My path

ASSIGNMENT: By describing what and who is in a real or imaginary place, set the scene and open the story about (a) a murder, (b) a love affair or (c) a comical event.

This morning is a Monday morning.  This street is the main street.  The bench at the bus stop is vacant bar for a pair of noisy Indian Minors scolding the passers by.  People exit their houses to embark on their mission for the day.  For many this mission begins at the nearby coffee shop.  For others the mission begins by driving to work over the speed limit so the overnight emails can be checked a few minutes earlier.

The man arrives at the bus stop and sits down on the bench.  The Indian Minors loudly complain and fly off.  The man pulls out his Blackberry and studies the screen.

The woman arrives at the bus stop and sits down on the bench.  She has the morning tabloid and opens it up to the middle pages.  

He glances across at her. He finds her quite attractive.  She smells nice. Her long brown hair is tied up to reveal modest ear rings.  Her glasses make her look serious.  Her heels reveal her to be a woman who doesn't care much for comfort nor practicalities.  He can't see what she is reading but he imagines her to be immersed in the Letters to the Editor.  He takes a long look at her hand holding the edge of the paper - no ring on the ring finger.  He consciously works out if he is looking at her right hand or left hand.

She glances at him.  He is totally immersed in his Blackberry screen.  She thinks he has a friendly face.  His suit is unbuttoned but his tie is perfectly knotted up tight.  His shoes are those of a man who is in charge and in control.  She imagines he works as a stock broker and he is now studying the overnight share prices.  She sees his left ring finger is vacant.

The bus comes rumbling down the street.  The man and the woman stand up from the bench.  She folds up her tabloid.   He slides his Blackberry into an inner suit pocket.   The bus arrives and the doors open with a clatter.   She steps onto the bus.  He admires the shape of her skirt before stepping onto the bus himself.  The doors close with a clatter ...

Homework for writers club meeting, 16th Nov 2011: 'Describe a person or place, real or imaginary in 500 words or less'

--oOo--

It is early in the morning. The cafe is empty of patrons. Outside, the sun is up, but very little of it reaches down into these narrow winding streets of three or four story buildings. Inside, light is reflected brightly off polished white and stainless steel surfaces. The hombre behind the counter busies himself by wiping a surface that is already clean. He moves a big bag of small churros snacks next to the coffee machine so that they can be conveniently added to saucers as coffee is being made.

A lady totters in purposefully aboard high heels. The hombre instantly recognises her. She is the hairdresser from the shop next door and a regular customer. He greets her with an easy smile and remarks that her night couldn't have been much fun if she is in so early and looking so fresh. She laughs and tells him that her night is still going and he’d better make the order a double shot espresso today.

Three people wander in off the street. They are wearing large backpacks and dressed in the bright colours of a traffic signal: one green, one red, one yellow. They are obviously pilgrims. They clumsily and loudly bang their backpacks into chairs and tables and each other as they make their way to the counter. The hombre excuses himself from the hairdresser and attends to the pilgrims.

The green pilgrim babbles something to the hombre in a foreign language. The hombre thinks it is English. He doesn't understand and shakes his head. The green pilgrim repeats, speaking slower and louder. The hombre persistently shakes his head; he is never going to understand; he wonders why tourists come to Spain without first learning a few words of Spanish? The green pilgrim is getting exasperated. The red pilgrim takes over and with a few harsh sounding words of English sends the green and yellow pilgrims to a table at the back of the cafe. They stumble to their table, continuing the ritual of bashing their backpacks against the chairs and tables along the way.

Red pilgrim voices a series of staccato Spanish words to the hombre: "can we have", "bread roll", "egg", "ham", "three", "please". The Spanish "three" is accompanied by three fingers held up on one hand. The hombre doesn't know what type of ham is wanted but he does know that it's better to guess than to ask. He does ask if coffees are required and they are. "three", "white coffees", "please" answers the red pilgrim. The three fingers are held up again.

The red pilgrim stumbles to the back table, re-enacting the bashing and crashing before heaving his backpack down to lay against the toilet door. The hairdresser sends an unpleasant look off to join the pilgrims. The hombre busies himself with filling the order, deftly placing a small churro snack on the saucer of each coffee as it is made.

It is 1:29am in the morning. I am lying in my bed at home. My bedside light is on.

There is a mosquito buzzing around my ears. When I hear it I randomly clap my hands in the vague region where the buzz is coming from. I check my hands, hoping to see a squashed mozzie. No luck. I can't hear it any more, so it is probably sucking my blood somewhere. Or maybe not. My many bites are evidence that my pet mozzie is unlikely to be hungry anymore.

There is a strange bird outside in the night who seems to believe that this is a good hour for a loud mating ritual. It lasts long enough for the female bird of the species to unlikely feel satisfied, unless of course it is her desire to quickly return to slumber.

