The Flume

The walk from the Flume to Hopkins Point is both the path most and least traveled.

This meandering path runs, sometimes walks or just plain dawdles, along the Foreshore, meaning just off the beach curving around Lady Bay. It is a walking/bike path tucked in along the edge of the dunes.  The dune verge is a few hundred meters wide, reaching up to Merri Street and the first row of houses on the other side of the street.

This narrow necklace of sand and coastline vegetation is home to our neighborhood wallabies, many birds, and is chock full of memories. The other ocean, the one of coastal grasses, also ebbs and flows along and throughout the Flume.

For those Stone Harborites amongst us, the walk along the Flume is a bit like that walk to the Point, especially the first one after an absence.  For those Hilton Headers that may be along, it is the walk south to the Calibogue Sound Inlet, or at least to the water tower turn around point.

It is very pleasing to remember walking this Foreshore with niece Sarah and Kevin, and to be back in touch with walks and talks here with my daughter Kate. It is a place to be with parents, and ghosts, spirits, and other kindred travelers past, present, and future. The mind, and spirit, gets both exercise and repose here, as does one’s more physical body.

I am never alone when walking here, when being here. One becomes part of a larger landscape. The appreciation of just being here runs deep and strong.

Wallaby shadows

A magpie friend poses

Two of the many bunnies along the path

Walking to the end of the path to the mouth of the Hopkins River, one of my Warrnambool most special places, is an integral part of this homecoming.

Levitating

There were a few discrete moments I wanted to capture before they drifted away like bubbles rising through sparkling water.

Descending in the elevator at the Vibe in Melbourne an adjacent passenger asked me what I was doing for Christmas, or some such small talk inquiry. I replied that my partner and I were going to Warrnambool. “I’m from Warrnambool” exclaims his partner, who it turns out grew up about a block away from where Ann and I stayed when we were there before, and who told tales of surfing with Maureen, from whom we previously rented.

On the train the next day going to Warrnambool I connect visually with a woman   passing down the aisle. She lights up as do I to her, although nothing is said. I don’t remember her name, but she was, is, a very engaging largely non-verbal developmentally disabled adult with whom I worked when here before.

Also while on the train, Ann sees a fox running through a field.  A few minutes later I see another one.

These little bits of seemingly isolated experiences, along with many others known and likely unknown too, paint an ever-changing pointillism masterpiece.

Today we went to Levi Beach, another ever changing masterpiece of another type: miles of empty beach running east and west, sandwiched between dunes and bush on the north and rough waving ocean to the south. What a feast it was. Ann and I were alone on this seemingly abandoned deserted stretch of the Shipwreck Coast.  Alone, except for the company of shore birds, sea weed, moving shifting sand dunes, bones of birds and fish, flotsam, jetsam (way too many bits of plastic), old boards, tangles of rope, and expectations or hopes of Jules Verne-like shadow creatures emerging from the waves.

Tonight we stepped back in time to the timelessness of Tower Hill: two koalas in a eucalyptus taking over for a partridge in a pear tree, three baby emus, and a giant hare hopping along with a mum kangaroo whose pouch was overflowing with a joey stretching out and trying to nibble on grass and bush in between maternal hops. There were a smattering of blue fairy wrens too, our all time favorite tiny bit of flying flitting about color.

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.

 

Jacqui welcomes us to her home with an American flag.

First Christmas morning walk on the beach - cool and blustery.

Second Christmas day beach walk with our friend Paul.

Scenes From The City

We generally refer to San Francisco as "the city" - never San Fran or Frisco - but if we say we're going to "the city" people generally know you mean San Francisco. Andy and I spent two nights there this weekend and we love the many perks of the city - new food, interesting people, and beautiful sights. But, OMG, the traffic!! We were wistful for the convenient country train ride and the easy walkable streets of Melbourne. Still, San Francisco is a lovely city.

They have cakes here too.

It was Pride Weekend so the rainbows waved everywhere.

One of the things I love about being in a city is the variety of political statements. We noticed this sign up in the palm tree: Free Leonard. This is a common sign you will see in random places all over the country, referring to Leonard Peltier, considered by many to be a political prisoner, convicted of killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. The movie Thunderheart is loosely based on Peltier's story. The demonstrators in the next picture are protesting forced circumcision.

