Kiwi On The Loose

I apologise to my followers and myself for not writing more in what seems like a very long time. The truth is that I have been writing lots, just not to the blog.
That will change as now I have Scribefire on my new mac book pro here at school and I will blog away and get around the net blockade. Man that sounds exciting, what a word, b l o c k a d e. Love it, conjures up many stories in my imagination. Swashbuckling stuff with a beauty under my arm, which I already have. Note its not saying I have a beautiful armpit, BUT that I have a beauty under my arm.
I have been working on various projects but the exciting one is a book aptly called Blind Man,s Bluff. It is a collection of images from my times in America and New Zealand.
Check it out, here’s a link. It would make a unique and excellent present. http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/772941
I am really excited about this book and the others I am working on. I have always wanted to write and so I am.
The preview is only 15/32 pages. Take a look and leave a comment there or here.
Shameless self promotion I know. But it seems to be the way of it. The squeaky wheel and all that………..

This is a story I want to tell, and will tomorrow. It’s late and I have been watching The Patriot which was on TV by coincidence. I will try not to get disillusioned by Mel’s latest womanising.
This is a teaser for the Doc Holiday story. It’s not actually his grave, becoz for reasons that will be revealed, it is hidden. But it’s the same cemetery.
To be cont’d.

It’s Saturday morning and here I sit.
No matter where you live on the planet, and perhaps its an urban planet dwellers trait, Saturdays are just so wonderful.
We got thru the week. Survived another 5 days of work. Maybe had another WHEW! payday experience with your bank acc. I sure am glad to have a job.

While I was in America I realised that Friday nights and Saturdays and Sunday afternoons all felt the same as here in NZ. I had always wondered if they would. Such are the things I wonder about.

Friday nights in Denver just felt like Friday nights in Whangarei, on the other side of the world. In the air you could feel the relief of the weeks passing and time for yourself without having to worry about work in the morning. It was party time.
There is a sense of WHEW! in the air.
Freedom.

Saturday mornings were similar in Denver but not as marked, possibly because any day or night of the week there are just so many people out and about. Denver is a seething mass of humanity most anytime. And it’s not even the largest of American cities!

Sunday afternoons in Denver however were so like in New Zealand. I don’t think it was just me. I can remember heading back down into Denver with Susan from playing in the mountains. In the late afternoon sun even the freeway was permeated by happiness and a kind of slow motion vibe. You could so feel it. It was like the same song was playing in travellers internal radio stations.

It was the same kind of happiness that I remember feeling sitting in the backseat of the car as a kid coming back from the beach after a Sunday afternoon with Mum and Dad. I had been in the sun, and dreaming about girls while lying on my beach towel, and looking out past Rangitoto towards the open sea of the Hauraki Gulf, watching the yachts in the sea haze and warm wind. Dreaming and happy. Life was a breeze then when you think about it.

Magic I guess describes that feeling. School was still fun, there were girls and games at school, so the last few hours of freedom were great and more linked to a favourite Sunday evening TV show. Slowing down the inevitable slide into another Monday wasn’t a huge worry.

Wow what a blessed childhood when I think about it!

And as I grew up and even as life got more complicated as it does, Sunday afternoons still felt the same. (but with the additional dream of afternoon delight or skyrockets in the night)

The Sunday afternoon feeling or vibe does seem to slow time down and radiate all of our dreams for a life of weekends and three day work weeks or no work at all. It’s like the Tantric Yogi slowing down the heart rate.
You could see it on the freeway. Cars with bikes, boats, full of happy people just slowing down the inevitable arrival of Monday by not thinking about it to hasten its arrival. Its like there is a collective consciousness of everyone to milk the last hours of freedom on the weekend and keep the contentment of what they had just done to revel in their freedom.

And so we are happy.
In the setting sun behind us in the west. Or where ever we are heading or where ever we are facing.

Can anyone relate to this?

I am grappling at words to describe it.
As I write my flat-mate Paul is mowing the lawns and the smell of fresh cut lawn makes this all the more real. It’s a weekend smell. It’s almost primal.

In some ways I see life in freeze frame moments.
It’s like you are heading down the freeway (motorway in NZ speak) and you see a face in a passing car, faces, families, lovers or mates. The guys all coming back from a bonding trip. The camera shutter clicks and you study those faces, or scenes. The head sleeping against the passenger window. The glow of time out side and together, or against the elements, time on the earth.

You know part of what they are feeling. It’s so real.

And so the camera in your head captures, or observes many things everyday.
SOMEHOW you know a slice of what that person, people, or situation might be feeling because you have had freeze frame moments with yourself.

There is a collective consciousness that really if we tapped into it, it would unite us as humans.

Perhaps a campaign on the Sunday afternoon bliss could unite us.

Or building up a collective bank.

