Oh, Cos You Know Me So Well..
There are lots of things going on at the moment .. and lots of things I’d love to write about it, but the timing isn’t quite right and the barometer is unsettled. I’m looking forward to time passing enough to be able to write about these things with the benefit of hindsight and discovery.
However, I can write a few, momentary reflections on some things seen and heard lately…that may or may not speak to things current, cos you know me so well.
1. Dave Matthews Band is still amazing live. And there is no more powerful witness in the world to any cause or movement, than a group of friends that stand together to honour one of their own. There are seasons of turmoil, grief and loss – when someone like LeRoi is suddenly gone… and there is a story left behind to be told by those who know him so well, that honours the music, the very being and core of his life, to love on the family of which we are all part, continuing on in the cause we are all living and believing in.
2. It’s someone else’s quote but it’s true “that which has the power to create an over or under reaction in us, usually has control over us, and will force that reaction from us”. If you know me so well, you know that I believe some of the essence of life is learning what to hold on to, what to let go of. There are some things though, that still hold on to me.. by their persistent ability to provoke an unwelcome response in me, because I’m still waiting for the freedom that truth brings. I realised that in some instances, I have laid down my right to write those truths, telling those stories.. because I fear the response. But the response in my spirit to not telling these things.. is much too much.
3. The adventurer in me is not dead, not the creative spark buried under sadness for a time. Cos you know me so well, I can speak to you of high desert plains, mountains, rocks, dry heat and long concrete & asphalt paths carved out just so that I can stand in the middle of nothingness. Stand there and realise how much I loved the unbeaten path, the unfolding day, the clarity of time and space. I am adventure-bound, ready for the wilderness of life again. The spark in me is rising up again, beating and warm within me.
4. Justice and compassion belong together. Cos you know me so well, you probably know that tears come more often now, more easily. The injustice of elderly couples treated with disdain, kids climbing out of the gutters towards the future, that which is lost…. So may my sense of justice not lead me towards rage, and may my sense of compassion still operate with discernment to the way forward.
Shanty Towns & Trailer Parks.
The Pacific Coaster from LA Union Station to San Diego takes about 3 hours, counting the time it takes to walk from the queuing platform to the station deck. Last month, I traveled out from a central part of the city to the outer reaches of LA, then on down the coast to my new home. It started with a queue, to pick up my ticket at Union Station. Once that was done, I walked and admired, in the sticky heat of a body not used to the warmth, the architecture and other-worldliness of this place.
Then we queued, under a sign. The sign told us to queue and wait for the signal from the usher, to walk to the platform where we were to board our train. I don’t really know why we had to stand there when we already had our tickets explicitly stating the platform and time of departure. But we queued, in an orderly and complicit manner until we were told we could move to the platform. Then we dispersed like flurry of fast-moving ants, which I’m not sure was the point.
As we (I guess the train and I) traveled, the railway lines were clinking and clacking with the roll of the carriage. It was kind of like those old spaghetti westerns carved out in Hollywood studios in the 30’s & 40’s where I sat out looking at the world, all the while suspecting there were half a dozen stagehands methodically rocking the carriage in time with the soundtrack in my head.
LA County rolls out it’s smaller cities and towns in a continual mass of concrete, brick and tile. By the time you hit the coast, it’s more like rolling past a line of school-children awkwardly holding hands. Some do it easier than others.
But the hand-holding really starts much closer into the city. You can tell a lot by the train line. Like back home, you get the best view of the billboards and industrial areas, great views of the central city suburbs until you hit the underground into Britomart. Here, you get a view into people’s backyards, their malls, parking lots and then into trailer parks. You get to see a lot of trailer parks.
Closer into the city, the trailer parks have a tendency to look like half demolition yards around the edges, with enough clear road left for the cars to move in and out. Corrugated iron in ruby and russet, with blue and gray tarpaulins part shelter, part windbreak, part privacy-shade swamp the permanently parked trailers.
About thirty minutes into this journey, we’re climbing our way through the freeway intersections and out into the hand holding inner suburbs, who sit shoulder to shoulder. Forty five minutes out of the station and the trailer parks begin to change their form. The driveways and streets are cleaner. There’s no tarpaulin in site and pot plants start to adorn the weatherboard-covered axles. The ruby and russet hues of iron and steel are gone, replaced with cool grays, blues, creams. The dusty inner-city haze seems to be cleared away.
At first I don’t think of there being any unusual thing in this situation. I’m laughing internally, the way a cynic who’s ashamed of their callous observations does, about the cars. It doesn’t matter how rickety-ramshackle the trailer park is, it sure seems that most of the cars are of a similar vintage. New. Spanking new. Well, within a three year model run.
The humour of it is, in my world the tidiest garages in the priciest central city suburbs house the rusty, fifteen year old student bombs held together with chewing gum and number eight wire, warranted by the Onehunga testing station, spit and grease. We’d trade just about anything for location and acreage when it comes to our homes. We long for ten foot ceiling studs and the quarter acre section, with vege garden and grass. Lord, we love grass. Paddocks preferably.
Here, a trailer-sized plot is big enough, so long as there’s a spot for the car, sparkling and fresh. The height of the ceilings doesn’t matter. It’s more of the same, keep the sun & light & heat out philosophy I guess, just in a different expression. Space for a bed, a chair, a place to eat. A shower. It’s all you need – so this is a simplified manner of living. In the East Coast Bays, we’ve talked about community, but this is shoulder to shoulder living.
We get an hour out of the city and the trailer parks are holding hands along the railway lines now, with the odd little stop tucked between. Some of our stops have me overlooking the garden sheds, kitchen windows and second-story bathrooms. The same colour landscapes apply to some of these suburbs and trailer parks.
The car rule is definitely the same.
By the time we hit the coast, traveling past the shoreline swamped with human bodies, beach umbrellas and lifeguard towers line up against the Pacific. It’s summer in California and the burner is turned up, even though the safety glass of the train’s window my arm is tingling and protesting against the heat. The vitamin-D starved, winter skin is both craving and detesting the sudden assault of sunlight. I feel pink and flushed all over, wishing I wasn’t so pale and out of place.
I’m watching the coastline and feeling every glass of wine, every pizza, every pistachio nut that has accompanied my winter hibernation. Golden, ruddy golden bodies are like moving exhibits in the ocean. I’m envious.
The trailer parks are non-existent now, beachfront condos and houses with Spanish influences crammed together no differently than my shanty town trailer parks and shackle the coast like palisades. Row after row, they line up the same way bodies cover the beaches. Americans know how to queue and line up, that much is for sure.
Then we hit the recreation parks. Parking lots lined with asphalt along the beaches. Black asphalt. So black that the tar was molten and glistening, even so I could see it from the train. They were covered with RVs. Dozens and dozens of them, and then the tents. Asphalt parking lots covered in tents and RVs, littered with bbqs, picnic tables and coolers.
I’ve learned since arriving, that it’s not at all uncommon. To park in a carpark in order to have a holiday by the beach. Others take their RVs into the desert with quad bikes and farm bikes. So I get it. I think.
Here are my observations, that really bear no aspersions or commentary on the place I’m living, it’s just different.
1. People are good at queuing here. It’s a culture of queuing probably determined by the crazy population swell of Southern California.
2. People are so good at queuing that even vacations are big queues of bodies, RVs, campers and tents.
3. People here live close together because “space” doesn’t seem to matter in the same way it does back home, when you simply don’t have the choice. Buses, trains, sidewalks, parks, suburbs, cities. You all gotta hold hands.
4. The tidy car seems to be more important in American culture than the tidy, freshly painted garage. Interesting ideas on home and space.
In America, The Moon Is Upside Down.
