Volume 7 - New Zealand

The end.  Almost.  I’m getting ahead of myself.  First we have to go back four months to winter in New Zealand, where I slept in long johns, two pairs of pants, two long sleeve shirts, and two pairs of wool socks under three blankets with two hot water bottles in art deco Napier where it had previously been too hot to wear a t-shirt but it was now 40 degrees and without heat.  New Zealand has an aversion to climate control.  Natural gas is too expensive to use it for central heat, and the idea of air conditioning is frankly pretty silly to most non-Americans, even in places far hotter than here.  It is nice to not have to go from scorching heat to the freezer that is the inside of any store during an American summer, but I was dang cold in Napier a few months ago.  Now I’m back in Ohio.  I completely forgot humidity existed until I stepped into the subway station in New York three weeks ago when I landed back in the United States.  Someone should have reminded me of humidity when I was gushing about the wonders of America last December.  

One place that I think is slightly less humid than Akron, Ohio, is Grand Rapids, Michigan.  Grand Rapids is my new favorite place in America.  Why would I be in love with a small Michigan city?  Because Grand Rapids stuck it to the Man, and the Man backed down.  Newsweek, the major corporate newsmagazine put out a list of “dying cities” in America based on population loss.  Grand Rapids was one of them.  One 22-year-old event planner begged to differ and to prove his point, he put together a massive lip-dup to Don McLean’s “American Pie” featuring local celebrities, the high school band, university football team, musicians, a helicopter, and a whole lot more covering the entire downtown.  Roger Ebert has since called it the greatest music video ever made, and Newsweek backed down from its claim.  This is what is right with the world and right with America.  Individuals rallying support for a cause they believe in, bringing people together, building community spirit, and taking back their lives from corporate control.  My beloved Cleveland is also on the list.  Cleveland rocks.  Cleveland made no such video.  Grand Rapids was national news.  Cleveland made national news when the entire population got in a tizzy when LeBron James left the Cavaliers.  We have a bit of a reputation for being passionate about sports…and nothing else.  America’s passion about sports has left me a bit bewildered since I returned.  Imagine what could be done if every American turned that passion for sports into passion for creating positive change.  Sports bring people together and create community.  We already know how to do this community organizing thing.  We just need to do it ourselves.  These are the places, places like Cleveland where big things are going to happen.  Places that are down but not out, poised at the brink of monumental potential, ready to erupt.  Places with real people, without the evils of gentrification, with abandoned buildings galore, waiting, waiting, for someone to love them.  I love you, Cleveland. 

I like, but do not love, Taumata­whakatangihanga­koauau­o­tamatea­turi­pukakapiki­maunga­horo­nuku­pokai­whenua­kitanatahu, a hill in rural New Zealand and record holder for the longest place name in an English-speaking country (85 letters), which means roughly, “the hill where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one.”  In America, this would have come with a gift shop.  In New Zealand, it a really long sign and a tiny gravel parking lot on a tiny gravel road.  I traveled with a friend to get there from Napier.  It was my first time in a car in ages and was surprised that I didn’t terribly enjoy being in a car.  I generally like cars.  I like convertibles especially, but any good-looking, fun car with a CD player usually gets me excited to be in it.  Car design is a really cool thing.  But I realized, and have confirmed since being back in the US and driving everywhere, that my love affair with cars has run its source.  At first I missed never driving during my travels.  When I did rent a car back in November, I wrote about how good it was, how it made me feel like a real Kiwi and not just a tourist.  But something happened in the following six months.  I just forgot about the car.  I rode a bicycle, or more often I walked.  I walked a lot.  50 km a day sometimes.  And I really enjoyed it.  And I never felt like it was a waste of time.  And I could never be rushed, because I never knew how long it would take to get where I was going.  Many times I didn’t have anywhere I was going.  It never mattered that it took longer than driving because I never had the option to drive.  I had to live places where I could get where I needed to go by walking.  Out of necessity I was forced to slow down the pace of my life.  I saw so much.  I also had wet shoes much of the time when it rained.  But I think I still prefer it.  My car now is 21 years old and has rusty chunks falling off the bottom of it.  I love that car.  It deserves a break.  I need a Vespa.

In the height of my realization that I don’t really like cars, I discovered something that made me more excited than just about anything ever has.  It’s an urban design concept called “new pedestrianism.”  Some people might not get excited about urban design concepts.  This is why I need to get a job so I can earn money to go to school so I can be a professional teller of how amazing urban design concepts are.  New pedestrianism is a radical offshoot of new urbanism, the idea that new developments should be built the way cities used to be built before the advent of cars, before zoning regulations compartmentalized our lives.  It says development should be based on population density, with all the necessary needs of a community met within the community.  It’s the anti-suburb.  And its most miraculous effect is that it brings people together and makes them happy.  So what’s the next logical step?  Relegating cars as far into the periphery as possible.  Even new urbanism still relies on car roads as central.  Front doors and garages face the road, which is designed for cars.  The front of everything faces the road.  Cars are still central and pedestrian walkways must be built around them.  What if it was flipped?  What if garages faced the back?  What if when you walked out your front door, you came to a pedestrian walkway without any cars?  You might see your neighbor more often.  What if the front door of a business faced a pedestrian path?  You might be more inclined to walk there.  If everyone is walking there, you might run into these people on the way…and talk to them.  Conversation instead of isolation.  Journey instead of destination.  Moving instead of sitting.  Meaning.  Life.  This is going to be big.

I’ve written a lot about the religious climate in New Zealand, so to conclude let me just encourage the good things that are being done there, even if they don’t seem to involve anyone between the ages of 18 and 40.  It’s like a big Amish rumspringa for the entire country.  Napier had five downtown churches in a city of about 50,000.  I went to all of them and do you know how many people I met who were out of high school and not married with kids? One.  I don’t know what has happened to this generation of New Zealanders that they are so uninterested in spiritual things, but there is definitely a need, and I think an interest.  Because in reality it’s not that people are uninterested, it’s just that they have never been given the opportunity to think about questions beyond the temporal.  And when they are, they respond brilliantly and genuinely.  Also good was the complete absence of the plague of homogeneity that has afflicted the evangelical church in America.  Evangelical churches here are well known for being mostly white, upper middle class, suburban, enormous, commercial, and judgmental.  New Zealand has no evangelical churches that I came across but they do have Pentecostal churches, a slightly more emotional version of the evangelical movement.  And these churches in New Zealand tend to be racially diverse and largely poorer.  Traditional churches tend to be elaborate and beautiful, based on the idea that the house of God deserves to be top-notch and that beautiful surroundings can help us align more with God.  Evangelical churches in America tend to be trendy, modern, and comforting rather than inspiring based on the idea that getting people in the door is the greatest challenge and something that looks familiar is an important way to do that.  New Zealand Pentecostal churches tend to be bare-bones and dilapidated, and they sometimes feel the most authentic of all.  Unencumbered by money, the buildings simply cease to conjure any thought at all, allowing the message and the people to take center stage.  All ways have a place in the life of the church, as long as the motivation is love.

