My passport expired last year after ten years of representing the possibility of travel rather than facilitating any actual travel. It has been retired without a single visa or stamp in it. I sit on the domestic commuter train instead, endlessly shuttling backwards and forwards between my work cubicle and sleeping compartment. I stare out the window, too worn-out to read, too numb to hear the music in my expensive headphones. I watch the backyards, queues of cars, the smooth even walls of on-ramps and bypasses slide by. I no longer notice the grounds of the prison, unless the kangaroos that live there are mugging for portraits as the train passes. But this month the Jacarandas are in bloom and every familiar sight is rewritten with lavender punctuation and a sweet soft scent. Jacaranda trees are like me – introduced long enough ago that most assume we’ve always been here. My Nan was born in Toowoomba, but her Ma came from ‘the old country’. Jacarandas (from South America) are officially a pest here now, squeezing out the native trees. An analogy still too close to the bone to bear and a wound salted by the fact that the trees continue and grow as heavily promoted tourist attractions for the locations ‘lucky’ enough to already host them.
I walk the dog and listen for the heavy, trumpet – shaped bloombells to land on the carpet they make. Purple droplets. There are rituals and myths about good luck in exams at those unis and schools with trees in the grounds. The colour is amazing this year – the drought makes the trees desperate to seed and seed needs bees and bees, well bees are where the magic happens aren’t they?
The rest of the year the trees are anonymous in the city. Green among the many greens we take for granted but for this one wonderful month these jacaranda trees invade our senses and give any cherry blossom a hard run for title of most beautiful.
I used to envy the Japanese their Hanami season – picnicking under cherry blossoms. Cherry blossoms are a perfect symbol for so much of Japanese culture. Haiku poetry, zen embrace of the now, a reverence for natural beauty, a deep understanding that striving for perfection is misguided. Ah – Cherry blossoms hanging on bare boughs, scenting warm air, and driving spring’s lusts back into our blood. All so very elegant, exuberant, sensual and ephemeral.

Here are our own zen muses. Jacarandas in bloom interrupt routines and demand enjoyment. They invite you to find a blanket and some food and drink and relax, staring at the glory of the sky through an impossible colour.  I’d rather they weren’t an import but life is no longer a game of perfect, it must be dealt with in the reality of here and now not just what could or should be. A blooming Jacaranda now is worth any number of Cherry blossoms that never seen. No passport required.