Eclipse… Saturday August 16th, 2008

e·clipse (-klps)
n.
1.
a. The partial or complete obscuring, relative to a designated observer, of one celestial body by another.
b. The period of time during which such an obscuration occurs.
2. A temporary or permanent dimming or cutting off of light.

I’m jumping across time with this one, because I’m going back to an eclipse gone-by as a result of an eclipse this very night. And because I’m a word nerd, I thought I’d throw in some definitive perspective… (probably also because I’m a nerd for definitive perspective, in those brief moments when she raises her pretty head).

I was at Sziget, that magical Hungarian island home of music festival goodness. Sziget 2008 marked my third in three years, and I can honestly tell you my desire for completing that hatrick was one of the things that got me through some challenging travel times of that year.

Much of the crew I was with that year had been before, but amongst the new faces was my friend Imogen and her daughter/my friend Cohen. Coh was something of my festival partner in crime that week, and this day we ventured in early together through the sweltering Hungarian summer heat, wandered theatre stages, chatted calming chatter, drank coffee, chilled…

Sziget is as much theatre as it is disco, as much chill-out as it is go-hard. Sziget is what you make of it. Sziget, my friends, is all things. And this year, Sziget was proving a touch tough for lil ol’ me.

b. The period of time during which such an obscuration occurs.

See, emotional pain can be as obscuring as any celestial being… if not more so, one might suggest. I found or created or encountered (or all three?!) some emotional pain on that island that year, and as is so often the case, the phases of the moon (and the buckets of long island iced tea) had a way of highlighting it…

But I was never sad this day... I was overwhelmed. I was delusional. I was reverberating with good and bad and beauty and fear. But I was never sad.

Who can be sad when there’s Vietnamese Water Puppet theatre, and the New York SKA Jazz Ensemble, and Roisin Murphy (with her honestly perfect boobs!), and Maceo Parker?!

Oh Maceo, where had you been all my life?? When did jazz hit so deep and put such a smile on my face that my cheeks hurt, such bounce in my feet that I dance til I’m dripping?!

And after Maceo’s set, in the soft enveloping black warmth of a Hungarian summer night, I literally watch the lunar eclipse above me... See the light of the moon phase away and back again above me, with the return of its rays beaming as cool and bright as the sun might warm and strong…

Tonight in Melbourne there’s another full moon and lunar eclipse. They don’t come along so often, and I nearly always find something significant goes down at that time. But tonight’s forecast for Rebecca promises to be quiet and relaxed… I wonder what she really has in store for me…

Actually now

In a complete diversion from the whole premise of this blog, I'm going to actually write about today...

Today is the fifteenth of June, 2010.

Today was the recovery BBQ of a wedding I MC'ed on the eleventh. I was tired. I was fairly hungover. I struggled. I can't lie; I nearly didn't make it. But I got there and I'm glad I did; as awesome as the wedding was, today was the day to be there for our bride and groom when they could relax and enjoy.

But the reason I want to talk about "actually now" is that I'm going home - I'm going back to Europe. Tomorrow. Wow.

And it occurs to me that I'm almost as nervous as I am excited. Not nervous for all those logistical maybes that can go wrong; nervous to catch a glimpse of myself through the eyes of the great friends I'll see there, and see who I am today compared to then.

I went corporate. The lil bit fat, relaxed open gypsy settled back into her suits and worked like crazy for the last eighteen months. And I proper enjoyed it. But that's ended now, and being presented with the opportunity to take the break abroad, it seemed a sound decision - obligations aside.

So Wednesday I'll arrive in the city I called home for more time than any other outside of Melbourne; Amsterdam. I'm over people thinking that those of us who know and love Amsterdam only love her for "the green" - I'll go on the record here and now to say I don't smoke, I've never done so, and it doesn't suit me in the slightest. But this city is so much more than redlights and coffee shops - it's art, freedom, intelligence. It's a strangely cramped lil city that feels like the bookshelf of a dusty library, crammed tight with too many books so that they can't stand up straight. It's more comforting than I ever imagined it could be.

Because there I will find some friends who I've never lost, but almost constantly missed. And I'm curious to see them, and have them see me. As I said, excited and nervous in almost equal measure.

But it's time to bring together the hardworking professional that Melbourne has seen for the last couple of years, and the vagabond gypsy that came before her. It's time to stand those two women in the same room within me, and see where the dust settles. It's time to be with my people.

Two years ago today...

21st May, 2008

I don't even know what this day was yet - haven't checked the trusty nokia diary - but I feel like writing so writing has begun...

This day two years ago saw the end of my two weeks traveling Spain with a beautiful friend of mine from back home. We were in Barcelona, which he would make his base for the subsequent summer, and I would fly off to here n there as my gypsy summer continued.

Thing is with this boy, though I love him so incredibly much it's with with nothing but love that I say it - he's difficult. OK OK I don't help things, but he is.

And isn't it funny how the end of something is so often the most difficult time?! Even something as lovely as this lil jaunt together had been. So often it's the closing moments of something that brings emotion and vulnerability to the surface - where it firmly overtakes anything like logic or sanity ;-)

I've been thinking lately - as in over these last days - how the humdrum of daily life masks the impact of existential crises that travel brings up. The good ones, the bad ones... though this day two years ago wasn't that, and oddly this day today might be - so it seems I've just contradicted myself... Anyhow, moving on. Or back. Ahh whatever...