So we understand each other and identify with our like experiences as humans.

But hey, and I regret to be negative, it’s just like the trench wars of world war one.
They sang carols at Christmas, played soccer in no mans land..then went back to killing each other.
Fellow brothers, fathers, husbands, uncles, lovers of someone.

Why is that?

You would think that in all our technological nirvana we would understand and empathise more with others.

BUT………………..

I wish the world could live in the ‘weekend bliss’ state more.

And I know full well, having a weekend and being able to have that ‘luxury’ is a blessing that I have done absolutely nothing to deserve.

None of us deserves anything…hey if evolution is how we got here, why do we have any concept we deserve anything. Where do rights come from? We are accidents and the fusion of time & chance.

Why else do we kill the unborn and each other. We don’t really matter

Better go do some housework.
Pauls finished the lawns.

And I am in too deep.

It’s Saturday morning.

It seems that I could write a few these ‘It’s been a while’ kinds of entries.
Since I have started back teaching, with a class of 31 special kids all differently grown and all differently wonderful…..I haven’t had a lot of time to think about anything except getting thru the next day.
In these early stages of putting a class together it’s a matter of routine. routine, routine.
For those who know me please don’t laugh.
I struggle to have routines for my own life.

In some ways my life at the moment can feel a bit like this guy that I snuck a photo of on a bus in Denver. You are just hanging on and taking the ride.You know the basic destination and are keeping your eyes on where you are going and where you may need to get off.
I know of others who are doing exactly the same.
In some ways in these times and living in a world changing @ an exponential rate, I wonder if this is not going to be the picture of the future for more of us who in the west have had the luxury of determining our security, lifestyles and futures.
@ least on the bus we are moving, or going somewhere, or taking the initiative to.

Yes @ 52 I crave peace, security and tranquility more than ever in my life. BUT, I can’t help but wonder if the times of being able to control and determine our futures and lifestyles within some kind of predictability has passed and we are in a new era of needing to hang on for the ride and a total rethink regarding how we foresee our futures and what they might even look like.

AND  when you really think about it, it has been some kind of Western luxury that we have even been able to do that. Let’s also not forget that being able to control you future or lifestyle has been the good fortune of those who have some degree of power to make choices and the resources available to make choices within the currency of their culture or environment. That could read ‘money’. Tho I regret to use the word, because being able to control our futures is not just about money and access to it. IT’s about mind set.

In other ways the ability to control your life circumstances and have some input into determining the shape of your future is a comparatively new historical phenomenon.
That it exists as a potential for you @ all (if you are in the Western world) does not mean it will be there forever. That is the nature of history. It has no master.

Things change beyond our control.

I cannot help but feel like a spoiled brat in comparison to the Kurdish widow of a murdered husband and father, when I get all churlish about my future, what it might be, should be and what I need to do to secure it. Really it is a somewhat arrogant and luxurious thought.

I am not advocating that we don’t plan or have dreams or be positive and turn in doomsdayers. I am merely challenging the assumption that we have right to a future styled ‘x’ or ‘y’. That is a luxury that history may be removing from us.And if we do have that kind of future it is a blessing most of the world never experience.

Only 5% of the worlds population has running hot water, or perhaps even running water on tap.
I do not think my logic is that far from the truth here.

The luxury of life changing choice and self determination has been ripped away from so many people in so many cultures by their circumstances which have not of their choosing.
AND in the West wings we whine and dine out on our dreams and plans for security, and having a future. That is a luxury denied the majority of the worlds inhabitants.

Then we have people like Madhoff who have fed their own greed beyond greed on peoples desire for security and the increase of their own wealth. Now that is so not wrong being wise with what you have, but my point more lies in the fact that Madhoff, (who deserves an existence he has no power over) had a huge amount of money to steal from people.

It existed.

Which he did and in his own greed he took down many charitable institutions that were good for mankind and individuals personal dreams of retirement and future security.

In some ways Madhoff typifies perhaps the state that we have gotten to, but his is extreme I admit. If I am honest, I know I am capable of this kind of greed.

How much is enough? What could he have possibly done with all that money and with not even a conscience about the lives he was destroying.

50 Billion Dollars!

And so in conclusion I pose the thought that perhaps the world is going to change drastically. Perhaps we are not going to be able to create a secure retirement plan, and a life of golf ,sea cruises and trips abroad. Even now those are perhaps the reality for a small percentage of older people.

Perhaps the reality is going to be far more earthy and we will be working to the grave just like many of our forefathers. Just like cultures who have not had the luxury of western greed and priviledge.

Sure we have had freedom, individualism, free enterprise and all its virtures and we have built some kind of shrine around these things and attempted to make them our birthright forever.

I wonder what joy, wisdom and character we have missed out on learning from those who have not been so fortunate.

What do you think?

I’d like to know.