Making my Way Back ... or "gambling everything for love"

There is a Rumi quote that has been repeating itself over and over in my mind since last evening. That is when, after 3 attempts, The Department of Home Affairs in Australia finally gave me permission to return to their country and my beloved Mick. (thank you Peter Dutton and Scott Morrison - hope all my tweeting didn't annoy you too much). After months of anguish and unknowing when we would ever re-unite on the same continent, we now have a glowing bright light at the end of what, until now, was a grim and hopeless dark tunnel. We were both feeling sad and defeated. With step one of this journey home to love behind us, now we face the next challenge. Getting there.

The reality is, few airlines are flying to Australia right now. With limited options and routes that would take me through countries that offer no guarantee for my connecting flights, I am going to be relying quite heavily on that wise old sage Rumi when he said,

"Gamble everything for love, if you are a true human being. If not, leave this gathering. Half-heartedness doesn't reach into majesty."

There can be no half-hearted attempt at this. It will involve risk and endurance to be sure. In all my excitement to be able to actually enter Australia, I have given little thought to the biggest risk - contracting Covid 19. When I left for Canada in March, the spread was minimal in Queensland. Precautions were in the early stages. I wore a mask on the plane and avoided using the loo (once in 15 hours was surely some sort of record-call me a camel.) I wiped every inch of my surrounds of the seat at the window (one less person breathing near me I reckoned) with disinfectant wipes, never touched my face, did not utter more than a few words to my seat mates, smothered a sneeze (likely caused by dust) as best I could but even still it was clear that the young man beside me felt threatened and generally did all I could to avoid those evil virus droplets that were possibly floating in that petri dish called a plane.

When I finally arrived at my destination in Ottawa, my friends had driven my car to the airport, tossed me the keys and I drove myself home and quarantined for 14 days. Each of those 14 days I was on hyper alert for the slightest symptom. I was justifiably tired and my nasal passages were bone dry from flying, causing a couple of days of nose bleeding but it passed once moist air restored my airways to normal function. My friends and neighbours delivered groceries to my door and I was able to wander around our 2 acres here alone outside which was a comfort and a blessing. Having lived through this, I have a bit of experience with quarantine.

The next one won't be as cushy. In fact, a little more like solitary confinement with a better bed (I hope). I also isolated prior to leaving last time and will likely do that here again this time. The one thing I don't want is to have to spend any more than 14 days in quarantine once I get to Sydney. Which brings up a whole other issue. Sydney. There is only one airline flying direct into Brisbane (where I want to land) that is available to me but it transits through Taipei. The Taipei layover is over 18 hours and by law, the government there will only allow a layover of 8 hours or less in the airport. That would mean a possible quarantine situation there and that is out of the question - a deal breaker I'm afraid.

Both Delta and United are flying sporadically to Sydney. That means I have to fly from Toronto to either L.A. or San Francisco (unavoidable) before getting on a flight to Sydney where I will spend two weeks monitoring every sneeze or sniffle due to allergies for the slightest sign of worsening. As it stands, the layovers are reasonable - 2-3 hours, but again, that is never written in stone either. What happens if I am stuck in either place for hours or days? It has happened to me before in days long before Covid 19, so it is not an unsubstantiated paranoia. Positive thinking aside, sometimes all the sunny thoughts of smooth sailing don't do a damn thing in reality.

So, let's say I do make it to Sydney in one piece, no fever or cough and the usual jet lag, then what? I finish my quarantine, get tested (I think) and I am ready to head home. But wait -  in the weeks leading up to this momentous day, the Melbourne and Sydney virus numbers have escalated and the Queensland state border has remained closed. A likely scenario. I do hope I will be able to apply my Sydney quarantine to re-entry into Queensland, but that is something I have yet to investigate although a "friend of a friend" did it during the last state border closure and they let her go home. I don't mind isolating at home for another 14 days, but I hope I don't have to do the hotel quarantine thing again just because I was in a quarantine hotel in Sydney.

So, there you have it my friends. This first hurdle was indeed just a baby step and if every journey does indeed begin with one step, well, that has happened.  In the next couple of weeks, my life will be a blur of details. Closing up the house here, final appointments for this and that, tearful goodbyes and lists, lists and more lists. I could avoid it all and just lay low and wait it out for another six months or a year or longer, but where I ask you ...

