Sydney, Australia
I'm on a train alone... It feels like ages since the last time this happened...
It was almost exactly 3 weeks ago in Melbourne as I paraded around that San Francisco style South Australian metropolis, ambassador-ing yoga products, meditating in botanical gardens, riding street cars just to people watch, and making friends with the nutty nut store couple who still want to set me up with their 45 year old Greek friend.
A million years have passed since then.
I returned to Sydney and my pseudo-family I've been adopted by... My favorite woman in Venice Beach arrived and the list of "quotables" began formulating- citing hilarious things said along our journey while unexpectedly touring with Bon Iver, cuddling koalas, feeding kangaroos and then dodging them in our shaggin wagon as we drove down the East Coast of Australia, stopping in beach towns along the way- sleeping in beds belonging to friends & strangers- though as I discovered about this time last year with my friend Mick in Padang "strangers are just friends you haven't met yet."
Mick emailed me this morning.
I haven't seen him since last year though we've been on bizarrely parallel paths- through SE Asia and India... He headed out on the Sumber Reseki last night (God speed and patience to him on that journey)
On Monday I will return to Padang- our Mentawai mainland hub on the poverty stricken, disaster and disease riddled West Sumatran coast.
I left in October of last year- 8 months after I arrived for the season.
I had no idea how long I would stay or what to expect.
I had credit cards and no cash... I'd quit my life in California and had created nothing but space and was excited to see what unfolded over the course of a year.
I lived and worked as a masseuse and yoga instructing mermaid hostess on a private island resort... I spent a month in Thailand... I fell into a relationship with a pirate and climbed aboard his boat for months- only coming to land every 10 days to dump the hungover, sunburned, surfed-out Aussie boys and pick up 9 more fresh ones... I canceled my ticket to Australia to stay and play mermaid a little longer before bidding "sampai jumpa" to Indonesia and heading to India, England, Calfornia and finally here to Australia... Thank God I made it after all, because I really really love this place and plan to find a way to live here within the next year or so.
It's funny how certain memories stick in your mind- like for some reason they were coated in adhesive as they glided through your reality and bam! It's stuck for good... Other things I try really really hard to remember and just can't no matter how hard I try.
One of those sticky memories is my last morning i woke up in Padang... It was still dark when my alarm went off but my eyes were open in the dark. I think Shayne's were too. We reluctantly climbed out of bed and started gathering my bags and walking them out to the patio at Maranatha where we always stayed.:. Always the same room - which was the first room we ever kissed eachother in. We always stayed there- except for once when we got back from a trip to Jakarta and "our room" was flooded from a broken leaky air conditioning unit.
It felt bizarre to sleep in a new bed which is ironic and silly being that I am absolutely by definition, a gypsy.
I've slept in 12 different beds so far this month in Australia and God only knows how many in the last year as I've galavanted around the globe.
I don't actually have a "home" though I use my parent's address in San Diego as an address when required for something.
I have been essentially homeless since November 2010.
A couch-surfing traveller, gypsy, professional houseguest, rugged mermaid vagabond...
They say home is where the heart is- and I always think that's funny cuz my heart is inside of me.
So that means I am always home, right?
When I was in India and people would ask where I lived I'd say Indonesia because... Well... That's where I lived that year- but I never had a chest of drawers that was mine- or a bed that only I slept in... It always depended on the night as to where I'd sleep on the island.
I guess that's why this sticky memory of my last night is Padang makes me a little homesick...
Because it was "our" bed and I had a closet and stuff would stay where I left it... And I hadn't really had that in a long time.
I was raised a gypsy too.
We had lived in 14 houses when I was 12 years old. There was never homebase.
I guess that's where I learned to wrap my arms around myself and dance to the tempo of my heart which is what I do today
Alone on this train headed to the ferry i'll take to northern beaches - tapping my toes to that tempo and getting ready to return to indo when this weekend is over ...
But i am happy alone... i am complete inside of myself... and inspired by solo train rides...
Even when i am "lost" or don't know exactly where i am in space - i know that my heart is still inside my chest, so I am home...
Everywhere.
-------------------
2 days later...
7:20am - about to go to the airport.
I wrote that last post... arrived at Manly Wharf -
and was greeted by the dude brood - Jules, Jane & Laura...
Story on this weekend to follow...
But pertinent to this particular piece...
I wrote "Happy Alone" only to meet a guy that night.
IS this proof of the stop looking at it comes around thing or what?
He walked up to me at a bar and said he wanted to know everything about me.
I told him i was a mermaid to which he showed me the mermaid he had tattooed on his ribcage... i told him i was from california to which he rolled his eyes and said all week he'd been asking the universe to send him a california girl.
We sat on a gutter outside the bar and talked for 2 hours and then like cinderella when the clock hit last call and my friends rolled out of the bar - i left.
But i went back to his house that afternoon while my friends surfed and we stared at each other a little more.
...And like the mermaid that i am, I had to return to the water - so off i go- leaving behind this amazing guy and somehow trying to remember what i had written the day before... I am home HERE - where my heart beats.
I am complete.
(cue sound effect of aching tearing heart strings)
God, I'm a hopeless romantic.
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