So two years ago today I was wandering the streets of Barcelona, essentially avoiding my beautiful but moody friend because the ending of our trip had brought us to the edge of our nerves for each other.

Instead I played with a spunky lil Argentinian pocket-rocket named Cici - we escaped the hostel for a lil piazza (Italian I know, but how I call them) and talked girly talk like body image and boys. It was awesome. It was an antidote to two weeks of boy time where he and i had both probably felt almost everything, but said absolutely nothing ;-)

Cici gave me a parting gift - a little anklet with bells on, that were legend to be the sound of tiny guardian angels to take care of me. I wore it for a long time after and still have it.

THIS is the stuff that matters.. these moments in piazzas with distant friends who invest in you the kind of faith you just need to hear every now and then. THESE are the times we should all remember and focus on - these tiny lil innocuous moments with the smell of a foreign city in your lungs and strange singing accents in your ears. THAT is the stuff I am focusing on today - as in this day right here.. it isn't much, but it helps :-)

Homecomings...

26 August 2008

I don’t mean to sound wanky when I say that by this date, I had seen a fair few places. Such is my nature that I’d found amazing things in almost every single one of those places.

I don’t mean to sound whingy when I say that by this date, I was actually quite tired. Such is my nature that I’d effectively exhausted myself on this adventure, relentlessly sucking everything I could out of every experience – people, cities, nights out, train rides – nothing escapes the intensity of the way I do stuff, for better or for worse.

My trip had taken on a strange energy; as grateful as I felt for the few months I had left to travel, I was also quite deliberately ‘dancing out the set’ – forcing myself to make the most out of my limited time, but actually dragging my feet through it too. I’d literally been counting the days between then and my touchdown at Tullamarine.

Then, I got to Porto.

What that city held for me could fill a dozen additional posts (and possibly will, if I ever commit to this poor neglected blog), but for the first part let me leave aside the connections I found in the amazing people, and just talk about how that one moment felt when I arrived.

Porto is nestled quite dramatically across the side of a hill above the River Duoro in the north of Portugal. The train up from Lisbon, my chosen path for this day, arrives across a bridge that traverses from the top of the south hillside to Porto on the other, with the full drop to the river below visible to passengers as it does so.

So there I was, one tired dirty suntanned lil Aussie traveller, pack on ready to alight the train. There I was, ready to find another tourist office, another map, another hostel, another group of travellers to talk to. Ready to man up and summon the energy to do all those things in yet another city, to trudge through it as best I could, and enjoy what this city had for me.

But as I saw that river, that city, something in me changed. I literally froze and chills ran up the length of my body. I could swear to you I had goosebumps, though there is a chance I’m exaggerating on that fact.

I’m not exaggerating this though – the moment I looked down that river at the sprawling brick houses, the rising church towers, the blue glistening Duoro, I literally said out loud to myself “Oh f$*k, I’m in all sorts of trouble.”

Trouble because something in me knew right then that I would never want to leave. Trouble because as tired as I was, and as much as Australia is my home, it was going to hurt to get to know this beautiful city and then have to leave her behind. Trouble because I had found this somewhere over the rainbow, right when I thought I was too out of breath to appreciate her.

Turns out it was easy to appreciate Porto. Turns out everything about my time there was easy – the company, the Super Bock, the food, even stumbling home up her cruelly hilly streets at 7am.

The illogical elements of life are the bits I love best. It’s completely illogical, my love for this city, but I knew right then that in some strange way, I was Home.

Since one year...

It’s exactly one year today since I landed back home. This is an attempt to write my way around this feeling that I have been so struggling to articulate today, purely self-indulgent and certainly of no real worth to anyone but me. You have been warned.

I keep a short diary of every day, locked into my mobile phone calendar and heaven forbid should any curious cab driver ever unearth it the day I finally lose my phone on a bender. The premise of this blog (such lofty ideals) was to use that as my basis for these entries.
My entry from that day doesn’t reveal much – I watched Heroes on the plane, sat by an Irish woman and got the short line at customs.

My memory from that day doesn’t reveal much more…

I remember my arm was broken. I remember leaving Schipol Airport in Amsterdam the day before, and being in an utter state of shock, but that would be the entry for the 29th October, not the 30th. I remember so much from my trip, but so little of this day.

Why is it then that this anniversary has me so spun sideways?

Initially I thought it was the circumstances of today that were hitting me, but as the day wears on I think that less and less. It doesn’t help that coincidentally my parents arrived in Amsterdam yesterday, welcomed by my Dutch Angels who’d kissed me goodbye exactly one year ago to that day. The universe is a perverse lil bitch sometimes, she really is.

The whole thing has made me very reflective – on who I am now, who I was then, and certainly on who I was way back when I originally flew out near-on three years before. The mind is quite literally boggling, though externally perhaps I seem pretty much the same.

I feel wiser, tireder, stronger, more secure and not a little jaded. It’s this last one that doesn’t sit with me, as anyone who knows me would be unsurprised to learn. My optimism is so all embracing it’s almost dangerous, and is something of which I am quite proud.

Do we have to become more jaded as we mature? Is it a maturation necessity to surrender not just our youthful energy, but also our youthful enthusiasm and naivety? God knows I am willingly going down kicking and screaming on all three fronts, but going down I am.

I’m getting older, wiser, smarter and if I do say so, hotter. I like getting older, and enjoy my own company and my life more for each year I dance / stumble / power my way through. But these milestones and their consequent reflection is a bit nasty these days…

Maybe coz we are by definition running out of them?... Yeah, maybe.

