the search ends here, where the night is totally clear. Missy Higgins at the Melbourne Zoo, Twilight Conservation Series

I have a really terrible habit of taking photos (all over the world) and leaving them to get dusty in the messy hallowed halls of the junk yard that is my computer. 

But these are too magical too be in the junk yard. It ain't a secret that I've got a little bit (ahem) of a crush on Missy Higgins (Case in Point: Something Told Me To Run), so being in the very front row on a breezy summer night at the Melbourne Zoo to watch her (for the third time in seven months; no restraining order necessary, I swear) perform was a perfect way to spend Australia Day weekend back in January. 

Sporting purple hair and ears-on-a-headband and a tail and a bright green jumper, Missy entertained an audience of 4000. It was a great night for a great cause. Front row outta four thousand! Not too shabby.

Hot damn.

I've been moving through seas of faces, hoping to meet your stare.

Even though all I meant to say was I'm so happy to be home and England wasn't my home no matter how hard we both tried and I'm sitting in the grass at a beach-front campsite with a pretty girl and a Bloody Mary in a plastic cup and we're about to go and see the fireworks so I've really gotta run but HAPPY NEW YEAR!, when I said "there aren't many vegetables in England", I guess what I really should have said was: arriving home, I was happy to be reunited with the intemperance-by-locally-grown-potatoes-and-apples and the fresh-tropical-fruit-from-my-northern-neighbour-state that I'm so used to. In England, I traipsed on and off trains and in and out of hotel rooms where I mainly consumed edamame salad and winter's finest pineapple from Tesco Expresses (or is it Tescos Express?) because I had no home and I had no kitchen. So, a redaction, and an apology to the people of England. 

...

I understand that I've been quiet. I'm not sure that I understand why anyone might care, though, and that's not a woe is me at all, so much as it is a full body cringe for nearly everything I've posted in the past two or three years, and I suppose that's to be expected for really anyone who writes or shares anything. Of course, I'm grateful for the time marked and stamped (and signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours), but the things that have swirled and rollercoastered in the last six months feel too mine and too quiet and too sacred to say HERE IS EVERYTHING AND HERE IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE AND SAVE AND CLOSE AND PUBLISH AND LINK. 

...

I drove to The Bottom of The World (or just about) last week, and I was coerced by four girls and their mum to jump in the sea with my clothes on. It was cold for seven seconds and then it was perfect, and I can't swim, not really, but I swam out until I couldn't touch the bottom and then I thought I saw a stingray so I swam right back because I have enough on my plate without stingrays getting involved. I sat on the floor of the sea with the water up to my shoulders and a blade of sea grass landed in my hand without any invitation. Of all the places it could flow and stop, it stopped between my thumb and my finger right as I happened to squeeze them together. (This is not a good story). But I sat still in the ocean staring into nothing while a bunch of little girls and their friends squealed and splashed around me, and as though I was called upon to present the class Metaphor of the Day, the blade of grass became akin to Everything Else, happening just by chance, like when you're sitting in the sea thinking about and expecting Nothing and Everything and squeeze your fingers Just So. 

...

Two years ago right now, we sat in the hospital waiting to know whether our Number One was going to come back to us or go on. He went on. 

And I sit here, two years later, wishing I could throw a paper plane into the ICU waiting room where we all sat frazzled, staring at a tiny television with bad reception and a vending machine full of Kit Kats and chips and the glazed reflections of our miserable and not-particularly-hopeful selves. I'd write a note on the side of the plane to say he lets go and so do you and this me is smiling because I know everything that is hidden in that cryptic fly-by. 

I wish I could talk to him and that he could talk to me and give me a squeeze and buy me a raspberry or a lemon squash and tell his pub-going mates that I'm the best thing going, not that I ever believed him, but it sure is nice to know that someone thinks you hung the moon, y'know?

