April 30, 2005

Like moving underwater

That is the speed I have been going at today. Could be just a tickle of a hangover. But I think I may be burning out. No, just shifting down a gear. After a year of drifting on the wind like one of those little thistle fairies you blow and make a wish upon, I think it would be nice to settle gently to the ground. I have appreciated the time to rebuild, heal, and learn to laugh again by just being and doing without feeling or thinking as much as I am naturally inclined to do. No epiphany to declare. I think I have said all this before, perhaps in a less positive light. But walking round the Bot Gs this afternoon, forced to slow down due to my bung shin, I got a totally different perspective of the route I would normally run. I liked it. It has been a while since I have been through the gardens in the day, and I found it bedecked in Autumn, russets and ochres and golds, and the air had that lovely frosty, wood fire taste and scent. I savoured it all, let it sit on my tongue and dissolve. I even paused by the duck pond and watched a couple of well wrapped toddlers held up by mum or dad so they could fire bits of bread over the rails at the birds teeming in the water, emerald and indigo feathers flashing seductively. I was a spectator rather than an actor, and I found peace in that.

Winter is blowing in and I'd like to be still a bit more, be on my own a bit more, be enclosed in the bush a bit more, read a bit more, write a bit more, paint, maybe reflect a bit more. I think I may have reached the point where it is safe to reflect once more, and I can afford to slow to a walk, just every now and again.

April 29, 2005

Dreamin

I must be dreamin, or am I really lying here with you....

Just reminded myself of this really cheesy song mum used to sing on the karaoke set-up we had in our kind of basement/rumpus room Actually it was the song she was singing when we walked up to the front of the chapel at the funeral, which always really fucked me off because I liked the idea of walking up the aisle to it one day, as cheesy as it was. Never mind, the idea of eloping to Italy is looking more and more attractive the older I get. Or becoming a nun. I was talking to a friend about what great nuns we'd make yesterday. Not the hard ass type. The I'm so happy and love orphans so much I don't need sex type. Like Maria. Hmmm, well that didn't work out so good for her though did it.....

It's just after 5:40am and I'm wide awake with precious little to say. So blog it she says! Ridiculous. Ridicurous. Went to bed too early and apparently the onset of old-age brings with it a reduction in the requisite amount of sleep as well as the more familiar phenomenon of failing memory.

So the dream: Names shall remain confidential. But me, sister, old high school friend, contemporary flatmate, ex flatmate and another ex flatmate's current flatmate were trying to get South, and had missed the bus. Literally. So we magicked up a car. I'm really good at problem solving/taking charge in my dreams. The car was constructed out of those great big wooden bins that you empty fruit in to (like kiwifruit) and I felt kind of sorry for the guys that were trying to build them in my dream while I used my new found telekinetic ability to rip them to shreds and make what at first looked like a tonka truck, but when I brought out ex-flatmates current flatmate to show them it was this souped up jaffa red Delorian type puppy that for some reason I drove (ofcourse I drove) from the back seat. And I wheeled it out of the garage to Grease theme music. But instead of heading south to make our deadline (oh that's it I think we were going to catch the ferry, must be some abel tas flashback) we all headed to a fancy dress party on ice. In the jaffa red Delorian. That had magical items (stationery) in the ash tray. Which makes sense seeing as I don't smoke. I can't remember what I wore other than a blonde wig (how inspired considering) but I know ex-flatmate went as a lawyer and as part of his costume had prepared opening submissions for his own trial. Probably quite wise. There was a performance on ice (ofcourse) before the party began, some giant teenage boy with disproportionately large crane-like hands dancing around Walt Disney styles and then somewhere around this point I woke up as I think I'd been crushing my hand and had out of control pins and needless. Which I learnt playing Cranium the other night is also known as formication. Educational I know. The dream also carried the characteristic qualities of all my dreams with some baddies; me trying to blow shit up, usually the baddies, before people, usually my whanau, get hurt. The details are hazy.

Does anyone else try and change their dreams from inside, when they are not happy with the direction they are taking? I can't sleep all that deeply huh.....
Fuck - 6:20am. Might read my book for awhile.......