One experience I wanted to be sure to have in New Zealand before leaving was farm work.  I have been getting more and more interested in farm work and supporting local and sustainable farming, so I wanted to get my hands dirty.  I was able to do a little of this in Napier when I helped pick olives (a very time-consuming job) and clean up meadow muffins (not nearly as delicious as they sound) left over in the field my the horses.  A horse makes eight meadow muffins a day.  And they are quite a big bigger than a human muffin.  This is an important thing to remember if you ever have anyone ask you for a pony.  They poop a lot.  But they’re also fun to ride, and I did get to take a ride along the beach and even in the waves in exchange for my help.  I also worked for a longer period on a macadamia nut orchard in what was ultimately one of the best experiences of my entire trip.  I was a bit nervous.  I would be working there in exchange for food and accommodation, which I thought would be safer than the generally exploitative practices of many commercial farmers hiring seasonal work (Oscar Romero anyone?).  I was right.  Every morning we would go out into the orchard and use our tool (a long pipe with a hook on the end, all handmade) and pull down the nuts, which hung like grapes off the tree.  It was almost like a treasure hunt.  Then they went into a big machine and were de-husked before being bagged to dry.  My farming family lived in a beautiful house with a gorgeous view complete with chickens and African guineafowl.  They had always wanted to have a macadamia nut orchard and they took pride in doing everything themselves including raising the bees that produced the honey for their honey-coated nuts.  It was all so…pure.  And these people were awesome.  They lived on a boat and traveled as a family with their two kids for 10 years.  When they lived in South Africa, they had a pet python.  Instead to paying oodles of money to feed them, they’d go to the animal shelter and get the dogs that had been euthanized and feed them those.  He used to catch octopus in the ocean by his house and put them in the tank he built himself.  He trained a raven to sit on the steering wheel when he drove and to come whenever he whistled.  These people were so stinking cool.  We all worked together every day.  Their granddaughter came to visit one day and after we had known each other only a few hours she ran off the porch and jumped into my arms to give me a big hug when it was time to say goodbye.  Their other granddaughter reached up to hold my hand when we went for a walk and held on tight when we rode on the back of the tractor from the shed down to the orchard.  We had just met.  It was pure, unashamed affection, and it was an absolutely beautiful thing.  Even weeding was fun.  There’s a weed.  Where are its roots?  Find them!  Pull them out!  I always expected there to be buried treasure at the end of one of them.  Though I had never done this kind of work before, I think by this point I had learned the one thing that you take away most from an extended period of travel – adaptability.  I really feel like I could do absolutely anything without any trouble at this point.  You just learn to be comfortable and calm anywhere and in any circumstance when you travel.  You have to.  I got to be on the other side of a farmer’s market stand too, which reminded me of college Admissions.  It was exactly the same dynamic as a college fair or a convention or a fair or anywhere where people stand behind a table and try to sell goods or pass along information. 

It was so good in part because I was completely disconnected from the rest of the world.  And I realized something about myself.  My happiness and optimism are inversely proportional to the amount of advertising I consume.  The more advertising I am aware of, the less happy I am.  Media has the power to make people happy or sad; its power is really unequaled.  I can watch “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World” and be giddy, or I can watch “American Idol” and want to curl up in a hole.  I have also been surprised to realize how little I like shopping.  I generally enjoy shopping for things that I enjoy or for other people, but in New Zealand I simply had to train myself to not spend money on anything for myself.  I didn’t have money and I didn’t have space to carry anything, so there simply was no way I could buy physical things.  Even t-shirts, one of my favorite things in the world, held little interest for me.  Perhaps that’s because I had a bit of overkill during the past few decades and I simply can’t justify buying any new ones when I have over 200 at home already. 

       

I of course, spent most of my time in New Zealand in hostels.  There’s no privacy whatsoever, but I liked that they were a great equalizer.  No one ever knew or cared what you did in the “real world” or how old you were.  Back here, the first question we ask people is what they do and categorize them accordingly.  And of course it would be shameful to be friends with or become romantically involved with someone more than a few years your junior or senior.  On the road no one cares.  You make some good friends out there, and saying goodbye is always tough.  I generally like long elaborate ceremonial goodbyes.  When I left Napier I did the opposite.  I just disappeared.  I usually like the closure an “event” lends to a goodbye.  I just got so tired of saying goodbye by that point.  And it was the first place I’d been that I actually didn’t really want to leave.  You meet people on the road and they are your entire life.  Your world is no larger than where you can walk.  And then you leave and everything in your life except for yourself is suddenly gone.  And you do it over and over and over again.  Starting over completely from scratch every few months or every few days.  And most of the time you’ll never see them again.  I am quite glad to be through with that lifestyle, and it may be my great takeaway from this trip (and one gray hair).

When I left Napier, I embarked on my last big traveling adventure.  I found a free natural hot spring that was warmer than any sauna I’ve ever been in.  It was amazing.  I smelled pine needles in the woods.  I don’t think there is anything in the world more comforting and lovely than the smell of pine needles.  I rolled down a hill in a big ball.  In New Zealand this is called Zorbing.  It was the next coolest thing I did after skydiving, and about 1/8 of the cost.  Pure fun.  And the people were so nice.  They offered to give me a ride home because it was pouring rain, and as I was waiting they gave me a free ride.  After all, they ball was at the top of the hill and it needed to be stored at the bottom.  This is what I loved about New Zealanders.  They cared about things other than money.  If you think the world is full of bad people, go traveling by yourself.  It is notI met a girl who was on the Amazing Race Australia.  She was awesome.  I did the haka, the crazy war dance New Zealand’s rugby team does before every match to psyche out their opponents.  As I was hiking one day, there were birds called fantails flitting all around me.  They’d dive in and around me and generally look a bit spasmodic.  Turns out that when I walk I disturb lots of tiny little insects and the fantails eat them.  They follow you picking up all the disturbed insects your walking creates.  I even saw a pheasant.  I love birds that don’t fly unless they have to.  They’re so wonderfully awkward.  

Then I almost died.  This one was intense.  I love caving.  I less love caving in a river.  It was a humbling experience.  First I tied myself t a rope and lowered myself 300 feet into a hole.  Then I walked or swam upstream against a current flowing wicked fast that were sometimes so deep I couldn’t stand.  And it was ice cold.  And underground.  And dark.  I squeezed, floated, swam, climbed, jumped, and sat in utter darkness illuminated only by the glow of fly larva trying to attract grown up versions of themselves onto webs so they could eat them and gain enough energy to transform into flies themselves only to mate and then fly into someone else’s web and be eaten.  At one point I simply didn’t have the weight or leg strength to get myself across the river and was washed away only to be grabbed and pulled back from the abyss by my guide.  At the end we had a feast, I got to take home the leftovers, got a ride back to my hostel, and got some free pics of the whole escapade.  I’m looking forward to paying it all forward.  People showed me so much genuine kindness on this trip.  People time and time again gave to me knowing that there was no way I could pay them back.  I was often somewhat ashamed to accept their generosity.  In America, we’re trained to do everything ourselves.  To accept gifts is a sign of weakness, to accept kindness you can’t repay is unheard of.  I was, however, not in a position not to.  When it’s raining buckets and I ate a single PB&J sandwich all day and someone offers me a ride and some left over barbeque, I’m going to take it.  And remember it the next time I see someone in need.  Yes, it is my own fault I am poor.  But getting that ride home in the rain doesn’t make me want to bum rides the rest of my life.  Sorry Republicans, in fact, it makes me more motivated to get some money in my pocket in the future, so I can give it away to someone who can never repay me.          

  

All of this was a bit much all at once for me.  I think a better philosophy to spread out major events.  Caving and bungy jumping and soaking in natural hot springs and doing the haka all in one week somehow may have taken to specialness out of each of them.  It was still an awesome week though.  It struck me about this time that while I don’t have any desire to play video games in the future, I’m glad I played them in the past.  I really believe the types of games I played did a lot to help cultivate a healthy sense of adventure, exploration, and imagination.  Games where you are free to roam and explore large, interesting worlds (and not with the intention of killing people) made me want to do it in real life.  I learned about different cultures from Street Fighter.  I learned about geography and car design from Cruis’n USA.  I learned that eating flowers lets you throw fireballs from your armpits from Super Mario Brothers.  The key for me was I played the right games at the right time in my developmental life and I didn’t play them so much that they took away from my interactions with the real world.  They enhanced it.  I think I also may have learned a lot about attention to detail and the importance of thoroughness from the Where’s Waldo books.  I’ve already established that while I’m generally not very fast at anything, I’m thorough at just about everything.  I can stare a building and just study the little intricacies of the architecture for ages.  Where some people just glance by and don’t pay any attention to their surroundings, I try to fully grasp the complexity of my universe.  I could have never found Waldo if I had just given it a quick glance.  And here is another example of how we train children right and then have them grow up to a world where everything good they learned is sacrificed at the altar of efficiency. 