Sometimes I'm standing in his shed and often it's because half my stuff is in there and so I'm lookin' for my birth certificate or That Photo of So-and-So or That Text Book or the Arrested Development box set or my coat or my sandwich press, but sometimes it's just because I miss him and he doesn't have a grave and he doesn't have a rosebush or a plaque and there's Nowhere Else to Go. His scribbles are on the walls, boxes and knick-knacks and hooks and pencil marks and nails and tools, timber braced across beams above, paint splashed on the carpet off-cut of a mat. Scraps of tasks, scraps of him. In no time at all, I went from being thirteen and seeking his help to make The Best Wooden Spoon Ever for woodwork class, to being nearly twenty five and he's two years gone. But he let go of his burdens, and I try to do the same. 

...

How is 2013 shaping up for you?

breaking the silence on canine treats and loneliness.

In 2012, I left for England without a return ticket and then a dog ate my favourite pair of earrings so I came home. Home and happy and with not much to say so I haven't.

A dog ate my favourite pair of earrings and I had a perpetual lean because of all the time I spent schlepping that blue and white duffel bag with 12 kilos of nothin' in it. And I was lonely. And I had nowhere to cook and there aren't many vegetables in England. One can only eat so many Ploughman's sandwiches. And I was lonely. And a dog ate my favourite pair of earrings.

And there really truly is no place like home.

Happy New Year. 

possible band name: sunset trampoline

Saturday night, golden hour. Tasmanian spring. Perfect. Warm and cold at once. I jumped on the trampoline with a blonde-haired blue-eyed seven-year-old boy. I was double bouncing him, much to his delight, and he was nearly clearing the net. We giggled and cheered (and gasped; trampolining is wicked cardio). I said how about we cross paths and jump from one side to the other, back and forth? and he said OKAY so we did that for five or seven bounces, wanting to go higher and faster, until he stopped me and he said Alison wait. Wait. I stopped and I waited.

He had a twinkle in his eye and I knew that he was onto something. 

He unzipped his hoodie all the way and grabbed each side at the pocket. 

He spread his arms out by his sides and stared at me, determined. 

...wings, he said.

The twinkle said I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner. WINGS. OF COURSE! WINGS!

...

I'd totally forgotten what that kind of belief in possibility feels like. A timely reminder, since, you know, I'm leaving for England in five and a half hours, return date unknown. 

Hoodie unzipped.

...wings. Why didn't I think of this before?

I have a white slimline telephone with automatic redial.

At gate lounge 82 at Narita Airport, I snarled somethin' funny at my travel buddy when he hurried me away from my computer and to the lineup, and an Australian woman smiled at me and told me that I am a STAR typist after watching me tap away at something on facebook only moments before. I chuckled and thanked her and said it comes in handy and she said I bet it does! I wish I could type like that! and I thanked her again. We crossed paths in the darkened aisle somewhere over the sea at 37,000 feet and she said how's that typing going? as though I'd been sitting in my middle seat typing a manuscript with wild abandon à la Jerry Maguire. I hadn't. I'd sooked and groaned about my sore neck and shoulders and the ground-beef state of my blister-covered feet and the cankles OH MY GOD THE CANKLES. But I smiled and said great! thank you! because I suppose when you're publicly good at somethin', or just publicly somethin', you've gotta keep up appearances. 

…

Someone says drink water All Day Long and you will lose All The Weight You Want and someone else says your body can only absorb THIS MANY mils so don't bother and someone else says my grandmother always drank a glass of water as soon as she finished dinner and she was trim until the day she died and someone else says only drink room temperature water because cold water isn't good for you and Dr. Oz says something about cold water being the best for burning fat cells and someone else shakes her head with insistent knowing and says eight glasses! that's the secret! and I say I really love cold water and ...isn't it funny how water is so so cold out of the tap in winter and wouldn't it be better if it was cold out of the tap in summer when we want it to be cold out of the tap? Huh.

I never quite know who to believe. (Meanwhile, in Africa, a woman with a baby on her hip and a bucket on her shoulder CURSES OUR ROTTEN NAMES).

...