...is the "majesty" in that?

Will Australia let me Come Home, or are we Phuced?

My journey to re-unite with my beloved Mick continues. It is not looking very positive. For those of  you who read my previous blog post, here is the latest update.

I did receive a reply to my first application to return to Australia. As I suspected, I was denied re-entry to the country based on the fact that I had not provided enough evidence of our relationship. I was not entirely surprised but I was astonished to receive the email reply from the Department of Home Affairs sent to my email, but addressed to a Mr. Tu Phuc Dat Pham. I have never known this man and as far as I know, I am still a woman. I couldn't help but feel as though my application had not been handled with much care. Attached to my email was a copy of my original application that contained all of mine and Mick's most private information, like our passport numbers, addresses, birthdates, etc. I couldn't help but wonder who had been privy to all of this private information about us and it continues to worry us.

I contacted the Department of Home Affairs in Australia to tell them about this concern and was told they would send me a new copy of the email addressed to me. That did not really instill much confidence in regards to my very real concerns. I wondered if Mr Tu Phuc Dat Pham received a letter to Mrs. MacFarlane? I wondered if this was a clerical error or had my original application been intercepted by hackers? There have been several cyber security breaches within Australian government websites of late and was I a victim? Should we be worried about identity theft? Had my application been truly considered?

I reported that I had sent a second application as I was concerned I had not received any reply at all up until then and so now I requested that they link my first and second application (which included stronger documentation proving our de facto partnership - wills, power of attorneys, joint bank accounts, etc), so that my second application might get moved further up the queue rather than starting the waiting process all over again. Mick visited our member of parliament, Llew O'Brien's office in Maryborough to show them a copy of the mis-addressed reply letter and the admin staff there also said they would "see what they could do". In both cases, we were told that no one had access to my applications. Hmmmmm, no one but Mr Tu Phuc Dat Pham, I thought. He now possibly had a copy of my entire personal information and identity.

I have had some time now to contemplate all of this. My letter arrived at a very odd hour. In the past, all of my correspondence with the Department of Home Affairs and Australian Immigration have arrived during standard business hours - Monday-Friday, 9-5. This reply letter arrived in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. I suspect it came from a time zone outside of Canberra or Sydney, but have no idea where in the world, although if I were to do some further sleuthing, would likely be able to determine approximately where it had originated - most likely from some offshore operation who I have since learned are actually processing these very important applications. It is extremely distressing to imagine that decisions about my life...our life together, are being made by someone sitting in a cubicle outside of Australia in some foreign country who is being paid a wage per application. (I don't know about you, but if that were the case and I was getting so much per application, I would be cranking them out faster than a great white headed for a surfer's leg at Bondi).

We have never had an opportunity to speak to a real human being about our relationship. We have never had the chance to explain how our lives have been affected. How our life together has been halted. How we have gone from being connected as a couple on a daily basis, to being half a world apart with no light at the end of this crazy tunnel. As each day passes we become sadder and lonelier and more heartbroken. The insensitivity surrounding the entire decision making process is astounding.

I decided to google Mr. Tu Phuc Dat Pham. I learned some interesting things. Pham is a common Vietnamese surname. Good to know. However, the combination of Tu Phuc Dat Pham is not. I ask you now, dear readers, to read this name slowly. Once. Twice. Three times. I don't want to spell it out for you, but I think as you repeat it over and over a few times you will see what it "might" be translated phonetically in English to mean.

I took it a step further and found a story about a name that had been made up as a Facebook profile a while back and was found to be fraudulent. That name was Phuc Dat Bich. Again, not a common combination in Vietnam. I suppose there is some humour here in a very politically incorrect manner, and surely there are many who would laugh. The creator of that name thought so at the very least.

For what it is worth, the creator of the name Tu Phuc Dat Pham,  has succeeded. That is exactly what our efforts to re-unite seem to be at this time, completely..... PHUCED.

Allow me to express my sincere empathy to everyone at the Department of Home Affairs and the staff at Llew O'Brien's office in Maryborough. I do realize that these are unprecedented times for all of us. We are facing chaos and tragedy daily during this Pandemic that none of us have witnessed in our lifetimes. My purpose here is to illustrate our frustration and put a face on the "number" we seem to have become. We just want to resume our quiet and simple life together in our small town in Queensland. I do not have Covid 19, and I would quarantine upon my arrival in Australia (unlike some recent young women who cavalierly toted the illness back into Queensland from Melbourne without a care in the world for their families or fellow Queenslanders.) I am a mature woman from Canada who loves Australia and her Australian partner and I just want to come home.

