Have i been Byron Bay'd?

I’ve had quite a remarkable couple of weeks. But I couldn’t tell you why.


It’s easier to believe the physicists when they say that time bends, when the eternity of blah I trudged through turns out to have been only a month, and the week since the sun rose again feels like a year at least.

Ahh, hindsight.

I do love retrospect. But when I’m feeling happy, I tend to have less use for it.

If anyone notices, they might want me to delve. What will I say this time? That this time when the see-saw jammed, I happened to be in the up position?


But it’s usually a good sign, if one can’t pin the changing of an emotional season on a particular event. Perhaps it was just time.

It did all coincide with a trip to Byron Bay. Most certainly, this was the trigger. Most certainly, even once you have the carrots and the celery and the onion and the chicken, you still need to add water for it to become chicken soup.


Along the incredibly serene and endless beaches of the shire, I ran almost every day, after not running for five, maybe six years. Some mornings I watched the sea for hours, and my mind didn’t wander too far. I went for long walks, and left my phone at home.

When it was time to fly home, I called the airline and asked for three more days. They were granted.

Shanti, Tamara and I rented this house between the river and the sea. Some nights we slept eight, some three. There were beautiful dinners and lunches, and I followed Tamara around the kitchen like a clumsy apprentice, learning how colours are just as important as tastes. I think she is a magician.

We watched the whole season of Underbelly. In two days.


One by one Team Byron departed for the airport. I was the last Mohican, staying behind to consummate the freedom of the relatively unemployed.

I moved into Byron Bliss House, and never was there an experience more aptly named.

Shanti and Tamara had mingled me in with the locals, and after they left the grassroots warmth continued. Trine cooked a beautiful dinner in her Balinese fantasy house. Mick shared his good red wine.


Yesterday as I ate breakfast at the Bayleaf I felt that warm gush of joy roll in. It had been resting there for days, but in case I hadn’t noticed, it now rose up like a wave and crashed through smiling eyes onto my deep and pebbly shores.

People notice these things. I notice them noticing.


Today as I floated through streets chatting and flirting and texting and planning, I remembered to put it all away and keep the energy inside. I sat down at a table on the sidewalk and ordered my dandelion soy latte. I put everything away, the bags, the computer, the phone, the book. I focused on the sky and the smell of my latte and the feeling in my chest.

I felt a touch of guilt rise up. It always does.

I thought, I should be locked up in a home for happy people.

Then I thought. Nah, I should be free.

reverse (reverse) psychology

What do you do when you get scared?

I free associate.

Sorry… ?

I think of all the other things I am scared of. One by one, they file into my mind. I feel them each individually as they approach, each with their own tension, their own sense of dread. An intricately planted premonition, each and every one of them. I free associate my fears, and my head begins to pound, my teeth clench, and later at night they gnash and grind, sometimes mincing my teeth to dust.

And this is something you allow yourself to do? You entertain these guests? You don’t turn them away?

There is something to them, Larry. They remind me, once the dread has passed, to live.

And your happiness cannot do that for you?

Hm. That’s interesting. I had never thought about that...

tell me again, kureishi

Hanif Kureishi wrote in “Intimacy” that it was disturbing that our illusions are often our most important beliefs. I want to end up writing a book like Kureishi. Love stories are the only dialogue in which people will appreciate being told something they already know.

flight 663

Sharing the sky with a cloud that has lightning in its belly. Watching from my window, maybe an arm’s length away, maybe a mile, lightning collects its charge from wet air and sets the sky ablaze. It’s twenty minutes after sunset. The sky is royal blue, and graying with age. A huge mushroom cloud spreads from my nose to the horizon, high as Jack’s bean stalk, casting a seamless shadow over half a city. It explodes with light. It snaps, spreads, snaps again. A city lights up, then darkens. Lightning is a tag team in the moist caverns of my eerie neighbor. An enormous whirl of white fairy floss, a violence raging in its trickling, suspended dome. Machine guns, cannons, booby traps, all going off, all now, explosion after explosion outside my window. CNN wishes it was here. I have night vision. I have lightning vision. I have fear of wars. The lightning wants blood. We are running away at 300 miles an hour.

