Nostalgic longing for places unseen

Great works of fiction are always set in our own living rooms, says American academic and novelist Siri Husdvedt in the lead essay of her collection “A Plea for Eros.” Recognizing this, good writers sketch the room and leave us to the furnishings. Lesser writers load on detail, not recognizing that by doing so, they cheat us of the pleasure of a good read.

Husdvedt is absolutely right, of course. Every reader has had the experience of having a crystal-clear image of a main character or other essential element of a novel shattered by an incongruent Hollywood blockbuster. But I think Husdvedt understates the phenomenon on two counts.

Number one: how is it that we can take an historic or period piece, for instance, and set it so vividly in our living room when we have no context – experience – to do so? Secondly, how is it that we develop such a strong emotional attachment to what is nothing more than a mental contrivance, and carry that attachment for years after we’ve forgotten all other detail of the story?

I’ve come face-to-face with this phenomenon twice in the last year.

In March, we were wrapping up our second week of scuba training on Utila Island, part of the Bay Island chain that bookends the southern end of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, stretching from the northern Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico to Honduras.

On what was to be our last Saturday on the island, our dive centre was offering a day-long expedition to Cayos Cochinos, an archipelago and marine biological reserve situated about two hours away by water. It was an expensive outing and we were torn on whether or not to participate.

In the midst of our indecision, we asked Lauren, one of the dive instructors, for her recommendation. “It’s the Caribbean the way you’ve always imagined the Caribbean,” was all she said. Yet, all of Madison Avenue couldn’t have fashioned a more persuasive response.

Through more years of reading than I care to mention, I’ve accumulated an image of the Caribbean. Throughout my adult life, it’s where I’ve always gone when I picture the perfect holiday. It’s where I’ve always gone when closing my eyes and imagining is as close to a holiday as I’m going to get. How could I resist, then, the opportunity to see it in real life?

The Caribbean as I've always imagined the Caribbean. Our captain nudged the diving boat onto this beach so we could enjoy a lunch of whole fish and Coco-Locos, a rum-filled coconut shell.

Fortunately, unlike the aforementioned Hollywood Blockbuster, Lauren’s description was spot on. Cayos Cochinos turned out to be the Caribbean exactly as I’ve always imagined it, and we had a day that was as close to my idea of a perfect holiday as I might ever see.  

I’ve always said that it was music that kept me in high school, but the truth is my graduation from a small rural public school’s monthly “bookmobile” to the comparatively vast holdings of a regional high school library was just as instrumental (pun not intended).  

Over the course of five years, at a pace of six to nine books per week, I read my way through the library – and most classes – beginning with all 58 volumes of the original Hardy Boys series.

I remember little in the way of detail of the formulaic stories: Teenage brothers Frank and Joe Hardy – with improbably-named pals Chet Morton and Biff Hooper – forever stepping in to solve mysteries for their detective-father, Fenton; Mrs. Hardy, never quite in the picture, save for baking cookies for the boys; Aunt Gertrude, even more distant.

And yet, since the age of 13, I’ve nursed a poignant, near-palatable longing for the remote, always blustery, always haunting headlands of the Bayport coast, the boys’ hometown. I’m tucked away in a towering crag, a sea breeze whipping my face, the surf crashing below; a group of smugglers surreptitiously maneuvering their mahogany runabout to a nefarious rendezvous in a secluded cove.

The funny thing is, I had no clue I was carrying any of that around with me until our first visit to Sydney in 2003.

It was a business trip for Marian. While she worked, I had two weeks of visiting one indescribably-beautiful beach after another. Two days before we were to depart, I discovered the Manly to The Spit Trail.

It’s helpful, I expect, if I first tell you a little bit about the Sydney Harbour. The Harbour is 16 miles in length, but its perimeter is 152 miles long. As it runs through the centre of the city, it’s difficult to get much further than a couple of blocks out of sight of an arm – or at least a finger – of the harbour. It also means that one has to be conscious of water when attempting dry land navigation from point A to point B.  

From the headlands near the mid-point of the Manly to The Spit Trail, looking across the Sydney Harbour to South Head and the city centre. To the left, two Manly Ferries pass on their routes to and from Circular Quay, next to the Opera House.

