Shut

So I'm sitting in my apartment at 7:18 pm on Tuesday night listening to the Glee Cast version of "Bust a Move," wishing I actually could. I spent the morning souvenir-shopping at the Queen Victoria Market with two friends, and right now my spoils are strewn about my desk like some tasteless contemporary art exhibit. I just finished dinner--rice with my attempt at chili (basically some veggies doused with cumin and chili powder)--and I'm contemplating either loading another episode of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (I've rediscovered it and couldn't be more in love) or finding the tabs to a new guitar song. The problem there, though, is that I have yet to entirely master a single song. I think I have musical A.D.D.

It is now officially 16 days until I leave this extraordinary country. As the hours pass, I am becoming acutely aware of how little time I have left, the realness of the threat that my life here will very soon become a mirage. In the past ten months I have progressed through the entire spectrum of human emotions: I have woken up broken, I've been so anxious I couldn't sleep, I've acquainted myself with the blissful evenings of sitting barefoot on my balcony with my guitar and singing to myself. I have cooked and been happy with it, and I've charred more than my fair share of grilled cheese sandwiches. I met incredible friends, and when they left I met more. I have been absent for deaths and emotional crises at home, and for this I have been both devastated and relieved. I've gone surfing and caving and swimming with a whaleshark. I was hit by a car. I was hit in a car. I fell in love, fell out of it, and am now hovering somewhere in between. I have learned and taught and slept and jumped into a pool with my clothes on. I have gotten more from this country than I ever expected I would, and because of that, I can't imagine any moment that is not this one, with my balcony door tied to the white iron railing with a garbage bag, the ding of a tram on Flemington Road, my pant legs rolled up almost to the knees, wondering how long it will take me once I'm home until I close my eyes and can no longer see the streets of Melbourne transcribed in my mind like they've belonged there all along. Losing this place scares me. In fact, I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that aside from the death of a family member, nothing has scared me more. I think back on all those times I complained about being so far away, and I wonder what the heck I was thinking. I never had it so good. This freedom can't be replicated, and now it's almost gone. Just when I thought I had come to terms with perpetual motion, when I thought my endless cycles of self-reflection had landed me on the doorstep of acceptance, the city called me back to myself.

My lorikeets are back. I call them mine knowing I have no right to claim such ownership of wild winged creatures that shoot past my window in blurs of red and blue and green, but after spending so much time here it's almost as if I've raised them--or, more appropriately, as if they've raised me. They're here and it's just another sunset, but I feel like I'm living something for the last time, and I don't even know what it is. So goodbye, eucalypt shadows across the browned and brittle grass. Goodbye Yarra River, the vein of the city. Goodbye opals and wombats and Brighton Beach bathing boxes. You truly were a gift.