10:34pm
It's been a week since I left Canada and this is the first time I've really been outside. I'm sitting on what I thought would be a quiet bench by the duck pond in the George Pentland Botanical Garden by Robert's house. Previously, it was just me, the ducks, some seagulls and a mother and her child throwing scraps of bread. It was a nice picture so I took one (I finally figured out how to load my camera). Suddenly, there was an invasion of excited toddlers and their careful mothers on my side of the pond. Little kids with accents. They're gorgeous. The birds are well fed now, they have nothing to complain about. Yet gulls are the kind of birds who like complaining so they're squawking at the children as they walk away. The original mother and child across the way have gone, but there are more babies to take their place now.
Contrary to what my snowed-upon Canadian friends and family would like to believe, the weather here hasn't exactly been spectacular. For the first couple days it was cloudy and kind of chilly. It was quite nice yesterday, but I didn't go outside. Today it's rather windy and it's a cool wind working against the warmth of the sunshine. It is still spring here, the Australians tell me, it won't get really hot until later on. Today it is like a very mild Saskatchewan summer day. When Robert's dad said to me the first day, "Welcome to sunny Australia" he was telling a joke, I think.
I'm feeling healthy in this garden. I think I'll come here everyday.
I'm going to do some more exploring and take a picture of the Fern Gully path. 10:53am
too much leonard cohen....
I have been sleeping so much
and waking always before my alarm.
Today you told me that your father
changed the channel and then
the phone rang,
and you expected it all.
You expected it that way, of course.
There is a boy, a young man,
for whom I am not worried about appearing
attractive, talking on the telephone
to someone I've never met outside
my bedroom window. I wonder why
he chose there for that conversation.
They don't give me jobs to do here.
They just offer me food and bed and
medicine. I would feel better if
they handed me a chore.
The boy, the young man, moves
slowly (because he's always
thinking) and uses the word
procrastination in his regular
vocabulary.
stay still. there are good (supportable)
reasons not to move.
9:56pm
to Thursday, November 9, 2000
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