TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

2:14 PM
Posted by jodi rose

on the bus late thursday afternoon
people looking assessing, painfully hip boys
and scarily asymmetrical girls
my favourite co passenger is the elderly lady
wearing yellow track pants, sneakers, a long woollen coat
and untamable hair - she looks eastern european, a hard life
etched into her face - somehow more compelling than all the bright young things around us. had to give myself a good talking to on the walk down the hill, about how those people might spend lots of time and money looking cool and funky, but I am actually doing really wild and interesting things, leading a great life and maybe dressing well isn't the no one priority at the moment. my aim is to transcend fashion to create and eternally unique style all my own.
it's funny being away from home for a while
I get used to throwing myself into places, exactly as I am with no real concerns about how that fits the local scene, coasting through on the glamour of being exotic and a certain level of wilful ignorance.
but it's much much harder to do in the place where you grew up, and you know all the social codes only too well.
same city, hell the same suburb - strangely in 10 year intervals
moved here at 14 with mum and jose, then at 24 during art school in a huge corner house with 7 bedrooms and a floating population
used to wake up for lectures and find Al on my balcony having a breakfast beer - she knew how to grapple life and take the most of every moment, lived enough for 5 people in her short 27 years.
had to leave the year people kept dying, it became too haunted, but so many good friends and memories from that time.
and now again at 34, yes, really. floating in no particular fixed direction -nothing I have is really mine - flashed through my mind while walking nera yesterday. borrowed dog, borrowed house, pay as you go mobile phone and internet, camping in my old studio, it's a very precarious life I'm leading here.
aware of my ecological footprint in the world - all those jet planes,
over consuming stuff, what am I really doing for the planet?
it was very refreshing being down at mum's in truly the solar powered shed (they moved out of the shack thank god) with composting toilet and all. bogon moths hurling themselves at the window, splendid bower bird male with coal black midnight blue plumes in the birdbath, all that green everywhere. must have relaxed me a bit, cause I came back to sydney and just collapsed. free floating anxiety still bad, but am getting a few bits and pieces done and the rest of the time in denial.