Becoming

Becoming is a process, not an event.

Sitting on the edge of the inercity - on the new marble wall of the Seymore Centre, by the old buildings of Cleveland St and City Rd... across from Vic Park... sun setting into a barmy spring evening over a city that has been my playground for years.

Becoming is my aim and my destiny. I am curious as I watch myself change. I try to point myself in specific directions, but becoming happens almost despite us.

New plans, new priorities, new feelings and experience. Standing on the same street but seeing different things, hearing new sounds. Some poisons once put up with - now unacceptable.

The times I've wandered the streets of Redfern late at night, alone, no money left, no drugs left, no sense of self to speak of... fading. Fading like this sunset into this balmy spring evening...

Another birthday, but it feels different. I actually do feel older this time, and it's a wonderful thing. Its a deeply wonderful thing.

The process of becoming promts a looking-back.

It is hard - at least in these minutes, outside the Seymore Centre, on the edge of the inner-west - not to look for an exact moment when I first lost myself. Somewhere in between Chippendale and Flinders St... In the endless satties and viles, the countless hours of exhausting work in the filthy, sparkling places...

Because if I found the spot in time where I had lost the girl I was, could I not get her back? Could I not re-unite? Become what I was?

But becoming never looks behind itself. Becoming is a process, and I can only watch and tend to myself, as I become a new something.

I remember now how much I love this city! In this moment my love is felt, not intellectualised or remembered from earlier better times...

The pay-off of becoming is discovering home.