A pile of opened envelopes and other paper lay beside my bed, the discards from my processing of all the mail that arrived while I was away. My bedsheets are strewn around by somebody who is obviously not sleeping well. I cannot sleep when I should be sleeping. I cannot not stay awake at times when I should be awake. Today is now the fourth day after the return from my trip and I usually find the fourth day is the hardest to cope with jetlag. These last few days have been generally sunny, and being out in the sunshine does help to keep the effects of the jetlag to a minimum. But nevertheless, the effects are there.

I slept through dinnertime so now I am hungry. I make myself a late night snack of Vegimite on toast. Only those from this corner of the world can truly appreciate the joy that such a snack can bring. The rest of the world's population would probably struggle to think of anything worse.

--oOo--

Just as nutritionists tell us that it is healthy to have a well balanced diet, I believe that a healthy and enjoyable holiday should be well balanced too. For me a well balanced holiday is a good mix of revisiting old favourite places and discovering new gems. It is both seeking to cross paths with treasured friends in distant lands and to also meet new people. This trip for me was a wonderful combination of all of those things.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to meet up with everybody I wanted to. I am never able to on these trips. I am frustrated that it wasn't even remotely achievable within the 10 weeks that I had this time. But I always seek to redress that on successive trips. When I am home, as I am now, my next trip to Europe always seems like it'll be an impossible eternity away. But when I return to Europe it usually feels like I have never been away.

I am always very sad to leave Europe. I always have such an enjoyable time with good people. But unfortunately that is not a sustainable existence and I eventually need to return to my real world.

Returning home hasn't always been welcome, but this time it is.

--oOo--

It is Friday 7:15am. It has been one hour since I landed at Sydney airport and got off the plane. I am now on a jetcat ferry on Sydney harbour. I am outside on the top deck with the wind in my hair. The sun is shining with tesselated cloud cover. The ferry is passing under the harbour bridge and headed on a course that will take Goat Island on its port side. There is the usual light weekday activity at this hour of people and cars and other boats. The harbour provides a beautiful and refreshing welcome home.

--oOo--

It is Friday 8:15am. I haved arrived home and now I am going for a jog around my favourite course.

This is the middle of springtime and the air is filled with the lovely pungent smell of jasmine. The Jacaranda trees are in their full bloom of purple. The air is filled with birdsong that always sound loud when I return home after being away for a long period.

I feel fit but I have trouble getting into a good jogging rhythm. I haven't jogged for three months. Does walking 25km a day with an overloaded backpack for 5 weeks count? It counts for general fitness. It counts for making me 3kg lighter, although I think that's a deceptively understated measure of how much fitter I have become. It doesn't count for running fitness though as running seems to use very different muscles to walking. My time is about 5% slower than before my holiday.

I soon discover that going for a 10km run only two hours after a twenty four hour flight is a very stupid thing to do. The muscles in my legs are now shredded. I have trouble walking for three days afterwards.

--oOo--

It is Monday 12:30pm. I am in the outdoor pool swimming freestyle laps. The sun is shining and the sky is blue. The pool only has a few people in each lane. I am enjoying being in the water and swinging my arms. The water is splashing around me as I plod slowly up and back following the black line.

This pool is under the main flight path for Sydney airport. As I turn my head to catch breath I see planes above me with their landing gear down and on their landing approach. I am happy to be home.

Some revisted towns seem familiar and some do not.

Münster is a town that is very familiar to me, but not for the streets or the buildings or the churches.

I am wandering around there now. Perhaps a few of the streets and buildings and churches look vaguely familiar, but I would have no chance of navigating around them by myself. Luckily for me I am not navigating around them by myself.

And that is why Münster is so familiar.

--oOo--

We wander into an art exhibition in the beautiful room of the Haus der Niederlande.

The walls around the room are crammed on three sides with a single line of collage prints by a local artist, Jens Thiele. It seems rare to see collage work these days. I wander what place the artform has in the modern computer age? Is collage still about sticking bits of paper onto other bits of paper with clag just as I did in primary school? Or has it evolved into a niche form of computer aided graphic design? Perhaps I should take that question away as homework.

I liked the effect of the collage. Some of the prints were to my taste. Most were not, but that's OK, that's normal for me. I only need to find one thing I like in an exhibition to have enjoyed the visit.

As we exit I discover that the collages are actually pictures that were created for story books. Aha! This is a lightbulb moment. Perhaps the pictures in the exhibition weren't created to stand by themselves? Perhaps they are part of a greater artpiece that includes words to convey meaning? I wonder if I might have enjoyed the exhibition even more if the words were present to accompany the pictures.

--oOo--

A short while later I am creating my own art. I am downstairs in the childrens section of the library trying to spell "Münster" out of large blocks that have letters on each side. I cannot find an "M" nor a "T". I give up and give the blocks back to the children to play with.