It is Spring, and I’ve started running to my friends when I see them in public. Maybe it’s the breach of the moments before we meet after missing eachother for so long, where one of you waits and one of you emerges from the crowd, determined, with a conversation to have and a friend to hug. There’s always a second where, if you are the later arrival, you spot your friend along the road, head most likely looking to their phone, and time moves slow like honey; the people between you both seem to blur, your friend perfectly preserved in their palimpsest as the world moves around them, unknowing but aware. The way that a friend feels you coming is instinctual. You could be half-way down the street, but their head snaps toward you soundlessly, and your heart sighs as they recognise you. How lucky are we, you both think.
This is where the run emerged from. The second after a grin splits across their face, take off in a jog toward them. Hold them tightly. Do not let them go.
On an unusually sunny winter afternoon spent lounging on the Green in the middle of the university campus in the middle of a big, big city, a dear, sweet friend of mine made an off-hand comment that between every season in Sydney, there’s always nearly two weeks of pure wind. Without fail, as a season ends, it’s like the atmosphere blows everything it can through the city, wiping cobwebs from corners and uncovering new earth. It’s purification from the highest powers possible. It’s a kind of cleansing, one that makes you shield your eyes as everything impermanent gets swept into the gutters, making sure we’re not getting too comfortable, wiping the slate clean and seeing what sticks. Maybe it’s a test. Maybe it’s a game. Maybe, every few months, a hard reset is due and it comes in the form of a strong southwesterly, or an Antarctic front, shoving some forcefully into their futures, and knocking other routes back home. Either way, I’m happy I made it through reasonably unscathed this time.
Another beloved friend of mine was ushered home by the wind recently, arriving home after months abroad with a breeze like a gentle sigh, like that of relief after reaching the top of a hill. We coordinated our train times so we would be able to commute from the city together in some small chance to catch up – coexisting simultaneously, skimming past eachother’s orbit and blowing kisses to eachother as we drift, but somehow aligning for a magical 75 minutes on the train back along the coastline.
As he span tales of his travels, I sat in awe, chiming in with the occassional ‘wow’ or ‘omg’ or emphatic nod. One of the most striking things about San Francisco, he explained to me, were how many eucalyptus trees there were. I’d feel ripped off if I went abroad just to see the same plants, I laughed in response.
After a second, I thought about it a little more. Maybe I’d like it more than I thought.
I’ve never been a plane crier. Sure, I keep a list on my phone of every time I’ve cried for the last two years, and keep a list of the best locations I’ve done so, but I’m surprisingly tearless on planes; I did have one close call recently, though. I was on the aisle seat and awoke in perfect time, just before landing back in Sydney – we were coming down over the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, cast in amber light across a wine-dark sky, everyone’s faces to turned to the windows in something like reverence in that dark, silent cabin. Everything felt like it sung, I wrote in my journal. This is our running home, arms wide open, giggling as we embrace, sighing that we missed each other. Held in the embrace of the dark city, it feels like the world recognises you back.
I make an itemised list of things that make me remember I am alive: a pile of jewellery on my windowsill, the flash of headlights from a car across the harbour, a friend memorising what milk you get in your coffee, thinking of your childhood best friend on her birthday every Sepetember even if you haven’t spoken in years, the crash of waves in the dark, spontaneous dinners at cramped tables with old friends and near strangers elbow-to-elbow. A lucky coin, a lucky star. Looking upward and realising the sky is clear and endless, and the air smells like salt and bottlebrush. A warm breeze at midnight. Everything feeling like it sung. It still does.
On Sunday, I had the honour of tabling at second annual (optimistic) Strange Fold Zine Fair in Coledale. With my hand-folded zines out on my crocheted tablecloth like my heart on my sleeve, I sat with a friend who came to visit me. This is just so… nice, she said, smiling. That was the perfect capturing: it’s all so nice. The springtime is so sweet, and everything is just so nice. In spite of it all, we exist in fragments, and these fragments are so delicate, so gentle, so nice.
Eventually, it gets to a point of existing in the city that you start recognising people everywhere you go. It takes a second, but eventually you realise that the world is much smaller than you think, and that is what makes it glorious. Soon enough, every corner echoes something sacred, with the alleyways of memory holding a candle to every empty space, every street lamp sparking itself into your heart like an undercurrent, making sure you wouldn’t dare forget it.
Beneath it all, underneath every version of you in every place you’ve ever been, the undercurrent hums. Sometimes it’s louder than usual: sometimes it might be engine hum, sometimes cicadas shrieking: something in us pulls from deep in our chests, looking for arms to fall into. Instinctually searching for somewhere nice and warm, the hum anchors to artefacts of the past in the hope that something sticks. Eyes glued to the horizon, hunting for something that hums with the purr of comfort.
The wind has finally ceased, everything temporary has been left with unstable foundations in the best possible way, and there are so many eucalyptus trees in San Francisco that, for a second, if you close your eyes, you think you must be home.
Happy hour espresso martinis after uni
The Magic Box by Olivia Laing
Seeing deer on the drive to a friend’s house
Mucking around in the photography studios on the bottom level of Building 6 and calling it productive
Brainstorming new ideas with new friends and getting so excited that you can only grab at each other’s arms and giggle
Finding a ring given to you by your grandmother that now fits perfectly
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney being released today
Staying up for hours folding and stapling but at least you hold your own work in your hands lovingly
Finally finishing a book that you’ve been reading for so long
Getting into bed after doing assignments all day (!!!!!)
Iced oat mochas & cookies from the Building 6 cafe
Driving down the highway and seeing the moon through the trees, and knowing how loved you are by the world
September is colossal and tender and difficult and lovely all at once. Trying to keep my head down, but my heart out. You should too.
Love,
Zara <3
Unreal!
the way i cried when i saw my house in sf for the first time because it was surrounded by eucalyptus