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The train car was spinning, round and round, like a teacup ride at an amusement park, even as the train continued its forward travel on the tracks. I guess that’s how this train worked, because no one seemed bothered by the irregular motion. My mum, sister and I kept traveling to forward cars. Forward, ever forward, putting more distance between them and us. We lurched as the brakes squealed, and the momentum of the train slowed, slowed, until it came to rest at an empty station. We disembarked. Can’t stop moving. The train behind us started again, the cars spinning as the whole thing disappeared into the distance. We headed towards the only building in sight; a department store, standing out against the dusty backdrop of nothing. Perhaps that was where they wanted us to go. Doesn’t matter. There were no alternatives. We hit the doors running, up the escalators at the back. Knocked into a man on the way. Sorry, guy. No time to be polite. We kept moving up, past the service desk, past the shoes, past the brassieres, past the toothpaste. Who needs a choice from 150 different kinds of toothpaste? To the fifth floor, against the north wall, lay our destination. A utilities cupboard, to the unsuspecting; so much more, to someone in the know. Someone like me. But how to get them in? I could get into the closet, no problem; I had my key. But I couldn’t get them past that point, couldn’t get them through the next passageway, without help. There was only one person left who could help me. And he wasn’t here. But as we rounded the last corner on the fifth floor, skirting the laundry baskets and the colored plastic clothes pegs, there he was. Coincidence? Perhaps. Maybe he needed laundry detergent and heard me running. The pattern of my footfalls must be familiar to him after all this time. He met us at the entrance to the utility closet. Inside, we shut and locked the door behind us. Now came the tricky part. The entryway was still there, at head height, behind the bleach bucket, like I remembered. A small door, set in the wall, only 12 inches high by 12 inches wide, with a plastic handle. No key to open this door. I pulled it open. The hinge was a little rusty. Clearly, this one had been forgotten. Behind that door was another, this one only 10 inches by 10 inches. And set inside the second door lay the third, 8 inches by 8 inches. As the third door swung open, he and I froze. There were people inside the room. There should not have been people inside the room. We could see their faces, staring back at us, and smell the stink of unwashed bodies in an unventilated, confined space. It was a big room, but there had to be, what, 50 of them? Before I could figure it out, he knew what had happened. He always was quicker on the uptake than me. He said this must be the last lot. The final group of people two of our comrades were moving, almost a year ago. They had been killed in the war, presumably after getting these people into the room, and no one else had been aware of them to get them back out. I had no idea how they’d survived this long. It took… special talents, to move regulars. I hesitate to call it magic, because, what is magic? Here, it was just an ability a few of us had, the ability to move people through a series of miniature entryways to a hidden room only a few knew about. Sounds silly when it’s written out. We could get in on our own, he and I, but it always took a second to move the regs. We got my family in, and promised to be back for all of them. It was convenient to pretend, for their sakes, that we were in control of our futures.
Outside, the black figures had drawn closer. They were here.
***
The house may have been my dad’s, in a different life. The front room, where we stood near to the wall, was the same. The door, the fireplace, the lounge. But the floors were wooden; that was different. They should have been carpeted. But it didn’t matter. He was with me, and the sun was streaming in the open windows. The music swirled around our heads before disappearing up the stairs. I closed my eyes, and the light reflected inside my eyelids, so I opened them. It was nicer to see his face anyway. And the rest of him, as it was no longer restricted to the confines of his outfit. A breeze blew in from the windows behind the couch, but it was not chilly. A strand of hair came to rest across my face. It was an excuse for him to touch me. To raise his hand and sweep the curl back behind my ear, to follow the contoured lines of my neck down to my shoulder, and rest his hand around the nape of my neck. There was no thought behind the movement. His other hand slipped around my waist and settled against the small of my back. It was only natural to close the distance between us, to take that step forward. To resist his arms, his embrace, was not an option.
[Edited for explicit content.]
