It’s Ekka Day – which means that all of Brisbane has a holiday so they can go see the Fair.   It would be equivalent to all the counties in Wisconsin declaring that one day (a different day for each county) of the summer was designated a holiday so everyone could go to the county fair and ogle cows. Australia is funny like that.  

It’s also funny that the Ekka is in the middle of the winter. But Winter in Queensland is a different animal – a temperamental animal who you love and hate many times over in the course of a day.  

For me, a typical day would start with me waking up at approximately 4 am because it’s freezing cold (as in, the room is less that 40 degrees). Which is to say, I wake up because I have to use the bathroom.  My body is shedding any and all excess matter to conserve heat.  I usually lay in bed debating whether it’s really necessary for a minute or two before I conclude that I will never get back to sleep unless I go do my business.  So, I steel myself against the cold, dart out of bed and across the horrifically cold floors of the main room onto the even colder tiled floors of the bathroom.  I do my business, all the while scolding myself for drinking so much water before bed, and then scamper back into the bedroom, where I leap under the covers and affix myself to Rick for warmth.  I briefly consider why Australians built Queenslanders with cracks in the floors, no insulation, and no heat, but the thought passes quickly. This whole traumatizing ordeal usually happens in 6-9 minutes.  Then, it’s back to bed.

An hour later, a series of alarms begin to go off starting around 5:30.  My alarms, Rick’s alarms, the neighbors phone which I can often hear from across the street, and of course the cacophony of cars, truck, and annoyingly loud motorcycles that use our road as a shortcut, gunning their engines in front of our house to get up the hill.

Despite the noise I remain unmoved from my bed because, as I said, it’s freezing.  Sadly, this fact does little to prevent Rick from getting up to make coffee and smoothies, leaving the bed without a heat source.  So, usually by the time he returns to put a smoothie next to my bed and a mug of coffee I am up, perusing emails on my phone, still fighting the need to remove myself from the waning warmth of the down comforter and 3-5 other blankets on the bed (depending on the temperature).

Rick, at this point, takes one of two approaches to getting me out of bed.  The aggressive tackle-and-move approach has proven limited in its success rate, as the appeal of ongoing bed comfort gives me a superhuman strength to fight back. The second approach of scratching my back and snuggling also has limitations, as it usually results in me attempting to get him in bed again. Nonetheless, eventually these strategies do get me out of bed, and in the time I killed by procrastinating the temperature has often risen to a balmy 50.  This is sufficient to get me to the shower with relatively little resistance as long as I have the help of a pair of Uggs which Rick bought me specifically to guard against the cold. (I feel the need to state this. My Uggs are purely functional, people.)  

After showering, which is a painful experience when your house is in the 50s, I bundle myself in all the towels and robes I have and head to my wardrobe, where I am faced with the day’s next major predicament:  what to wear.  In my previous life, this was a less demanding morning activity.  Here, I have to factor in the temperature now, the approximate temperature by noon, and the approximate temperature by 6 pm, as well as my mode of transport (bike or walk), as well as my after work obligations  (yoga, zumba, cleaning the yoga studio, drinks with friends?) as it is impractical to come home when you travel by foot or bike.

So, once I have gone through the calculus of determining an outfit that will satisfy all the parameters specified, I can get on my bike and head to work.  This is where I begin to fall in love with Winter.

My ride to work takes about 15 minutes.  I leave my neighborhood, crest a small hill and cross over to Suncorp Stadium, which often has runners and bikers and fitness groups doing workouts nearby.  I cruise by them, over a pedestrian/bike bridge and down a path to an underpass that spits me out on the Brisbane River.  I turn right and begin to make my way to work, passing many other commuters doing the same thing by bike or on foot.  As I look across the river in the morning light, I often see 3-6 boats with rowers finishing up their morning workouts.  The City Cat ferries cruise by creating a wake that laps at the rocky edges of the bike trail and adds a subtle percussion to the morning song of bikes, birds, and sunshine burning off the remnants of the morning chill.

My first few hours of work fly by, and by lunch I am heading out for a walk or a workout.  By now it’s much warmer, possibly even hot.  My morning’s calculations are often slightly incorrect.  I should have gone with a light sweater, not a  blazer.  By the way, Brisbane has taught me a new appreciation for sweaters.  All sorts of sweaters.  While I rarely need a full jacket, I could almost always be wearing a sweater.  This is mind blowing stuff, my friends.

