Not much is going on now, except packing to move on. WOrk has temporarily evaporated, or maybe I've just lost interest ins taying here and am not therefore willing to commit to another few weeks of work. I'm intending to resume sightseeing, and try to get to that ice cave on the West Coast (I don't know of a particular ice cave, only 9of two particularly accessible glaciers, but it's the blue light which I suspect is not rendered by printing processes that I'd love to see...it may take a helicopter ride, in which case I may have to get a lot more serious about finding work again very soon).

I'm staying on the next few days only because I'm minding the house while the owners of the hostel I'm in take care of some out-of-town business. So I have a computer at my disposal, without hourly charges, for the first time in ages.

So maybe I can put down a few things I've missed ...

Vinyards, orchards, and hot springs have in common the presence of sulphur. It helps keep pests off of trees and vines, is allowed even on organic production units, emerges naturally from the earth in thermally active areas.

(About which I've been reading in a very cool book my brother sent me, A Brief History of Nearly Everything, which is funny enough and has enough gossip about famous and not-so-famous scientists (in pursuit of one of the author's main questions about science in general, "How do they _know_ that?) that I'm really enjoying it... which means it has become my staple of conversation, somewhat to my embarrassment as I am not necessarily among geeks here.)

So anyway, now my work clothes, especially my shirts, have sulphur stains on them. And silver jewelry, my own and people's around me, turns black within weeks or days. Because of my familiarity with very basic chemistry, I'm paranoid that it's combining with the water in the mornings to make sulpurous or -ic acid, which is probably the wrong thing to worry about since a) there are intermediate reactions involved, like fire, and I have no idea if NZ's extra-burly UV can produce the same effect, and b) any concentrations of H2SO4 strong enough to damage me would probably also blacken the leaves it is sprayed onto. But I do breathe, unlike the plants I'm tending ...

Ironic to "get away" from the chem lab, only to be ducking aerosols of the same chemicals on farms.

...
There was a street party on New Years ... did I already tel you about that? Probably.

...
I worked for a cherry orchard, then tended their gardens and built them a database before moving on to another cherry orchard, then a vinyard. Now I'm on hold, waiting for apples to ripen, but as I mentioned above I'm thinking of escaping altogether.

...
The next likely destination is north of here, but still in the South Island; near Nelson. Moketua's been suggested by friends (Drew and a buddy of his); we'll see where the work is.
...
I've been taking aikido classes twice a week; have progressed from drawing an utter blank every time we're asked to practice the move the instructor has just demonstrated, to merely drawing a blank when trying to name the move I'm performing. It's enjoyable for the physical learning (more balanced, and more practical, than fencing; more deadly than dancing; but draws on enough of the same skills that I can "get" it and enjoy it the same way), and for the camraderie: a half-a-dozen regular participants, a nice balance between Japanese-derived discipline, Kiwi rough-and-ready fun, and the genteel art of power.

...
The benefit of taking a week to pack is that I'm fixing and winnowing as I go: mending the 5-year-old gaps in my 10-year-old laundry bag (looks great now), filing insurance claims and bank authorizations I've been carrying since September, losing and finding various things like my scissors, which actually increases the incentive to get things very tidy. I'm remembering my friend Tyler's advice, "Take half the stuff, and twice the money, that you think you'll need."
I second that advice wholeheartedly -- which maybe makes it a quarter of the stuff, and four times the money ....

I'm discovering that a lot of the things I'm carrying, I'm carrying for fear than I'd kick myself if I din't have them. When it comes to first aid supplies, or a towel, this is very sound reasoning; but these are also easily replaced. Pretty much the passport's the only thing that can't be substituted. So when it comes to articles of clothing that I really love, or bulky art supplies for the three hobbies I was intending to spend more time at when I left home, I'm now kicking myself for _not_ leaving them behind. I may send the whole lot up to Auckland, care of a friend there, to call for them on my way out.

There are many things in life that I've done, not from interest or love, but from fear that I'd kick myself if I didn't. Maybe the problem isn't that I'm failing to live up to my own expectations; maybe the problem is that I'm kicking myself.

I'm beginning to recognize this particular fear as one of the major obstacles in my life. Sometimes it gets expensive, as I feel compelled to do something just to say I did; and often it gets burdensome, as in my extra luggage, and as in time spent pursuing precautionary measures, rather than real goals.

This may be an old story to some of you; I seem to remember writing it before, but it remains relevant.

The trait was recognized and pointed out by my excellent coach, Jeff Lord, in college. He said, "Stop beating yourself up. If you heard someone cutting down a rookie as hard as you do to yourself, you wouldn't tolerate it. You would be over there, making them stop. So stop doing it to yourself. If you need to be chewed out, trust me, I'll do it." At the time, while I could recognize it as true, and not a good thing, I had no clue how to affect this habit, this aspect of myself.

I met it head-on myself last year, on a breakwater in the Columbia River Gorge. I wanted to walk out to the end to drop in a salmon bone, the reasons for which involve both local values and a stranger's art project. Let's just go from: I wanted to get to the end of the breakwater in a fairly serious way.
But a breakwater is not a pier; it's a series of horizontal logs pinned between uprights, with big rocks at the base, which looks safe enough to walk on but really isn't designed for it. So I got about halfway out, and sort of slowly froze up. I know I have good balance, and little fear of heights or water, or come to it, rocks. So what was it that paralysed me? Fear of looking stupid, if I fell in; fear of knowing I made the wrong decision; fear that I would be upset with myself if I met with some accident, but also if I gave up.
So began a bit of reasoning / internal bargaining: what's the worst that could happen? I fall in. Get wet. Worse, get trapped in part of it if it collapses. There are scads of people around; the height's not enough that I'm likely to flip over, especially as I'd be doing my damnedest to prevent it, so I might conceivably end up with a twisted or broken leg, stuck in water until the people over there get organized to extract me. Which I'm sure my mom doesn't want to hear about, but to me, it doesn't sound that bad. Drowning's a possibility, much more remote, but curiously it's not death I'm actually worried about, it's that caustic regret.
So how about this: Let the world be the judge. If something goes wrong, fine, I'll listen to this fear in future. But if nothing goes wrong, I get to be free. This fear can take a back seat, while I continue doing the things that are important to me.

So I walked. And nothing went wrong. As I stood at the end, as far into the river as I could walk dry-shod, and threw that little bone into the deeper currents beyond, something gurgled overhead that may have been a raven. It could have been some other sound distorted and carried over water. But for resonance with the salmon bone, I was very touched to think raven might be acknowledging my gesture.

I wanted to speak to it, but was embarrassed to use English. So I walked back to shore, and began the rest of my life.