I finished my time in New Zealand in the big city.  I had hoped to spend a good portion of my time in New Zealand living the city life I’d always wanted to try out, and I originally decided to get that fix in Christchurch.  Well, Christchurch is actually a pretty small city and had a big earthquake that took away a lot of its city-ness, so I found myself in Auckland a few months ago.  Auckland has as much in common with the rest of New Zealand as New York City does with rural Kansas.  New Zealanders who don’t live in Auckland hate Auckland, but Aucklanders make up 1/3 of the entire country’s population.  On the end Auckland was good, not just because it was a vibrant and fun city, but because the people there turned out to be pretty awesome.  I didn’t particularly like it at first, but now I miss it.  I loved getting up early.  There is nothing as magical as a city in the morning.  The life just starting to return to the city.  None of the crowds and chaos and drunkenness that characterize cities at night, just the bright sunshine and potential of a new day gleaming off the beautiful old edifices and the grotesque ‘70s slabs next to them.  In Auckland I learned that the word “family” means, “12 and under” in New Zealand.  It’s like Happy Meal.  I like being happy.  I want a Happy Meal too.  I also learned that bubble tea is disgusting.  Potato-flavored milk with sugarless gummi balls.  Yum.  One day in particular I thought perfectly encapsulated what makes me me: I started the morning at a farmer’s market and followed it with a performance aimed at kids of local hip-hop dance crews at the city’s major performance venue.  After that I had a free lunch at a local church mission then walked through a historic neighborhood following a history booklet and stopping on the way to get bread from a local baker with a coupon I had.  When I finally got home, I wrote a cover letter for a job application.  What am I supposed to say when people ask me what my hobbies are?  Everything?

I worked at a university bookstore in Auckland.  While it was the most prestigious University in New Zealand, I felt like I was having a very different experience than I would working at Harvard’s bookstore.  I was, as I always was this past year, a temp at the bookstore.  The funny thing about being a temp is that everyone tends to treat you as if getting to know you is a waste of their time.  This is largely a defense mechanism I think.  I can understand it myself.  If people are constantly coming in and out of your life and the majority of them are drunk the majority of the time, it takes something special to arouse interest.  The trouble with part-time jobs is that people skills are largely undervalued.  In lots of work I suppose this is the case.  I would argue that it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference if you know much of anything about what you’re doing.  If you have people skills you can do anything.  I think there is a missed marketing opportunity at New Zealand universities from university-branded clothing.  At Elizabethtown College, ¾ of our bookstore was clothing with the Blue Jay.  At the University of Auckland there are two designs you can get on a t-shirt or a sweatshirt, they hang behind the desk in the gym, and they have to be special ordered.  Then again, New Zealand universities aren’t in desperate need of revenue because New Zealanders pay taxes in accordance with a higher quality of life…but that’s a much bigger issue.  New Zealand as a whole is anti-pride.  They’re not necessarily pro-humility, but they are very adamantly anti-pride.  Actually they aren’t terribly adamant about much.  They are humbly and quietly anti-pride.  In America our license plates have our state on them.  They are decorated with some design representing what’s unique about that state.  Many people choose to pay extra to have their license plate number personalized.  New Zealand license plates are all white with black letters and numbers.  The end.  I missed decoration.  Then there was the Civic Theatre.  Strikingly un-New Zealand, the Civic is a mammoth picture palace in downtown Auckland that is the envy of any I have ever seen.  It is second only to the Paris Opera House as the most unbelievable theatre I have ever seen.  It was almost torn down and as usual, was saved by a group of concerned citizens.  Seeing this theatre is worth the price of a plane ticket to New Zealand.  It was life-changing.

And now we’re down to the wire.  What follows comes from a place where I was about mid-July.  It’s hard to put myself back in that place because I’m not really in that place now.  It was a difficult place and a thoughtful place, and one that deserves to be heard.  But it is the past as well.  At this point in July, I was having a tough time with being in New Zealand and was intent on changing things when I got back.  I’m glad I had a tough time in New Zealand and I am glad to be implementing some of the changes I dreamed up in New Zealand.  I felt at that time that I had largely veered away from my original intention in traveling.  I intended to pursue love, the love of people and the love of God.  I ended up more focused on truth, on something more internal and academic.  I had been alone in my travels for so long that I could only vaguely remember a time in my life when other people were an intimate part of it.  For so long, I had been the only person to consume my thoughts.  I was interacting with the world in a way in which I hoped to love and make a positive impact, but I was doing it alone and on my own terms.  You are never as lonely as when you’re alone in a city with millions of people around.  The presence of other people and the lack of genuine connection with them only exacerbates your feelings of loneliness.  I made a decision at that moment that the next stage of my life must be focused not on exploration or peace or justice or authenticity or any other grand concept but on the individual relationships in my life that make those larger concepts a reality.  I have been focusing on the big picture and I’m glad I did, but the time has come for me to focus on the little pictures.  To forget about excitement and speed and enjoy savoring simplicity.  To make a difference in the lives of individuals.  

In a way New Zealand toward the end became a bit of a personal purgatory.  I found a masochistic bone in my body I didn’t know was there.  It was my 40 days in the wilderness, my spirit vision, my self-denial, and my solidarity in learning to do without all rolled into one.  And I decided that if I was going to be poor, I might as well be poor.  So I did without more and more to weed myself off of the need for things.  At this same time I was reading “Into the Wild” and it scared me to death.  And I realized, at exactly the right moment and with the help of the very genuine love of other people, that none of that really mattered.  What mattered was not so much Love but love.  I don’t know that I’ve mastered Love, but I’ve spent so much time fixated on it that I’ve come to a point where I’m beating a rock hoping water will come out.  It’s better to just let the rock be a rock.  And get water from the spring.  People are the spring.  

We all have our own way of setting priorities.  Sometimes our very different actions can be the result of the exact same motivation.  In traveling for so long, did I choose “career” over family?  I don’t think so.  But it was a typically counter-cultural way of bucking the prevailing trend of staying put for no reason.  And one thing I never lacked was motivation.  My motivation was always in the right place, and everything I did was always the result of careful thought and consideration as to what was the morally and ethically right decision.  But the result was still a turn inward and away from relationships.  It was not at all bad in and of itself, but it did result in a lot of worship of the God of exploration.  I learned a lot about people and about myself, but I became less adept at fostering individual relationships.  There may have been a point where I lost sight of the larger vision and instead got wrapped upon the sociology of all of it.  I put the puzzle together, but I forgot to take time to get to know each piece.  It’s a tricky business trying to ascertain your motivation after the fact, and potentially not worth the mental strain, but I think it does help to focus priorities and bring peace and closure after a monumental life event.     

That may leave the unintentional impression that I had a bad experience in New Zealand or that I am sorry I went.  Nothing could be less true.  Everything that happened there and every thought that entered my head was there for a reason.  And today I am as happy and optimistic and grateful as I have ever been.  Not because I went through this difficult time in New Zealand, but because I went through this incredible time in New Zealand that here and there disguised itself as difficult.  And that’s part of the big lesson.  Trials are merely opportunities for joy.  Abundance is an opportunity for joy.  Exploration is an opportunity for joy.  All of life is nothing more than an opportunity for joy.  I had a goal in my two years of travel to understand, relate to, and appreciate all people,  and be comfortable in any situation so that in doing so I could better reach out in love to anyone I meet.  I was granted that goal.  And I have been granted joy overflowing.  The future is bright, as it always has been and it always will be.  Thank you Aotearoa, land of the long white cloud.  Thank you kiwi birds and kiwifruit and Kiwi New Zealanders.  Have love.  Give love.  Be loved.  Be love.  Always.

The End.

Jeremy

Volume 6 - New Zealand

So here I am back in “The Newest City on the Globe,” Art Deco Napier.  Just a few days in, I can confirm, as is always the case, the doing the right thing is the right thing to do.  It’s one of those things we know to be true, but somehow we are able to convince ourselves that sometimes doing the right thing will come at great personal cost.  Of course, it often does in the short term, and any religious person will be able to remind you of the existence of martyrs, but in the BIG picture, the one that really matters, doing the right thing is the right thing to do, for more reasons than just semantics.  In my little world of returning to Napier to finish what I felt to be an obligation I had to complete the terms of service I’d come here with a few months ago, even though it wasn’t where I particularly wanted to go, I have found Napier in the southern winter to be a relaxing and enjoyable place.  Doing the right thing is difficult, but always worth it.  
 

