Tag Archives: travel

Airports

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I love airports. They always give me a little rush of excitement.

When I lived in Melbourne, being inside an airport usually meant I was on my way to spend time with my family, or had just done so. If not that, then being at an airport meant I was heading off on an overseas adventure, or picking up someone I had missed.

That’s part of it. The other part is the other worldly nature of airports. They’re like their own little universe. People are in transit in airports — on their way to somewhere or from somewhere, stuck in between two places. Planes are similar. But I guess airports still allow people to move around, and therefore be more interesting. I love it.

I get nervous when I travel — have I packed everything, will I get to the airport in time, will I be able to find my way? — but once I’m at the airport the nervousness is replaced by excitement. I’m always excited to be going somewhere. And, once the nervousness dies down, I’m thrilled to have (re)discovered that I’m capable of doing this on my own.

Overseas travel excepted, pretty much all my time in airports has been spent alone. And I like it that way. It’s a different kind of adventure when someone else is along for the ride.

Being on my own leaves me free to people watch, and to strike up conversations with strangers. I love talking to and observing strangers. People are so weird and entertaining. Especially when they’re between places, in the midst of a journey. An airport, after all, is not really a destination.

I’m writing all this because this weekend I’m spending time in various airports (being weird — and maybe entertaining — in the corner, furtively doing a few quick yoga poses to realign my spine after sitting in the slump-inducing plane chairs), as I make my way to and from Adelaide for the Academy of Words. I’ll be on a panel today, and hanging around at various other things all day. If you happen to be in Adelaide, come say hi.

Thinking time

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I seem to spend a lot of time on my own these days. I only realised just the other day how much time I spend in my own company. Most of my work is in the evenings at the moment, and I’m not a late sleeper, so I spend a lot of time pottering around by myself during the day.

But by no means am I lonely. In fact, I thoroughly enjoy the time.

Most Mondays I get on a train and head up to Newcastle to visit friends up there and attend a production meeting for a creative collective I’m involved in. The trip is three hours long. At first, I thought of that three hours as a chance to get a little bit of writing done. Or some class planning. Work-time, that is.

As it turns out, I find it impossible to work when I’m in transit. I’ve tried, but I usually end up with two or three words on a page and frustration in the space between my eyebrows. I’ve found the same thing on the three-hour bus trip I sometimes take to and from Canberra when I visit my Ma, Pa and brothers.

So recently I stopped trying to force myself to work. When I did, an interesting thing happened: I started to think. Properly think. You know, about life, the universe and everything and nothing. I thought through the problems I was having with my writing and often came up with solutions — I thought through life problems and again, often came up with solutions. I also started to think bigger than myself, to think, dare I say it, philosophically about the world. No solutions there. But interesting nonetheless.

How often does one get a chance to just sit and think these days?

Now, when I travel alone, I call it Thinking Time, and I don’t understand how I ever did without it.

Here’s the view from my thinking seat on the train to Newcastle. Sigh.