Just before leaving [Cities and Memory]

A woman writes a message during her daily tram commute to work. Seemingly insignificant details, like selling a table or a couch, hide a deeply personal story about love, and the fragility of the hope for new beginnings. In these small, fleeting moments between home and work, she is rewriting her story, while the ordinary tram ride becomes the extraordinary vessel navigating the delicate space between now and tomorrow.

Just before leaving was created for Cities and Memory's Autumn Project, reimagining the sound of a Melbourne tram.

What is Art, in all the wrong places?

Characters who can't always be trusted. Because they often don't see the difference between sound and noise, between countryside and abandoned building, between fiction and reality.
I explore sound, speak languages and talk to strangers. This is my work.
AIR Member. www.cristinamarras.com

I hope you are feeling better today, my love, and I hope that this message will cheer you up.

I've just got on the tram at Flinders Street Station.

On the train it is impossible to ride, too many people, here on the tram I usually find a seat.

So, this week I'm going to the office Monday and Thursday instead of Wednesday and Friday,

and you will find this surprise message once you wake up in your part of the world.

From your last email I didn't really get why you were stressed.

Don't know, but I liked the bulletin for sailors, you know my soft spot for technical language.

Speaking of bulletin, it is almost snowing, biting cold and annoying on and off rain.

I try not to let it get to me, and the results are great thanks to the massive doses of

vitamin love that comes from your messages.

I keep a close eye on the supplier so he doesn't slack off and keep sending it.

I finally managed to sell the couch and tomorrow an old friend will come to get the dining table.

Family life goes on at an extraordinarily normal and happy pace.

I mean, all things considered. Sad friends, surprise friends, surprise mainly by the harmony

despite everything, and families and friends in Italy, waiting.

I decided to count the days until my departure, after all.

I'm definitely counting, but without anxiety.

I also count the days that have already passed and it seems huge.

Did we really last three months apart?

Did we really start this adventure patiently, without knowing how long we would have to wait?

Was our love strong enough to blind us and make the wait and the not knowing irrelevant?

My God, how good are we, my love?

How good are we?

I'm watching the freezing travellers, and enjoy the view from the window.

I'm surprised I haven't yet switched to the mode "goodbye landscape".

I don't know why, but this time, leaving Australia, I don't feel that dramatic sense of goodbye and

"who knows when I will see that wall, that building, that shop, that street again".

Sometimes I think I'm more attached to places than people.

Maybe because places are less likely to misunderstand.

They don't make demands or expect anything, but always wait there for you.

Well, unless they get demolished, and it happens a lot here in Melbourne.

Anyway, my stop is next.

I've got to get off.

Now that you're back at work, I'll have to wait until this weekend to find a moment

to call you and hear your voice.

I'm sending this now.

I love you.

Hold me tight.