A few weeks back, we had a beautiful day in Mount Cook and as I was walking, not thinking about anything in particular, I had a revelation, as I often do when I’m not trying to…I thought this would be a perfect day for a drive in a convertible.  Then I realized I could not recall ever seeing a convertible in New Zealand…or a roadster…or a sports car of any kind.  Not on the road, not at a house, not in a parking lot, not in an advertisement, and I realized why I think NZ cars are so boring.  I’d felt this way for a while, but I never understood it, since many of the cars here are exactly the same as the cars we have in the U.S. (albeit under different names).  If they’re the same cars, why do NZ cars seem so boring?  This time I recognized that it was not the inherent boring-ness of the cars that existed, but the lack of exciting, inventive, or artistically beautiful cars in the market that made automobiling here so bland.  Cars here seem to exist strictly as a means of transportation, not as a statement or reflection of personality.  People aren’t as passionate about cars.  Perhaps this is also why imported classic cars form America and Britain are so popular here too.  The enthusiast has no “cool” cars available in their market, so they import the coolest of the cool from overseas, even if it sometimes means having the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car.  Even if I don’t and may never own a “fun” car, I like seeing them.  Anyone who has ever passed a Smart car on the highway, seen a Vespa scooting through the city streets, or caught a glimpse of a T-Bird convertible in their rearview mirror can’t help but let out a little smile because they have just witnessed something of beauty in their everyday world.  The absence of beautiful cars is akin to the absence of art museums.  We don’t all want to own a Van Gogh, but we want the opportunity to go to a museum and see one.  We may not all own a Corvette, but the rare glimpses we catch of them do indeed enhance our lives.  Plus there is an awful lot to be said for the, dare I say, necessity in our lives of things whose existence has little if any practical value and instead relies solely on fun as a reason for being.  Far too often we are caught up the practicality of everything that we do.  Everything must have a reason and that reason must be heady and weighty and culturally impactful.  But is that living, or is that surviving?  We need experiences that are nothing but fun.  Colleges need foam parties and streets need 2-seat top down roadsters.  We need to remember that nothing in life is more important than a smile. 

I had a shocking dream around this time.  In this dream, I was working at a party of some kind for little kids.  I turned on the water tap from a big cooler sitting on a table and was subsequently drug away by a girl to another area.  The end.  My memory of the dream so many weeks removed (even though I wrote it down) is pretty shaky.  And now, as then, and as with just about all dreams, it doesn’t seem to make any sense whatsoever.  But the key thing about this particular dream was that there was something absolutely hilarious about it, both when I was in the dream and when I woke up and for a significant time afterwards.  I was dying of laughter in the dream and woke up with a massive smile that literally put me in a great mood for days.  Something about it, whatever it was, was pure.  I woke up with a feeling of pure, unfettered joy and sense of fun in a way I’ve never experiences from a dream and haven’t experienced in waking life for too long.  It reminded me of childhood or of days as a Peer Mentor at college, times when I was completely comfortable, surrounded by love and joy and acceptance and the possibility of pure fun and laughter that comes from knowledge of complete acceptance.  The best part was that there was nothing sensical about any of it.  There was no reason for my laughter.  I was like a child, just giddy with joy.  It wasn’t “real” in the physical sense, but are our dreams or the experiences within them any less real, any less a part of us than our waking life simply because they exist only in our minds?  Could a moment like this not be a source of inspiration to me if in fact it did (as was the case) give me a real sense of joy in the “real world?”  Could this not be a gift of God to His child?  I want so badly for other to be able to experience this kind of joy.  Joy unrelated to physical events.  What passes for joy in my experiences with travelers is startling.  We spend our lives pursuing alcohol, which in turn is our way of releasing the inhibitions that seem to shield us from our true goal – sex.  But do either of these bring us joy in and of themselves?  Is not our true desire love?  Joy for everyone is a bit different of course, and two people, given the exact same circumstances, will not experience the exact same feelings.  But joy is not a feeling.  It is not something that comes from outside…or from inside.  I think it transcends both the traditional Western notion of attaining something based on outward circumstances and the traditional Eastern notion of cultivating something based on inward reflection.  I think it’s something else entirely.  Something we don’t quite understand and can’t quite define.  It’s something that we also call Love and we also call God and something in all its mystery and purity that we must somehow, as a people and as individuals come to embrace…

It is good to be back in a city here in Napier, even if it is a small town.  I think often about the next step in my life adventure and the bigger picture of where I want to “end up,” assuming of course that we ever actually “arrive” anywhere.  I’m quite glad I went to Mount Cook, just as I am glad I went to the Mojave Desert years ago, but while I enjoyed these experiences immensely, and I would hesitate to call myself a “city boy,” I think I am hard-wired to crave the variety, culture, and population of the urban life.  No new architecture, no new people, no live music, no cinemas, no lectures, no new museum exhibits…the country life was turning me inward more than I liked.  I needed to “get out,” but there was nowhere to get out to.  I absolutely love hiking and exploring and communing with nature, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to live in New York or LA long term, but I likewise need the vibrancy and exchange of ideas that exist in an urban center.  I love nature, but I think more than nature I love the act of discovery.  One aspect of the Mojave that I was enamored of was the constant discovery of remnants of human history scattered around long-uninhabited patches of desert.  In the middle of nowhere hours from civilization I’d run into a shack or a mine or an old rusty car.  Mount Cook was pure nature.  About all I discovered was a hidden hot tub in a locked corner of the hotel that hadn’t been used for years.  Can the hand of Man really improve on God’s design?  I don’t know that the dichotomy has to exist this way.  Perhaps nature and Man’s design can coexist and strengthen one another.  We were designed to design.  Is pure nature more inspirational than a pure building? Probably.  But when they interact effectively, well that can’t be beat.  If I could just find that place that’s just like Akron, Ohio…except isn’t Akron. 

I’m still open to ideas about what I’ll actually do with my life in this ideal city that I will soon discover.  Growing up I always felt I was somehow placed on the wrong side of the US.  People like me lived in California, I thought.  Relaxed, fun, passionate people.  I thought it was my destiny to be a Martin Luther King, a man who inspired great masses of people, a boy who was just waiting for the inevitable greatness that was sure to come.  Over the course of time, I’ve become less enamored of this supposed destiny; I don’t know that it appeals to me anymore.  It seems it may have been as much an idol as money, stability, experience (traveling), love (marriage will solve everything) or anything else.  It’s further evidence of the complete reliance we must have on God alone.  I don’t know that fame in the sense I’ve always thought of it is even possible in our modern society.  We live in a world where everyone is famous and for no reason at all.  There was a time, it seems to me in my always romantic version of the past, when people were famous because they had earned it, had stumbled onto it, or had been born into it.  At any rate, there was a reason people gained cultural influence.  Today, with little to any barrier to entry, everyone has a blog, everyone has a slew of YouTube videos, everyone is famous for 5 minutes.  While this has arguably improved prospects for underserved populations of our society, it has also done a bang-up job of eliminating intelligent thought, meaningful training, and motivation for developing expertise.  And it has made us a much more segmented society, clustering around out specific interests with like-minded people, and removing our interaction with “difference” or uncomfortability.  Apart from the inherent disconnection this causes, this segmentation of society also leads to an inevitable relegation of groups that aren’t ours to a status of “other” (something that happens whenever people are separated for any reason) and makes unification under any cultural influence almost impossible.  So a Martin Luther King of today has a following of a couple hundred instead of the hundreds of thousands that were possible 50 years ago.  But as we know, change is the only certainty in life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about adulthood lately.  Perhaps it’s because I have such a range of companions during this traveling spell – people from every country and age and belief system imaginable.  I came into a graphic novel or “long comic book” at a hostel a while back.  The book exchange was overstocked so I was able to just take it.  I loved comic books growing up and am rediscovering them again, and the wide range of graphic novels that don’t have anything to do with superheroes.  Finishing the engrossing novel was a good feeling.  It was one of those little accomplishments that I think are necessary to the soul.  We work on so many BIG projects and tiny chores, that the sense of accomplishment of something significant but not life-engrossing (and the subsequent “down” that comes from finishing something so massive) is absent from a lot of adult life.  A book is a great way to get this I think.  It’s something otherworldy that captures our attention for enough time to be meaningful, so that when we finish we feel like we’ve actually done something.  I remember video games doing the same thing for me as a teenager.  We need more of that. 

