For three years I have been living the quiet life in
Auckland, New Zealand.
Auckland
is a city of a million people that sits astride a
narrow isthmus between the Tasman Sea
and the Pacific Ocean. On the
Tasman side are black sand beaches and lethal waves that crash into
shore with a deafening roar—like a train rolling down the coastline. Tall cliffs and dense bush rise up from the jagged points where
the Tasman meets the land, broken in places by homes that cling to
cliffs in ways that almost defy sane architectural thinking. On the Pacific side, you find the Hauraki Gulf, with quiet, easygoing beaches and lazy waves that
slap the sand quietly.
Sometimes I think that island life is a strange sort of metaphor for
man’s existence. You are
the rock and the life in the center. The world is the sea, the changing mass of fluid motion that
threatens to overwhelm you. You
paddle and push as hard as you can out into the world. Sometimes you
push forever. Occasionally
you find a lush place to call home, and you stay there awhile. Hell, even if you’ve got someone to keep you good company while
you paddle, all the better.
Yet there is
something uniquely constricting to island life. Everything is limited
because the geographical landmass is limited. In a place like New Zealand, you are constantly trading off monotony versus
natural beauty. You look at
the jobs section of the newspaper and find that there are a million ways
to carry a tray, serve a beer, or sell some hand-carved trinkets in a
shop or dairy for NZ $9.00 an hour. Wide is the road to narrowness, it seems. As I add it all up, I can say only mixed, and often contradictory
things about life here. You
can get killed on the roads from the insanity that Kiwis call normal
driving. You can sit on the
beach and have a picnic in the sunshine.
You can listen to people complain about things that Americans
like myself wouldn’t even dream
about mentioning—and then you can turn straight around and marvel
about how much nicer New Zealanders are to deal with on a day-to-day
basis. So many
contrasts—they seem almost like the weather.
One minute sunny, the next cloudy, then sun for a few seconds,
then rain. You can’t count
on the sky, and you always feel like you are in a warzone—trying to
plan out where you can run for cover before trouble comes.
I turn
on the movie "My Own Private Idaho," and I see River Phoenix as he
is standing on a long, flat stretch of a Western American highway. He says:
"I am a connoisseur of roads," and then passes out in
a narcoleptic sleep. I find
myself thinking of this phrase quite often while stuck in Auckland
traffic. While
the fish delivery truck behind me whips over into the right lane just to
pass a couple of cars and then slam on his brakes in order to stop at
the light. I watch the long
line of 5 PM
traffic leading off like little tracer-fire lights
over the Harbour
Bridge
and into town. People
are looking for somewhere to drink—somewhere to rest their heads. So they will spin into town, buzz someone up on their bright
yellow cell-phone, and end up wrapped around a stranger’s toilet
after downing ten vodka cocktails.
My wife Jelena
has done a great deal to keep my unorthodox life stable and happy. Her family wagered their lives on leaving war-torn Yugoslavia
and moving to New Zealand
in 1996. She
became a permanent resident here, and I moved here to be with her. Since that time I have witnessed the crazy and the boring of Island
life, with her always there to keep me centered. When I don’t feel like anything is happening, and I check my
e-mail a hundred times a day in hopes that someone out there is
listening, I have her. She
smiles as she gets out of the car after her normal ten-hour day at work. And as much as I long for the open fields of North Carolina, the
mountains and country cooking, she gives me a
reason to bear all the change that has come down upon me. I keep telling myself:
"I wouldn’t do it for any less of a
woman." But then I think
of where I might have been, had I not been with her. Maybe still behind the front desk of a hotel, getting drunk after
work and just hoping to God some girl would just spare me a couple of
words. Or would I be burning
my days away in a blanket factory, or in some trivial small town
quietude. When I reflect on
that possibility, I am led to believe that my move to
New Zealand
came exactly when I needed it to be. I was starving for something new—and now, even the new thing is
old. New Zealand,
after three years, feels a bit like Old Zealand.
Still, I know
that I had to be here. I had
to learn to walk Queen Street
in downtown Auckland
just as I walked the Cours Mirabeau in Aix-en
Provence,
France, in 1996. I
had to hike up the Mont Sainte Victoire, just as I now go up Mount
Victoria, an extinct volcano a mere 10 minute drive from my
New Zealand
home. I
had to step into the Te Papa national museum in Wellington, just as I did the Louvre in Paris, or the Musee D’Orsay. They were just moves on the chessboard that led me to the
queen—to my wife, and the quiet, but very busy, life we lead.
My time
is spent here by the sea. I
am still the island in the turbulence—and I know that I will stay that
way, whether it be in the Great Plains of America, the Appalachian Mountains, or the dusty seafront of
Southern France. Even
though my island
is small, it is still home. And home is something that is only ever truly built in the
heart—with a good deal of help from an exciting place. That has been New Zealand
for me. It
has hammered me into shape. The
new shape, wants to return to France, to see
Portugal, the Balkans, South America, and Africa. This
new guy now knows that there is really a world out there, and that the
greatest joy is a new discovery, or a new, unusual friend.
I know that I don’t know what I intend to find out there—but
only that I can’t miss the chance to look. For now, I will look in New Zealand, among the Silver Ferns, the black sand beaches, and
the crowded Auckland
motorways. All
of us are on this thin raft together.
But I will stay up the mast, my eyes focused on the horizon,
looking for the new lands.
