Some days are easier than others. Like today, today I don’t have cancer, I haven’t driven my car into a tree and I haven’t been shot in the head by a band of teenage girls. Today is an easy day.

Then there’s those other days, not just easy days but bloody great inspirational days, days when …

….. all the parts of the puzzle look like they fit . These days, those days, thank god there’s days like this.

On days like this life seems to have a capital ‘L’. In fact all of it is in CAPITALS. LIFE IS GREAT. We live for days like this. Wait, slow down …. read that again …. we LIVE for days like this – and on days like this we REALISE that. We know why we are alive, we know why we are here, we know the purpose and the meaning of life – or …

                                                          ….we don’t know it and we just don’t care, because simply being here is more than enough. Days like this. Ah yes, glorious, god given, beautiful and bedazzling, uplifting and enlivening days like this. I love em. In fact I don’t even need a whole day, just a moment – a moment like this. One of those is enough to spark me up for a while.

Like yesterday I found myself standing in the kitchen at the residential home for the mentally unwell where I just happened to be working yakking away to this Jamaican Brit about New Zealand and Brixton, sons and daughters, girlfriends and the importance of having a smile on your face. A moment like this, so full of energy, full of goodwill, full of connection, communion and synergy is for me what it’s all about.

Just thought I’d share that with you … and may yours days always be days like this. May you feel the wonder, joy and synergy of life in every moment. May you feel the swell of gratitude and the beat of belonging in your heart. May you always share in my dharma.

 x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

I seems to have gone as quickly as it came, as quickly as it lasted.

Come, been, gone.  Come, be, go.  Kum, by, ya.  Oh lord, kumbaya

It has been about a week and I think I’m almost over it, although there remains a lingering after taste, one that will probably stay as long as I am seeking work as a EFL teacher.  Lots of applications out there, and I’m now starting to get responses and rejections back.  At least with the rejections that’s the end of it, the rest tell me that if I want to progress my application further then I need to fill out further applications.  Ye gods!  Only in the UK I tell you.  16 pages of information to fill in to maybe, maybe get appointed to a 2 week teaching gig!  What’s that about? Arghhhhh! They’re MAD about application forms, chocka full of inane questions: what kindergarten did you go to and what was the name of the kid who sat next to you on the mat ? Name three interests you have that involve balls and rings? Arghhhhhh!!! Lord, give me strength!

Anyway time to stop resisting, knuckle down and do it, although I must admit I feel, every now and again, the chill of a familiar wind on the nape of my neck.  Knowing that I have turned down teaching work here in NZ  to once again put myself at the mercy of  potential UK employers …  causes those not so fine hairs on the back of my neck to stand up and take notice.

Anywho, that will be as it is – regardless of what the future holds, the recent past was an intense experience, filled with some hugely magical, inspiring and enlivening moments. What made it so, were the people.

‘He aha te mea nui o te ao?
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata’

‘What is the most important thing in the world?
It is people, it is people , it is people.’

So thanks to my fellow CELTA students:

Sophie, for you fantastic laughter, your lust for life

Karen, for your quiet strength and yet unfathomed depth

Lewis, for your gentleness and dryness, for being British

Merv, for your determination and resilence

Linda, for your self belief, honesty and quiet calmness

And thank you all the teachers and the students – one and the same – without you none of this would have been possible, so thanks Kaye and Jeanette, thanks Natsuki, Masumi, In Sung, Nassem, Rachel, Kristen, Naere, Joo Jung, Oat, Jin Ah, Soo, and all the rest of you. You are ALL wonderful. Thank you one and all. May you all be blessed, may you all be happy, may you all always share in my dharma. 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Last day. Tomorrow is a traveling day. I’ve booked my ticket back on the Intercity coach leaving Wellsford at 4 and arriving SkyCity at 5.30. An hour and a half trip, that doesn’t seem so long any more, I’ve made much longer trips on buses and trains just getting across London. Maybe I’ll celebrate my return to the city with a little flutter at the casino?

Another glorious day here, the rain has passed and the earth looks just a little bit greener because of it. I did as much as I could on my CELTA work this morning and put it away. It has come to 20 pages so far so I am glad I came here to do it, I can’t imagine getting it done so comprehensively and so quickly if I had not had this quiet and distraction-free environment. Thanks again Jim. Mate, you make my heart sore/soar, you really are an inspiration to me.