Of course this led me to think about what else but action figures!  As adults, it’s fairly acceptable to reminisce about childhood and recapture some of those old loves.  Adults can play video games and read comic books, and while mainstream society would call it a bit geeky, there are still enough geeks in the world that it’s really not terribly countercultural in the end.  But one thing adults never do is play with action figures.  Some adults collect them in their boxes and display them and brag about how much their worth, but this is just a form of collecting, it has little to do with the intent of the product – to be played with.  Because one thing that is strictly forbidden for adults is play and its inspiration – imagination.  Adults are allowed and expected to fully participate in the real world.  We have access to “reality” and we’re supposed to use it, we’re told.  Kids, on the other hand, don’t have any of this.  They are more or less waiting for adults to let them into the real world by virtue of their adulthood.  I f I want to I can get a job and join the army and invest in the stock market and buy cigarettes.  A child can’t; they are excluded from full participation in the real world.  Therefore, the pretend they are in the real world through action figures and other “imagination” of “play” games.  Of course their knowledge of the “real world” as it actually exists is limited, and even when it’s not, kids often find it quite boring so they make up their own fantasy world anyway.  Once we reach adulthood, however, since we now have access to the real world we dive into it headfirst, abandoning the make-believe of childhood as games for the past, attempts by immature minds to make sense of a world they can’t yet understand.  But by fully embracing the “real” – the physical, the factual – we completely lose touch with the “unreal” – the make-believe, the play – and its inspiration…imagination.  Just because we no longer need to imagine what it would be like to grown up doesn’t mean we need to abandon imagination.  By being stuck in the real world, we fail to progress.  There is no forward motion if everything as it is is accepted as the way things are.  The way things change is through thinking apart from the way things are.  It is only by eliminating our ties to the actual that we are able to imagine the not yet actual but somehow possible.  We need to dream, we need to play, we need to separate ourselves from the confines of the way things are in order to spark the imagination to dream up new possibilities for the way things can be.  It’s not just good for the soul, it’s necessary for progress.  So take those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures out of their sterile plastic shell and get them to Splinter-following, April-loving fun!

Surely though, adults are not so braindead that they simply follow blindly the path set before them?  We must still have something to pursue, some goal to reach for.  This debate is of course ultimately irresolvable, but I would argue that the majority of our creative efforts and ambition from puberty on is consumed by one thing and one thing only – gaining acceptance.  We need other people.  This take many forms but it’s all leading up to the same thing.  We want to have sex so we feel loved and cherished, like we matter to someone.  We want companionship, the ability to know we’re completely and utterly loved unconditionally.  We try to get there with drugs and prestige and money and fame and influence.  But we’re all just going after acceptance, not just by the masses but by individuals.  Why do movies continue to be made about adults whose release comes from their father or mother finally accepting them?  Why do we read stories of people happily giving up everything for the simple embrace of one other person?  Because these stories continue to sell.  And why do they sell?  Because they resonate.  Because we all want to love and be loved in return.  Kids, in the most ideal of circumstances, do not have this burden.  They are free to use their creativity, their imagination, to the ultimate limits of where their mind can wander because they do not have to worry about gaining love or acceptance.  Their world extends not beyond the loving, nurturing acceptance of the family.  They know they are loved completely and without exception.  Can we recapture this as adults?  I think we can…we simply must love others, all others, completely and without exception.

But one letter can only handle so much heavy philosophizing about the deeper importance of fun.  Back to NZ quirkiness.  I climbed a particularly treacherous mountain in Mount Cook, perhaps the most treacherous I’ve ever attempted.  It wasn’t so bad in and of itself.  It was simply that the mountain happened to be covered with various types of snow, ice, and mud…and I happened to be wearing 10-year-old Converse Chuck Taylors with no traction.  Never have I slipped and slid so much going uphill, had such cold feet, been blown by such strong wind, or fell on my butt so many times as during this trip.  But the top was indescribable.  I did this hike with a friend who turned out be literally the first New Zealander I’ve met who doesn’t drink.  I was glad to learn of his existence.  I also learned that New Zealand has professional mechanical bull riding.  This greatly redeemed them.  In NZ you can also change you wittle baby’s doodoo-filled diaper on the floor in the middle of a hostel hallway if you want.  Everybody poops.  In a country where you can see a baby butt in public, it’s also much more socially acceptable to talk to strangers.  In fact, if I never talked to strangers, I would never have any friends.  I wouldn’t have any acquaintances.  I would never talk to anyone even.  Because I came to a country where I don’t know a soul and everyone is a stranger, and the same is the case for most travelers I meet.  Yet we still sometimes have trouble overcoming the awkwardness of talking to one another, because most of us, no matter where we’re from, were brought up to see strangers as dangerous.  Another example of early labeling as people not us as “other.”  This is a complex issue of course, and nobody wants a cute toddler to get yanked away by a maniac because he talked to strangers, but it strikes me that there must be a middle ground.  Kiwis also like to cycle in fluorescent yellow and orange vests.  I like this a lot.  Why do they do it?  So cars will not hit them and end their sustainable transportation-filled lives.  I remember seeing them months ago and thinking it’s cool that construction workers are cycling to work.  Then I saw lots of them and it hit me that these weren’t construction workers; these were anyone and everyone who gets on a bike considering reflective clothing as essential equipment if there’s even the remotest possibility of darkness.  Would this fly in the U.S.?  We have trouble getting people to wear helmets because they’re such a fashion no-no.  I like that NZ cares about being alive more than fitting into advertisers money-making schemes.  So why do they still not have free libraries?    

Perhaps the coolest thing to happen to me this month was the mouse.  There I was reading on my bed when I saw a dark flash out of the corner of my eye. Big bug?  Lizard?  Mouse.  The last time I found a mouse in my house in Elizabethtown I reacted out of fear (where all violence originates) and set a “no-see” trap to kill it…and it worked.  I like mice and I didn’t want to kill it, but the thought of it passing a disease onto me scared me enough that I wanted it gone immediately.  Cockroaches are fine, but wild rodents scare me.  They caused the Black Death, man!  I didn’t want to see the graphic end of my violence though, so I took perhaps the most cowardly way out possible – eliminating the necessity to see the results of my dastardly deed.  Not this time, my friends.  I of course did not have a mouse trap handy in Mount Cook and if I told the bossman, they would have done away with the poor little guy since mice are considered major pests here, even more so than at home (they’re generally bad for native plants and wildlife).  So I tried to set a trail of peanut butter (every mouse’s favorite snack) on tiny napkins leading from his hiding place out the door.  He ate the first one then retreated back into hiding.  I had to think like a mouse.  As I thought about the mouse’s habits, I realized that it was terrified of wide open spaces.  That’s where hawks are.  Realizing that I had only ever seen him run along the wall from one dark small enclosure to another, I had my plan.  I moved away every last possible hiding space away from the wall except for the immovable dresser, knowing that this is where he would go.  Then I turned off all the lights, made sure the lights were off outside, and opened the door just a crack.  I got a dead reed from outside and pushed it through the length of his hiding place behind the dresser just firmly enough to make him uncomfortable.  Then he did exactly what I thought he’d do.  He ran out the other end, following the direct line of the wall to the next possible hiding place – out the door and outside of my room.  No animals were hurt and I had a great feeling of accomplishment.  I eliminated the reliance of violence by simply making my room an undesirable location for the mouse to stay.  This, my friends, is called creative nonviolence and is a perfect, if small scale, example of how, when we eliminate violence as a possibility our creativity WILL come up with other ways to resolve differences.  I used my brain instead of an iron clamp of death and didn’t quit until I had succeeded.  Give peace a chance.

I also made my way back through my old haunt of Christchurch en route to Napier again.  Christchurch, of course, has been shaken to bits by a major earthquake, and a healthy chunk of the center city lies in ruins.  Most places that I was familiar with in the city lie within an area blocked off to anyone but necessary personnel but there were plenty of leaning skyscrapers visible from outside the cordon and even more piles of rubble, collapsed roofs, and stripped “dollhouses” outside of it.  It may have been the gray, glum weather, but there was an air of sadness over the whole city.  Still it wasn’t as bad as I expected.  I saw nothing there that I haven’t seen in Camden, New Jersey, and most of Guatemala on its best day still appears in worse shape (which is to say nothing about the quality of the people or country, just the poverty that is pervasive there).  As someone passionately interested in historic preservation living in the post-industrial Rust Belt and quite used to seeing, both in photos and in real life, dilapidated, torn down, and neglected old buildings, I was surprised by my reaction to Christchurch.  I found myself thinking perhaps it was best to not save these buildings, partly because they appeared so completely beyond repair than any effort to retain the historic character would have to involve replicating most historic elements rather than rebuilding them, which in essence would be nothing more than a modern attempt to recapture a past that no longer exists (akin to building a log cabin out of vinyl siding) and therefore a psychologically unhealthy attachment to the past and failure to embrace the future. 

