post script: perth - august 30, 2006

i have a heartening message from my travelling guru in vancouver, rod (on the verge of his own departure for asia on september 16), and a perfectly glorious meal with extraordinary people tonight at the Subiaco Hotel (server Stephen from vancouver!) to thank for this last, fumbling effusion from australia, none of which will surprise anyone.

my mind wants to continually drag me into a place where i'm not prepared, not ready, uncertain, off balance, doing it wrong, blah blah blah. i'm doing it and it's really happening and whatever happens, i'm making it so and that's pretty fucking cool. there's excitement in that, though it's not the kind of excitement that people seem to be looking for when they ask, as they inevitably do: "so, are you excited?" i hate that question because i feel compelled to conventionalize my response, to package it up and merchandise it for better consumption. it makes me feel like a social commodity.

i can't put this experience into a nice box for the rest of the world that makes sense and makes everyone else feel comfortable. it makes writing these posts excruciating because the same part of me that wants me to believe i'm screwing it up (for a host of convenient, drop-down menu reasons) is the same part of me that wants the rest of the world to believe that this is all fun. it's not. it's fucking scary. it's the scariest thing i've ever done while mired in the muck of being a body. but it is certainly an adventure and, in rod's words, i feel calm and ready, despite any impression left by my ongoing fulminations.

i'm sated with food and good humour and the acceptance of my blessings and my shocking insanity.

so, like, i'll catch y'all in kathmandu (sorry....couldn't resist)

in the meantime, my favourite photo so far: some majestically twisted graffiti on a mysterious, abandoned building at the entrance to Noosa National Park in Queensland. and just to prove that i was there, the inimitable Sydney Opera House.

in medias res

despite its absolute, bone-jarring familiarity--the sense of always being in progress, a beginningless beginning or an endless ending (hell, why not both)--i am, just as always, flummoxed by it.

yesterday, when i started writing this post, was a "get to it" day: get up, get going, get out, get stuff, get back. get-get-get. i'm sure the sound of it could be neatly mapped onto one of the strange avian species that australians rarely notice, but i can't not. (it was also a day of double negatives and negative doubles. a wrigley's gum day, in an inverted sort of way.)

today, i have no idea what i'm doing, saying, thinking, feeling, but in furtherance of getting to it, i'm just getting something down. so those of you, like mr. barker, who's eyes are set to rolling by my flash-flood stream of consciousness, may wish to read no further. you have been warned.

lindy and i drove to margaret river on friday (august 25) and stayed with her friends, patsy & chris, until monday (august 28). there was wine, there was tremendous food, there was footy. in fact, i will take this opportunity to come fully out of the spacious, if not especially well-appointed, footy closet. appointments can be highly overrated, especially when there are footy players to engage one's renegade attention.

although we were piled up inThe Knights Inn of the Margaret River Resort to experience the West Coast Eagles and the Fremantle Dockers, i feel giddily confident that it wouldn't really matter who was playing. i am

(wait for it)

a fan of the Australian Football League (AFL).

to my neophyte's eye, the game plays out as a dizzy fusion of (north american) football, rugby, soccer and basketball with a volleyball garnish. i have yet to figure out the rules completely, but at the moment, they seem to be extraordinarily secondary. tertiary, in fact, since the game itself is secondary to the players. don't mistunderstand me: it's a game of truly bewildering stamina and athleticism. these guys are are incomprehensibly fit. but after all, it's like all other incomprehensible games in which very fit men are paid incomprehensible heaps of cash to chase a small object around a playing surface according to incomprehensible rules in order to sell incomprehensible products to an incomprehensible audience. we won't talk about the distressing prevalence in "aussie rules" of the so-called "micro-mullet". we'll simply note the otherwise unobjectionable Ben Cousins, Chad Fletcher & Matthew Pavlich and move on.

there has been watching of australian idol, too, which somehow manages to defy my disgust, but that may have something to do with the accent. of those who might actually have a shot at winning, i'm cheering for dean geyer. of the others, bobby flynn is truly brilliant, truly individual. he could hold his own against the damien rices and jack johnsons of the world.

ask me about aussie slang when you next speak to me.

