Juxtapositioning

Art imitates life. Or is it the other way around? It’s so hard to tell these days.

Over at Causecast, one of the things I’m writing this about week is raw food. And either because I’m so highly suggestible or because it seems like a good idea (or both), I’ve decided to go raw. For awhile.

What does this mean?

Well, for me, since I’m not going to join Mel Gibson with the Tiger Diet (go on, click on that), and I think that re-creating familiar cooked foods with some weird substitution (a raw counterpart) is both useless and a waste of my energy at this point, I’m basically eating raw vegetables and fruits and that’s about it.

Day 1: a handful of radishes with pink Himalayan sea salt, about 1/4 pound sugar snap peas, and a handful of ripe strawberries. All food is local and organic.

Today I biked to the farmers market and bought more sugar snap peas and radishes and some lettuce. I have more strawberries and also apples and a few grape tomatoes and part of a red pepper, as well as some garlic scapes (immature green garlic) and rainbow chard, but I’m not sure how delicious those last would be raw. Maybe in a salad…

Yes, there will be weight loss involved here, no doubt about that. I’m not a particularly large person to begin with and most people would rank me on the thinner side of the human spectrum, so we’ll see what happens.  Initially this was going to be for 2 weeks but I may go 30 days. Bonus! A side effect of eating raw seems to be increased strength and stamina (lots of athletes are raw foodists), so this coincides nicely with my return to yoga and also to running.

Side effects so far:

• a light feeling throughout my body, similar to that when fasting
• hungry from time to time, but feeling satisfied so far with what I’m eating
• the smell of cooking food, like when walking or biking past a restaurant (especially foods with a lot of fat in them), seems unusually distasteful

I’m not sure I could keep this up indefinitely; I LOVE to cook, and I love the satisfying feeling of eating healthy foods that are seasonal and well-prepared, which in the past has meant something cooked.  I’ve been eating a primarily-macrobiotic diet (a loose, non-anal version that has room for chocolate and the occasional potato chip) for years, and I really LIKE rice and veggies.  I would also miss soup.  So we’ll see.  I’m certainly having a new appreciation for the sugar snap pea, and I am especially grateful to be trying this in summer when there’s a good variety of local, seasonal produce, rather than in the dead of winter.

Later on through this experiment I’ll be posting links to resources and more information.

I think I’m going to start a commune.  Or host an orgy.  I don’t know — which one is quicker?

I moved week before last.  I was able to walk, more or less, and I hired two semi-enthusiastic 20-somethings to take my paltry items and put them in the smallish truck I rented and take them out again 10 miles farther west.  And I even had time to buy a robin’s egg blue sofa and a butter yellow leather chair, and they were even delivered the SAME DAY, after which I looked around, my head still slightly spinning on its axis, and said, “I’m home.”

The next day my-neighbor-the-artist knocked on my door and I invited him in.

If you knew about the house I grew up in, you would know what a Big Deal that is.

Once a year or so, mostly to keep us on our toes and to get the windows clean, we would have Company — faceless people who smelled like People From Other Families and sat having polite conversation in the living room while I hid in my bedroom, hoping I wouldn’t be called out to Say Goodnight or some other shameful horror, inhaling the strange scent of coffee brewed in the coffee maker that came out of its cupboard hiding place on these occasions.

The day before there’d be the usual vacuuming and dusting that occurred at regular intervals, plus Mom would be outside with a hose removing the screens from the windows and spraying them down, buffing the glass until the water spots were gone and it shone.  The window thing got to be a joke and when I got older we’d ask “Who’s coming over?” whenever Mom washed the windows, knowing that there probably wasn’t anyone coming over because we were a family of hermits bleached white from lack of sunlight, growing huge saucer-like eyes as we peered at one another around the nuclear-family dinner table.

No one ever came over.

I liked going to my friend’s houses.  Except for the smell, which I could never get used to.  It never occurred to me that my own house was strange, with green walls and orange walls instead of plain white ones, or that the smell I called home may have been odd to anyone else, but there was a certain smell that I associated with Other People, the smell that came wafting out through the front door when you rang it crying “Trick or Treat!” and that made Halloween truly horrifying and door-to-door magazine sales an impossibility.