Maybe coz I am honestly still lying to myself and I DON’T like my life, my job, my mind, my body?… Lol methinks nup on that one.

I do miss my gypsy life, but it’s missing the people that makes being home cruel. I miss them all so much it is like a physical pain some days, and consequently I literally shut my mind to it momentarily just so I can appreciate the present.

Of course they are all always in my heart. I have been so incredibly blessed for people in my life. People who have believed in me, trusted me, challenged me, hurt me, loved me, shit me to tears.. on this side of the globe and the other.

But I miss them every day, so I don’t think that’s what is getting to me today.
I quote Lucas… “What’s with today today?”

F*ed if I know kids… Sometimes we just gotta ride them out I guess.

Happy Anniversary to myself. From myself. Bring on tomorrow.

Peaches 'n' Cream..

There's no day for this one. There's no day, but there is a man. And a family. And a song. And a smell.

For some reason today, this humble 'nothing' Friday in Melbourne, I got to be thinking about how some songs have a very distinct smell for me.

Yup, smell.

Yup, I'm insane ;-)

For example, The Killers Mr Brightside smells like an Italian Summer - but that's for another post. The example for this post is Peaches 'n' Cream by John Butler Trio, and how it smells like the Victorian surf coast. Like Home.

But here's the contridiction - it might smell like the surf coast, but it creates a full-fleshed, three dimentional vision of Amsterdam... of my brother Samy... standing in our Flying Pig bar (most probably arm in arm)...



See this wonderful contridictory vision is born of countless nights, days and afternoons where Samy would play me this song. He would fix those deep, intense brother Samy eyes on me, and play me this song. We would sing along together, and my brother Samy would break my poor lil heart there and then - in such sweet ways.

And for all those times when Sam played me this song.. and how I craved and ACHED for this place called home!!.. I stood there in those soft warm walls of that hostel called home, and LONGED for the smell of this other place called home....

Funny how now I listed to this song and long for the flip side of the coin ;-)

Not that I am unsatisfied... not wholly at least.. mostly I am just entertained at my own human nature...

And inspired by the magic of the love of all that we - the 'dam family - found in Amsterdam. It doesn't fade. On the contrary - the more days I live, the older (wiser?!) I get, the more real and beautiful and amazing that Amsterdam family is.

........."there you are... right in front of me.... a brand new day.... sunrise over sea.... no longer, my cup half-empty... coz there you are".......

So much love, guys... Peaches 'n' Cream, and so much love xox

L’Amour Menacant

Sometime in November or December, 2006

Shortly after arriving in Amsterdam, realising I would live largely broke and cold, I invested in a “Museumkaart” – a membership card for Amsterdam’s museums, purchased so that I would have worthwhile entertainment on cold days off when I couldn’t walk in parks.

So we find me, some cold day or another, heading off for the Rijksmuseum… it was just around the corner from work at the Flying Pig, and touted as one of Amsterdam’s finest.

After an entire ground floor of (slightly boring) Dutch empirical paintings of sailboats and bloodshed, I climbed a curving flight of softly polished wooden stairs, and found “L’Amour Menacant”.

I have always preferred sculpture (or photography) to most other art, and this sculpture is an example of one that stopped me dead in my tracks. In the foyer at the top of the stairs I saw this, and PLEASE believe me when I tell you that the picture you are looking at attached to this blog does NOT do it justice.

As soon as I saw it, with outright clarity and a hard beating heart, I thought to myself “oh fuck, that’s the whole fucken point”. And though the realisation challenged me, I thought it happily… especially once I read the encryption on the base.

Here I was, standing staring at a clearly mischievous lil fucker (ie Cupid) ready to reek havoc on all our lives (ie inflict us with Love, god forbid) and I read inscribed on the base the Latin that translates to…. “Whoever you are, I am your master. That I am. That I was. That I will always be.”

And I shit you not, my skin rippled with goosebumps and my heart kinda froze.

It’s a funny thing, the way the Universe chooses to have its way with us on days like this. See, when I arrived at the Rijksmuseum that day, I remember quite clearly selecting Kruder and Dorfmeister’s Sessions 1 & 2 as my soundtrack for the day (drowning out tourists in museums is highly recommended, most especially when you are one of them), but bear with me as to the point…

My friend James has (arguably) been with me through more analysis of Love and Its Great Purpose than any other individual in my life. K&D is irrefutably his soundtrack for me, so before I ever even saw L’Amour Menacant (“Menacing Cupid” it translates to, by the way) he was standing right beside me despite the fact he was actually safely tucked up in Melbourne on the opposite side of the globe at the time.

Lately (as in actually these most recent days and months of my life ‘lately’), I had been craving An Epiphany. This day I am attempting to describe right now was most definitely one.

Coz see there I stood, before this grinning lil fucker (Cupid), with his wry grin that positively screamed “I am about to fuck up your life in ways you never imagined”, and I said to myself all over again with clarity and knowing I had never before experienced – “It’s the whole fucken point.”

Love. Surrender. Surrendering to love. It’s the whole fucken point.

We may like to occupy ourselves and our days with concerns about rent and jobs and superannuation and so on and on and on… but when all that meaningless discourse dies down, and we are left with the actual point for our lives, we find Love.

And staring open-mouthed at L’Amour Menacant made me realise the need – the beauty! – of surrendering to it, to Love.