April 26, 2005

An indian princess

I just wrote a six page letter to Kel, coz I've been a bad ass sister and sent one letter in two months. Owch. Made me feel sad when I realised that.

Dad also got around to ringing me back on Saturday after maybe two months of little to no contact. It's not even like he's a bad dad, or I'm a bad daughter. We just don't really keep in touch that much these days. And then when you do talk, you are all out of practice and it is hard work and reinforces the distance between you. I think we both asked each other "So what is happening up there" and "what is happening in Wellington?" about three times. Then he put my stepmum on.

So I got my eclectic rag tag collection of writing paper out tonight, some of which I have had for probably 15 years or so, like care bears and shit, and nestled in with it were some photos mum had picked out to put on a photo board for my 21st. I haven't had the heart to mix them up with my other childhood photos. I hate having my baby photos. But I don't want to give them to dad to look after either. One of the 21st photos is of me at primary school with the characteristically bad hair I've had for the better part of my life, and it is my school's book fair day, and we were to come dressed as a character from our favourite book. I'm dressed up like Tiger Lily, the indian princess out of Peter Pan.

This is what time does to you:

I am transported back to the kitchen of the home in Bethlehem, Tauranga where I grew up. Everything is huge, because I am small. Mum is standing over me assembling a costume and I am mortified because not only is my costume home made, it is made out of a brown paper rubbish bag. She is trimming the hem of the rubbish bag (skirt) to make it look like large tassles I guess. I have a dark brown corduroy dress on underneath, natural coloured ug boots and a patterned head dress with a red cardboard feather protruding upwards. The next day I am milling about with tinkerbells and sleeping beauties and snow whites and ballet tutus (I never did ballet) and sparkly ball gown type dresses and I am in a freakin rubbish bag. I carried this memory with me for a loooooooooooong time.

So some 13 or 14 years later mum dredges out these photos for my 21st and I find one of me walking along in this costume, and I'm just spellbound by how clever mum was and how great the costume is. And I think how fantastic that I wasn't one of the twenty or so sleeping beauties in the parade that day. And tonight looking at that photo I felt this huge pang and then put the group of photos back in their little sleeve and away with my archaic writing paper, to stumble upon again another day.

April 25, 2005

Lest we forget

Well it's one way to get you to remember - get you out of bed before 5am on a freezing cold day like today. Speaking of freezing does it get colder than THIS? By god, I think I'll be leaving Wellington before July rolls in if that is the case. In saying that I do believe there is something particularly freakish going on with the rainbow, then the hail and lightning at 3am Saturday morning (I don't suppose anyone in the Wellington region would have slept through that hammering, I woke up, snuggled deeper under my duvet and felt delicious that only Sunday was approaching), and then the thunderstorms last night! I do love a good thunderstorm, but you can stick the cold that goes with it.

The walk down from Kelburn through Uni was unbelievably creepy at 5 in the morning with gusty winds and noone on the road. I was wrapped up like a marshmallow and with laurie's earmuffs on (I want some, and mittens and a new hat cause I've lost mum's one that I've had my whole Wellington life). Alannah was the only brave soul to come out as well, and I was glad for her company by the time i got to Mena's.

It was my first dawn service since first year at Uni (1999). I decided if Grandad survived four years as a POW in Crete I could haul my lazy ass out of bed to stand in the cold for 3/4s of an hour. The service itself was fleeting and appropriately solemn with the largest helping of religion I've had in my diet for awhile. I quite enjoyed that. Except for the hymns, I can't abide hymns. The indigestion came later when the insufferable Don Brash gave an address. "Justice", "freedom", "tyranny", "oppression" were bandied about and I grimaced to hear them. It's not that I don't appreciate the concepts and the sacrifices that were made including over 18,000 kiwi lives in WWI and more than 11,000 in the Second (I'm sure I heard that right, I wonder why the losses were greater in the first). God I do appreciate it, as far as the sheltered, privileged existence I have lived thus far can allow. I just worry that the words themselves justice, freedom, democracy, although mighty pretty sprinkled throughout political oratory, lend themselves so easily to abuse as a veil for all sorts of horrible alterior motives. Perhaps I'm getting cynical in my old age but those words aren't pure for me anymore. They have been commandeered by faces and voices I don't trust, and the ideals seem less precious when such a massive proportion of humankind is missing out on them. Perhaps that should make them more precious. And perhaps Brash is right when he said by allowing our defense forces to atrophy we risk losing international cred and alliances and jeopardize those same (our) ideals which are currently assailed not only by more traditional threats but also from dum dum dum - the international terrorist. I found that particularly interesting, that there is a class of international terrorists, like they have all graduated from the same high school. I am not trying to justify those acts currently classifed as terrorism in a popular sense any more than I would the violence condoned by some as a war on terrorism, I just wonder about the fear and loss of hope and desperation that must invoke such acts. And I wonder if the fear of losing what we already have isn't exactly what we have to fear the most in terms of escalating international political instability.

