In the air

This is my last post from the glorious State Library of Victoria (have I mentioned that this is my new home?). By this time tomorrow I'll be most of the way to Tokyo! In case you missed it (easy enough, I only mentioned it once), I'm going to California - and flying the long way. I'm participating in a conference on an exciting new way of teaching about history (I get to go because I'll be chair of the first year program when I return to school next year). Very happily the conference is in San Diego, where my parents live! And that the ticket I ended up finding (in highest of high seasons down here) goes over Japan with compulsory stopovers adds very pleasing wrapping. But it will be a lot of time in the air. Have you ever noticed that Australia is really very far away from, why, from most anywhere?

I'll try to update the blog regularly, but just so you know where I'll be flying when. (If anyone wants to catch up by phone while I'm in California, I'll give you the number!)

Tuesday 9/1: Melbourne-Tokyo
Wednesday 10/1: Tokyo-San Diego
Friday-Sunday 12-14/1 conference
Friday 19/1: San Diego-Tokyo (arriving. Saturday)
Tuesday 23/1: Tokyo-Melbourne (arriving Wednesday)

But before I leave Melbourne, let me tell you about something strange that's been happening to me; I'd be interested in your thoughts on it. Just in the last few days I have started finding myself recognizing lots of people from New York around here - in the library, the café, the tram. It's not them, of course. But the resemblances are, for a time, striking. What's strangest of all is that this didn't happen at all before a few days ago, and now it seems I can't take a ride in a tram without seeing some ex-student or colleague.

What to make of this? Is it homesickness - or the opposite? (It's not anticipation of being back in New York, since I'm only going to California.) Perhaps my mind has let go of the boundary between there and here, letting me look at strangers' faces here with the expectations of home, expectations which were bracketed out before by constant awareness that this is not home? Or is it that I've now been here long enough that I'm recognizing faces (regular passengers in the tram, waiters, etc.), and so the gates have been opened to a more general expectation of familiar faces? Or maybe I'm just going soft in the head from thinking too much (or too mushily) about the good. Any thoughts?