Moving On

Okay, now that all that STUFF is out of the way...here are the mechanics of life right before Christmas until NOW...

A decision was finally made to move out of Christchurch. I know, many friends from outside Christchurch (especially my family and friends in the USA) are saying, 'finally', but it is not an easy decision to leave behind a city that needs so much help. However, we are convinced now that the only help we can give will be to return to Christchurch from time to time and hopefully bring with us the clarity that can only be gained from a distance.

Christchurch is in deep need of some clarity. And, so are we.

We went on holiday to Kaikora for one night and on to Blenheim for seven more nights and camped in a tent...the most secure feeling in the world for those of us who live in earthquake alley. Having nothing more substantial over one's head than a micro fiber spells RELIEF to the soul continuously checking out the structure or escape routes of homes and buildings in Christchurch. I am looking forward to NOT sleeping with my cell phone at arms length in the very near future!

And, I might add, I am looking forward to living anywhere on all the other many and various known and unknown faultlines in New Zealand with the same underlying awareness that rocking and rolling is always a possibility, but the recent historical record of how things are being addressed in Christchurch, well...I shall not comment except to say that we have decided that for us...distance is in order.

For our many friends who must stay in Christchurch for their own or other reasons...we have acquired many extra tents (a fact) and an open door policy that has always been a part of our ethics (another fact)...come, come as often as you need to become refreshed, camp in our next surroundings and express yourself with as many earthquake stories as you need to exude to clean out the clogged arteries! We will allow you to pick the topic, paint the picture as you see it with your own words, and simply LISTEN. We have no solutions either, only ideas going unheard.

Meanwhile, we have put our home on the market and anticipate a fairly quick sale as it is undamaged. We regret that we have to leave behind Brother John's creation, but Brother John's motto is 'don't worry, be happy' and even he felt this was definitely revisable when standing in the door frame too many times in one day...it pays to worry just a little when living in Christchurch, and at least we know we will leave behind a safe enough place for the next owner to scurry to when the going gets going a little too much. The outdoor kitchen is heaven on earth during a major quake...we know, we got to use it the very first night of its completion.

While on vacation, we fed the eels and ducks a lot, sat by a natural stream and contemplated which way to go. We decided on Blenheim at the top of the South Island, closer to the North Island which we feel we have ignored too long and home to Marlborough Country and the best Savignon Blanc grapes in the world. Even though I do not drink, I certainly enjoy the ambiance of the perfect rows everywhere growing the nectar of the gods...laugh out loud, or so they think. But, it is also next door to the Marlborough Sounds which is and always will be one of my favorite places on this planet...the Sounds are for the spirit a huge upliftment that can be even for a writer, darned near indescribable. Pristine beauty.

We will be close to Picton where we can hop on the boat, go across the strait (on a fine day of course) and investigate what for us has become to feel like another country, the North Island of New Zealand. Should I mention that we will then be situated right on the Great Alpine Faultline? Well, for my worried compadres in Oklahoma, you are sitting on the faultline of fracking, and now, this disease is going viral so I don't reckon anywhere to be safe enough from our own stupidity, but the aesthetics of the region will simply have to make up for it. And, it does...I will send you pictures soon enough.

It has been seventeen months of hard work. We have been fortunate to get out a few times and feel the difference between living in a world not totally focused on devastation and rebuilding and the world of such...the contrast is enormous and the anticipation of getting out and starting over is as you would expect...a real thrill and a real bummer (nice seventies vocabulary)...bittersweet...but, we are not leaving Christchurch entirely behind as we will take it with us on many levels and come back often to visit, encourage and hopefully even one day get to help redirect some of the thinking going on at another time more ripe for ideas that will bring relief instead of more mayhem. Right now, Christchurch feels stuffed with too many minds that need a particular vacation from this place...there are a few who simply need a one way ticket out of here.

Enough. We are busy packing, moving, showing, trying not to tell and telling only what those who must remain behind need to hear...wherever we go, we will take this collective consciousness with us and always have the tents ready for as many as feel the need to spell themselves relief with micro fibers...such a strangely blended world we all now live in...

My love, as always...belongs to each and every one of you...

