Final Sydney Chapter

After a couple days of rather extreme mental roiling in the wake of Ewan’s departure, having concluded an afternoon of errands in the city, I made my way to the station at Circular Quay to take a train back to Alice’s flat. Circular Quay is there on the waterfront, close by the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. It is the origination point for many of the ferry boats which skate endearingly along the waters of this sun filled, marine oriented city. Ewan and I passed through Circular Quay a number of times during our days here. That afternoon I felt his absence poignantly. And in that experience of quite purely and simply missing him, somehow all the mental churning settled. In that calm, I felt able to be more present, present to movement within my own heart. It is an interesting journey we are on together; nurturing this relationship at this distance marinating in our individual experiences along with the associated blessings and vulnerabilities.

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My skin is a richer shade of brown than it has been in a very long time and this has occurred without effort, despite +30 sunscreen. My vitamin D levels must be in great shape. Hopefully the skin cancer risks will be moderated by my relatively short tenure here. This has been a sun filled time of play, has been since my arrival on this continent. Since Ewan’s departure I have attempted to balance a reasonably full series of family social visits with good centering exercise and writing which honestly helps me sift through it all. Alice and I have shared some wonderful time over morning walks, shared meals, and harbour pool swims.
My characteristic tendency in life is to trundle along open to social engagements until I arrive at some magic and unidentified threshold at which time I feel rather primally compelled to crawl into my hermit crab shell and simply be still for awhile. I have suspended some of my hunger for stillness in deference to squeezing in visits with the family and friends here in NSW. While ‘busy’, these meals and gatherings have largely been pervaded with ease and leisure.

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Manly Scenic Walk with cousin Tony

When my grandfather was 9 years old, he boarded a ship with his parents and 4 siblings departing from Scotland for Australia. Each of the siblings married and had their own families which are now strewn largely along the eastern coast of this continent. On the other side, my grandmother’s maiden name was Barwick. In the early part of the 20^th century there were some 27 Mrs Barwicks living along Warrah Creek in rural NSW. The scope of my relations on this continent is extensive even in sticking to the closer branches of the family tree.
My maternal aunt Rosemary, who died of ovarian cancer 28 years ago, had three children, all of whom live in NSW. Stewy, Tony and Chrissie are very loving people, all who happen to be over 6 feet tall. They each lavished my brother Jason and me with attention and affection during our visits as kids. While these three, particularly because of their height, occupied near mythic status in my childhood mind, it is with them, along with the Alice, Susan & Rex that I have cultivated the closest, albeit rather sporadic, relationships during my adult life.
Tony has had a diverse series of careers, with over 20 years as a pilot and later photographer for the military, some years ago he returned to school and is now close to completing a second degree in psychotherapy. He has made a couple visits to the US and over more recent years been an erratic email correspondent. One day we met up to go on the Manly Scenic Walk, a stunning 9k hike along the north shore of the harbour, mostly through park and beach with a couple limited stretches through waterfront neighborhoods. Through a rather hot afternoon we hiked in and out of eucalypt forest, onto rock outcroppings with breathtaking views of the Harbour, along sandy coves filled with holidaying families and sunbathers, and back into the cool moisture retained by the eucalypts. We saw a lovely rust bellied iguana and many smaller lizards scuttling amongst the leaves.

Per my request, he spoke about my grandparents who he knew far better than I did due to the distance. He offered simple reflections on their characters, their marriage, my grandmother Nanny’s superlative hand at Scrabble, my grandfather Poppy’s fierce discipline, critical eye and self motivation, and their support and love for him. He spoke of the role my own mother played in Tony’s life; the adventurous auntie who sadly left the continent in her mid 20s, but who introduced him to exotic things like gelato on return visits after her world travels and settling in the US to marry my father, who she met in Mexico (another story worthy of its own narrative). Despite the distance between our homes, Tony feels a tremendous sense of closeness and resonance with my entire family. Our afternoon hike along with a few other visits we managed in recent days afforded us an opportunity to further cultivate a connection at this stage in our lives as adults.

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Free Marine Amusement Park Ride

One afternoon Alice and I ventured to Nielsen Park, a harbour pool in the eastern suburbs, the cove demarcated by stunning golden sandstone. ‘Look, Moby Dick,’ Alice commented satirically pointing out one formation which resembled a whale breach. The barrier designating the pool is only a flexible rope net suspended from an arc of cable 15-20 feet above the water. In recent days, many of the ocean and harbour beaches have been closed due to the enormous wake generated by more extreme weather out the coast. This explained why there were actually surfers at a beach renown for its calm waters and family atmosphere. After swimming out past where the waves were breaking, we continued on to the net, grabbed on and had what felt like a free amusement park ride, buoyed and pitched, swinging with the inflow of each wave and then drawn back out as the next gained momentum. It was fantastic!
I am not fundamentally a beach goer, at least not a sunbather. And yet I have been positively enamored by the beautiful harbour pool experiences these recent weeks in Australia. Each has its own character, most are free to the public, and all have some little kiosk/café where one can find a coffee or meal for reasonable prices. As the Christmas holidays coincide here with summer vacation for kids, it has been a delight to see the beaches and parks filled with families out freely enjoying the world together.

