Speed Trials

Thursday, June 15, 2006 – 1:00pm

1. Having to press a button to activate the crosswalk lights at every intersection.
2. Going to Experimenta and other Artist-Runs and simply saying, “My name is Marlene and I work at the Canada Council for the Arts” and immediately getting a tour of their facilities and ample reading material.
3. After hearing my accent, having anyone who speaks to me say, “You’re not from here, are you?”
4. Meeting Andrew’s friends and colleagues, and sitting in on a staff meeting at his office. Oh, and voicing my ‘well informed’ opinion on things!
5. Riding the Tram with no set destination, and just following unsuspecting commuters until I end up in some god-forsaken suburb.
6. Eating at the yummiest restaurants, whose entrances are – of course – located on shady lanes and alleys, never main streets.
7. South Melbourne Market.
8. Going for breakfast with Simon, and going out for drinks with Ollie and Luke.
9. Going to bed with Andrew’s arms around me, and waking up the same way.

Things I don’t love about Melbourne:

1. The fact that Andrew’s apartment building has no heat. As in, central heating was NEVER installed.

We caught up for a bit, and when he found out that I was staying at a backpackers he said we had to get in his car immediately to retrieve my things – of course I would stay with him. The girl at the counter must have thought I was crazy, returning one hour after I had checked in, with this random guy, both of us red-faced and giggling, telling her that I wouldn’t need the bed after all. I’m sure she assumed I was some crack-whore who had found herself a good dealer. That’s the only plausible explanation.

We then drove up to his mother’s house outside the city. It usually takes about 40 min to get there, but in his car – a 1969 Hunter (?) that only goes 50Km an hour, it took longer. We talked incessantly, stopping only to grab a bite in the nearby village. His mother’s house is a beautiful sprawling cottage with a few well-placed luxuries. It sits on a 20-acre lot of rolling hills. It is the perfect setting for three young brothers to grow up in. We took a long, ambling walk around the property, and he promised me kangaroos, but we didn’t see any.

Later we returned to the city and had dinner at a Spanish restaurant downtown. By that point I was so out of it that I couldn’t very well orient myself, and the city is still a great mystery to me.

He left me this morning to go to work, and so today is my first of solitary exploring. I might explore the options of buying an actual coat, as the Weather Network’s 13*C reading is a little misleading. In fact, this morning as Andrew and I had breakfast in his kitchen, we could see our breaths. I realize now that I was seriously in denial of the whole Winter-in-June thing.

13 January, 2006 – 1:45pm

After I last wrote, I started my short journey to him. I found his street with little effort – the only thing of note is that I had to cross a busy four-lane road with a median, and for both sections I looked the wrong way for traffic! It’s amazing how ingrained our sense of traffic really is. So that’s something to work on.

I walked up to his apartment building, which is a nice looking Art-Deco 3-story walk up, with gate and courtyard. A lot more charming than my boxy low-rise. The cement stairs are open-aired, which means no buzzers to ring, but there were no numbers on the doors. I deduced that his was one of the two apartments on the top floor, fairly arbitrarily, and as I approached I could hear Belle and Sebastian eminating from behind his door and I knew.

I knocked. He opened.

I thought I could say something clever or meaningful to complete the scenario, sure that I could control that moment since I had been bracing myself for it for so long. But the moment I saw him I became drenched in calm, as though in slow motion, finally seeing that face in the flesh, two feet away from my own. All I could do was smile. He smiled back, first in polite inquiry, then a little broader, then he gasped and said, “Oh my God!” and then smiled again. He pulled me into his apartment, ran his hands down my arms, and held me. He let me go, looked at me again, and then he kissed me. All anxieties fell away, all doubts or insecurities melted, and the only reason we were both shaking was from the physical shock of this encounter.

Monday, June 12, 2006 – 12:06pm.

I have no idea how long I’ve been up… I think I’ve been traveling for 35 hours straight (37 if you count the two hours to Montreal)

Nic, the boys and I had a wonderful breakfast in town, and then Nic and I drove up to P-E. Trudeau Airport. The ride up was very nice, Nicky, though the overcast weather turned to pretty heavy rain once we were in the city. Checking in, blah blah blah, was fine, though it did reiterate how much I hate people when they’re out in public. Roscoe, you know what I’m talking about.

Landing down at O’Hare in Chicago was a little disappointing, as I couldn’t get a good view of the downtown core, with its impressive wall of beautifully gothic buildings that had affected me so deeply when I drove into that city almost a decade ago.

En route to LAX, I sat beside a man with a filthy bandaged hand, bloodshot eyes, and grime between his teeth. He took it upon himself to introduce me to the world of Gem Telepathy Healing. Basically, as I understand it, just by understanding the Earth’s gems and their vibrations and auras, you can actually cure someone, even someone who is far away, by thinking of those vibrations and sending them out telepathically. Then he introduced me to the woman sitting next to him (his wife?), who has a degenerative eyesight, and is for all intents and purposes blind. I made a sympathetic noise and resumed reading Fast Food Nation…

Descending into LA was crazy. The expanse of the city, the highways, the whole scope of it. Yowza.

As I sat in that huge plane for the longest part of my trip (LA to Sydney) I started to really focus on Andrew, and the purpose of this quest. I guess it goes without saying that there is something very deliberate about what I’m doing. I think I tricked myself into thinking it would be nothing but romantic and impulsive – but as I hit hour 10 of a 14 hour flight, I lost sight of that impetuousness. I see now that there are pros and cons to this decision, weighted options.

I have traversed an ocean for him – I can no longer downplay how much I’ve wagered on this gamble.

Thankfully I managed to be distracted by the Columbian sitting next to me. He used to live in Toronto, but now lives in LA and he loves it – though he misses the winters Canada has to offer. We talked about LA, about losing passports, and he gave me tips on jetlag. Oh, Martin and Danny, he noticed I was reading Guns, Germs, and Steel and told me he had just finished reading Collapse, and he loved it. He actually went to see Jared Diamond speak at a conference in LA.

My final Sydney to Melbourne flight was entirely painless. I flirted with one of the stewards who rewarded me with a glass of champagne destined for the first class passengers. Good times. Especially at 7:15 in the morning.

I’m now at Base, the Hostel I’m staying at (for now). It’s wonderful, of course, and I am just about to go to him. I have not stopped (save for a shower and this post), nor will I stop, until I am in front of him…

Well, the most important task of all is done: I have figured out my travel outfit!! It’s now just a matter of riding out the rest of the week…

Sigh. In the meantime, I have to sort out ArtEngine, get a monologue thrown together for my audition on Friday, and wrap up my competition before I leave.

But I am keeping my eyes on the prize. I can’t wait.