As modern economics have advanced, it is incredibly difficult to build the way we used to, using reliable, long-lasting materials and combining practicality with aesthetics.  Many of the architectural wonders of the United States were built or at least initiated by “magnates.”  “Robber barons” is the less kind term, but for whatever else they were, these excessively wealthy individuals from the earlier part of the 20^th Century had direct control over ridiculous amounts of money and very few people to answer to about how they spent it.  They did use it to build magnificent mansions, but they also used to it to build gorgeous public buildings for the public good, things that would never pass a vote-by-committee as decisions are made today.  They created their own philanthropic organizations rather than simply donating to existing ones.  Their vast sums of money combined with freedom of ingenuity led to some absolutely fantastic advances not only in architecture but in society as well.  People took risks.  Architecture took risks.  Should we return to slave labor to build great buildings like the pyramids once again?  No way.  But we mustn’t be discouraged from taking risks.  So here I am in Napier, the city I wanted to visit because of its beautiful architecture but I didn’t really want to revisit but I came back anyway on the risk that doing the right thing was the right thing to do…which isn’t really that risky after all.  Because Good is always good.

Jeremy

Volume 5 - New Zealand

This must be what college in Switzerland is like.  Lots of foreign youngins living in close quarters creating drama in the midst of massive mountains.  But less intelligent conversation.  It’s astonishing to think of how far I’ve come (or fallen perhaps) in the circle of life.  Amid the rolling farmland of Central PA, Etown College offered a nice place to learn about the world and the various ways individuals could be appalled at what they did the night before and continue to do it the night after.  After years of donning the tie and button-down shirt, in my quest for the vibrancy and excitement of living in community again, I have found myself for the past few years among the hornballs and cornballs of the world who are putting off the American dream for a while to pursue the higher dreams of travel, the almighty experience, and occasionally, the American cigarette.  As always, the other people I meet in my travels are the most exciting and interesting aspect of it all, and of course the most difficult to understand or explain (I heard that my current room was formerly inhabited by a transvestite who hosted the most wicked parties in town).  Even surrounded by the purple mountains majesty of the Southern Alps every day, it’s still all about the people. 

In the past I’ve turned down jobs that made me cut my hair.  As much as I loved my long flowing hippy hair, I’ve become less discriminating about my employment opportunities (which may be why probably all the worst jobs I’ve ever had have all been in New Zealand).  While I don’t chop off the old locks as frequently as many men, my biennial cut is perhaps more meaningful since I lose so much of my mass with each one.  I feel like I’ve had just about every type of haircut experience possible.  There’s the generic American strip mall salon (both with and without large smoking “beauticians” looming outside) in Ohio, the old school male barber who shaves your neck and doesn’t use a mirror in Pennsylvania, the occasional beauty school friend giving the gift of their talent, the one-off experience with an overpriced spa where a free shampoo is included in the supersized price, the local Spanish-speaking barber of the Galápagos giving me the $5 gringo price, and now the 2 hour marathon New Zealand beauty school cut with a girl just about to graduate who it seemed had never cut a male head before yet was charmingly interested in the size of American food.  We’ll see where I end up for my next one in…September?

Nice, sensible, non-threatening haircut out of the way, I landed in the stunning little hamlet of Aoraki Mount Cook Village where I currently reside working a variety of jobs for the supposedly world-famous Hermitage hotel.  The Hermitage museum in Mother Russia may be world famous, The Hermitage hotel in New Zealand has a tougher time making the claim, but no doubt makes up for it in gorgeous scenery.  The hotel itself is the third in the location, the first being built in 1884 and flooded away in favor of the second in 1914, which itself burned to the ground in 1957.  Today’s Hermitage is a bizarre mixture of 1950s motel, 1970s hotel, 2000s highrise, A-frame chalets, a hostel, and a random motor court down the road.  The entire village lies within a national park (NZ parks are different o American parks in many ways, most notably the number of backpackers tramping around here), which itself is part of a larger World Heritage Area, so all of the 300 odd people living here must be employed by either the hotel, one of the three other accommodation options in town, the one other restaurant, or the New Zealand version of the National Park Service (0% unemployment!).  We have a café, a buffet, and a fancy round restaurant (round restaurants are always the fanciest, especially if they’re on top of some tall building).  One school with five kids, no church to speak of (in fact, the only overt religious experience most New Zealanders seem to have, as is so often the case, is with death…memorials are covered with verses from the Bible that many people seem so unconcerned with during life).  Though my time here has not yet come to end, thus far it has been, bumpy moments and all, easily the most positive of my work experiences in New Zealand.  My first boss was incredibly nice, and my current boss is pretty awesome.  I spent the beginning of my time in a café, the first time since I’ve been here that I’ve landed one of the jobs I actually set out to obtain.  This is far from a cozy, friendly local café, though, catering mostly to large groups of in-and-out one time visit tourists.  I was, at least at the beginning, able to get lots and lots of work, putting in about 55 hours each week.  The work has dropped off with the crowds following Christchurch’s second big earthquake of the year, but the relaxed pace is quite enjoyable after working so hard the first month.  I spend most of my time now in the buffet restaurant, and occasionally I feel like a migrant worker showing up at the hostel day after day begging for any work they have for the day.  Rent and food are given to us at a very reasonable price, and I’ve been able to eat like a king again, if the king was given the same food every week.  We have a free gym where I can work on my killer abs and get all the activities (glacier lake trips, scenic flights) for free.  The surroundings are gorgeous, there are tons of hikes to do, and every night the sunset on the mountain is enough to take your breath away.  Perhaps just as importantly, the tiny village is strictly controlled by the park service, which means every new building has always been strictly watched to make sure it fits in with its surroundings and the rest of town.  What results is the first architecturally-unified and verandah-free city in New Zealand.  And almost every night, when the rest of the valley is dark, big old Mount Cook, New Zealand’s tallest, is still lit up in striking sunset mode in a way that is framed absolutely perfectly.  The part of me that believes that somewhere in the world there is a woman who still believes in romance, still gets a little misty-eyed every time I see this sunset.  I am enjoying this little alpine village very much.  We also have keas, the world’s only alpine parrot, a massive green shimmering bird with orange highlights that squawks and caws in the early morning air and proves that the word “cheeky” can indeed be overused.  They have made the list of my favorite animals ever.

It’s not all roses of course.  I continue to learn more and more why country songs like “Take This Job and Shove It” can continue to have such popularity.  I have also learned a lot about myself.  Primarily I have learned that I am simply not good at being fast.  Maybe I once was.  I don’t remember always being slow, though I always hated time limits in school.  But I do recall beginning and continuing to put into place a few years ago the practice of mindfulness, the act of being engrossed in my surroundings and aware of what is happening around me, being fully immersed in and present in the moment.  Mindfulness is the opposite of speed.  It is the slow deliberateness of the sloth, the anti- fast food, the unitasking that flies in the face of all things modern.  I have tried to cultivate slowness as a purposeful way of life and I am quite proud to have been moderately successful at maintaining quality over quantity.  However, it’s safe to say that most managers of part-time food service jobs are not terribly in tune with their inner Buddhist.  For me quality is paramount.  (Thanks Dad, for that quality control influence.)  I simply do not believe that quality and quantity can coexist.  Something can be fast or it can be good, but it just can’t be both.  Quality and speed have an inverse relationship for all you math folks.  We don’t learn speed early on.  It goes against everything we learn in school about focusing on quality.  While tests and speeches may well be timed, school teaches us that the important thing is to be right.  It’s the working world that teaches us the opposite.  Why are most 16 year old high school students so miserable at work?  Because for the first time in their lives, they are somewhere where they’re being encouraged to cut corners in quality to increase their speed.  They’re taught that you must be fast if you want to succeed in life.  And unfortunately, kids start to believe the so called pragmatist at work more than the educational idealists and throw quality out the window even at school.  It’s easier to copy a paper from the Internet than write it yourself.  The SATs encourage this pragmatic approach with a time limit that rules out the possibility of deep thought, people get caught up in 30 second news clips, and half hour TV shows, and we wonder why our college applicants write application essays that border on unintelligible.  Speed kills, my friends.  It would be a reasonable argument, yet one that I can’t get into here, to blame many of the pitfalls of our modern lives on our insatiable appetite for speed.  But the revolution is coming.  Slow food is becoming more than just trendy, American capitalism is taking a hit in the jaw, back roads are coming back, and I see less text messaging around than I have in ages.  And there are bastions of civility out there.  Good old Etown College reminds me that are genuinely friendly places in existence where people actually spend time thinking about doing the right thing, even if it takes longer.  Slooooooooooooooooooooow dooooooooown. The roses smell nice.

