"The process of writing was important. Even though the finished product is completely meaningless." —Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore.
And I'll be damned—what a luxury this life is! For some people it is do or die. For myself it is merely do or do not, the latter choice simply being a version of myself that represents immaturity, stagnation. Isn't it bizarre to envy those who became better people by some external force? Perhaps they had horrible, toxic parents that pushed them to be more responsible and independent. Usually it's some awful thing that, if you can overcome it, it makes you a stronger individual. And here I was, not a care in the world. Loving parents, lucrative job, comfortable routine. If I'm so lucky, why would I upset that balance? I somehow got through the system relatively unscathed, so what use am I now? Sure, I have my own small stories to tell, triumph over evil and all that jazz. But having acknowledged that my first world male whiteness has given me all the opportunity I could ever dream of, I'm now at that crossroads where I realize it's not just about me, but I don't fully know how to direct my efforts. If I have any agency at all, shouldn't I be doing something about all of the shit out there? Shouldn't I be elevating the voices of others who feel so downtrodden that they can no longer speak? I've always prided myself in taking the time to listen to people's problems and offer what little advice and comfort I can, but there are so many people out there with a host of difficulties I can't even fathom. I feel obligated to do something about it, to pay back the world that raised me, but the path to that is still unknown. In the meantime, all I can hope to do is help people in some small way. It may never be big, but that's the aim. Even if the effort falls short, it's still further than it would've been had I stayed home.
Vague language aside, all of these thoughts swirling in my head have a lot to do with what I want to give and take from the next several months in New Zealand. On the surface, it doesn't look like the Kiwis are struggling with any grave circumstances like poverty, disease, famine, or the like. But nonetheless, we all have struggles. Even in the week that I've been at camp, I've met plenty of kids that surprise me. It's a cool thing to witness those personal victories and changes. The activities might be pretty trivial to an adult, but I can remember a time in my life when everything seemed so damned big. Honestly, I mostly hated any camp I went to. At space camp, I refused to shower for the whole week. I hated sleeping in a big room full of rowdy boys. I missed my parents, and I had no idea where I was. This place was a fifteen minute drive from my house, but as a ten year old I couldn't make sense of that, having the spatial awareness of a frightened dog running down the street. I might as well have been on the other side of the planet. I couldn't get into any of the activities, and I counted the minutes until we'd be free to go home. I couldn't even appreciate the fact that Buzz Aldrin came to speak to us, something that would make the current me totally enthralled.
Upon coming home, I took a huge shit. I believe I was constipated for all five days, but I can't fully trust my memory; it might've been that I simply loathed anything related to the bathrooms. After that glorious defecation, I ate two slices of pizza and promptly threw them up. I was ecstatic to be home, but something about the whole experience threw my body into disarray.
I imagine most of us have had those retrospective moments where we wish we could go back, if only to tell ourselves that it'll all be okay. Those bouts of homesickness as a little boy felt like the most threatening thing a kid could feel, simply because we haven't really developed enough experience or a strong sense of empathy, of wandering outside your own subjectivity. Extravagance. Extra
At science camp, the eleven year old me had a similarly tough time. I recall getting involved in a rather intense pillow fight on the first evening, resulting in my bawling for hours and wanting to get the hell out of this fucked up place. I can't remember the details, but I made up my mind to hate everything as much as possible. I think my bowel movements weren't so adversely affected this time around (I just know you're wondering), but what I do recall is the face of the counselor who took me into his cabin and talked with me. I can't remember what was said, but I do remember coming out of it feeling much better the next day. He told us a story about the moon and I fell asleep. Having somebody acknowledge me was so reaffirming, and I was able to enjoy the rest of camp a bit more. I vaguely recall campfire skits, nature walks, cleaning our plates in the cafeteria, and so on. Those little things don't really stand out, but what was tremendous was dealing with the emotional outpours.
But once again, the relief that washed over me when I came home was the best. If I could've told myself that seventeen years later I'd leave home for a year, that would've changed things. Yet here I am, wondering if future me would want to come back and tell me the same thing, that all of this will make my homecoming that much sweeter. Maybe I won't have a home to go back to. There are so many possibilities, and I can't predict how I'll feel about it when it's over.
I imagine there will be relief. I don't have a camp counselor to guide me through this, but I do have a bunch of new friends in the same boat. Admittedly I operate on a different wavelength most of the time (read: I'm old!), but this whole camp thing is a pretty interesting experiment. It's interesting to approach it from the other side, and also kind of funny that I still harbor similar apprehensions to camp. But I intend to use that as my strength. I can relate, and maybe I'll be that nameless counselor that a kid needs to get through the whole experience.
Maybe he or she will loath it that much less because of me. Look at me getting involved with kids! Hah!
