I'm immersing myself in reading early Australian history,
thanks to the local library’s surprisingly excellent collection--I learned from
a preternaturally friendly librarian that this is no accident, as the various
branches have specializations, and I happened to have lucked into the correct
one! This has occupied a substantial number of my waking hours in midweek (time has
taken on a strange blur for me, again one result of travel but also the
obsessive-compulsive nature of my work habits I suppose), and I found myself
deeply affected by this introduction to the city and its colonial history. For better or worse I have mixed some
straight-ahead works with some New Journalistic accounts, a combination that is
unsettling in itself. From the
point of view of my purported course design (“Writing Australia”) this is
perfect: I am constantly reading one account in light of others or in light of my travels around the city, aware of
gaping holes or omissions that mask ideological or historiographical
underpinnings in unexpected ways.
At the same time I ponder how or whether I can transmit this to my
students, whether I can design the classes to cultivate this unsettling
critical thinking about thinking.
Mirroring my experiences in other countries I have found
running to be an excellent way to ground myself in a place, to explore and get
lost and get my bearings. Padding
along in my non-shoes now I want to avoid pavement when I can, and there are
some amazingly wild trails around the various nearby headlands. No doubt because of their value as
naval-battery sites, these bluffs haven’t been subdivided as heavily as their
choice views would dictate, I guess because they stayed military long enough
for the Harbor Trust and the League of Sydney Walking Enthusiasts (or whoever)
to have them set aside as parkland.
My radius has expanded, just as has happened with each new place I’ve
lived: my first forays were a mile or two, each time late in the unexpectedly
short day, whereas on Thursday I poked farther out, down and up and down and
up, passing Balmoral Beach, Georges Head, Chowder Bay, Bradleys Head, and back
around to my little corner of leafy yuppie heaven. Actually the sunset view from the trail near Bradleys Head
was so stunning I was surprised at how few other people there were: the Opera
House and Harbor Bridge in the distance, the water that burnished gold, why was
I almost alone? Running almost barefoot
has made me acutely conscious of keeping my stride smooth and absorbing shocks
over my whole foot, not just striking my heels, and I’m glad I have worked up
the distance slowly.
Yesterday was my first day with Davis students, with an
orientation by CAPA (the international-education agency with whom we are
working) followed by an afternoon bus tour. I’d set out quite early for the 10 AM rendezvous in North
Sydney, but stupidly waited for a bus nearby rather than blasting up the hill
to the arterial that has more choices; with plenty of time I decided to join
the conga line from this suburb to the city center (sorry, centre) and then get
back across the bridge by train or ferry.
As usual the grain of the northside manifests itself, as the buses make this
weird counterintuitive loop back over first east and then north and then west
and then south; along Military Road (where cannons were laboriously dragged to
the fortifications on the bluffs) one gets that bleak stream of phone shops,
boutiques, estate agents, and nail salons that strikes you heavily when you are
a newcomer. All over the bus, just
like at home, everyone is thumbcandying away--I am in the distinct minority
having a stupid phone and not a smart one--but shoulder-surfing some of the
inane texts and time-filling games quickly convinces me that never has so much
technology served so little cognitive activity. As I have at other times, for example when I commuted from
the East Bay to a tech writing job in San Francisco back in 1986, I feel like
an anthropologist, amongst a strange tribe but not really part of it; by
contrast, on the train to Davis from Berkeley that I’ve ridden now for almost
twenty years, I have no such sense of alienation but am myself part of a
newbie’s study with my rituals and habits.
I’ve reflected many times that these study-abroad
engagements demand improvisation and flexibility even more than planning, and
yesterday morning was no exception: at about 8:45 I’d ensconced myself in a
cafe a block or two away from Australian Catholic University’s Mackillop
campus, where our classes will be held, and when I downloaded e-mail I had one
of those “Gulp!” moments: there in my inbox was a note from the CAPA
coordinator saying “We are on for 9 o’clock and....” What the? I was sure things started at 10, but maybe I
had airheaded something. I pounded
my coffee, hustled on over, found the classroom, and of course found out that
she had mis-typed. Only later did
I think, “You know, you could’ve phoned her to double check.” On the other hand, you don’t want to be
a high-maintenance client, and who knows whether you’ve gotten into phone tree
hell anyway? But that’s the sort
of wrongfooting that seems par for the course when you’re doing this sort of
program.
Actually a program like this is pretty different from
Summer Abroad, where as faculty leader you are much more front and center on
the logistical support. Debbie had
assured me that her office would take care of all the arrivals the day before,
and so they had, with the notable exception of one benighted duckling who
evidently had ... forgotten. To
buy her ticket, much less to notify us or CAPA that she was bailing! [But as it turns out, she may or may
not be bailing. From what I gather
as of this morning, she is due to arrive Sunday morning. Money, apparently, is no object. This is a new one on me.] By contrast, my first Grand Tour was an
absolute whirlwind of details, trying to get students situated in London and
then Paris and then Les Houches and then Rome. Even with an assistant it felt insane. By contrast, here was this small but
efficient little team, running a good and thorough orientation session with
not-too-stupid powerpoints covering everything from money matters to culture
shock to homesickness to safety, including an excellent video on rip currents
that I will make sure Alex watches when he gets here.