I spend the next 40 minutes or so, working out in a tank top or t-shirt quite comfortably, possibly breaking a sweat. It’s sunny and warm, but not humid and certainly not too hot.  It’s actually as perfect as I can imagine weather to be.

Then I head back to the office, and by the time I leave the sun is setting, casting an orange glow on the skyscrapers of the City as I ride toward them.  A chill begins to creep into the air and I wonder whether a jacket would have been wise.  The wind rolls up from the river, giving me a small shiver, but before long I am home again.  I leave the door open to the front porch, savoring the fresh air until the coolness proves too pervasive and my will to bear the cold weakens.  Before long I have sweats on and wool socks, soon I’ll be under a blanket.  If it’s really cold my hat is always nearby.

And so begins the cycle once more.

That’s not a reference to anything at all inappropriate, unless you’re a beer snob.  The XXXX Brewery is where I spent the majority of my night, at least thus far.  It’s the quintessential Queensland beer, and it serves as a shining example of one of the things Australia lacks.  Namely, good beer. Nonetheless, I spent an enjoyable night there with a group of my coworkers, so it gets the title.  It’s funny that even during my first visit here, back when the old boyfriend studied here, I thought their beer was bad.   I guess not that much has changed.

I am writing with a few beers in my system because it seems to be the only way I can get myself to write on this blog these days.  Between establishing a fairly narrow scope in what I wanted to write about, and being alert to some segments of my audience that I want to keep unruffled, I have felt my writing take a bit of a hiatus.  In reflecting on it, I want to write a more uncensored type of blog, but I worry about it more than I did just a few years ago – and that saddens me.

In the weeks since I have been back in the lovely land of Australia, I have felt a relatively profound shift in my attitude towards this place, as was probably reflected in my last post.  In coming back here from a vacation, it occurred to me that I need to stop acting as if this life here is the vacation and start making it more of a home.

It’s a bit funny to say that, because I feel more invested in many parts of my life here than I EVER have in previous jobs or relationships.  I find that the work I do is engaging and I am taking ownership over things so much more than I did as a Plebeian division order analyst in a mid-sized oil and gas company.  Here I find myself working overtime and on the weekends – I actually want to work and enjoy the challenge and engagement of caring about my job and wanting to do it right.  It’s wonderful.

I feel myself settling here in many ways, but there remains a sense of unmooredness.  I have like 8 friends here, if I am generous with my counts.  Many of those, in fact most, are through work. The one non-work friend I had just moved to Melbourne.  That needs to change.  I am sure I will delve into this more, but I am already bored of my own whining about it.

In other news, Rick and I have an upcoming trip planned to New Zealand for a few days of hanging out in Queenstown and checking out NZ skiing.  I won’t lie.  I don’t have high hopes for it, but I will happily take ANY skiing after going through a season without touching ski to snow.  I feel such a strong pull to the snow and the culture of skiing – I guess I was meant to be in Colorado.  Perhaps it will call me back someday.

It’s funny how fate has a way of bringing you to places that seem pre-destined.  It’s like a level you must pass through to move on to the next phase.  I passed through Colorado and the trials that came with it – I guess it took me two tries.  Now I am on to Australia.  What challenges lie here remain to be seen.

I have been thinking a bit about the self-imposed challenges as I have been reading the book “Wild” by Cheryl Strayed.  It’s a story about overcoming her own demons on the Pacific Crest Hiking trail.   I will admit I was quite skeptical of it at the outset, perhaps because she’s a St. Thomas grad (my college’s rival down the road) but as I have read further (and been forced to stoically pull myself together to prevent teary outbursts in cafes) I have developed a grudging respect for her storyline because I identify with parts of it.  Not the heroin parts. Not the parts about being married and divorced by your mid-20s. Not the parts about losing your mom to cancer at age 45. Not the parts about growing up in a cabin with no plumbing.  Mostly the parts about feeling trapped and lost in your life despite all the good things going for you like someone you love, support of friends, etc. and being unable to pinpoint the source of your ever-present restlessness.

I could relate to that voice from my past in more ways that I am comfortable admitting.   The way she discussed those feelings, they felt so shockingly familiar that I was taken aback.  Her despair and personal necessity for a drastic change mixed into a volatile cocktail of woe.  I kept thinking “Yep, I know that one.”