I spent my first weekend off doing nothing of import, but it felt so damned good to have meaningful time off again. I cooked, I ate, I did other domestic things. I read all day (Cosmos by Sagan) and listened to Pale Communion long enough to get it cemented into my head. Nothing like indulging in a day off! Now if only I could rekindle my will to exercise... Maybe I should be working at a fat camp.
Bring it on!
Boisterous Ben in all his bearded glory.
I haven't had coffee in a while, but these slogans are pretty inviting.
Olivia takes charge on the Giant Swing. And to think that a week ago she was reluctant to go cliff jumping into the ocean. Now she's a leading example!
Paul Chakerian contemplates his future as a shepherd.
Hagley Park and Botanical Garden. New Zealand isn't skimping on the flora.
Inside Banks Peninsula, looking out past Cape Three Points to the open ocean.
Majestic raven watches over the car park.
Warwick ascends to the heavens.
Athough not kind to the man-parts
Team building! This stuff actually works!
Crispian gets fancy for the staff.
This is actually the release mechanism for the Giant Swing. The "subject" has to be the one to yank it out. There is no spoon!
Inside Banks Peninsula from the Hilltop Tavern. This is the first thing I got to see coming over the hill from Christchurch. Welcome to your new home!
Aimee warned me that it would feel pretty absurd and overwhelming to come back to a developed nation. Bangkok and Manila certainly had their large pockets of decadence, but somehow the wedge drives deeper here in New Zealand. Department stores, supermarkets, loads of restaurants. But the biggest difference is that everybody is speaking English. I'm not used to being able to approach anybody with virtually no language barrier. My habit of simplifying speech into child-like, terse phrases is a thing of the past. I can eavesdrop on conversations. I can talk to people freely and they can talk to me. I guess the key word is *can*. Even though the potential is there, it's not like we're all breaking into song about the marvels of communication and how great it is to speak English. As nice as it is, the other side of the coin is that everything feels a bit too homogenous and too familiar. While the population in New Zealand is predominantly European, the people seem to embrace the local Māori roots and history. This adds a cool spin to the whitewashing that usually occurs in any given former colony. It seems like more of a cohesive equilibrium rather than an overwrite.
Nicole and I spent almost two weeks with our friends Lianne, Brendon, and their parrot, Albie. I used to live with L&B in Santa Barbara, back when I had the easy life of a college student for the second time around. Brendon landed a job teaching statistics at Auckland University, sparking their move to NZ over two years ago, around the time I graduated.
As with most things in my life, coming to Auckland signified yet another bittersweet moment. It's a bit of a relief to no longer be on the road, but this also means I'm inclined to stagnation. I need a plan of action, but being a homebody for a while looked pretty dammed good. I suddenly had so much more free time, especially while Lianne and Brendon were at work during the week. I filled this with nothing particularly interesting: walks around the city, copious video gaming, cooking. Well, that last one was more of a revelation. Having a kitchen kicks ass. I made so many smoothies and veggie stir fries. Glorious! There was something strangely appealing about living out that domestic routine again. I even enjoyed washing the dishes, stacking them back in their homes. I even noted a few familiar plates from our previously shared home. Warm thoughts! Also, they took my old bed to Auckland after we all moved out. Talk about a familiar place.
Over the weekend we took a trip together to the Coromandel peninsula. This place has some pretty cool volcanic activity going on, which seems to be the theme for New Zealand. Being the end of winter season, it's still pretty cold outside. But we lucked out with some clear weather while visiting the beaches. One of the beaches we visited happens to be situated 2 kilometers above a cooling vein of magma. The water seeping down gets heated to about 170° Celsius by the vein, then being forced upward and reaching the surface at a temperature of about 64° Celsius. That's about 147° Fahrenheit. The Hot Water Beach makes for quite a spectacle; many visitors dig out their own hot tub sized holes in the sand to guide the hot spring water to various collecting pools, mixing them with cold ocean water to find that perfect temperature for lounging around. I wonder if the houses nearby tap into this heat source at all.
Our time in Coromandel is short but sweet. We have a few late nights of answering intriguing hypotheticals from the Book of Questions, as well as watching Mrs. Doubtfire for some Robin Williams nostalgia. I was delighted to find so many raunchy jokes this time around that went over my head as a kid. I'll never forget his performance on James Lipton's Inside the Actor's Studio. The crazy, silly caricatures he generates on the fly are so unusual and compelling.
Coming back to Auckland, things kick into gear with a potential lead on a job. I accepted a position as a volunteer instructor at YMCA Wainui Park. (Staff training started as I write this, but I'll get to that later.) I was suddenly stricken with all sorts of new feelings, mostly in the form of debilitating anxiety and excitement. Having only heard about the camp in passing, not to mention never having worked with kids, I had only the slightest vague impression of what this commitment would entail. I was suddenly afflicted with a frenzy of self doubt, and a host of other complicated emotions that I can't really figure out. A lot of the trepidation also stemmed from the impending reality that I was to part ways with my comfort zone. That comfort zone came with me everywhere I went, and reciprocally I followed it everywhere it went. And that zone was my friend Nicole.
