Back to the 'berra
Apr. 27th, 2012 05:04 pmI can't seem to stop thinking about Canberra.
My mother grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, and I was always incredulous as a child when she told me how stultifying, how suffocating, how smothering she found it. Canberra itself is suburb incarnate, empty streets laid out like spokes of a wheel, extending outwards from Capital Hill, quarter-acre blocks, dry grass, blue sky so bright it burns you. And I loved it.
Like most Canberrans my age, I got out. There are two great mass exoduses from Canberra. The first is of eighteen-year-olds, off to university in other cities, or to travel the world. The second is of 22-year-olds, who elected to stay in Canberra for university, but only as a stepping stone to brighter lights, bigger cities.
It took me a long time to feel at home anywhere else. And I confused matters by moving back to Canberra for a year after I finished university. It was at once the stupidest and most important thing I ever did in my life.* I think for a long time, the problem was that I confused home with childhood. I was underwhelmed by adulthood. I was bereft, adrift. I didn't feel the things that people around me seemed to be feeling, I didn't want the things they wanted.** Home was an age, not a place, it was the place where I was a certain age, an age and a place where I was no longer.
It took me a very long time to feel at home in a place that wasn't Canberra. What it took, in fact, was to feel at home in an age that wasn't childhood. But still, that city, that sky, those lunarscapes of suburban shopping-centres are impressed, burnt into my eyelids. And every time I think about growing up, moving on, shedding skins, I find my thoughts returning there. To those roundabouts.
All this is by way of preamble to my friend![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lucubratae's amazing poem 'Those Evocative London Placenames'. His journey in a way is the complete opposite of mine, but what he says about growing up hit me right in the heart. I highly recommend it.
______________
* Stupid because I was miserable, but important, because it's what convinced me to apply to Cambridge, where I found myself.
** I realise now, of course, that I was far from unique in this regard.
My mother grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, and I was always incredulous as a child when she told me how stultifying, how suffocating, how smothering she found it. Canberra itself is suburb incarnate, empty streets laid out like spokes of a wheel, extending outwards from Capital Hill, quarter-acre blocks, dry grass, blue sky so bright it burns you. And I loved it.
Like most Canberrans my age, I got out. There are two great mass exoduses from Canberra. The first is of eighteen-year-olds, off to university in other cities, or to travel the world. The second is of 22-year-olds, who elected to stay in Canberra for university, but only as a stepping stone to brighter lights, bigger cities.
It took me a long time to feel at home anywhere else. And I confused matters by moving back to Canberra for a year after I finished university. It was at once the stupidest and most important thing I ever did in my life.* I think for a long time, the problem was that I confused home with childhood. I was underwhelmed by adulthood. I was bereft, adrift. I didn't feel the things that people around me seemed to be feeling, I didn't want the things they wanted.** Home was an age, not a place, it was the place where I was a certain age, an age and a place where I was no longer.
It took me a very long time to feel at home in a place that wasn't Canberra. What it took, in fact, was to feel at home in an age that wasn't childhood. But still, that city, that sky, those lunarscapes of suburban shopping-centres are impressed, burnt into my eyelids. And every time I think about growing up, moving on, shedding skins, I find my thoughts returning there. To those roundabouts.
All this is by way of preamble to my friend
lucubratae's amazing poem 'Those Evocative London Placenames'. His journey in a way is the complete opposite of mine, but what he says about growing up hit me right in the heart. I highly recommend it.______________
* Stupid because I was miserable, but important, because it's what convinced me to apply to Cambridge, where I found myself.
** I realise now, of course, that I was far from unique in this regard.