Please Australia...let me come back!

Original Painting by Cindy Schultz that hangs in our home at Kyeema North

 I don't know what else to do, so I am writing this open letter to the powers that be in the land down under. Let me come back to "my Mick". He needs me. I need him. We have been apart now for over three months. I left Brisbane on March 24, 2020, heeding the call from my Prime Minister in Canada to "come home now". 


I regret that I listened to that now. I wish I had stayed in Australia with "my Mick". His name really isn't Mick as most of you who know me and know him are aware, but that has been my pet name for him on this blog for years now. In case you don't know why I call him "Mick",  it is a reference to Mick Dundee of Crocodile Dundee fame. I had never met a man like him. He is about as rough and tumble an Aussie as you might ever meet. He is what people outside of Australia would see as an authentic fair dinkum Aussie man. He is strong and brave and tough-skinned and funny and he knows how to pick up a snake, fix a broken down car, drive in soft sand, swim like a champion and rescue a Canadian girl like me from Huntsman Spiders and Rhinoceros Beetles. He is all that and more...much, much more.

I met him in Spain in 1977 when we were just kids backpacking through Europe. I was 19 and he was 20. We didn't see each other again until 1979 when I came to check out Australia. That was when sparks started to fly between us, but as fate would have it, that was not the time for "us" to become "we". We remained friends throughout the years. He was good with Christmas cards. So was I. When I finally became a mother at 36, he already had 3 boys. He called me and teased me about being "a little long in the tooth for babies" by that age. He had had his kids much earlier. I was married. So was he. Life went on. He sent a sweet little t-shirt with a kangaroo on it for my baby from him and his boys. These little connections went on for years. I kept telling myself we were just old friends. I had to. What else could I do? I was a married woman. 

I do recall thinking however, that should something ever happen to my husband, I would very likely think about taking a trip to Australia to see if there was something more there. I knew his marriage had ended, although he never really revealed that directly.

Then the thing I thought would never happen, did. My marriage fell apart. I had started writing this blog and "Mick" started reading it. He started commenting on it...anonymously. It took me a few weeks to figure out who these sometimes annoying comments were coming from, but when I did realize it was this boy/man from my past, we started to talk and talk and talk and before long, "Mick" decided to come to Canada so we could meet up again in person after more than 30 years. Despite the passing of years and hair loss for him and the effects of gravity on me, that old twinkle in his eye was still there and we got that old spark ignited pretty easily. 

For the next couple of years, we had this crazy intense long distance relationship and racked up thousands of air miles and wore out computer keyboards chatting daily on-line until we knew we had to take the next step. Mick took a leave from work for one year and came to Canada and we lived together here until his leave was almost over. He had "proposed" prior to arriving in Canada. Neither of us were too keen to actually get married again in the traditional sense having "been there, done that", so on a beautiful sunny day at the Sandy Cape Lighthouse on Fraser Island, he asked me instead to be his "life partner". That was in 2012. He gave me a ring that he had gotten made, fashioned from a ring I had given him in 1979. There are many romantic stories I could share, but I am saving those for my novel. This is more of a synopsis of how things have developed between us for the powers that be to learn and understand our history together.

In 2013, we travelled back to Spain to visit the town where we had first met. We came back to Toronto from Spain and packed up and moved to British Columbia to see if we might like to start a new life together there. It was a bit early for him to retire, but we wanted to explore our options. He got along great with my brother and so we thought it might be nice to live near him out west. In the meantime, I had taken and early retirement and it was my turn to give Australia a shot. Toward the end of 2013, I left my life in Canada behind and moved in with Mick in Australia. He bought a little house for us and while he worked, I renovated the house and created a "home" for us. It kept me busy and life went on happily for the next 4 years in Maryborough, Queensland. We created a new life together with old and new friends, family time and travel. I went back to Canada each year to visit my family and friends and we both returned for my niece's wedding in 2014. By the end of 2016, Mick was getting ready to retire in 2017, so I came back to Canada ahead of him to begin to search for a house. It was our dream to spend half the year in Australia and half the year in Canada between our two homes. 

