The government has plans for each and every piece of land in this country. But for its people, they have been less attentive. Unlike the land, most of us have no clue as to where we fit in. Being free means that you have to decide what you want to do, even though you have nothing to do.

The field from which I watched the lunar eclipse is no longer; having replaced by new condominiums separated from the world by walls and gates. This country is always in the state of metamorphosis. Travel across half its breadth and lose count of the number construction projects in progress. Nothing is as we remembered anymore.

It did not seem too long ago when I was there watching the lunar eclipse, lying alone in that expansive field; thinking things that are no longer relevant. She is back on a more permanent basis and it seemed like yesterday when we used to talk every night and every day, of everything that mattered and everything that did not.

But it has been 3 Melbourne winters since we were last so carefree with each other. And it has been 3 Melbourne summers of silence. Nothing is as we remembered anymore.

Yet everything feels still so familiar.

Three years of silence and of absence… the mind should have filled it up with angry words and adjectives; reality should have filled it up with facts and happenings. But nothing… my initial search turned out blank.

But there should be and there were words, phrases, adjectives, facts, acts and happenings. I have graduated, found a job, passed my graduate diploma course, changed my job, and done so much more, so much more… Wars have been fought, innocents died, and the world has been made to swallow a load of propagandistic crap…

Yet none of it was registered in my cursory introspective search.

So through the method of elimination, am I to derive what really matters? And what truly mattered is what happened between us?

Billie Myers still sounds as world weary as three years before when her words sounded so true and appropriate, and Tracy Chapman has not lost that sorrow in her voice. Some things did happen and some things did not; regardless if I remember.

But everything still feels so… indescribable. Memories are indescribable. The heat is no longer searing, and the cold not biting. Yet there is that ever so familiar tingling on the skin to remind us of the warmth of a hug and the cold of early winter.

It just felt like bells ringing drawn by heartstrings extending back through time.

Things did change. I did not have skip through the past three years as I did through the first twenty three. Life is a lot more self-directed now. One cannot be burdened by the weight of the past if one is to fly. In my pursuit to overcome myself, these memories assumed a different purpose.

The past is but a reference point, not the destination. I do not harbour any hopes that things can be back to what they were. Neither do I desire them to be.

Things are not as we remembered. They need not be... but at least they are fine now.

Welcome back, dear friend.