Negley Park

I am still struck by newness and familiarity blending together.

First and foremost, Ann and I are spending much more time together than ever before. We really only lived in the same house, our house, for about two months before leaving together for Australia. So, this is a journey of exploration of each other, and of “us.”

And that is very fun. Our new house is small, but it is full of spaces to sit alone or together. We get great light from all directions, but especially looking at each other.

As we are on a corner (#38 Japan Street, at intersection of Japan and Koroit), all compass directions are walking options right at our doorstep. We have familiar walks already, with favorite homes, yards and gardens to greet us. Yet those walks are always guided by a hand holding tug one way or another to say “Ann, look at that,” or “Do you see that Andy?”

Yesterday it was the wallaby only three blocks up the hill, on the verge of the dunes over looking the ocean.

Today it was the variety of clouds waiting for us as we headed downtown to shop late afternoon.

Today offered up a great variety of new familiar activities. Ann left for campus about 8:00 am. I got to sleep in a little, as much as the melodic magpies would allow.

Once up and breakfast dishes washed, I did a load of laundry, in a machine that only holds less than half of what we (i.e. Americans) would consider a normal load. As it was yet another rare sunny day, for drying purposes I used the alien communication device antenna that was left behind by those here long ago. According to Ann, these early people visited North America too and left similar indicia of their presence there, but that is not something with which I am familiar.

The sense of hanging laundry came back though, slipping into my mind just as easily and unassumingly as Ann’s hand into mine on our walks. Don’t think I have hung a load of laundry on a line since boyhood days in Stone Harbor, New Jersey. The smell, pace, simplicity and completeness of the moment were there like always.

Next up was a walk to the Warrnambool Aquazone to join the community gym there, and it was an uphill walk at that. As the crest of the hill is reached, there is a great view back out over town and the ocean. But the compelling view for me is the water tower ahead at the very top of the rise, across from the great house occupying the vantage point. This is early boyhood days of another type, mid third grade when the move from Camp Hill to Lemoyne was the familiar newness at hand. When I moved to that house at the top of the hill, across the street was the neighboring water tower, a silent but constant friend and companion while playing on the grassy field around it.

The gym had the familiarity of any gym, except the locker rooms seemingly harking back to Junior High in the aforementioned Lemoyne. As a matter of safety and self-preservation, I had to ask if the weights for the lifting machines were in kilos or pounds. Pounds it was, which helped get started. The cardio machine (treadmill) was in kilometers per hour, and I had to enter my weight in kilos, so it was a bit slow going there at first. Burning 630 calories is the same in any language though.

Card carrying gym member!

Negley Park came to my mind a few days ago, a visitation I have had before, especially when traveling. Negley was the local park just a few blocks away down Indiana Avenue from the Lemoyne water tower. This is a very evocative place for me: Little League baseball, first friendships, learning about being alone, play, and much exploration. It was very familiar, and safe. It was new and uncharted. The woods at the backside of the park called out like the sirens enticing Jason and his Argonauts. Into those other wordly, somewhat off limits spaces I went, trekking into it like the Enterprise seeking out new worlds and life forms.

The Negley Park-ness feeling comes from that sense of entering something new, but finding familiarity. Both welcoming and foreboding, those woods became a refuge. What also came to mind is how small they really were, yet how lost you could get in them. Over all it is gaining a sixth sense of place, like when coming out of the woods on the other side, and over looking the Susquehanna River and Harrisburg.

That “aha moment” of just where I am.