I can't wait for the next Underbelly Bazaar where I can shimmy my sequined booty to my heart's content.

Dancing is how I connect my head to my body. The work I do is entirely intellectual. My body just sits in a chair and I curse it when it seizes up and causes me pain in retaliation for sitting hunched over a keyboard all day.

Belly dance reminds me that there is a graceful, flexible and sensual body hanging off the end of my neck and connects my brain back to my physical self. I love feeling the stretch and play of my muscles, the wobble of a good shimmy, the strength and grace of my posture. I love losing myself in the music.

It makes me love my body for what it is. I appreciate the strength of my thighs because they are the foundation for all my moves. I love the curve of my belly and the way my bum jiggles when I shimmy. I love the roundness of my hips and the way they accentuate my moves. Flat abs? Who needs 'em?

I love that if I set my mind to it, I can seduce the 'Exit' sign right off the wall. That I can dance as good as chocolate sauce tastes. That a friend once told me that she thought I was having an orgasm onstage because I looked like I was enjoying what I was doing so much.

But it's not just what the dance does for me.

For our last class of 2002, my teacher put on Shakira's 'Wherever, Whenever' and the whole class sent up the video and danced moves that would make Shakira alternately blush or go green with envy. We laughed and messed about and played and danced and danced and danced.

It was utter bliss.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is ultimately what it is all about.

Here's to bliss, sequins and shaking your booty like there is no tomorrow.

The light here is astonishingly clear. Free of much of the pollution that fills the atmosphere of the northern hemisphere from centuries of burning coal and combustion engines and fumes. This is not to say we don't have pollution problems, but the light, the atmosphere, here has been spared to a much greater extent.

For painters and photographers, the light here can be revelatory. It unearths colours and transforms the landscape. It is clear and harsh and bright and unforgiving. My uncle, a landscape painter, paints skies so improbably blue that it looks like artistic license. It's not.

You become so used to the clarity, the amazing vividness of light, that when it changes, it can be quite a shock.

I hadn't seen light like I saw on Monday morning for almost 20 years.

I wish I hadn't seen it at all.

The light glowed like illuminated honey.

It was glorious. The air was almost pink with it. The world was washed in gold.

It was heavy with the smell of burning.

It is bushfire season.

Victoria is burning.

Twenty years ago, bushfires tore through Victoria and South Australia, killing 70 and destroying thousands of homes. The worst of it occurred, perversely enough, on Ash Wednesday.

Ash Wednesday no longer has religious significance for many people here.

Those who remember it talk of Ash Wednesday in hushed tones. Of the nightmare images in the papers and on the news. Of the hopelessness of fire fighters and the heroism of volunteers. Of the hatred of the terrible people who light these things because they are compelled to do so.

I was a little girl during Ash Wednesday. I remember standing at the end of my street at night watching the nearby mountains limned by flame. I tasted the smoke. I saw ash in thick drifts like snow on the ground the next morning.

I held my breath one afternoon as I realised the mushroom cloud of smoke I could see from the playground was behind my own house and I cried, imagining the panic of our pet dog trapped in our backyard.

I watched in mute horror as hot fierce northerly winds lifted the soil from burnt out fields and carried it over the city in black rolling clouds that seemed straight out of a Hollywood studio. I watched the winds tear the guttering off the school buildings and rattle the windows until they nearly shattered.

Pundits speak gravely of the terrible drought we are experiencing now. About how dry the land is.

About how we haven't seen conditions like this since Ash Wednesday.

Victoria is burning.