Ownership

I sold all my stuff. I could easily riff lyrically about how we don’t really “possess” anything, about how we are just with things and people. Let’s be honest, though: you already know all that shit. It’s old news. Either you buy it (no pun intended…maybe) or you don’t.

Sure it feels good. The car is gone and I don’t have to think about warrants of fitness, ongoing repairs or registration costs. I bought that car for $2,750 two years ago and I’ve spent over $3,000 since then just keeping her on the road, let alone full of gas from week to week.

The kayak is gone, too, and I was actually a bit emotional as Dean off TradeMe drove off down the driveway with the trusty steed on the roofrack. I’ll miss having that particular chunk of plastic.

fff

Lana and the Steed

Cycles, Part II: Rebirth(day)

I’m going to replace the word “birthday” in my personal language to “rebirthday.”

Everything is cyclic, and no cycle is the same. While each cycle is similar, it is also unique—much like each year in a person’s life.

People often ask us on our (re)birthdays, “how old are you this year?”
I’m replacing that question in my personal language with “how many rebirths have you had now?”

You see, a person doesn’t ever get “old.” Some of the most fascinating, lively people I know are in their eighties. And each celebration of a person’s life as the Earth cycles around the Sun is an opportunity to start afresh, to reflect on past years (cycles) and look forward to the coming year (cycle). Each year is new and young and fresh, and is a chance to make new choices, or to strengthen current resolves and projects. We don’t get old, we get renewed.

LadyM’s 39th rebirth is taking place today, and I imagine that where she is right now it really is feeling like a proper ReBirth. Her future is bright and shining with new promise and choices that glisten like the skin of a butterfly just out of its chrysalis.

Happy Rebirthday, Lady.

Cycles, Part I: Reflections

I was having a conversation with my friend Haley the other day. I noted how everything is cyclic; things repeat and reflect each other and themselves in many ways. It’s never the same cycle twice—time always carries things forwards, like a wheel rolling down a hill—and things often come back around.

We see similarities around us every day. Flowers of the same species all look similar, days look similar, oil paintings are all composed of oil paint. Still, each flower, day and painting is individual and recognisable; reflections of the others.

People reflect each other as well, and I was thinking about that yesterday morning on my way in to work.

Taranaki Hardcore

Flash!

Originally uploaded by jamesmnz

http://www.flickr.com/photos/albatross_j/sets/72157623770671596/

So Haley & I drove up to Taranaki for the weekend, and on the way through Porirua there’s this young dude standing by the road holding a sign saying “New Plymouth”. So we thought, why not?

I’ve hitched around a lot in the past, so it seems right to pick one up myself now and then. Haley’s done loads of hitching as well, so she was in on the idea too.

Michael the American German med student turned out to be an awesome guy and joined us for Naki Burn, getting right into letting us dress him up to hang out with the bogans and hippies in a paddock under the shadow of an active volcano, near a town called Urenui, which translates literally to “big dick.”

Consciousness, Unconsciousness, and Evolution

We go through our lives with our brains humming all the time. Our subconscious brains process vast amounts of information remarkably quickly, from reflexive responses to complex situations,  to interpreting the countless subtle gestures of body language, vocal tone, and vocabulary choices in non-verbal communication.

We do comparatively little processing in the conscious brain. And yet, when we think about things consciously and in more detail we often find ourselves discovering that things we had previously thought or done unconsciously don’t actually make that much sense, or serve us as well as we might have assumed. They may serve us in the short run, and perhaps that’s just our evolutionary heritage. Things like sexism, racism and other –isms fall under this category, as do many of our other more idiosyncratic eccentricities.

I wonder why it is that we are instinctively driven to defend ourselves instead of opening ourselves up. By opening up and thus becoming vulnerable, are we therefore fighting against the tide of evolution, and our very nature of attack and defense? And if that is so, then why is it that we are paradoxically enabled with a consciousness that presents us with that opposite possibility—love and openness?

E=mc2

Here’s something I wrote back in NYC. It goes some way towards summing up why I’ve called my blog “Oxymoronism.”

It was Saturday the 18th of May 2002, and things were challenging. I was on the bones of my ass in one of the biggest, most competitive cities in the world.

New York City is an incredible place, I loved every second I spent there. It was vibey and buzzy and stocked full of awesome things to do and characters to meet. I loved it because it confronted me. It challenged me.

A few days before this entry was made, I sat on the edge of my dorm room bunk bed having just paid for another three nights at the Manhattan Youth Hostel at 103rd and Lexington. I’d been looking for work for two weeks straight and now, with four weeks still left on my tourist visa, had twenty-seven bucks in my back pocket. I had a return ticket back to London, but I  didn’t really want to have to change it and bomb out early. I wasn’t freaked about finding work, I was just very frustrated; in my heart, I knew I was going to find work…I simply considered that fate was being a motherfucking hold-out bastard and teasing the shit out of me. I was thinking, “just give me the fucking job, already! You know I’m not giving up…!”

That night I went out and got two (shitty) jobs.

People were saying to me, ‘Dude! If only you’d gotten here a year ago, you would have stashed piles of cash. We were in the middle of an economic boom.’ What had changed was that I had arrived there only six months after the 9/11 attacks. Employers were being very specific about needing a green card. I even tried to buy myself the required papers from some Mexicans in Queens, but I couldn’t find the correct Mexicans. After asking questions to some rather surprised incorrect Mexicans, I decided it was too dodgy and gave up.

Situations like that make you think pretty hard about what you’re doing and, more pertinently, why. I tend to get pretty philosophical in those kinds of situations.

Here’s what I wrote in my journal just a few days later: