Kiwi On The Loose

I was busy with my work at lunchtime today, when a package arrived for me, delivered by my daughter. The courier guy knows she is my daughter so saved an extra stop by delivering it to her work. One of the benefits of being a legend in my own mind or maybe my daughter is the legend in his. Whichever way something lovely crashed into my day unexpectedly.
I hadn’t ordered anything from anyone, I was on a pretty thin line of credit while I was saving.

There it was.
A large parcel wrapped in that brown paper that always feels and smells like an old childhood friend.
My heart smiled. This was a surprise indeed.

I found my way into the wrapping and once inside realised it was from my wife.
and it was a Fathers Day gift and she was 7000miles away.

Yes my eyes watered.
 A gift that had begun it’s journey so far away in a thought and ended up in my hands was special indeed.

I read the card, my eyes resting on every lovely word.I felt so loved.

Suddenly I realised that I had forgotten it was Fathers Day, that I was a father and that it was a Fathers Day for my own father as well. Whew!
It was Friday and I still had time to get a card and send it to him Fastpost before 5pm.

Not only had the parcel left me feeling warm and loved, it saved me from forgetting my own fathers special day.

My Dad if fact is always special so no extra special day is needed, but I in the chaos of my life and love, I so lose track of things like Fathers Days and birthdays. Call it what you will, I know it’s not that I don’t care, it’s just the wiring in my brain that don’t help me keep track of things like others.

So come on Fathers Day, and I know two Dads who will be really happy.
Me and mine.

A lovely Friday surprise.
Thanks Q.

I began writing this several weeks ago……………..but I am still gonna post it. Why waste feelings and good thoughts right?

Several weeks ago I began to write………..

When I first arrived back in New Zealand after several lovely weeks in America with Susan during July, the weather was sunny, and I found myself most days commenting on the gorgeousness of it all. And it really was, you got into your car at the end of the day and could have easily done a cat nap in the warm sun right then and there. Bliss. It felt good.
Now I know that rain is a part of the whole winter thing, and it’s kinda like duh! what did you expect, when it does rain……..but  I get tired of the rain and then feel guilty for feeling that because that’s what winter is and the earth needs it anyways, AND it’s really been light rain. Compared to Pakistan anyway.
BUT it gets me down. I don’t think I have SDS, (seasonal disorder syndrome), but then again maybe everyone gets that in winter. I wonder what they call what you get in summer?

Several weeks later…………….(Sept 1st)
I woke this morning to spring. Actually it felt like spring last week, BUT today it really felt like spring. My mind even felt bouncy. It was Sept 1st however, the official beginning of spring I hear on the radio. The freishias are out, the daffodils, and other springy things are emerging from the sleeping earth. It is wonderful. Maybe I am emerging from a long sleep as well.

Last weekend I started spring cleaning my home. That felt really great. I had felt paralysed for many weeks under the weight of the to do list that I carry around in my head all the time. (Can anyone relate to that?) Nothing was really happening that I needed to. Part of me was being kind to myself and realising yes, this is winter and its okay to feel like this when its raining more, the suns out less, and you can’t get outside to mow the lawn, do some gardening. It’s okay. Several times I actually sat down and read a chapter of a book. I was quiet and prayed. I wrote some reflections on what I was feeling and dreaming about. IT FELT GOOD.

After my spring clean, which began in the kitchen, and stretched outside to the lawn, I have felt energised to carry on. Spring is here, inside where I live as well as outside.
That don’t change the issues I face or the person I have to live with every day (myself), but it does seem easier somehow.

I find myself smiling, and the yellow daffodils give me hope.
And the freishias, they smell as beautiful as ever.
I found one growing thru the weeds on the back lawn.

Beauty growing thru the weeds. A message from God for me.

I haven’t been able to leave America, and in truth I don’t really want to, but leave I must. There are bills to pay and a job to keep…………..leaving is proving difficult. There isn’t a seat on the plane. As a little kiwi guy who hasn’t spent a lot of his life flying…….I am having to contemplate my first sleep at the airport, missing flight experiences. To make matters worse they have happened at LAX……an airport many people avoid in their world travels. Thankfully I have a good friend in LA with a heart of gold. So Echo Park here I come and a couch to sleep on instead of a cold hard marble floor. LAX is deliberately made inhospitiable and inaccessible I am told by locals so that the homeless wont sleep there. And of course there in the terrorist aspect. BUT I did sleep in LAX once on my first trip to USA and I turned up for my flight but on the wrong day……….that was in 2007 and it seems to have changed since then…….changed a lot. But in all things there is some good and so here I am with my rock star mate Brad outside his home in Echo Park. Better to sleep on a friends couch than the floor of LAX the good       book says……
I may be on that plane tonight…….leaving America again.

That makes a nice change from song titles like leaving Ireland……..in past times. While I am glad to be heading back to a job and our own home……….this trip has found Americans weaving their way into my being lots more. I have seen the people for a change…….all the other strangeness has faded into the background more. (I know its there tho} Driving down from visiting friends in the mountains yesterday…..I actually forgot for a while I was somewhere different…………..I could have been home. Not coz I thought it was the same……..I had just stopped making comparisons. All the time. Waiting for a flight to LAX……………. Being with Susan is like being home…….

