And this is just the airport...

Written in LAX after my flight got canceled and my substitute flight got delayed again and again and again...

• My American accent fits uncomfortably again.
• I bought a bag of BBQ chips and they didn't give me culture shock. Back to good ol' taste of American style BBQ.
• Sitting in a shuttle trundling along on the right side feels wrong.
• I automatically stand to the left on the escalator then remember that I'm back in the USA. So I awkwardly look around and indecisively hover around the middle.
• I miss Aussie and Kiwi and English accents. I miss being constantly surrounded by accents from all over the world. I think I also miss being one of the rare Americans (country and continent!) around.
  
• I still hate LAX with a bloody passion. Even after hating the Brisbane airport for making tired travelers pay $5 to get from the domestic to the international terminal. There's no other option. Cough up the money sucker. But that's not enough to push it above my hatred for LAX. Oh how I truly detest you LAX.
• The gift shops don't have aboriginal decoration themed itmes or kangaroos and emus or boomderangs and digeridoos. They have Oscar statuettes and The Governator t-shirts. Oh my.
  

On being indescribable, or Bungy! Scuba!

There are certain experiences that are so... so disorienting... And so different... That it's almost frustrating to be asked to describe it after the experience.

Bungy jumping was one such occasion. As was scuba diving for the very first time in the Great Barrier Reef.

With bungy jumping, I decided to do it at the last minute so I only had 1 hour for my stomach to perform its nausea-inducing circus acrobatics. I turned off my brain and my fear throughout the registration, the payment, the waiting, the 200+ stairs you have to climb to get to the jumping platform, the securing of the harness and ropes...

Then, after hopping awkwardly to the edge of the platform, I look down at the 50 meters (164 feet!) I'm supposed to be free falling through and all my turned-off fear and nerves come rushing back full force. (Just look at my expression!)

And unlike skydiving where your tandem dude is the one who's responsible for jumping out of the plane, here, jumping off a platform 50 meters above the water is entirely up to your own free will.

Luckily the guys on the platform countdown for you so you don't have to think too hard...

Three. Two. ONE!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I was shaking afterwards. And people kept asking me how it was. At first I said, "awesome!" which wasn't entirely true, so I switched to "crazy!" which was truer, but finally, I just left it at shaking my head in awe.

But I think, it was slightly indescribable. Disorienting. Happens so quickly.
It's so disorienting. And so different. It's a blur to be honest.

Now which line was written in my journal after bungy jumping and which was written after my first scuba dive?

I have a fear of being in small spaces underwater. It's a fear of being stuck where you can't get out, and even if you could get out, you'd still be screwed because you wouldn't be able to breathe. (Sort of like the garbage compactor in Star Wars, but put underwater.) Hence, scuba diving scares me. It's underwater so you're clearly enclosed by water and you're putting your life in the mercy of this canister on your back and this tube at your mouth. It's not natural.

You'd think that after jumping off a platform 50 meters high, jumping off the side of the boat from less than 1 meter above the water would be a piece of cake. But it wasn't. I had to sheepishly request that one of the crew countdown for me.

Big splash!

My scuba instructor dude brought me through some incredible places on the first dive; the scariest and most insane being a narrow pass in between two towering reefs that felt like canyons to my terrified scuba newbie self. I stopped moving entirely so the instructor ended up steering me through.When we resurfaced, the captain of the boat asked us if we liked it.

"I don't know!" was my painfully honest answer.
"Well, I'm slightly offended!" returned my scuba dude.

Whoops, sorry scuba dude.

But really, as I wrote in my journal after the first dive: "I still don't get how anyone can expect me to properly express how something was immediately after the experience. It's far too rich for that. I need time to sit with the experience when it's the manageable memory and not the onslaught of real time. But I am so glad I'm doing this."

So glad indeed! It got better the more times I went out, to the point that I was able to truthfully answer, "Yes! I loved it!"

So even though I can't say that I loved the bungy jump (in the way that I loved the skydiving experience), I feel compelled to go bungy jumping again to better experience it after the shock of the initial run.

Who wants to join me?

On Australia and New Zealand

What excites me outdoors
NZ: Whee! Sun!
Aust: Oooh! Shade!

Footwear
NZ: Jandals. Hard to find because who the heck wears flip flops in the rainy spring?
Aust: Thongs. They're everywhere. And I'm immature enough to have to suppress a giggle when a mommy tells her daughter "Now, don't forget to wear your thongs!"

Fast food
NZ: McDonalds. Starbucks. Burger King.
Aust: McDonalds. Starbucks. Hungry Jacks.

