Post Dated These entries were written in a notebook that I bought at Uluru and had with me at various points since then. These are direct from the page, no edit at all. 23 Feb 2002 -- Uluru Woke up. Still no stars. Had breakfast. Went to the rock. Walked around it. Went to the cultural center, very cool. Bought crappy souvenirs. Need to take a photography class when I get back. --People on this Way Outback Tour: Patrick, from Zurich. Simon, from Taiwan. Willy, Irish living in London. Tim, our tour guide, lives in Alice Springs. Me and Chris. A good group. 24 Feb 2002 -- Kings Creek Station --Stayed up late last night, talking and feeling nice. --Rained while we were bivouacking. I had to drag Chris' heavy ass under cover. --Woke up, had breakfast, drove to Kings Canyon. Great place. Great pictures, I think. Then we came back, had lunch at Kings Creek Station, where everything was a ripoff, then left for Alice Springs. Managed to check my e-mail at a reststop. Nothing too greatly interesting, but it was an odd experience to be looking at pictures of Bethany and I at her winter formal while at a reststop in the middle of the Australian Outback. --Almost at Alice. Got a ton of sun today. Gonna be red, I know. --This is a vast and beautiful land. 9 Mar 2002 -- Bonanza en route to Logan It's a beautiful day. The clouds are thin and listless, the air is just under warm and sweet. The first flowers are peeking out from behind rocks. It's a beautiful day, but I wish it wasn't. A day like this makes it hard to want to leave. Light so pure makes me think of Liz and her glowing skin in summer, my sisters shimmering jet-black hair, cool spring days playing golf with dad in sweaters, the course still a light, undecided gray under blue skies before its green spring transformation. I wish it were bone-chillingly cold, dark, sleeting. Then I could curse this place where I live and say 'I can't wait for the Mediterranean.' But, alas, my thoughts are firmly in the here and now, entrenched and churning over things like love and its truth, truth in general, family, friends, balance, the future, truth, truth, truth. A day like this makes one call Tom Wolfe into question: 'Why can't I go home again? Look at it! Who wouldn't want to come home again?' I think about this awhile, then decide that it's not the home that's the problem. The home will always be there. The home that one pines away for is almost static. Things do change, of course, but it's still home. The problem is oneself after being gone. People told me that all the time, before I left: 'You're going to change so much.' And I nodded, and I said 'Yea.' Occasionally I'd try and be clever and say 'That's the idea,' and throw back a big smile, then usually walk away. I know I'm different now, I can feel it, and I'll be even more different when I get back. I will go home again, some day in June, and it'll be roughly the same home, but there's no chance that I'm going to look at it in the same way. In effect, I'm not going to go home, I'm going to go to a place that I've never seen before. 11 Mar 2002 -- First impressions of Nice (already published) and Mme. Mercier She's a funny old woman. Shes' not particularly frail, not particularly large or small and not particularly outgoing or shy. She reflects the great compromise of the city around her. We talked yesterday, my first day, about her daughter, who died of a disease whose name I did not catch. Her pictures are everywhere. Either she was loved much and is now missed on a daily basis (a la 'Music I Heard,' by Conrad Aiken) or she was never loved enough and it took disease/death to realize that. I wonder. Addition: I wrote that my first day, but, having come to know Mme. Mercier very well, and having seen her love for just about everything in the world except politicians and bad milk, I must conclude that is was the former hypothesis. She's an extremely kind woman, and must have been an excellent mother in her day. I cannot imagine her children receiving anything but the most love possible in the world.