I like men in uniform, and I liked the men in uniform standing there with their kids, and I liked how the Army and Naval Officers directly in front of me snapped to attention when the The Last Post played. I liked the eerie dark silence broken only by the solitary drum that marched the Parade to the Cenotaph. I liked the melancholy strains of a lone piper that kicked off the service. I didn't like Brash and I didn't like the volleys from the firing party, I have sensitive nerves, and both aforesaid grated. But I did like that it didn't start to rain until I was almost home and by 7:30am I was curled up in bed again with a Milo, some toasted vogels with peanut butter and jam, a book and a (probably naive and cowardly) hope that if the shit ever hits the fan to the point New Zealand is involved, we will all get smoked by some nuc and never know what hit us rather than go through the heartbreak of watching a whole generation snuffed out by man's innate talent for self-destruction.
When are women going to start running the world?

April 23, 2005

Why are there so many?

In my 25 years I have never seen a rainbow as vibrant and with colours so dramatically distinct as the one that is currently arching over Wellington Harbour outside my bedroom window. I have no great hopes to see one like it again. Its shadow is almost as vivid as any primary rainbow I have seen. It is making the houses and hills and Harbour seem pallid and lifeless in comparison.

So I'm in a pansy ass writing mood and could meander on about getting up on to our deck and noting how strange the sky was, trying to be both dark and light at the same time, and then turning to look in the other direction and being stunned (sharp inhalation) and then feeling, well heartbroken, just looking at this rainbow. And hearing someone from next door call "look at it" (presumably not at me) and standing selfishly for a long moment before running inside shrieking to the others to come look. Oh I have had my back to the rainbow (it's such a silly word to repeat over and over....rain.....bow) for five minutes, just turned to look out the window again and it's vanished into a smokey violet twilight. Morose sky. I'd be sombre too if I had possessed something that beautiful and been careless enough to let it get away.

I have been out adventuring again today at the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary. Sherpa Burdon and Sherpa Henderson. Made it all the way to the Wind Turbine. And I have fallen in love with a Tautauwai. I want him to have his own story though. Maybe. Maybe not for the blog.

I got home and did some gardening in the rain for half an hour or so and got damp and dirty planting my chrysanthemum and begonia. They are safely in the ground now where I will let nature take it's course rather than watch them wither in their pots under my not so green thumbed tendance. I'm good with palms and pot plants that aren't needy, but anything with flowers and the neglect soon takes its toll. I think it may have been too late for the Christmas lily, but I'm hoping it will make a come back later in the year.

I was really looking forward to this show but it looks like you're bailing on me Jimmy (double hard bastard my ass) so I think I will rent some classics, wash my hair and eat some icecream. It kind of disturbs me how appealing this actually sounds, and how glad I am that I'll be in fine form to go to the vegetable market early in the morning. Shucks.

April 18, 2005

Strange and wonderful life

I think sometimes the best days aren't necessarily the ones where everything goes completely to plan. I've had a day of good and bad in palatable balance, and feel gratifyingly filled up for living it.

Finally feeling like I'm sorting shit out at work and not walking round with the I'm fresh out of Uni aura about me. Quite pleased with some of the stuff I did today, and saw very little of my boss, although I'm establishing that the best way to handle her is a slightly more articulated version of how I would handle my little brother.