Over the last few months I fantasized often about what traveling solo might be like. There were times that my mind had trouble getting over any trivial spats and tensions that arose out of living with a person, day in, day out, all while dealing with a gamut of challenges from painstaking discomfort to mind-numbing boredom. There were times that I thought I'd be better off doing my own thing. I'd be able to seek out things I wanted to do, and nobody could stop me!
But after a while, I realized that Nicole wasn't holding me back at all. She was just an easy scapegoat for me to pick out, a seemingly simple explanation for why I wasn't getting what I wanted out of traveling. But once this devilish little thought made itself known, I was able to slowly combat it with a more sensible outlook. In actuality, I myself am the only thing holding me back from getting what I want out of this experience. Part of it stems from my tendency to exalt expectations, romanticizing how much I can actually accomplish. I idealized the notion that traveling alone would enable full agency, complete autonomy. It would certainly have new challenges, but it would also mean starting over in some sense. I'd have to figure out how to pick up the slack I'd inevitably create, no longer able to divide the tough stuff between two heads. And that day will come eventually, but I'd also quickly realize how great it was to be sharing this whole thing with someone first hand. Our minds are often in different worlds, but the moments when they come back together are what it's all about. Hitting a stride, being dorks, making each other laugh. Even as just a thought experiment, it makes me pretty sad to imagine having all of these stellar, irreproducible moments with nobody next to me to turn to, to say, "Did you see that shit?!", to howl like fools—to make our own comical universe as seen from our little vessel. Usually that's the sort of idealized relationship people save for somebody they're going to marry, but I'm pretty lucky to have it with one of my friends.
To distill that, I'd say that any thoughts of preemptively parting ways were quickly snuffed out with this realization: it's going to feel like it's moving too fast, and then I'll wish it never had to end.
And that's where I am now. Of course it's not an ending in any dramatic sense. Nicole is still sending me pictures of all the good California things: climbing with Julian, eating nachos with Jeff, consequently filling me with a fierce, envious rage (that I shall take out on her next year).
But leading up to that inevitable goodbye, I found myself strangely inert. I pulled the trigger but couldn't fathom the consequence.
It's not always the case that the emotions well up in a timely, efficient matter, let out all at once then neatly contained thereafter. And being the sorts that we are, different wavelengths and all, Nicole would muster out something sentimental only to have me draw a blank in response.
I can imagine it like a tsunami. When a seismic event is triggered offshore, the impending oceanic waves can sometimes be very deceptive. It's like I came down to the beach to find the tidal recess way below its usual mark. In fact, the shore now stretches out for hundreds of feet before touching water again. A host of life that never touches the stuff is feeling the atmosphere for the first time. The world looks alien, out of place, but compelling all the same. I'm tempted to go out and explore this anomaly, to see all these things that have now come to light. I don't know how long it'll be like this, so I just watch for a while.
While that's going on below the surface, the examination of the ocean/emotion, I have nothing I can really say in those moments, nothing that comes out in this shared reality. Mouth agape, I'm in a fringe world.
But days later, without warning, the tidal wave comes, submerging me in a heap of murky water. Shit I still can't comprehend. But luckily my friend is still there to put her hand on my knee. "There, there." I don't remember if anyone said it, or if I just thought it, but this makes me sputter out a laugh. It's moments like these in which I truly feel like my mother's son. I may not cry at the drop of a hat, but I can identify the same tendencies bubbling beneath the surface.
This was a hard good-bye. My body was clenched tight with tears and headaches and all. But this friend is my lifeline, and I take a few desperate hits from her backup regulator. I'm swimming in the tsunami, submerged in all my fears of whatever this upheaval is going to bring. It's too much to handle alone, I keep thinking. I avoid eye contact, thinking it might send me over the edge. I'm still breathing somehow.
And it's gone for now. I'm back on shore, and the damage isn't as bad as I imagined it. Meaning, I've been away for a week now and I think I can manage the separation anxiety. With global communication, we're not even that far apart. Imagine what people had to endure back in the day when it would take weeks for just a letter to go through, or weeks to cross the ocean.
So what next? Well, this blog has always served as an outlet for my ramblings, a way to make sense of things. I'm glad it could also serve as a place to cope with some difficulties, too. If there's any goal I want to set going forward, it's to use all of the informal knowledge I gained while traveling and put it to use in new ways. I want to surprise myself, and the first step was saying, "Guess what? You're not going home just yet!" Oh how I wanted to come back, to see everyone, to do all those things I said I would do: drink beers with my buds, play all the video games, hike every day. It hurts a little not to give in, but the mentality I want to cultivate will help me to deal with that pain. This longing is self inflicted, but in a good way.