My life hardly paints the picture of someone in the throes of rebellion, but I have had my wild child moments – as some of my best friends, sisters, and old loves can attest to.  More than anything, I have struggled to find and accept my need to take my own path.  I realize that I’m not alone in this, that most people struggle with it.  I guess I can just really relate to this woman who became unmoored from life temporarily and needed to go away to find herself.

Alright, on that note, my toiler boyfriend, the one that has moored me and appropriately channelled my wildness, has finally returned from a late night in the office (on a Friday!).  Time to enjoy the night out!

A friend of mine shared Colson Whitehead’s Rules for Writing  with me recently.  In reading it, I was struck by the one tip which explained that what is NOT said is as important as what is said – and that “the real action occurs in the silences.”

In life and in writing, I think Colson Whitehead has a good point.  The real action occurs when life is flying by and you hardly have a moment to digest it.  So here I find myself, sunburned, exhausted, and reluctantly contemplative after a month of silence, full with action.  I occasionally feel some regret at my need to process and reflect so much through writing – it seems to distance you from the experience of life.  Perhaps my silence has been my unwillingness to part with the immediacy and sweetness of the last few weeks.  But, I guess it’s time to share.

My last month has been spent in the most wonderful of ways – surrounded by friends and family, and busy.  We ran a marathon, packed our bags, and got on a plane to the U.S.  It’s hard to express what it meant to go home.  For me it was terrifying and exultant.  It felt like the trip home was a chance to show that, “Hey, we packed all our belonging into two suitcases, boarded a plane, and attempted to make a whole new life on the other side of the world. And it worked!”

I know it’s not rocket science – people move abroad all the time, to significantly more culturally varied places than Australia.  But, all the same, when I left I was riddled with doubt, fearful, and not sure I would make it in this new world.  So, nine months into the stay, with a job, an amazing guy by my side, some friends, and bits of my life established here, it felt like a triumphant return.  On my flight home, all the questions and doubts that riddled me last time I crossed the ocean came back to me and to each my answer was, “yes, this was the right thing to do.”

I was home for two weeks, during which time I was lucky enough to see almost my entire family, do nearly everything I wanted, and enjoy visits from some of my best friends who flew in to Milwaukee to spend time with me.  I went to Summerfest, I drank a bloody mary with my Grandma, I saw my cousins and aunts and uncles,  I toured the Lakefront Brewery, I walked on the beaches of Lake Michigan each morning with my mom and my dog, I ran with my Lifey,  I spent SO much great time with my sisters.  I went up to my parent’s cabin in northern Wisconsin, ate cheese curds, drank wine spritzers at sunset with Britta, swam and went trail running.  I visited camp and had the pleasure of feeling quite old and removed from it. I also took a side trip to Richmond, Virginia for Rick’s brother Bradley’s gorgeous wedding where I saw Rick’s whole family and then some.  It was everything I needed and could have hoped for.

Being home it felt like I hadn’t skipped a beat. It seemed that if I were never to return to Australia, my time here would simply linger in my memory as an unusual dream. I am not sure how to feel about that.  I enjoy my life here and the sense of constant discovery, however I think it shows just how few real roots I have established here that I could so easily think of not returning. Many times I thought it might be nice to linger indefinitely for a long lunch of cold cucumber soup in the shade of the porch overlooking my grandma’s gardens, or to wake up every morning to the cool Lake Michigan breeze winding its way through the narrow, twisting hallways of my parent’s old house and into my bedroom. I ran through the trails of the Lakeland Discovery center wishing I could see the passing of a whole year on the trails, rather than the infrequent vignettes I’ve gathered over the years.  It was so sweet to savor all the things I love and know how much they mean to me – especially in light of the fleetingness of my visit.

I came back to Brisbane, however, and though I was sad to leave all the people and things I love from home, it really hit me that THIS is where I live now.  This is where I need to set roots, at least for now.  I need to stop living my life here as though I can put off the necessities until my vacation ends.  THIS is my life.

