while i've kept it as something of my own spiritual guilty secret, i think for the sake of honesty i must admit: i wrote my own petition. and it was fucking answered.

i don't think i'm feeling quite so open to bearing my soul as to transcribe what i wrote, though i do have it saved as a word document on my computer ("my petition.doc") but i can give you the basic story. this was probably towards the end of may, which was, appropriately enough, right before the grand enlightenment and subsequent love affair with new york truly got some wheels under it and i wasn't just floundering through life wondering if i'd ever find the key to filling in the great gaping void in my chest i had been walking around with for so many years.

a little less than a month and a half before this, i had gone on the entirely restorative vacation to florida with jay and laura, where i fondly remember sitting alone on the porch one morning just writing for pages about where i had arrived in life, and what i could quite possibly do next. i was already tossing around australia, and saying, "i'll go in october" and asking "why october?" now, when i re-read what i wrote on that morning--that incredible, warm, serene morning when the tension had finally flooded away from my entire physical self for the first time in what could have either been any number of months to well over a year--i can feel my willingness to "get it" running through my words. i was being patient with myself. i was already well into but not finished with "the power of now"--pass the kool-aid, eckhart!--and i must remain unabashed in saying it was truly informing that moment. i was also reading this fantastic book called "a brief history of anxiety," which was both a comfort and a confirmation of what i believed about anxiety (the sociological effect of work and modern relationships, the general awfulness of medication and ruthlessness of pharmaceutical sales, truly what a nervous breakdown feels like) and so i think overall, what i was arriving at was a willingness to get my shit together.

all of this to say that i was trying for a while before i finally wrote my petition.

and yet, i would stare blankly on the subway trying to find a space between whatever unexplainable malaise i was feeling and myself, grasping desperately at the supposed peace of "now." i'd sit at my desk at work listening to something peaceful and heartfelt, trying to breathe away the constant fervor in my chest. i'd stay inside all weekend trying to figure out how to get over the brick wall between myself and the world i should have been experiencing. falling asleep was impossible some nights.

i was already into my to-do list for self-improvement, having gotten the dreaded hiv test, gone celibate, and sent a fairly conclusive email to david of all that was unsaid, whether he needed to hear it or not. none of it was working--or rather, it was all working, but it was missing something. at some point around now, i started reading "eat, pray, love" and basking in those snotty bathroom floor cries. i just wanted to read an entire book about crying on the bathroom floor, or in the car, or on the couch, or in the supermarket...

at that point, i could have written that book.

i said it before, and i mean it: i have no intention of modeling myself or my life's recent journey after a book resting on the new york times bestseller list for an obscene number of months. but as i said before, i don't believe in coincidences. i think we are meant to arrive at certain points, see certain things, meet certain people, at very particular times. and i was meant to read this book. i was meant to get to the part where elizabeth gilbert says, "i wish i could just petition god to make this end already!" and her very spiritual friend asks, "well, why can't you?"

we had the same answer. you can't just ask for it. you have work for it, earn it. we both seemed to believe that the only way to life's goodness was a personal war. and that's if you win the war. that's, essentially, if you kill all of your opponents, and neither she nor i had that option without a prison sentence and/or a guilty conscience. and i didn't need that, i was already having a hard enough time sleeping.

i couldn't believe she wrote a petition. and i couldn't believe it was answered--and so quickly! i had forgotten, by the time i had sat down to write my own maybe a week later, that she had dozens of people, alive and dead, sign this petition. she just said, "my parents have signed it. and my best friend. and abraham lincoln!" she had the support of the entire known world on this petition. i didn't think to ask for so much. i just signed my name. i guess in the spirit of learning that i'm enough.

i asked for clarity.

i said there was this boulder on my chest, and i didn't need the strength to lift it, i needed the clarity to recognize the strength i already had to lift this boulder. i asked for health. i asked for my life. i insisted, a number of times, that i must have been asking for too much, but i pushed through it. i said thank you. it seemed the least i could do.

and i think my petition was answered before i even finished writing it. and then it was answered a little more the next day, and then the next. a little more than a week later, i was able to sit down and write the letter to my father that had been waiting to be written for twenty-three years. i've never seen my life so clearly as when i started writing that letter, or felt so complete as when i actually sent it.

in subsequent days, the void in my chest closed up like a minor wound. the current of sadness and pain running under the surface seemed to dry up completely. i lifted the boulder like a handful of feathers, and handled it just as delicately. we must have reverence for our pain, as it has the dubious honor of bearing the most important lessons we don't want to learn.

essentially, though, i got my shit together.