It has also come to my attention that the effort for speed fails to utilize employees to the best of their abilities.  Efficiency becomes the name of the game, but in not taking the time to get to know each individual employee, what their strengths and desires are, there are huge wastes of resources.  Maybe the company needs some photography done and they would know that one of their employees has considerable photography experience had they just read their resume in detail instead of giving it a tertiary glance.  If someone is better at washing dishes than clearing tables, have them was dishes more often.  I’ve seen many companies give lip service to this type of thing in interviews or regular assessments, but it’s very often never followed up on.  Instead, most managers assume their minimum wage employees are bottom crawling deadbeats instead of the college-educated dreamers and world travelers many of them actually are.  Along with identifying my slowness (which I would never call a weakness) I’ve also had to think about what I am good at.  It seems to me that I have solid people skills, a big old brain in my head that’s able to capture information, think critically about it, and use it to solve problems, and a tendency to thoroughness.  This does of course mean that I am not good at speed and unquestioning obedience, which, it could be argued, are far more practical in this mad mad mad mad world.

Working in food service after traveling through Central America has also given me a better look at what I truly believe is a food waste epidemic.  Seeing the amount of food that gets thrown out, both by the restaurants and by customers is simply appalling.  There is absolutely no reason for world hunger.  Certainly the solution is not as simple as getting rich people to eat less.  The problems of world hunger are largely related to distribution channels, lack of resources, and corrupt governments.  Getting the food from the rich countries to the poor countries is a big problem.  Still, cakes should never be thrown away.  If you order a pizza, you should eat it.  Clean that chicken bone people.  I don’t doubt for a second that the amount of food that is thrown out each day here could feed all the employees happily.  Anyone who has ever worked with food should be ticked off by this.  It has really opened my eyes.  In his novel, Galápagos, Vonnegut talks about a local Ecuadorian going mad during a hunger crisis when a visiting tourist feeds an expensive steak to his dog while people are starving.  At least, there, some living thing benefited from the steak.  Friends, people are starving, dying every day because they don’t have enough to eat.  Can we even imagine actually dying from hunger?  It’s so far from our realm of possibility we can’t even picture what it would look like.  Even if your cooked pizza can’t make it across the ocean to Africa or down the street to the slums, no conscience should be able to live with throwing an ounce of food in the trash in a world where people are dying for as much.  And in the end, it is all connected.  Beef cattle graze on cleared rainforest land that robs the earth of oxygen and biodiversity.  Sometimes it’s not cleared rainforest, sometimes land in poor countries that could be used for useful food production for that nation’s population is used to cultivate animal feed to send to rich countries to feed to their cattle because it can fetch a better price.  Our insatiable appetite literally robs the planet of its oxygen pumps and the worlds’ poor of their dinners.  Eat my friends, and enjoy every bite.  That’s your privilege and your prerogative, but keep that food out of the trash.  Waste not.

A lot of people here aren’t able to pick up my accent, which is very strange to me.  I think it’s pretty clear that I’m American no matter how I shake it, but perhaps most people’s American stereotypes still have us all sounding like Garth Brooks.  I think the bigger thing people here in my voice, though, is enthusiasm.  People say I don’t sound like an American, and I’ve gotten everything from German (a good guess since every other backpacker in NZ is German) to Australian.  (I learned as well there is at least one horse in Germany named Jeremy, belonging to one of the girls who worked here.)  Listening to myself I don’t think I sound any different than I ever have, but I have realized that the distinguishing characteristic of most people’s voices is lack of enthusiasm; it’s boredom or anger or frustration or general unhappiness.  I had a wonderful compliment the other week from a friend that I always seem so happy.  All I said was “it’s a choice.”  Lots of people are grumpy I think because they don’t get enough sleep.  I may be the only person I know who sleeps between 7 and 8 hours a night.  Lots of folks get a good 5 hours, and many others get a good 10.  I know you can easily adjust to different levels of sleep after a period of time, but I can see such a huge difference in my own levels of alertness depending on how much sleep I got.  It is also a fine testament, I hope, to the faith I have in Christ.  I’ve always thought that the best way to show people that Christianity is not a faith of judgment and legalism but of love and peace is to live a life of love and peace.  Frankly, most Christians don’t give of a very god vibe to the outside world.  If you know nothing of Christianity except what the media gives you and you meet a Christian who fits the stereotype, you’re very likely not going to be terribly attracted to it.  But if you meet someone who exudes love and peace and joy, it may actually make people want to know why you’re so happy.  Many people express genuine shock when they find out I’m a Christian because their only experience with the faith has been negative.  It’s a sad fact that it surprises people to know that Christians can be loving.  More than a few people have told me that I’m the only good Christian they’ve met.  Brothers and sisters, I’ve got the joy way down in the depths of my heart.  Sometimes it gets a bit cloudy between my heart and my brain and I forget that the joy is down there, but the clouds always pass because they’re just not strong enough to block out the joy. 

You may wonder how I remember all these things that happen to me between journal sessions.  I actually keep a notebook with me at almost all times and jot down quick notes any time something comes to my mind that I want to write about.  Sometimes, however, I look back at my notes a month later and have no idea what I was talking about.  Such is the case with my next topic, four things that do not bring me joy.  If I recall, I was in the middle of clearing tables at the café at the usual breakneck speed and being generally frustrated with the constant push to be faster when I began thinking about things that make me mad and decided it would be a good idea to put them into list form.  Ah, the human need to categorize everything.  In an effort not to dwell on these things I’ll simply list what I determined summarize the banes of my existence, in no particular order: being wrongly accused of something I did not do; dishonesty, especially in the form of manipulation for profit; apathy; men or women in relationships who are ungrateful for their incredible blessing.  People say I’m always so calm and relaxed.  What does it take to make you mad, Jeremy?  Now you know. 

My days off have been spent enjoying the incredible scenery all around me.  While exploring the village I ran across a spider part way through making its web in the corner of a gazebo at the local school and decided to watch the little guy complete his home.  I can safely call it one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.  The precision and tact with which it made that web so architecturally stable and perfect is fascinating.  How does it know about the structure of sound design? How does it know where to go next?  Why can it make silk and I can’t?  It’s rationale in choosing which strand to complete next baffled even me, but in the end, it came out with a gorgeous web.  That same day I also saw a NZ falcon, another native species and a pretty rare find.  They say they are the meanest birds in the world if you get near their babies, so thank goodness there were no kiddies around!  I also did a tour of a glacier lake (made from meltwater on top of a glacier growing enough to create a lake).  The ice that is now in the icebergs of the lake fell as snow onto the top of the glacier more than 300 years ago, meaning it is “pre-Industrial Revolution ice.”  In other words, you’ve never seen anything so clean!  This ice is unbelievable; it’s absolutely crystal clear and borders on rock solid from all the years of compacting in the glacier.  It’s impossible to have ice like this anymore because the Industrial Revolution has so polluted the air that even if we eliminated pollution completely today it will still be a long time before the air would be as clean as it was before smog.   

Women of course continue to boggle my mind.  I know there are decent women in the world.  As far as I know, all the women in my family are quite decent.  Common sense would then tell me that there must be decent women elsewhere whose last name is not Ebersole.  They seem to all be in hiding, however.  It’s astounding that at 27 years old, after a good 13 odd years of playing this game, and all the cultural changes that society has wrought over the years, I still encounter the exact same situation with almost every girl I meet.  Age, culture, background, none of it seems to make any difference.  The planet is simply populated by women who seem to genuinely believe that friends and boyfriends should not be the same person.  Women who in private, away from the conforming eyes of society, can enter into genuine meaningful conversation, but who once among other people continue to defy logic in ways that confound even themselves.  Being happy, being good, giving and receiving love, these things are so simple and so elemental and fundamental to our beings and yet we continue to rob ourselves of them.  But I’ve written about all this before. 

