Returning

I’m waiting for my return flight to Melbourne from Bangkok.

I was here in Thailand for a week.

A week on an island doing Muay Thai, yoga, SUP boarding, drinking coconuts and walking in the rain.

And now I am returning.

Going away makes you see coming back with a different lens.

I’m trying to return to writing this blog.

I want to return to writing here because I still want to be able to return to reading here. Old posts that make my eyes roll sometimes and other times have bought tears to them. A notion I know can be self-indulgent but I’m wanting to start tiptoeing away from the antipodean need for self-deprecation so I’m going to say it anyways.

There’s more space for Stories, Sentiments and Sometimes Stupidity now that uni is on holidays and Spiritual Gangster, my newest solo show, is done.

(That process alone is something I must write about!) 

There’s space that was created during a full week away where I have been able to either not respond to messages or respond with “I’m in Thailand, I’ll get back to you.” 

Space that was carved out by looking out the window on a bus when I finished reading my book or standing under a shelter waiting for the monsoon rain to stop that I didn’t fill with phone scrolling or wondering what I was going to cook for dinner or whether I was going to be late.

Go with me on this- it’s like making coffee.

You can do it in a machine; where the coffee is furiously ground then pressured firmly then hot water blasted through it and it takes 30 seconds an BOOM! 

Strong, bitey, sometimes burnt caffeinated gold.

Or

You can make it pour over style, call it hipster or whatever, but the coffee is corsely ground, then a little bit of water poured on, then you wait 30 seconds. Then a bit more water, bit more waiting so the coffee has time to BLOOM.

That’s genuine coffee jargon for what happens when you make a coffee like this.

5 minutes later, the result is more subtle, lighter on the tongue, caffeinated gold.

When there’s space, things can be a little lighter or clearer; like when you finally tidy the Tuppaware cupboard and you can find the container and the lid as easy as the people on the infomercials do.

Back to Thailand...About 4 days in I was supping a coconut writing in my journal and I realised I had returned to myself. 

It’s a strange concept, I mean, it’s not like I left my body and went away to get stuff done then come back with a tan and penchant for papaya salad for breakfast. 

My meditation practice allows me to return to myself daily. But I guess it’s the thing when you are travelling alone that you really have to really work that groove into the couch that is sitting in yourself, and make it comfortable.

When you are travelling in Asia it’s a very sweaty groove. 

It’s mid-December. In a week I’m returning to my hometown, something that makes me happy and a touch nervous.

Not because I might not win the Rosie O’Grady’s Christmas Eve karaoke contest and play out the events of when I was robbed of the title in 2011.  

Because when we return, we notice what is different compared to when we leave.

Or what hasn’t changed.

As we come to the holiday where commercialism sponges up our spare time over the next 15 days, as does planning, travel, cooking and worry, I am going to try remember the waiting in the rain. Remember seeing the thumbnail of pink sunset in the sky as my plane was landing, and how the seconds between day and night were filled with the finale that is sunset.

On the island I got to see several of those. 

A finale that happens everyday, the sun returning to the horizon, off the edge of the earth for a few hours till it returns to the dawn sky. We have the golden opportunity every 10 or so hours to witness it.

If we just make the space for it.