Industrious Needs Its' Tummy Flap Lifted

Industriousness looks different to me now. I begin to watch for signs of it while I get up from bed every day and head straight for my desk where I might write down what comes to mind after being shut down and then restarted. (Two cities come to mind by comparison, Christchurch and Sendai, I live in one and consumed the other)


Today, I stood in front of the mirror naked...

...while lifting the flap of my tummy off the caesarean scar from giving birth to my second to last daughter, whose name appropriates all that I am ever contemplating as I go along in my own industrious ways. There is an underlying pattern I seek inside, not to classify, but to bring light to the darkness. Air under the tummy flap, to make things heal, is my destiny.

My daughter’s name is Destiny. Destiny Rose, in case Destiny is not enough. I never meant for it to be the flower, but the act of rising, like the energy that needs addressing, too long repressed, under oceans and inside hearts. I long for us all to be in touch with our destinies.

That destiny is to love no matter what, alongside our natural tendency to slaughter and be condemned to a death of some kind, which always follows birth by moments or many years, the difference is only important to the survivors, who cloud the issues of what life has left for any of us on the backside of too many earthquakes and one hell of a tsunami. All with feminine characteristics no doubt and very cranky tummy flaps.

With my own words I desire to make less of a mess of the space I occupy. I long for a landscape of peaceful composition fully rendered with potential approval by everyone. Ahhh, a dreamer you say, there is no way to do that. But nevertheless, how might I do that is what occupies my mind every minute of every hour, every day of every year, every year I have been here. Not because the ‘I of me’ needs it to be expressed by me for others, but because the ‘I of me’ requires that that one possible language to be strong enough inside myself to create an over-riding pattern of reality to offset the slaughter.

To deny my own sense of slaughter is insane and not very intelligent, for intelligence renders one thing to all, we know nothing, and we are more often merely responders than meaning makers, not one of us makes any lasting meaning for anyone besides ourselves to the point of intention that I seek inside myself, which is every one’s right that cannot be breached, except...some do try. I rub my finger across my scar and remember my own efforts to control anything, the futility smells upon my fingertips.

Then some are the collective parts of ourselves left to go fly into the universe without editing, like say the media...showing tsunamis, earthquakes, nuclear explosions over and over again with the still pictures heaped with visual remnants of past industriousness torn asunder. What think ye of industry today my friend, Ben? I think he might agree with me on this...there is nothing to be gained by watching it over and over and everything to be gained by turning it off collectively and saying, excuse me, I need time to think this thing through, there is much to do here, but it needs to be from the part of the ‘I of me’ of all of us after we become intimate with our own destinies and lift up our tummy flaps and allow a little air in.

While many are performing rescue, I sit here and contemplate...what we do next certainly needs to be extremely different from what we have done before...and...

It occurs to me that the only reason we need armies is for the purpose of saving those who are lying in the rubble of Christchurch and Sendai, this is an army’s true destiny, to rise up their numbers for these acts of love and not those that contribute to the slaughter. An army has the force that could put love back on the map of our world, to counter balance what is the natural tendency of all organic matter, to slaughter, decompose and/or simply die.

Imaginary boundaries need to come down, property rights rethought, positions of power destabilized need rethinking in egalitarian ways utilizing all our natural and material resources collectively to bring love equal to slaughter. There is no one on this planet unaffected by these events now thanks to technology, it is our best friend and our worst nightmare and it has brought to every one’s table this reality:

We are all on this planet together, and this planet is undergoing a very strong pattern of repositioning itself, not because of some angry god, gods, or external mad-hatter, but simply because it can and does over and over, no matter what. We all need each other to collectively create a world where everyone can be as safe as possible, while always understanding that there is not anything we can build, plan for, or dictate, that cannot be pulled apart, drowned and destroyed in the blink of an eye, or nearly as quickly, and this pattern will never stop.

The only thing we as human animals can truly do is to be constantly industriously cultivating our abilities to love differently than the way we have in the past. We need to language things differently, rebuild differently and that will never be possible as long as we look at the mediated spaces for our language keys...turn the television sets off...and think what destiny might rise up inside the 'I of you' that is important for now, we need one another to all be doing just that...NOW, not later.