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<!-- June 20, 2003 -->

7pm. Gloria Jeans, Pitt St.

I don't want to go home.

I'm sitting here, writing at my table by the wall, my empty cup of formerly long black before me.

I'm feeling the itch. I am absorbing, experiencing; I feel switched on. And I want to be able to share it with those at home.

I told Andy that he could make his directorial debut with a documentary ("doco" as they call it here) on me. Here.

I read an article in the Sydney Magazine about the ten most essential reading on Sydney. My documentary would be essential viewing.

I know I will never be able to get anyone to know - really know - what my life is like here.

The complex weaving of my mundane, everyday life (roommates, laundry, work, gym) with the more interesting tourist life (the walks, events, sites) is beyond my ability to relay in a bearably interesting story.

How can I convey the unabashed pure enjoyment I experienced this morning just drinking my Red Rose tea with my day-old Coffee Roaster banana muffin and reading the article on the top ten Sydney books?

There are a million such moments. And they are not all good. Like, how I swear out loud every time I enter the kitchen and see heaps of piled dirty dishes, mere centimetres from the dishwasher and cockroaches crawling among the crumbs and juice stains on the counter.

To write it all down, to tell it all, would bring anyone to tears of boredom.

But these moments make life here my life. These things will live inside me, wanting to get out, until some patient soul allows me to pour it all out for them.

When I left Canada, I knew that this trip would be different from what I thought it was going to be. Because these are the things that no one can prepare you for.

It's not just the mechanics that are different. Certainly, I've already been in Sydney longer than I'd planned. And sure, I'm NOT reading as much as I'd thought I would. And, dammit, there's not as much sun as I'd thought - although today was absolutely beautiful.

It's the chance encounters. Like the man I served at the cafe today with the beautiful golden lab named Harrison. The man actually wanted to know my name and asked me where I ws from and hoped we'd see each other and talk again soon.

The lady from Hiscoes, my gym just across the street from the cafe, also came in for her morning cappucino. She asked me how I liked the Pilates class the night before. She's taking a Pilates instrucor course soon and I gave her the idea of combining yogic meditation with a Pilates workout. And I thought, "Wow, I'D like to be a Pilates teacher."

It's about sitting in Gloria Jeans after watching my Aussie film festival movie and hearing Sarah McLachlin and Celine Dion and feeling all patirotic. And musing a little about how the Aussie "mocha" sounds much like "mucka".

It's the realization that reading - struggling through - Bill Bryson's "in a sunburned country" has realy not given me a good idea of what to expect in the rest of Australia. But I know why the book lies so flat with me, now. He drops into a place, stays a couple of days, sees a site or three and writes about the place as if he knows it; as if his experiences capture its essence.

The essence of my life here has very little to do with the sites I've seen or the exhibits in the museums. This is what frustrates me... there seems to be no way to really capture what I'm experiencing. Not, at least, one that people could possibly be interested in.

It has taken me a while to get to this point, but life here seems quite real now. When you're travelling everything has a more surreal quality to it. And only NOW am I grasping what a challenge the year will be. If it has taken the better part of three months to get comfortable with Sydney - which is eerily similar to Toronto - it will be quite a struggle when I begin moving from town to town every couple of days for months at a time.

I will be uprooting myself and not setting down roots for this long possibly ever again while I'm here.

Perhaps this is the scary, exhilerating thought that prevents me from returning home right now. I half want to forget where I am and pretend I'm at home in Toronto and half want to forget I HAVE a home here in Sydney and pretend I'm already a nomad on the move.

Or perhaps it is just that it is warmer in here and filled with people who don't think I'm rude for not talking to them.

Ultimately, my growling stomach, stocked fridge, empty wallet, free Internet access and full email inbox will drive me to attempt the half-hour walk home.