Nicole befriends Albie within a matter of seconds.
North shore explore.
Baby ducks at the Auckland Botanical Garden.
Wandering into the cold, misty rains. Much brooding.
Cyclops.
Botanical Garden at Auckland Domain.
The Mount Eden volcanic cone.
Buzz cut.
Always the charmer.
Finding that perfect spa temperature at Hot Water Beach.
Massive obelisk of a rock.
Exploring around the old railway site through Coromandel
Found it. You can leave me here for a while.
Some impressive erosion from the tide.
Out with the old, in with the new.
Claimed in the name of the king, Nicole wards off the trespassers.
Arsenic tanks at the old depot. The corrosion is kind of beautiful. Take a deep breath.
Light at the end of the tunnel.
And it does wonders for the skin!
We've got loads of energy.
Resting just above neutral. A rare occurence.
The sandal tan lives on!
Enough with the impressive erosion, already.
Reluctantly departing from Nicole's Heaven on Earth.
Coromandel Peninsula.
Chickens! These clever girls had us surrounded, but fortunately they prefer grain over human flesh.
The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of change, but I've managed to safely land my vessel (I'm piloting my body in this metaphor, yo!) at its destination. Let's cover the when and where before I delve into my usual tangential musings.
After Nicole and I got every little bit out of the Gilis, we finally made it to our Southeast Asia exit point: Bali.
Bali isn't an enormous island, though too big to explore in a few days. Due to our time constraints we spent the last four evenings on the tourist-packed beaches near the airport we were booked to depart from. Upon arrival, my body came down with some sort of slightly debilitating infection. No hospitals this time, but I spend an inordinate amount of time in bed, sleeping off whatever migraine or funky bleh I might've been dealing with. Nothing too bad to keep me from enjoying Bali, but there was also nothing in the area for me to really fixate on. Aside from good food and some nice massage, nothing unique really bubbled through the thick layer of shops and tourist attractions. The touts were annoying as per usual, the traffic was dense, the prolific redundant souvenir and fashion shops dominated the streets, but it wasn't altogether that bad. Nicole and I walked down the beach one morning, stopping a handful of times to check out some cool patterns in the sand. The surf looked good, but it just didn't appeal to me without my Monterey friends with me. Admittedly I never really got into it, but I got a lot of social reward out of the whole experience. The idea of going into that ocean without the same friends just made all prospects of enjoyment unlikely. Oh well! It was still fun to walk around, eat cheap Balinese food, and take some down time while I was feeling mediocre anyway.
If anything brilliant came out of these few days, it was Nicole's impression of Jude Law a là Talented Mr. Ripley in the boat scene which he confronts Matt Damon with just how boring of a sociopathic mimic he is. She even re-engineered Law to have a very posh British accent, despite playing an American in the film. This became a bit of a running joke for the next few weeks any time we slipped into a bout of boredom, all inspired by a rather insipid Belgian who graced us with his mediocrity for an evening. Although there's nothing wrong with being boring, there's just nothing interesting about agreeing with everything a person says in order to win their favor and hopefully have sex with them (the object of his desire being Nicole, of course). As a rather average looking male, this isn't something I come into contact with often. After playfully making fun of our new friend behind his back (we're such nice people), we then admitted that he would've been that much more charming if he were simply physically attractive. Or not boring. If you're going to be so translucent about wanting to have a one night stand, you might as well have a personality. This guy was so agreeable that he booked a room in the same hotel, perhaps in order to spend more time with Nicole, only to bail in the morning without paying the owner. The landlady's response was a little heartbreaking: "The tourists think that the locals rip them off, but often it's the tourists who rip off the locals." In a sort of weird way, it's pretty common to come into contact with a few touts and automatically presume that all Indonesians are out for your wallet, and foreigners react to this by being dicks to *all* of the locals. At least things like this remind me that assholes can come from any culture. And another benefit to this guy being a dick is that now we can safely detest him for his bland personality. Good riddance.
And speaking of good riddance to assholes, Indonesia and the whole of southeast Asia finally gets pleasure of saying goodbye to some rather burdensome thorns in its side. Don't worry, the sentimental overload doesn't kick in for a few more weeks, but in the meantime we are finally Auckland-bound. Lianne and Brendon are in for a treat!
One of the biggest beaches I've seen!
Delicious, inexpensive vegetarian street food. I ate here almost every day.
The other street food "stall."
Chomp. Nom. Also boobs.
Don't forget to wash 'em down with a heaping glass of Fanta! Now a proud sponsor of psychedelic mushrooms.
Ugh, does this mean I have to, like, exercise?
Aliens?!
Or a seriously crabby commune. I wonder if they were yelling at me to get off their lawns as I tramped over their homes.
