Going up the Country: Neighbors. Going home. New Familiarity…?

Our voyage “back” had two legs to it, at least in flight path terms, San Francisco to Auckland (NZ), followed by Auckland to Melbourne. Breaking up the travel time this way actually made the journey a relatively seamless whole. There were no real extremes of physical fatigue or psychic numbness. Rather, we were both more present in a good way, tuned in to the travel and not compelled to tune out any exigencies.

The familiarity of coming back was both calming and exciting. The sense of place we steeped ourselves in while here before was a beckoning friend even before we were on our way back. Once on the ground and moving through customs, the sense of “it’s like we never left” was palatable, and touched us strongly.

Ann’s bag not arriving with us was barely a ripple in just going with the flow: Skybus, Southern Cross Station, V-Line Country Train tickets for the next day, walk to hotel fittingly named Vibe, and then back to streets in search of the holy culinary grail of Shanghai St. Dumpling. Yum !

I suppose an element of any good story is its “you had to be there moments” in its making. When the story thread is woven with both been there and being there, it becomes an especially rich personal tapestry. The rich timelessness of the precise moment is book-ended by the before at the “beginning” and the what’s next at the other “end.”

Ann has written about our friend Otha, a Sudanese refugee living in Warrnambool, who speaks the need to close one’s legs: one can not have one leg in one place and the other leg in another somewhere else. You have to close your legs and be where you are. It is not that way for me though, as I feel grounded in both the world of Chico and that of Warrnambool. The sense of community and belonging of each may be unique, but both have self in common in how they manifest.

The train trip from Melbourne to Warrnambool the next day is another trip back in time, of immediate newness, and future what to come. I remember years ago having the same sensation taking the train again from Paris to Dijon after a long absence. The view into each back yard, the expanse of fields, and the graffiti of the underpasses seemed to have an exceptional clarity. Interior and exterior vision of a moment in time coming together with timeliness of memory.

Enough said, for I can’t adequately put into words the fullness of being here, and the awareness of there that is integral to it.

We are met at the station by Kristy, whose car we are given to use while here, and taken to Jacqui’s at whose house we are staying while she heads off to Nepal on Christmas Day. Visit with former neighbors Deb and Wayne to check out their garden’s bounty. Beach walk this morning, delicious Christmas lunch with Juli and David and family, and post meal foreshore walk with Paul. A bit of Ann and Andy down time at the moment, soon to be followed by kangaroo and koala spotting at dusk when we visit our dear friend Tower Hill.

We are amongst friends.

Thank you all for that timeless gift.