![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
waxing nostalgic
Feb. 27th, 2005 01:15 amI was in a supermarket today, and suddenly, it smelled like the one in Sydney, and it took me forever to figure out why, but it was just the slighest scent of dried ginger and apricots and over-ripe fruit. It made me happy. I've got coconut bread in the oven, my fingers smell like it, and tonight I should really be at Tropfest, but I'm on the wrong continent for that.
Sometimes, I look up here, in a way I never did before Sydney. But I do it and I force myself to say, what about this would look at all familiar to someone coming from there to here? What would they recognize? and what differences would they marvel at? Fabric awnings would seem shockingly strange as would the price of candy and the scratchy, greasy feel of our money, and as would the black and white truth of so many of our buildings.
My heart aches when I think of Sydney, not because I miss it (I do), but because my heart has always ached from that first time I thought about it, and to have gone there and discovered I was right about all of it -- it just stops my breath for a split second every time. I want to show it to my friends so badly. I want to write this script and go down there and make this film, and I want to argue, viciously with people (possibly at Flickerfest) that people who aren't Australian can also be part of telling Australian stories. I wanna take my friends to Tropicana and bills. But I'd get up an hour before them, every day, so I could sit there alone.
I miss that, the sitting there and looking out the open doors at the rain and realizing the people walking by were looking more intently in to see who might be there than I was looking out to see who might be walking by. I read the papers and the home decor magazines and the gossip sheets, and I thought about New Orleans, of the way that city makes you breathe slow and wait, listening for your ambling, lazy destiny to lever itself out of a chair and make its formal introductions. Every breath becomes intentional, because you always, always want to have enough air to say, "I've been waiting for you for so long, I just thought I'd made you up when I was a little girl."
"You did," it'll say kindly as it takes your hand, and I think if we're blessed the beginning and end of the world should always smell like a proper breakfast.
Sometimes, I look up here, in a way I never did before Sydney. But I do it and I force myself to say, what about this would look at all familiar to someone coming from there to here? What would they recognize? and what differences would they marvel at? Fabric awnings would seem shockingly strange as would the price of candy and the scratchy, greasy feel of our money, and as would the black and white truth of so many of our buildings.
My heart aches when I think of Sydney, not because I miss it (I do), but because my heart has always ached from that first time I thought about it, and to have gone there and discovered I was right about all of it -- it just stops my breath for a split second every time. I want to show it to my friends so badly. I want to write this script and go down there and make this film, and I want to argue, viciously with people (possibly at Flickerfest) that people who aren't Australian can also be part of telling Australian stories. I wanna take my friends to Tropicana and bills. But I'd get up an hour before them, every day, so I could sit there alone.
I miss that, the sitting there and looking out the open doors at the rain and realizing the people walking by were looking more intently in to see who might be there than I was looking out to see who might be walking by. I read the papers and the home decor magazines and the gossip sheets, and I thought about New Orleans, of the way that city makes you breathe slow and wait, listening for your ambling, lazy destiny to lever itself out of a chair and make its formal introductions. Every breath becomes intentional, because you always, always want to have enough air to say, "I've been waiting for you for so long, I just thought I'd made you up when I was a little girl."
"You did," it'll say kindly as it takes your hand, and I think if we're blessed the beginning and end of the world should always smell like a proper breakfast.