Internal relations
NZ: Treaty of Waitangi. Bicultural coexistence. Maori cultural education is easy for tourists to find.
Aust: Aboriginal rights, reconciliation. Past treatment like past treatment of Native Americans AND of blacks in the USA. Beyond their art their culture isn't promoted to visitors.

Giftshop chocolates
NZ: Kiwi oopsies.
Aust: Roo poo. (i.e. chocolate covered almonds)

Giftshop jewelry
NZ: Jade jade jade jade jade jade jade
Aust: Opal opal opal opal opal opal opal

Giftshop toys
NZ: Kiwi birds and sheep. Lots of sheep.
Aust: Kangaroos, koalas and platypuses. (Platypi?)

Possums
NZ: Run the $#@*$&%$ vermin over!
Aust: By law, protected. Score one for possum.

On Art and Animals, or, Seeing the Real Thing

I have a confession to make. When I saw Caravaggio's The Calling of Saint Matthew last year in Italy, towering over me in all it's massive chiaroscuro glory, I felt little beyond a twinge of "Ooh, cool! It's so big in real life!"

I never admitted that to my classmates. Artists always declare that art MUST be seen in real life to be truly appreciated. I, on the other hand, feel that it's good to see art in real life especially because the scale gets lost in textbooks, but that it's not a life or death matter.

Still, I have come to the conclusion that that there is one key element that makes seeing the real thing necessary: movement.

This conclusion came after seeing

• Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne
• Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal II, at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image
• Kangaroos, echidnas and wombats at the Australia Zoo near Brisbane.

Images just can't capture the spirit of these artworks and animals.

I had a bit of a mental freakout when I chanced upon Anthony McCall's You and I, Horizontal II. I had written about one of his "solid light films" for an art history class which made finding this piece in an exhibition about film and movies (rather than an art museum) all the more exhilarating.

Basically, the artwork is a projection of shifting lines and curves of white light through fog/smoke/haze in an otherwise pitch black room. You can change the art without changing its base by interacting with the smoke and light at various points: fanning the smoke to watch it swirl in the light; blocking the light path at various points to see long thin shadows stretch to the opposite wall; or standing at different points and heights to get varied immersions. Or you can just sit in a corner and watch it uninterrupted.

At certain points I felt like I was underwater. At another point, a horizontal beam of light moved slowly down to my neck and I held my breath as if it was about to choke me. When the light described a curl, I stood in the middle and felt like a surfer within the curl of a massive wave. Seeing this after Bill Viola's Ocean Without a Shore meant that I couldn't help but make connections with light, water, life and death.

It was beautiful and absolutely fascinating.

My words are painfully lacking for describing the experience. And even though I said that images can't capture the experience, especially with something that requires you to be wholly immersed in a 360° environment, these images (click!) will at least give you a better idea of what I'm talking about.

The movement of these works and the fact that they unfold within time means that you truly miss out if you don't experience the real thing.

As for the animals? You just need to see a kangaroo hopping very slowly, a wombat executing a startled 180° jump and turn, or an echidna waddling around in its hilarious spiny glory to appreciate the fact that images can never do the wonkiness of these Australian creatures justice.

Ode to Heat

The streets are unbalanced
Tipping with weight of pedestrians
Who gravitate to the side less touched by sun.

We seek shade.

Squares, plazas, seats,
Full in the morning shade
Ghosted by afternoon sun.

Life clusters under shelter.

Even then
The indecision of the breeze
Makes shaded relief temporary.

Walking. Dripping.

Museums, libraries, info centers.
Cool wisps of air beckon enticingly
From their briefly opened doors
Whispering a single promise.
Air conditioning.

But the sun is life
And the blue is joy
And the spring that feels like summer
Of 94 degrees in November
Leads to one conclusion.

It's slurpee season.


(Tapped in the shade at 37"49'05.47S 144"58'07.99E)

On the threshold between life and death

I've never been a fan of video art. Maybe it's because my attention span jumps like a hyper kangaroo or maybe I just don't know how to appreciate it. (It referring to the video art, not the hyper kangaroo.)

Enter Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore. (Look it up. But only after reading this.)

My entire time in the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne was spent with this piece. The introduction for Ocean Without A Shore states that it "explores the threshold between life and death, or as the artist has stated, 'the presence of the dead in our lives'."

For someone like me who feels compelled to record my experiences in scribbled sketches or scraps of brochures, it's frustrating to spend this much time with art this amazing and not be able to take any sketch or image of it with me.

But when all else fails, benches beckon and ink meets paper.

So here, in words scribbled into my journal, is my attempt to preserve my experience of Bill Viola's Ocean Without A Shore immediately after emerging from the room.