So, since James was as close to my oracle for this shit as it gets, and he had been with me this day from the outset, I went and bought a postcard featuring the image of cheeky lil Menacing Cupid and filled it with cramped handwriting about theories, fears and beliefs… I tried to capture for him the burning moment of that Epiphany. And I kissed it, and sent it his way.

There is more to say about L’Amour Menacant – about how art intellectuals believe that the artist (Etinenne Falconet) was referring to the Egyptian god Horus when he sculpted Cupid’s fingers to his lips (I have the eye of Horus tattooed on my back, for those who don’t know) – but I think this is enough meaningful Epiphany for one blog, don’t you?!

xox

River walks

Sometimes this stuff just gets me… this missing stuff… knocks me sideways and leaves me panting and crying.

Such was today’s lunchtime walk, when I suddenly found myself overwhelmed with a memory of…

Thursday 12th July 2007

Great things happened this day, and bad things too. It was a dramatic little day that started with a walk along the Po (the river that flows through the charismatic lil city of Torino, in Northern Italy), continued to my one and only pick-pocketing experience, and concluded spectacularly with a Daft Punk gig in a park under a summer night sky.

So perhaps I will come back to parts two and three of this day, since both are full fleshed memories even now, but today I am going to sink into the memory of that morning walk. Mostly because it was the memory of that simple, apparently unremarkable act that so brutally kicked me in the stomach just now as I walked by the river in my ‘home town’.

I remember seeing two turtles sitting on a rock as I wandered the grassy walking path, smiling up at the mountains that hug the city. I remember taking a picture of them – most probably because it was (fortuitously) the only image on my memory card when my camera was taken later that day in the aforementioned pick-pocketing incident. I remember a lady walking a whole troupe of Golden Retrievers and how the sight of them made me feel waves of familiarity (I had two retrievers growing up). I remember a general soft wave of familiarity for being in Torino at all, since I had been there exactly a year before for the Traffic music festival as well, and recalled lil things like where the internet café was and where not to eat.

And I remember how it feels to be in Italy… in Europe in general. It isn’t a feeling I can describe (it certainly isn’t logical) but it is this weighty contented sense of adventure and spirit that is just… there – just there when I am shopping for groceries, just there when I am drinking my coffee, just there when I am walking the rivers or streets.

Today the lack of this feeling hit me so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that I literally broke into spontaneous tears. I miss how it FEELS to be in Italy, miss it so much that this apparent substitute of Melbourne just seems… empty.

But it’s not. I’m just feeling dramatic today ;-)

Guess I broke my own rule about nostalgic reflections since this is really about today, but thems are my rules and I’ll do what I want with em.

(Oh, and I can’t post the picture of the turtles since the F#$KERS stole my camera, but I can see them if I close my eyes…..)

With editor's approval and love beyond words xox

Saturday 19th July, 2008

A few things happened on this day, but it was the last moment of a long day where it bumped into the next one that I most want to share.

We were in Novi Sad, in the north of Serbia, and 'we' is myself and this redhead goddess Imogen I have mentioned but not named in previous ramblings. We had just reunited for and survived the Exit festival in that same town, and had decided to succumb to being stuck there for the time being.

So cool things had happened - I'd wandered around town with a Serbian friend (aka man mountain) Dule, to find us an apartment... I'd been spoiled with homemade sarma (cabbage roll heaven) and raikia (even better!)... We'd laughed hysterically as a grown man on rollerblades had attempted to woo Imogen, headband and all... We'd been entertained and supervised and questioned and taught by these amazing Serbian men we found friendships with in this pastel coloured lil town.

Somehow at about 7am two "big anglo chicks" (as Imogen likes to refer to any white woman over 5'6" who isn't waif-like) end up in the one hostel bunk, drunk and giggly, talking utter sh!t like teenagers on a slumber party, generally indulging in each other's company. I'd been away more than two years, and apart from a brief visit home which kinda just made it more apparent, we had felt the lack of each other.

Imogen is frighteningly intelligent, madly articulate, unsettlingly intuitive... great qualities but also ones that bring her unstuck at times. See, when she gave me a bit of "Oh I told you I kissed him once, right?" about a man who was once my sun and my moon, I couldn't help feeling like she knew she was spitting it out at just the right time, accidentally on purpose, when it would hardly touch the sides.

Coz of course it didn't, and remembering this moment makes me smile like a fool - me laughing and smacking her repeatedly over the head with an empty water bottle saying "OF - COURSE - YOU - KNOW - YOU - DIDN'T - TELL - ME - THAT - BIATCH!"... her ducking her gorgeous red curls and spitting back "hey, it's not like you haven't done it to me, hey stop!!"... me "THAT'S - NOT - THE - POINT - mwaHAHAHAHA!"... laughing. Both screaming laughing.

God this woman makes me laugh, makes people laugh. So we laughed, I stopped belting her, we got up and went down the street for pizza slices in our jamies amongst 7am commuters to continue the banter, eventually slept, and I imagine we got up and did it all again the next day.

I miss her so much - she took the gypsy baton and stayed in Europe, and leaves but a pathetically slight trail of blog posts in her wake (clear dig xox)... but I imagine I'll find her somewhere again someday.

