21 June
It's the shortest day of
the year, but quite possibly my favorite since I've been in Karuna Falls. Sun. Skin warming, eye squinting, laundry
drying sun! I spend the day in the garden. Weeding, forking & spreading until 4 beds
have been composted, manured, limed, and covered with rotten hay. Ready for planting more winter crops. The rich, dark, sticky soil is nutrient dense
and absolutely beautiful. My skin is
saturated in sun, I lie on the warm wood deck and worship it.
22 June
The moon is nearly
full. It casts onto the big, billowing
clouds a haunting blue.
I learned how to replace
a window pane today. I'll be building my
own earthship in no time. Mahamudra is
proving to be an excellent opportunity to acquire building maintenance/repair
knowledge. The sun is hot on my back as
I chip away at the yellow hardened, aged puddy.
The ease and comfort in which
I've slipped into Wayne's life is nothing short of rare, maybe even a bit unusual,
but it's suiting, and we're serving a purpose, be it predestined or simply
serendipitous, in each others lives.
Each day is it's own.
23 June
The moon and the
accordion are meant for each other.
Sunday, a whole day
off. Lazy morning in bed, breakfast on
the porch, squinting into the hot sun, afternoon doing laundry, toasting
muesli, finishing Wayne's sign.
An hour
before sunset Wayne and I head down to the beach and go fishing. He hasn't been in ages and we're keen on
catching dinner to bring to Ruby's full moon potluck. As the sun sets a massive ivory orb rises
over the sea and I hook a kahawai and bring it in excitedly. When the moon conceals itself behind a cloud
and my fingers begin to stiffen with chill we head over to Ruby's. 
The free spirited girl has gathered a lovely diverse crowd, I'd expect nothing less. Two Spanish girls, Aurora and Belle, a Kiwi named Tim and his gorgeous Italian lady, Lulu, with a baby girl on the way, another Karuna Falls couple, and Ruby's mum. We share a meal of fresh veggies from everyone's garden prepared in various fashions. I share my catch from the sea.
Afterwards we head outside to howl at the
moon like proper mystical NZ coyotes, and jam on the random assortment of
instruments Ruby has sorted out. Aurora
straps on her accordion and plays an evocative homage to the man in the moon. Honestly, you're automatically a complete badass if you can rock out on the accordion. She sketches an image with her words of a
great white bat who looks onto the earthlings from his lunar perch and it is he
who feeds us our stories, our musings and our desires. Her flawless skin is eggshell white under the
moon's galactic beam, her accent is romantic and lyrical and I wish she'd never
stop talking. She's someone I'd want to
introduce Emily Otis to because I think they'd either fall madly in love or
fight with the passion of a thousand suns.
Either way, the girl is significant.
And the way she plays the accordion, like she's the medium through which
the instrument confesses its tormented and eternal longing for its one and only
love, the moon.
Ruby beats her African
drum, Bella her maraca, me, I tap a clay pot with the handle of a
paintbrush. We're a musical mishap, but
we're howling below a mega moon on the winter solstice, and I can't stop
smiling because I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be.
24 June
Flat tyre on the way to
meet Natalie in Coromandel for a hike to retrieve Kiwi audio recorders. Farmer John helps out, but I end up having to
call AA in spite of his typical Kiwi DIY preparedness. Ever heard of a tyre stud threading to the
right? I always thought it was lefty
loosey, righty tighty. Apparently
Tin-Tin swings the other way. After
Farmer John wanders up the road to his original destination, I sit reading
quotes from his holiness, the Dalai Lama.
He speaks wisely of patience and inner-calm. The irony that this is the first time I've
sat down to read this little book of mantras, as I'm waiting for a service
truck coming from the town I'm meant to be driving to, is not lost on me. Steve discovers the right threaded trick and
an hour later Natalie and I still manage to meet up for a steep incline walk to
the last recorder.
