| now is | once was | came from | heard tell |

2:07 p.m. - 2006-02-20

travelgirl

Home is the great southern land, the sprawling metropolis beneath the fierce sky, this side of a half dozen oceans. And I'm here, at this place called home, for all that it's strange to say it. I'm 'homeless' here, drifting between couches and spare rooms of old, wonderful friends, long-suffering family, and rare short-term rentals. But I'm home.

There, I had an apartment, a room of my own, space to spread out and explore from, but I wasn't home. I was in that stressful-but-exciting space of Away, being the Traveller, finding tiny pieces of familiarity for comfort. It was wonderful and beautiful and good. I learnt all about the way the sky over Dolores Park changes from blue to white to intense grey on foggy afternoons, and the way the sun-seeking crowd denies for as long as possible the cold wind and fog descending. I learnt hills, and dealing with Muni, and orienting myself in a vast Californian supermarket. I learnt how to modulate my voice so I could be understood, how to re-phrase my sentences into the local slang, how to flirt in an entirely different body language, how to find a wardrobe in a suitcase.

And then I left. On my way back I went to lots of places, and learnt some more about the wierd process of being a Traveller, of figuring out street plans and transport in the space of days, and taking off again. I learnt about the kindness of strangers, the randomness of fate, the smallness of the world.

And now, home.

I still love her. A year away didn't cure me, and I figure, if that failed, and all my intervening lovers have failed, then there is simply no curing it. And that's OK, in the tense and complicated way we have of interacting, passionately close friends but distanced, by necessity of this burn I feel for her. I have recurring dreams of her lips- kissing her- no more than that, but tell her nothing of them. I know she knows. She knows I know it. In the manner of all the best friends who have fallen hopelessly, impossibly in love with girls who will never reciprocate, I just cope.

- |+

[Post-mortem] - 2007-12-22

[My life. For real.] - 2007-11-26

[Full moon] - 2007-09-27

[Unwinnable] - 2006-08-09

[Sydney Grrl] - 2006-07-16