Seven of the 21 students (or is it 22?) are in an
apartment situation (paying extra) while the rest are in homestays, and I heard
little complaining about anything besides the challenges of making sure iPhones
are well and truly unlocked. As an
icebreaker we had to introduce the person next to us (tell us name, major and
one thing from the States that that person can’t live without), and a
substantial fraction did name their mobile device as that essential thing. I was pleased at how many names I did
remember from the Davis orientation, and I was also pleased to see how friendly
everyone seemed. That said, a part
of me was scanning for future trouble--Is this the person who will be
chronically late to meet-ups? Is this the human-limpet who will pillory me on
the evals for not being more of a buddy? Is this the core of Golden Children
whose clothing budgets exceed my per diem total? Is this the Toxic Social Media
Schmuck who will be hatching plots and ranting pretentiously until shut
down? I remember decades ago on a
mixed snow ice and rock climb in the North Cascades with an experienced Outward
Bound instructor, seeing him gauging the entire party’s comfort level early in
the trip so that he could head potential problems off before the going got
rough--here I was doing a version of the same thing.
After turning us loose for lunch the very capable Rachel
and Sarah joined us for the half-day bus tour ranging from the harbor out to
Bondi Beach and some places I certainly had not seen yet, with a driver who
struck the right balance between blather and get-on-with-it. I sort of gave myself up to being a
passenger and not a trip leader (though I did set up the count-off to make sure
we were all accounted for at each stop) and reveled in getting a better sense
of the geography of this chunk of the city. The weather was beautiful--it had drizzled in the morning
but cleared up to one of those jaw-droppingly nice days where you can’t believe
people actually live here full time.
Very weird to look over world-famous Bondi Beach in slacks and shirt,
the full mass of humanity not nearly in full summer mode but still enough people
to make you hope to hit less crowded beaches. At one hilltop overlook I cracked up inordinately when the
group-photo gathered and an immaculately turned-out sister laughingly called
“sorority lean!” and Assumed the Position (hands on bent knees, head inclined
just so, dazzling fake smile saying that this group of Greek letters was
absolutely the best of all), a gratifying bit of self-awareness and good humor,
but my sensors are on high alert still.
Unfortunately the tour dribbled out into a morass of
downtown traffic at the end, which was a slight bummer as it had felt
just-the-right-length a half-hour earlier as we traipsed down the path from the
wildly sculpted sandstone cliffs of The Gap. Again I was thankful that someone else took the initiative,
steering groups back toward their homestays--I didn’t even think more than
twice about whether I was expected to tip the driver and how much, a decision
always fraught with peril back in Europe as one supposedly bought future
cooperation with bus companies by not ignoring the outstretched palms. Here I would play dumb and trust to
Australian tipping habits and my coordinating team.
Then I decided to walk from the drop-off at Central
Station to the ferries, which got more than a little purgatorial: just a hint
of the Asian-urban crowded-canyon feeling, with a continuing frisson of
"is this really north that I
am walking?" until in a confirmation of faith I did end up at Circular
Quay and was able to get the Mosman ferry through the gorgeous dusk and finish
in darkness on the bus, trusting I knew where to get off. I am totally a
fan of the ferry system here, I have to say, and I am a long ways from taking
the water-level views for granted like the bulk of the commuters. The skyline against the sunset light,
the strange jungle-y growth on some of the points, the yachts bobbing in the
wake--you can’t quite hear the self-satisfied clink of glasses on the terraces
of those lucky enough and wealthy enough to have that drop-dead view on
Cremorne Point or Old Mosman, but you can definitely imagine it as the ferry
rumbles up.
It was a little strange to be returning home at night, I
have to say--I’ve been pretty much a homebody except for my evening runs, so
joining the end of the commute was a little different. I’ll be teaching an evening class on
Wednesdays, the first of them next week, so I will have a fair number of these
to make, although I suppose they’ll do Daylight Savings soon. I ducked my head into the dark back
entrance of the same cafe I’d spent an enjoyable hour earlier in the week, and
punked off their non-password-protected wifi just to be sure there were no
mission-critical e-mails, before I headed down the hill, made my leftovers, and
watched a little too much TV thing.
I suppose I can call it Research, watching with some perplexity as the Manly-Warringah
Sea Eagles lost ignominiously to the Melbourne Storm in the Rugby League
semifinals; having played Rugby Union back in grad school I had never actually
watched League, which is a totally different rhythm, and it definitely fed my
anthropologist’s thirst for Cultcha to hear the announcers’ plainspoken
(not to say ruthless) analysis of Manly’s futility and the incompetence of the
referees.
So I will head up to the Library and post this catch-up of
the blog, with or without photos, and check out a couple more DVD’s. If I have the energy I’ll blast through
some more of another long deferred writing task (some analysis for the
Federation of non-senate academics at UCD), and organize my photocopying for
next week. The other item on the
agenda is to take another good long run like the one I did on Thursday.
Thanks for reading!
The photos are icing on the cake (I particularly love the sunset ferry-ride one!) but the thoughtful prose will definitely have me coming back for more. Thanks for posting, dude! (or I guess I should say, "myte")
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