My house smelled like home and when people came over, especially teenage babysitters who SMOKED on the way over, they completely ruined the smell for hours.  Sometimes I could smell the residual Otherness of the strangers who crossed our threshold for days, and I would have to hold my breath when I walked through those rooms and avoid sitting where they sat for days so I wouldn’t be infected with their smell (which still clung to the mid-century modern sofa cushions) and their strangeness.

So the Inviting People Over thing isn’t a big part of my gene pool.  Which made it all the more unusual for me to, without even thinking, ask my-neighbor-the-artist to step in instead of standing out in the sun, blinking a little as he introduced himself.  I grabbed his arm and he came in and perched gingerly on the only piece of furniture in the room that wasn’t brand new and only one day old, and I proceeded to wear him down and grill him about his life and the neighborhood until he ran screaming through the still-open front door to his next-door studio where he slammed the door shut and threw the bolt against this horror of a woman-next-door who was scary and intense and invited him in.

I haven’t seen him since.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration.  I have seen him at least 100 times since, walking past my window or knocking on my door to show me the painting he made THAT VERY MORNING or inviting me to an art show or apologizing for wanting to mow my lawn.

And I love having neighbors whose names I know and I love living across the street from a neighborhood coffee house and a gigantic tree with branches that just beg to be climbed and sat on and I love living where people call to me by name from across the street and I can hear the train 12 times a day. I don’t even mind the buses lumbering past my window every hour or the homeless walking up the street on Saturday nights.

Is good, this place.  Is good.

Q: Does time really slow down when you’re in an accident?

A: Yes. Oh yes.

I bought a motorcycle. The whole idea originated at about the time I fell out of an airplane, when doing things that made my heart stop and that created the World’s Largest Sudden Outburst of Endorphins made a lot more sense. I left New Zealand with the conviction that above all else, I must procure a motorcycle license, and soon!

The class to get the license was sort of funny.

About two-thirds of the students already owned motorcycles, had been riding around illegally on them for years, maybe, and were just now getting around to the whole license thing. Why they didn’t just march down to the DMV and do it all for free is beyond me, but it may have been something to do with the little T-E-S-T and the fact that interestingly, in general, motorcycle riders don’t tend to be the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Ahem.

Yeah, so this class was mostly a lot of standing around (outside) listening to specific instructions on just what we were going to do (outside) when we got on the motorcycles that had been assigned to us (outside), turned them on, and rode around in a particular manner (outside).

It almost snowed that weekend, but not quite.  It did, however, rain.

In the classroom the night before they warned us about hypothermia. “It makes you stupid!” the instructor cackled. “You can’t think! If you get that cold, you shouldn’t be riding!” Inside the warm classroom, we chuckled knowingly at one another. WE would never get that cold. WE were taking the class that told us not to.

So, alternating standing with riding all that next day, eventually my shivering stopped.  Just like Mr. Hypothermia said it would.  And on the way home, all I could think about was getting into a scalding bath and being warm again.

Have I mentioned the huge temperature fluctuations in the hot water here?

Depending on how active the water heater has been lately, hot = anywhere from barely tepid to furnacelike.

This was a tepid day.

I did eventually warm up, but the whole thing brought home the fact that Them Thar Motorcycles Are Dangerous-like.

Still, I insisted on buying a motorcycle almost immediately.   Whereupon I promptly parked it in the garage, too scared to ride it much.  Then Matthew brought his helmet down, thinking he’d dust off his own ancient almost unused motorcycle license and see if he could ride mine.

Excuse me?

Yeah, that didn’t go over so well.  I hated that he seemed better at it than me (whose bike was this?) and that he offered to take me for a ride — behind HIM.  Nossir.

So, I got over the thing of being precariously and vulnerably perched on a machine that could kill me, and rode it.  Got really comfortable.  The idea was to ride it around town, pick up groceries (when not using a bicycle), and also be able to take it out on the open road.  Power between the legs.  So to speak.

Friday, it was beautiful here. Sunny, warm, just gorgeous.  So of course I hopped on and went around, drove down to the beach, drove up to a lake I hadn’t seen before, had a nice ride.  I planned out the whole rest of my afternoon: I had already been for a run in forest in the morning, so I thought a bike ride after I got home would be perfect.  It was so nice out.