over the course of the weekend holiday, lindy and i also visited two of the Margaret River Caves--Jewel and Lake--the Brown Hill winery, Canal Rocks in Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park near Yallingup (the countryside is sprinkled liberally with placenames suffixed with "up", which means "water" in the local aboriginal dialect) and Gunyulgup Galleries. there were far too many cakes and creamy desserts involved, but the enormous karri trees foresting the southwest really demanded a special diet to be appreciated properly. i shouldn't be so glib: this part of southwestern australia is wildly beautiful. the coast is the most spectacular i've experienced. unfortunately, my camera batteries were dead, so i have no pictures of our drive back to perth along the coast. i'm hoping lindy will share hers.

and now that i've spent the entire post babbling about australian pop culture and touching only lightly on the country itself, i feel really super-tired. i want to write more. i want to be witty and fresh. i want to dazzle & delight. i want to entertain with my finely-tuned observations about australian life, culture and the environment. all quite beyond me at the moment, they are.

all of which really means that i'm about to leave "western" culture behind very early tomorrow morning (airport by 5:15am) and i'm craving distraction. i have a 16-hour day of travelling in 2 legs (perth to singapore, singapore to delhi) with a 5-hour layover in singapore. i have to overnight in delhi before leaving for kathmandu midday on friday, which requires some sort of accommodation that i haven't organized and am not even sure i want to. i may curl up in a corner of the airport wrapped around my bags like a needy lover.

mostly, i'm looking forward to being in one place for awhile. being able to call kathmandu "home" for the next 3 months is bizarre and comforting. i'm excited to meet the staff and the children, but naturally terrified of what the whole experience is going to be about.

(there was to be something about "clean coal" initiatives in australia and a really magnificent riff on the similarities between underground storage of carbon dioxide and human anxiety and depression, but, you know, stuff happens and it's time for dinner)

and now i'm done faffing about.

may you all be well, peaceful and happy.

perth, western australia - august 24, 2006

i've just moisturized with lindy's cocoa butter formula moisturizer. i smell like a freshly-baked cookie. i am now markedly more interesting to zoe the dog, who demonstrates a precocious, if not entirely self-possessed, curiosity at the best of times. she's a doll--one of those charmingly larger dogs whose frequently inappropriate sniffing hints at the sort of ungainly and, sometimes, insufferable, saliva-streaked bumptiousness that seems directly proportional to canine size, viz. the great dane and the st. bernard. zoe, bless her, is simply charming.

henry is a birman. henry lurks. henry licks. henry enjoys a challenging relationship with his insistent mane of chest hair. henry is a cat. henry is lurking somewhere. i miss henry. henry will come back. see henry lurk. see henry come back.

i am enjoying an entirely peaceful, domestic day in lindy's* lovely villa in the scarborough district of perth. i've washed laundry and hung it to dry outside in the breeze that, fortunately, does not blow directly off the stormwater pond beyond the fence (see pungent). if not for the music i've chosen from lindy's collection (like a version, at the moment), it would be almost perfectly quiet.

i've also washed the dishes. last night before bed, i carefully did not commit not to wash the dishes today. see lindy be delightfully frustrated. see lindy understand that, sometimes, dishwashing allows allan to maintain an essential, even keel. see allan be happy that his head doesn't explode. see allan be happy that neither henry nor zoe will have an opportunity to slurp up the scraps of his sparkly brain from the deep lustre of the jarrah floor. see lindy be pleased. see allan dance for joy. see the lovely clean dishes.

i can't bring myself to bore anyone, including me, with the (inner) drama of the journey from sydney to perth yesterday. see allan dislike unfamiliar options on fatigued arrival in an unfamiliar airport. see allan move from point A to point A.1, A.2, A.3, A.3.1, A.3.2, A.4, and finally to point B.** see allan do laundry. see allan wash dishes. see allan come back.

the abridged version: lugged the luggage by taxi to lindy's workplace, where she programs websites for the department of education. (see allan be reminded of just how hot lindy is.) chucked it all in lindy's car boot. followed lindy's instructions to the cafe and shop district on oxford street (yes, there's one here, too). enjoyed a lunch of chicken caesar salad, while navigating my way through a fascinating emotional response to the sunny-side-up egg perched on top of it all. the egg-bellishment seems to be a trend in australia: on tuesday, my chicken caesar salad in sydney at the hyde park cafe was similarly appointed. (damned if i can find a photo....). anyway. after only a mid-flight muffin from the virgin blue menu, even a disturbing food accessory was welcome sustenance, as were the two flat whites (helpful graphic here).