Sydney is described as “the city of villages,” and Manly is the former village – now thriving beach-side town at the northern end of the harbour. Because the harbour is particularly wide at its northern end, vehicular traffic would be required to travel quite a distance to the west before being able to swing south to the city centre. The saving grace is a narrow “spit” of land not far from Manly that, with the addition of a heavily-trafficked bridge, forms what looks almost like a causeway – and short cut – back to town.  

As the crow flies, the distance from Manly to The Spit is approximately 4 kms. But given that length-to-perimeter business I mentioned earlier, the trail that follows the headlands is 11 kms. I was somewhere around the mid-point in 2003 when I suddently realized I was walking the Bayport coastline. It was one of those “coming home” type of moments. The next afternoon, our last full day in Oz, Marian played hookie so we could walk the trail together.

From roughly the same spot on the trail, a view of North Head in the distance, and Manly to the left.

I really didn’t expect we’d find ourselves back to Australia anytime soon. But I couldn’t think of a better reason to return than to once again walk the trail, which we did a few weeks ago. I expect we’ll do it at least once more before we head back to Canada. Try as I might, there seems to be no satisfying my nostalgic longing for a place I’ve never seen.

(By the way, Will Ferguson wrote a wonderfully warm and funny Father’s Day piece in the Globe and Mail earlier this year on his reading the Hardy Boys series to his young son. See it at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/the-burden-and-the-glory-of-fatherhood/article1610030/print/)

OZ on Parade

A very large flat screen TV is the centerpiece of our Sydneyside living-room. I’m not sure exactly how big it is, but a corner-to-corner stretch consumes the lion’s share of my arm span. It would be incorrect then to say we are not big TV watchers, we just don’t do it very often.

Like Canada, Australia is a large country with a small population – only about 21.5 million, mostly clumped in relatively few urban areas. After a few weeks of infrequent TV viewing, then, one becomes conscious of seeing the same faces showing up on multiple channels and programs.

“Good News Week” became our instant AusCon favourite. Hosted by comedien/musician Paul McDermott and featuring a revolving cast of six comediens/performers, GNW combines a wacky-headlines-of-the-week game show with “Who’s Line is it Anyway?” It typically keeps us laughing out loud for 50-odd minutes of the hour-long show. When we’re not laughing, it’s usually because we haven’t kept up with the pace of delivery. We’re looking forward to attending a taping of the show next Saturday at the ABC studios downtown.

There is a striking difference in the comedy one hears on GNW and other Aussie shows compared to what we hear in Canadian or U.S. programming. One senses the broadcast environment here is uncensored by regulatory code and it’s certainly free of self-imposed political correctness.

The effect is that whit runs rampant. There are no laugh tracts. No subject is sacred. Who knew, for instance, that there were so many al Qaeda jokes? Those who resort to the easy, obvious jokes are greeted with evident distain. Profanity, when it’s heard, tends to make witty comments that much funnier.

Yes, intelligent humour seems to rule here, and for reasons I can’t explain, it would never be permitted on North American airwaves.

I was thinking about this yesterday as we hiked the “Parade” historical walking tour of downtown Sydney.

The Parade route is anchored by Oxford Street, widened in 1910 – 1914 to become one of the city’s first boulevards – a place to see and be seen. The street has hosted many parades: military, celebratory, ceremonial and political. But “Parade” also alludes to the gay rights movement that found its way out of the closets – and jails – of Australia onto Oxford Streets and environs in the ’70s and ’80s.

Although homosexual acts remained illegal in Sydney’s home-state of New South Wales until 1984, a plethora of restaurants, shops, bookstores, pubs and “back rooms,” according to our walking tour guide, clustered to form the “Gay Golden Mile” along – and near – Oxford Street.

Marian reads inscriptions on artist Annie Kennedy’s “Camp Stonewall,” which encircles the closed up “men’s convenience” (public washrooms) in Taylor Square. The monument honours the leaders of the gay rights movement in Sydney. Two of the inscribed tiles appear below.

Today, the Parade district is reminiscent of the Castor neighbourhood of San Francisco: more trendy and tasteful than flamboyant and rebellious.

A Gay Holocaust Memorial in Green Park brought back memories of our Sunday at Dachau two years ago, with one entire room of the museum dedicated to the enumeration of groups – including homosexuals – who were on the Nazi hit-list.

