Home. Sweet Nothings.

The best thing about going away is coming back.

Leaving Australia is nice, but it's returning to Australia that unleashes a hot streak of happiness in me. It crinkles the corners of my every mundane movement for days afterward, sometimes weeks. Small acts of casually liberated abandon such as stepping with certain feet onto my own bathmat or stepping out into my yard in my underwear of a night to look at the stars fill me with a sense of golden gratitude and gratefulness. Yes. Home is the place. Home is where it's at.

Also, I find there are far less legitimate opportunities to work myself into a froth of indignation and irritation when overseas. This occupies a fair to large portion of my time at home in Australia so I tend to find myself with quite a bit of vacant mental real-estate when away. This makes me slightly uneasy. I'm not entirely at home with the inside of my head resembling a place of golden splendour and serenity. I mean, you've read the rest of this blog, right? Exactly.

In fact, here is a direct, horse's mouth quote (in which I am the horse), indicating the extent to which my cranial chambers have been troubled only by the occasional rolling tumbleweed these last few weeks:

"My mind's relaxed too......it feels like a field full of wheat with the wind blowing through it.......whoooossshhhka"

I actually spoke these words after receiving a massage. This is significant in itself as I have historically had some trouble receiving massages. I don't know, I'm just not that into dropping my trousers for people when there's new age music wafting in the air - even when there's a well-established pretext and financial framework in place. Especially when there's that, actually. I'm funny like that.

Anyway, I was indicating that I felt loose of both body and mind. Or something. I guess something about it (AND I CAN'T IMAGINE WHAT) struck Susu - the lucky recipient of 17 days worth of my preposterous waffling - as absurd and she dissolved into giggles. As in, she kicked her legs in the air and squealed and everything. Hummmmph.

And that massage? It was something else. My flesh yielded to it as it would to the advances of a mouth-breathing football player. I was fluid, liquid, mercurial. You know, as opposed to feeling like a marbled slab of meat, or a greasy chunk of tuna laid out on a table, head installed in a hole, vaguely troubled by the knowledge that the masseuse's inviting smile belies her internal dread at having to lay her lovely hands on the knotted, bed-sore ridden back of another dishevelled and decadent western wayfarer? Anybody? No, massages are not for me. Of course, this attitude doesn't stop me from having them, no. It just causes me to seize up somewhat and become rigid, so the inevitable outcome is that I lie there like a partially defrosted leg of lamb for the massage's duration. I'd probably be more relaxed being chained to a rock and torn by vultures. It would be less neurosis-inducing, and I imagine I could at least keep my pants on for the most part.