Today is a day of thanksgiving. To stand and appreciate all that is here. The sun that has shined so often and the shadows and dappled light it has cast. The grass underneath my feet, places where I have sat or lain upon it and rested. This wonderful dwelling that is Jim’s gift to me, one I will never forget, and one that is so much Jim. It is a comfortable place my friend, full of dharma and love. A place that welcomes contemplation and creativity. It is a home, a sanctuary, a refuge and a retreat. It is shelter from the storm.

I have cleaned and swept, wiped and vacuumed. It didn’t take long, its not a big place after all. It has been a quiet day, contemplative in a relaxed and easy way. I have simply meandered through the day, tiding here and there, getting a little bit more ready to leave.

It has been a most wonderful retreat. More meaningful I feel than I am currently aware of. I know I am leaving something here, something I feel I no longer need to carry with me. A little bit of the future perhaps or maybe just some restlessness that no longer serves. Leaving it here for others who visit to pick up and play with. It would be nice to come back with Caroline and share this retreat and spend more time in the sand. I would like that, exploring Sand Island with Cari.

There is little left for me to do now. Pack and leave. I am all but ready.

day six ….

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

The Shore. Devonport again. After two years away I hadn’t anticipated my reaction which is subtle yet obvious to me. The first sight of Rangitoto, the moving water at Narrow Neck Beach, Mt Vic looming at the end of Lake Road. As a write these words they seem like somewhere exotic, strange landmarks in a faraway land, describing a place only I and a few others are familiar with. Which I guess when I think of all those who do not know this place, is true.

Wide streets bordered by an eclectic assortment of houses, houses I used to feel were all so similar. Yet now when I look they are all so different, so many styles, so many different materials: bricks, glass, stone, wood, plaster. Old villas next to ultra-modern flat geometrical shapes. I rejoice in their variety. This is a paradise resting easily somewhere between old and new.

And palm trees? Where did they come from? How come I never noticed those before?

And the people who drive past me, who walk so casually along the footpaths, blissfully unaware of all I see, all that I feel. This sense of connection, significance, meaning, depth and discernment. This is other that just some place on a map, this is other than just some place to live. It has meaning to me now. More meaning that it ever did when it was ‘home’. Now it is part of my history, part of my past. I am now present in my past. This is a place to visit and remember, a place to notice what is new and what is not.

I am left once again in awe of my parents. Even more so now having lived in the land they came from. They changed their lives, changed their surroundings, changed their chances. They were happy here. I was happy here. Thanks mum and dad. Thanks once again for the life you gave me, for the choices you made.

It took me a long time to leave here and now that I am back sitting drinking coffee in the Stone Oven I do not want to stay. It seems a little unreal somehow. It seems like a nice place to visit. Nicer for sure than Brisbane or Surfer’s Paradise yet a holiday destination nevertheless. Maybe it is something about finally being free – a sense of leaving home and never wanting to be back home.

I love the strangeness that I feel. The feeling of being the outsider, the observer however subtle that is. I feel for those who do not see as I do. I do not wish to rejoin the ranks of those to whom the palm trees do not exist.

I am living a dream. My dream. I know now more than ever that I have become what I wished. I have made what I imagined. That being the case, now what? It is time for me to decide, to choose, to collapse potentialities and reach for the stars once again.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

Two years have passed since my very first post. Two years – wow! This website was once a dream, simply a possibility, a maybe, and now it is so much a part of my life. So much of what has happened for me, to me and in me in the last two years is captured and freed on here.

I knew this day was coming and wanted to write a post to recognise it, and I hadn’t really thought what I would write about. I’ve just read my very first post, appropriately called ‘the beginning’ (funny that), and that reminded me what it is I need and want to say.

Thank you. That’s it. Thank you

Yes you. Whoever you are reading this  – thank you. My words are so obviously about me and for me that to know that there are some others over these last two years who chose to read, ponder and puzzle about what I say has been hugely supporting.  I know it sounds like a cliche, and, I really don’t think I could have done it without you.

For those of you who have been here on and off over the last two years you’ll know there is one person who has been, and continues to be, very very close to me. One person who has, like no one else, set me free.

Thanks darling.

Caroline – you love me in all ways. You love me always. In doing so you set me free. The things that at times tie me down, hold me back, shut me up and lock me away are all mine, made from smoke and mirrors of my own making. It is you who then sits me down, holds me lightly, loves me deeply and illuminates the way out of my maze. You really do want me to be happy. Thank you so so much.

So once again – gratitude. I am rapt that it has become the most prominent of the ‘tags’  on this blog- I am pleased that over the last two years it is the thing of all things that I have most ranted and raved about, the thing most expressed. Thanks everybody, thanks for a bloody fantastic, absolutely awesome two years!! May you all share in my dharma.

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x