the bookstore to which lindy had pointed me was almost a disaster, since every title that caught my eye pulled at me like a riptide, especially inhaling the mahatma, by australian writer, christopher kremmer. i may need to read it, so i am (hold on to yourselves) considering the purchase.

currently, i'm reading marisha pessl's rather extraordinary first novel, special topics in calamity physics, which i'd stumbled on in noosa. i almost bought it there when i misread the back jacket excerpt as "I wrote this account one hundred years after I'd found Hannah dead." i expected time travel and quantum weirdness and a new species of physics of a calamitous nature. the sentence, from the introduction, actually reads "I wrote this account one year after I'd found Hannah dead." now that i'm on page 82, i can frankly say that my expectation has not been entirely defeated.

if i'd had any expectations of perth, they wouldn't be defeated either. apart from the crisp audacity of the city itself, i'm loving that lindy has taken voice lessons, owns a drum set, has bravely participated in her first jam, and has explored the world of visual art, all the while subsisting in the stultifying world of state government, but with a vision of a future in the living world, with landscapes and creatures. she is the only other living being i have ever met whose mind works on essentially the same scale and according to essentially the same rhythms and in precisely the same key as mine.*** lindy is a natural superfreak. naturally, i'm a huge fan. in fact, with the added bonus of her ferociously gorgeous intelligence, she reminds me that there are downsides to being on the essentially gay end of the queer spectrum.

point of interest: lindy reminded me last night that we really got to know one another, intially anyway, in the 10 hours or so between tokyo and LA on our flight from kuala lumpur in february 1996 when i was returning from my first trip to australia--leaving james behind--and she was wending her erratic way to costa rica to be with her then beau. i'd forgotten that i invited her to sit beside me when seats opened up in order to "rescue" her from the obnoxious yank who was not only fomenting dissent among the flight attendants in a bizarre, mile-high divide-and-conquer approach to Getting His Way, but was exhorting lindy to send australian stamps and other memorabilia to a list of friends and relatives for whom he had a list of addresses. the sequelae of all that is entirely lindy's story and i learned it only last night (as far as i'm presently aware). it's an inspiring doozy of missed flights, airline frustration and wild, last-minute ad-liberation involving modified flight tickets, etc. but i'll let her tell it if she chooses.

why that brings me back to james and lily tomlin and i *heart* huckabees and love and hope and joy and dancing and death and poetry and strategies for success and choosing to change and finding oneself and letting oneself be found...is a special topic in calamity physics.

*i have yet to hear the story of lindy's evolution from "linda", though i have pointed out the oddly discomforting resonance with lindy chamberlain, who has, of course, long-since been absolved of any wrongdoing

**could this be the secret role of the fourier series in my experience?

***not to be confused with, though it bears relation to, being "got"--i.e. understood in that weird, wordless way

topsy turvy: the top end, etc.

it's the early afternoon of tuesday, august 22, the day before i leave sydney for perth. i retrieved my passport from the indian high commission yesterday, with a lovely 6-month, multiple-entry tourist visa stuck immaculately on page 17. the stamp i received upon entering australia on august 2 is stamped neatly, but off-centre, on page 4. i have accepted that if i were an immigration officer at a point of entry, i, too, would choose passport pages at random, just to make the day interesting. or i might decide that, today, all visas would be stamped in the first available space; tomorrow, it might be all pages bearing prime numbers; friday might be a fourier series (if i really understood what one was and could make it fit a passport).

my visit to Darwin, at the "top end" of australia (august 13-18) was full-on and fascinating. it's the middle of the dry season, locally called "The Dry". the monsoon season, or "The Wet" begins to bubble in november and really takes off in december. the monsoon forest is an exercise in imagination: it's terribly monotonous, especially driving on the equally monotonous highways in a tour bus, but is full of the wildest forms of life and relationships. among many other remarkable creatures, about 100 species of termite make their home here, so i got to see the magnetic termite mounds in Litchfield National Park. they were first thought to be magnetic because they are large, knife-like structures that are oriented almost exactly north to south. it was later discovered that the are oriented to catch the morning and evening sun to perfectly control the climate of the mound in the neighbourhood of 31C.

