Kiwi On The Loose

Hi faithful followers.

I am sorry that I have not been more active of late. I remain a compulsive communicator AND John Foster I haven’t forgotten about the rest of the Doc Holiday story.

I do have some exciting things happening and I will get to sharing these. Its great to be back in New Zealand and to have a job. I will never tire of saying that. Paying bills is a spiritual experience.

Being back at Kamo Intermediate and in the saddle I can see my perceptions from afar regarding me not being able to start @ the beginning of the year were askew. And I am glad about that. I have/had given a lot of me to the school since 1998. A little older and wiser now, I work to live and not live to work. I have many projects in the fire as it were, and the least of which is definitely not being the best me that I can be. Being a good you seems to come easy to some, for me I struggle with organising my shoes, or keeping to yet another filing system……but I know I am a good teacher, and its great to be back around students and to share the adventure of learning with them. Some of the world’s inhabitants and its management types have this propensity to want everyone to be the same somehow, while professing the virtue of creativity and diversity. Language and practise don’t often line up or shape the practical, visible outworking of philosophical positions.
I am blessed to be working in an environment where I can be myself, as I try to be the best me I can.

I shall return.

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.

Well despite the business of life, I have just found an amazing little add on that will help me prattle on even more. Its called ScribeFire, and it works with FireFox. That’s an alternative browser to Internet Explorer. And much as I love Bill Gates, its less virus ridden and just different.
Well it’s Saturday and I have survived the week. HAD to cancel a trip South becoz of the weather, but will have a much needed time at home gathering my thoughts and energy for the week.

I think I will write something meaningful later.
I’d encourage people to read a comment on my previous blog made by Craig. Wise and inspiring words. Thanks Craig for y6ur responses.

There was a time when New Zealand held the Americas Cup, and even Dennis Connor and the New York Yatch Club gazillions and the legal wranglers couldn’t keep us from winning it. There is a Tutukaka connection here.When the defence before last was held in Auckland, New Zealand, the Tutukaka Yatch Club put in a bid the mount the challenge from here. It would have been amazing. In some ways I am so glad it didn’t happen. The lure of money doesn’t always result in development along environmentally conscious directions.

This is the speck of paradise where I am now living.

And I must confess I am living. Totally. In the sense of having a job, a regular income and being able to pay my bills and get out of debt.

As I think I stated in my last post about buying jandals, simple things hold a lot of pleasure in the face of a world that’s struggling with economic stability.

Last week I went for several evening walks down to the marina late at night and out to the breakwater. The reflections of the night lights on the water, the mullet jumping, the sights and sounds of boats at their mooring, all this is sensually captivating.

It’s  just lovely to immerse myself in at the end of long and hard days. I love the night and you can feel the marina a real sense of all the boats and bodies resting after a hard day in the elements and the sun.

29 Marlin have been caught and tagged or kept this summer so far.

It’s been a record year. The old timers are saying things like, “It hasn’t been like this since…”.

Zane Grey once went game fishing from here.

Interestingly enough, this season several punters have had injuries from Marlin swords after they have been landed. A rich mans occupational hazard I spose.

Being back in teaching is pretty consuming time wise, gratifying some days and down right frustrating on others. There are 31 students in my class. 9-10 year olds.

I am pleased that I see in myself a level of tenacity that I can only thank America for. You gotta do what you gotta do.

My working now is no longer because I have some need to prove, if only to myself that I can do it. I know I can do it. I found in America a confidence in my ability to survive and put into practice the well known ‘kiwi’ trait of versatility and of being ‘hard’ working.

And I thank those who allowed and helped me to do that.Not the least of which was Susan’s help and support.

Now I work to live. I have a purpose and getting through the tough stuff brings that grit I have discovered in myself to the surface.

That in itself is a simple thing again.

I want to build a base for my future, my future with Susan, my kids, and so you do what you gotta do. That’s motivation enough.

So when the few kids in my class are not tuning into the programe, I simply remember what I am trying to do here, why and for whom I am trying to do it, and I grit my teeth, take a deep breathe and say it again…….or wait until those off the programe get back on it.

These are simple things and I am a slow learner, but I get the message in the end.