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| View of Coromandel from track |
Conversation is fun,
interesting, relaxed. She's one hell of
a woman. Returned from the slippery,
narrow bush path we say our goodbyes and I take care of some errands in
Coromandel. Pick up some shellfish to
make Thai curry mussels with Wayne.
Yum! I'm feeling exhausted and
welcome and early night. I fall asleep
to Wayne singing and playing guitar.
26 June
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| May All Beings Be Happy |
I'm so happy here it's a
little ridiculous. Mounted above the
dining table is a long board made of kauri.
Etched in it years ago is a message reading, "May all beings be happy." It's so simple, but it's the one thing we all
strive for in life. John Lennon said
something like, "In school my teachers asked what we wanted to be when we
grew up. I said, happy. They said I didn't understand the lesson, I
said they didn't understand life."
But things get in the way, eh?
Life happens anyway and we forget that all we wanted from the beginning
was to be happy, plain and simple. And
then we've all got our own definitions of happiness, but really, at the core of
it, we've all got the same basic needs.
Food, water, shelter, community, acceptance, love. We get so lost in our routines of what we
"have to do" in order to provide the food, water & shelter part,
that we often forget the latter three.
And then, what's the point? If
you're not sharing and learning and laughing and crying and adoring and
growing, what are you doing? That's the
part that makes life worth living. Even
the Dalai Lama suggested that a good belly laugh is the best kind of
medicine. I felt it on the night of the
full moon. I feel it everyday since I've
been here, sitting below that message, living that message. I felt it earlier, planting seedlings into
the saturated soil.
And I feel it now,
walking the 8k bush track to Colville with Bella and Aurora. We could have driven, of course, but it's
been a warm day and it's not raining, so why not. If we leave at 3 we'll make it just in time
to meet Ruby for the 5:45 Nia class in the town hall. I didn't expect to ever practice my Spanish
in NZ, but here we are, sogging through the sticky clay soil, switching between
ingles y espanol, hablando sobre la vida hermosa.
As we approach our final destination a truck
pulls over and it's our search party!
Ruby and Shane, our salvation, come to rescue us. We hop in the pickup bed and speed off. Nia class goes as follows: 8 of us in a room
with a projector set up to play an ultra cheesy American DIY Nia video. Despite the hilarity of the effeminate male
instructor and his massive fake breasted, yet hyper masculine female
co-instructor and their posse of overenthusiastic belly shirt and jeans wearing
back ups, I feel uninhibited and quite happy to shake what my mama gave me
(refer back to hydrocephalic chimp dance moves). It's freeing and messy and sweaty and
bonding.
I return to a cozy house with a
hot fire going and dinner simmering on the burner. Welcome home.
A steaming bath and a cup'a tea later I'm curled up reading by the wood
stove. Happiness is easy to find if you
stop searching for it and just let it happen.
28 June
Well isn't this the day
for accomplishments and deliberation.
Completed the construction of a bookshelf for Tin-Tin and man am I buzzy
from it. With Wayne's materials,
guidance & good instruction that I hope to retain, it is a solid,
good-looking piece of furniture. I can't
wait to put it to use! Paint something
cute and artsy on it and it's perfect. I
know it's a small thing, but it made me feel as though this is only the
beginning of a skill, interest and hobby developing. I like making things, practical, useful
things with a look of unique quirkiness.
Perhaps that's why I've decided that one day I want to design and
assemble my own cob or adobe home, using re-purposed found materials for
windows, doors and other necessary furniture.
Ideally, it'll be off the grid with alternative power and water
sources. And it goes without saying
there'll be a wicked garden and even an orchard on site. The house with its red dirt walls and sturdy
foundation, its welcoming wood stove and its revitalized antique stained glass,
will tell a story. What that story is, I
can't know yet, but I feel the pen dropping and the first words being written
as I glide the saw, true to its mark, through the red wood. It's a simple bookcase, but it feels like
much more.
