Dodo Au Go-Go

As I sit here, winter in the tropics means a warm day without humidity. Leaves sing noisily in a strong breeze. I'm sitting in Dodo-Land - aka Mauritius - after a very long absence of some double-digit years. I'm older, everyone I know is older, and the island has changed much in that time. I want to jot down my initial impressions now, before the memories fade and disjointed sensations of newness fall into a temporary familiar.

It's my second day in Mauritius. I'm still jet-lagged. Yesterday, I was too tired to be awake and too awake to sleep, as my brain and body struggled to join the dots across timezones, places and the past and the present. Of getting no sleep the night before starting the trip to the airport at 1:30am, and hoping that the new proposed second airport for Sydney will go ahead soon, without planes dumping fuel over the Blue Mountains conservation/heritage area. Sitting in an empty airport with lines of light in the hours before the world has started to turn properly.