China

Somewhere in the untidy space between joyful marriage and bewildered divorce, Cold Chisel's Khe Sahn infected me. Driving back to Brisbane from a night at the Gold Coast, tipsy and strangely empowered, Don Walker's haunting narrative of shiftless middle-aged dislocation rattled inside me like a stone in a bucket, and landed with a clang. I was seized by a potent desire to lose myself in Asia; to disappear from everything and everyone I knew; to vanish.

Two years later I sat on the cool tiles of a tiny 15th floor balcony watching my first Chinese dawn rise over a corner of Shenzhen. I wasn't completely lost. My friend and his Chinese wife slumbered in an air conditioned bedroom just beyond the small neat living room I now called home. But I was half a universe away from everything I knew. The dawn and I were both grey, and it was good.

I had arrived in Shenzhen at the end of a complicated, life altering journey. Crazy holidays in Macau and Indonesia had led to 18-months work in Arizona, and then several more months in Jakarta and Dubai. Like the listless protagonist in Chisel's faded folk tale I had finally surrendered to brokenness. It had taken 40 years and more than one brutal broken heart, but it had happened. I had no plans, no more dreams, and no clue.

In the few hours since crossing the Chinese border, the musty magic of the Orient had filled me with a creeping wonder. Everything felt different, from the mundane script describing colourful laundry powder packets to the acute, quirky clothes worn by beautiful Chinese girls populating the streets and buildings. All was alien, and invigorating.

I should have been exhausted following the overnight visa run through Hong Kong and the two hour van ride to the apartment from the Shenzhen ferry, but I was too wired to rest. The Lam Tsuen mountains beyond the slow sliding causeway and far to the south were ancient, but from my balcony looked alive. I felt as if I was in a movie, and played the reality of where I was across my consciousness until fatigue blurred me.

It was over an hour later as the sun rode high up a hazy, unfamiliar sky that I stretched onto the couch and shut my eyes, my nose and ears already filled with Asia.