New Zealand Nature

Amy got this one from our house.

I'm going to put my interesting wildlife and nature shots here.

Heaven

I heard this story from Jaime (jadedtales) who in turn heard it from a friend who experienced it as a dream.  The profound message of it struck me and wrote about it here.  The message was relayed to me in only a few sentences, but this is how I imagined it.  I know nothing about the woman who had the dream.  I believe the messages we are given are too often ignored.  I also believe that connections we have are not random.  This story was given to the friend, delivered to Jaime who told it to me so that I could hear it too and now I share it with you...

The world was filled with white fog and light.  She was alone on the path.  The ground was unseen, but felt soft and comforting.  The effect was calming, but… something nagged at her.  Oh… yes… she was dead.  

 

That was it.  She was fairly sure.

 

Nervousness set in like a single dove lighting on branch of her mind.  The details about the exact cause of demise were fuzzy and strangely irrelevant.  What did occupy her thoughts was, “Oh crap! Will they let me in?”  This being Heaven, she was concerned about even mental swearing.  “Sorry”, she quickly thought.  Another dove landed in the nervousness tree.

 

There was no discernible road or walkway, but she knew she was walking where she needed to go.  The events of her life played like a video montage in her head.  She cringed at the worst parts, cried at the sad parts and chuckled at the silly parts.  She saw her first kitten, her first boyfriend, the day she graduated, her one experimental girlfriend, a string of embarrassing party moments… scene after scene.  It appeared that being dead provided one with perfect recall… how lovely.

 

On the whole she had been kind.  She had loved many, helped many and generally strived to limit the hurts she caused.  But she had also often been vain, apathetic, and careless.  She certainly had not devoted her life to any great cause.  She had not saved any children.  She had tried to do the best she could—still now she could see a great many mistakes she had made.  Nervousness began to chitter.

 

She could see the gates now.  She laughed at seeing the literal pearly gates to round out this cliché version of Heaven.  Still there wasn’t a soul to be seen.  She quickly reviewed the exactly 152.7 hours of Sunday school she had experienced in her life time.  She remembered that Saint Peter should be here somewhere to check his book and see if she should be allowed in.  But as she approached there was no book and no sage man in robes with troubled eyes to challenge her.

 

When she finally confronted the gate she noticed a telephone key pad next to an intercom.  Apparently Heaven had gone through some downsizing and installed some automation circa 1980.  Great…

 

The panel was brightly chromed with the familiar 10-key dialling pad next to a set of instructions.  “Please dial the appropriate number to represent you” followed by a long list of codes, “001 Jesus Christ, 002 Allah, 003 Saint Mary, 004 Jehovah, 005 Buddha, 006 Shiva, 007 Jesus who spoke to Brigham Young… etc, on and on.

 

She pondered for a long time.  She felt this selection would be profoundly important.  But as she reviewed her life, time and time again, she realized… she had never really decided on any of them.  Several more birds landed in the nervousness tree and began to chatter.  She pushed on the gate.  It was solid and firm and in an instant she knew it could not be defeated in the same way she knew she couldn’t randomly make a selection.  She stared at the number pad again and began to cry.

 

But then a warm light appeared behind her.  She turned to see a man dressed simply in white.  He was calm and kind and reached for her hand.  She touched his palm and her sadness disappeared.  All the nervousness doves quieted and stood still.  She felt the connection to him.  Rocks, trees, people, places, lives, worlds, and the cosmos were all connected in him.  She felt the connections beyond him and then realized that she was connected in exactly the same way—all things together… including him… including her.

 

His face held her gaze.  He was not smiling, but the look radiated love and acceptance.  He stepped beside her to face the key pad.  They stood and looked at it together for a few minutes hand in hand.  Then he leaned in toward her and said softly.  “Don’t worry.  You can choose to represent yourself…”

 

Nebraska

A completely unpredictable set of letters.  I do not think anyone would come up with “Nebraska” nowadays.  I remember being taught in school that it meant “flat water” or “land of flat waters.”  But I can not remember which Native American language it came from.  I will guess it is Sioux.