Other than women, much of my time is spent thinking about work, specifically, what exactly I’m going to do when I return to the land of baseball (which I have deemed to be essential to a productive and happy life) and Hershey’s chocolate in August.  I think many people work more for the lifestyle afforded by work than the job.  They love the money, the benefits, the security, and the schedule afforded by their jobs without regard to the actual work they are doing.  I have been caught up in this as well.  It was hard to leave admissions counseling because of all these things.  In a way, this was the mindset that brought me to New Zealand.  I didn’t care what I actually did (even if I had preferences), I just needed to make a little money to fund my exploration of an exotic country.  The lure of the exotic for its own sake has thoroughly worn out its appeal, however.  I have realized how critical it is to absolutely love the work you are doing, perhaps not without regard to the lifestyle afforded by it, but at least with less regard than is given to the actual work.  For example, I love film and movies, but would I like working in a movie theater?  Even though I love the content, what would I actually do in a movie theater?  I’d sell tickets and food and clean carpets and bathrooms.  I love architecture, but would I love being an architectural historian?  What would I actually do?  I love learning about so many things, but I’m still trying to figure out what I actually love doing.  I remember loving performing, but it’s been so long since I’ve done it.  And what does it actually mean?  Acting, speaking, drumming, tour guiding?  What happened to the days when there were two choices, farmer or intellectual? 

It has become a regular fixture of these NZ journals to talk about the interesting cultural differences between my permanent and temporary homeland, so I won’t disappoint this time.  I learned recently that there is no drinking age in New Zealand.  This was quite a surprise to me since I had always thought that everywhere has a drinking age of some kind and that NZ’s was 18.  Turns out 18 is a buying age, not a drinking age.  In New Zealand, it is not at all illegal to drink alcohol at 6 years old if you want, you just can’t buy it until you’re 18.  And it’s perfectly legal for parents to give their kids alcohol in any and all circumstances.  I encourage anyone who thinks that lowering the drinking age in the US or encouraging people to drink responsibly at a younger age so that it become more normalized will solve our alcoholic culture to come to New Zealand.  Alcohol creates an alcoholic culture, however you shake it.  Also, in NZ, “fillet” is pronounced exactly how it looks, with the “t” and all, fill-it.  (And a little bit of German humor too.  We had a customer ask for mayonnaise the other day and I asked another German employee where it was kept.  She had no idea what I was talking about.  I figured the issue was pronunciation, so instead of man-aze I tried may-o-naze.  Still nothing.  I tried just mayo.  Nothing.  Then she said, “oh you mean my-o-naze!”  It’s amazing how the slightest little difference can make the biggest difference in language comprehension.)  NZ birds also don’t fly quite as much as our native species.  Instead they hop just about everywhere.  Little kangaroo birds hopping along picking random bits of who knows what from the ground.  It’s pretty cute.  Speaking of cute, I saw my first possum the other day.  Possums are the devil to New Zealanders.  They are native to Australia and completely different from North American possums.  These guys look more like little tree bears than big rats.  They’re quite adorable and were brought over to NZ so people would kill them for their fur and make money off of it.  They multiplied too quickly, though, and started eating all the native birds and trees.  The myriad ironies are apparent, but about half of the national park service’s job is trying to kill all the possums in New Zealand that they introduced decades ago so people would kill them and wear their fur.  You can’t help but think the cute little buggers are the real victims of all this. 

In my continued pondering of the glories of the United States, I at some point remembered all the uber-patriots and their rallying cry to love it or leave it.  Many Americans are absolutely convinced, without ever having left America or knowing anything about the rest of the world, that America is the most incredible place in the world.  Freedom. Liberty.  You know, all those things terrorists are supposed to hate.  And while I disagree with their method pretty vehemently, I don’t completely disagree with their conclusion.  I think the great gift of America to the world, our strongest asset in making the claim to awesomeness, lies in the virtually endless possibilities we have to do anything.  New Zealand has amazing landscapes and a thriving economy and all the necessities for a healthy population, but it doesn’t have the population necessary to provide opportunities for every dream that exists in the heads of its citizens.  They do the best they can of course, but at a certain point, when you only have 4 million people, it simply makes sense to focus on certain things that you’re really good at and say to people who want to explore other opportunities, “go over to England if you want to do that.” New Zealand is still an incredible place, but its size is a necessary limiting factor.  I can’t speak for many other countries, but I can say I am completely convinced that in America, if nothing else, we always have a possibility of a better tomorrow.  Anyone anywhere can go into a library and learn to read.  We have social programs set up to help people in any life circumstance you could think of.  We have pretty good education, some of it even affordable.  We have a range of health care options; and even if many of them are out of a reasonable price range, we have incredible holistic medicine systems in place to back it up.  And just about any career that exists in the world, exists in the U.S.  There are of course, all kinds of implicit barriers that block people from some of these resources, but the framework is well laid, and I think it’s easier to eliminate the subtle barriers to a resources than to develop the infrastructure to set up the resource in the first place.  And it made me wonder, how on earth can anyone in the U.S. be a pessimist?  Of course we have a critical mass of pessimists in the United States.  I would wager that the majority of Americans are in fact rather pessimistic; many of these people have even travelled widely.  Part of this I think is our cultural impotence at relationships, but I am still inclined to say that even the most pessimistic American, if given the opportunity to really live in another country without them would have to agree that we have something fairly unique on our hands.  We do a lot of things wrong, but one thing we do right is give people the chance to set their own course.  Let’s have a little thanksgiving.

 I had quite a beautiful day last week, so I walked about 7km through our valley to the neighboring one before I was picked up by a Swiss couple who took me a little ways farther to the intersection with an underground river leading to the base a mountain waterfall.  There was an old path leading up to the falls, but the bridge over the river was completely gone and the trail dead ended into some matagouri  (Maori for “face slasher”) bushes.  I eventually just decided to follow the dry riverbed up over boulders that became increasingly slippery the closer I go to the mist of the waterfall.  I was able to get to get just about right next to the base of this, the highest permanent waterfall in the park, before turning back when the current and power of the water became more than I was willing to risk.  The place was teeming with grasshoppers and I became really intrigued by one that let me get real close without hopping away.  As I watched it I saw its body begin to shake and this long thin object come out of its backside.  I have no idea if what I saw was a potty break or the miracle of life.  Either way, I may be the only person I know who has seen either one, which makes me feel pretty darn lucky.  I walked back through the valley, which was carved by a glacier many many years ago.  The ground isn’t even the true bedrock but rather 600 meters of rubble deposited by the glacier during its retreat back up the mountainside.  I found an old dirt road to walk along, but at certain points it had been overtaken by the riverbed that provides a waterway from the current glacial lake to the big old one.  I took a nap under the clouds and woke up to see a car face first in a tree of the side of the main dirt road in the valley (no injuries).  With no one anywhere around, I couldn’t help but sing a song as I walked.  It was a good day.  

So I have about a month left in the mountains before heading back to Napier for a bit.  I decided I needed to head back to maintain my integrity as a man of my word.  When I took the hostel job in Napier I promised them 3 months.  I failed to deliver in my effort to get out to Mount Cook, but the part of me that recognizes that my ancestors in the Brethren church were persecuted vigorously for their right to such beliefs as not being bound by oaths, contracts, or swearing on anything.  The idea is that a Christian does not need such things and that in genuine Christian community they are not necessary because a Christian’s word is as good as gold.  I have always tried to live my life in such a way that I am blameless in my own conscience, and it struck me that in order to maintain that integrity I had to honor my commitment.  So I am looking forward to returning to the deco city for a relaxing month without the expectation of perfection that accompanied my first visit.  It struck me that my interest in Napier and in historic architecture in general is not so much a search for aesthetics but for the way of life they represent, a way of life romanticized by popular culture but one that if it ever existed before, certainly does not exist now outside of little pockets.  In Napier, I was hoping to find a city so proud of its architectural integrity that it embraced the simpler way of life of that time period.  Instead of jazz clubs and flappers and classic cars, I found thoroughly modern people in a thoroughly modern city putting on a play of sorts for tourists.  It is a town that recognizes and celebrates its heritage but does so as a show rather than a reality.  At the end of the day, there is still a KFC just beyond the square and the old buildings are filled with trendy coffee shops and designer clothing stores.  But there are pockets in the world – neighborhoods, communities, families – where values of community and love and fun and technology-free companionship do exist.  And the hunt shall continue.  Meanwhile, Napier is a nice place to enjoy the pretty buildings.

Jeremy