Safe journey Beautiful. Keep laughing xox

Any grey day, February to May

It seems utterly ridiculous to be sitting here reminiscing about grey days in Edinburgh when it’s over 42 degrees in Melbourne today… Still, call me Gen-Y if you wanna, but a world of extremes has always kinda been my thing ;-)

So any day grey from February to May… basically, an excuse to be wistfully nostalgic about all things Edinburgh… so in no particular order, and certainly not a complete list…

Coloured doors
Usually primary colours – bold and red and blue and yellow and shocking. I loved them. I loved the dark, grey, mysterious buildings too, but somehow all the more thanks to the contrast of the doors. And OK, it wasn’t every door, but there were a lot around town.

Girl Time
I have an older brother, and perhaps because of this have always been more comfortable with a lot of male company in my life. Not there. Not then. For whatever reason (though I do suspect it may have been the state of my lil heart at the time) I was all about the ladies when I lived in Edinburgh.
I shared Storm’s room, as I already mentioned, in a girl’s university dorm. There were six girls in our dorm, and four or five more across the hall, many of whom would pop over for ‘family dinner’ between study session and episodes of crappy UK TV.
And at work too… though I am famously allergic to female managers, I worked in a team of seven women, and genuinely enjoyed it.
There were boys in Scotland too of course (nice big Rugby sized ones), but they didn’t much scratch the surface.

My Mountain

This will be mentioned again and again. Every weekend, without fail and regardless of emotional state, hangovers and god awful weather, I climbed Arthur’s Seat. It was about a two and a half hour door-to-door sweat-fest, always solo. And it was a kind of exhaustion that cleansed me to my soul, which may have actually been the whole point…

Princess Street in the mornings
I walked the long way to work every day, not just because Café Lucano is the only place in Edinburgh that has real Italian coffee, but so I could walk the length of Princess Street. It was an extra 20 minutes every day… 20 minutes less sleep, every night for those few months, and I am smiling now with gratitude to myself for doing it.
Every one of those mornings I would gape up at the castle, perched illogically on its jagged edge of volcanic rock, and feel a tightness in my chest from the sheer drama of it. Amazing.

Graveyards
I have a beautiful friend, who has a beautiful daughter (who is my friend too, lucky for me), who always loved graveyards. To be fair, this friend of mine is more than a little insane, so I always thought it was kind of a strange thing to love.
Then I got to Edinburgh.

Hair elastics on the street
I have no idea why – the wind blowing them out, perhaps?! – but I have never in all of my gypsy wanderings seen so many abandoned hair elastics lying on the street as I saw in Edinburgh. To the point where if I see one now, in whichever city I find myself, I smile and think of Edinburgh.

I do quite a bit of smiling and thinking of Edinburgh, actually… :-)

Leaving Dozza

Today I feel too Sunday afternoon lazy to write eloquently (or in fact spell 'eloquently'... god bless spell check!), so I being cheeky and just posting an old email.

I've been considering posting this particular email for a while now; at the time it was a particularly cleansing, powerful thing to write. But this morning as I read it, I am quite amazed at how very different I feel from the girl who wrote it. And that is in nice ways, but I am surprised by it. I guess sometimes we don't notice the little shifts in ourselves.

Anyways, this was written from Dozza, Italy, about two months after I left. It was emailed to all my friends, so apologies if it is a little hard to follow. It was written from exactly here...

Enjoy.

Sunday 4th June, 2006

Hello lovelies

This email is my farewell from Dozza before I move on to a few days roaming Bologna, and then MEET MY PARENTS! – Saturday 10th June, 4pm, bottom of the Spanish Steps, Roma – and thus hang up my farming volunteering boots for the foreseeable future.

And it comes with a warning… well, a couple…

One: I have been isolated, and somewhat SOCIALLY STARVED for conversation, so it’s long. Read it only if and when you want.

Two: Mostly these emails from people who are traveling are of the “where-I’ve-been-and-what-I’ve-been-doing” variety. This one is not. I’ve been here in Dozza. Since Cannes I haven’t moved. I could spend this email describing this gorgeous countryside, my hours raking hay, this sweet polite family and their small-town cat Boss Hog with his Big City Attitude – but I don’t wanna. This is a “HOW-I’ve-been-and-HOW-I-am” email. You have been warned…;-)

OK… so here I sit on a Sunday morning… looking out the window from Victoria’s computer, and oh wow… I tell myself “ALWAYS remember this view”…chooks cackling… sky a perfect blue, streaked only slightly by whisps of white clouds… pines and vines and boxy square terracotta houses rising up from the valley before me. Yeah, I think Dozza has healed and stilled things I didn’t even know wanted it.

And to confirm that little thought… right as I write this, the church bells chime melodically down the hill from my gorgeous Dozza. There is steaming cup of too-strong black Italian coffee beside me… and yes, this might be heaven. Yes, thank you Dozza.

Because the thing is, in lots of ways I feel like I want to be back to the girl I was when I landed in Rome these weeks ago… back to the girl who lived danced cried laughed her way WHOLE HEARTEDLY through a glorious Melbourne Summer, but all those who know me and saw that know that level of energy wasn’t to be sustained. It was awesome. It was beyond fun. But it was the kind of hectic best not sustained. I had to come-down from it eventually, and here in the sweet little Dozza, I have.

But DAMN I LOVED that Summer! Thank you, those who shared played laughed danced MADE IT REAL with me. I think now in reflection that perhaps I needed that kind of madness to make the transition from that job… BRUIZE and its bruises needed some serious fun to heal.

