An Echo.

It’s a slow and measured ride. A little after sunset, the smell of wood fires, the scratch and shuffle of possums. The chilled air bites your cheeks, your knuckles, your nose. Scattered milk crates, a barking dog, patches of gravel on the path left from flooding during the hail storm months ago. Bus stop graffiti reveals Casey to be a Big Fat Slut. You cross the dew licked grass. The moon is full, and glows like a future behind the dark lump of Mount Ainslie. A carefully placed bunny-hop up the curb and you’re out the front of the house, cresting at the apex of the shallow U shaped crescent, hidden by the line of conical hedge trees which are exactly the sort you can buy in hobby shops to line the country roads of your model train diorama. Around the dark buses, through the chain link gate and past the old bath tub and little piles of car parts. Through the bead curtain hanging in the backdoor frame. This is what we call home.

And it’s definitely a lonely town.


But here I am and here I am. Canberra, our nation’s brave and bright political beacon, our majestic capital. A city kinda like Pauly Shore or Vanilla Ice – a joke that never fades. Already half way through my first (and possibly only – inshallah!) stint here. Steel-trapped behind the computer desk, reading, typing, thinking, procrastinating – procrastination never feels so bad when you’ve got nothing better to rush off to anyway. Stretch it out, make it last right up to the hour it’s due. See what I care. I’ve got Allen’s snakes, I’ve got the new Modest Mouse, I’ve got Facebook messages from ex-lovers. Out there there’s nothing but a couple hundred up-collared jocks stumbling liquored outta Mooseheads, humming Khe Sahn, on their way to the $2.50 pizza slice counters. Beyond that? Silence and cold and darkness, and somewhere among it all, my bedroom.

I exaggerate of course. There are warm, sunny days with windsurfers on Lake Burley Griffin, and birds flicking from orange and yellow trees. And there are people I have here as my friends, and they are good people, despite not exactly making my desert island shortlist. The key people in my life right now, for your information, are as follows:

"Giacomo"
He is Italian, from near the French border. He likes wearing his sweaters over his shoulders, smart-casual style. He has a particular way of speaking that often includes the use of the phrases “It’s a good/crappy thing, actually, at the end of the day” and “oh PERfect, well done, well done”. I will be studying with him in Oslo for the second half of the year, also. He once stole a 7 disc set of Dawson’s Creek Series 5, but felt guilty and returned it to the store, offered to pay for it, and was arrested. He represented himself in court and walked away without a criminal record. He has trouble with getting the ladies because they all think he is “such a good friend” and “such a nice guy”, and we all know how sexy that is. Little do they know that he’s actually a sexist, Eurocentic (bridging on racist), porn-collecting, smack-shootin' motherfucker. You’re missing out, girls.

Yui
She is from Thailand. She is here on an Ausaid scholarship, meaning the Australian government pay her the same amount to study here as they give about seven local undergraduates – ie: she actually gets enough to live on. She’s pretty much the cutest thing since Sanrio and I’ll admit here that our friendship kicked off when she was chosen in the early days as the closest thing to a crush I was ever likely to develop in the course (and indeed in Canberra) and thus approached her with invites to social occasions. Since then its all gotten pretty severely platonic (thus rendering the whole crush-scene distinctly wastelandic) although Micky and I joke often with her about both of us being somewhat head-over-heels, hence our new (hilarious!) project – http://yayforyui.blogspot.com . She likes cake and German boys.

Hugh
He is from Perth. He is friends with Jim Mitchell! He has a pretty girlfriend called Claire, and surfs, and wrote a honours thesis about Aceh. When he doesn’t want to discuss something he gets very obvious in his vagueness. He doesn’t like discussing the affairs of others, or about his honours thesis, or about skinny waitresses with lisps who have mad crushes on him. He’s a really lovely guy, but he lives out in Upper Downer, which is a very inconvenient place to get to by bike, so he’s consequently notoriously antisocial.

(photo to come)

Jason
He is from Taiwan. He is the most fashionable male in the course, as voted by me and Yui. He works at the Taiwanese embassy, or whatever they call it given that they are not allowed to have an embassy. He is actually a special operative spy intent on the immediate destruction of China. He cooks a powerful Korean dumpling, too.

*
I’m gonna post more, I promise. This is the start of a new era for the Standard Line Delivery Corporation. Enough stalling with illusions of literary birds nests – this is supposed to be a diary goddamn, something to belt out when I’m alone and cold, and to read back on someday when I’m alone and cold and, also, old. For now, to the two or three of you who still bother checking this thing for updates, goodnight, and may your dreams hold rickshaws filled with soft fruit and slender Vietnamese women in milk white ao dai.