8pm and I'm sitting in the Occidental between a red-haired bombshell probably a few years older than me with a fairly drafty glass of feijoa 42 below that I recommended, and a man who probably saw the better part of last century and reminds me unnervingly of my grandma. I think it's the unkempt Bohemian intellectual thing they both have going on. He's sipping lemonade. I appreciate the bar isn't particularly quiet and he may be having trouble hearing our conversation (no way he's having trouble hearing the red head, I'm loving her) but the Bohemian relic is leaning in to me a little too much. Perhaps he has got tired of a century of holding himself up. We are also talking with a man who's eyes bug out when he talks and a couple of other nondescript people at our table, and the rest of the group are at the table opposite, a bunch of 40 something men talking animatedly over their pints. I feel like they are trying not to look at us, well in particular the red head, she is very engaging and becoming increasingly loud. I've only just met her and you know how some people unleash the extrovert in you simply by being their reserved and measured selves, well this gal's making me feel like a shrinking violet, but I'm flattered by the attention she is giving me. Real touchy feely and laughing constantly while we talk. One of the men across from us reminds me of a fish, his lips and something slimey they do when he looks at me. I've become interested in a guy a bit further round the group and with his back to me. Not that i've ever been that ambitious in climbing a corporate ladder or bothered with networking but I have this gut instinct I'm meant to charm him.

Shit it's almost midnight. Sitting here listening to Muse, Sing for Absolution. Been listening to them a lot lately.....

April 17, 2005

Water Baby

In a much better frame of mind now. I have had a swim and a snorkel today (no wetsuit), and it is mid-Autumn!!! Wellington is a star - the entire weekend has been exquisite weather wise. And as ridiculous as it could sounds to locals, I snorkelled in Oriental Bay! Josie went out a bit deeper while I snorkelled round a baby reef (is it a reef if it's man made, i'm sure it is?) and there were heaps of fish, admittedly of the same variety, and plenty of jelly fish that I kept head butting. Wasn't too keen on the head butting. Lauren assures me the jellies probably found it more disconcerting. I have my doubts, seeing as they are jellyish and, I wouldn't have thought that cognitively developed.

Other reasons I am feeling quite pleased with myself right now, I have at least tried phoning Dad this weekend, even left a chirpy message. Yesterday I walked all along Oriental Bay, past Baleana and kept going to Evans and finally Lyall. I lay on a silky patch of sand and let the sound of the ocean giving the shore (and some surfers) a good thrashing massage my soul. Then I got a bit lost in Lyall Bay, then I got a bit lost climbing up Mt Vic (ended up in someones backyard at one point), but then I found Constable Street and walked through Newtown right up round Te Aro and then home. All in all, was gone for about 5 hours. I was completely shattered last night, had a terrible sleep the night before (mostly alcohol related).

All the time I have spent in/around the ocean this weekend has led me to appreciate how much I need it. I believe it may be my panacea of choice, particularly for blues related malady. Even trumping chocolate (although using both simultaneously is probably going to be most effective.)

A good friend asked me recently why I have been questioning my motivations so much lately (I'm paraphrasing), and I think it was very observant, and well, the answer is I don't entirely know. A phase? I AM desperately trying to appreciate that I'm not necessarily a flake/bad person because I lose the plot and momentarily regress and indulge in those angsty self-involved teenage traits I so desperately wish to avoid carrying into adulthood. But I think it's a matter of taking responsibility for these (hopefully rare) occassions, which I've never done all that constructively, and not feeling sorry for myself when I'm the one who has fucked up. Sounds brilliant in theory.

I'm going to see Motorcycles Diaries tonight. I've been wanting to see it for ages.

It's not plagiarism if you attribute it to the author yeah?

I'm really not very bright. I keep thinking someone is messing with me and changing my mouse configurations because everytime I use it it seems to be different. But it's actually my new found ambidextrousness (if that wasn't a word before it is now) - a result of being without my right hand for a good six or seven weeks. Makes it sound like it went on holiday. It didn't, I broke it.

Explanation = Jenkin's Hill Learning all the time - thanks Mark B!

That's cheating, using your post aye Jimmy? I think I had asked you if that was okay previously. I just wanted a record of it. It cracks me up (now). And it makes you look pretty sweet too, (which of course you were). And makes me look quite tough, (which of course I was).

And now I'm really just procrastinating, avoiding what I really want to write about....