***
The liquid kept falling. More and more, falling into a basin that could only hold so much. And then it stopped falling, but the basin started to overflow anyway. We were upstairs, in a bathroom the size of my last apartment. One side of the room was made of fly-screen, and looked out to a forest. Ordinarily, quite refreshing. It was nice to look out at the trees while in a bath, or doing whatever else needs doing in a bathroom. But right then, the basin continued to overflow. I’ve no idea what it was filling with, or from where the liquid was coming from. But the drains weren’t working. The drain in the shower, the sink, the toilet... none of them were draining. The level of liquid in the bathroom was rising at an alarming rate. Already, we were standing in 4 inches. You were with me, and had no suggestions. My suitcase rested on the floor behind us. It was imperative that the contents of my suitcase remain dry. When there is no recourse, actions are made of desperation. You and I retrieved our plastic yellow and green containers, with Yoplait written across the side, and bailed out the bathroom. It was perhaps not the best use of recycled yoghurt containers. But it worked. We bailed and bailed, until the ground outside, below the screen wall in the bathroom, was coated in a layer of wetness. And the sun shone, shone, and all the millions of water droplets, busily refracting the light, pondered their immortality.
Generally speaking, I have recently found myself to be in a state of contendedness.
I am adapting to Oz, carving out a niche for myself, and making friends. I have a nice flat, and I love my flatmates. I have a regular schedule, which helps my sense of being grounded. While not enrolled, I occupy myself with stromatolite and cyanobacterial sequencing at the University of New South Wales. I have an office I am at by 8-9 every morning, and I leave around 6. I have a bicycle, and this acts as an excellent physical outlet. I have my slackline, which I have finally succeeded at using. The other members of my lab are coming to accept me, which is great. Why, the other day, Jason flicked ice at me again. In the BAN lab, this is a clear indication of acceptance.
Last weekend, Michael and Tamsyn and I went canyoning. 'Twas Tamsyn's first run, and she thouroughly enjoyed it and wants to go again. This trip was over Kalang Creek, and was more of an abseil trip than a proper canyon. No standing water, but waterfalls all the way down, and 11 abseils of 50 meters. (Working on posting a few pics, just not there yet.)
It is amazing, though, how quickly a feeling of contentment may be shattered by the removal of one obligatory comfort. Money.
This semester has been great, in terms of starting research and being at school. The plan was to apply for an IPRS, the big international post-grad scholarship, which includes a living stipend and pays for tuition and fees.
I recently learned, though, that there is only one of these scholarships given out, every year, for the entire uni. And while I find myself a contending candidate, I do not leap off the page as being 'the one' for this scholarship.
So the notification week has passed, and I have not recieved word, which means no scholarship for me. Which means... what?
I do not know.
Tonight, I am filled with disgust.
It makes me grit my teeth and clench my jaw,
my toes curl and my fingernails dig into the soft flesh of my palms,
as I look out upon the vastness of "civilisation"
through my cloudy, paraffin-sealed, graffiti-covered pane of glass
next to my well-worn, stained, gray bus seat.
Why the fuck are we doing this?
We have created a rat race for ourselves, that we mockingly call life,
but unlike the rats, there is no prize waiting for us at the end.
Look out your window.
What do you see?
Light pollution obscuring your view of the stars.
Smoggy haze misting throughout the city, leftover from the daily oil uptake and exhaust production of our common lives.
Electrical wires crisscrossing overhead, obscuring the remaining glimpse of sky through the murk.
Since when did glimpsing a tree through the multi-story, steel, and glass, and painted buildings become a novelty?
And the smell!
Hardening cement, week old oil in the deep fryer, a pool of leftover diesel discarded and forgotten on the ground.
Cars zoom along next to you at 80 kilometers per hour, with no thought or concern about anyone as they pass, absorbed in their own little worlds.
There is no natural inquisitiveness as to the well-being of fellow humans.
Or if there is, it is well concealed, smothered by the facade that dictates nonchalance.
Neon signs flash in your face, and rubbish gusts gently across the path in front of you.
But do not worry about it. At no point should any of us despair to ever regain a semblance of the humanity we once boasted.