So, all of a sudden I find myself rediscovering Brissie through the eyes of someone who isn’t on an extended vacation – who lives here.  As such, I have stopped putting off things like getting the MRI for the massive bone growth (an enchondroma or a bone chip healing badly) on my knee from the weekend I went hiking before the marathon.   I finally went and began playing tennis with Rick, like I had talked about doing for months.  I have begun setting up a CSA delivery box for our house.  And it feels so good to let myself sink in and feel like this is home and my life is not some extended experiment in living abroad and doing without.

So I guess in the silence of the last month, while I have been on multiple continents, seeing so many faces and places that I love, a lot has happened.  I recognized just how much I love and value the things I have at home, but I also realized that home is where you make it.  If I am to go on living in Brisbane and not feeling like I am on vacation, I need to do more to make THIS place my home.

This afternoon while I biked under the trees along the Brisbane River as the sun was sinking below the western hills, I was reminded that this is a beautiful and interesting city.  I need to embrace it and live in the moment here.

This week feels like the culmination of 6 months of planning and training and anticipation all finally coming due.

Last Sunday Rick and I ran the Gold Coast marathon.  It was a good race, and we both got new personal bests.  Rick broke 3 hours – which is amazing.  I PR’d by about a minute.

It was cool because the course doubled back on itself twice so I was able to see him running around mile 15 and again right before the end.  It definitely lifted my spirits watching for him to barrel by, glowing and shirtless.   I saw him coming in to the finish and knew it was down to the wire, but that he was going to make his goal.  When I saw him he looked exhausted, but fast and steady.  Knowing him, I knew he was going to power through.

I, on the other hand, struggled a bit with powering through.  I need to toughen up a bit, I think.  I ran the first half of the race on pace for a 3:40-3:45 finish – which was my pie in the sky goal, but I lost my momentum after about mile 17.  First I had a bathroom break, and then running in the direct sun and heat (it was 23 celsius, which is about 75 F) started to take it out of me.  My legs felt like lead, and though I was still moving, I was moving slowly.  I also had a bit of a hard time doing the mental conversion from k’s to miles so it was hard to know how to manage my energy reserves at the end.  When you’re so tired, trying to do conversions in your head is amazingly challenging.

Anyway, I finished just about a minute under my previous PR, which was good, but a bit frustrating because I think I had more in me and that it just wasn’t my day.  I had banged up my knee the weekend before while hiking and it seized up on me for about a half a mile around mile 12 and then hurt for the remainder of the race.  I also just suck at running in direct sunlight, and the Gold Coast is all about sunshine.  In that respect, it wasn’t my day.  A little cloud cover would have done me good.

All in all, I am happy, but I learned some lessons from the race to take with me going forward.  I know I am making progress at toughening up in the last 6 miles.  It’s just that the increments of improvement are smaller than I’d like.  I think, and my esteemed coach Rick agrees, that I will focus on doing a year or so of shorter races to get better at pushing myself once I have passed that lactic acid threshold and feel crappy.  I need to improve my ability to muscle through that feeling.  I am kind of a wimp.

Anyway, the nice thing is that there’s no time to dwell on marathon regrets.  This Friday I head HOME!   Two glorious weeks of hanging out up north, seeing my friends, wedding celebrating, and family time await!  I have been waiting for this trip for MONTHS.  In two days time I will be on a plane, snuggling up to Rick and watching movies for 14 hours straight before we’re parted in LA.  I don’t know what I’ll do when that happens.  I have been around the guy almost non-stop for 9 months.  I might go into some kind of withdrawal.

This song has been in my head all day and I think it means I’m excited to come home (and that I have an enduring obsession with David Byrne – if you haven’t seen the movie This Must Be the Place, see it tomorrow!):

I clean a yoga studio once a week.

It’s a good arrangement. It began when I first moved here. I was feeling thrifty and eager to meet new people. I offered to clean the studio for free classes and before long I was a regular cleaning lady.

It was a great arrangement back then, because I had all the free time in the world and was interested in doing a lot of yoga. I got to know the teachers, attended some amazing workshops, and started to feel part of a little community there.

Then I got a job. A real job. A job I take seriously. That, and I began training for a marathon. It’s amazing how such things eat up your time. I began doing yoga from podcasts at home in the mornings and frequenting the yoga studio less and less. Except each week to clean. I have been to only one class there in the last month. It’s so sad.

A few people have asked me why I still make the time each week to go clean the studio, and I’m honestly a bit reluctant to tell them. The truth is weird. But I am about to tell you. I feel like my yoga studio gig should be more coveted than it is.