Stones like these
are just like fuel underground
You stop my feet
from floating up when I come down
I go up
and watch the world spinning round
But I came down
You can’t see
that I’m like dust on the ground
The wind picks up
and then it blows me around
I go up
and watch the world spinning round
But I came down
Finding out the northern lights
Out Of The Moon
Last year, I spent about (what felt like forever) 5 months in a waiting/interviewing/paperwork process to look at the possibility of coming to work in the US. It didn’t work out at the time for a number of reasons – but I’m here now for 4 months.
The first of these months is nearly over, my brain and feet and breath finally settled into a rhythm of life here. There are sunshine skies that last forever. Long evenings. All the tastes and aromas of life are different, prioritized differently, examined and enjoyed differently.
At first it’s the large things that take your notice but eventually it’s the smallest of things that catch your attention. Like the sky. Here’s what I sent home recently..
the sky is blue today. that kind of blue they call azure. and though it’s light, warm blue – it’s like a hundred thousand translucent layers so the sky feels deep and warm. how can the sky feel deep? and yet it does.
so am i at at the bottom looking up or the top of the sky is really earth?
everyday i look out from my office across to hills that are brown and covered in houses that are made to keep the light out. they are made to keep the light out because the sun carries heat so strong in the middle of summer that the only way to survive is to stay in the dark as much as possible. isn’t it funny that back home our houses are built to catch the light because of the warm it brings and here they have windows the size of shoeboxes?
everything seems brown and covered in dust because of drought. strange isn’t it. and california – you think of it as being a beach state, and certainly San Diego as being a beach town.. but really – the beaches are beautiful yes, but thin strips of sparkly sand and that same reflected azure sky carried in water. it’s 10% beach and 90% desert which affects my theology.
The sea blows in a marine layer every morning – it’s like a sea fog that hangs in the sky instead of along the ground. and why not – because the sky is so vast and huge, so warm and blue – i would, if I was marine layer – want to hang in the sky.
most days it blows out again, and the warm breeze is left on my skin, the dryness of the air making my skin tight and dry in places unusual. and why am I telling you these things? well because my story at the moment is found in the geology, in the air and in the shape of the desert all reflecting my spirit and my heart.
The moon is upside-down, but I am getting used to the view.
Strange & Unusual Observations
After four weeks, I get surprised with the phone rings. It was the most familiar sound back home. I was used to eating and drinking and sharing life with with multiple people from multiple worlds every day. I’m surprised with the sense of vitality I miss from that.
Without my phone ringing all the time – I do feel more relaxed.
Change and life carries on exactly the same at home (so I am assured) yet I constantly feel anxious about the life that carries on without on it’s own path & trajectory – so perhaps I have an over-inflated sense of self-importance.
It’s easy to be here, it’s easy to make a new life when you have something to do. My list of things I want to do is constantly expanding, mostly filled with places I’d like to visit, things I want to see and do and dreams of wide highways, mountains, green that covers me like swaddling clothes, desert rocks and Yosemite, Yellowstone and Yukon.
I like, no, I love this space. I love these people too. I feel at home. Even if the moon is upside down!
Object Attraction.
I’m going to be moving house soon. Granted, every year, I’ve wondered, for all six years I’ve been in my little cottage.. will this be the year it’s finally time to move? It’s been a glorious little home.
So I’m ruthlessly going through my worldly possessions (it feels like there are a lot of them, but I’m putting a huge amount down just to the 37sq metres of living space.
This little article here is full of interesting thoughts around possessions and the sentimental significance we attach to stuff.
Of course, the real power of those objects is found in the internal monologues, memories and pictures inside our hearts, those objects are like hyperlinks to those stored images, scents and sounds.
But why do I hold on? I hold on to photographs, instruments and books. Pieces of art and gifts and silly little things. As I try and undo and put aside, I find myself looking at the “memories” I’ve been keeping, slowly wondering why, and unraveling a girl I was a long time ago.
It’s the journey and reflection I see of myself that lashes me to Objects. Still, it’s time to let many of them go, begin afresh and new.
“Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is.” Yoda.