Missed the turn onto my street.

It has happened before; there’s a blind hill just beyond the turn, and you can’t see oncoming cars until they’re almost right on you, so on the bike I’m a little shy.  Something about being blindsided while on the motorcycle and being crushed/run over by an oncoming car acts as a wee deterrent.  So — shit — here comes a car, I twist the throttle and go on up the hill.  Turning around, when I get back I don’t recognize my own street.  Sure, I never approach it from that side, why would I? Missed it again.

That’s okay, there’s another way to get there; I’ll just go around.

At the top of THAT hill, something happens there by the stop sign.  Time slows down.  I think about using my leg to keep the motorcycle from falling over, but I wonder because I’ve had issues with that hip before.  Maybe I’d get hurt.  But the decision is made for me, and I feel the entire weight of the bike crushing my foot, which inside its heavy boot is bent in a way I am pretty sure feet are not supposed to bend.  From there to laying under the bike yelling FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCK I’m a little hazy.  Also the part about getting my foot and bruised crushed leg out from under it.

I do remember the guy from around the corner approaching me gingerly, not wanting to scare the crazy yelling lady, and not wanting his toddler’s ears to burn with so many repeat refrains of FUCKFUCKFUCK, and he helped me pick the 350-plus pound motorcycle up because I was pretty sure I was incapable of anything at that point.

I did ride it home.

I didn’t get the foot xrayed.  What’s the point?  I’ve always known when bones break.  How can you not know this?  I even once made a bet with my parents, so sure was I that my (other) foot was broken, and offered to pay the doctor’s bills if I was wrong.

I was not.

Plus, fun little indicators like PAIN and BRUISING and SWELLING and DIDIMENTIONPAIN are also a tipoff.

So this, happening a mere three days before I was supposed to move to a! new! house! just seemed Extra Ironic.  With sugar on top, and a cherry.

However, I have an arsenal that depends heavily on the strong conviction that energetic healing, even from afar, really works.

So tomorrow I move.  I can walk: slowly, carefully.  The pain went away almost immediately, once the Big Healing Honchos started working on it.  This from semi-excruciating to simply uncomfortable, in a few minutes.  And tomorrow two guys come and put my stuff into a truck that’s far too big for the amount of stuff I own and we (I) drive it to my new place, the one I went over and cleaned today.  This time tomorrow, new house.  (And no internet, but that’s a different story…)

Brilliant.

It’s not often that we get to know, right at the moment it is happening, that the moment has come after which life will never be the same again.

I live a dramatic on-the-surface life (juxtaposed with the under-the-surface what’s-she-going-to-do-next aspect, but we’ll leave that one under the surface for now, because this is my blog and I can show you what I want to, and hell, do you actually know what percentage of this (if any) is completely made up?) so I have those moments often.  The first one that I recall with absolute certainty happened in the back-room semi-office where I did my work and spied on my coworkers for our respective bosses (that was such a comfortable situation *cough*). A coworker walked into the room from outside and it was as if he came in from the apocalypse, breathing heavily and leaning against the door, having managed to shut it against the firestorm outside, when in reality he sauntered in, said something unremarkable, and I knew that in that moment life as I knew it had changed forever.

(Of course, I wasn’t sure how it changed, which rendered that tidbit of psychic phenomena slightly less useful.)

Today I went for a hike.  It’s remarkably cold in the damp green moss-covered primeval forests around here the day after a hard rain.  It’s also remarkable about the flies. After about 10 minutes a fly joined me, circling incessantly round and round my head as I walked.  I kept thinking I would outwalk the fly, but no.  He was clearly following me.  Then I tried dissuading the fly, believing in my powers of dissuasion and throwing energetic blocks at the fly to make it go away.  After several minutes of this it occurred to me that I was taking the wrong approach.  I should send love to the fly.  I pictured the fly wrapped in a cocoon of love, everything it needed in that small sweet space, not needing anything from me.  I knew the fly would just drift off happily and leave me alone, sweetly engorging on pure love.

Yeah.

Now there were two flies, buzzing round and round my head in annoying dissonance.  Could they not even buzz the same note?

I tried ignoring them.

Fucking flies.

