STEPS

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The museum of my childhood.

Others recounted their frustration at being held in the prison-like environment: the locked gates, the queuing up for food slopped onto trays, the boredom and fear of unemployment, extended incarceration - unable to escape from what was in essence a glorified detention camp. Transported by train from the big City to the middle of nowhere, the former army barracks holding several thousand migrants at any given time, all waiting for their ticket out: A job; procured through relatives arriving before them or contacts made back in the old country.

The narrow room full of desks where Isat with other children pronouncing over and over the strange new words. The fibro hut we shared with another family. The now barren surrounds, only a few trees and some tidy lawns.

"It was greener those days!" I stressed, bothered by their impassivity. "More trees, more bush, birds and echidnas and kangaroos!"  

My recollection at odds with our present surroundings, my memories holding more colour, far greater wonder, seen through the eyes of a child. The caretaker showing us our family name, alongside photos and a row of numbers indicating our barracks... There I was, wide-eyed, the photo capturing this former wonder.

Walking around the limited preserved area with them, I tried to voice the differences between my place of birth and this country-side I was transported to, bereft of apartment blocks and busy streets, gypsies travelling through each year; the natural lushness of the hills surrounding us now at odds with the rocky barren mountains where my grandparents had lived.

Still it was meaningless to them. They saw only the physical remnants: long rows of fibro huts, huge metal pots sitting on large antiquated stoves behind the serving area. They observed but the emotion of the place, even my own sentiments failed to connect them to then, to the young me marvelling at this very different environment.

Like tourists, they passed through my memories, examined the evidence but took away no lasting impressions - as one does when dutifully visiting a museum or a historical site.

...A month later, we were transported by train from the relative freedom of this country-side camp to yet another detention area - the new one cramped, encased in concrete. All I can recollect from the two weeks there were my mother's tears, my father's outbursts. From there, finally to an inner city suburb, and our first rental with several families, sharing one room each. Again, all I have retained from those few months was a constant image of my mother crying.

Enrolled in school and lumped with all the other migrant kids in Special English classes. It was then perhaps I decided to seek comfort in words, learning the foreign language in mere months; resembling those ducks at the lake we sometimes visited, paddling swiftly until I floated above the deep unmanageable horrors of incomprehension.

I had to understand everything. The migrant label unacceptable, language grasped as the ticket out. I grabbed it and exploited it; spoke like a native in no time - except for the weird posh British inflection sometimes sneaking in, even to this day. Embarrassing me because I have no idea of where it comes from.Too much Shakespeare consumed perhaps...

Was this also the beginning of the need to explain everything my way? I turned into the consummate teacher's pet, writing, writing, reading anything thrown at me. And more, collecting books, other's stories - the way some kids collected stamps - hundreds and hundreds of books. Some I read over and over, extracting new impressions each time. To this day I shun tablets and laptops. Scour second hand shops for real, worn, frayed copies, coffee stained, sand sometimes trickling out. Who read the book before me? The idea intrigues, trying to match books with previous readers.

Funny... Losing everything has produced an unexpected benefit. I hold little regard for possessions now. Packing, unpacking, with each new move, further things disposed of. Travelling light. Huh. Maybe I no longer dare attachment because of the potential loss. It would make sense, this theory. I lost everything of value to me once already.

Except for the books, the dozens of boxes I cart around, parking them in garages and under-house storage spaces. Some of them falling apart, spines broken, pages pushed back in any way, to preserve the stories within. The foreign encyclopaedias I scribbled in as a child, books from my teenage years, the torrent when I discovered the release, the temporary escape they provided.

Hundreds of books, some quite valuable - others long past popularity, picked up in discount bins, second hand stores. I treat them all as equal in value. I marvel at the tenacity of these writers, their ability to create a beginning, middle, an ending. Always the question: "How do they do it?" Hundreds of fucking books, some hefty, so full of words they are awkward to carry in one hand. "How do they do it and why can't I?"

My boys' work the only other exception in my safe-keeping; scribbled pages from their childhoods, crude stick figure drawings, pieces of official school paper. Everything kept. This action easier to interpret: My mother threw mine out - everything tossed. Only a single report card and some photos salvaged from the purge; gone my early poems, my school essays, gone my art, once proudly displayed around school corridors.

Maybe she didn't think ahead those days. Did anyone? Why would she expect me one day resenting this callousness? For there's something in the keeping, in the revisiting as an adult the world of the child. My boys appreciate it. Laugh too, sharing with me their first attempts to define, describe in written words, in vivid colours. The Mother's Day booklets full of promises and IOUs of hugs and cups of tea. The silly Easter hats put together in a rush because they forgot to remind me...

The in and out of creation behind this hoarding perhaps? Taking-in, spitting out, dribbling into a napkin or projecting like vomit... Even the taking-in suspect: I don't trust what I see. Or hear. Despite being sometimes the only, other times one of the multitudes to witness, still I eye the absorbing with suspicion. Looking for the intent, always measuring the impact - bigger the pain, louder the muttering on paper. Maybe I suspect some manufacture. No absolute randomness, some situations planned out, calculated for maximum absorption, voluminous after-drool - everything definitely about the writing afterwards.

Rarely for me abstract creation. Eloquent descriptions of landscapes, whether imagined or real? No. Only ever interested in people, identifying and tagging; letting in to wander through some space and analysing the wandering; recording traces left behind when they exit, slamming the door or bowing out with regret.

Attaching, always attaching a tag, some label to prove identification has taken place. My being presenting as a series of connected rooms. People opening a single door, content to meander in the confines of a specific space; people unseeing or uninterested in opening other, connecting doors - and I never pointing them out. Each only ever opening the door of their choosing, one which best suits them and all is well. Everyone in their own separate room and guarding their private piece of me.

Yet I in turn demand complete access. Neither a room nor a series of rooms, rather the grand hall of being. They fear this. My meandering most times uncomfortable, unmanageable to bear. Which is understandable yeah? There is no equality, no tit for tat exchange, only unbalanced incursions.

"The best of times those moments without blueprints or navigation aids guiding my wandering. That's how I find you. For me, all it was all it is, a journey without accountability. Without borders, body screening or need for passports."