Today most of the family is going on an outing to a place where there’s swimming and hanging out and other family to spend time with, but I didn’t go today because I’m having a rest day so that I am able to keep feeling as healthy as possible.
I am coping as best as I can; I drink a lot of water, I eat cold things when I can (yogurt, cucumbers, cold lunch meat & cheese) and often rinse my arms with cool water and then pat the water onto my face and back of my neck and if there’s water left on my hands, into my hair since it’s still pretty short and wet hair is fairly cooling for me.
I never want to be sick, although I certainly want a break to do nothing at all when I am. I’m still doing better now than I was previously in Michigan — yesterday I did my laundry and hung up my washing to dry on the clothesline, and gathered it all up later and folded it and stacked it up in my cute little stacks of clothes on top of my closed luggage. It was a lot of efforting, partly because I’m spending my visit here in someone else’s house, so I needed to make sure I was running the washing machine properly and shutting the water off properly afterward as well. The mental effort required by my neurospicy brain can make a simple thing like ‘wash a load of laundry’ feel like A Lot To Do, but Ashley and I did ours together which made it easier on both of us.
The day before that (Sunday here in Australia), we cleaned in the house while our host was at church. We want to be good visitors, and part of the reciprocity we’re giving her is to clean the house as a group once a week. I got so into my part of the job that I was scrubbing the grout at the back of the counter tops (or, if you’re being proper Australian, the grout at the back of the bench). You know how it is, right? Once some part of a thing is clean, you notice the everything else that isn’t clean, so you have to clean it. Or ignore it, but I might ignore it in my own space, but not in someone else’s because that’s pretty rude, I think.
so today I am taking a break.
Bee is here with me in case I need any help, which also means she gets some rest from the hard work she and Vincent and Rose did yesterday as another piece of the reciprocity: beginning the cleaning up at the property that is part of the estate belonging to Rose’s father who passed late last year.
Since there’s less going on for me today, I have the time to sit and think and write. I keep thinking that I will pull out my little chromebook after I’ve gone to my tent for the evening, but inevitably I am too tired to focus very well on long-form writing. When I need to take a bathroom trip into the house, though, it’s always dark and the cooler air and the smells on the breeze and the brightness of the stars and moon are mesmerizing and I am continually awestruck at the beauty of this place.
KANGAROOS
The kangaroos around here are the Eastern Grey Kangaroos — some of them are small enough that I’d compare them in size to the white-tailed deer of my home soil in Michigan. In the evenings they sometimes come up the driveway here, and I am enough of a dumbass to try and get close enough to take a photo or at least a video. They will look at me curiously when they see me, and I imagine they are just wondering what I’m doing. The way they stay still and just make eye contact reminds me of deer as well, although they are certainly not skittish like deer usually are. Here in the land of the sun, kangaroos have no natural predators, so there is not really anything for them to be afraid of.
Especially not me, a very curious dumbass from the opposite side of the world.
the Nix World Tour
In order to visit a country, you need to first have your own passport (I think that’s obvious) and then you need to apply for a visitor visa from the country you want to spend time in. They come with time limits and other restrictions depending on what kind of visa you applied for, and you can only enter the country when your visa has been granted. I think this is obvious, or at least to me it is obvious — it’s like knocking on a door and waiting to be let in, rather than knocking on the door and then walking in anyhow.
I have 90 days to visit here, and then (BEFORE the 90 days are up) I can go and visit somewhere else. Since we are expecting our gap year to be about twelve months, I have been thinking and dreaming and excitedly imagining which other places I would like to go and spend some vacation time. Travel costs are quite a bit lower when you can plan far out in advance, so I’m going to finish figuring out my next stop by the end of January.
Countries I would love to visit include: New Zealand, Iceland, Wales, Switzerland, France, South Korea, Thailand, and the South Pole. I’m not a beachy person, so all the beautiful islands that most people want to visit are not on my list of places to go. Instead, I want to see Middle Earth (New Zealand), volcanoes, ancient sites with standing stones, mountains, not-bears (Antarctica), and places where some of my favorite Asian dramas are set. And also, hopefully, Ashley and I can go to a K-pop concert and scream ourselves silly in our extreme joy and excitement.
