A House Doesn't Make A Home

There's something strangely symbolic about the way our house used to smell. When we arrived it was a warm, sweet smell. But as time went on the smell changed, you could say that's not the only thing that changed.

The house on the hill took on a smell that signified all of its troubles. A decayed rotting smell. Something had died, several times. It wasn't what it used to be, and neither was I because of it.

It's so easy to pack up our belongings, shift from four walls to another, but we always leave something behind, and something is always left with us. I may have left an empty shell of a life I used to live, but the smells will always stay with me. The ones that were often so enticing, tempting, they drove me away.

I don't know if I would have ever called it home, but right now I can't call anything home. And I don't think I will for a long time. Maybe I've learnt that home is not a place, so much as it is a feeling.

It feels like I'm forever leaving, running, and there are things I miss already that have been left behind. A closeness to you, the last thing I've been holding on to, to keep me sane. It's gone now and I don't know how to deal with that. Although sudden loss is no stranger to me, I will miss the journey home, the one that gave me hope over convenience.

No matter how foreign these places are to me, they are no stranger than myself, and the places I have found within.

Please Don't Tell Me This Has Been In Vain

I feel like I'm standing right on the edge of my life right now. There's no pretty way to describe it. It's actually quite ugly. It's all at the tip of my fingers, so ready to crumble in my grasp, or to form into something solid, something I can hold. These things I've gotten myself into, I'd never believe.

You wouldn't believe it either. And I wouldn't know where to start, so I just don't. And I tell myself it's better this way. But I can't lose the anxiety.

It's so uncertain, and it always is. But this kind of uncertainty is one I can't get comfortable with. I can't take this on everyday, but I don't know how to confront it, or even if I should.

I'm standing on the edge of the world now. I can't go back.

Never Have I Been A Blue Calm Sea

We were the storm chasers, only, we weren't really. We were running from the storm. But they didn't know it. Maybe I was the one running. But I'd never tell you from what.

It's eerie out. A stretch of orange marks the sky and it reminds me of a painting I once saw. It had the same intensity, only I wasn't frightened of it. I watch out the back window of the car. The sky flickers like a light in a cellar. There is no sound though. A silent storm - the thought of it seems so unreal. Sometimes it feels like I have a silent storm raging through me.

Nostalgic music floats through the car, it feels like a movie. The ones where the characters are all so oblivious to their impending doom, but I'm not, I've always seen it coming. I've always been afraid. It's the fear of losing control that gets to me. I guess this runs deeper than nature, but I'd never tell you why.

I'll Never Live To Match The Beauty Again

As of today I've been living in Brisbane for one year and there are things about this city that will always pull me back, no matter where I end up. Just like in Sydney, there are places that I miss, both new and old. Some I have just discovered, and already find myself yearning to revisit.

I guess each city is its own entity, and while superficially it may seem that a city is defined by its places and people, there has to be something underneath all that, that makes it what it is. Because without that, then it is just another suffocating landscape.

To me, Brisbane is an endless stretch of the horizon burgeoning on sunset, full of hope and promise, but always disappearing just before you can grab a hold of what it is you are looking for. But you wake up the next day and it's still there, that little promise of greatness pushed far into the distance, waiting for you to reach it.

Brisbane is beautiful in the most ordinary of ways. It is an earnest beauty that needs no explanation, or maybe I just can't find one. How do you describe the way the light falls on certain parts of the landscape, and that this in itself gives you hope, and makes you breathe easier somehow. Perhaps it is because from where I am, I can see it all, the mountains, the city, the small people below, going about their daily lives as if they are blind to the natural beauty right before their eyes.

There is much about this city I am yet to uncover, but I want to find it all, take it in, and never for a second take for granted what is in front of me. And aside from that...pretty girls talk to me in Brisbane, so I can't complain!

Kick, Push

My feet are glued to the deck and I'm an unstoppable force. There's nothing graceful about it though- at least, not the way I do it. It's gritty, fast and clumsy. I look at the videos, try to imitate their style, but it never quite seems right. And then I realise it's not about the way they do it, it's about the way I do it. The way my front foot is never far forward enough, and my back foot hugs the tail, so much so that I risk flipping myself off the board. And the way my arms hang aimlessly, feeling left out, you can't imitate that.

I stop to take in the view. It's such a contrast, the pureness of the mountains and the fields, and then the ugly mess that we've created. And then it begins to rain, and it's just what I expect. It feels good against my skin, cold from sweat. My arms glisten and the road becomes slick and dangerous, but the ride is smoother and faster. I enjoy the rain but yearn for the sunset, which is the thing I really came for. The view from here can only be described as magnificent, it makes me feel small, but in a good way. The rain has clouded over my sunset and I miss the pink and orange stains in the sky. The gold, that seeps through the cracks. The kind of gold that can't be manufactured.

My music filters out the world while I ride, makes me feel invincible. I'm listening to Incubus, because it's angsty but full of hopefulness, I guess that's how you'd describe me. The tingle in my feet that I get when I step off the board reminds me that I'm alive, that I'm feeling again. And even that small inch of fear that creeps in when I start to go too fast down a winding road, that disappears eventually too. Not because I am foolish, but because I'm flying, and nothing else matters in that moment.

All The Same

Sometimes it's hard to believe we are all looking in to the same sky. To think, that on the other side of the world someone else is looking into the very same space that you are. I need someone to explain to me the way the earth turns, because it never quite makes sense. Are we all really that connected? And if so, then why are we so often plagued with loneliness? At night when we look up and try to connect the dots- figure out what it all means, who's to say there isn't someone else out there, doing the same. Staring into the same sky, feeling like an insignificant speck on the landscape. Because that's all we are right? Specks on the landscape. When you're in the sky it all looks the same, it's the same shade of green all over. And so if we just live our life remembering what it looks like from the sky, then all these things that don't really matter, like if you're big or little, they shouldn't matter should they? Because if we are to look down from above, we will realise, it's all indistinguishable. I guess in the big scheme of things as they often put it, we are all so much smaller than we think we are.