We made that dream a reality when I bought a house in May of 2017. He retired in February of 2017, came to Canada and now we could live this amazing life splitting our time between the two countries. Everything was going swimmingly well until March of this year when Covid-19 turned our life upside down. If I stayed in Australia, I would not have any health insurance for any "pandemic-related" illness. If he came to Canada, the same thing would apply to him. In retrospect, what I should have done, was stay in Australia and apply for my permanent residency, something I intended to do "one day".  As the years have passed, we have always known that at some stage we would have to choose which country to spend our final years on this planet. We were leaning toward Australia all along but now that is indeed, the plan. When I do finally get back to Mick in Australia, I will be applying for my PR. We never imagined a scenario like the one that has played out in 2020. 

We are 62 and 63 now. We don't take time for granted anymore like we might have when we were in our 20's or 30's or 40's. We are retired and in the final third of this life now and that makes these last three months seem like an enormous amount of time that has been stolen from us. At the end of 2018, Mick had a heart attack. That was a big wake up call for both of us around the fragility of life and how every day is precious. Together, we made some major lifestyle changes and I am happy to report that Mick is in fantastic health. With my help, he changed his diet, we exercise together and he has never been stronger. And that is why we are so desperate to be back together enjoying each other and living out the next part of our lives in the same country.  Deb and Steve (his real name), Poppa and PoppaDeb (what the grandchildren call us) - we are a team...the "perfect couple" according to a sweet, young neighbour here in Canada.

I have had to apply for entry back into Australia as his de facto partner. I have yet to hear back from the Australian Government as to the status of my application and now I fear that I may not have provided enough evidence of our relationship to warrant approval. I may be wrong and perhaps I am just in a very long queue. I have booked a flight to Sydney September 1st, but without the thumb's up from immigration, I cannot get on that flight. 

I am asking all of our friends and family in Australia to please share our story. My tennis friends, our neighbours, our family in Brisbane, Rockhampton and Gympie, all of our mutual friends in Maryborough - Please share it verbally, share it on social media, share it any way you can to help bring Mick and I back together. 

Please help mend our broken hearts.  Thank you all so very much.

 Happier times...Deb and Steve

 

Francesca

Francesca

It’s clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. - Robert James Waller, The Bridges of Madison County

Two months had passed since their last kiss. It was becoming clearer and clearer with each passing day that they were likely not even near the halfway mark of their separation. They had sworn they would never travel between their two continents separately again, but they had made that promise to each other before the Pandemic. Before the world they had known had changed into something unrecognizable. Before their near perfect life had been disrupted beyond their imagination.

Diane’s heart was heavy.  She had decided many years ago that she was not gong to be a Francesca. In the 1992 book, The Bridges of Madison County, the main character, Francesca Johnson, an Italian born war bride of an Iowa farmer makes a decision to remain in her dull marriage rather than leave him to be with the great love of her life, a photographer named Robert Kincaid. The bittersweet romantic novel was equally adored and scorned by the critics. Diane happened to adore it. It ticked all the boxes for her with its passionate love story combined with tender poetic writing.

Making a decision to move to Australia to be with Mick had some similarities in that it meant leaving behind everything and everyone she knew to take a leap into the unknown. At that time she had laboured long and hard over the pros and cons and the many possible outcomes. A quote from that book became a secret mantra whenever doubt prevailed. Kincaid says to Francesca after asking her to come away with him,

“In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.”

It was how Diane felt about her love for Mick - an instinctive urging from her gut that he was the one.

Her intuition nagged at her constantly. “Do this Diane, just go. Go to Australia” Her heart was telling her one thing and her head was telling her another. The battle went on for months. Mick had taken a year off work to come to Canada to be with her. After her separation from Graham, they had waited a full year before he came. It was Mick’s idea. He wanted her to be sure her marriage was truly over before starting a new relationship with him.

Their first few months together in Canada were like a honeymoon. Intense and passionate togetherness combined with the happy planning of taking a trip to Spain to revisit the town of Sitges where they had first met in 1977. All of 2013 became a wild adventure. After Spain, they decided to leave Toronto and drive across the country to the West Coast to see where life might take them. It was another bold and daring leap for Diane and once again, she sold her newly accumulated possessions, quit her job, loaded up her SUV and headed off to figure life out as it came. They had a vague idea about settling in British Columbia, but nothing was set in stone.