Thailand is on my list not because I want to be in the heat — but because my spouse is visiting there, and because our cats are there while we take our time and spoons to find a place in Ireland to move. And I miss them all, even the cats who are assholes (arguably all cats are assholes — but we love them anyway). Also the air conditioning in that house is apparently PRISTINE, which I suppose is the equal exchange for the volume level of what is documented to be literally the loudest bird in Asia. The bird in question hangs out on the verandas and is apparently outrageously loud during the early part of the day. I don’t remember right now which bird it is, so I don’t have a helpful link to provide in case you are curious.
all these places will be different, maybe confusingly so, but this year I am brave.
I want to find a favorite food in each country. I want to try foods that I’ve never had before. I want to see things in person, like the active volcanoes and lava fields in Iceland, the city of Seoul where I can try Korean barbecue and fried chicken and see the buildings, the mountains and meadows and valleys of Switzerland where some of my ancestors grew up.
I have a lifetime’s worth of yearning to go, to be, to experience, to see, to take in as memories for later.
I want to find the places where my soul belongs. I want to be in places that I love so much I will always miss them after I’m not there.
I want to get tattoos in countries I have yet to visit, and more piercings if my ears actually have more space for them. I want to learn enough of other languages to be able to get around and be respectful. I want to be a person who has a greater understanding of this big beautiful planet. I want to feel the energy and spirits of the land in new places. I want to give offerings at the village shrine where our rental in Thailand is located. I want to gaze in wonder at the holy places of different cultures. I want to respectfully wander this world as a student of the Path of Light, being where I am meant to be when I am meant to be there, doing what I am meant to do, being someone who brings light into shadowy places when it’s my work to do so.
and if I’m careful, which I already am (except for approaching kangaroos), I can do all this while being disabled.
I will show up queer, pierced, tattooed, and leaning on my walking cane and probably sobbing every time I notice how much better disabled people are treated in other countries. I have already received so much of the small help that matters, from people who smiled and noticed what I needed before I realized that I could ask for it.
Nobody has been cruel to me. Nobody has treated me as less-than, not in the way people like me are often treated in the states. I am expanding to fit myself rather than shrinking to hide the parts of me that could put me in danger. I will have to adjust how I show up depending on where I’m going, but I am willingly going to do that because it does not change who I am.
The survivor’s guilt of being able to go into the world like this when the United States is burning and so many of my queer friends and acquaintances are having an unbelievably hard time — I will probably struggle with that for quite a while. But what I most want to do is to prove that people like me, with the kind of community around me that I have, can do these things. They are hard but they are not impossible.
I hope that I can bring some joy into your life as you read about my adventures.
xox,
Nix
p.s. I have a sort of vlog happening on the Marco Polo app, where I am posting short videos including two that I excitedly took of kangaroos, and last night I posted a video I took of the full moon. I’ve been considering posting some of the videos as short-form content online, but I’m not sure yet how or when I will do that. I’ll keep you updated.
epilogue:
I fear the people I love most
and a disappointed face
my unconditional blindfolds
and a life that I could waste
now I never sit up straight
and I don’t fit the mold
crying all over ivory
was never my goal
I cut my fingers right off, and you told me to reach out
but I’m all alone in my head, so I’ve married my doubts
now I need someone to trust while I lie to myself
no strings attached, I need a thread
it’s like I’m dead
lone wolf, thought I’d do better on my own
lost in a survival TV show
and it’s so manufactured, my brain’s getting louder
rejecting the flowers
memorized all the smells of my bed’s living hell
now my pillow is missing a cold side
I cut my fingers right off, and you told me to reach out
but I’m all alone in my head, so I’ve married my doubts
now I need someone to trust while I lie to myself
no strings attached, I need a thread
it’s like I’m dead
— cut my fingers off by Ethan Bortnick
(I first heard part of this song on the clock app and it’s so EXTREMELY good, the piano work is amazing)
featured image is a photo by Ása Steinarsdóttir on Unsplash