 

No matter how I try to remember my home, it always appears first as the color of dry hay.  The color of corn stalks in Fall.  The color of wheat ready to harvest.  The color of earth baking in the sun and sand hills for as far as the eye can see—and the eye can see pretty far in Nebraska.  The horizons are distant.  I know they call Montana “big sky country”, but they are wrong.  There is nothing but sky in Nebraska.  I never knew that until I saw a painting by Carol Burkholder of a flat land farm.  The horizon was perhaps 6 inches off the bottom of the frame and the rest of the space was 36 inches of sky.  It was really the first time I saw home in a painting.

 

There is not a day in my memory where I can not see the fields.  Even living in the capital city of Lincoln my whole life, I seemed to never be more than a few blocks from a plowed field.  They are perpetually frozen in my mind as harvested stalks in endless rows.  I walked across those fields on my way to Pioneers Park, on my way in to town, or simply to the next neighbourhood to find friends.  I drove by them day and night on my way anywhere for there was no direction to go and not experience them for miles and miles and miles.  In my memory, I see them in moonlight with fresh sparkling snow.  I see them on days so hot the air shimmered.  I hear the roaring rustle of leaves in Fall.  I smell the wet thawing dirt in Spring.  All through my youth I struggled to tell people I was a city kid.  I did not grow up on a farm.  But looking back now… I did grow up on a farm, just not one that I owned.

 

Back home is where my folks live, still just outside Lincoln.  I have aunts, uncles, cousins, a niece, a sister and friends all in Nebraska.  They live in towns like Crete, Unadilla, Denton, Beatrice, Fairbury, Seward, Waverly, Grand Island and Hickman.  All of them are small towns and each of them stands out in my mind as another bay colored place with hot wind and bright sun.   

 

Driving out to see family is as much a part of life as thunderstorms in the Spring.  I suppose it should be no surprise that in a land devoted to growing food that gathering to share dinner is often what I remember most.  Between the towns are the countless fields.  Each bordered by a row of wind break trees to protect the exposed top soil.  Creeks run through rarely in winding snarls of wild bush in otherwise parallel rows.  Dirt roads cross in 1 mile blocks from East to West for 400 miles.  Not a perfect grid, as any unfamiliar wanderer will discover.  There are plenty of places where “you can’t get there from here.”  Your car rumbles on the gravel and dust chases you mile after mile.  The crunching slows as you turn in to the drive and fades to a surprising silence when you stop.  When you finally arrive, you will have a dusting of Nebraska over everything you own.  But it doesn’t matter because you are home and family is already out the front door to hug you.  Kids run around from the back.  Somewhere a train whistle blows distantly drifting to you on a warm breeze.  Sunday dinner smells good as you walk up.  Uncle Bobby and Uncle Marty wrestle stiffly on the porch even though both of them are in their 50's.  Time to go inside.  Everyone has been waiting for you!  Go in.  Sit down at the table.  Here comes the turkey and next is the ham.  No plate is big enough for it all.  But there is always time for seconds.

Exactly Ten Thoughts to be drafted in the 24 hour period of Tuesday as measured by Pacific Standard Time

1) The first step in any project is defining the problem followed closely by defining the requirements to affect a solution.  (In case you have not guess, I am at work.)

2) I like my IBM T61 laptop with dual screen monitors.

3) Telephone companies are to budgets as monkeys are to bazookas.

4) Dilbert is my personal tragic Hero.

5) Bender is my personal epic Hero.

6) If my phone and service were not free... I don't think I'd pay more than $30 a month for it.

7) Last week I had my first "smart moment" after working here for about 3 months (I actually knew something that someone else did not and added a small moment of value).

8) Despite only providing perhaps 8 useful things to my employer in my first 3 months, they seem quite pleased with my acquistion.

9) I would like to make more money--even though I am well aware that I probably don't deserve more money.