Simplicity brings happiness.

I am a very happy man and excited about the future.

The best I believe is yet to come.

Well I noticed when I bought them they were called THONGS. Strike me pink what’s happeneing. I liked them beingg jandals, a thong is something….well eeerrrr. Let’s just not go there.

I have nearly been backl one month from my American experience. Yes my heart is still there with Susan, AND so are a pair of leather jandals I rather liked.

They are either in California or they feel out of my luggage when it all got smashed b y the lovely airline guys.

So I have been walking in bare feet since I got back. It’s been to hot for shoes anyway.

SO today, I went and got some things and among the treasures was a new pair of jandals. TWO pairs in fact. It was a buy one get one free scenario. So now I have two nice pairs of leather jandals. NO more wincing on the stones as I cross the roads at the marina.

It’s been very good for me. Once up in the mountains and later @ Paonia I meet some people who thought I needed to wear bare feet more so I would settle into America better, so I would be grounded there.

I tried to do it as much as I could.

Even had a snow session walking to the dumpster and back.

All I can say is that man, frost bite must be one painful experience.

And so life goes on. It’s Valentines Day and Susan and I are apart but there is a beautiful and strongly woven thread between us stretching across the ocean.

I survived my first week back at the chalk face.

I should be better this week in my flash new jandals.

Can anyone be really scary in bare feet!

Happy Valentines Day to all the lovers and best friends out there.

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.

Well this is my final time on the Mac before I pack it up to take it home to New Zealand.

So I am sitting here with many mixed emotions. This image which I took today at our favourite Vietnamese Resturant symbolises my American experience really.

It’s fierce because America whether it realises it or not is a war zone. Be it in reality somewhere in the world, or ideologically with itself in politics, or the battle against illegal immigrants. America has teeth barred like a snarling dog, and I have felt them. I felt welcomed by people here, the wonderful people I have met and got to know, people who want me to stay, but as a nation, the rules and regulations, they are as unfriendly and unwelcoming as this dragon.

And I have felt a general state of unhappiness with the way things are among people themselves, not just at a political level, but with their lives.

Its a busy place, but not happy busy. (And I full well realise that I have only touched a speck of this huge place, however I do believe I have experienced a broad general representation of the country)

People are pretty much the same all over…………perhaps even worse….or perhaps even more wrapped up in survival than I have seen.

This picture represents the diversity of this place, as well as the creations it has spawned. It’s kinda like a Klingon, or some on the bridge of Starship Enterprise.

In reality, I am loathed to leave because in its own way I have become fascinated by the place.

It has so changed me. Possibly not in ways I have even fully comprehended myself or how Americans think it might change me.

But I have a love for this place, as well as a desire to escape it while I can.

In these uncertain times the hum drum of a job is a luxury I welcome.

The wheels of a regular existence, and the familiarity of the soil you grew out of seem mighty fine.

AND driving on the other side of the road, that’s gona be interesting..since my brain has adjusted.

So before I fall asleep at the keyboard, best I do what I don’t really want to and pack up the computer for the flight home.

I wont be in this space perhaps ever again.

This has been a rich time, I time I ave no regrets about and a time that I think will have been the makings of me.

I will say more from the other side.

Thanks America for teaching me so much, thanks to all the wonderful and beautiful people I have met. Thanks to Pablo’s for the most awesome coffee.

Thanks to Susan for taking me to neat places and spaces….and our journey is not ending here.

I will miss the sky and the light of the sun here…………….

Yes I will miss the little bit of America I have lived in.

Gona do it now and turn off the switch.

KiwiVagabond over and out.

He’s going home.

Well Happy Christmas that’s gone and Happy New Years that’s gone but will keep happening for another 361 days.

On the other side of these holidays I wish the excitement could have lasted longer. Bring back 3 day celebrations like in the real olden times. Though I enjoyed them, the build up and all that, going to friends places, the decorative atmosphere everywhere, the days themselves passed with me in solitude, thinking as usual, but happy. I like time alone,

BUT perhaps being alone on Christmas and New Years isn’t something I want to do too often.

Stranger in a strange land, I will find those who are alone and invite them to my humble table at such festive times.

