In November Lisa and I decided to take a long-weekend trip to Sydney, because when else will we have a chance to jaunt across the Australia for three days? So, after procuring the puzzling $20 visa required to visit Oz for more than a few hours, we set off on our adventure.
I don't like to think of myself as a typical "tourist", whatever that means, but seeing the Sydney Opera House in person was much more profound than I predicted it would be. I felt truly in awe just being there. It's a completely different wonder than I've felt in the presence of the astounding beauty of NZ: a more collaborative joy than breathless appreciation. To look at an icon like the Opera House is to enter a liminal space, populated by every other person who has stood in that spot and seen this place that our culture has marked important. I remember feeling a similar way floating down the Thames in London, peering out at the Tower Bridge, the Globe Theatre, this city teeming with history and literature and humanity. It's why so many people still trek to the Tower of Pisa or the Pyramids or the Forbidden City; despite the cliche, there is still something transformative in the experience. It's holding hands across time with the human race.
That evening, Lisa and I watched fireworks from Darling Harbour, eating cheap Aldi snacks amidst the fancy yachts and waterside restaurants. We walked back to the Opera House to see it lit up at night, and on the way back saw a wall littered with footprints, dusty marks where people had ninja-kicked the concrete. I didn't think much of this at first, but the pull to add our own footprints to the mural was pretty overwhelming. And how strangely satisfying to strike this wall I'll probably never see again, stamping myself onto it-a collaborative art project with the people of Sydney.