I gave up.

I am somewhat convinced that it was this giving up that led to the conversation with my inner voices.  You have those, right?  Or, maybe not.  Anyway, I do.  Anytime my mind is not actively engaged in something else, there’s an inner chorus telling me things.  It used to be things like, “You’re fat!” or “You’re a failure!” but I stopped listening to those voices a while ago.

Today I started telling the voices what I wanted.

Turns out, I want quite a lot.  And that’s okay.  We all want stuff.  So we had quite a talk, the voices and me, and this time it was different.  We made plans.  I got advice.  I have homework.

I’d tell you more, but I’m kind of busy.  Homework.  Writing.  Stuff like that.

Next time you hear voices (especially if there had been flies involved), listen.  You’re wiser than you suspect.

P.S. It’s all good.

At 24, on weekends (when I had them off) for a while, I took to walking through the too-large, too-empty colorless high-ceilinged rooms of my new house, walking slowly past the new furniture, wondering where my soul had gone. Time stretched into frightening nothingness and it seemed that by walking — slowly, endlessly walking — I could somehow fill that void.

It’s easy to find ways to fill up the void.  Having a job that you take home nights and weekends, every night and every weekend.  Having children.  Then having more.  Letting life revolve around you, propelling you round and round, always in a different direction, any direction.

There are too many blank spaces again these days.  Life has conspired to leave room for thought, for direction, and the idea of becoming one’s own rudder again, when the rudder itself stretches into gaping darkness, seems like an endless bad dream.  The walking has begun again, only there’s nowhere to walk to.

~~~~~

I read something today that seemed incredible to me, a laundry list of things one might feel when beginning a spiritual awakening process.  Every single item on the list was also a sign we associate with depression.  Deep inner sadness. Check.  Sleep issues.  Check.  Physical disorientation.  Check.  Every one.  And I have felt ALL of them, at one time or another or all at once, since about the age of 9.  Which means that:

1. The awakening signs list is a load of crap, or
2. I’ve been depressed since I was 9 (or before), and
3. Everyone else I know is depressed as well, OR
4. There’s totally something to this awakening stuff and it completely absolves me of guilt over feeling so crappy for so long, BUT
5. Since I was 9? Am I not yet awake, then? WTF?
6. Because dude. That awake stuff is, like, my business.  I help OTHER people.

I don’t know whether to feel heartened by this or to feel like running screaming in the other direction (maybe that’s an overreaction … checking list for “overreacting”).  Does knowing this, if true, mean I can release not only any expectation of this ever to go away but also and sense of responsibility about it?

It’s like a relief and yet not.

~~~~~

Speaking of reincarnation, I’m going through a sort of one.  That’s, of course, in addition to any painful deep inner stuff I may have already mentioned.  A job thing, squeezed now into a smaller space, and soon my belongings, rapidly and unwelcomely having grown out of the everything-fits-in-my-car stage of only a few months ago, to be also squeezed into a smaller physical space: I’m moving in a few weeks.  Again.  But this time I get to take along new things like a bed and a chair and a desk and a coffee table and dishes and a TV (why?) and a Wii (why??) and a motorcycle.

The alternative seems to be along the lines of chucking everything into storage and leaving the country for someplace exotic for many many months, but that was going to take planning, and since the farthest I got on that road was to buy a guidebook and I am still lacking small details like immunizations and visas and plane tickets and, well, PLANS, moving seemed easier.

Yeah, I’ve sort of missed blogging, but I’ve been busy.  It’s this alternate-reality thing.  No, really.  A few weeks ago I discovered I can slip into this other from of reality.  It’s way cool and yet sort of frightening at once, so of course I like it, I’m fascinated by it, and I can’t wait to do it again slash never want to do it again.

So this is what happened:

Matthew put on some music, and I became immobile.  Went somewhere else.  Spent an hour looking up at the skylight and the trees and whatever other little slice of outside I could see, the rain dripping on the glass a little.  For an hour.  I couldn’t move anything but my eyes.  I sort of thought I could and that somehow I was faking this, but when it came down to it … I couldn’t.

The music?  Mercan Dede.  Went through an entire album, whatever was there on his iPod, and there I was, immobile and thinking that here I was in this world and there Matthew was in his, and somehow the worlds  just didn’t quite intersect.