This is not life.
This is habituation with standards set by those who are even more farther in than we are.
This is faithlessly conforming to the expectations of others and the revolvement of our society around a predescribed set of rules. Around money. Around "progress".
Rush, rush, rush.
Get to your job on time.
Finish your homework.
Go to class.
Cook your middle class family dinner every night.
And do not forget to pay your rent.
Complete every task everyone expects of you, having performed them for so long you have forgotten the reasons why. Having lost sight of anything else. Of everything else.
Walk the well trodden path,
along the black asphalt road,
and over that glass bottle and plastic sack laying discarded on the grass.
Allow yourself to be inundated with the flashing lights and flapping signs, the flow of the world around you.
After all, we designed this.
Is this not what we wanted?
Alyssa friend game:
match each action or object to the person that matches best
1. chicken soup
2. slow motion
3. a day without rain
4. lime squeezed over an open wound
5. lime squeezed over a closed wound
6. umbrella
7. double sided duct tape
8. mirror
9. reflection in mirror
10. tidal pool
ambiguous? yes. open to interpretation? definitely.
some friends may be compared more than once.
others not at all.
see if you can find yours,
or see if you can match them all!
Vacillating between:
Estuans interius
ira vehementi
in amaritudine
loquor mee menti:
factus de materia,
cinis elementi
similis sum folio,
de quo ludunt venti.
Cum sit enim proprium
viro sapienti
supra petram ponere
sedem fundamenti,
stultus ego comparor
fluvio labenti,
sub eodem tramite
nunquam permanenti.
And
Count me out, when it's clear
that I, find it hard to say.
And you, find it hard to care.
I wanted to see something that's different,
something you said would change in me.
Wanted to be, anything different,
everything you would change in me.
Got this way, upfront but never true.
God I'm wrong, it's just the way I am.
Crashing down, any chance you hear.
Caving in, any chance that you, could see inside of me.
So yesterday we did Claustral Canyon, just outside Sydney proper. This is an 8 hour canyon, from start to finish, not counting drive and prep time. Michael, the neighbor guy I’ve been going canyoning with, is leaving for Canada in 2 days, so this is his last canyon for a while, and I’m always up for it. We arose at 6 am and drove around yawning at each other for a while, and then arrived on Mount Tomah, the tallest mountain in the Blue Mountains at just over 1,000 metres.
Our destination was Claustral, as in ‘claustrophobia’, out of respect for the section of canyon referred to as the ‘Black Hole of Calcutta’. The Black Hole is home to the three abseils (Americans read: repels) in Claustral. Claustral Canyon is probably the hotspot canyon for keen canyoners to hit. It is relatively easy to get to and the most beautiful. Do understand, this is also a level 4 canyon, with running water. The threats of hypothermia, drowning, getting lost (we are in the middle of the bush), flash floods, and things of this nature are high. About 2 hours into the canyon, I’ve been terrorized with the tales of the deaths of the previous 5 people to kick it in this desolate place.