numb

often, I find myself quite numb.

numb to crowds. to conversation. numb to good coffee. numb to a perfectly ripe avocado.

i am numb to other people’s news, their engagements, their pregnancies. numb to global warming and bombings and civil wars. numb to my meditation.

i am numb to changes in the weather. it’s mild in cambodia, sam said. here, i never know what the weather is, even when i'm standing in it.

i am sometimes numb to my own ambitions. my check list for today sinks flatly into the journal page, as far away and impersonal to me as the factory in which the ink was made to fill this pen that lies limply in my hand.

i am numb to my thoughts. fickle bastards.

but sometimes, something just breaks on through. like this week i was not numb to the Leonard Cohen interview on youtube. or to the Great Gig in the Sky, which played full volume in my car and transported me home. Or to The Big Chill, which I have seen and seen and will see again, maybe on Thursday.

(i think some people and some things break through because they bring with them no memories, but also no triviality. the two bookends of my shitlist.)

often, i find myself quite numb.

but some days, i like feeling this self-contained.

i am glad i know the comfort of silence.

scientifically nyc

going through old writing wondering if i might stumble across a masterpiece i was previously too immature to recognize (that's what they'll do after my death anyway, so...), and instead stumbled across a better reminder of why i write. i write to remember. many forgotten slices of my life have been replaced in the heart of me today, including this little tribute to my love affair with nyc...

(June 5, 2003: from the Starbucks series)

Just spent Saturday night hanging out with the homeless intelligentsia at my local Starbucks. The ‘bucks on Astor Place is 24-hours and has a complete culture of its own. i would even call it an ecosystem. 60% loners with wandering eyes, writers with pen and paper, geeks with macs, book readers - always on their own; 20% homeless or semi-homeless, because they quite literally live in starbucks and all know each other and have for decades; and 20% people who just want to have coffee with a friend or lover or elicit affair person or stranger.


you know which category i fit into. so, tonight i took my Learning Hebrew books to Starbucks, as i do one night a week, and spent hours talking to myself while memorizing letters and verbs and sentences and conjugations.

it's not that i didn't notice the bulging group of homeless men at the next table (they are all remarkably literate, always discussing literature and politics). it's just that we are all part of the same ecosystem in there, and i don't mind them and they don't mind me. and it's not that i didn't overhear their conversation turn to the moral character of Jews, and the global consequences of an Israel, or fail to sense the tension mounting as two camps emerged among them and dug into their trenches. it's just that i can't go moving tables just because mine is littered with Hebrew-emblazoned scrap paper and textbooks. that would be victim-complexish, and i decided many years ago that i would not perpetuate that particular cultural tendency.

anyway, they noticed me soon enough. "excuse me ma'am, you jewish?" (young black kid who likes to point at people with his umbrella and pretend to shoot them), "yes, i am", "aaa... medaberet ivrit?" (50+ year old, seemingly highly educated, homeless israeli dude who walks slowly with a cane, asking if i speak hebrew), "lo, ani lomedet ivrit" (“no, but i am learning"), "you ashkenazi?" (kevin: intense 30+/40+ irish guy, possibly homeless, definitely unemployed, who is always there, day or night, in the same corner, typing with enormous conviction on his rather nice laptop, always wearing the same clothes, always wearing the same hat, and whom people approach and treat like a Godfather, the don corleone of Astor Place. kevin remembers everything he reads and is an enormous conspiracy theorist. he starts his sentences with "i have information that..." or "i received information that..."), "yes..."

spent the next 30 minutes debating whether the holocaust was the jews’ own fault, whether jews own the IMF, and whether sephardis are truly (Kevin: "scientifically") jewish.

when three more heavily matted and somewhat less domesticated street czars come over and nodded at Kevin, i started feeling that maybe I was a very small, very female fish in an increasingly strange fishbowl. I packed up my hebrew papers, waved my bye byes, and walked the 20 feet to my apartment.

it's great to be home, but it was great to be with them, too. they made my night. and they won for new york city a little piece more of my heart.

i mean, where else is this a normal saturday night for a girl like me?

i really, really, really love this town.

eliminating time

When I got back, she was meditating. I knew she was aware of me, and I wondered if she was conflicted about having disappeared for 40 minutes.