i took a scenic flight tour over Kakadu National Park, which also took us over the vast and largely uninhabited wilderness of Arnhem Land in the northeastern corner of the country, which is off-limits, except by not-so-easy-to-get permits, to all but the 5,000 aboriginal people who live in this area of some 97 000 square kilometres. (there are only about 200 000 people in the whole of the Northern Territory, most of whom live in or around Darwin). we were taken to some truly spectacular aboriginal rock art sites, including Ubirr and the misnamed Nourlangie, which the aboriginal people are asking everyone to call by its proper name, Burrunggui. some of this artwork has now been dated to more than 20 000 years ago (could be older; my memory isn't working very well today). on our 3-day tour of Kakadu and Katherine Gorge (in Nitmiluk National Park), we were blessed by a driver/guide, Lew Dungey, who has been working in the outback since he left Adelaide at 14 and has developed striking relationships with many aboriginal people, giving him both a deep knowledge of, and respect for, their culture and belief systems. he was the highlight of the tour, really (though his support for uranium mining in Kakadu left me a bit cold).

of course, the other highlight of my touring around in 33-34C weather in the dry, tropical heat, where the saltwater crocodiles almost outnumber the population (truly: approximately 80 000 are known to be hanging about), was the handful of lovelystrange people i met on the tour. there were the odd-couple cousins, Carmel and Barb--think australian laurel & hardy--who adopted me as their own; Marianne & her 16-year-old, half-moroccan son, Joel, from germany, who spoke remarkable english (marianne introduced a new phrase to my vocabulary: "wortschatz", meaning "word treasure" or.... "vocabulary". Glory!); Lizzie & Colin, the couple from Hervey Bay who were closest to my age, along with marianne; josef & ute from germany, who own and run develoop.com, a management consulting firm that practices some kinda cool stuff, especially around "change management"; and Steve and Kim from Perth, the youngest couple on the tour. being a (younger) solo traveller on a bus filled largely with australian retirees and foreigners was a bizarre, but edifying experience. i had a blast.

there's more to tell, but i'm meeting james in 5 minutes for a walk up Oxford Street (my first time, this trip), then lunch with mary and then who knows. i've been rushing through this post, just to get something on the record, so forgive any lapses of grammar or spelling.

more from perth.....

these are not the contents of my head

ok, the trauma of re-reading and then typing out the contents of my head from the other day got the better of me and the cost of actually getting it all into the easyjournal was prohibitive here on the most expensive street in australia (hastings street) and i'm feeling much more alive yesterday and today, but just for fun, this is how it started....

"i had difficulty getting out of bed. lots of it. what do i want to do? do i want to do anything? no, not really. why not just relax? because that would be a waste of resources--what it took to get you here--and a slap in the face of those you're on your way to learn from. right. i'm a failure. i can neither do nothing and be happy nor do something and be happy. there is no joy in the day. get up and have some coffee. make it first. that will give you a start. thank you. what would life be like without sleeping aids and caffeine? or lots of food. heaps of it. 2 slices of the best bread ever, toasted, with butter, a banana (12.99/kg after the hurricane wiped out the crops in queensland) AND a bowl of muesli with soy milk. then a slightly squishy bowel movement. right. wasn't i just saying to james that i thought my gut issues were likely related to overconsumption, rather than any one food? but i'm feeling unsure of myself and what i should do today, since alexandria must wait until tomorrow. eat, then. eat. throw yourself together, too. splash water on your head, face and under your arms. arm yourself for a simple, solitary walk up viewland drive, into noosa national park, to laguna lookout. look. there's a fire burning in the forest north of noosaville on the other side of the noosa river. walk to hastings street down the freshly laid cement walkway that protects revegetation areas from further touristic trauma. these homes closer to hastings street are magnificently ludicrous, perched imperiously on bandy metal stilts like war-of-the-world cottages. worth millions, they are. is that success? right now, i wish it were so. i'd have something to aim for. why am i not goal-oriented? isn't that supposed to be a good thing? shhh. you're approaching the street and other life forms, most of them 55+ wearing blindingly light-coloured clothing and sunglasses so big they almost seem to need bandy metal stilts to keep them from sliding from the soft, craggy hillsides of the slightly stunned-looking faces on which they, too, are ludicrously perched. do you pity them? yes. do you envy them? yes. where the hell are you going? to the tourist information booth at the intersection of hastings and noosa drive, just to get a map of the town, but the information lady must be tired or sick of softly craggy couples in blinding-light clothes and hubcap-sized sunnies because she chooses not to smile when she tears one from the sheet in the big front window. maybe it's you? yes, maybe it is. maybe i'm too hard and edgy. maybe i look too foreign. maybe i'm just too tired and stunned in my own way....."

