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 20th 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
