Golden Birthday

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Uprooting is a devastating blow because you have to separate yourself overnight from something that, for as long as you can remember, has been an important part of your identity. In a sense, you are your culture, customs, language, country, your family, your lovers. Yet exile, should you survive it, can be the greatest of philosophical gifts, a blessing in disguise. In fact, philosophers, too, should be uprooted. At least once in their lives. They should be exiled, displaced, deported — that should be part of their training. For when your old world goes down it also takes with it all your assumptions, commonplaces, prejudices and preconceived ideas. To live is to envelop yourself in an increasingly thicker veil of familiarity that blinds you to what’s under your nose. The more comfortable you feel in the world, the blunter the instruments with which you approach it. Because everything has become so evident, you’ve stopped seeing anything. Exile gives you a chance to break free. All that heavy luggage of old “truths,” which seemed so only because they were so familiar, is to be left behind. Exiles always travel light.

The redeeming thing about exile is that when your “old world” has vanished you are suddenly given the chance to experience another. At the very moment when you lose everything, you gain something else: new eyes. Indeed, what you eventually get is not just a “new world,” but something philosophically more consequential: the insight that the world does not simply exist, but it is something you can dismantle and piece together again, something you can play with, construct, reconstruct and deconstruct. As an exile you learn that the world is a story that can be told in many different ways. Certainly you can find that in books, but there is no deeper knowledge than the one that comes mixed with blood and tears, the knowledge that comes from uprooting.

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-Costica Braditan, NYT Editorial 16 August 2014

Mike turned 50 years old on the first of October, and we took our first tiki-tour to celebrate.  We went up to a place called the Bay of Islands, famous for fishing, sailing, diving, Zane Gray, and the location where New Zealand as a nation was born.  Follow below....

Here's a panorama view of the whole Bay of Islands from a town called Russell.  The bay contains hundreds of little islands.  The pole in the near is famous for being chopped down x 4 by the Maori chief Hone Heke when the Brittish flew their flag instead of the flag designed by the Maori.  Directly across there from the bay is the Waitangi Treaty Grounds--"The Birthplace of New Zealand."

This massive lawn is where tents were set up for multitudes of Maori chiefs and people, along with all who had an interest in colonization, to meet and hammer out the Treaty of Waitangi in February 1840.

This is a waka taua, or war canoe, hand carved from the massive, beautiful and strong Kauri tree.  No synthetic material, no nails.  Prince Charles and Princess Diana where given a ride in this back in the 1980's to the Hole in the Rock (see pics below).

Anyhow, we went to a Powhiri (welcoming ceremony) here in front of the Marae, which is a traditional meeting house.  It is built in the image of humans--a protector on top, legs on which it stands, arms coming down to encircle, ribs to support.  The inside is a safe and nurturing place--the womb.  The inside is decorated with carvings and weavings, in honor of all those before.  The birthday boy was chosen to be the "chief" for the visitors.  In we went:

So that was fun.

It may look like a weird Hawaiian-luau/contrived performance.  But the Kiwi culture is more than tokenism;  it is part Pakeha (white European Brittish Commonwealth Immigrant which I can totally relate to as a descendant of the Irish potato starvation) and part Maori (aboriginal South Pacific warrior explorer).  It's a crazy amalgam of shared resilience from remote island living, farming and fishing culture, and warrior nature.  But there is little violence here.  Maori language is actively preserved and included (like all the signage at the hospital and everywhere else, and at spoken every introduction to any public event).  The Haka is performed--really occupied--by the All Blacks national rugby team before any competition (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56Hb632BCCw) and it unites a masculine energy--it is really powerful.  All boys of adolescent age also learn the Haka at school (like my 12 year old).  He's also learning how to use a warrior stick.  The Maori legends are taught, the art and images are ubiquitous, and the correction of social disparity is a national priority and something I was interviewed on prior to obtaining a job here.  It is very, very different to the Native American relationship to the USA. 

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We also went on a fun boat ride to the Hole in the Rock, but it was so windy and wavy we couldn't drive the boat through the hole.  And we didn't see dolphins...so we got a voucher for another trip.  Which was nice.  

We also went fishing right off of the dock in Russell.  Seamus caught 2 Schnappa which were smallish so we threw back.  Then Fionn got a Kowahi (aka sea salmon) which the chef at our hotel prepared into sashimi and fish and chips for us.  

On our way home, we saw river eels--which are crazy cool!!!!!!  They come out of the rocks if they think you will feed them, and they make eel balls.  There was a PBS Nova special on them (watch if you can) which shows how amazing they are:  they reproduce infrequently in a big mass in the pacific ocean, they can climb up walls, they are big in Maori culture.  

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For the rest of the boys' spring break, they did surf camp.  We can all stand up on a surf board now, which is a lot like skiing...on a moving slope...which=nirvana-ish.

I'm too emotionally and mentally tired to be profound and reflective, though it's been churning over the past 3 1/2 months.  There have been days I ache with the love I feel for my friends and my family in the US.  It can be overwhelming and sneaky, the way grief is.  And yet I know there is no where else I would want to be, and that I have the support of my posse.  And I have moments of profound gratitude for all we have, the opportunities, the beauty, the adventure.  I've also been working really hard at my new job, and trying to be a good parent and also trying to enjoy the present moment.  We have arrived into a neighborhood community of like-spirited souls, which has made for a soft landing.  I just wanted to share some of our joy with my friends and family. The really nice thing was that when we rounded the bend at Sandy Bay, I saw familiar sights and I thought, "oh good we're almost home."