Adventuring on home turf

In the past month I have been writing more by hand- with a pen, on paper!- than in a long, long time. Normally I would say I HATE writing by hand. My handwriting is painfully slow compared to my ridiculously fast typing speed (I can type as fast as I think- that is the truth), and being unable to erase, go back, rewrite as fast as my brain is coming up with revisions and better phrasings is frustrating. It feels clumsy. Plus, what I write on my computer exists, for real, either here or in an email or in a folder somewhere, where it will be backed up and stored and revisited. What I write on paper tends to get lost and scrunched up at the bottom of bags and forgotten about.

But this past month I have been loving writing by hand. I have been far from my computer for long stretches of time, doing beautiful things and wanting to remember them. Scrabbling for a pen and writing it out on the back of an envelope, or the back of a stack of embroidery stitch guides, or on torn-out pages of somebody else's notebook. It's been nice. When I write by hand I use names fearlessly, and write narratively about what's happening (can you imagine?).

I went to an island for five days. It was so beautiful, and I had such a nice time, becoming filthy and salt-encrusted and wild. Living out of a backpack, hiking up treacherous broken tracks to hidden secret lagoons, swimming in warm, clear bays and tannin-lakes like baths of tepid tea. I lay on a picnic table one night staring at the stars and thought I am completely happy with every decision that has led to me being the person who is lying here right now.

I drove back to Sydney crammed onto a bench seat between a friend who chose not to speak a word that day, and the extremely chatty driver of the campervan who was giving us a lift. He was a stranger, but a decent one. It's hard to come back from an adventure like running away to a tropical island, but it's been good to be back in Sydney for a bit.

In the just-over-a-week since I've been back I came up with & performed a show, my first solo show in 3-ish years, which felt amazing. I ran away from Mardi Gras Fair Day to the beach to watch brightly-dressed hipsters race each other on inflatable rafts on a day that sparkled across the water like a diamond. I went to a film festival on the roof of an abandoned, squatted motel on a beautiful warm night, watched the slice-of-orange moon set behind trees, Chinese New Years fireworks shoot up over the city, flying foxes flapping fat and clumsy overhead. On that rooftop I loved my life, my friends, the night and this city.

The morning after Mardi Gras I woke up on three hour's sleep and went to the beach in a car-load of friends from the house I once lived in. The sky was dark and the water was gun-metal grey, the beach almost empty. We swam naked. It rained, after a while, ferociously heavy, warm rain, which looked beautiful from below the surface. I swam for the first time in ages in goggles but not a snorkle, and rediscovered how good it feels to fling myself down right to the bottom of the water and float among the fish and kelp until my lungs are pounding and ears popping. When we slid out of the water into the rain my body didn't feel like anything had changed- as though I was still submerged, the air exactly as wet and warm as the ocean had been.

I have had sad days, in the past week. Everything is not golden- far from it. But there have been more golden moments, shining so bright and beautiful, than I can remember experiencing so close together in a very long time. I have been writing them down on paper, mostly, because I have not been around my computer much. But I can tell you about them here, as well, for double-extra-guaranteed remembering. And hopefully when I read back on this I will remember enough to fill in the spaces I have left blank, in the writing of it.