April 13, 2005

I need a confidante

My goodness confidentiality issues suck! I have had the craziest day at work, and the only people I can discuss it with are people at work, who deal with similar stuff, and therefore don’t find it that crazy. It just amazes me the complexities and the frailties of people….even exceptional ones. So much lurking behind the surface…. I kind of feel drunk on humanity right now.

I should go – still at work, need to get some fresh air, resurface, but we’re currently offline at home at the moment due to the introduction of a reuter (may be spelt wrong) so i wanted to get this down. Now we won’t have to fight over blogging and on-line chess time. So I moved my computer into my room last night, we trailed all these cords around the house, up the walls, along the skirting board, masking tape and tacks and rugs (horrible feng shui) and whaddya know - it doesn’t seem to be working.

We had another earthquake, a little one. I have decided I like full cream milk on my breakfast and have wasted the past year thinking I was happy to drink that watery shit the rest of the flat drinks. I am worried the income of my mum’s estate is funding the trustees drinking habits. I haven’t talked to my dad in so long I actually wonder if he is still alive. My boss and her neuroses are driving me crazy. And I need to go for a run now…..

April 10, 2005

Episode 3

I really want to finish the thing on the Tasman before it is lost forever to the dim recesses of my mind. Okay the cavernous recesses...Oh get on with it. I do think that anything more than a trilogy is never going to fare well at the box office so a condensed run down of highlights of the final three days will suffice, for my purposes anyhow.

Sunday mornings seem to bring out the verbal diahorrea in me unfortunately...

I'm actually sitting here waiting to see if the weather and the hang over of one of my tracking buddies is going to prevent us doing this walk today - the southern walkway

So the third day, that's where we left off, and my whimsical imaginings on the beach at nightfall the previous evening turned to despair when I awoke the next morning and the rain was hammering on our tent. Emerging from the tent I saw the campers around us were hastily packing everything up and then dragging all their soaking gear to the shelter of the kitchen area, huddling there wet and cramped. A short time spent gathering information from the campsite and the Ranger brought more bad news, the rain was likely to hold out throughout the day and the buzz words were water taxi. I was heartbroken, I desperately wanted to complete the entire track, but a conference with the other girls quickly established the fact that they were keen to get off the track entirely if it continued to pelt down. We compromised. We would water taxi to Araroa and cut out one of the bays, camp down for the night and if conditions failed to improve, abandon the Abel Tasman on Easter Monday, a day earlier than planned. You can bus directly out of Totaranui, an hour and a half's hike on from Araroa, but this would mean sacrificing the final leg of the track that promised the most expansive vistas and seclusion (according to a Lonely Planet guide camp mum had brought along) - and the bit I was most looking forward to.

I should have had more faith.

"And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should".

The ride on the water taxi was probably one of the highlights for me. The weather was abominable. High seas and heavy rains. One of the girls suffers from motion sickness, and although she seemed to cope with that element (didn't puke), she was petrified the entire thirty minute voyage. At one point we exchanged a look and I did feel for her, I did, but I was just having waaaaaaaaay too much fun, and she just looked so comical, I was in fits of laughter about the whole thing. The boat wasn't covered and it was still raining, but we couldn't get any wetter now, and for some reason being out on this huge expanse of water, going as fast as the 16 person boat could when it was dropping off the crest of each wave, it didn't seem to matter that I was drenched. I think part of the misery of being rained on is the claustrophobia, not being able to escape it, the fact that us humans wear these ridiculous coverings on our bodies that aren't designed to get wet. Hmmm, naked rainy boat ride..........that would be exhilirating.

Oh, I've been summoned to the Southern walkway. So much for the trilogy, but this was getting too long anyway....

Sticks and stones

Just quickly, and primarily for JK's benefit, I have enabled the anonymous comments again, decided I don't like your intimidating tactics and will not kowtow to them. I'm regretting rearranging those previous couple of posts to accommodate your negativity. You've told me you think my writing is crap in person, I can respect that, and then discard it. What I do not respect is the fact you didn't have the balls to say what you said and declare your identity along with it.

That said, I have to agree with Alannah and Johnno that you did a bloody good job with that adventure. I'm quite psyched by it all and have forsaken Tyryn as my pseudonym of choice and as a character. I quite like Pix and everything the term has come to mean to me.