True, we had just met on the plane. True, we may never see each other again. But we had come to the business class lounge together (I could have gone to the BA lounge, but casually joined her at Cathay Pacific instead), and there was something impolite about her having vanished without an explanation. Wasn’t there?

And now she had returned from whatever had taken priority. But by then, I had decided that I would move on, too.

“Hello,” I said, when she opened her eyes. I was packing up my laptop.

“Hey hey…” came the cheery reply.

“I’m going to get moving to my gate. It’s at the other side of the airport,” I said, trying to keep an even tone.

“Oh, right,” she said, and again, I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

“How was your shower?” she asked, and I liked that she remembered I had wanted to take a shower. And then she asked about the weather in London. Then she made a joke, or maybe it was me.

Anyway, twenty minutes later we were comparing 20-year projections on European society. We disagreed on how the world may rebuild itself after the Ultimate War (would it be with or without religion?). We agreed that a major conflict was possible (“likely”, she said) in our lifetime. I noticed we were whispering, but didn't have to.

By the time we ascended the escalator, her flight was 10 minutes from takeoff. She seemed calm, but I think amusement was just her form of nervousness.

I’m guessing she made her plane. But I still wonder where she went for 40 minutes of our broken destiny. And I wonder what kind of a person thinks of meditating in a crowded, buttoned up lounge, surrounded by CNN plasma screens, moving tickers of down-turned arrows, and the clinking soundtrack of gluttony and restlessness and eliminating time.

Hugs & Kisses from LA: Part II

(Friday, March 28, 2008: from the Starbucks series)

my little house

in the Hollywood hills

On Friday I woke up a woman consumed. I could barely get out of bed. I needed a man.

But, there wasn’t one. So I did yoga. I ate. I had a shower. And three hours later I still hadn’t had a single non-sexual thought. I had so much work to do, a whole presentation to write, and the day was slipping through my fidgety hands. I needed to get out of the house, go be out in the world of people, feel less isolated, stop being a horny divorcee.

So, I went to the one place I knew I liked, Café Vienna on Melrose Avenue, to get some bloody work done.

Melrose

When the sweaty Mexican busboy told me they were about to close I felt my eyes burn. Crying? Are those fucking tears? Okay, this is no average frustrated Friday. I am actually on the verge of breakdown. I need my friends.

Okay, no friends? Alcohol.

Ten shaky but militant minutes later, I was sitting alone on a banquette for seven in a corner bar called The Village Idiot. Whatever. I don’t know why I bothered to look at the juice menu, because when the waitress came back I asked her what went down easier, the Pinot Grigio or the Chardonnay. I was hoping she’d say Chardonnay. She did. And that was how I started drinking again like old times.

the ghost of me in the window booth

Between my first and third glass of wine, I edited four versions of a story called “I Remember,” which recounts the day of my grandfather’s death in 1988. I think I also ate a goat cheese and leek tart, because I remember it arriving, and then it was gone.

“I Remember” was earmarked for submission to the Australian Cancer Association’s short story competition, and the deadline was five days away. Should I be doing this drunk? Probably not. But driving drunk was apparently totally a good idea. So I wobbled across the street and into my bright red rent-a-junk, and drove off at the slowest over-the-speed-limit pace I could manage to…

vroom

... let’s see, it’s Hollywood, it’s Friday night, and in addition to getting laid what I need most is an electricity outlet, wifi, and possibly some coffee. Shit... starbucks.

