Jordan, ‘10

Warning to all study abroad students:  ALWAYS TAKE YOUR CAMERA WITH YOU WHEN YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE!!!  I don’t regret not having it this weekend, but so many beautiful and poetic events happened that I feel sorely silly for forgetting it…but I’ll get to that in a minute.

My mid-term tests are fast approaching.  I have a paper due next Monday and two exams next Friday (one of my classes only has a final).  It’s amazing to think that I’ve already been here three months.  I can’t believe that my Central Australia trip was a month ago.  It’s scary that my finals are in a month and a half and they STILL HAVEN’T POSTED A FINAL EXAM SCHEDULE!  

So my Saturday passed without much disturbance.  I did homework (what little there is) and I studied for hours.  But when I woke up on Sunday to a completely cloudless blue sky, I decided it would be insulting to my host country and torturous to my state of mind to sit in my wedge-room and study until the hours of the days had dripped away one by one like the grease and fat sizzles and slides off a steak onto the flames of a grill.  So instead, I took a blank notebook, pens, and my iPod, bought a Sunday Saver metcard (it’s a cheap, all day tram card they sell on Sundays for $2.90) and rode the tram all the way to the sandy (and chilly) shores of St. Kilda. 

This beach area is spectacularly quaint and hippy-ist (which, if you guys know me by now is sort of my favorite combination).  There is a main street with really nice restaurants and quite a few really cheap clothing boutiques; there is a beach with soft sand and no (absolutely no) waves; and there is (I’m thrilled to say) a new hideaway for yours truly.  St. Kilda happens to have a B-E-A-utiful (to use an old My Girl reference) pier at the end of which exists a colony of penguins and a large jetty of black rocks that looks out on the sea.  I sat on a flat black rock overlooking the sea for five hours on Sunday and watched the world move around me.  I wrote poetry, lyrics to a song, and meditated and now I feel refreshed and ready to take my exams next week. 

There were also two particularly beautiful scenes that I would like to describe to you (since I have no visual evidence) and I should be able to dole out an adequate description of them.  The first involves what happened as I was walking the long stretch of pier to that table-top stone.  I stopped on the pier at the point where the beach extending in both directions away from me met that almost calmy anticipatory apple green sea; I stood above the zone where white crests should break.  I gazed down into the translucent otherworld and saw…stars.  As far as I could strain my neck in either direction in the water, it looked like day’s reflection of the night sky.  Hundreds of sea-stars were gathered in front of me.  At first, I could only see the creatures that had bold colors–the oranges and purples.  But then layer upon layer of camouflage came undone, like the packaging of a well-wrapped gift, and I saw stars with darker and lighter tones.  I even picked out several black ones I hadn’t been able to see on the tan sand moments before.  Yet again, I let my eyes adjust to their world and spotted more stars.  These proved to be my favorite illumination; these were the terrestrial bodies that most closely resembled the earth on which they lay.  In fact, there was one star in particular that was the exact tone of the sand–I could only see it because the ridges on its back caught shadow.

The second, but no less impressive on my mind, occurred once I began moving down the pier again–this time practically at a trot.  I must have looked ridiculous as I dodged elderly couples, bicyclers, and Asian tour groups, racing a sailboat into Melbourne harbor.   But there, probably a kilometer from the pier’s head, two dozen small, white sailboats were riding the waves that never made it to shore.  The wind was blowing, the air was cool, and the flock of white boats was breath-taking in the afternoon sun.  Except that they weren’t alone.  One sailboat, shaped like all the others, flew a bright red sail.  That boat moved away from the others, quickly, nimbly, and raced me to my stone–showed me the way, actually.  I never saw who was sailing it, but that is insignificant really.  It contained a life of its own and steered itself, that bright red puffed out, pulling it forward.

I signed up to support an OXFAM program here in Australia called Close the Gap.  They are trying to get national health insurance to the indigenous groups in Australia.  here is a picture of the “brand” they gave me–the fake tattoo that was beautiful.  ah if only I wasn’t scared of needles…or maybe if only I liked tattoos.  Hehe.

Jordan

Quote of the week:

“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space.  He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us.  Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” - Albert Einstein