But now, after a few weeks of fitness and constant busy at Antonello’s to distract me from the heartbreak of leaving you all in Australia (HOW did I do that?! THANK GOD I WAS DRUNK!), I’ve had a few weeks of silence. Of quiet stillness. Of Dozza. Where people life time MEANDER by… and some days it’s been too slow, some days I’ve been too alone, some days I’ve been too damn SOBER!

But as it comes to its peaceful smiling end, I can see that Dozza – like shavasana at the end of a yoga class – has been the time to truly integrate the changes.

It’s like Ferris says – “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” And here I have had that time – not only to look around at where I actually am (that came last, in fact), but to look around at where I’ve been… who I’ve been there with… and my - THE FUN WE HAVE DONE!

In the still quiet serenity of this gorgeous green valley I have thought and smiled and cried and laughed about you all. I guess some people don’t say this stuff out loud (little own in emails!) but I do, so I will…

People, relationships, connections, personalities… these are my favourite things, and the things that endlessly fascinate me. To that end, the people who fill my life are truly integral to who I am. My friends, my family – you guys define me.

Rest assured if you’re reading this now (if you’ve made it this far awake!) I’ve thought of you and missed you and loved you some time in these last weeks. I chat to you on my endless walks, dream of you in my deep exhausted sleeps, wish you were around and hope you’re smiling wherever you are.

Because my life is f%#ken awesome guys, and you have helped build it to be that way. After these weeks, being as restful and healthy and isolated as I’ve ever been, I’ve appreciated you love, your support and how REAL YOU ALL ARE so so much.

And with all this integration relaxation appreciation… with my sails full to capacity with fresh new-Summer breeze… to The Next Chapter I go.

Smiling.

Lots.

So thanks.

Lazer lights and open hearts...

Since I am sitting here wearing a Sziget Festival t-shirt, let's go back to the year it all began...

Saturday 12th August, 2006

Sziget. Oh dear, oh wow, oh My sweet fair Sziget. This was my first trip to what has become the festival to hereforth ruin all festivals for me. Sziget is amazing.

'Sziget' is the Hungarian word for 'island'; a ship building island in The Danube river that seperates Buda from Pest is, for one short, sweet, dirty week per year, transformed into a music festival. Well, more than a music festival... Sziget is a parallel word of music and art and culture and people and tents and mud and good clean fun that leaves me pinching myself to think I have really been there and seen that. Thrice.

This was Day Four.

It was also an interesting point in my life and travel. My 'plans' (though I say it laughingly even now, since 'plans' and 'travel' rarely conjunct sweetly) had all gone to utter shit. I was left scratching my head and wondering where to go - the world was my oyster, but on this day the oyster was a bit big and daunting. It happens.

So I had called Mental Health Day... (yeah, you will notice a trend towards these; I highly recommend them). Despite having an island full of madness and a globe full of opportunity, today I decided to call game off, and go to the movies with the girls.

In this instance 'the girls' refers to my childhood friend Brookie (who I was travelling with at the time) and two Dutch girls we had met the day prior at our Sziget hostel, who went on to become my Dutch Angels very soon after and forever since.

It's funny how certain company brings out certain thoughts, certain feelings. Hester and Ines (aforementioned Dutch Angels) met me when I was pretty confused, emotional and vunerable. They are called my Dutch Angels because they were exactly what I needed, exactly when I needed it. And this was the day that sealed the deal - at the end of this very week I literally shrugged and said "Well, if you girls are Dutch, I'm coming to Amsterdam!"

James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy runs with the idea that nothing is a coincidence, that everything that happens in your life is connected and happens for a reason. Days like this - people like these - leave me tending to see his point.

From the very get-go I remember walking to the Festival, talking intensely with Ines about my very best friend and how much I loved her. Right back then I remember dancing and laughing and smiling with Hester like we had always been pounding dancefloors together in just such a way....

And if I believe that certain people open you up to new depths of feeling, emotion and fun, then I believe it of music in equally potent measure. This night at Sziget was Radiohead.

Now controversally enough, I would never call myself a Radiohead fan. Musically, lyrically, professionally I have admiration and respect for them. Personally, they make me want to cut my wrists. But this night, although I was apparently ignoring the set, I discovered how raw, powerful music takes you with it, whether you want it to or not.

During this set, being treated to The Lightshow Of My Life, I stood at our meeting point bar with Ines, and we poured our hearts out. We had known each other just over 24 hours, and here I was, gazing into this woman's endless dark eyes, and almost crying with the release of the words that were tumbling out of my mouth.

The music, the company, the island, the magic... it brought tingles to my skin and a shortness to my breath. It does even now, just thinking about it.


(Oh, and here are Radiohead's lights, to give you the visual...)

Mental Health Hangover day

Saturday 16th June, 2007

For nearly half a year, I lived in a small Italian Riviera town called San Remo. I went there after my six months in Amsterdam (via a little travel), studied Italian, relaxed, indulged. In fact, I did a whole lot of nothing apart from the language school; it seemed to me that work and an Italian summer were simply incompatible.

There's a great Cat Empire song, the chorus of which rang in my head on this day... "nothing, oh sweet nothing... today we're doing nothing at all"... and I did.

I just recently gotten back from a short jaunt over to fair London town for a gig, and had returned home to my quiet, peaceful, dusty old apartment overlooking the Mediterranean and been treated to a day of summer storms.


I lay in bed, finished one book, read almost all of another one. The rain was monumental. San Remo is trapped between the sea and the Ligurian Mountains, and the storms there are something I will never forget, and always appreciated.