Other Excursions

~ I met with Daiju/Simon Rowe someone I know through the Tahoma One Drop Zen Buddhist sangha, my home practice community. Daiju and I share not only our Zen practice, but also careers in Chinese medicine. Daiju finished his course of study just over a year ago and is now establishing his private practice in Sydney.

~ I have long heard about and was recently included in Alice’s almost ritual Friday night supper with friends Daniella and Gary for dumplings in Ashfield, the heart of Sydney’s Asian community. After stuffing ourselves with dumplings and Chinese broccoli, we headed into the city for a free night of outdoor music performances which were kicking off the first night of the Sydney Festival. We boogied a bit to some swing jazz in Hyde Park and then continued on to hear Paul Kelly, a well known singer song writer at the Domain, a vast open park space. Thereafter we listened to half a dozen (for me wince inducing) songs by Beach Boys Brian Wilson…just not my thing. The evening was beautifully punctuated en route back to the train station by stumbling upon a fantastic smaller stage, a handful of very skilled musicians with penny whistle, uncertain mandolin like stringed instrument, Uilleann pipes (which like bagpipes rather spontaneously evoke tears in my eyes when heard in the open air), and occasionally quite tasteful, in contrast to past experiences, integration of a digeridoo.

~ Last Sunday was shared with cousin Tony’s sister Chrissie and her family. Chrissie manages, I’m not sure how, to balance a career as commander in the Australian navy while concurrently raising three teenagers. Chrissie’s youngest, Jack, was celebrating his 12^th year. The birthday party occurred on a sultry afternoon in the treed suburb of Pymble, Chrissie & her husband, Jack’s teenage sisters Ashleigh, Hannah, grandfather Pat and uncle Stewy (the third of my 1^st cousins). In ’99, I lived with the Clarkes for a couple months on and off during some travels in New South Wales during the Spring before leaving Australia. Amongst tales from that time Hannah recounted being in the midst of a shouting match with her father (assumedly on a hot and irritable day) and having me direct her into a cold shower, effectively ending the argument.
Stewy’s account of an interchange decades ago with Pop Anderson, my grandfather, was another memorable anecdote. Stewy reckons Poppy would have been close to 70 at that time, still a regular lap swimmer and tremendously fit. Stewy was at my grandparents’ for dinner and refused to eat his vegetables. Rather than face his vegetables Stewy bolted from the house and ran down the street. Several blocks away he recalls hearing heavy foot falls behind him and then feeling a firm hand coming down on his shoulder, Poppy conveying clearly that Stewy would indeed return to his plate of veggies.

~ After an overnight with the Clarkes, I caught the train down the coast to Wollongong about 1 ½ hours south of Sydney to visit friends Cynthia & Jim. They met my parents while both couples were vacationing at the same hotel in Florence, Italy in the late 70s. If I recall correctly this was one of the early experiences of my mum’s marked by her waning Australian accent. She apparently heard Cynthia speaking, recognized it as an Aussie and made to strike up conversation. Cynthia inquired, “So do happen to know some Austrlians?” To which my mother assertively responded, “I AM Australian!”
I have always enjoyed visits with this interesting. well traveled, dear and hospitable couple. During my visit in ’99 they took me hiking for several days in the Blue Mountains. Our time together this visit included a couple drives; into the verdant inland hills, south to Kiama another north along the coast to Austinmer. We enjoyed an early morning swim at their lovely local ocean pool one day, later a delightful lunch with a vibrant, interesting and intellectually vital group of elder women, and celebration of Cynthia’s birthday.
Perhaps the most amusing moment of this visit for me was during an evening Scrabble game. It will likely be comical only to those people who know me well, knowing the depth and intensity of my study of the central nervous system over these recent years, particularly during the last 8 months of my studies at SIOM. For my senior research project I examined Multiple Sclerosis from both a Western biomedical and a Chinese medical perspective ~ online for anyone interested in the subject matter

http://www.siom.edu/resources/senior-projects

During the Scrabble game I laid ‘axon’ down on the board. After a few moments Cynthia asked me if I could explain to her what an axon is. I hesitated…I knew it was a scientific/medical term and yet for the life of me could conjure up neither definition nor context. As soon as Jim began reading the definition I laughed out loud, at myself, and proceeded to explain this keystone of the nervous system complete with small diagram, explanation of the myelin sheath etc. This simple experience affirmed just how much rest, in one sense, my travels have afforded the overstimulated portions of my graduate school fatigued brain. These sunny, harbour swim filled weeks have gone a long way in that respect.

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These recent days have all been more of the same. I don’t imagine it would be of particular interest to further recount the minutia of these social visits with family and friends. Additionally I have begun to pivot my attention toward my pending departure for India in less than 2 days. There are a variety of thoughts and reflections which have been passing through my mind about Australian culture in comparison with my own, the nature of family (blood and chosen) and human relationships therein, the impact of extended travel on the mind, heart, and body. And yet none of these are succinctly developed and so will have to wait a bit before appearing here. Times of transition and airplanes I have often found to be good places for the honing of such thoughts.