As they drove westward, they took a detour though the USA. Diane had always been curious to see Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota, so they mapped out a route that would allow them to make a stop at the famous National Memorial. As Mick drove and Diane navigated, they were making their way through Iowa when Diane noticed a directional sign for the town of Winterset.

“Did you see that sign Mick?”
“What sign?”
“The sign we just passed. I’m sure it said Winterset.”
“And I should recognize that because…..?”
“Isn’t that the town from the movie?”
“What movie?”
“THE movie…The Bridges of Madison County. It must be a real place!”
“Ya think?”
“Look there! Did you see that sign? It said Welcome to Madison County!”
“Do you want to turn back?”
“Hold on, let me see how far it takes us out of our way.” she said as she surveyed their roadmap.
“It’s not too far off the main road…let’s go! Are ya with me?”
She didn’t have to ask twice. Mick pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and did a U-Turn.

A country road led them a few miles off their route into Winterset and they were not disappointed. The film had been made in the town and it was instantly recognizable. Diane could not believe this was happening. With no idea or plan in place they had stumbled across this place she thought had only existed in the imagination of the author of the story. It had never occurred to her to research the location details of the film that had been made from the book and yet here they were. Mick was able to sit on the exact diner stool at the Northside Cafe where Clint Eastwood, in the role of Robert Kincaid had sat during the filming of a scene. A small gift shop sold keepsakes and copies of the book and Diane bought a photo of the Roseman Bridge, one of the 6 remaining covered bridges that had been the subject of Kincaid’s photos. She framed it when they moved into their beloved Kyeema North and it sits on the windowsill next to their bed, a constant reminder of her choice.

From Winterset, they drove to visit the bridges and they appeared just as they were in the film. Mick and Diane had each bridge to themselves which surprised them considering they were somewhat of a tourist destination for anyone who might be interested in movie locations. They were still in use and part of the Madison County backroads, not props as Diane had once mistakenly assumed. She imagined Meryl Streep leaning against the corner post of the Roseman Bridge and could recall her self-deprecating and shy wave toward Clint Eastwood, embarrassed that he was taking a photo of her and she herself posed in the same spot while Mick took her photo. She watched lovingly as Mick scrambled down the embankment of the creek next to the covered bridge to pick her a posy of wildflowers just as Eastwood had done in the film.
A sucker for such romantic gestures, her eyes welled up as he handed her the sad little handful of limp-stemmed daisies. When it came to knowing what made her happy, he never held back and she never grew tired of his efforts to win her heart.

She couldn’t help but think it had been some sort of message. It felt fated and when they got to the Hogback Bridge, Mick noticed someone had written his name and the year 2009 on one of the wooden posts supporting the bridge.

“I came here a few years ago,” he joked. “I set this whole thing up. Pretty good, heh?”

It was the exact sort of thing Mick would do thought Diane, so the idea that he actually may have wasn’t a stretch.

The magic of that day was not lost on either of them. Visiting the site of one of the most bittersweet romance stories they had both read and watched together (she had sent him a copy of the book a year earlier with a note telling him she did not want to end up like Francesca), was both surreal and confirming.

He was her Denys Finch Hatten and Robert Kincaid all wrapped up in one big beautiful, chivalrous, romantic soul and their journey was only just beginning.

Excerpt from My Novel

Apart


Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road. - Isak Dinesen


While most of the people Diane knew were eager for life to return to normal during the Pandemic of 2020, she wasn’t so sure. The solitary life was suiting her and she finally had no excuses not to write. Wasn’t this the ideal writer’s retreat? She had her desk in front of a window with a waterfront view. She could drift and dream at her leisure, eat when she was hungry, sleep when she was tired, get dressed if and when she felt like it without a schedule or interruptions. A writer or poet’s dream if ever there was one.