The Ferry Building in San Francisco is full of food markets, similar but smaller than the Victoria Market. The Blue Bottle coffee shop requires only their iconic image to elicit two long lines of devotees.

We sat outside at the pier and watched the ferries load and unload. I took a few pictures from our bench.

Coit Tower in the distance

A protective mama and her chicks

"bike rack"

 We spent the day down at the Embarcadero before heading to the Giants game. They lost to Cincinnati and it was freezing in our top row seats, but the views from the stadium are great.

Bay Bridge to Treasure Island

Fog begins to roll in at the game.

 A few more street scenes on our way out of the city.

Frag ments

 G’day or good morning or somewhere in between.

I have been so full of thoughts, memories, rediscoveries, along with disengaging and engaging, that I have been hesitant to try to capture any of it.

I wanted to have a storyline, and not be randoming about like an overblown balloon with air escaping from its loose tie.

Then again, I have always been a fan of Brownian motion to give purpose to what otherwise might seem purposeless. 

I was recently reading to Ann a passage, part of a paragraph that I liked, from Nicholas Rothwell’s book Journeys To The Interior: “No, the fragment, the symbol-laden fragment, rather than the flowing sequence, was the necessary form for what I had to say: what I meant was in fragments, and dust; it was best told in fragments—fragments were all that I could manage, and even they seemed too controlled, too much a bid to reimpose order on a flux of shimmering, glancing, barely casual connecting chains.”

Our Deakin colleague, friend, and goodbye-for-now party host, Paula’s advice about planning for the Warrnambool end game was well given, and well taken. I was prepared. I had a place inside me for it. Warrnambool is still there, vital and alive, part of my fabric of being.  There is no unraveling now that I am back in the Chico fray, just making new clothes out of it.

I have been struck, and a bit stuck, not by any disconnecting with all that is Warrnambool, but by the lack of consciously or consistently connecting with Chico.

There were many fragments though.

One of the transferable skills I acquired while away was walking. Home has a whole new view from the bi-ped perspective.

My path of travel to the gym is along the Esplanade (a wide tree lined boulevard), and then a bike path that follows a decommissioned freight railway line. And then a pedestrian crossing with a sign admonishing cars to yield to bikes and pedestrians. Good thing, as I’m still not sure which way to look.

I see restored Victorian homes, some as residences reclaiming a bit of faded glory, others repurposed into professional boutique office space.

Blue jays abound and many squirrels in the trees and on the ground. (I smile at thoughts of Kristian and Bernie coming here and meeting our “heaps of squirrels” as they would say.)

Two days in a row of greeting a man in black pants on a bus stop bench who has one hand firmly gripped on the steadying bottle in a brown paper bag, the other hand shakily extended accompanied by the wavering refrain of, “I only need 85 more cents to get some French fries.”

Remnants of homeless camps where the old rail bridge crosses Rio Lindo Channel.  Not sure about the people who were there, how much of them left behind. Or what of those still there.

A beautiful shadow pattern of fence posts along the path.

Hot blue empty skies, with only a tease of clouds over the far distant mountains.

Lawns being watered by automatic sprinklers during the day in the midst of a drought.

Trying to make eye contact with passing people, offering a nod of the head or a hello, getting little in return.

The gym itself, the experience is quite familiar. I have a new routine there, but it’s like I never left.

It is at the open house for the Torres Shelter expansion that being away and being back came in to focus. The Chico Community Shelter Partnership, now the Torres Shelter, is an emergency homeless shelter four others and I helped to start about fifteen years ago. It models building community on a foundation of believing in and belonging to the greater good of people. 

It was as if I had left, but I was returning to my country.  Welcomed and well come on in and no escaping being fully back to here and now, with past, present, and future experiencing rolling into one timeless moment. So many old and new not yet met friends contributing to and creating a wonderful sense of place. A place and sense of belonging. Home again.

I heard Bernie’s voice when coming through the door a few days ago, as Ann was Skyping with her. Ever so sweet the tones of “ ‘stralia ” resonating in heart and home.

Ann and I are still creating our home space. This weekend will be our art open house with both Ann and Australian works hung all over, before we repaint.

The solstice is once again at our doorstep.  

Come on in and sit for awhile.

Warrnambool and Chico are getting blended in a most wonderful way.