Away, away

It's t minus 60 mins until I brave the train on the beginning of my trip...train to Spencer Street (currently known as Southern Cross station - YUK) then Skybus to Tullamarine...online check-in and away...

Will this trip change me? Does travel change you/one/us? How can I measure it? I guess my ideas about spain will change since it'll be the first time i've been there...

And thinking about change...can/does writing change you/one/us? can we change each other with writing or words?

Some words that changed me:

• "placate" - my only good high school teacher Mrs Hollensen used to say to me when I'd try and have my linguistic way with her: "Don't try to placate me with your words"...


• "simon" - this word marked the end of my only child status and opened up a whole new universe of possibilities...good and bad (for both of us...)


• "alison" - a word that i say every day both inside and outside myself...aww, shucks...


• "dad" - very nice to hear and a work in progress to say


• "rosebud" - another cataclysmic shift


• "matthew" - the way special people (mostly women) have said it and do no more since they've disappeared (in Italian you say that people have "disappeared" when they die) - my two nans and my mother-in-law...


• "ava" - this means bird and it also means that you can get it right twice


• "make me young" - Kurt Vonnegut's eternal mantra which stabs me in my gemini heart

Right, next post from foreign lands...gotta buy batteries for my toothbrush (white teeth = youth)