I don't try to rationalise much anymore, because if I see "God needed another angel so he took <name>" one more time (and I will), I'll… why, I'll…

There's just no hushing those people; the ones who feel the need to share Just How Enlightened they are. 

Forgive a lack of understanding. Forgive a lack of understanding. Forgive a lack of understanding. A mantra.

…

We have been put into life as into the element we most accord with, and we have, moreover, through thousands of years of adaptation, come to resemble this life so greatly that when we hold still, through a fortunate mimicry we can hardly be differentiated from everything around us. We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. -Rainer Maria Rilke.

All of that leads me to this: to report that kind of recently, something swelled in my chest to say I'm here and I always have been and I said oh you sssssssshhhhhhhhhh and it listened and nodded respectfully but insisted, promising, okay, but I'll be back.

I thought maybe it would be wrong and that maybe it was lying and maybe maybe maybe I could go on just the same, but: it didn't lie. It came back. 

It came back and I heckled and withdrew and SHOUTED AT MYSELF ALL DAY LONG. 

Then one day I said it out loud and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and suddenly, it feels like my arms are on the right way around; as though they hang from my shoulders in the way they were supposed to but never have, like I've been put back together the right way. I get dressed and my clothes fit better because suddenly it's more like rad sweater instead of how does this make me fit the mould of the grown up and fancy and perfectly acceptable woman-person that I am supposed to be when I'm askin' everyone else but myself?

Do you know that I haven't ever ever ever been able to picture myself in a wedding dress? Not ever. Marriage, sure, absolutely, but not the dress. Even with my stellar imagination and propensity to NEVER SWITCH OFF EVER, mind always running. Even when I like tooootally loved a boy.

…

I visited my father for the first time in eleven months and we sat in a busy food court and he said so, are there any young men in your life? and I scoffed and said oh, god no and he said well, you need to get onto that all "time's a' tickin'!" and I said no, I don't. I excused myself to the bathroom where I stood at a hand dryer and felt earnest, mostly sure that I might have scoffed for more than just a simple brushoff, more than pfft, I don't need a boyfriend, Daaaad. Because it's not that. 

…

It has taken me a long time to reconcile that this is not just post-break-up BOYS ARE LAME.

Boys aren't lame. They're just not my thing. 

You know what else isn't my thing? That squeaking sound cornstarch makes. Vaccinations. Death metal. Lima beans. Car maintenance. Excessive time in the sun. The consumption of meat. Incense. Mathematics. Absolute Smut Labelled As "Art". Girl-with-uninventive-name-conquers-the-business-world-in-big-city-and-lands-the-guy-(also-with-uninventive-name)-after-dicey-romantic-situation novels. Spongebob-freaking-Squarepants. 

And you know what is? Loud music in good headphones. Reading in a hammock. Brushing the dog. Transcontinental travel. Making care packages. Tempeh tacos. Making kids laugh at dumb stuff. Sleeping in. Rambly conversation that gets ramblier with good wine (or bad wine). Broccoli. Taking photos of people who love each other. Taking photos of people who should love themselves more than they do. Running after a ball. Saving my car from a stall when I accidentally round a corner in fourth gear. Making soup. Girls.

I'm also apparently a STAR TYPIST, just ask the lady on Flight QF22 from Tokyo to Sydney. She'll tell ya. 

I'm not any one thing more than I am another, at least not in the sense of what's important and what's not. I'm as fortunate and cranky and rich and poor and musical and creative and funny and unreachable and useful and thoughtful and cold and clever and useless as hundreds and thousands and millions of others. The way I love is likely to be as flawed and patient and generous and desperate and successful and falling-short as anyone else too.

So, that's that. I wasn't sure whether this belonged here in this space (because I don't suppose it should matter), even though I use this space for a time marker; a space to keep the scary and the hard and the lovely and the torturous and the whimsical, all so I might have it all again when it's gone. 

But I suppose when you're publicly good at somethin', or just publicly somethin', you've gotta keep up appearances.