***

i say all of this, a little over a week after arriving in australia, in lieu of describing in detail how fantastic these past eight days have been, because none of this would mean a thing without that. i will get into australia. i have plenty of stories to tell, ideas to share, plans to discuss. i have a life down here to share. i made a petition. i said, "i want my life."

here it is.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

this boy's in love

i have a tendency to put the cart before the horse. i also have a tendency towards using that expression. i love the look of confusion on the imaginary faces of all involved, including the horse, including the cart passengers.

that being said, i think it's just a matter of coasting along with life's general good intentions before everything rights itself. be patient till you make friends, get lost until you ask for directions, have doubts until you take risks. i think it's so good to go without before receiving. i definitely think i endured that in new york, and while at the time it was a struggle, i also think my perception about it was different. looking back, though, i love so much more the life that came together because i knew how it was to have life exist at such disparate points, so unreachable from one to the other.

all of this to say, whatever unfounded life crisis i was having when i first got here has already passed. nevermind that i moved here with friends to immediately reconnect with, or with a good bit of savings to keep me cushioned for plenty of time to find a job, or the very fact that i was moving out of the bee hive manhattan in which i thrived, and to what has been considered one of the most livable cities in the world in one of the friendliest and most laidback countries in the world. i can hardly claim fear of the unknown, knowing all of this.

but i made the effort a while ago to stop judging the hell out of myself, because that only seems to spin my wheels in the mud. so fair enough, i was terrified at first. who wouldn't be? am i still? not in the least.

i've been here less than a week, and i may have already found a place to live, for rent so dirt cheap it would make the modern new yorker weep into his latte. and not in a ghettorific neighborhood either ala washington heights! in possibly my dream neighborhood, a quintessential example of everything i've ever wanted since i was cognizant of my desire for a barbie dream life, sequins and all.

i've been reconnecting with some old friends but also making plenty of new friends already. i have plans! i couldn't pay someone to have plans with me when i first moved to new york. what's more, i can make friends with boys, and hardly have to dodge the pitfalls of a casual hook-up. i think part of that has to do with dropping the habit of using sex as currency to pay for a life, but it's also such a different socialization here. making friends with people is effortless. much of that has to do with the people here, and i think a good bit of it has do with me forsaking any shell i might resort to hiding in.

yes, a lot of these comparisons are with new york in mind as the "meanwhile, it was so much harder in new york because blah blah blah" but it's worth mentioning that i miss the hell out of new york. it goes without saying, i miss the people, but i also miss the look, the feel, that cliche-ridden energy, and just the general sense of ever-expanding options for a life. i even miss how hard it made me work, how i sometimes had to earn it. new york is an exquisite boot camp.

but to be honest, i feel guilty about my loyalties. i am falling back in love with melbourne, but my break-up with new york is not a spiteful one. in fact, it's not even a break-up, it's just a circumstantial parting. i talk about new york so obnoxiously much. it feels a bit like that long marriage set in concrete, with highs and lows, betters and worses, sicknesses and health. and melbourne is this love affair i keep having anyway. so do you stick with the solid marriage, or the one that you can't seem to let get away?

(hmm, where is the horse that was drawing this cart? oh...what are you doing back there?)

Monday, August 4, 2008

arrest me and say yes

i woke up last night at 2:30am thinking, "well, i feel pretty well-rested now." i think that just about sums up my first day in australia.

even now, i find myself a little speechless about it all. everything, from the moment i left for the airport to now, had and continues to have a fuzzy dream-like quality. it's like watching an adaptation of your life on tv. but a very loose adaptation, with some actor (probably canadian) playing you who looks nothing like you. to be fair, though, he does a decent impression of you. but he seems to have no intuitive sense as to the way you would react to anything, so it takes a few seconds for you to understand his performance, his motive, his "why" and most definitely his "how."

it's the one question no one asked until now, and it's me asking it: how are you going to pull this off?

so this is the long way of saying i've arrived in australia, and i'm feeling a little spooked by it all. melbourne is slightly how i remember it, except i'm currently staying on the other side of town from where i was last time i was here, so the perspective's different. and as i told craig yesterday, there are no expectations of me here this time. no one is "looking" for me. it's entirely up to me this time, making a life of it all. and yes, that is why i did this--i came here to build the house, not dust the furniture. but dusting is so much easier.