It used to be that I felt bad about doing nothing for a whole day. Being a recovering over-achiever, it used to be that guilt would kick in and I would force myself to do something. Not anymore.

Hehe... it occurs to me that 'nothing' doesn't make for a particularly interesting blog topic, but damn it was a lovely day.

Our Room

Tuesday 19th February, 2008

My Aunty's favourite city is, and always has been, Edinburgh. She travelled there in 1976, two years before I was born, and I have been raised with this constant understanding that of all the places she went, it was this city that most stole her heart.

And a little piece of family love, and feeling close to someone like my Aunty Libby, was exactly what I needed when I arrived in Edinburgh. And in a crazy frantic way, exactly what I found.

I left Manchester for Edinburgh on this day, and it was not an easy day. Oddly I think my (hideously severe) hangover helped... (I woke up with my shoes still laced up, if that gives you some idea!). But some days being a lil numbed down to a level where simple tasks take your full attention can help. Some days there is no room for thought or reflection. Some days you've just got to get up, breathe, and put one foot in front of the other until the sun sets.

I was moving to Edinburgh very spontaneously, after my living situation in Manchester capitulated somewhat. In fact, I nearly went Home home, but I just kinda couldn't do it - not without my summer of music festivals, and not without seeing Edinburgh. No, more than that. Not without knowing Edinburgh.

Through my wonderful 'dam family I came to meet a beautiful young sloe-eyed girl named Storm, and her student dorm room was to be my soft place to land. Storm is possibly the only person I have ever met who talks more than me, so us living together in a dorm about the size of a broom cupboard could easily have spelled disaster...

Well, it didn't. From the moment I got there, this beautiful and incredibly generous soul just kept repeating to me - "we just fit". And fit we did, in the tinest of dormrooms, in the most unlikely of situations, for the most perfect time.

This particular Tuesday, I bid a crisp, sunny Manchester a teary goodbye on the station platform at Piccadilly Station... I heaved my hangover and my endless kilos of crap North, through breathtaking rolling hills... and I found just enough space, and so much love, in a tiny dormroom in Warrender Park Road.

A 'dam fine Christmas Day...

Tuesday 25th December, 2007

OK OK so in the spirit of the season, here's a lil Christmas nostalgia...

Last Christmas (after I gave you my heart) was layers of whipped cream and champagne and that feeling where hungover and sleep-deprived and not a lil tipsy converge. I was, of course, in Amsterdam... safe in the soft warm walls of that hostel called Home, The Flying Pig.

It was my second Flying Pig Christmas in as many years, only this time I had popped back for the occasion from my current 'home' in Manchester, and the year before I had been living in The 'Dam. Many original 'dam family members remained, and our lil posse had swelled impressively with new faces too... and so we came together, to celebrate this good day.

I started the day out of the hostel, waking heavy and hungover at my Dutch Angel Ines' house to find Santa had come!! My parents had arranged for In to buy me gifts!?! Heaven... then into the debauchery of the Pig, where I found my friends on cleaning shift were already well into their Christmas bonus champers. Well, what was I to do but join the fray!?

There were whipped cream fights, constant sparking of Amsterdam's finest, bottles popped ceremoniously over the Room 17 balcony into the Vondelpark below... there were great friends, constant laughter and there wasn't much effective cleaning done, unsurprisingly enough ;-)

Since the staff are supposed to cook all the guests their dinner, this utter lack of sobriety (before lunchtime, little own dinner!) was something of an issue... to this day I have no idea how we turned packet mix mashed potato, soggy brussel sprouts and some kind of Dutch supermarket meat product into a meal for 50, especially given that the majority of the kitchen help were seeing sideways at the time, but we did.

My dear friend Action (nickname, not noun) did lose a chunk of his finger sharpening a knife, but on the scale of how it might have gone?? Methinks we done pretty 'dam good.

I miss those crazy cats this Chrissy. Well, I miss some of them - two of my 'dam family closest are upstairs asleep in my parent's spare room and I have just finished wrapping their gifts with my mumma. Ahh... long live a world so small and safe. Long live the 'dam family.

And Merry Christmas.

xox

I'm strange about shoes...

Friday 22nd August, 2008

I am too. And I don't mean I am strange in that girlie "I can't go to New York until I can afford Jimmy Choo's" kinda way, I mean to me shoes are... earthy.

OK OK don't tune out, I am serious. If you think about it, shoes are the thing that connect us - quite literally and physically - to the earth. And yes, I do sometimes find strappy lil girly things that somehow do it, but more often than not if the temperature is somewhere a little above freezing, you will find me in a pair of Birkenstocks.

And not to be a brand-whore, but specifically Birkenstocks; copies do not patch it.

So on this random Augustian Friday, I replaced my Birkenstocks. I took the sweaty, cracked, unheigenic dark brown Birkenstocks that had been given to me on my Amsterdam Birthday (Feb 2nd, 2006) by my old work friends from the Flying Pig - "so that I would remember them every step of my adventure", or so the card read - and bought a shining new pair... exactly the same.

And I had to have a lil moment for the old ones... a lil do-it-yourself ceremony. I stood outside the Portuguese shopping mall in Lisbon, people milling about either side of me doing their business, and me standing there like a maniac saying goodbye to my shoes...

A quiet moment of reflection, for all the days and nights spent treking unfamiliar streets in totally foreign places... for all the dancefloors where all around me are pretty lil things in pretty lil shoes, and me in my clunky ol' faithfuls... for the fact that they don't slip in the wet, don't blister in the heat... A quiet moment of reflection for those beautiful souls who gave me those shoes, and who had, in fact, come with me every step of those years.

