travel addictions

It was then, when I climbed aboard a tiny plane at 9:15pm in Sydney, that everything began to melt away. There's something really comforting about airplanes. All the stresses and anxieties, all the conversations from the night before, everything begins to get turned down. The white noise of the cabin drowns out the noise in my head. And all those people I met, all the stories I've lived, all the encounters and conversations, are all transformed into sparkling lights below and behind me. They're turned into what they are meant to be, I suppose: memories. Things to look back on that seem so real so tangible right now, but every day become more storybook than reality. Situations begin to get blurry, and the contrast turned up really high, like a hand drawn cartoon from the 1970s, inexact, shakey but entertaining.

So with these thoughts and more, I departed Sydney, the location of my blatanly painful impermanence for the past two months. It's a city now full of memories for me, and they are bittersweet memories at that. Fragile and beautiful moment shared with people who, if things were only different, could be fixed personalities in my life. It's always sad to say goodbye. But the plane ride is a bandaid for those wounds, and the scars are always a good story.

When I arrived in Melbourne, I was greeted almost immediately by Li and Joey (aka Crazy Elf). Li was arguing with him about something and I had to stand there waving at them to get their attention for about 2 minutes. The car ride into the city was full of goofy 80's music and laughter, and a ridiculous story about the dangerous creatures called "Drop Bears" which, according to Li, fall out of trees and kill people. "that's why you have to wear a helmet when you're walking in the forest." She explained.

They don't actually exist, of course.

So within the first 5 minutes of my arrival to Melbourne, it was already clear to me that this is going to be one heck of a city. I spent the morning wandering around the CBD, weaving in and out of used bookstores, vintage clothing shops and making note of the locations of stereotypical tourist spots (note: must visit the art museum and cathedral). The streets are filled with college-y types reminiscent of beloved east coast american cities (guys with spikey hair and crazy oversized sunglasses, girls with brightly colored bags and shoes), businesspeople bustling about, old women weighted down with bags asking me (moi?!) for directions to shopping malls, young people chattering away in languages I don't understand, with the occasional english slang word thrown in.

This ain't no disco. It ain't Sydney either. I'm embracing the change. As Allan Watts would say, I'm joining the dance. And man, it's been a long time coming.