Field Notes One: Perth to Buenos Aires, the continents between

Drain half bottle of scotch with friend returning from Mumbai gunfire. Leave Australia in midst of night. Arrive Frankfurt, sleeper train, Leipzig, leg of pig, bratwurst, beer, so much beer, autobahns, angry friends, high speed, blurring vision, snow-filled country roads and villages that should exist only in absurd postcards and quaint Disney musicals. Perfect children skip across the street with sleds. I try not to kill them with my car slipping down the ice. Pump brakes. Köln. Dinner with my father. Wolf Parade in basement club. Guns and Roses covers. No sleep. Autobahn again, blurring worse. I travel in the slipstream of trucks, hoping nobody will notice me in my American rental beast, surely the last Dodge on European roads. We could not find Chinese Democracy on sale in petrol stations so instead we listen to bad German radio and occasionally tinny laptop speakers until the battery gives in. I am accused of quoting from Adbusters. This makes me sad. Middle of the night. Obstinate GPS. In 900 metres, keep left. Recalculating. 86'ing, sadly. Frankfurt. Blink. No sleep. Buenos Aires. Excellent friends at airport, a smile that will keep me going for hours, a missed smile these past several months. A child juggles at traffic lights, a more impressive request for pesos than the old-fashioned window wash. Shower. Steak. My friend's band is playing, Diego says. They're on early. 2am. Okay sure. Heineken in Palermo bars, still unsure when the last solid sleep was. The band are not great; apparently the singer used to model for his paintings. Hostel rooms, quietly stumbling onto top bunk, the Chilean below felling forests all night long. 4 hours sleep. No coffee in this place. Stumble into San Telmo, gather up some pesos, become convinced the cash machine has only offered to loan me the money and is asking when I will pay it back. Wish I had learned a little more Spanish. No gracias! Walking, much walking, drinking mate in parks and then too much beer again in grungy cafes not so very different to ones from home, find a Melbourne friend's short story on display in the lobby of the national library, a science-fiction building apparently landed like brutalist spaceship in garden surrounds, wander drunkenly through shopping malls and forget about eating, pass out in a blur somewhere before midnight, skipping plans for dinner. The Chilean's at it again. I wake up and pick flecks of mate from my teeth.

The backpacking life is not for me, never particularly was -- surrounded by Australians and Germans asking where you've been, where you're going next. Skipping along the top of the world, a smooth rock on a flat pond, never sinking down with any satisfaction. I'm going where my friends are, where my family is, recharging, reshaping and shifting perspective. Thinking about not going to Brazil, where there will be a week more of this backpackerly bullshit, but after these 10 days with excellent friends in Argentina, fleeing back to Canadian family perhaps earlier than intended. My carbon footprint is monstrous, perhaps to be unearthed by palaeontologists exploring far-flung parts of Patagonia, postulated to be a travelling beast the likes of which the planet has not seen for millennia, and should not see for millennia more. Finding myself thinking about people I had not planned to be thinking about, cursing myself for that, for being unable to leave with the blank slate intended. Plates shifting beneath feet, as they always are, but a strong feeling that, upon return, configurations of friendships and life will be very different -- the past no longer a foreign country, but the past as Gondwanaland. The pieces the same, but you wouldn't recognise it without expert training. 2008 was snuck away from before it was fully done with -- actually, no, not snuck away from at all. I thumbed my nose and ran, hopped on a jet and brought myself here. 2009 will not begin until I return. This is the dead space of travel, a gap year for the soul.

More notes to follow. Vaya con dios.