Anyway, we’re walking along the ridge on the way to the saddle, where we will dip down into the canyon, and a frigging lyrebird runs across the trail in front of us. These birds are really rare ground dwelling birds that can mimic anything (including a 35 mm automatic camera shutter). In Michael’s 30 years of doing canyons around Sydney, he’s seen two. Good start to the morning. We walk for a while longer before we get to the first pool, which you have to swim through. Out come the wetsuits, and the 15 minutes it takes us to get them on. We arrive at the Black Hole, and I start to get nervous. I’ve done wet canyons before, and I’ve done abseiling before, but this was my first trip doing abseils in a wet canyon, with water pounding down on me as I’m lowering myself down these 10-20 metre cliffs. You take a step over the edge, and your first thought is, ‘oh please let my anchor hold’, but then you can’t even worry about this ancient log that’s supposed to hold you up that has scars from so much use, because you’re trying to not slip down the 80˚ wet incline. And when you slip, which of course you do, you have to think ‘ok, just let yourself hang upside-down over nothing with water rushing up your nose, but don’t you dare let go of your brake hand!’. Quite the adrenaline rush. The three abseils are all right after one another, but because it was only Michael and myself, we only had one rope. As a result, the going was kind of slow in between pitches, but that just gave me more time to appreciate the beauty. By the end of the third pitch, we were well into the heart of the canyon. We were standing in a metre of water, with the roar of the waterfalls behind us. The canyon is only a metre wide, and the only light is filtering down from 60 metres over your head after having made it through a tangled mass of tree ferns growing out of the sides of the sandstone cliffs. And cutting into the sandstone there were these iron deposits, these really thin layers of sedimentation from millions of years ago, that zigged and zagged their way across the walls of the canyon. The place flash floods fairly often (always make sure you go to this canyon when there is zero chance of rainfall), so there are boulder fields and fallen log fields all through the canyon. In several places, the water was too deep to walk, and there were obstructions in the way, so you had to throw your pack into the pool below you and then jump after it, hoping that you weren’t right on top of some hidden menace below the surface of the water. A couple other little waterfall places are right in the middle; they’re not bad enough to necessitate an anchor and an abseil, but they are too far to jump, or too shallow. So a lot of these places have handropes, left there by previous canyoners, and you down climb carefully over the waterfalls. One of these waterfalls claimed a man’s life just recently – he got his foot stuck in the crack between two boulders in the middle of the falls, slipped on his way down, ended up upside-down, with his head below the water level of the pool below. The force of the water prevented him from righting himself, and he drowned before his friends could get to him. (As a side note, Michael told me this story after we made it down the falls, merely advising me prior to the activity to not place my feet directly in the crevice.) Lots of little tricky places, where you have to crawl through small spaces under boulders, and climb through cobwebs and things like this.
I mentioned the lyrebird, right? In 30 years, Michael’s seen 3, now? Also in those 30 years, he has never, not once, seen a leech. He’s done Claustral a huge number of times, and fifty other canyons, besides. In the 8 hours we were in Claustral, Alyssa picked up 4. Two of which were apparently the red-backed or racing-striped or some such leech, which excited Michael to no end, cause they’re supposedly rare. The first one was really big, and was on my shoulder. I only noticed him when he came off, and I put my shirt back on, and Michael observed a rather scarily large quantity of blood smearing all over the back of my shirt. The other three were fairly innocuous, and were pried off my ankles with a pocket knife. These also bled outrageously, though, as all leech wounds do. (Leeches introduce an anti-coagulant into your blood system when they feed, so when they come off, blood goes everywhere.) What other wildlife was there? Michael decided I was good to have on these trips, cause all the animals you rarely see, we saw. There were the leeches, the lyrebird… We saw a dead snake, black with yellow boxes. There was a live thing that I called a snake, but was apparently a legless lizard. There were big crayfish, a random freshwater fish swimming in a pool, and some tadpoles, which I caught, just for fun.
Anyway, after climbing down, through the waterfalls and abseils and stuff, you always have to go back up, right? The last 2-3 hours of this trip is a 1,000 m climb out. And it’s frigging hot. And you have to carry a soggy rope and wetsuit.
But oh, the fun! This was the best canyon I’ve ever done, hands down. Longer, harder, tighter, more water-y, more fern-y. Covered in blood (not just from the leeches) by the time we got back to the car, and so sore I couldn’t bend over to take my shoes off. I loved it. And when anyone ever makes it down to see me, this is where you’re going.
So a cute guy smiled at me today. I was in the car, being driven back from a most wonderful Italian dinner, and we stopped at a light. There was the most attractive middle to late 20-something guy walking along the side of the road. Alyssa’s window is rolled down, naturally, in this 40 degree weather. Guy looks right at me, and smiles. I smile back, one of those close-lipped, crooked smiles, and his smile gets even bigger. I have time to take in his nicely defined biceps, their tawny color, his sandy shaded hair, and his rather tasteful wardrobe, before our light turns green and we zoom off.
Why didn’t I throw myself out of the car?