This is my third visit to the States. To recap for some, I spent 9 months here in 2008, was here previously in 2007 when I met Susan, and here I am in 2010, now married to Susan and over here in the school holidays. As soon as I landed this 3rd time I felt a change. America is probably still the same but I have changed. This time I have found myself not having to figure it all out so much…….like why is it so different, what makes it all tick. I have partially dealt with or made huge inroads on those questions, now I have found myself just enjoying the people and seeing life beyond the politics of America. I have really really loved this trip and the people I have met.
Of course again there has not been enough time, with Susan my wife, or time to explore the vastness of America. I have found myself falling more in love with this country and its people, beyond all the madness.
We have explored Austin and both really love it here ( I am writing this at the airport in Austin waiting for a flight back to Denver or somewhere ). Texas has always attracted me since coming here in 2007, Dallas is flat, BUT Austin has hills…………..and Austin has the Saltlick………..one of the top 10 BBQ eating places in USA. Absolutely awesome awesome food…….down home cook’n……..and tasting so good it etches itself into your taste buds……….that’s even without doing the eat all you can deal. We were much more restrained. I will write more about Austin……..but heres a few images from the story.

In New Zealand it is winter. We are approaching the longest day and to be honest, while it’s dull and grey some days, it’s nothing compared to some countries in winter. New Zealand winters are tame as. Thinking in terms of emotional health, I really struggle in winter. I need the sun, and lots of blue sky. While I enjoy the rain and being inside in the warm, soup and a warm bed, winter really challenges my spirit. I am not the kind of guy who has to be doing stuff, so the still aspect of winter isn’t what effects my emotional health, its something with the light and the mood of the earth in winter.
I have moments hanging out the washing where I feel the sleepiness of the earth, that stillness in the trees as they sleep, the grass slowing down, in fact everything is slowing down, thoughts and feelings, the whole of creation is wanting to sleep.
Tis a good time for thinking and writing.

I have found myself over the years so believing that every weekend should be a three day weekend. Believing because after a three day weekend, apart from thinking Tuesday is Monday and turning up for things on the wrong days for a while until the penny drops, believing because it feels so good. How did people get on in the old days when you never stopped work?
That’s one of the things I love about God. The command to rest on one day of the week was sourced in common sense and a need to replenish the batteries, and for our own benefit as human beings. It was not some law by a megalomaniac creator wanting our homage………….
Three day weekends just seem to have that blend of time for everything.
Saturday on the jobs around home you need to do.
Sunday perhaps doing stuff you need to do with people and…….
Monday just for the luxurious things you would like to do……………

There is nothing like the feeling of Friday night or waking on the Saturday morning knowing you have an extra day………..and then there is the deliciousness of Sunday night knowing that tho it’s raining and the rubbish trucks still gonna come by, you don’t have to go to work.
Now I happen to enjoy my job as a teacher and 9/10 days i am okay with trotting off to the treadmill of necessity, BUT the luxury of that extra day is wonderful………..a day to lavish on sitting and reading, or doing what you want because you have had two other days to work on list reduction.

So my thanks to the Queen of England, and the Commonwealth and all that! Eh wot.
Happy Birthday to You.

Getting through to the end of a hard week I could think of a number of things I wanted to do as soon as the work week was over and I stepped thru my front door.

The first was to spend some time with my best friend if she was still up. I knew she had to get up and work early.
If that wasn’t able to happen plan two moved to top place.
COFFEE made in my own coffee machine.
I had slept in this morning and had wanted to have one ever since……
The other option was to head down town and take some photos, to do something for my creative soul.

So what happened?
I managed to spend some time with Susan before she hit the hay.
I made the coffee. And drank it.
I got ready to head down town to get some photos, and fired up my MP3 player to listen to some lectures I had downloaded, and that were so unlocking doors for me.
OFF I went…(after washing some dishes and enjoying the sun in my back window while I worked)
Here is something from that unwind time.
Doing something we enjoy and that gets us out of our weekly after work space, is good for you.It seems so basic but it’s what I don’t seem to do enough.
Healthy lifestyle is about what we do as much as it is about what goes into us, AND it’s not just about exercise in the normal sense.
It’s about how we exercise freedom with our choices, and choices that we make based on our knowledge of our needs and what will help us me emotionally healthy.
I am glad I went out.
Now I am off to the gym!

Beauty Therapy in a nutshell
(a muse)

I find myself hungry for beauty.
Not the kind you might think.
Beauty has many faces & unfortunately
the deepest & rarest beauty is born through pain.
Birth is never a painless process.
Ask any woman or polished gemstone.
Beauty sneaks up on me & jumps out from behind doors.
She smiles at you in strange places.
I know this.

The shell I live in does not totally define me,
but it can limit me.
There’s more than meets the eye to the man in the mirror.
I can see who I really am,
who I really can be, who I have rarely been.
I want to live longer, taste life even more deeply,
to love & laugh at myself & the world,
to finally give up being what I am not.

Beauty is not only skin deep.
The peanuts will have to go!

© BlindPoet
June 2010

My wife who is an American, (and I love that connection) recently pointed out how kiwis are in the habit of saying, ‘yeah, yeah yeah”, in quick succession when in conversation. And just like when you buy a new vehicle,  and suddenly everywhere you look you see one like yours, as I have listened to kiwis talk, suddenly we are all doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeh. It is really really true. I just smile in wonder at my wife’s observant nature to notice this phenomenon.
It had been pointed out to me (not by Susan) as well the verbal habit of the vascilating kiwi to include all options in discussing a decision or answering a question involving wanting to do something.
Yeah, well nah, ahh maybe……..
I am amazed at number of times I have heard this said.
A kid did it to me at school today and I just laughed and said arh well which one of those is the answer.

Another habit not just limited to kiwis is the saying of ‘anyway’ when we are in conversation. I am writing this in Mc Donalds and the lady in the cubicle next to me just did it.
Anyway…………….like what does that mean……..anyway
Now that I am a year older and tougher skinned, it don’t bother me but before I used to think am I going on, umm is this subject boring, or do you need to go somewhere……………
or like …………before the anyway………….nothing made any sense…

anyway

What do you think?