i feel so incredibly far from new york, from my teary-eyed parents i parted ways with at the airport (how unaccounted for, the incredible difficulty in saying goodbye to your parents for some undefined period of time), from my friends, my job, my routine, my developing roots, the deep sense of familiarity i had for new york. it's what you aspire to as a new yorker, the ability to talk train lines and neighborhoods and rent costs with the same ease as regarding the weather. it's what you aspire to in life: easiness.

but i seem to always insist on a challenge. i don't want life without the occasional growing pains. not to validate the godawful therapist who told me i was a sadomasochist (*adjusts leather thong*), but i do like to push my boundaries. well, i like it the way someone who's right-handed likes learning how to write with their left hand. there's a bit of frustration and exhaustion involved in it all, but the pride of becoming ambidextrous pushes you through.

and yet, nothing about this last twenty-four hours has been hard. it's been terribly easy actually. between the "good luck" and "we miss you!" sentiments from people back home, to the genuinely nice people i've met already--and as i've discovered in new york, it so much about the people in your life--i feel somehow cushioned by two sides of a life. i've got plenty of money and time to find a job and a place of my own to stay. there's no pressure from any side to be doing anything other than what i'm doing right now.

i think the truth of the matter is that i can hardly digest the largeness of this all, so maybe i should just stop trying. maybe it's just one bite at a time. last night, my mind was wandering, and i felt this sudden rush and thought, "oh my god, you just moved to australia. you're here. you did it." i think i can just wade in that feeling for a while.

and maybe try to get a little more sleep.

Friday, August 1, 2008

and then you take a moment take a moment take a year take a year

well, my friends, today, this boy finally flies south.

even my horoscope says so. (yes, horoscopes.astrology.com) and i hardly need to reiterate my feelings about my horoscope. particularly, on the day when i step out into the great abyss of who-knows-what's-next, it says:

this day is going to unfold in some unpredictable directions, but not knowing exactly what is going to happen next might actually be a very good thing for you, right now. look for it to spark your creativity by the afternoon and help you get started on a new path in some aspect of your life. you'll have the urge to start a few new social endeavors you've been contemplating for a long time -- finally, you've got the right attitude for trying something new.

it's that last little line--that urgent interruption of it all, that summation of the point, that really gets me. "finally, you've got the right attitude for trying something new." and hasn't that been what the last few months have been about? i needed to arrive at a point in my life where i was ready to fly. i wasn't ready back in april, when i decided that, indeed, i would be going to australia. i still had a few trials by fire to go through, and great streamer trunks full of baggage to let go of. i had a lot of peace to find. i had to find the good in my life, so as to be sure that i was not running away from the bad.

needless to say, mission accomplished.

so now i arrive at those questions again. those old questions i introduced at day one. what are you going to do in australia? are you going to get a job? how are you going to support yourself? what are you doing?

my answer is still the same--"i'm just gonna figure it out"--but now i'm going, now i am actually figuring it out. and not to put the cart before the horse, i haven't even gotten on the plane yet. but in my mind, in my heart, i'm already there. i'm already in that new life. i woke up this morning--after a night of tossing and turning and bizarre dreams, despite the liberal dosage of "simply sleep" i took--and it was as matter of fact as "today is friday. the sun is out." today, you're going to australia. it has begun.

i want so much for this experience. i want for it the way a parent wants for their child to do well in life. i want for it the way we yearn for good health, a loving relationship, for peace. i want it to be brilliant. i want it to be right, in the sense that the good always outweighs the bad. i want the bad to be nothing more than an opportunity to grow and learn. i want the good to be the same.

i want it to be worth what i've given up. i want the cause to exceed the sacrifice. i want to know that the people i meet in australia, the sights i see, the experiences i have, are all innately "meant to be." before i left new york, maggie told me, "i can't imagine my life without you, but i can't imagine your life without this experience." and maybe that sums it up. i want to look at this experience as something indelible in my life's narrative. the story could not be told without this chapter. equally, this chapter could not exist without the progression of the story up to this point.

everything in life brings you to where you stand right now. everything happened the way it did so you would be doing what you're doing right now. so in that respect, i'm terribly grateful. for all the good, all the bad, all the smooth sailing and rough waters, all the times i collapsed under the emotional weight, and all the times i floated on the ineffable joy of the moment. for the people who broke my heart and the people who expanded its capacity to love. for the monotony and the spontaneity. for the impenetrable dark and clarifying light. for the doubts and the confidence. for all the yes and all the no of my life. i have no choice but to be incredibly grateful.

and on that, my best possible note, i take flight.