Oh that's why....

I don't know if it's divine retribution, universal interferance or simply just good luck. But lately I recall something my uncle told me some years back, over breakfast in some deliciously New York cafe. He said that when we want something enough, and send clear enough signals to the universe, the universe will respond by not only pushing you down the right path, but opening the doors for you along the way. It's by no means a direct quotation, but it's certainly something that's stuck with me thus far. I think there's a mistake I keep making (if you can even make mistakes on a trip like this... which I'm not sure you can), and it's that I'm waiting for some kind of sign or feeling to push me along that path, you know, that path i'm *supposed* to take. But it doesn't really work like that. I think it's almost like, in order for things to fall into place, you need to plan first.
And so I booked a flight to Melbourne. It's time, sadly to say goodbye to Sydney. I ignored the itchy feeling long enough for it to turn into panic episodes. Enough's enough. I will go to Melbourne. And then I booked a flight to Auckland, and started my research once more into global spoken word groups.The response emails came back pretty rapidly, and I'm happy to report that in both cases, although the dates were chosen completely at random, they are the perfect dates to go to each city.
And so, the familiar bittersweet feeling of leaving a beautiful place with beautiful people is now upon me, and although it's a bit painful (like scratching a mosquito bite) at this point, anything is better than those anxiety episodes I was dealing with before. And hopefully this is not the end of my Sydney experience. Unless I get a marriage proposal from some prince or fall into a bottomless hole, or some amazing undeniable opportunity is thrust in my direction, I will be back in Sydney once more for The Night Words Festival at the Sydney Opera House Studio. I've been interning with Word Travels, sending out emails, press releases and helping put together programs and whatever else needs to be done but would take too much time for a normal person with- you know- a life to do.

As I've mentioned in the previous post, it's been great fun hanging out with Miles and seeing the inner-workings of this project, and it's really made me think again about the path I'm on. I am glad that I didn't apply to graduate school just yet. I love psychology and I could see myself doing that for the rest of my life, but there's another side to me, a side that is somewhat related but in a different capacity than a PhD could get me. That side loves to organize cultural and artistic events. Especially ones with social and even political implications. Using the arts to bring people together, people who normally would rather shoot eachother than be in the same room with one another, that's a worthwhile job. In one email I recently sent out, I was told to bring up the "importance of events like the Public's Poem and The Night Words Festival". So I did a little research. Australia Day, though celebrated mostly like our 4th of July in the states, is a day wrapped in a bit of contraversy. Often days that preach "patriotism" tend to end up forums for hateful racist thoughts, words or actions. Just last year, for example, there were race related riots in Cronulla, a suburb in South Sydney. This year I had the pleasure of working at a station of the Public's Poem at a "Survival Day" concert in Victoria Park. And earlier this week, I had the interesting, yet somewhat tedious task of going through over 400 lines of poetry, each one written by a different person about "what it means to be australian", And though at first it just looked like an incoherent jumble of phrases, it later melted into a really huge poem that not only spoke of being australian, but literally *showed* what being australian really means. So there we were, one year after violent race related riots, and people from different races and perspectives were using poetry as a tool to unite themselves.

But I'm off on a tangent now. Where once it just seemed like a chance encounter to work with Miles and Word Travels on these events, now I'm noticing the impact they are having on me and my vision of myself and the future. I'm not saying every experience I have is a world-altering, eye-opening amazing experience. That's just being naive. But I will say that every experience most certainly is a life-changing one. Because every small decision and movement is a ripple, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And I guess I was just afraid of causing the wrong kind of ripples, or maybe too many. But I'm starting to realize that there is no wrong kind of ripple, and really, if there's one thing I love doing, it's making waves.