Train trip

Reading my last post is like returning to another life. A year later in Zhuhai, Bing and I would hug goodbye with tears in our eyes. The I would turn and get on the ferry across the channel to Hong Kong where I would spend the evening wandering Kowloon, and fly to Australia the next day. I did return to Lijiang and see him once more. We had lunch and wandered the streets. It was sad, but a more complete finish, and in that sense gave a wholeness to our friendship.

Now, 2 years later, I'm on a train.
My body is erratically jiggling, quivering, being moved. It's good to be on a journey again, even if it's only from Coogee to a small town on the Hawkesbury river - half an hour on a bus, and then an hour on the train. My small pack is leaning up against me, and my laptop is on my knees.
I'm wearing the marino hoodie my mum bought me in Otaki.
In it's pocket is something I received in the mail yesterday from the South Coast. I've been holding it off and on. I generally try not to infuse things with too much significance - the process feels a bit naff and inauthentic. But if one can remember that the objects are simply triggers or reminders of what is being generated within... Anyway, to me it represents the love of the friend who sent it to me, so I accept this talisman of her care gratefully.

I'm on my way to see someone. We've been estranged for two weeks now and more than anything, I need to make peace. There's a knot in my stomach. Beyond that I don't know. Perhaps this be my last trip and I'll break up with him. Perhaps we've already broken up. I'm already missing being out in the boat. That feeling of being swayed by the sea and the river. There will be pain and loneliness and self doubt, but perhaps also relief. I don't know. But something is no substitute for nothing.

Over the last two weeks, things have come into my life to support me. Z appeared out of nowhere after a 10 year gap. He was my first boyfriend. I first met him 30 years ago. He had a five hour stop over between Wellington and Bangkok and emailed to see if we could meet up. That was just after the telephone argument with my boyfriend. Z looked at me and laughed when we greeted each other. What? I said. Your gestures, he replied. They're exactly the same; they've never changed. Gestures? I'd forgotten what it was like to have someone know me like that. 'The way you move your hands, flick your hair, walk'. I felt like a sun was shining on me and I lapped up it's warmth. We got to Bar Coluzzi and ordered coffee and Portuguese tarts. My spot under the oak tree by the curb was waiting. I said the cosmos had sent him to me today.

He told me a story about when he was in the territorials as a teenager doing 3 months of voluntary army training. A maori guy in his dormitory went AWOL. He turned up 3 days later. His explanation was that he'd woken up in the night with a feeling that something was wrong at home and he had to be there. When he got there his wife was ill and needed to go to hospital. He took her and looked after their son. After a few days he was able to come back.
Z said he wanted to live on those kinds of intuitions; to feel and heed them, not to operate according to some rationale.

Me too.