Earlyish this morning I arrived in Melbourne, Australia. For once I was aware and intent on the window as the plane nosed down through the cloud cover, then past it. Jewel green hilly checkerboard; I wanted to caress it, feel the moist fuzz of the moss under my fingers.

Danielle was kind enough to pick me up from the airport about sixteen hours ago. It's now 11:55pm and I haven't napped yet today, so I may yet beat jet lag on this trip! Factors: at least two prior weeks of uneven and inadequate sleep (I slept nearly the entire first, 5-hour flight), alcohol and melatonin (for something like 8 hours of sleep on the second flight), and caffeine (a "short flat white" coffee thingy around 10am).

Also today: ate a great "vego brekky" (vegetarian full-English-style breakfast) and some nice Thai curry, met Steph, bought a Lebara SIM card so I have an Australian mobile number, and tried to veg out and catch up on internetting while sitting in a warm living room, looking out at a wide winter sky. Pale blue shaded into bright, ridiculously fluffy clouds moving to and fro when I wasn't looking, over rooftops and brick.

It sounds so simple once I say it, that paying intense attention to external sensory stimuli (light, sound, wind, touch, colors, hush) opens me up so I can hear my internal sensations too, physical and emotional, raw. It aligns me. But how did I not know this till this summer? Or how did I forget?

Tomorrow I aim to hang with Danielle & her pals, and walk around the city a bit on my own. Wednesday, a pre-Worldcon pub crawl in the evening is my only plan. A few things a day, no hurry. I aim to circumvent the Fear of Missing Out, Fear of Missing Something. My bigger fear is missing the experience I'm having by skimming along it, hydroplaning in haste. No control, direction by default, and seeing only my own reflection along a surface.