Here’s the secret folks: I dance in the yoga studio.

Yes. I dance in the yoga studio. It’s my secret joy.

You have to understand that the yoga studio is a huge, beautiful space. It smells like incense, the walls are a deep marigold, the windows look out into the space three stories above a bustling laneway. It’s always warm in there. It feels good. The energy of love and sweat and releasing the day, pools in the cracks in the old wooden flooring, and settles on the windowsills. As I lovingly wipe down dusty surfaces and clean the floors, I stir it up and energize it. Before long I’m crafting my own interpretive dance to Van Morrison’s “Into the Mystic” or rocking out to the Violent Femmes. It’s fabulous. A whole studio, all to myself, to dance like a crazy person.

I can do this there, because I clean late in the evening after the last classes have ended – after my workday is over, my runs are logged, and my belly is full. When I coast down the alley on my little yellow cruiser, folks in the laneway bars below the studio are finishing their meals, sleepy with wine, languid and happy. Between flirtatious conversations they eye me outside the warm bar, locking up my bike, unlocking the door to the studio, taking the three flights of stairs up to the top of the building. By the time I’ve reached the top, they barely recall I was there. I am unnoticed. The empty studio two floors up is miles from them.

And when I unlock the studio door, switch on the glowing yellow lights, and begin to get my supplies, I feel exhaustion in my bones. Early morning wake-ups, a day at the office, and evening runs leave me fuzzy-headed on auto-pilot. Sometimes I remind myself that I can afford a few yoga classes a week. I don’t need to clean the studio to practice yoga there. But then I plug my Ipod into the booming speakers of the studio and as I begin to dust I feel a little shimmy in my hips. By the time I’ve vacuumed the office and the studio lays before me, I’ve remembered why I continue this strange habit. In the huge open studio, I play my music insanely loud and dance like nobody is watching. One week I did “the worm” so many times I could barely function the next day. I kid you not. Where else would you actively practice doing the worm? It’s perfect – it’s practically a yoga move. I’m telling you, this yoga gig is pretty incredible.

A couple of years ago I saw a therapist after a bad break-up. This therapist listened to me talk for a few sessions and responded to my ramblings with the observation that I am “a very physical person.” I’ve considered that comment quite a bit since then, unsure whether it was an honest observation or veiled insult. But when I am dancing around the yoga studio like a wild person, I think I know what he meant. Since childhood I’ve been a person unsatisfied with the limited expressions of the mouth. I need to talk, I need to write, I need to run, I need to climb things, jump in rivers, ride my bike fast, dance hard, love fiercely, fight, cry, and sleep it all off when I’m done. These things are more that just actions, they’re expression of self. They are integral to feeling fully me.

So, I probably won’t give up this gig. I will probably spend one night each week losing myself in the music of an empty yoga studio three floors above downtown Brisbane until someone forces me out or catches me in the act.

Yesterday, as I was leaving the house, an old man appeared at my door.  He spoke to me in a thickly accented Spanish.  He told me to go back inside.   He sat on my couches and looked at me, weary and expectant.  I brought him some coffee.

He spoke.  Slowly, with words carefully chosen. I listened, and the day slid out from beneath me.  His words seemed to bypass his brain and instead rose out gracefully from his chest, naked and untempered.  He put a hand on my shoulder, and his watery eyes looked into mine with love,  and implacable sweetness.

He asked me for another cup of coffee and I rose to boil the water.  Returning, I found an empty couch and french doors ajar, sunshine pouring in from the east.    I looked down the road and saw him slowly pulling on his sweater and cap as he walked.  I smiled.

Turning back to the house, I saw a note written in green pen.  “I want you to know one thing. If this is so, you shall lift your arms and your roots will set off.”

Folding the note into my wallet, I picked up my bag and began walking.

I’ve been struggling lately.  I’m constantly thinking about things I want to write, but I’ve lost my mojo.  I have lost that burning need to put words down on paper.  In fact, I’ve lost that need to say things at all.  To anyone.  To facebook.  To people I have always wanted to talk to in times like this – my friends, enemies, and co-conspirators. I just feel like shutting my mouth.

