Wednesday, 21 November 2012

I own a Winter coat!

THIS winter coat which makes me not shiver anymore.


Right at this very second, I'm sitting uncomfortably on some cold metal chairs, that I'm sure used to be red, at a Grey Hound terminal in Richmond, Virginia.

It's 5:25am.
I'm doing surprisingly well with this fact.

I'm in the middle of a 16 hour commute from New York to Charlotte, North Carolina.

Nearly two weeks ago, I left Isaac in Vegas to make my way to Philadelphia. While I do love that R. Kelly's remix to Ignition is still in California's Top 40, I wanted to go back to the East Coast because I missed so much. I'm almost certain Isaac wasn't ready to go home.
I was very happy our rolls weren't reversed.

Everyday I'm away, I hear about some illustrious distant land somewhere that promises me something glorious and I want nothing more than to make my way there and take it.


At the moment I'm pretty set on making my way to Alaska with someone amazing after the ski season. I have to be careful because wanting everything is very similar to wanting nothing.

I hope Isaac makes it back over here at some point because someone needs to ensure I get into a healthy amount of trouble.

Philadelphia is a great town and I stayed at a really friendly hostel where I met some fantastic people. Everyone that actually lives there has some kind of strange emotional hang up that they're only too keen to tell you about, given the right amount of liquor. I won't go into detail but the story ends with us fleeing from a girl that owned just far too many cats.

Philly is also the most liberated place in the world!! I say this because while I was there, I visited the constitution center...
located in Independence Mall,
on Independence Ave,
oposite Independence Park,
where the Liberty Bell lives.

I wish I was making this up.

I was in Philadelphia to meet up with Dan, my other more stylish and responsible half and to lick the Liberty Bell.


As it turns out, American takes the protection of its national artefacts rather seriously.

Even if I did make it past the aligator infested moat, used my limited contortion skills to navigate my way through the maze of lazer death beams and answered the Liberty Bell's guard trolls three riddles correctly, I'm sure I would have been shot by security before I could taste delicious liberty.

Also Dan just out right refused to take the photo in fear of becoming my neighbour in an immigration jail. 

I was pleased that we managed to make it to a Philly Roller Girls roller derby match because girls on skates beating each other up... yes please.


After Philly, we took a short bus ride to Washington DC to chase a band and play Drag Bingo. 
Oh and the Smithsonian and monuments and blah blah.


I look mildly insane because all I did in DC was take photos of trees and jump around in leaves and kick them about. Someone said to me, "it's like you've never seen fall before!" I assured them that that's exactly what it's like because I have never experienced fall before. 




While I was lucky to miss out on the effects of Hurricane Sandy, Daniel wasn't and it had cut into the time he had put aside for New York.
I very happily suggested that we should go back there. Not so I can see the friends I miss too much already, eat bagels at my favourite cafe' in Bushwick or go ice-skating and see 5th Ave's Christmas decorations but... you know... for him.



I won't talk about New York... again... but I'm going to move there so I can marry the bartender of my dreams but for now, I had to start make my way South.


I do like that you experience places differently depending on who your with. I like that the other persons perspective rubs off on me. It forces me to look at things differently and sometimes it teaches me patience and I'm certain it's teaching Dan tolerance... if he had room to learn any more.

We've come up with this very delicate, very scientific way of deciding where we go next. We throw the names of all the cities we think we'd like to go to into my bandana and pull somewhere out. In doing this, we agree on one rule.


Whatever the bandana says. Goes. 

So, there, that's how we ended up heading South on a bus to North Carolina and how I've ended up listening to Jinja Safari, while I watch the sun rise over the Virginia country side with my best friend of ten years.

Thursday, 8 November 2012

3 Months On


I recently did an interview for someone awesome. It was for a uni assignment about the concept of home. 

She’s an Arts major… be kind.

Anyway it reminded me of this time when I was a kid.

I had just turned six and we’d not so long ago moved from Bali back to Perth. I think it was particularly hard for me at the time but I don’t remember why. I just remember I wasn’t really adjusting.

I would just keep threatening to run away from home in "classic Blinky Bill" style.

I know now that it probably really hurt my mum but she managed to put an end to it pretty quickly. I think it must have been the third or fourth day that a head strong, six year old me, swore I was leaving.

So she very casually lent down, looked me in the eyes and said, “I’m sorry you don’t feel happy here. I love you, I’ll always love you and you’ll always have a home here but you should find somewhere that makes you happy and a family that can do that for you.”

Then she walked me to the front door, shoved me outside and closed it behind me.

I didn’t even make it past the letterbox before I burst into tears and was begging to come home.
I remember she opened the door and just laughed, smiled and welcomed me back.

I never threatened to run away again. Well at least before this trip anyway.

I’ve been gone for almost three months now.
Yeah, I know. It feels like FOREVER ago that I left that tiny Perth airport. 




Although I’ve tried, how can I even begin to explain to you all the things that have happened to me in that time.

All the people I’ve met, everything I’ve experienced and all the things that still lie ahead of me. I can’t accurately summarize it.

How can I possibly explain how it feels to see the Grand Canyon with your own eyes? Or to stand on the top of the Empire State Building or to ride past a pirate ship in San Diego or run through crowds in Mexico City or to see Vegas rise up out of the desert?



Some days I look at my backpack and wish I'd left all of it behind because all it does is slow me down when I’m trying to run for the bus or train or plane. When I was packing, I couldn't bare the thought of leaving any of it behind. 



It was the feeling I got, when I found a clearing in the shrubbery that surrounds the canyon and stood on the edge of that cliff. 
When my legs trembled ever so slightly and my lungs stung, it making it hard to breath at that altitude.

When you see that Canyon stretch out in front of you for miles and miles and feel that warm desert breeze on your face.

It's THAT feeling that makes you never want to care about Facebook or your smart phone or the balance of your bank account because none of it is a measure of who you are.

You've been gifted this opportunity to feel your heart pounding in your chest and adrenaline coursing through your veins.

I understand all too well what Christopher McCandless meant when he wrote “you are wrong if you think happiness radiates only from interpersonal relationships. God has placed it all around us. It is in everything and anything we might experience.
We just have to have the courage to turn against our habitual lifestyle and engage in unconventional living.”

That's why I travel. That's the reason why I left, because I let myself become too concerned with others and all the bullshit you fill your life with. 

Because there's nothing like looking in a rear view mirror and watching the city slowly disappear.


Even though I’m excited for the day that I eventually do come home and to show off the new person I’ve become, I’ve still got so far to go. 

For now I've got nothing to do but to turn up The Shins on my iPod and board that next anything to take me somewhere.