It was about the only thing I achieved that whole week actually, given that I had been laid out with a post-Sziget (music festival) flu the whole time I was in fair Lisboa. I slept, I wandered, I eased my way into Portugal slowly and quietly, and I said goodbye to a pair of shoes.

Sonal the Sloth...

April, 2006

(I'm too lazy to get my journal to remember the exact date, and I remember the day so that can be enough)

This is just a few weeks (days?) after I left home, all those moons ago. I met a gorgeous American girl named Sonal, who was a guest at the agritourismo where I was working, and she and I had somewhat bonded.

You find us in a tiny villiage called Pescosolido, which lies on a hill just above the larger and less pretty Sora, in the South of the Abruzzo National Park, Italy. I started my trip by working here in exchange for free room and board; few weeks of Italy and quiet and language, after the hectic party of a Summer I'd just survived in Melbourne.

This day I was keen for a walk, typically enough. Sonal asked if she could join. Sonal, as it turns out, is known affectionately as 'Sonal the Sloth' by her friends; a small snail could easily overtake her when she's running at full throttle.

Once the predictable frustration wore off (I'm used to a good 7kms a day at real-life human full throttle!), it was a lovely wander down from the farm into Sora. Here I drank too many irresistable, sensational coffees in Sonal's favourite cafe, and then I imagine we probably checked emails or did something similarly unexciting.

The weather in Italy in the mountains is always unpredictable, and as we came to start our hour-long walk (shuffle!) home, the heavens opened. To distract ourselves Sonal started quizzing me over and over and over and OVER on the full conjugations of the Italian verbs essere (to be) and avere (to have)...

Blissfully, we were saved by a passing local who recognised us; Jessica had been teaching Sonal Italian at the agritourismo... She and her sweet friends gave us a lift the last lil way home, and that's her on the left in the pic (Sonal on my right).

In all my days of attempted Italian language since I have never forgotten this afternoon and this lovely woman's smiling voice as she relentlessly drilled these essential verbs into my linguistically limited skull.

A man named Mark...

Out of the hazy mess of memories, feeling somewhat overwhelmed but realising that this lil project needs to start somewhere, i hereby for this post select.....

Saturday 16th February, 2008

This is the night I was lucky enough to crowd myself into the Manchester Apollo, shoulder to shoulder with countless hyped-up and sweating strangers, for the Mark Ronson gig. Mark had just taken home his Brit Awards that week (or was it his Grammys? Ahh I could google it to check, but you get the picture), and the atmosphere was consequently heightened to buzzing point.

His 'Version' album had been a big one for me for at least the six months prior, and this night itself marked the closing bookend to my time in the fair, funky city of Manchester, England. My living situation there had capitulated somewhat, and I had decided to leg it north to Edinburgh after that very gig.

It was no ordinary show - brass, strings, guests I could name but only the hip-hop savvy would recognise (and I would have to google that too, to be sure I was right myself!)... Mark himself is a producer, rather than an actual musician; he joked himself throughout the set that he only played guitar well enough so he had something to do on stage when he toured. But I for one could almost feel the man's talent, almost see it rising off his pinstriped suit...

Now you wouldn't be the first to call me a groupie, and if you read this blog this wont be the last time you find me gushing about the power of live music, but this gig was sincerely One of Those Nights.

Two stand-out moments...

1. He opens with his 'version' of Maximo Park's "Apply Some Pressure", only does it solely instrumental.
The aforementioned heaving and hyped crowd all (my good self included) begin screaming the words... Most especially the line "What happens when you lose everything? You start again... you start all over again"...
For a girl who kinda did just lose a piece of her "everything" that week, and who was about to "start all over again" in bonny Scotland, it's fair to say this struck a chord.

2. When Valerie kicked in.
Now we have all heard Amy and Mark's brilliant cover of The Zuton's track, and I for one don't think it's even nearly been killed yet, despite reckless overplaying. When this track started, I was the only one of our gig-going group who wanted to move forward, closer into the madness, into the sweat...
And as I started to walk forward and away, gaps started appearing in front of me, as if by magic. Moving forward was easy, smooth, fun... And as I walked forward, while the tracked kicked in, I could feel tingles rushing all over my skin while I danced myself crazy; it was as though the light of the full moon was shining unobstructed onto my skin.
I was moving forward, away from something, and the path was lit by the Universe.

Sorry if I lost you a bit there... this got a tad metaphoric ;-)

T'was a mint gig though, and one I shan't forget.

Better late than never??

So, here goes my travel blog.



I suppose the fact that I am already home makes it somewhat more original?? Yes, yes let's say that, especially since the alternative is that I have just been too slack these last two and a half years to bother with one.



Anyway, here we find me in my parent's kitchen, steaming espresso in hand and bandage on my right wrist - but we will get to both my broken wrist and my caffeine addiction/obsession with time...



This is the intro posting, to forewarn anyone interested in reading my lil ditties what this blog will be about. This is my own nostalgic reflection section, posted public because it's more cleansing that way. This is my therapy, my escape, my attempt to record something of what the magic of the last two and a half years wandering, living and working in Europe has brought.



My idea is that I will randomly chose a date, and then write about it. I can't promise I will stick to that, but that is the idea.



Enjoy at your leisure, whoever you are xox