This, above all else, feels wrong.  This, my friends, is not who I am.  Or is it?  I don’t even know.  To say I’m feeling a bit lost is an understatement.  I think in my household all souls present are going through small bouts of lostness and trying to find the best ways to fend them off.  For me, for now, my best hope for fighting the onslaught is to do one of the posts I have done so well in my past blogging lives – a simple, open-ended, directionless brain dump to the interwebs.

Commencing my brain dump now.

For those who take interest in such things, I deactivated my facebook account. Though, if you take a keen enough interest, you may already know this.  If you’re a close friend, you may notice your number of photos has dropped precipitously and I apologize for that.  You can contact me with any photo requests and I’ll dig them out of my archives.

To say it is liberating to leave Facebook is to lie.  It is much more than that. It is absolutely mind-alteringly wonderful.  Facebook had become very demanding of my time.  I needed to make a clean break.  To get out.  It’s nothing personal, Facebook.  It’s just a thing that I’m going through on my own and I need some time and space with my thoughts.  Without you.

To quit Facebook, when it seems like one of the few tangible ways of connecting to your far-away home and friends is a bit tough.  But, honestly, it was just time.  Too many game requests and baby photos and neurotic checking of news feeds that showed me memes I thought were idiotic. ( Well, except for that one about the otters holding hands—that was pretty adorable.)  But, moving on!

Pinterest, you’re next.  That site is brainwashing the minds of American women.

I have some pretty strong feelings about where social networking is taking us.  As an early adopter of most of these sites, I have a long and complicated history with social networking.  Mostly it began with curiosity and ended with deep internal conflicts and existential questions about what I am doing with my life. I think that is probably a bit like how drug addicts might feel.  I know I am not alone.  I think we all know the draw of facebook, and we all now know its corresponding pitfalls.  Facebook is a great way to stay connected to people and find out news from your social networks.  But, the vast majority of that information is entirely superfluous – and therefore a distraction.  With time and with a increasingly strong desire to have real and meaningful connections in my life, I have realized facebook needed to go.

Along those lines, I have a growing internal conflict about the crafty, food, art website Pinterest.  Pinterest is possibly the more sinister of the two in my mind and I haven’t even gotten in too deep.  Pinterest, while wonderful in theory,  has begun to represent (to me) a vast, heteronormative, stereotype-solidifying, consumption-driven, pit of female distraction from real life.  (Men use the site too, just not in droves like women.)

It’s no wonder we see the steamrolling of women’s rights in the U.S., with all the young, educated women so complacent in the notion of their unimpeachable equality that they can devote hours to trolling websites for the perfect coral socks for the baby they don’t yet have, while looking for indulgent recipes to try at home in their soon-to-be redesigned kitchen, while wearing the cutest apron imaginable.

Pinterest, to me, embodies materialism at its most insidious.  No only does it set up all kinds of strange normalizing scenarios (Should I have a board of Thinspiration quotes??  Do I need to lose weight?  Should I be making this cheesy appetizer for my next party? Should I be throwing a party?  Should I redecorate my house before the party?) it also is simply a fantastic waste of time and mental energy.

It’s a bit like an online version of when I walk into a Anthropologie store.  I don’t want to pay their ridiculous prices to some white Republican dude who wants to use that money to donate to other white Republican politician dudes who are slowly conspiring to take away my rights.  No.  I go into Anthropologie and I smell the candles and look at the pretty clothes and pillows and artful displays.  I take detailed mental notes, and then I go to a thrift store and commence getting creative.  Pinterest is like that idea, on steroids, in your home, on your computer at all times of the day calling to you to forget the things  that are bothering you and look at pretty pictures of home gardening.  You don’t want anything to do with that mess unless you have the willpower of Gandhi.

That being said, I’m still on it.  I’m a hypocrite.  But I am at least aware of the depth of my vice and that’s the first step.

I ducked out of the office at noon, phone in hand, ready for my date.  I rode the elevator  the eighteen floors down to the ground floor and walked out into the bustle of Queen street – the center of downtown Brisbane.  Turning into post office square, I dialed a number I know by heart.

Across the line came my best friend’s voice.  Across an ocean, she was trying to out-walk the rain with her dog, Beatrice.  We have a long-established tradition of planning phone dates over the years of our friendship, as our lives have gone in different geographical directions.  These dates provide us with the opportunity to talk to a sounding board that understands our individual quirks, because more often than not, those individual quirks are also our own.