10) I highly recommend a walk by the sea to improve morale... and large cappuccino.

Rugby and Rainbow Warrior and International Finance

Just a quick random update.

Gabe had his first rugby practice last weekend.  I don't have a good shot of him at practice, but here is the field.  It was rainy all weekend, but it did clear up for practice.  I guess God likes rugby too.  The ran those kids for 2 hour solid.  The were aged from about 6 to 12.  They took no breaks.  They had them run, block, tackle, run some more, flop down, stand up, tackle and run.  It about killed me to watch it all.  I'm still sore.

There has been a celebrity in the harbor the last week.  The Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, has been docked here.  Each day I walked past I thought I should get a picture.  Well I finally did.  I'm not nearly as green as Greenpeace, but I do respect the sentiment.  It is pretty cool to actually see the ship I've heard so much about.

On other news I'm waiting for my damn IRS tax return to post so I can buy my tickets to the US for a visit in June.  Transfering cash from NZ to the US is a pain.  If you can avoid it, I would recommend you do.  It costs me $25 per transfer... and that's just annoying.  In general, NZ is spooked about the world economy and its own.  That housing balloon the US is experiencing now is rippling through the world.  Finance companies here are starting to topple as well.  NZ experts claim that home are as much as 30% overvalued.  The effect of that reconcilation will severely hurt the already very bad home market here.  Very bad if you're trying to buy that is.  House values are higher than they've ever been and have risen about 100% in the last five years!  I must say, I don't enjoy financial turmoil in the least--here or there.

Antartica

One of the fringe benefits of being in a place farking hell and gone from anything you've ever known is to bump in to things you just would never see.  As many of my more geographically conscious relatives have known, New Zealand is about the closest land mass to Antartica there is.  "Tourism" to the frozen continent is something genuinely possible here.  In fact, a friend and co-worker here just returned from such a trip.

I just sat through an hour's worth of his photos and perspectives on the trip.  I could easily sit through another couple of hours.  He took over 10,000 photos on the trip--mostly of ice and penguins.  Still the cross-exposure to listening to Neal talk about it is fairly priceless in itself.  Plus it saves me the $20,000 NZD price tag of actually going my self.  Neal and his wife spent 30 days on a Russian ice-breaker that sailed from the southern tip of NZ to Scott's Sound.  It took about 10 days to get there and then 10 more to get back.  The ship was not all that large and only held about 50 tourists.  It wasn't exactly luxury either.  But Neal says they did have great food--booze was extra.

The thoughts I took away from the discussion were these.  There are vast sections of that landscape that literally have no trace of human existance on them.  Not even footsteps in the sand.  While I suppose this is not so profound, it was amazing to me.  The animals had no fear of humans.  They would approach out of curiosity and then get bored and move on. 

Really the chance to go on your own National Geographic tour would be just too cool for words.  While I'll probably never have that kind of cash to go--I'm glad I can experience through Neal.  I'll have to get a few of his pictures to share.

Here are Neal's photo's online.

Ten more Thoughts on Tuesday

1) Phone companies (even in different countries) are remarkably similar, however, chaos is maintained by using entirely different acronyms for everything.

2) I have realized that I have been pronouncing my co-worker's name, Amber, as "Ahm beh".  I also refer to my "Paht neh" for my partner.

3) Kiwi's have freakishly diverse footware fashion sense from barefoot with suit pants to thigh high, bright red, stiletto boots.  Both of these fashions can be observed working at the bank.

4) Two cappuccino's make my hands shake.  My limit is definitely one.

5) I frequently wonder if I can really publish writing for a living.

6) This exercise makes me think of that Violent Femms song where he counts up to 10.

7) I have more computing power in my phone than the first 5 computers I owned combined.

8) If you could transport my laptop back to World War II, even without the communication functions, it would alter the course of the war.

9) What if the "oldest" human civilizations were in fact not the most primative.  Could we recognize advanced technology buried 15,000 years ago?

10) The wind was genuinely cool this morning.  It made my ears hurt a tiny bit.