Sunday, February 22, 2009

Week Seven / Day One

Early Monday morning, I looked off my balcony and saw that the balloons were back...  A little googling reveals that this is a Regular Thing; Sunrise Balloon Tours (breakfast optional) over Melbourne or the nearby Yarra Valley...Australia's Napa.  When the first of my from-home guests finally visits; this is most definitely on the agenda...

Looking at this photo, one can see that the air remains colored with the smoke and smell from the Bush Fires...an evocative and apt metaphor for the Australian people and the effect these fires have had.

From when I first moved to Manhattan, from the-longest-year-of-my-life, in Orlando, I could exit my building, turn right on 49th, then downtown on 8th Avenue and -- looking down that vast canyon of concrete-and-steel -- hear some small part of me say, "Damn, Kile...you are living in effing New York!" That kid within me, born in an arid, Southern California suburb and raised in the mountains of Oregon, was ongoingly a little amazed that he'd put himself in that city and was actually living there...

Years before that, on April 15, 1979, as I drove across the Bay Bridge on the clearest day in creation with the shimmering clarity of San Francisco filling my vision, I felt a trepidation-free exhilaration as I saw the City where I would sow the seeds of my future...whatever that might be.  

Ah, had I known what lay before me, would I have been as thrilled?  I think so; despite some very dark and sad years, that is where I found and have, still, my "post-nuclear" family of friends...and that is where I found the freedom to become whatever man I am.  There was powerful love and profound loss awaiting me, there; and it has gone into making me that man...or the man I am yet becoming.

Even before that, I so clearly remember the drive away from Washington, DC, after graduating from Georgetown - the spires of that institution filling my rear-view mirror and the strains of the Four Season's "Dawn" pouring from the radio as I crossed Key Bridge on my way to Florida and my first Professional Adventure aboard Semester at Sea...  I knew my life was set and the future was secure as I launched myself forward, unhesitatingly, into a future that, as it turned out, has had no small amount of surprise and insecurity for me.

The view from this tightrope can be awesome, inspirational and clear...and, so far, survivable.

So, I've learned most certainly that nothing is forever, nothing can be successfully manipulated, virtually nothing is predictable; and therein lies the adventure.

So, as I look outside my window, as I absorb each night's sunset off my balcony, at some point it occurs to me that that is Australia, out there. Right outside my door is a country larger than the US with only 3 times the population of New York City.  The space is sweeping and virtually boundless, the culture is open and welcoming, the opportunity for me is expansive.

And I am so damned lonely.

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Change of subject:

On Monday, I returned to the gym, Day One of ramping up for competition in Physique at the Cologne Gay Games in 2010.  Discovering bodybuilding at "an advanced age" has changed my life, immensely, for the better.  With a 9-month lead time, in 2005/6, I managed a bronze medal while Directing the fracking ceremonies at the same time.  This time, I think I have a chance to do even better than that.  ...Cooked my First Week's 16 Chicken breasts, yesterday, and am ready to rock...

Got my first Australian haircut: not bad at all.  Amy, to whom I shall return for this monthly grooming, does have the best fingernails in the world, making that shampoo an experience that borders on the illegal; she managed to trim me up, just fine. And, she shared with me what will be this week's Featured Strine:

"...a face like a dropped pie."   [I LOVE that!]

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I finally bit the proverbial bullet and bought a washer and dryer, this week. There is no Laundry Culture, here. Since discovering, in college, that one can take in a bag of laundry, pay about US$20.00 and have one's stuff returned, all clean and folded and wrapped in blue paper, ready to restock the dresser; that has been my habit.

Well, they don't do that, here.  Last month, I took my stuff in to a laundry and, about a hundred dollars later, got it back with, quite literally, everything ironed and on hangars.  I mean EVERYTHING.  Even my t-shirts were ironed and on cardboard-protected hangars, ready for display. That's a mistake that won't be made, twice.

The fact is that Oz doesn't have the pool of low-paid workers to support some of what are, in fact, luxuries that we enjoy in other parts of the world. I'd never really considered this at that level.  Here, most working people actually earn a living wage...of sorts.  Waiters don't work for tips, commission on store sales is very rare, and the Service Culture doesn't exist as we might know it.  So, there is no one living on a cot and sleeping six to a room to wash and fold my underwear for next-to-nothing. Looking at it from that point of view...

Well, I bought a washing machine and did laundry, all afternoon, yesterday. No prob.  Happy to do it.

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I had dinner, this week, with the man who first brought me into the world of themed entertainment and theme parks.  [Well, over and above the fact that my entire life has been themed and scored, I suppose; Phil made it Official!]

As he was filling me in on the State of the Business Back Home and Worldwide, and sharing the multiple stories of lost business and cancelled projects, salary and staff cutbacks and concomitant shedding of anything and any personnel that most projects and companies might do without; I realized, again, that I am likely in the right place and lucky to be here.  I have the chance, here, to build something and enjoy some (very small amount of) financial security, here, while this Global Recalibration takes place.  I do like the work, and see great possibility for this company and -- if successful -- for me, when it is done.

Were I still in the US, things would likely be pretty grim for me, about now, as every single one of the companies and opportunities I had been pursuing and courting are undergoing great difficulties. Professionally, I should be where I am.

Daily, though, I awaken with the awareness that I am risking the very most important thing to me. This would likely be at great risk, even were I in the States, given the economic climate and state of the business; but, being so distant from where my heart lives leaves such a chasm of desperation within me. The zen of it is that I must discipline myself to accept my impotence, my inability to make things be any way other than how they are, and to accept that if that which gives my heart reason to beat is to survive this separation, it will survive the distance and the time and perhaps be all the more rich, for having done so.

Trust and Hope without Desperation.  Gonna be NEEDING some damn zen!