Belonging_Story

The streets of Bondi tell the story. A glass tower here, a three storey, red brick walk-up there, shiny hotels alongside crumbling decrepit terraces. Eateries abound everywhere. A French brassiere beckons next to a Japanese Sushi Bar or a take away pizza and ribs, or a pub and bistro; all delivering their offerings with differing quality and price. Wet suited surfers hugging their boards wander along the beach side avenues; tradesmen and contractors squeezing their utes into impossibly small parking spaces. Flamboyant young women sip skinny lattes on a curb-side café table; nearby young men make boisterous conversation and garrulous discourse whilst fingering text messages to an unseen world. And here cooing pigeons, screeching seagulls and squawking cockatoos create a natural symphony broken by the intermittence of the roar of overhead jet engines. I should be happy in such an environment. I tell myself I’m lucky to be surrounded by such sights, and yet I’m not. It’s my neighbourhood –it should be my comfort zone, yet sometimes I feel like a stranger, like I don’t belong. * With mixed emotions of excitement and trepidation I boarded the plane to experience my first overseas trip. As the plane levelled off, I found myself in a floating world between expectation and uncertainty. I wondered whether belonging is about more than being in a place - you can feel you belong to a place you’ve never been to and yet feel like a stranger in the place you were born. * With seatbelts tightly fastened the plane swooped over the Aegean Sea to land before the peak of the midday sun, hitting the runway with a series of bone jarring bumps and shudders before coming to a well deserved rest. I looked anxiously outside as if searching for something that resembled scenery I’d seen in holiday brochures. Sleeping in is an impossibility in Athens’ Omonia Square. Thundering traffic rumbles along the avenues and alleyways past renovated buildings with sparkling glass and magnificent colours made more attractive by the soft light of a different sun. Locals rush past the visual delights walking across streets ignoring red lights while drivers do their best to keep them at bay; tiny squares wholly occupied by parked cars and residents’ balconies heavy with verdant greenery complete with glossy designer boutiques. By night the car free Plaka district comes alive with pleasure seeking tourists served by self-assured waiters delivering food on oversized trays. By night or by day, whether you were here or there, the Parthenon atop the Acropolis exuded its overwhelming omnipresence. Up close it’s worn, it’s crumbling. It survives more in spirit than in substance yet it projects a natural beauty, a character that transcends its flaw – it’s inseparable from its environs. * I look out to the horizon and see the pale purple outline of another naked island protruding above the rough waters. As my ferry nears port I observe the warm glow of lights off the stunning white buildings with shutters and a labyrinth of narrow streets with tourist shops and busy restaurants. As I disembark I feel the warm air and become consumed by the smells of grilled food and the sea. The slap and suck of the water against the tourist boats is soothing and compliments the cool drink I’m taking under cover of the warm afternoon sun by a waterside café adjacent to my pension for the night. What is it about this place, this country, this region that beckons pilgrims from far and wide' The archaeology is not unique - stores of crumbling, ancient, once magnificent architecture abound throughout the Mediterranean. Frameless clear blue skies, crystal blue water is not exclusive to this world. My own island home is awash with such trophies. I can’t define it. My three weeks here have been the happiest of my relatively short existence. I love it. I want more. Yet there’s something that doesn’t strike the right chord - a disconnection; a chord resonating like never before as if forces, whose existence I never suspected, came alive- I found something I wasn’t looking for. Ordering my second aperitif, my attention is drawn to the local families coming out to eat dinner or simply to take a stroll along the waterfront. They stop to talk while children run around shouting and playing games and even though I can’t understand a word they’re uttering, I sense a contentment, a joi de vivre, radiating from each and every soul. There’s confidence there. This is their neighbourhood. They are home ... they belong! Instantly, I’m drawn to my memories of my neighbourhood with more than a sense of sentimentality. The wanting is no longer present in my psyche. Strangely, I simultaneously feel a sense of enlightenment and relief. I sense many travellers before me have sought meaning and purpose to something innate that draws them to distant shores in search of a personal truth; the night life, the surroundings, the denizens, the architecture. Like Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect once said, “No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill - belonging to it. Hill and house should live together, each the happier for the other.” Truth is abstract and fleeting but it inevitably applies to one’s neighbourhood. The streets do tell the story and Bondi’s is the right one.