taking care of the place
brisbanally retentive at last
Brisbane. Took me ten years to settle here, having uprooted from sultry Jakarta and a school which had barely two students of each nation in one class. This was the first time we’d lived in the suburbs, since I was a tiny baby by the sea, a child learning to walk in the desert. I used to lie on my bed listening to lawn mowers almost frantic with the choking feeling that lives go nowhere and end in dust. Lawn clippings and agapanthus and dust. But then there was sultry West End, the village which now has devolved to a suburb at last. And then I moved away and now I am back. It has taken me months to move out of the suburbs and into a place of my own. And six months and tonight I feel the trickle of sweet familiarity at last, a trust in the landscape, a kind of security that releases a kind of intrigue it is hard to feel when you are always new, like how it’s hard to be deeply creative and free and wild with no safe home place and without a routine. I felt I belonged at last. God damn it, Brisbane.
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West End is lovely, and glad to hear that you’re finding a niche of Brisbane that you can be yourself in. ????
West End used, in my opinion, to be a whole lot lovelier. I miss the haberdasher’s and the old hardware store. I miss thriving share houses who made their own bread. The businesses which weren’t cafes.
Welcome to Vegas – I had two stints at the fair city, and found that she was generous in her people. I have now moved to a place that is beautiful but the people are very tough nuts to crack – which is okay, because all of the blow-ins are pretty cool.
Cracking those hard nutcases can be more trouble than it’s worth… hard to tell, until the shell caves. I’m glad you have blow-ins. And fellow returnees, bella voyager.