Kiwi On The Loose

Well here I am back in the country of my mother. And my father. And it feels just like that. This was where I was born, it’s the soil I was planted in, and started growing in. These are familiar skies, seas. The familiar smells in the summer night as you drive home in the darkness with the windows all down. I cannot believe how much I felt that in coming home. This is my place and where at this point in my life I need to be.

I didn’t get all emotional landing @ Auckland or anything like that. It has been a wave that has slowly rolled over me as a realisation that things are familiar again, and I am relaxing into ‘the’ familiar. I honestly hadn’t realised how much I loved ‘familiar’ or how much I needed ‘familiar’.

So from this side of the Pacific and on reflection I can see that, yes I like adventures, yes I want to travel, yes I am a vagabond, BUT there is nothing like home, and the garden of my birth.

Always being lost is no fun.

This puts a lot of my obvious struggles with America in perspective, and you may have picked up on that struggle in my writing.

Now I understand that I was screaming out for the familiar, I wanted to be @ home there, I wanted to feel the familiarity of home over there. It didn’t all seem so different in the TV programmes.

BUT it was!

So forgive me America.

And thankyou America, I learned much from you.

I LOVED my time there, this time in my 52 year old life, (even my struggles to make sense of it all) and now that I don’t have to worry about working illegally, or saying anything that US Imigration might see and think Hmmmm….that boy wants to stay here! and come knocking on my door, NOW I can say anything I like without the worry. The ever present fear.

When I return some day it will be with a new plan that will work becoz of what I have learned this time around.

Part of my heart, my life, is still in America.

It’s in the form of the person Susan, and it’s in the form of so MANY wonderful memories. It’s in the form of a future together that is developing it’s own unique shape.

Yes America is special to me.

Susan loves her country, and helped me discover a speck of it (and Fox LOL). Those are the memories, our travels and the places we took photos of together, the hikes, conversations and music on the freeway. Screams when I was on the wrong side of the road………….yes so many great memories.

More of this can be found here. Some of Graham’s America photos

The rest are HERE in various galleries

Susan’s photos of America & beyond, AND her take on New Zealand can be found HERE

There were times over there when people would ask where I was from and I would say New Zealand,  and they would say, wow………thats a beautiful country, and be thinking what was I doing there!

I would think or say……..looking around me….uh helloooooo……with panoramic arm gestures. I found America the land absolutely full of beauty, wonder and awe.

I hope to return there in a different format and with a stronger base to work from in New Zealand.

I wouldn’t change the experience for anything. I made many friends and met some wonderful wonderful people.

I also learned a lot about me, things that I can’t change and need to accept. AND things that I like about myself, and things I need to change.

I think too much ( trying to give it up), I experience life generally at a deep emotional, feeling level. I interpret the world thru my feelings. Hence the homeless, and the beggars posed issues for me. Peoples statements about ‘America the blessed’ posed issues for me.

I don’t think I am intense, just an over active mind.

Back home I hope to unpack some of my travels gently, and enjoy the new eyes I have for my mothers country. GOSH I even love the plain ole pinetree.

AND I am enjoying having a job and paying my bills. Such simple pleasures.

My hope for America is that she gets better economically by realising where the blessings really come from.

That it rediscovers the God of the founding Fathers……….and that His thoughts are not our thoughts.

God created us in HIS image, in America I think it’s more the other way around.

It was very cool last night to see the New Zealand Rugby Sevens team, moments after defeat 19-17 by England in Wellington, circle and kneel on the feild and pray. Now not all those guys will be people of faith, but they acknowledged something greater than themselves.

It was not just lip service.

America it seems to me is mostly full of lip service, not humility.

New Zealand is more of a Godless nation than USA with 3- 4% ever darkening the doors of any church, Shawn Hannity would hate it, we have had a liberal government for 10 years, we have a partially socialised political system but there are people here who love this place as much as any American.

Me included.

It is a quiet, deep and most time silent patriotism. BUT it’s there and we play our part on the world stage.

I found American styled patriotism pretty ugly because it has narrow vision and  is distorted, and has a bloated perception of it’s importance on the world stage. If it does have vision it is permeated by self interest and gain. Oh yes we appreciate that America exists, and our blood lies mingled on battlefields having fought together. We were in Veitnam, Korea………..and other greater wars.

New Zealand due to it’s geographical location has had to have ‘world vision’ to survive, and done a lot of thinking about our position relative to market places and economic powers in order to compete. ll that thinking gives use a perspective on ourselves.

Our little island.

I am glad to belong here.

Great to be back.

Stay tuned.

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