Australia

“I noticed how visible I was to the outside world when I finally discarded my first bag of recycling. If I wasn’t tactical with my curtains, anyone outside my Sydney apartment could easily see into my bedroom.

Thankfully there were two small secondary curtains at either side of the window to help me cover myself and blot out the courtyard. An elderly man sometimes smoked cigarettes near the recycling boxes. The caretaker often stood near the dumpster picking at his broom. One evening a young white man who looked about fifteen, with dreadlocks dangling down his back, embarked on a phone conversation while he wandered the courtyard, and I was surprised to hear he’d already in his life found time to estrange a wife and lose touch with a son. As he paced up and down the red painted tarmac I felt wise and lucky, but also utterly immature, for this was another of the evenings I spent alone in the apartment stretched out on the cloth couch, aware I had no one to phone, that the phone I’d brought to Australia didn’t work, and even if I retrieved my SIM card from my shaving kit, I still wouldn’t be able to send any messages. I was free to read my book until I finished, and then pick up another, moving at a pace of about 100 pages a day. I’d just settled into Robert Hughes’ history of convict Australia, The Fatal Shore.”