New Zealand Day 5

Today's my last day of travel in New Zealand, and I'm looking forward to the train trip. Six hours... six hours speeding down the coast, with the sea out my left window and the mountains out my right. But first I had to take a crack-of-dawn bus to Picton harbor, and there catch the train.

Bumbling around in my early-morning haze, I stumble out of the shower only to run (literally) into Mysterious Sleeping Boy, who tall and skinny and mumbles something to me with a British accent. I don't say anything back, but duck quickly into the room. Later on while I'm eating a bit of breakfast (fresh bread from the hostel-keepers. Fab), I decide to read the newspaper, and I guess I must have accidentally started making my inner-commentary *outer* at some point (I could have sworn it was in my head...), because soon I realize someone is chuckling at me. I look up to see Mysterious Sleeping Boy eating breakfast at the other end of the table. Turns out he's also taking the bus to Picton (which is the only reason he, too, is up at this ridiculous hour). We chat for a bit-- he studies "Maths" at University of Leeds...and that's about all I remember.

There were only four people on the entire greyhound bus to Picton, but Mysterious Sleeping Boy No-longer Sleeping Who Studies "Maths" at Leeds came to sit in my row anyway. I probably should have taken that as a cue to become his best friend or something, but it turns out I'm terribly shy after all, and I decide to stare out my window at the rolling hills and endless vineyards and daydream all the way to Picton. At which point we say goodbye. Goodbye. Sorry I was too shy to become your best friend. I guess I'm only good at handling crowds.

I had to kill a few hours there in Picton before the train came. I ended up sitting on a park bench talking to the ducks and seagulls (yes, I had a chat with them. No one else was around) and watching a storm come in over the harbor. Eventually I hear the train come rolling into the station, and I leap on board, prepared for six hours of daydreaming, breath-taking scenery, and relaxation. Again, I am lucky to have an entire carriage to myself, minus an elderly couple a few seats ahead. But she was friendly and he just slept the whole time. I don't think I can explain the beauty of that trip--not only of the outside world, but of the inner-workings too. I mean, that trip was sort of a metaphysical journey. I've done a lot of soul-searching on this brief, intense solo trek in New Zealand. And, as I suspect is the case for many people who are painfully analytic, the best soul-searching happens unexpectedly, and without prompting. It can never be named afterwards, either. The thing has just switched over, and it's only when you find yourself back amongst a network of people who know you well that these subtle and nameless changes--these imperceptible shifts of the soul-- become a little clearer. Here on the train though, I want to try and put my finger on what this thing is... for fear I'll lose it. It will be some time before I'm again in the company of people who really know me, after all.

I feel as thought I've been made whole again--a complete person--but I hadn't realized I was less than whole in the first place. Which is why it was shocking. It wasn't that fierce independence, that I'm My Own Woman sort of thing, either. I've had that before and thought that THAT was what it meant to be whole, or be a grounded, full person. But this...this took the form of a rather painful realization of my complete and utter dependence on the love I have received and continue to receive most undeservedly from many sources. It was as though the depth of love I have for friends, for family...for my God...and that they have for me... became physically real. It became manifest somehow in those hours- a tangible thing that swallowed me but then spit me out again.

When I was climbing that mountain, and when I was lost on it, I felt like I was drowning in the life and death of the forest-- the way it went on and on without me, and without any concern, knowledge, appreciation or apprehension of me, a person. All there was was life and death, and that was all that comprised reality. But of course that's false. There is an infinite and unnameable chasm between that sort of living and ours. I had to drink in the air of a brilliant sunset on the back of that train before I realized that I needed to be swallowed up in that cycle of life-death, decay, life... death-- only to come out on the other side and see that there is a profound difference between my be-ing and the sort of be-ing I encountered on that mountain. That sort of be-ing, I realized, has very little to do with the truth of who we are. It can't even begin to give voice to the difference. But we can. I can.