On my way out of the Village Idiot I had passed a newspaper stand with a host of free publications. The Onion (had read it), Metro (how to have fun if you swing both ways), and LA Weekly with the lead article: “How to Get Divorced by 30: A Beginner’s Guide to Ending Your Starter Marriage,” which was tucked firmly under my arm when I arrived at the vile beige-hued establishment I was meant to be boycotting.

“How do you say a very weak, middle sized, sweet flavoured latte in Starbucksese?”

“A grande, half-caff vanilla latte,” replied the out-of-work actor behind the counter.

“Half-caff? I’ve never heard of…”

“Yeah, that’s what you want right?”

“Okay, yep. That."

I sat down opposite a small effeminate man drawing surrealistic interpretations of whatever in an oversized sketchbook with a mixture of glitter and crayons.

I booted up my computer, opened “I Remember”, and closed it. My work documents got similar treatment, only faster. The LA Weekly article, both hilarious and accurate, was clearly my destiny on this night, so I sipped on my tasty half-caff and sat there rocking in my chair and feeling unjustifiably okay with my life for a tipsy and gleeful little while.

I hadn’t quite finished the article when I felt my mood lift immeasurably. I was now more happy than I’d ever been in my life, or at least in the past week, or at least since my vitamin B-everything cocktail of the previous morning. Anyway, it felt good.

At around this time I noticed the music that was playing, and for a moment had no idea what was going on or where I was at all. It was American cowboy on the plateau, meets 50s broken hearted crooner, meets did my father play this when he proposed to mum?

The little effeminate man opposite me obviously had perked up at the same time… “It is like we are in a Little House On The Prairie, and I don’t know where is Laura…”


He was French. Very French. I laughed with shoulders and everything, but really only at his accent and the weirdness of it all, because honestly, I have never seen A Little House On The Prairie...

I sighed deeply and wondered what was next. Should I try to convert little Mr. Glitter and Crayons tonight?

Jesus, I should never have gotten out of bed.

I went back to the counter.

“Can I have the other half of my caff now?

“Sure…”

Hugs & Kisses from LA: Part I

Hello from the land of the male pinkie ring!

Hello!
Hey!
How are ya?
Grayt… how are yoo?
Yeah, good. What’s happening?
Ah, yeah, you know. How about you? What’s happening?
Ah, grayt.
Yeah? Grayt.

Okay, phew, now we got that out of the way…

Honestly, Hollywood is growing on me. In a veins on blue cheese kind of way. Makes you hungry for something, but you know it’s not good for you. Still, you’ll enjoy it in small doses.

The past three weeks have been lots of work and little play for the most part. Some exploration, yes, a couple of road trips, but largely I’ve retreated to my house in the hills and squeezed my creativity out onto the walls and documents and presentations and on into my dreams.

Willy: The Team

I start most mornings with a sweaty gym session or an hour of yoga. Then Willy, my creative compadre, arrives at the house somewhere around 10 a.m., and I pretend to set some structure for the day. Then I run around with a marker and throw our ideas onto giant post-it notes while we riff off each other and sometimes fall over into corners laughing.

When we get tired, we exchange music and flip through magazines and the weirdest books we can find in LA’s many eclectic stores.

Around six or seven o’clock I start getting ansy, so I kick Willy out and go for a sunset drive along Mullholland drive, or stroll along another true-to-the-movies boardwalk. Then I go home and work some more or write or read and eventually fall asleep while watching LA’s twinkling lights in the valley below my bed.

Everything was going great. Kind of.

Then a few days ago I woke up agitated and dream-stoned and thought… WHAT the hell are you doing??? Helloooo-ooooo.

what matters in Hollywood

I was overcome with aggravation. I felt isolated, a little lonely, bored of talking about nightclubs, and extremely needy of some diversity, some interaction, a change of scenery, a sincere conversation, and maybe a hug.

