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