AND

though socialism may get the bad press in America, the land of opportunity, the  home of capitalist crashes and wonders, (and I don’t even know if this has anything to do with socialism or if its just plain good sense), I like the way in NZ we have two statutory days off at Xmas and New Years. Which most people enjoy.

That don’t happen to everyone in this great and blessed land. It seems time may stand still on those actual celebratory days and then its back to the grindstone/treadmill for workers and the driven. The blessed middle class. Perhaps Obama or some wise person will put an end to this madness.

More time off may be the luxury of the wealthy and economically unchallenged. Or the sane.

Nope. America never stops. It’s a 24 hour going concern.

When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn.

Forgive my sarcastic sentiments, I am reflecting on my time here.

I am on the eve of leaving and returning to one of the blessed nations on earth, my home soil, hills, salt water , rivers and mountains. Aotearora/New Zealand. AND a job.

I will struggle with serious rejection issues incurred by this land of the free. It cost me $300  US, thats nearly $570 NZ,  for me to get a piece of paper telling me what I already knew about applying for an extension and no I couldn’t stay in USA  for another 6 months.

I am angry and will probably stay angry about that, and what really irks me is that any attempt to come back to USCIS about the reasons they gave that cost 300 buks to write out in the denial letter would not move a speck of emotion in the organisation OR find any chinks where they might think, yes he’s right, we have misleading forms to fill in.

The American Federal agencies have a jadedness to people, there are just so many, you feel like a number when you go there, the experience can strip you of human touch.

Ho HUM….it’s just part of the American way. Like it or lump it..You are just another person in the line and there are many behind you, and coming tomorrow and the next day and the next.

The assumption is that all comers are leaches on the system. Some want to give. I did. I could have been a great advocate for America. A PR bonus in fact.I see good here as well as the stupidity.

Individuality reigns supreme in America, if you want to express yourself, or carry a gun, be a crazy on the Colfax bus, have a choice of salad dressings, or become a millionaire. But it doesn’t reign supreme in places where it should, places where you should feel like you are being treated like an individual. Like governmental agencies and airports.

In that De Caprio movie ‘Blood Diamonds’, they had this term, TIA which means ‘this is Africa’, you know banana republics and the politics of graft and corruption …………well in my book TIA will also mean this is America. Nothing surprises me.

AND yet I can see what makes this country potentially a great place again.

Some people are looking for answers in all the wrong places.

So that my gut spill of grrrrrrr against the place I have grappled with, loved and come to understand a bit. ( I can’t say understand  a lot, to give credence to the millions of thinking/processing miles my brain and heart have done as I have walked and rode the buses, because some will say, what do you know ‘kiwi’.)

Perhaps they are right, and I have no right to think or form any opinions about America becoz I ain’t one.

BUT hey, I am going home, to a job. That in itself in these perilous times will be a luxury.

AND I will go home a different beast.

Gona be funny though.

I used to have  fridge magnet that said, ‘You can’t scare me, I have kids’.

Well I have a few new versions, that I will ponder when I am confronted by wanabe gangster types in NZ who grow larger thru intimidation type looks and walks and words and dress styles……………..and copy American styles from TV, music and movies

I might get badges that say…………’you can’t scare me, I have riden the Colfax buses’………..or ‘you can’t scare me, I have lived in America for 8 months’………..or ‘you can’t scare me, I seen real black people’. (and they ain’t all gangsters)

Yes going home is gona be funny. The reverse might happen. I will do NZ /America comparisons in real time now.

Living here has changed me inside, its been great. Quite apart from the awesome people I have meet and come to know.

Just looking at the mountains, seeing the land just spreading out forever from the window of the plane in every direction..

Seeing the iron work, faux finishes and tiling in America. The unique trucks purpose built. Massive antique shops, AND The Home Depot. (tool paradise)

Seeing people who are just the same externally as New Zealanders commuting home at dusk, but have the internal characteristics of having  grown in different soil.

Yes this has been awesome for my own growth.

I wonder if I changed anything in America just by being here. That smile, that touch.

Leaving is tinged with a not wanting to go, I know I haven’t got the full scoop of this country.

Don’t think I am far off though.