Blue and Red

S. is the one I miss the most. I suppose at this distance, 10 years out of 15, of course he will make up most of my memory of Australia. He was embedded into the experience.

He sent me a present, two books from Amazon, which I found on the front step last night. I opened the box and enjoyed them with delight last night, but this morning it made me sad.

It could also be because everyone here is married, and I was supposed to be married and it's not my fault that I'm not. It's still a disruption to my intended future, an injury. I feel sometimes like the walking wounded, and I wonder how I'm going to get out there and relate to people. But this is the midwest, this is Wisconsin, and everyone is both nice and smart.

I was just thinking, wondering if I'll remember this very spare and bleak first week in Appleton when I haven't had any email and I've only driven on two streets and I don't know where anything is or how to do anything and I don't know anybody yet. But then I tried to remember my funny apartment in Station Road, Indooroopilly, with cardboard boxes for furniture and most of life spent sitting on the floor, and I remember it quite vividly. It didn't predict what my experience of the country would be. The two experiences that come to mind to represent (emblematize?) the bleak start and the fully embedded experience of my life in Australia was sitting on the weird polyester carpet in my flat in Station Road, Indooroopilly, and being at a Knights game. The blue and red, the circus colours, the noise of the crowd, the sun, the green grass, my heart swelled to bursting with feeling. You can't get that passionate about a football team without doing a bit of historical research about the place you're in. But more than that, without being fully embedded in the place, without, fully, living in it, a whole, rich, full life.

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The song, "Give Me Some Money," by Spinal Tap, features as the background music in an ad for American Express.