After an hour he started getting a little concerned.  An hour is a long time in that place, but he could unlock the spell by touching my hands (though I had no idea what to do with the cup of tea he gave me).  Some voice in my head whispered commands to me but I couldn’t make my body do them.  Walking was new (how did I get so high up from the ground?), and who was that person in the mirror?  Driving was interesting, all those distractions from the “furry trees” (trees with moss on them) and the excitement of passing the “ocean,” (a lake) and having to read every sign out loud and realizing I was the one driving, I mean how funny is that?  Trusting the crazy child-woman behind the wheel.

I’m still not convinced I’m not totally making this up, but I did stand motionless on a chair, paint brush raised in hand, for several minutes after Matthew put Madonna’s “Ray of Light” on and I found I couldn’t move.

New Age and hypnotic music does this, but I think that’s just an entry point and that there are other ways to get there.

So this was all happening at about the time I was finishing “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and musing about one’s possible descent into other worlds and what that might be like and what a total relief that would be.  Coincidence, I scoff at thee!

(Books, incidentally, have always been a sort of beacon for me, illustrating in a surface way the things that are happening inside me as well, and I take my reading choices very seriously, allowing an intuitive guidance to occur and always enjoying the juxtaposition of the inner world with the outer.)

So … that’s where I’ve been.

Also I’ve been delving into fear a little.  From skydiving I went to getting my motorcycle license and riding around on one.

But, as always, the things I fear most are the ones I hide best.  The ones deep within.  Unlocking that monster-in-a-closet is next on the list, I swear.

I am about 3 weeks late on a deadline. I am never late with deadlines (except for a notable exception because I can’t seem to operate Google Calendar). But this one requires going deeply into something, something I just don’t want to touch.

But I have to.

It calls to me, whispers to me at night just as I’m drifting into sleep and makes my eyes snap open as if on springs and my heart suddenly pound.  I push it away with safe thoughts, good thoughts, and push my leaping heart back into my chest.  It wriggles, fishlike, for a moment, then lays still, obediently pushing blood into my arteries again.  I can breathe.  The moment is gone.

The other day I was meditating and felt guided to have a hot bath.  Bath preparations were narrated by my inner voice: insistent, encouraging.  The water in the bath, I understood, was me. The essence of me.  I was to immerse myself in … me.

I undressed and got in the water.  Hot.  Stillness.  Yes, this was me.

Inner screams.  Panic.  ME??  I am immersed in MYSELF??!  It felt like bathing in acid; I could feel the inner awfulness burning, burning, searing my skin, destroying me.

I wanted nothing more than to get out of that bath.  Immediately.  But I couldn’t move.

The inner voice still spoke to me.  I listened.  I breathed in my fear, breathed it in and felt it, loved it.  I felt my panic subside.  I could love this water, this me. I could love it.

My body relaxed.  The voice continued.

The project that has this deadline is like the water in the bath.  It requires me to look deeply at things I’d rather not see. Things that are painful to think about, let alone become immersed enough in to write about.   But who am I, anyway?  I am my story.  I am the stories I tell.  And if I don’t look deeply, if I don’t touch the burning acid inside, then my stories lie deeply hidden, burning a hole deep within me.  Touching the burning acid, then, is the only way to set it free.  It’s the only way not to burn up inside, becoming an empty hole surrounding a pool of fire.

Yeah, so I jumped out of an airplane the other day.

It’s well known than New Zealand is famous for bungy-jumping. When we got here there were countless airport brochures covered with alluring photos of smiling people about to hurl themselves to their doom. I thought about skydiving and it seemed sane by comparison—only a little daring like a walk on the foot-high barrier next to the path instead of on the path itself, rather than bungy-jumping daring of hurling yourself right off the cliff next to the path. I could do that.

“Karen’s going to go skydiving,” Matthew remarked to his mom right after we got here. (He had done it himself once before and felt no need to this time.)

She looked at me. “That’s expensive,” she said dismissively. So I ruled it out. Expensive. Not gonna do it.