etc.

you get the idea....there was also something about darkly cute and curly 18-year-old grocery store clerks, but i may come back to that at some point. i usually do.

i'm leaving noosa in a few hours. i've got a 90-minute bus ride to the brisbane airport and a flight of maybe 2 or 3 hours--i have no idea, really--to darwin. i'm trying to decide whether i'll just wander the streets of that city tomorrow or splurge on a crocodile feeding cruise. maybe a tourist or two is bait. once again, i have no idea, really.

other than a bit too much sun yesterday, i was lured by a small beach at the base of a fairly steep cliff, ringed by heaps of black pearl-like rocks. i'd noticed it, and the handful of people body-surfing, on wednesday on my way back from alexandria bay. i think it may be winch cove and part of granite bay. the best photo i can find in a short period of time (this cafe is rather expensive) is the small, bottom right photo here, which doesn't really demonstrate how steep the access is, but at least gives an impression of the black pearls (the kind of washed out gray areas....)

anyway, i'd scoped out my descent on the way to alex earlier in the day, but almost couldn't find the courage to do it. i had to complicate it by asking a (darkly cute) surfer if "that" (pointing to where he'd just emerged and knowing the answer very well already) was the best way to get down. of course it was, and i got down the "goat track" (his phrase) to this fantastic little beach. just amazing. less amazing were the 2 young women taking T&A shots of each other on the sand. ok, maybe it was amazing, but not in any conventional way. at least they were in the water by the time i was ready, so i didn't feel so alone.

i got only one good drubbing when a wave caught me off guard and sent me tumbling along the sandy bottom. it was time to exfoliate anyway.

i was at alexandria bay (someone else's photo) again much of yesterday yesterday. it was a wilder, windier day there.

the savage azure cat
licking clean
heaving up against the hard to reach spots
loving me too
with foamfleck kisses
and wind-dressed caresses
i drown
in its deep
secret bath
the relentless
rolling whispers
of its countless tongues

(that relentless....whisper...tongue motif just wouldn't let me out of its grip, as you can tell)

and then i leave you with words from mimi:

"Lately we [mimi and daughter, nora] have to play this game where she dresses up in weird outfits (a favorite is the lab coat/swim goggles/Mardi Gras beads combination) and pretends to put three small stuffed monkeys in monkey jail (the newspaper recycling basket), and then they escape, and then we chase them down and give them injections with the toy syringe from her doctor kit. It is like some sort of Andromeda Strain reenactment for preschoolers, but performed by drag queens or the Flaming Lips."

truly, there's no place like home

saturday, august 12, noosa heads, queensland

noosa heads, queensland - august 10, 2006

wow. i've had to marshal some serious resources to post today. for those not faint of heart, strap on your helmets and pull on the gumboots--maybe even hip-waders--and visit the contents of my head back in the old place in a few days once i've had a chance to wip up the entry. it's thick and sticky and not necessarily in the good way. (i've spent too much time in the cafe today....)

although it's winter, the sun has been shining without break since i arrived on tuesday morning. but darkness is complete by 6pm. my body and head are struggling with these conflicting pieces of environmental information.

i've taken a one-bedroom apartment here. it's huge. i could do cartwheels naked if i wanted to (note to self....). but it becomes something of an excuse not to be outdoors, with people, something or other....i'm not quite sure. it makes daily decision-making a fascinating experience. hence the thick stickiness that is my head on a momentary basis.

it wasn't much of an effort on wednesday, after an early and effortful breakfast, to make my way to the beach at alexandria bay. but it's familiar and loaded with power. it's actually not much of an adventure. does that make any sense? nothing fades after 7, 8, 9 or 10 years. it's like i've never left. i was even able to find the dent in the dunes that kent and i occupied in 1996. i think i could still feel our ghosts.

it was trying to give myself permission to relax today that catapulted me into the lovely quagmire of self-absorption that i've been wading through all day (my hip-waders are well-worn and purple, thank you very much). landing on an internet cafe....no wait: GETTING to one...was the biggest challenge of the day. it only took me until about 4pm. i kept feeling the pull of "home".

