The Green Ocean Explorer

From China to New Zealand, above the sea. Above, even, the clouds.

Aircrafts aren't so special anymore. Even when they serve you decent food. The magic is gone; now so pedestrian.

How many tons does this thing weigh?

Flight is magical enough, I'd say; it occupies so many of my dreams.

This is what we might call kamakzi blogging: renting time from the Auckland Central Library on a sunny day, a sunny summers day, on a mission. Let's hope I crash into the right target.

Here. 6 days and counting. Moved hostels, walked the grassy crater of a sleeping volcano, bought "jandels", tried to rest, found an apartment. It's the latter that's making it sink in. The outlay of funds for a habitat, the outlay of funds which precludes my ability to get home on my own. I live here now, and it's now that I need a job.

So I've done my resume up. Which was harder than it sounds when you have to rent your computer time, and more so when you realize that their standard office paper issue is slightly longer than we use at home. Not quite legal, not quite letter; formatting's a bitch; but there I am: Spider's Qualifications.

What exactly are you good at?

Well....

It's been a back and forth between the four corners of emotional extreme, flight control can't quite get through all the static: panic, delight, despair and unbridled desire, each lying outside the calm. But soon I'll have a place to hang my hat. With a view, thank god.

Last night I watched Sideways with Mustardseed in an open air theatre. You can see stars, even amdist the urban sprawl, and the air is clean enough to see out across the water. This is what the Kiwis call the "Big Smoke". It ain't so.

There was a complimentary wine booth provided, a vinters range from Hunter Valley.

"What do you like, my dear?"
"Everything. I'm a sommelier."
"Oh! Then what do you want to star with?"
"The Pinot."
"Ah, in keeping with the theme."

Today, I've taken refuge here in the library because books help me feel grounded, and the stacks have always been my refuge. The smell of paper is something permanent to me... funny that, what can so easily go up in flame.

I re-read Marguerite Duras' The Lover, which is something that is best done in the summer, somewhere cool, on the edge of the heat. Near the end it makes me teary.

Here:

And another time, on the same route, during the crossing of the same ocean, night had begun as before and in the lounge on the main deck there was a sudden burst of music, a Chopin waltz which she knew secretly, personally, because for months she had tried to learn it, though she never managed to play it properly, never, and that was why her mother agreed to let her give up the piano. Among all the other nights upon nights, the girl had spent that one on the boat, of that she was sure, and she'd been there when it happened, the burst of Chopin under a sky lit up with brilliancies. There wasn't a breath of wind and the music spread all over the dark boat, like a heavenly injunction whose import was unknown, like an order from God whose meaning was inscrutable. And the girl started up as if to go and kill herself in her turn, throw herself in her turn into the sea, and afterwards she wept because she thought of the man from Cholon and suddenly she wasn't sure she hadn't loved him with a love she hadn't seen because it had lost itself in the affair like water in sand and she rediscovered it only now, through this moment of music flung across the sea.

I've seen live music at the Zoo, so far. I've been dancing, here and in the city of light, Hong Kong. I've gotten a couple of history lessons, and I am continuously, constantly in danger of being run over by cars; mind you, I'm still up high, looking for a target, circling my map of New Zealand, in back and forth between those four corners....

I'm off to buy some toggs.