A funkier monument can be found in Taylor Square, at the convergence of Oxford, Bourke, and Flinders Streets. Artist Annie Kennedy’s “Camp Stonewall” encircles the closed up “Men’s Convenience” (public washrooms), and honours in words and looping audio recordings those who led the gay rights movement.

But Oxford Street’s urbane shops and somber monuments remain spiced with dashes of pepper. Amidst the many, many high-end women’s shops and men’s boutiques with names like “Aussie Boys,” are shops catering to virtually every sexual taste and preference.

We passed one sex shop called “SAX Fetish.” Right next door is a Thai restaurant.

What would you call a Thai restaurant that’s right next door to a fetish sex shop?

What else would you call a Thai restaurant that neighbours on the Fetish sex shop, but "Thai Me Up?"

Well, this is my point about the difference between Aussie-rules and North American humour. We’d be concerned about offending say, victims of sexual assaults. Here, the shop is humourously, delightfully, and unaplogetically branded “Thai Me Up.”

(For additional comment on the Aussie sense of humour, see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZPuu_GUqHM)

The makings of a “good” trip

The opportunity to travel as we’ve been doing for the last couple of years is our dream come true. But during the two months we took to traverse Central America earlier this year, we came to realize that neither of us is certain what it is we want to see and do as we explore. 

We first wrestled with this while staring at a map of Costa Rica. “So, whadda ya’ wanna see?” “I dunno. Whadda you wanna see?” With a whole country to choose from, it’s no exaggeration to say we were almost paralyzed by uncertainty.

We hit this again, full force, on our return home. “Did you have a good trip?” was a routine question, and we answered affirmatively, without hesitation, but I realized I wasn’t sure what the asker – or I – meant by “good” trip.

In the context of Central America, does having a good trip mean that you saw dirt-poor country after dirt-poor country, “Pepsi Cola” professionally painted on every prominent, dirt-floor hovel not comparably adorned with “Corona?” If so, then yes, we had a fantastic trip.

Or does a “good” trip through that part of the world mean you succeeded in sticking to gringo resorts and locales, blithely riding “zip lines” through the rain forests with nary a care for the impoverished circumstances of the native population? For some, I expect it does. 

 We hit the question again last week, here in Australia.

Donna and Mark are our next-door neighbours here in the north Sydney suburb of Frenchs Forest. They, and their two beautiful little girls, Lara, 7, and Ashley, a freshly-minted 5, are very good friends of David and Andrea with whom we’ve swapped houses. We’re reaping the dividends of that friendship.

We arrived to find a welcoming note on the kitchen counter from Donna and the fridge stocked with essentials. Prompted, I expect, by advance knowledge of our preference for bicycle transportation, Donna had had her 21-speed overhauled and has very kindly left it with Marian for the duration of our visit.

A week or so ago, Donna popped over later on a Saturday afternoon to invite us to join them for a glass of wine. They asked about our sight-seeing plans while we’re here – where we plan to go, what we plan to do. Ah, I realized, we’re back to that awkward “good” trip question. 

It kinda’ slipped out of my mouth – and it took a day or so of subsequent reflection for me to recognize the full truth of it – that my idea of a good trip isn’t just seeing and doing things, it’s going home with at least some fledgling sense of what makes the local population tick.

Our very pleasant conversation over drinks evolved into equally pleasant conversation over our first authentic Aussie barbie.  

We talked about Australia’s roots as a penal colony and the impact of that on the population’s self-image (where once there might have been shame, Aussie’s are learning to take pride in their heritage).

We talked about the economy (Donna and Mark own a growing financial services business).

We talked about unity, diversity and racial issues.

And we talked about Aboriginal populations.

It was startling to realize how similarly and miserably our two countries have mismanaged relationships with our native populations; how the governments of both countries have now extended apologies (us, more specifically for the abuses of residential schools);  how both countries – and their respective native populations – wrestle with the socio-economic fallout of systemic racism…right down to the horror of native kids in both countries sniffing gasoline; and the potentially corrupting influences of money and higher education as they find their way back into historically disenfranchised populations.

It was after 10:00 when we left Donna and Mark’s for the 4-metre, cross-lawn journey home. While the conversation subject matter wasn’t exclusively pleasant, it was a most enjoyable evening and the starts – in my mind – of a truly great trip.