Sydney in 6 Pictures and a Thousand Words

Now that everything has fallen away and all that are left are the memories and photos, I figured I had better add words to the mix before the moment is gone. Such is my memory, mercifully short in an effort to lose my cravings and addictions.

The past 2 weeks can be summarized using a culinary term, ‘high notes upon high notes’; you will soon see what I mean. Trays of food upon more delicious food, so much so that I am bewildered by the fact that I am still the same weight. Never felt that I grew horizontally, well with the exception of the time that I was in Sydney, I felt that my waistband was some boa constrictor, constricting me.

At the Highly Recommended Hurricane Café in Sydney Darling Harbor

Sydney was great, despite the crowd and the nightly sales. I have always been one who prefers the suburban life to the city hustling one, but I am not complaining. What irked me most about Sydney was the rainy weather. Despite being warmer than Melbourne, it seem to rain an awful lot with most of our photos turning out gloomy and sad, a sharp contrast to our gayful and playful mood.

To escape the tragic weather that hovered over the CBD we took a 2-day trip up to the Blue Mountains. Blue Mountains have always been a place I wanted to go to. Partially because I have heard so much about it and that I want to be able to say I have been and seen it.

On a Stone Ledge at the Wentworth Falls Hike

Relentless is not a word I use often. Words I use often are happy and comical words like ‘funny’ and ‘what???’ and maybe ‘Blardy hell’ said in this ridiculous high pitch tone. But relentless would be the one word that I use, (while summoning all the seriousness that I possess) to describe the Blue Mountains Trip. It was bush walking after bush walking to see eerie spiders, trickling waterfalls all on mud paths that have yet to seen sunshine in eons. All this activity serve only to reminded me that I am all but a highly inactive lab monkey on normal days despite the sports shoe that I wear daily.

Back to the bush walking, I have to admit I love and bask in the tiring nature of all the climbing and walking even though the weather was not agreeable. But there was a point in time where I had to consciously resist the final act of throwing my hands up in the air and exclaiming to all who would listen that ‘I had enough of all the muddy business’. I mean, why is it that the weather is so disagreeable on a holiday? Instead of taking my frustrations out on the innocent people around us, Mr S.O and I sat at one quaint little cozy café where hand-crafted coffee is served to rest our woeful tired feet and body.

Hand-Crafted Coffee and a Hot Chocolate to cheer our Leaden Feet

This picture honestly deserves another rant. I mean what on earth is meant by ‘Hand-crafted coffee’. If there is anything pompous in this world, that must be it. Coffee can hand-roasted, hand-grown and hand-picked, but hand-crafted suggest something entirely. And if your mind is as scientific as mind, you would think that the coffee is genetically-modified, hence the HAND-CRAFTED tag. Hah! Coffee-addictions can make one go loony!

In our Abseiling Gear and on the Edge of the Cliff

Our degree of loony is apparent in the activity of choice the following day; Abseiling. It was almost as if the bush walking was inadequate in pushing our calves to the brink of retirement, so we giddily decided to embark on another adventure abseiling down 60m cliffs which will see us WALKING up the same distance. Genius! Thankfully the weather was good and we did catch some glimpse of the sun despite small showers throughout the day. And all the exercise had another advantage to it, burning away all those chocolate that we have been practically INHALING throughout the time we were in Sydney.

Us at the Sydney Harbour Bridge (above) and the Sydney Opera House (below)

Trips to Sydney cannot be considered authentic unless a visit to the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge have been dutifully paid. And that is how we trot along on the last day of our stay in Sydney, before we return to the cold and shivery Melbourne. It was amazing that we did not pay for transport during the whole time in Sydney. We walked everywhere… chatting and basking in the atmosphere of the city, almost replicating the early dating days when we were both students in Singapore.

Funny how memories always seem happy on hindsight, but the present always feel heavy and mildly suffocating.

Everyday, I Play

Everyday I am presented with the opportunity to learn something new.

Every single moment of my apparently insignificant life is a lifetime of experience in itself. Sometimes I am too busy yielding to the demands of the world to recognize my own mortality; but today is tinted in a different light.

Today I learn that it is easy to make something appear seamless. It is almost effortless to appear as if nothing has changed. It is easy to say ‘I am okay’ but infinitely hard to convince someone of it. More so yourself. It is easy to whittle to your knees and wail but impossible to hide from the words of sympathy and condolences that suddenly flood your world.

