11th April 2000

2.30 am and I'm trying to study oncology, not very successfully at that.

Weather in London of late's been so warm and sunny and beautiful I've been lying in parks doing my readings. I think quite soon I won't need to wear a jacket anymore.

When I was very young I used to stare at lights, street lights, room lights, lights in general. It had something to do with not being able to stare at the sun, so I substituted it with lights, and I'd stare so intently that after a while I could make out the lighting coil in my room light or the halogen bulbs in the street lamps. I had perfect vision unaided back then and I could make almost every feature on the moon out, craters, valleys, hills and vales. I used to read in the car at night much to my mum and dad's chagrin. Don't read in the car you'll spoil your eyes. It seems they were right. lol

For some reason I've had a flashback of a little canteen in Sydney university near the Physics department where I was at about six years ago. Have you ever had memories come back so vividly to you that you can almost hear and smell everything that happened? I remember being there with 50 other students from around the world, sitting in a canteen eating a mars bar (was addicted to them during the International Science School for some reason) and I remember the glass doors that opened into the archery pits and greens just outside; I remember the warmth of the sun on my skin as I sat there and wondered if I would ever study overseas in a university quite like that. I remember walking down the little road (which was under construction) outside the physics department, of someone making dry-ice bombs of plastic coke bottles and chucking them onto the road just there. I remember watching the sunsets from the balcony of the residential hall I was at, spectacular scenes of the sun setting in the distance over the sea, beyond the sydney bridge. I remember just standing and watching the sunset, sometimes with friends sometimes alone, and once this girl from the ISS, a chinese girl and not unattractive at that (I wonder whatever happened to her, and to David Whitelaw, and loads of other people) whose name I've since forgotten was there with me and she saw something in my eyes that I didn't even know was there. I remember endless cookies and table-tennis games with the Thai students (and losing to girls ouch) and pool games with the English girls indoors, I remember feeling cold and warm outdoors, I remember doing jigsaw puzzles and taking photos of them. I remember being bunked with my best buddy in a little room with an insanely hot heater, and the more acclimatised students sleeping outside on the balconies which confounded me. I remember standing on the cliffs at the highest point in sydney (there's a lighthouse there and some kind of rocky park) staring down at the rocks below. There was a footprint about 200 meters down on one of the rocks sticking out of the cliff face. Apparently select students from the uni made pilgrimages to that spot to take flying leaps off into eternity from there. It reminds me of a rather poor joke about hen-gliding and parrot-chuting I got through the email. Nevermind.

I remember returning years later when it was much warmer. I remember walking through the university in different company, seeing the same buildings and wondering how I'd ended up somewhere so completely different to where I'd wanted to be once (but I'm here and I'm happy, I think). I remember a large shopping centre that looked more like it belonged in london than Sydney. I remember walking the harbour by myself and sitting in the park by the opera house feeling the sun on my skin, and dangling my legs off the cliffs by coogee bay and watching the day go by. I remember wandering around awkwardly with an absurd cardboard box in my hands and my jacket hanging off my shoulder, something I do daily in london which disturbed the friend I was with to the extent that she had to carry the jacket. I remember a restaurant somewhere near the uni, and dinner with an old, old friend. I remember many things, some of which can't possibly have been.

Its strange the things you can almost touch when its 3 am in the morning and the coffee's beginning to wear off.

I suspect all this nostalgia stems from a subconscious urge to distract myself from filling my brain with that wonderful invention called knowledge. Back to the books it is, then.

"I'm just another writer, still trapped within my truth"