roaming families of bush turkeys. the smell of eucalyptus hanging everywhere like a lonely friend. i find it impossible to describe the endlessness of the south pacific here. even when it breaks and bubbles like an azure bath against black rocks or gold beach, the sea here has a secret, one that stretches outward and downward as far as i am allowed to discern. i haven't yet unravelled the language in its rolling whisper, the heaving of its countless, relentless tongues.

so how do i account for the time invested in the australian discovery channel? no, really. i've turned to television as medicine. i'm rather concerned. although i feel ok when it's "fairly odd parents" and "spongebob squarepants" on the nickleodeon channel, "a haunting" on the discovery channel leaves me feeling in need of an exorcism.

speaking of nickleodeon....

the scene: an australian lad named matt, from canberra, ACT, wiggling the end of his tongue in his left nostril. "hi! my name is matt and i don't need to use any fingers."

glory.

BEST BREAD EVER: fruit loaf by the Essential Grain Bakery (2/17 Project Ave, Noosaville, Qld 4567, ph/fx 07-5455-6266. ingredients: organic stoneground wholemeal flour, organic stoneground ryemeal, unbleached white flour, ryemeal leaven, sea salt, yeast, gluten, sultanas, currants, apricots, dates, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, poppy seeds.

BEST YOGHURT EVER: Gourmet Passionfruit Yoghurt by the Queensland Yoghurt Company (4/7 Endeavour Drive, Kunda Park, Qld 4556). indescribably good, but let me try (since i'm just that way): lemme see.....like passionfruit spun by dairy silkworms (wow, that was bad....it must be the sun....or the 6pm darkness). i'm not the first to rave.

i'm still grappling with photo issues. i've taken loads, but i have memory chip issues that require resolution (ha) before i try uploading anything.

do stay tuned.

do not....ever....stay tuned to CNN, especially its "open forum":

"some e-mails have been edited for the sake of clarity and time constraints"

over

and

over

sydney: august 7, 2006

for some reason, i'm resisting the urge to post something as remarkably pedestrian as this post. it must be because it's what everyone seems to do. i have a natural resistance to crowds of any kind. i don't mind being on the fringe looking in, but panic sets in when i feel too much a part of it. i can't decide whether this attitude will be helpful or beneficial in the coming months. i'm moving to countries where population density renders the notion of "bystander" virtually meaningless.

it seems like i've been in sydney forever, though not in an unpleasant way. despite the more or less benign trauma of the indian consulate, life is pretty effortless here for me. james and mary have been spectacularly good hosts, as they always have been. james in particular has put aside his initial anxiety about seeing me for the first time in 9 years, as have i, and we've grown quite comfortable with each other. he's actually going to cook for me tonight. this will be a first.

we had a rather big saturday night. the dinner at Slide was very tasty. our table for 8 was set up on one end of the raised, saturday night fever dance floor (!). i was able to sit with my back to the rest of the venue; neither kal, james' friend, nor i could cope with facing the small crowd. we had a drink upstairs once the place began to morph into a dance club, but the attitude was what i'd call pushy-poseur-bland and none of us found it very comfortable. i did, however, have the opportunity to share perspectives on india with two of my dinner companions, one of whom is a partner with louise hay in hay house australia. among many others, hay house publishes deepak chopra. leon's perspective was comforting, though superficially at odds with what i would have said was my expectation of india. i wasn't even aware that i had an expectation until he pointed out, very gently, that india has become the subject of a fairly elaborate fantasy about spirituality and mysticism. his wisdom grounded me in the immanent (and imminent) reality that india is a a country very much at war with itself, with most of its population mired in poverty and prejudice, both of which are largely perpetuated, or at least supported, by the national religion of hinduism. i found myself surprisingly at peace with leon's view, i think because at some level i've been aware that whatever spirituality is involved in this journey, it is entirely my own and has nothing whatsoever to do with someone else's fantasy. the challenge of all this is to face my self-imposed limitations and step beyond them. nobody is going to give me answers.

although i've never read any of chopra's works, i confess to being a bit starstruck meeting someone who's socialized many times with the guru. however, leon's candidness established for me that chopra is rather an ordinary human being. he may find himself in extraordinary circumstances, but sometimes things just turn out that way. we move as we will.