Today’s conversation, like so many in the past, covered our individual lives and the small dramas they entail.  Like she always does, my Lifey put things into perspective and helped me laugh at the sources of stress and frustration in my life.  But today’s conversation was different, we both had virtually no relationship drama to relate.   It was a bit mind-blowing. Here we were focusing on our own personal growth and putting our energies into bettering ourselves rather than embroiling ourselves in relationship theatrics.  We both were acting quite adult.

After the conversation ended, I headed back up to the office, thinking that this moment would always be seared in my mind. After all, our relationship was crystallized long ago by the bonding experience of running and deconstructing our lives together.  And now,  my Lifey and I, had come to a point – talking across oceans, about lives so drama-free that they might be considered boring. In that moment, the present and future all seemed wrapped up, and the unfolding of our lives in strange and unpredicted ways was extremely tangible.  The pace of time, and our changing natures felt altogether too real – but at the same time, comfortable and right.

Just a few months ago, she sent me a cute email telling me that 5 years ago, on the same day, I had nearly been kicked out of a hostel in Santiago, Chile on my birthday, at about 5 am.

What a difference a few years can make.

It’s 6:30 in the morning, and I am nestled under a down blanket. The Queenslander is cold. R would argue with me on this subject. Cold doesn’t mean to me what it once did. I attended college in a place where your eyelashes froze upon opening the door to your dorm. Yes, this isn’t that kind of cold. It’s a crisp 50′s kind of cold that reminds me to wear more than a nightgown to bed. Nevertheless, I feel the chill – and I love it.

I feared that the lack of seasons in Brisbane would depress me. I love the way the cool mornings burn off and cool nights set in at the outset of autumn. I love the crunch of snow under my feet and the glitter of a snowfield in the morning sun. I love the breeze-rippled lakes of summer. I love the feral emergence of spring from the mud. I feared the non-expression of these seasonalities would harm me in some way—make me hard and unobservant to the way life moves around me. But in their subtlety, the seasons here ask you to be a keener study. And so I notice the birds sleeping in, the spiders slowness to rebuild damaged webs, the passing of mango season into custard apple at the market.

Camping last weekend in Fraser Island, brought some new insights into the changed seasons. It was dingo mating season and we saw 7 of them while out walking after dark on the beaches trying to avoid stepping on the blue-bottle jellyfish and ducking the incoming surf. It was really incredible. Fraser Island is indeed an amazing place. We hiked sand dunes, drove 4WD everywhere, floated down clear streams to meet the ocean, swam in perched aquamarine lakes, saw snakes and ran on the beach at sunrise. Yet it felt overrun and the beauty inaccessible due to crowds. Or perhaps it is just not in our natures to swoon at the sight of 30 Land Rovers and a couple of airplanes parked at the trail head to see some natural phenomena. R and I prefer remoteness, it appears.

So, in answer to the crowds, we retreated to a quiet campsite, set ourselves up in beach chairs, and spent 2 days looking at the waves, snacking on cookies, and immersing ourselves in books.

I’m now suffering a tremendous book hangover. It seems to me that reality is ever so much harder to face after you’ve turned the last page in a good book and said your goodbyes. For me, this time, it was the Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton. The last Edith Wharton book I read was Ethan Frome, back in high school at the behest of an evil English teacher. And though I detested the woman who brought her to me, I have to admit that I owe Ms. Bosley a great debt in introducing me to Edith Wharton. Even then, when everyone else was lamenting the pace and paucity of drama in it, I was eating up Ethan Frome – with its images of cold New England life. I can’t resist a novel that gives character to the setting on which it takes place.

Anyway, back to the Age of Innocence. I realize that, yes it is a classic and a winner of the Pulitzer. But yet, I still wasn’t prepared for the beauty of the story and its enduring relevance. I haven’t been able to sit in peace without thinking of it since finishing it. I find myself plotting ways to get to the library over my lunch to check out ALL of the remainder of the Edith Wharton books I have yet to read. I feel my heartstrings trying to shrink back to normalcy, but they have been so pulled out of whack by the story that they may not recover. At the very least, I reason that I should continue on my Edith Wharton bender now, while they’re all misshapen anyway. I’ll spare them the abuse of returning to size, only to be split and torn again.