Suspended in time

Tawa

   

The window in my brother's room looks out over the hills running along the back of Tawa. In the morning the sun rises early over these hills and shines with a fierceness most unwelcome when nursing a hangover. In the evening the moon illuminates the trees and houses of a prosperous Tawa. And if you're lucky, the stars blanket the night sky, leaving only pets roaming around in the early hours of the morning.

"Christopher!" Something's not right here.

"Christopher! Do you want some breakfast?" I reply in the affirmative. Within ten minutes I am sitting groggily at the dining table with a meal of hash browns, bacon and eggs. Most welcome, despite my sorry state. It's the first time I've had breakfast in a month.

I spent the next two hours cleaning and organising my old room. By early afternoon, I'm endlessly throwing a ball against a wall. The T.V. is out of bounds because Dad is taping something. The clock ticks slowly.

Ben calls.

"Yo CK, I'm bored, got any ideas?" Ben also lives in Tawa.

"Want to go to the bush and play with guns?" I suggest.

"No"

"..."

"How about a walk up Mt Kaukau?" Ben says.

The sun was high in the sky, and although the afternoon late, sweat poured off us as we trooped up the mountain. Ben and I have done many exciting trips over the years. This year has been the most tumultuous, with me crashing my car head on into a tree, 100km east of Napier, on an isolated gravel road, at 10pm at night. Ben's latest escapade was being rescued by helicopter from the Tararua's after spending a freezing - potentially fatal - night deep in the frozen valleys of the wilderness. Needless to say, sometimes we let our ideals get ahead of us. In saying that, sometimes it is good to forge ahead with reckless youth - how else would we learn the wisdom of old age?

The next time I saw Ben was Sunday night at Sweet Mother's Kitchen with our two other friends, Matt, and John. Or, if we are to use nicknames, Yobin ("Yo Ben"), Cooper and JT or John T. Swagger. Fog had descended over the city, including Wellington airport, putting a specter of doubt on our trip. A few beers and a chicken burrito put an end to the worry (for now), and the four of us made our merry way into the night. It was as though nothing had changed from Tawa College, all those years ago. I still had the same feeling of being exactly where I wanted to be - no future, no past, just right then and there. 



Realm regulars - on a brilliant day



If it was a time for reflection, it was also a time to reflect on the week just past.  I had spent my final night at 6 Kupe, the flat I had lived in for just over 18 months. Six different people had lived there by the time I left. I took one last look into my room and closed the door. Memories of friends, parties, and endless speech practicing flooded my mind. Those memories evaporated when I saw four dozen empty bottles and a bench cluttered with dishes, not to mention the flies buzzing round.  I had a beer at the Realm - in the brilliant sunshine - and said my goodbyes. Out of the flat, back home - how the wheel had come full circle. 

 

Bob - hard life



It is tempting to reflect on the year, and indeed, the years before that. But as I sit here, in the doorway of the lounge of my childhood home, next to my childhood friend Bob (the cat), it hits me: reflection isn't always a good thing. At one time or another, we've all made mistakes and found ourselves in situations or circumstances we don't want to be in. We've all acted in ways we don't really like, and done things we're not proud of. In varying degrees of course, but to some degree, for everyone. On the flip side, we've also done good things, made ourselves and others happy, and most the most out of what we have. So what is the point of looking back if it only leads to ill-feeling and regret? And why not look back on the good things we have done - that we've achieved, accomplished, given, strived for - as fuel for future endeavors?

Someday, beyond the hills of where we came from, and down the roads of places previously unknown, our past reconciles with our future - and be it good or bad - there will always be that place from which we came, and from which we strive to set forth from.

What is beyond those hills?



My journal



In a matter of hours I start the journey to the Phillippines. I look back on the year and remember all the people who too, have left on journey's of their own. Some have left work to do the traditional O.E. of London, others to Australia. Some have left simply, to find themselves, while others have left just for a break. Each person on their own journey, each person charting a course in life that is unique and special to them. No right way, no wrong way, just ways. I pause for a moment. As the sun rises in Tawa, shining over the trees, replaced by the moon and stars at night, as I sleep for one final time in the house I grew up in, I think of a journey that I'm going on - an adventure more so, such that my age will allow - and one too that I will return from, the wheel again having come full circle, and out of which a future will rise, wherever that may lead. And as I look out the window one final time, a view known to me since my childhood, I hear another echo, silent in the night... I am no longer who I once was. 




Things to take to the Phillippines





So we understand each other

Wellington

 

For 27 years I have lived in this city; and for 27 years I have lived within the boundaries set for me. Those boundaries – classrooms, offices, and suburbs – carry us through, and form, an essential part of being a human being. Albeit, they only form part of it.

 

When time in the day is short, and those longings we feel are buried under an avalanche of work and busyness, we can’t help but go on living – without actually experiencing what it feels like to be alive.

 

Indeed, there are times in each of our lives – and I say this in the most unqualified way – where our lives are structured so that our inner desires are entirely consistent with our outer circumstances. Say those, be they good, or be they bad, sometimes come to fruition, and when they don’t, we often see what a fragile heart lies beneath modern life. Let me say this in another way: life, designed, is a powerful and uplifting notion. Life destroyed, through circumstance or otherwise, is equally powerful, but tinged with pain and sadness.

 

This conflict – this fragile and delicate balance – between our inner desires and outward circumstances, rises most when the boundary lines start to fade and weaken. When we test these boundaries – formerly known to us – reward and punishment await. These new boundaries give rise to further conflict, and the pattern repeats, until the conflict is solved and the gap between the known and the unknown is bridged. And one day – perhaps long in the future – we find peace in our souls, and comfort in our hearts.

 

But first, in the shifting rites of passage, there is also a time for discovery.

 

I fear I am getting too theoretical, so let me at the outset state what this is. This is not a story of a tourist, basking in the noon-day sun. No – this is a story of deep reflection on the world around us, and the role we, as individuals, play in that world. It is also the story of two people – alone in a foreign country save for each other – and how they change along the way.

 

Six weeks is hardly a long time. One can spend his entire lifetime in a place, and if, by way of conformity, he never leaves, he can never really know the place. At the opposite end of the spectrum, one can change his entire outlook on life in a matter of weeks – if such intensity of experience will allow. In six weeks too, desperate longings, ranging from a bowl of soup to the loftiest of philosophical ideals, can occupy and consume his entire existence. Such experiences, if interesting enough, might well read something like these notes.

 

In May, many months ago, the decision was made to travel to the archipelagos and Visayas of the Philippines; through good fortune and a bit of luck, the road is now travelled by two adventurers, two dreamers. Were we too impetuous, too haphazard in our planning – too careless? Time will judge us, and perhaps our fellow man too, but we can only interpret and see what our impulses allow us to. I am responsible for these words; the world is responsible for being as it is.  

 

As I write, I see a different person emerging. My wanderings in the past have changed me; released me, endeared me, perhaps, hardened me, to the experience of fellow man. This trip, these wanderings – they’re changing me. I am no longer who I once was. 

 

I said at the outset that for 27 years I have lived within the boundaries set for me. I have also alluded to the presence of change – so much so that change is now becoming the only constant in my life.

 

In any photographic manual, you can expect the landscapes and other scenes to reflect only part of what is going on. In evenings shared only with moonlight, these pictures may appear dark and agnostic; but they are real, violent and sudden against the passage of time. This is not the only thing going on, for readers of this book may witness a change – and not necessarily in that of the author.

 

For now though, my only thoughts are those I leave behind, and I shall leave you with that man, whose world was once something very different…

* Title borrowed from "The Motorcycle Diaries" by Che Guevara