R.I.P. This Blog

This blog is officially dead. Feel free to remove it from your RSS feeds and bookmark lists, as it will not be updated until I do something really interesting. Which won't happen for about two years.



While writing this blog, I have been to Los Angeles, Toronto, Buffalo, Calgary, the Rockies, Minneapolis, Chicago, Houston, New Orleans, Memphis, Kentucky, Denver, Philadelphia, New York, Connecticut, Miami, Georgia, Boston, London, Paris, Montreal, Manhattan, and Fiji.

Nothing like that is going to happen until maybe 2011. I've settled in for a period of furlough in Auckland, a city which has all the disadvantages of L.A. without the buzz.

Gilded Cage

I'm back in my home town, and I discover that it is someone else's home town. Tauranga elicits in me an overwhelming sense of deja vu. There is little that reflects me here; this town is not my home.

Years ago, I took a ride on the road I grew up. Turning off the highway I saw the school, with its lush playground and weatherboard classrooms, and pulled in. I was immediately struck by the smallness of it. I still remember the Lilliputian sensation of towering over these remembered places, almost as if I were looking through a fisheye lens, not knowing whether to trust my gaze or my memories.

They say that after travelling, when you come home you see the place for the first time. I couldn't say whether seeing the world changed my perspective, or that the time away allowed me to release my entrenched ideas about Tauranga. Whichever is true--probably both--I feel more than a usual urge to escape.