What a mystery and a beauty this life is. Tonight, the apartment is gathered around me – some warm and safe space. I’ve been reading Earth Abides
and listening to the wind pressing against the windows. A few minutes ago, my neighbor fired up their stereo and I found I wasn’t annoyed – it was nice to have the company – and their music’s not bad.
A couple of hours ago, I talked to Sharon as we do every evening. She sat in the hall way at home with several cats around her and dragged a ribbon around for their pleasure while we talked. I could see her on the camera and we chatted as if we were both sitting there. I have to remind myself that she’s nearly on the other side of the world.
When the music began to come through the wall, it was comfortable. Someone else enjoying the evening, someone else listening to the wind on the glass doors up here. Someone else safe in their high nest. I washed the dishes and looked at every plate and utensil. “Ours”, I thought. “Ours – this is ours, we own this place and these things so impossibly far away in another national reality.”
Sharon was so close on the phone and camera, the familiar cats, there with her – just outside of my touch, playing. I have to remind myself over and over again, where I am. I’m on those two islands that I’ve been looking at all of my life as I’ve spun the globe wondering and wishing. I’m there, here, sitting in this beautiful room, surrounded by my dreams unimaginably far away from my previous life.
I don’t ‘get’ distance. Oh, I know the numbers of miles and the time involved to get here, but I don’t really get it. Where ever you are, it seems that it is the center of the universe for you, personally. Sharon’s so close on the camera, just a few button pushes away on the phone, when ever I want to talk. I have no real idea how far away she is. I don’t think we ‘get’ distances like that anymore than we ‘get’ death. They are ideas we talk about as if we understand them – but we don’t.
Tomorrow, with luck, I will connect a camera up here so that she can watch me when she wants. It’ll probably be less interesting than I imagine; me playing on the computer, me writing E-mail, me walking over to look down on the street and over at the park and the sky, me sitting eating and reading on the couch. It sounds great to me – but then this is universe central. But, I think she’ll enjoy seeing the apartment and seeing me while we talk in the evenings.
I told her tonight that I’ve felt very little pull thus far to mount an expedition and go up to Kaikoura or to take the train over to Greymouth. I was thinking about why that is when I was riding the bus home from the market today. And, I think it’s because I’ve been doing basically nothing but laying about and doing exactly what I want all day long for over a month. The idea that I might need a break or a distraction seems ludicrous to me. Just organizing the trip sounds like work and focus. Here, I just drift from one whim to the next. I think nothing of deciding to walk 20 minutes to the library to pick up a book that’s come in. The city is ever changing and if I get tired, I can take the bus back or stop into Starbucks and have a coffee until I’ve recovered and girded myself up for the next whim’s expression.
I feel peace and poetry beginning to pool in odd places as these days collect. It’s strange, because in my writings and projections, I’m always seeing the demise of life as we know it in the western world. Yet, here I am at what might be the last truly beautiful place in history and I am drinking it deeply and feeling so very blessed. It is all a mystery; here/there, now/then, near/far, life/death.  I live so intentionally in the abstract and yet I feel so strongly and emotionally about the now.
I know it all changes – it always does. Time flies by like horizontal rain in the wind. In a month, I will be on the other side of the planet again and all the love and mysteries there will enfold me – and this will be a dream; this apartment, this city, this nation, these people. I know they will continue – but for me, they will be waiting for my return before they can animate. All this will be just two small islands on the globe in the hallway that I pass and glance at each day.
Our apartment will be like a beach head in paradise – a promise of our return. It will be waiting, silently, as the months pass while the traffic and the weather passes outside and the neighbor come home in the evening and plays music for an hour in a small personal celebration. I feel that celebration.
by James Lovelock over lunch, I came across an example he provided that I loved.