But it came at a price. She hadn’t seen her family in several months, since she had been in Australia for five months prior to the virus outbreak. If social distancing restrictions didn’t start opening up soon, a year might pass before they could connect in person. Her parents were not computer literate, nor did they use a cell phone, so the old fashioned land line phone was their only form of communication. Her only child was in a city too far away and had roommates who worked in essential service jobs, putting Diane at risk should they meet in person. And then there was Mick on the other side of the world in Australia. When would borders reopen? When would planes start flying? When would his head be lying on the pillow next to hers again? The cost of her isolation was loneliness.

After all they had been through to finally create a life together, they hadn’t ever imagined being torn apart by something like this. Diane likened it to what one must feel when spouses go off to war never knowing when or if they will see them again. Perhaps that example is a bit extreme, but instead of an adversary with a gun, the enemy they both would need to avoid was Covid-19. The idea that their farewell kiss at the Brisbane airport could potentially be their last was a thought she needed to put out of her mind whenever it came.

At the last minute when she was packing to leave for Canada, she remembered to take the antique compass he had given her the first year they were together. It held so much meaning. It was almost an exact replica of the compass that was passed from character to character in the epic romance movie Out of Africa. It was a recurring symbol of finding one’s way home throughout the film.

Denys George Finch Hatten (Robert Redford) gives it to Baroness Karen von Blixen (Meryl Streep) to help guide her home across the endless dusty plains to her farm in Kenya several days away. At the end of the movie, after the great love of her life is tragically killed in a plane crash and her farm has gone bankrupt, she has to leave her beloved Africa and return to Denmark. In the final scene of the movie, she hands the compass to her faithful Somali man-servant Farah and says…

“This is very dear to me. It helped me to find my way home.”

When Diane told Mick that Out of Africa was her favourite movie, they had watched it together and he understood the bittersweet romance she found so powerful. A hopeless romantic, Diane cannot watch the movie without crying. For their first Christmas since reuniting after more than 30 years apart, Mick spent months scouring antique shops in both Canada and Australia for a gift with some meaning. They were still living on separate continents. Christmas came and went and Diane had not received anything from him. She was disappointed and a little hurt that he had not managed to get anything to her but he told her a gift was coming and he was sorry it would be late. He said it was something very particular and he was having trouble finding one. She had no idea what it might be.

When a package finally arrived two months after Christmas, Diane was beyond curious to know what this special parcel would contain. She opened the small box wrapped in plain brown kraft paper and inside was what appeared to be the exact compass from the movie and with it, a note that said,

“So you can always find your way back to me.”

She had to sit as it had taken her breath away. No gift had ever touched her more. He was her very own Denys George Finch-Hatten.

She had never felt so known, or so loved.




(Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals) 

 

Time for a Pause

This is a special announcement for those of you who have been regular readers of my first 24 Chapters.

I am about to take a bit of a diversion and it will require some rewrites, some format changes and some adjustments to my writing schedule.

Before this story goes any further, I have had some thoughts on how to edit and present the chapters differently which means going back to make changes. Once I have done that, I will resume writing the chapters in the new format.

I am so grateful to all of you who have been following Diane's adventures up until now and my wish is that when the book is finished you will pick up where you left off and continue reading. With any luck, it will be an actual hard copy of the book. 

I will leave the last 3 chapters up on my blog for those of you who have fallen behind, but will be removing them in a weeks time as well. 

I don't have writer's block, if that's what you may be thinking. On the contrary, it is my desire to dive deeper and longer into my writing without the self-imposed deadline of producing and presenting a chapter each day for the sake of longer chapters and smoother segues.

Be well everyone. I will miss our daily interactions. At least those pertaining to the stories.

xo

 

Sweet, Sweet Rain

And the rains have come and the entire world around us has come to life. The humid air has awakened every blade of grass and the insects are rejoicing and the frogs are singing and the pool is overflowing with rain water and we get naked after dinner and slip into the fresh cool water. An infinity edge has been created by the heavy rains. Light rain falls as we swirl and dive and dip. 
An oasis after the drought. When we finally come inside, my feet stick a little with each step on the chill ceramic tiles and everything is slightly damp and my hair is limp and my skin is moist and the air from the ceiling fans feels soft and cool and breezy and we devour cold mangoes and watermelon and dragonfruit and melt into the sensation of moisture that has been missing in action for months now. 

It's exotic and magic and I feel bohemian and alive. 

I sit in near darkness, the crickets and frogs serenading me as I write; here in summer, in Queensland, in the wet season that has finally arrived.