~

It's absolutely mesmerizing. You enter a small, darkened room and take a seat on a bench. It's silent except for a constant muffled noise as if you are underwater and water is falling some distance above you. A large vertical video screen is ahead, maybe five feet in height. Two more screens stand guard, one on the left wall, one on the right. All three propped up on altar-like structures.

Newcomers stand uncertainly at the entrance before their eyes adjust to the heavy darkness.

Each screen is fuzzy, noisy, dark, and grey, with tiny muffled figures in the distance, one figure per screen.

Slowly, one figure starts to move forward. Slowly, ghostly. Their image shifts, blurs, falters, even as they grow larger in their approach.

A sheet of water, invisible prior to contact, separates them from us.

They begin to cross the threshold into the world of the living. One figure's fingertips graze the sheet of water, testing, testing. Another figure walks erect, chest pushing ahead of neck, nose ahead of forehead. No hesitation. Yet another presses their palm to, then through, the liquid sheet. Another bows their head and pushes through, unseeing.

Noise of falling, rushing water fills the room, increasing in intensity as more of the person's mass interrupts the flow of the water

As they emerge, color floods their drenched figures, sometimes with jarring saturation in their attire. They stand in the world of the living for varying lengths of time, with varying degrees of interaction with we living spectators.

Some refuse to open their eyes. The world of the living must be met with caution.

Others hold your gaze. Disconcertingly.

One old woman emerges with great joy on her face. Contagious joy. But it soon turns into a troubled expression as if she knows she can't stay. She lingers for a very long time once she passes through the water back to death. Even in death she is reluctant to leave the living, breathing.

A woman dressed in vibrant green has her head bowed slightly, to the side as if listening, deliberating. She takes a very long time to open her eyes. But when she finally does... slowly... she lingers...

And as she stands there cautiously in the world of the living, a man in the middle frame walks quickly to the water, through the water, and stands surveying this world. He puts his hands on his hips as if he doesn't care much for what he sees. He turns and walks back, easily, quickly. All this while, the woman lingers on...

The people do not emerge from the left to right frames in an orderly fashion with similar speeds. Life is not predictable. Death is not predictable. We are not predictable.

They make contact with the water differently. They move through it differently.They are individual and unique in how they enter the world of the living and how they respond to it.

But the constant truth is glaring. Invariably, every single one of them must leave and return to death. And we, sitting in a darkened room in the world of the living, can't help but feel ...

On Driving on the "Wrong" Side of the Road

Let me rephrase.

This is about driving on the OTHER side of the road. Because it's only wrong if you can't distinguish between right (correct) and right (side).

What I discovered at the beginning of the trip is that the road side swap doesn't really bother my sensibilities. Surprisingly, trundling along on the left side of the road is not terribly disconcerting.

However, I WAS disconcerted by the number of things I did which showed how deeply ingrained the right side dominance is in we right side drivers...

• The bus driver mentions that an interesting road sign is up ahead. (I think it was Shag Point or something?) Sitting on the right side of the bus, I eagerly get my camera ready and wait for a sign that never comes. Actually, a sign did come but I only got its backside. Whoops, we drive on the left side, thus the sign was actually on the left side of the road. Photo op missed.
  
• Distracted while talking to Scott, I instinctively head toward the escalator on the right hand side. I pause. Then look down in great confusion. The escalator steps are moving towards me. Ahh. Unless I want to be a little kid running down the up escalator (which is certainly entertaining!), I need to go to the left side.
• Darkness is falling and I'm trying to find a bus that will bring me back to my hostel. I see a bus drive by on the other side of the street. It takes another 5 minutes to realize that that bus was heading in the direction I wanted. I was waiting in the dark, in an unfamiliar untouristy area, on the wrong side of the road. ACK!
• On the streets, heading towards another pedestrian. I could play Chicken with them but I don't really know them well enough. So, I veer to my right. So do they. What? You want to play Chicken?? No? Oh, you walk on the left side! Walking on the left side has become such a habit for me that I actually get annoyed when people walk on the right side of the path!
• When I'm crossing streets, I look like I'm shaking my head like a child in a tantrum screaming "no no no no no!" Looking both ways. Again. And again. And again. It's called playing it safe to avoid being roadkill.

I shudder to think how much trouble I would've been in had I tried driving over here. My right hand would be bruised by the number of times it would smack into the door. The windshield wipers would forever be wiping a dry windshield everytime I wanted to make a turn. And, well, playing chicken with another car hurtling along at 100 km/hr isn't quite as harmless as playing chicken with another ambling pedestrian...

Excuses excuses.