April 08, 2005

Are there glow worms in the Botanical Gardens?

I am fully aware of the fact that this isn't episode three. Don't really give a fuck about episode three right now. It is quite early in the morning and my head is gently protesting that last glass of red I had last night. But I was commemorating. And commiserating. Now I'm kind of fucked off. Not entirely sure why.

I was feeling a bit reckless last night and went for a run through the Bot Gardens at about 7pm and underneath the canopy it was pitch black. Probably not that wise, more because of the risk of a twisted ankle where the ground is really uneven than because of being mugged. I had it all planned out what i was going to yell at the fucker if I got attacked anyway. But I saw what looked like little green LCD lights along one of the banks. What the hell were they, I'm not sure?

Got through yesterday relatively unscathed. Felt kind of heavy in the morning, but I think this was far diminished from the previous year, and may have been more attributable to something, someone else entirely. Got an email from my sister - the Tauranga one, not the Chile one marking the occasion. And a phone call from Frank not saying anything overt but just letting me know in his quiet way that he is there, and so I could talk to Jake, who told me he likes the Brother Bear dvd I got him for Easter except it's a bit sad because one of the characters D - E - Is. He actually spelt it out for me. I pissed myself laughing.

But I was still kind of hungry for solitude and some angsty music by the end of my working day, and after I'd bought the wine, a huge bit of steak, and some stuff for a salad, I headed home. On the way, at a set of lights waiting to cross, is the first time I get a bit misty eyed. Watching this woman with one kid in a push chair and another, a boy, about I dunno three years old, and they were standing waiting too and the little boy was basically on the road with nothing between him and the traffic screaming around the corner. And I stood there and thought shit lady, I would never be so reckless with my child's safety. Then I thought of Jake. Then I thought of Mum. And in my usual egocentric tradition I was reminded of one of the key reasons I had been terrified about losing her. Her being the guru of motherhood, I didn't know how I would get by without her when I had little ones myself (which admittedly seemed a bit more imminent at the time we spoke on the topic than today). She said something about kids being resilient and how you could pretty much drag them up. (A huge comfort at the time - you'll fuck up, but unlikely you'll kill them). But on this day I know she would have scowled at the kid (or his mother) at the lights too. And I realised having seen her with Jake, and even Kelly to some extent, for those years, that I had received more than what I had consciously appreciated. And it was what I had had, not what I had lost, that made me get teary there at the traffic lights. Time really does work magic.

April 05, 2005

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once upon a time there was a young girl, lets call her Selune, who lived in a quaint little fishing village by the sea. Although Selune had a loving family and good friends she had known all her life, she often felt suffocated by the monotony of her day to day routine, and the inevitability of her destiny. She would look around at everything she loved so dearly, and ask herself why she resented the fact that she knew exactly what the next day would bring. Although the small cottages that speckled the coastal village were devoid of luxury, Selune's community wanted for nothing. Selune's constant relection foretold a life of honest work, frequent communal gatherings where the themes were uproarious dancing and over-indulgence in dark ale, and at some point in the near future, a suitable marriage. She would pass each of the handful of strong, quiet boys her own age around the village each day and be suitably polite and charming at each meeting, leaving them with a hopeful glimmer in their eye. However, the knowledge that she would one day marry one brought with it a heavy blanket of despondency, quickly followed by guilt for her lack of appreciation for everything she possessed.

One night, at a celebration for a particularly bountiful catch, Selune could bear it no longer and she stole away from the merriment to find the ocean. Selune loved the vast, unexplored, unpredicatable sea and spent the small amount of spare time she had swimming, or in the colder months simply gazing out across the horizon looking for something she did not comprehend. Tonight, Selune felt her mood buoy as the laughter and music subsided behind her. As her bare feet found the silken sand, Selune felt she had stepped into an open-air temple, such was the reverence inspired by this still night in early Autumn. On the altar hung a ripe fiery moon, that burnished the shore with enough light for Selune to clearly see the waves lapping in constant supplication. And as the entranced Selune gazed out at the oily black sea she was astounded to see stretching directly before her an amber path of illumination, flickering in the water. The path caressed the shore and extended ray-like out to the horizon, where it became a dense shadowy web that seemed to ascend to the moon itself.