I sat around and moped for somewhere between one and two days. Then I announced that the office was moving to Melrose Avenue. There, I found myself a cafe and a cute waiter and some good music, and soon started to feel better surrounded by life and color and possibilities again.

So now, with some newly inserted ingredients my days are more diverse and so sufficiently distracting again. The work is still good, I’m living a healthy life, and true to a casual preference developed on my travels, I haven’t had a drink since I got here.

our target audience

In other news, I am still in touch with a man I met a few months ago in Thailand, and with whom I had a magical affair. I mention this not because it has hopes of some extremely happy ending, but rather because I am learning a lot from this first foray into playful companionship since my separation.

He is wonderful, and we’re wonderful together (as only two people with oceans between them and memories of great intimacy and no sense of obligations can be), but like always there is a risk to every hey-this-is-really-great scenario.

Yes, I needed a gorgeous lover with whom I could feel safe and laugh and who was intellectually stimulating and who helped me move on as an individual. And that’s exactly what I got. But now, three months of long-distance seduction later, I do notice that I feel less alone than I should, and also that I am getting used to this man in an mildly attached and vaguely pre-needy kind of way.

But it’s not so much because I am falling into whatever. It's because I'm allowing this experience to populate places in my mind that I was supposed to leave vacant, so that they could come to rely only on themselves for a sense of fulfillment, or hope, or confidence that I am not really the faded flower I sometimes see when I look in the mirror.

Instead, fantasy now leaks into those spaces and props me up with imaginative daydreams, guaranteeing me an eventual plummet back down to earth when, for whatever reason, I realize that in reality I am alone.

In case it is not coming through here, this is all extremely positive. I am immeasurably blessed to have come as far as I have, and would not change a single thing. My work, my travels, my friends, and my first significant lover are teaching me volumes about my new strengths, my new weaknesses, and how to be a single, open-minded, ambitious, traveling, thirty-something-year-old woman with no real home, a slightly wounded heart, and a chance to rebuild whatever life she wants.

In the ‘recently separated, out of work and feeling guilty’ category, it doesn’t get much better than that.

Mullholland

my terrace with pups

The Journey Continues...

After the leaving Kopan Monastery, I found it difficult to write for a long time. Mainly because I did not know where to start, and I was liking keeping all the sensations and thoughts inside. Then, pretty soon, I simply got distracted and moved on to different experiences, from which it was even harder to build a literary bridge.

Wonderfully, in the last few days of my travels, I had an experience that inspired me to sit down and write a final post. I did that, and since then it has been sitting in an almost-completed form on my computer. I hope to post it on Journey Always Waiting in the next couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I am writing this post from Los Angeles. What happened was that in February, when I was on my way to India for the Dalai Lama's teachings, I was offered a short-term project creating a brand for a new nightclub and restaurant on the Hollywood strip. That's where I am right now.

Pulp Fiction Diner

Once this is project done, I plan to get back onto the road. I will start in Bali, but probably need a month or two in Melbourne in between, to take care of some practical life and living issues.

I now need to make a decision. Where do I post to in the meanwhile... Firefly or Journey? Technically, Journey is meant to be a travel blog. But technically, I am still traveling.

Since there is no clear answer, I have decided to split my writing into two difficult to distinguish categories. Some things will be posted here, others will be posted there. My journey is bleeding into my life, and so my blogs must bleed into each other as well.

Regardless of where the words appear, it feels like this whole year will be a continuation of the transformative journey I began on October 1, 2007; rich with short stories, unexpected twists and turns, and with my new life force the common denominator beneath it all.

If anything is clear at all, it is that this is the beginning of a totally new way of life for me. I see the decisions I am making during this time not in the context of a vacation or an adventure, but as a focused, strategic and wisdom-inspired movement towards a new future, a new destiny.

Wherever I post, everything I do now feels like it is part of my Journey Always Waiting.