I long to disappear into silence and nothingness. Perhaps in there, there is a suitable misery to mirror this void. No substitution exists; every impostor that tries, fades and decay, lingering into a certain shame that puts my wants on a pedestal.

In all that murkiness is a certain realization that what I innately desire is furthest away from the goals that I should be pursuing. And the humbling recognition that the coming days will be a struggle to be paid with tears and an infinite amount of heartache.

I need a certain reality where the world I live in overlaps sweetly with that of my imagined mind.

Geography of Solitude

It would take a resilient soul to live 'happily ever after' in a world of solitude. Because the geography of solitude is often linked to one of regret and hidden ambitions, that world often becomes discoloured and devoid of tangible moments. Happiness in such a place can only come to those with rose-tinted glasses and scented daffodils.

And it is funny, and highly idiosyncratic that it is not the need and desire that is lacking. The missing piece lies in shattered remains of what I cannot seem to put my finger on.

And if it is true, that 'the surest home is pointless' then I wonder, what is the point of it all. The choice of taking the pathless path is scattered with more questions than answers.

Neruda: 100 Love Sonnets

Somewhere in my 'favourites folder' lies big things that have been forgotten with the ebbing of time.

In my obsession with Dali and Merton, and in the seas of prophesying Gibran and Owens, I must have forgotten an old but still treasured friend, my dearest Neruda.

From 100 Love Sonnets; first written in Spanish

No. XVII

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as one loves certain obscure things,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries
the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself, and
thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose
from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where
I love you directly without problems or pride:
I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,
except in this form in which I am not nor are you,
so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,
so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

Questions with No Answers

I am sometimes convinced of the existence of a certain life that I am destined to lead. What that life entails, I do not know. But it does sometimes seems as though that my role in the larger picture of my life is just as significant as the person I met on the street the other day whose name I do not know.

How much resistance am I suppose to put against the crushing devils in my mind? And how much of my soul should I put on the silver platter and present to all who wants a nibble?

And if the plan was for me to live in misery and exile for all of my life, to what degree am I able to silently accept and bow to the platters of evils that I am fated to encounter and consumed?

Would I arrive at the end of my life, sinewy and shrivelled from the experiences and sights that I have seen, silent and stout in my mental rejections of the worst sides of the human race? Or would I be able to preserve the innocence and naivety that I still may have in me and see the goodness in the shattered remains of every broken day?

In the knowing and the unknowing of the world that I live in? How does one go on to proceed to thread tenderly on burning coals with grace and obedience and docility?
___________________

Forget about likes and dislikes. They are of no consequences. Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness but it is greatness.

George Bernard Shaw

Post 101

Welcome to the 101th Post. Didn't realised that it was already so far along! =)

Time passes quick when you are not keeping watch but travels at a snails' pace when all you want to do is get away from here... The satire of it all being that one would always forget (upon hindsight) the details of all these insignificant moments that were once magnified to the size of the moon.

So here I am, preserving for eternity, the warmness of picking up the phone and chatting as if you last saw each other 2 minutes ago. And here I am, preserving for eternity, the surety with which you put down the phone with uncontested knowledge that both will speak that way again in the near future. And how that happens when physical distance is a great barrier is something I try not to explain for I know no amount of explanation will suffice.

Just say thanks and run with THAT joy.

The Invitation: If You Ever Asked

If you have ever asked why I am still with the same person after 8 long years, this may be the answer you are looking for.

Sometimes I may have shrugged and joked that 'soon' will be the time to part. Sometimes I may have said that I have been trapped in a joking manner. And at other times I may have mentioned that otherwise I may have to remain a spinster for life if not for Mr S.O.

Still I attribute Mr S.O to my blessed life. And still when I think of him, I think of what I had read as a 14 year old. These words has impacted me in ways beyond imagination... This has partially defined my teenage years and its echo still reverberate now and then, every once and again.

And as I move away from one chapter to another unwritten one, I thought it is fitting to pay homage to the ignitor of my young mind without which I may never be the person I am today. Without which, I may have never learnt to treasure what I now hold close to my heart.

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for,
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy,
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul;
if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty
even when it's not pretty, every day,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine,
and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

It doesn't interest me to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up,
after the night of grief and despair,
weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not
shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls
away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Extract from The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer 1999