the other compelling perspective was offered by a woman who was managing the oxford hotel when james worked upstairs at gilligans. he was working there in 1996 when i met him. sandra is a self-proclaimed--or maybe self-created would be kinder and more accurate--outsider. she's a 59-year-old superfreak who prefers to observe, and absolutely loves the chaos and stickiness of india. in addition to her direct and cutting views on indian culture, she had some very practical suggestions for navigating my way through its soupy thickness as a privileged, white, male westerner.

it's strange how these revelations unfold in the manner, by the routes, and at the times they do. everything arrives wrapped in an eerily translucent perfection.

kal and i hit it off rather too well. he's a complete sweetheart. we adopted each other as club buddies for the night....and a good chunk of sunday morning....and hopped from the midnight shift (locally and affectionately, "the shift")--which is where i met james 10 years ago--to ARQ (new to me), and DCM (my first sydney bar back in '96 with its mindblowing drag show) and back to the shift and then back to ARQ, where we'd left our coats. i was able to dance (in which venue i'm not quite sure) to a completely new remix of "cry india" by umboza, which was THE song to be dancing to in 1996 in sydney and was the first piece of music i bought here that long ago. i still have the CD, which james had helped me to find with very little to go on but my poor rendition of the basic tune and how it made me feel. go team synchronicity. so weird. so wonderful.

everyone else had gone home long before james, kal and i piled into a cab at about 6:30am sunday. sydney does have a way of pulling the party boy out of me and throwing me up against the wall and spattering me on the dancefloor. it was lovely, ribald, exhausting, and completely peaceful.

i slept until 4:30pm, bludged about for the rest of the day watching television, including the initial search edition of the latest "australian idol"--sweet lord.

oh, yes, my favourite australian tv commercial is for bigpond broadband internet access and involves a young schoolboy being driven by his (shockingly old) father [read with your best version of a thick aussie accent...]:

son: dad, why did they build the great wall of china?

dad: (searching the databanks....) well....that was....uh....during the time of nasi goreng. (searching databanks....) to keep all the rabbits out. (searching databanks....) there were too many rabbits. (searching databanks.....) in china.

[cut to son in front of his class]

teacher's voice: now, we're going to hear all about china from...[whatever his name is]

*snort*

*giggle*

i can't stand it. it's so beautiful and wrong. it gets funnier every time i see it.

maybe that's why i'm sleeping better. or maybe it's just because my worries, such as they are, have been reduced to a manageable level. they aren't really worries anymore.

which brings me, finally, to where i intended to start this pedestrian post: my australian sub-itinerary is finally final.

after my last encounter with the indian consulate, i was afraid i'd agonize about the visa thing. but a good night out on sydney-town does wonders for the spirit, and by this morning, i knew that i'd apply for the tourist visa and worry about more time in india when that visa expires in mid-february. i may take that time to spend in sri lanka or wherever and come back...or come back to canada. who knows? the consulate was full of waiting applicants; i watched many of them turn red with disbelief and frustration as whatever information (or lack of it) there were faced with acidified their initially hopeful moods. i tried not to despair and formulated a strategy of absolute good humour.

whether it played any role in my case is unanswerable, though i don't think anyone else who approached the wicket received a smile as i did. everything was fine, everything was acceptable. though it will be issued august 14, i can retrieve my passport and the visa on august 21, the first working day after i've returned to sydney from my northern junket.

so, officially, this is where i'll be for the next 10 days:

aug 8-12: noosa, queensland

aug 12-14: darwin, northern territory

aug 14-17: my "top end" tour

aug 17-18: darwin

aug 18-23: sydney

aug 23-31: perth, western australia (perhaps traveling with linda south to margaret river)

while i have the chance in noosa, with nothing but beaches and a hotel room to play with, i plan to do very little but read about nepal and try to learn some nepali phrases. i've done very little reading since i left calgary. i feel poorly prepared to step into nepali culture in the not-quite-a-few-weeks i have left. (since james' bathroom is absolutely frigid, i do feel somewhat prepared for the cold bucket showers, but that's about it so far.)

i could go on, couldn't i? i'm just that way.

but i've a train to catch, back to summer hill and stir-fry a la james barker, and packing and all that.

thank you for staying with me all through this and all through that.

it helps.