Only four or five months left in my Australian sojourn and I’ve hardly written a word about it or anything else, really. Except for the extremely formal stylized stuff I write at work, a few isolated stabs at picking up the journal again, and grocery lists, I’ve not written much these past 30 months. (The closest I came to being productive was during the first couple months of my wife’s extended stay for work back in the States. I plasti-tacked newsprint on the wall and scrawled frequently honest and maybe occasionally literate things all over those large journal pages. Dare I transpose some of those to this blog?)
It’s not too late to write about Australia or, now that I think about it, anything else. I’ve been telling myself for some weeks now: just write something, anything, somewhere, anywhere, but until now I haven’t been listening and the journal stays unused but for phone numbers and notes on family business and to-do lists. And this blog? Well, it’s stayed blank too because I tell myself every and any thing I write here must be perfect and brilliant (an example of self-talk I shouldn’t but do studiously heed). I’ve convinced myself of this because I imagine I’ll someday use this online collection of bits and pieces I’ve written as a portfolio to help me get hired to write for X or Y or Z, or be selected for the advanced writing class I’ll be applying for at the time. As if 16 month gaps in my blog portfolio will impress future employers or educators! I think it’s time to write and let potentialities be damned.
When you move to a new place, especially if it’s in a foreign country, you marvel at all the new and fascinating and sometime weird-to-you ways of living and talking and flora and fauna and foods and driving on the wrong side and more. Then after a while you get used to it and it seems normal and, you’d think, harder to write about. I’m pretty sure that hasn’t happened to me yet, here. After two and a half years, I still love seeing a mob of kangaroos in a field. I thrill to see two brilliant Scarlet Rosellas eating seeds from the cosmos and basil in my early fall (it’s March 3) garden. And I’m still charmed by Australian words and ways. I’m used to the place, yes, but still marvel at it everyday I’m here. Guess that clenches it: still plenty of time to write.