We got off on our own finally last week, rented a car and headed northward to Taupo. Had little idea what was there besides a big lake and volcanic stuff underground. It was away and that was enough.  We stayed at a “backpacker’s,” like a hostel with a communal kitchen and gathering area. I chatted up some of the people there, from everywhere, it seemed, except New Zealand: the U.K. Nova Scotia, some Scandinavian country, etc.

“What’s the best thing you did here?” was my question.

“Skydiving!!”

The world tilted a little on its axis, and priorities changed. Plus, I am (apparently) immensely suggestible. Go on, tell me what I will like and I will believe you.

Skydiving.

So we went whitewater river rafting, addressing another of my fears (Fear A = Heights. Fear B = Drowning in Water), and it was fab. A high. Easier than I thought. Plus I did not fall out of the raft, a huge plus in my opinion.

That morning I made the reservation for skydiving later that day, for after the rafting, after consulting everyone else in the hostel. Unanimous. “Were you scared?” I asked them. “Of course! Best thing I ever did!”

Okay then.

This, by the way, was a Skydiving Upselling Moneymaking Machine Industry. In case I missed the point or any of the 12000 opportunities to buy merchandise/photos/videos/memorabilia. They wasted not a moment and had the whole thing choreographed. The process of Sell + Wait Around + Get Nervous Waiting + Can’t Change Your Mind Now + Get Ready + Jump + After Jump + More Selling of Things You Hadn’t Known Were for Sale + Pay for Everything You Agreed to Buy While Under Duress took several hours.

It still involved falling out of a plane though.

The ride up took 20 minutes, they said. It may have been five minutes or it may have been an hour, crammed butt to stomach into a small airplane with about 10 other people. I couldn’t count. I couldn’t think. Every few minutes the guy behind me, to whom I was attached by a system of clips and harnesses that I couldn’t see and only nominally trusted that even existed, would show me his gigantic-dialled wrist altimeter, indicating we were at 1000 feet, then 5000 feet, and on upward to 15000 feet (which didn’t even actually show on his altimeter that ended inconveniently at 10000).

Thousands of feet? Meant nothing. I was in the Zone, the Zone of Not Freaking Out.

Pretty soon—hours? days?—the guy behind me pushed me toward the open door of the airplane. This was not happening. Everyone else had disappeared (where did they go? I never saw them leave, actually). There was nothing else to do but surrender and let him push me out too.

Put your head back and curl your feet back. Banana.

My head is back and I am falling.  There is a reassuring weight behind me, reassuring only in the lightest sense. I am falling.

Falling.

Tap on the shoulder. Let go of the harness that is keeping you from (falling?) dying and put your arms out like you are (falling?) flying.

Can’t make sense of what I am seeing. My ears hurt, cold. My fingertips, cold. I begin to worry about my ears and their reaction to the slightest wind. This is way more than the slightest wind.

Falling.

Clouds? That’s clouds there, the clouds we flew through earlier. There they are.

Now through the clouds and there’s more reassurance. Greenbrownblue, colors swirling, moving so fast.

A tap on the shoulder. Something about a parachute. Suddenly vertical, swinging. Still can’t make sense of what I am seeing. I may have said “fuck.”

Not dead.

Swinging, angling around in stomach-churning circles, over the lake (OVERTHELAKEWATERDROWNING), swinging.

Flying.

“Relax,” the wielder of parachutes behind me says.

Falling.

This part should last longer, but there are parachutes far below, colorblips beneath my dangling feet (were they cold too? I can’t remember now), and there is a race, must catch up.

Hold your legs up, let me see you practice, noooo I just want to fly here forever, slowly, just gliding, enjoy the moment.

No, down.

Then, on the ground (that’s the ground? It feels so … solid), no longer tilting. There is Matthew, two cameras, now I am supposed to smile and look happy to not be dead.

Elation, of a sort.

What just happened?

Ten minutes later my whole body began to shake, and it took two days to hear properly again.  Every night since I have dreamed about the open door of that airplane.  I still don’t know what it looked like to fall out of it (eyesclosedeyesclosed) so I see it now in my dreams.

Still a blur in my mind, I don’t know what’s real. I have a line item to look at on my credit card statement. I have photos of me, so tiny, still swinging from brightyellow parachute in a red jumpsuit.

I have dreams.

Falling.

Fear, and moving through the fear.