Wayne hosts the MEG committee
meeting. It's nice to see everyone
responsible for the success of this organization gathered all together, and I get to
listen in on the inner workings of the cogs in the machine. After a little while I realize I'm inside on
an absolutely gorgeous mid-winter day so I sneak off to do some gardening and
then read my new book, basking in the sun's gentle light like a peach porch
lounger.
The warm, yellow beams shoot me
up with habit-forming rays of liquid gold and I know there's no fighting it:
I'm a junky. Sprawled out on the
veranda, intoxicated, peeling off the layers to expose every inch of bare skin
I can get away with, I give in and let the lustrous narcotic seep through. After the gale-force winds and impenetrable
murky sky of yesterday, today's solar fix should keep me going for the next day
or so. If tomorrow brings doom and
gloom, I'll still have these moments.
29 June
Ending a winter day with
a hot bath under the back-lit blue black canopy of sky with thousands of tiny
holes punches shining through. A hot
bath to wash the smell of fish from me.
The sticky smell of the two massive kahawais, much bigger than any previous
catches. 4 to 5 pounds each. Pulling them from the sea, their blue green
iridescent bodies catch gold pieces from the sun then toss them back in to the
endless wishing well they'll never see again.
Even on these bigger creatures, I've pretty much got it down, the
quickest and, hopefully, most painless way to end their fleeting lives. Thanking the kahawai for its life, and the
sea for its bounty, we head home just before the warmth of the bright, clear
day becomes a freezing, cloudless night.
Preparing dinner, I practice gutting, cleaning & filleting each
fish. Another overlooked practical skill
I'm happy to have recently picked up.
It's fresh and delicious, of course.
Moist and flaky and swimming freely not two hours ago. After a day of tree felling and my first
chain saw lesson, I feel pretty grateful for the nourishing food and company.
30 June
I hear Wayne plotting
over the phone. He's being
secretive. I know he's got something up
his sleeve when he asks the receiver, "Are you still feeding your little friends today?" Satisfied with the response he hangs up and tells
me we're going for a walk, grab my camera.
Over at Al's I watch curiously as he mashes last night's fish leftovers
into a pulpy paste and heads down to the stream. "Eels." He breaks the suspense. "Just give 'em a couple a minutes 'til
they smell the stuff." So I sit on
the bank and wait for the eels, or tuna,
as they're called in Maori. I'm
imagining a few over sized worms wriggling out of mud holes to come nibble on
the fish remains.
There's ripples in the
water upstream and I squint my eyes to spot their tiny forms… and then I see
them. A half dozen or so are lazily
making their way toward us, only they're monstrous. Four to six feet long from nose to tail tip,
with striking, perceptive blue eyes.
Their murky brown tubular bodies writhe together in a clump, but they
don't fight for the fish carcass, instead they take turns, biting off just
enough for each. Creatures I would have
pegged as evil incarnate actually have the sweetest disposition. So amiable in fact, they barely notice when I
stroke their skin. And that's what it
is, no rough scales, no electric zap, but smooth, clean skin.
My affinity for NZ fresh water eels was nurtured in Karuna Falls, and
I'll never look at a river the same way.
Today is the day for
wild animal encounters. Right at dusk
Wayne calls me outside to see a ruru (morepork owl) coming out for the night to
feed. The little guy ends up hanging around
the house for a good 15 minutes, swooping from tree to tree, until it lands on
a pole just a foot above my head and looks down right at me. I stare into its wise, inquisitive owl eyes
and for a moment we're just two animals, checking each other out.
Since it's been so sunny
the last few days we've got plenty of solar power so we watch a movie, one of
Wayne's favorites, The Triplets of
Belleville. "Impossible to
describe, impossible to forget" is what it reads on the cover. And I agree.
I highly recommend seeing it.
More Pictures!
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| Wayne's Place |
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| My room is the one on the top left |
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| The sign I made |
