God defend New Zealand

Tonight, my fate was to watch the All Blacks in a Surry Hills pub with 3 Kiwis. Like I do every time, I got chills from the Haka. And I sang the national anthem with them.
The islands are places that I remember with a part of me separate from emotion...like, I've shelved that devotion for now. But tonight, amidst my favorite accents on earth, I remembered again. I never looked on Lyall Bay without adoration, I never went on a run or a hike or a swim when I didn't feel like home. And every time my plane touched down there, I wished my family would be there to greet me...that Aotearoa was that kind of home and not just the one of my heart.
It's good to know that the devotion remains as it has since I first met the place in 2008. It is contentment.
And many thanks to Australia for the gifts she bestows upon me (not without cost)
This is so romantic and emo, but it is much like a woman feels when she meets her true love. She must go to be with him, even if it takes her far from her father and mother.

And I just realized.....
Hanumanasana.

What the birch tree told me years ago.

Mahanaway.

A tree with two branches going in two directions.
Wow. This won't make sense to anyone else, I'm sure.

grounded

I used to find that I often would be struck by the muse while driving. I don't drive these days. Which is incomprehensibly weird. People often ask what I've seen of OZ. Not much. I don't have a car.
In my imagination from a child, gifted to me by my parents and my culture, the auto-mobile was freedom and escape. It was vacation and adventure and exploration. It was privacy of the highest order. It was my handbag, my toolbox, my zoo.
When we arrived in NZ, I promptly decided that Chris and I must buy wheels. He was only partly into the idea.
I fell in love with the heap of washed out red station wagon and took about 20 pictures of it.

I left Rosalita in NZ with Chris. The universe sent a thief to break into the thing days before I left, leaving him to fix the thing before the new WOF was due. Sometimes the Fates intervene when I cannot be passive aggressive or vengeful. Little gifts.

I want to see Australia. But the possibilities never enter my mind. I have no wheels. Oz will likely be a landing/launching pad for me. I will live here for many months and never know the place, never hear it's heart beat, never experience it's song. And it's sad for both of us. Someone must know that it's best I don't get too attached at this point. And I can hardly put my feet on earth and not love it.

poland

Today I met a lovely Polish-Australian who is married to a Polish-American who has a house and a growing permaculture operation on her tiny plot of yard north of Sydney where trees still grow and there is quiet.
I am going to begin a cooperative honeybee experience with her. It was a natural and relaxing sort of afternoon, swapping stories of resourceful things we did in our home countries when the rural life demanded it. Normal Americans might not have known what she was talking about...(I mean normal ones who live in places like Chicago, New York, LA and the suburbs) but this girl, coming from a working class family with farming backgrounds knew about all of it.
I left the city feeling slightly agro and tired/wired, thinking about the email I had received from the boss and how I ought to respond and how I could possibly pay my list of fees and still eat bla bla bla.
Coming back, I was reading my book sprawled unladylike on the train like I didn't care how presentable I appeared.....generally feeling my wild self. Whenever I leave and come back, it is so apparent how difficult this town is for me. I find myself connecting and being drawn to the country girls and to the landscapes outside the city.
While this brings peace and some reprieve, I find it hard to fit myself in my mind back in a place where I can feel no soil under my feet, nor grow things out of earth.

However, today marks the 3rd woman in a month that I have met with to keep bees. May the trend continue and grow.

buzz buzz