Part of me suspects I made this up.

The room where we’re staying here in New Zealand is teeming with life. That sounds so positive and lovely stated like that, “teeming with life,” doesn’t it?  Like we’re in some fabulous wildlife sanctuary filled with tiny playful monkeys and exotic butterflies and mysterious yet-to-be-discovered species.  Or that maybe we’re in a magical underwater world where each teaspoonful of this watery bedroom contains an entire ecosystem.

Nope.

We’re talking flies and spiders and tiny worms.

Ew.

One night I counted twelve spiders hanging from the ceiling corners.  And why wouldn’t they be?  There are at least 20 flies in the house at any one time; surely one must stumble into a web from time to time.

I made a deal with the spiders.  I am deathly afraid of being bitten by one because spider bites on me swell to hard hot red welts the size of grapefruit.  But I also don’t like killing.  At home I liberate spiders and take them outside.  I figure that even if it’s below freezing it’s not killing them (is it? no wait, don’t tell me), and they are creatures of nature and know what to do to survive.  It’s not like the mice that used to snack on the peanut butter smeared inside the humane traps in the pantry; I’m not sure whatever happened to those because I refused to be the one setting them free in faraway cornfields, leaving behind a faint mousy scent in the car.

The deal was this:  I would love the spiders if they didn’t come down and bite me.

One night I lay in bed, the lights still on.  There were two spiders hanging just a few feet above me, but we had made our deal and I was (relatively) peaceful about their presence.  I lay looking upward and noticed a fly flying around up there near the spiders.  At least, I thought that there were two spiders up there; now it was hard to tell.  One of the darkish blobs my contact lenseless eyes thought was a spider now looked more like a smallish flying insect.  It flitted about here and there near the fly.   I could tell the fly felt comforted by the nearness of another creature so like it.

I watched them dance.

That was the fly’s undoing, the dancing.  It was lured in by the dancing spider and became caught in the web.  I watched the spider, now acting very much like a spider again and no longer dancing at all, as it busily approached the fly, still buzzing helplessly in the web, and then stung it and wrapped it more securely.  Everything I knew about spiders from reading “The Hobbit” was true.  They do stun their prey and wrap them up.  I watched the spider attach the fly-package more securely to the ceiling corner above me, and then I fell asleep.

So, we’re in New Zealand. Once what I imagined as a rather exotic faraway place, one not all that high up on the List of Places I Might (Hopefully) Go One Day, now it’s mundane. Almost. Here are some things I have noticed:

Pies. Every small shop/bakery/grocery stocks pies. Savory pies. With meat in them. Delicious, actually.

Coffee. Kiwis are almost as serious about coffee as Portlanders are about theirs, though I am still not quite clear as to what either a “flat white” or “long black” is. I settled for a mochaccino because a) I always order a mocha when I order coffee out (about once every 3 months, and b) I happened to know that here it’s pronounced “mock-a” instead of “moe-ka.” Score.

Money. Colorful. Looks a lot like Canadian money, though the pic of the Queen needs updating. Also flossing. Two-dollar coins? Yes, please! (When will the U.S catch up on this?)

Accent. I can’t imitate it. We did fly in an “ear”plane to get here, though. Haven’t quite got the rest of how the vowels flow.

Drive left. Unless you like driving into oncoming traffic. I’ve driven left in Ireland and Scotland, and it’s somehow much easier on those two-lane lanes than it is navigating the endless roundabouts here, but as I have yet to actually get behind the wheel it’s hard to say.

Weather. It’s summer here. I am liking that very much. Not too hot, either.

Potato chip flavors. Chicken. Lamb and mint. Prosciutto and Brie (that last sounds good but I am definitely trying Chicken because it’s so popular here).

Bikes. There’s a place that sells bikes for $20, and you can sell it back to them for $20 when you’re done with it. The pedal fell off of Matthew’s bike and my rear tyre is flat again this morning and my hands were black when they left the handlebars and only maybe 3 of the 10 gears work, but $20!

Economy. The kiwi dollar is a little more than fifty cents for me, which makes those $8 bottles of wine look pretty good.

Sheep. Yes.

Work. And yes, I am still very much working over at Super Eco while we are here (for 24 days!). Go see!