Wellington, New Zealand
I have been away from the blog for a solid week now. Not at all by design, each day I intended to set aside some time to extract some pearl from my headspace, yet each day somehow got away from me.
In one arena, I have been busy with errands, some still left over from my life in Sydney, some related to the next phase of my travels. I finally went through the stack of documents I brought with me, a pile that at some point in my final month I had flagged as action items for actioning before actioning my departure, but by the time I was making my final preparations I had lost track of its low level details and decided to just bring it wholesale and go through it when I had a little more time. Turns out I had an envelope of potentially warranty relevant receipts for some of the bigger ticket items I sold, my nearly completed tax return for 2007 and all the supporting paper nonsense to go with it, and a bunch of phone numbers and scribbled notes.
It was actually quite nice to attack these rather straightforward to-dos, surprisingly satisfying to complete a task, mail out those receipts (almost as heartwarming as a postcard, right?), bit by bit tie up loose ends and clear out space in my luggage (highlight unconsciously clever layered image? nah, leave it). Communicating with the folks at H&R Block is having its moments. It never ceases to surprise and outrage me how some people allegedly providing a service show so little intuition, take so few proactive steps, fail to assume responsibility for those key activities that would benefit from their alleged expertise and make the whole experience more pleasant and efficient. I'm the idiot if I expected there to be as many sharp minded people as there are things that need doing, but sometimes it feels like the world is peopled primarily with monkeys, and service means no more than a chimp with access, and I have to BYO the thinking.
I risk falling down a black hole of mundane details masquerading as a meaningful update, I lack the energy to inject comedy into the laundry list... The itinerary for the Asian leg of my travels has been sorted out, the last of my worldly possessions arrived in Los Angeles and my dear friend Dan was able to pick them up with no significant incident and by his report without major inconvenience. Found out my motorcycle has been sold, though the money is yet to hit my bank account. The point, if I so choose: I am now unfettered and free to enjoy the rest of my trip without further backward-looking worry.
And at last my point. I believe so much of my happiness, my mood, my reactions, so much comes down to my choice. I can have an amazing satisfying time if only I would choose it. And so I have.
A week ago, I was about to embark on working through 'The Artist's Way.' For those who don't know it, it is an intensive writing based approach to getting to the core of your creative spirit, returning to your creative soul. It is notoriously difficult and time consuming. This, along with the other mind-blowing books I was set to read, and an intention to dive back into my novel, and so on and on and on the list goes, piling up the list of intentions. I do not quit them altogether, but I have decided to set them aside. Making a choice.
And instead of looking directly into the eyes of these things on my mind, and writing what I see, I have decided to peer into the face of my food. Write about the exciting things that I am eating. The amazing people I meet, the places I go, the things I see. And I know, in so doing, I will be writing about my soul anyway. And I will be more firmly in the present. And that is the only place I really want to be. I have been put in touch with friends of a friend and they have taken me into their home. They are the most extraordinarily generous and hospitable hosts you could imagine. So much so that I feel I must dedicate a separate entry to the experience. And this leads to my final thought. That, like the truly great meals I have had, it is better to have a well-paced, well-proportioned dining experience than to gorge on a meal much larger than it needs to be, satisfying as it seems to be to take it on and clean my plate. So I will endeavour to make my entries a little shorter, and hopefully thereby a little more frequent.
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