Great Southern Expedition ~ Part 5 ~

i left too early, both in the day and in time.

the ennui of travel is that the liminal self gets so little stage time he can't savour his own existence. much like other young men of my age my liminal self cannot grow up, existing as he does in a hall of mirrors, (nostalgia repackaged, contrived obligations, gestures of being) that, while directed inwards, do not point to the central self. to the mountain we can choose to become. travel is living without becoming, it lets us make a cocoon of necessity, outside of which everything has to wait.

so it was that the function of leaving concealed both the event and the emotions. the flight was an early one, there was scant enough time for a cup of tea and a pat to the dogs before we had to be off. so little time was there (it i tell myself now) that i forgot to look backwards for the entire drive, nor when i gave dad one last hug and i turned to board. when i did remember he and tasmania were no longer there. i feel as though there should've been more to it than this, but i am at peace with the fact that my actual, living, physical father is quite a non-event in my life, the partition in my thinking informs me it's not a good thing nor a bad thing, it simply is.

there's a disconcerting emotion-memory about my expedition that i carry. it goes something like; driving towards the home in geeveston on arrival felt as though it were a slow, unfolding homecoming. a rediscovery of and affirmation about a childhood in tasmania i never had, but glimpsed in several holidays there. this grief informs my having to drive away from a largely fictitious life, it feels like slowly closing a book. as though the act of leaving were a time lapse glaucoma, fading from the edges of vision into a tunnel formed singularity, the last sight of which is the broad side of the pages of a book which is simultaneously the vision of huonville from the top of the sleeping beauty mountain range. outside of this repeating image is nothingness. the fluidity of pure memory is terrifying, little wonder then we kill it with words.

what strange omen it was that my seat should be the very furthest right seat in the back row, unable to recline and with the tray table barely an inch from my chest, i became quite claustrophobic. i say that, but i feel as though it should have been an omen, though no pattern emerges from this experience yet. I'm very much back in melbourne, and i don't know if how they show each other how to live here is the explanation that suits me yet, but i live in quiet hope my village shall reveal itself to me.

this post, while perhaps mistitled, does actually contain as much of the great south land as my last day did, there's the rub.

so make a cup of tea, and some avocado toast, light a fire and sit comfortably while you press play on this last, small offering. why do we find so much comfort in a return to the beginning? it doesn't actually resolve anything...