The Southern Bays of Banks Peninsula

 Birdlings Flat, New Zealand

This fine day. I write from my lair inside Miss Daisy May, a 1969 American travel trailer now known as a caravan in New Zealand. We both are expatriates of the USA and placed with the view from above. It is a healing place from physical and metaphysical earthquakes, mass shootings and relatives that feel unrelated. Miss Daisy May was my first metallic womb, a place with some bounce and warm wood so that I can stretch out my arms and legs and ride around inside her end over end without fear of coming undone in the process of birthing my next self.  

  

Our faithful dog Tuppy is usually somewhere close. He is the perfect writer's companion until he starts snoring. We think Tuppy is thirteen years old but our calculators went haywire after the earthquakes. Time became distorted when numbers were gobbled up for guesstimating how far east that one was, how deep, and what number on the rector scale. "How old am I?" was replaced with "My god, I am still here!" My god became my dog and I retreating from the epicentre of hateful happenings. 

Happenings is such a polite word for earthquakes, death threats to the psyche and blood in the streets where you use to walk around but now don't.

No, now I live as shown above because "place" is pivotal for traumatised souls to regain subjective wellbeing during their happening. For me, living on the water's edge viewing an ever changing landscape while nestled inside a small self-contained space is exactly what my psyche ordered. I can feel the surf and the wind modulating my heartbeat and breath, if I keel over from ecstasy or fright, I will be propped back up by a wall, pillow, or puppy dog.