New Zealand Day 6: I leave today.
Slept last night at the cheapest hostel I could find, too tired to care about character and charm any more. The place was right by New Brighton beach, and was attached to an excellent Thai restaurant. The owners--who were from Thailand, in fact-- kept asking me if their Thai food was as good as or similar to the Thai food in America. Most curious...
Sunday morning I got up early to walk to the beach. The pier was lovely-- the sky and sea blue and blue again. I ate a traditional Australian/New Zealand breakfast treat: two pancakes drowning in maple syrup and powdered sugar, with grilled bananas and bacon between them. Sounds like something they'd have thought of in West Virginia already. It was delicious, but of course I wanted to crawl under the table and die after I'd eaten it.
After that I had a series of long, arduous, annoying and time-consuming hassles with public transportation in Christchurch that made me (i) really cranky, (ii) really late to catch my flight, and (iii) NOT a fan of Christchurch. I finally had to take a taxi to the airport, which set me back about 50 buckaroos. Adieu to you, too, New Zealand. Sheesh, I was cranky.
But once on the plane flying back over the deep crevasses, shadows and glaciers of the Southern Alps, the beauty of the country put me right as rain again. It happened too fast, though, and soon we were over the never-ending ocean. Sydney was quite literally a grey haven--cloaked in rainstorms and gloomy. Though a small rainbow did appear at the end of the tarmac just as we landed, which was nice.
And that was it. The end of New Zealand.
I'm sorry it took me three weeks to get it all out. I don't think I'll ever really understand or be able to satisfactorily process all that happened there. But thanks for giving me a venue to try, at any rate.
This week is my last week in Melbourne, already. I will try to post once more from Australia, but I am attending and giving a talk at a conference for the better part of this week, and I've got a million things to tie up before I leave for the Netherlands. But at some point I will try to explain a bit about this place. I will say that I have spent far too much money eating the most amazing food here, and seeing shows and drinking good wine and traveling, and making friends with the philosophers here. This is a fantastic city, and I am sad to be leaving it after such a short stay. Perhaps someday I'll make it back again.
July 6, 2008
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.
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.
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