Terra Australis

Late in my semester at Singapore, I escaped amidst final exam week to stay with my aunt and uncle just to the south, in Australia.  The following is a piecemeal of letters and journals...

The Australian Utter family lives on a fairly busy street, and their house seems all the more a stronghold of peace, set against the shores of traffic.  Their lives feel situated much more in the thick-of-things than ours ever did far away on our Pasadena hilltop.  I like it.  I felt very plugged into the immediacy of day-to-day life in Australia from the start.

The family seemed really intent on keeping me happy and entertained (perhaps too much!) - really I was thrilled to just explore and relax.  As it was, I got a bit more of the former than the latter, but enough of both to leave me invigorated for my return to Singapore.  And my god it was such a fucking relief to get out into the cool crisp air of Victoria and sleep in a bed that was actually soft!  Also the vegetables in Australia are incredible!  I think I've been growing sick on the bio-engineered and imported produce of Singapore.  In Australia, everything was fresh ... I even got to cut my own fresh asparagus from their vegetable garden!  I think they must have thought I was weird to be so thrilled about cool air and open space and vegetables and crumpets - but really they just didn't understand where I had come from.

I divided my time pretty equally between the complexities of Australian Suburbia, the City centre of Melbourne, and of course the wonderful farm.  Louise took me out to museums and Aboriginal galleries and put me in touch with the art scene - including her own studio and insights about creativity – a woman after my own heart.  Bob drove me around Melbourne and took me to a Harvard Club business meeting where I got to mingle with Australian Suits - we also had a nice dinner out and got to talking about everything from economics to esoteric spirituality.  Cousin Megan took me to a political film screening about Middle Eastern immigration that she was involved in, and I joined her and some of her co-workers on a day trip to a re-created Australian Gold Rush town - who knew lawyers could be so much fun?  Cousin Adrian took the day off work to drive me through the rolling vineyards of the Wine Country, show me his place of work, and let me taste dozens of different wines as the day went on, and even some of his own brew when we got back to the farm that night (it was so cute - he was self conscious about his wine the same way I am about my theatre performances.)

Young cousin Jaimes introduced me to Australian television, and we commiserated together over the fact of our final exams coming up the following week, and the fact that neither of us had begun to study.

Melbourne is a wonderful city - clean, open, cultured, friendly, modern - and Australians on the whole seem like a wonderful people.  The Farm is also amazing, and I got to see my share of Kangaroos, snakes, wombats, and the like.  The Australian Springtime is beautiful, and when I first arrived at the farm and got out of the car - having just come  from hot, heavy, and oppressive Singapore the day before - I had trouble understanding what it was I was seeing - I couldn't believe it was real!  They lead a real double life - Bob in a suit, in a house by a river of traffic and the buzz of the news radio - Bob in shorts herding his cows by the rushing river and the buzz of Spring cicadas.

                         ***

Another lazy morning in the Australian Utter household coming to a close.  I find it impossible to get out of bed before mid-morning.  In fact I continually find myself unable to believe that the morning has passed so quickly, when from out of the darkness I find my consciousness lifted as by an angel’s hand, to glance at the clock and see that it is hours beyond the time I would have predicted in my timeless state of sleep.  In fact, this morning the angels plucked me out of my astral ruminations at the ungodly hour of half past six, to see the golden Australian sunrise.  I took it in as much as I could before drifting away again.

My dreaming is still a highly incoherent state – some of it has been coming through clearer since coming to Terra Australis – but during those bits I remember it often still seems that I am seeing it all through a distorted mirror of half-consciousness, and that there are two dreamers sharing one space besides – and when I wake up, I find my mind operating in arcane functions which I cannot fully apprehend, and do not wish to understand.  Waking life, by contrast, has become a good deal clearer.

Of course, any way you look at it, Australia was the land of the Dreaming tens of thousands of years before Jesus walked the earth.  I had hoped coming here would shed light on why my own dream world has become so mechanistic, dark and hard, difficult to enter fully, to understand.

I sit here trying to describe my life in poetic and intriguing terms (Lucy the family dog is trying to convince me so anyway – she keeps groaning and growling at me and doesn’t seem satisfied until I take her outside to play fetch – she does teach me a good lesson – I’d best go out and take the day whilst I can.) – but coming here has been wonderful.  The difference between efficiency and health is the difference between Singapore and Australia.  I wish I could stay here for a very long time …

Time with the extended family here has been a real blessing.  They have made me feel very welcome.  I had not realized how much I needed that.

                         ***

I wish I didn’t have the exams hanging over me (they start tomorrow and I’ve not studied) – but I suppose it’s good to have a bit of gravity to pull me out of this orbit and on to the next thing.  I suspect that I’ve had quite a good time here

But in the dark of the night, under the stars, for a moment Adrien and his girlfriend seemed to switch off – I couldn’t detect their consciousness for several seconds, as though they had gone to sleep – and then the stars opened something into me – the consciousness of a cell being vivisected – a cosmic pain – something like that – it was quite awful … I had forgotten that awareness of such things was possible.  Adrian had given me some of his pot to smoke and it opened up the doors to the dying machine world.  I’ve tried to digest it as best I can.

Anyway, I’m sad to leave Adrian, because everything else aside, I know that he really is my family and that there is love between us.  It makes me sad to think I might not see him for a very long time – or that, when I do, we might not know each other. 

Ah well, to the future, then.  Part of me wants to stay right here.  Come, live in Melbourne … get to know my family better, become an Australian…

So like I said, good to have the exams as a bit of gravity pulling back north.

I'd better get to work on them then, hadn't I?

Sunday, November 16th, 2003

Melbourne, Australia

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