Selune was spellbound, and her heart melted as she felt the moon itself calling to her. She felt herself drawn by some gravitational force towards the water, but her reverie was broken when she disturbed the slumber of a family of Oystercatchers. Laughing inwardly at her fancy, she ambled further down the beach. When she stopped some distance along she looked back out to sea and gasped. The path of moonlight, pulsating its rich amber light, stretched out directly in front of her. Selune looked back up the beach from whence she had come. The path had followed her. Again, Selune began walking towards the water, this time her gaze fluttering up to the huge glowing orb above her, and her heartbeat quickened and she clutched her stomach, so deep was the emotion the moon was evoking within her. She shut her eyes and suddenly saw her friends and family laughing and gamboling around a large bonfire. She pulled away, lifting her feet and ran down the beach. But again, when she halted, the path was there before her and the light resonated with a silver, sweet hum. Selune took one last look towards the direction of her home, and then stepped through the ocean's foam, and kept walking out to sea, the path of moonlight carrying her over the water throughout the night. At the end of the path Selune found a stairwell that ascended to the moon, and climbed it until she was met by the one that had been calling to her her whole life. And ofcourse...they lived happily ever after.

April 03, 2005

episode two

It was unbelievable to wake on the cold hard ground on the second day and see sunlight through the fabric of our tent. I dragged everything out to dry, pack, travel outfit (oh i love the applicability of dnd references) including my precious runners that had never had occasion to get soiled, apart from the odd sojourn round Wellington or through the Botanical Gardens, until the previous day. And now they were muddy! Sorry, I'm quite attached to inaminate objects at the moment. My sneakers, my Swiss ball, my jade plant. It may be the lack of animated objects in my life to give affection to at present. Oh, boo fucking hoo, Miss Independence can't make up her mind.

Speaking of which I emailed Mark (ex) for the first time in a couple of months today. Just cause. I gave him a brief rundown of what I had been up to, he reciprocated adding the nice little titbit about him having been to Sydney for the new love in his life's mother's 50th, and that was it. Very clinical, probably not that necessary anymore.

Sorry, I'm having trouble staying on topic. I think it's when you feel obligated to get something down, so you have a record of it, it kind of makes it like homework. Ya know?

I'll keep it curt.

It was kind of unnerving but all the other campers seemed to have cleared out first light and we pretty much had Anchorage to ourselves. I found out from the Ranger that it was because the weather prediction was for showers mid-afternoon and we had a tidal-dependant crossing to make at some point on the way to the next stop - Bark Bay. But we got the crossing times fucked up the whole trip, and today would be no exception. I'm not quite sure how we managed that with our down to the minute itinerary, but we did. So we took the high road (high tide route), which I think added a bit of time on, but the weather held and when we got to Bark Bay it was still and warm. Three of us went for a swim after we'd pitched the tents. Although it was early evening and on the cooler side of invigorating, it was sublime to wash away the sweat and just soak up having this paradasaical beach almost to ourselves. A world away from Oriental Bay, that's for sure...

The four of us were in pretty high spirits after that and I remember there being a lot of giggles as we ate our evening meal. I think this was in part attributable to the sewage facility or whatever the hell it was smack bang in the middle of the campsite which Sarah quickly decided smelt like cauliflower, I think the euphemism helped her deal with it. I love people dealing with shit through humour. (Excuse the pun, it honestly wasn't deliberate,) We were also amused by the two German boys with no apparent olfactory ability who pitched their tent almost on top of it.

Unfortunately even on this blissful night, it was dark by 7, but the moon was full, and while the others read or puzzled by torchlight (my new torch straight from the Kathmandu sale which had new batteries and was working perfectly when i tested it the night before we left did not go the entire trip), I sauntered off down to the beach on my own where a bunch of kids were playing spotlight. I was entertained for awhile positioning myself to confuse the one doing the spotting, but strangely enough didn't get invited to join in. I was just about to head off to bed, when I discovered a most exquisitely simple thing. I almost don't want to share it. I think it is the stuff of fairytales, not pixietales. And this post is already so long, perhaps I will save it...