Perched at my temporary domicile’s dining room table in Narrow Neck surveying the landscape, across neighboring yards filled with all manner of clothes lines, overlooking the estuary of Ngataringa Park between me and the summit of Takarunga / Mt. Victoria on this-side of Devonport, I begin to prepare for my change of venue next week from one dominated by quaint small towns built during the turn of the last century, to the beaches of the South Pacific.
Where every morning contains a surprisingly wide array of wind and rain conditions during the early spring in Auckland. Where the semi-tropical winds brush across the field of mangrove threatening to break out of their estuary and across the road and into the golf course. Where sudden rains threaten to wash those golfers back to their homes. Where each day brings an ever constantly changing team of construction crews to work on the road, or side-walk, or other damage done by yesterday’s rainfall.
Where each morning, I witness a neighbor persistently pacing in her home. So persistent in her ritual, I find myself trying not to look and simultaneously drawn to like watching the second hand of a clock waiting for the minute hand to twitch. Wondering if the pattern will ever change and she’ll bound outside the limits of her ritualistic pacing back and forth in the space between her front door and her kitchen.
Prowling back and forth from one side of her cage to the other, like a lioness testing and stretching her body against the physical space in which it’s being held. Holding the promise if she ever were to see the outside of her cage she would never allow another to put limits on her existence.
Back and forth, … to and fro … pushing and pulling, … this end and that, … … step by step finding her stride and testing her boundaries. Always preparing for that instant, that elusive spasm of time and space where and when she must summon all that she is to escape her confines to freedom. The freedom that I too seek from the patterned existence I’ve found myself fixed.
The pattern where I wake, caffeinate, prepare for and walk my 5 mile trek across two beaches, through the small port town of Devonport, up Mt. Catherine and down through the estuary to my temporary home in Narrow Neck. Everyday, round and round, day in and day out. Over and over, waiting to find that break in my life where I break out into my new existence.
Everyday, where I write lists and lists of what I like and want to include in my life. When each day, I seem to forget yesterday’s list and start afresh. Pages and pages of lists, consistently the same but never the same twice. Over and over and round and round. Only differing by the changes in weather and construction crews.
I’m am now conscious that in an effort to change up my life, I’ve exchanged one locale’s summer construction season for another’s on the other side of the globe. The more things change,… and so on.
adieu,
Loved this Andy... I could see it so clearly and made me think.
What you are doing... so courageous and hard to find a life like that...( I’m fascinated by the pacer- like “rear window”... Tracy got me on cygnaly but I can’t figure it out yet)