The Great Loop-Dee-Loop: Part III

Now I am a full-bellied boy in the Mazda.  After waking to blue skies and the snow-capped ranges.  After waking to blue skies and the Fox Glacier.  After ripping down the morning road and chowing down on fried rice camp-cooked by the Hasst River.

Now I am a full-bellied boy in the Mazda.  The Mazda zooming up the Haast Pass.  In the backseat the sun shining through the back window on my neck.  Full-bellied and a full-bellied killing machine.  Finger pressing the swarm of sand flies.  One by one.  Each and every one bloody.  Bloody popping—pop pop—their full bellies now smeared across the seats, the floorboards, my skin, the window.  The window like the bathroom mirror of an acne ridden teenager—bearing the carnage of a pimple popping spree.  And how unexpectedly satisfying—pop pop.  Call me the sand fly dermatologist—pop pop—the exterminator.  Pop.

And through the window smeared with blood, smeared with the carcass scatter, I watch the ranges roll past.  Toward the pass.  Haast.  Through the rain forest ranges.  Jeff Buckley on the storm speakers.  And it is Halleluja down the winding road.  Tour Guide Caroline pointing out where we would see the peaks were they not cloud shrouded.

The waterfalls white and pouring forth as if someone came thorugh and poked holes in thes mountains.  The puncture wounds deep.  Deep to the liquid core.  Deep to the water heart.  And the white froth spewing forth.

Roaring Billy.  Thunder Falls.  Fantail Falls.  The white froth pouring forth.

Through the pass and onto the flat valley bed.  The mountains still towering ragged-toothed to our right.  But to the left—to the north—they shrink shyly to the shallow hill-dome.  Or is it only a problem of perspective?

Lake Wanaka sprawled blue at the collective foot of the Mountains.  The mountains sloping into the water blue.  So blue and the wind chopping across in white caps.  And cut inland.  Here is another Lake.  Lake Hawea blue-gray blue and gray like a Picasso painting.  The water calm like a painting with a sheet of glass laid over the top and left lying on the ground. 

To Wanaka to bask in the sunshine for short minutes.  To Queenstown to sip beers in a bar and sleep under the southern stars at a clearing by the lake. 

To Christchurch the following day.  In the morning it is neutral on the downhills.  The great race to make it to a gas station on an empty tank.  Done.  Out of Queenstown and onto the town of Twizel to finish off the tomato and the avocado in the sunshine, the storm clouds gathering north.  Gathering, gathering, but not before we get our picture perfect view of Mt. Cook rising.  Rising out of the waters of Lake Pukaki. 

No photographs can capture the scene.  Can capture the being there.  And no word-pictures either.  So I will leave it alone in its majesty, and show people the fuzzy photos from my Sony digital.

And on to Lake Tekapo, the aqua blue intensity.  Like chlorine water stirred for children in swimsuits.  And on and on.  Geraldine, Ashburton, north to Christchurch.  Complete the great Loop-dee-loop.  North to Christchurch.

Away.

The Great Loop-Dee-Loop: Part II

A blue patch in the sky and we must move out of the Hostel.  Into the car.  Out of the town.  And on and on to the glacier.  But the blue patch shrinking.  But we are down the road and out of the car.  We are on the gravel track crunching through the rain forest.  Waterfalls hanging silent in the palm forest hills high above us and we walk over the clear running water that has taken the tumble from the top to the bottom. 

Over the water down the wet gravel track to the blue blue glacier.  The glacier itself a low angle waterfall hung out to dry, this Franz Josef ice block filling the valley.

The tourists stand in clusters in the oval opening at the end of the track.  Pointing, talking, taking picture after picture after picture.  Repeats in the photo-log and we, too, participate.  The great blue block across the river and sliding ever so slowly.  So slowly that our eyes cannot see it, sliding ever so slowly down to the flatness.  Ice stalagmites crinkling the top of the glacier, and all of it sliding down.  Sliding down to the flatness.

We exit left, headed south into the on again off again rain.  South toward the next ice river sliding.  The Fox Glacier on the tic list, but on the way it turns torrential.  Once again cats and dogs.  And once again our future is thrown into limbo.

Over priced internet in the town of Fox Glacier and the girls buy ferry tickets for December 31^st.  From Picton to Wellington, back to the North Island for the New Year.  Print the confirmation as the web timer ticks to a stop and we creep back into the rain.

One decision final.  The ferry booked.  The trip finite.  But what to do now?  We creep back into the rain.

Car-sitting at Lake Matheson, this the famous mirror lake and reflecting only the cloud ceiling of the covered sky.  Car-sitting in the drizzle, and we bust open the cracker box to do something—anything—to take our minds off of the drizzle.  

Decide finally—as we finish off the Ritz look-a-likes that we should once again seek shelter indoors in a hostel.

Back in town we book the “fairy room” in an out of town hostel-owned house.  I though this was the “ferry room,” and assumed it would be painted blue with pictures of boats on the walls.  But it was, of course, to the horror of we three upon entrance, the “fairy room.”  Painted pink with a glass chandelier hanging from the ceiling, portraits and puzzles of pixies hanging framed on the walls.  Tiaras and figurines perched on shelves around the room.  Fairies everywhere staring out of glass eyes above plastic cheeks, out of poster board poses, lashes long, wings aflutter.  Fairies everywhere (and not a boat in sight) and how can we possibly stay?  A crib in the corner with a pink sheet spread on the miniature mattress.  How can we possibly stay here in the ghost of a little girl’s room?  

Plus there is the fact that the weather seems to be clearing.  Plus the fact that I told the Hostel staff at the check in that there were only two of us despite the fact that there are obviously three.  No biggie at any traditional hostel.  No biggie.  But.  Seeing as the entire staff seems to live at this outlying hostel annex (a fact made apparent when—in my confused delirium brought on by the fairy room—I stumbled into the private upstairs staff living quarters and consequently upon a member of the staff half-undressed and squatting over a toilet—staring at me through the open door of the water closet and screaming “these are private staff quarters” before slamming shut the door) yes, seeing as the entire staff seems to live at this outlying hostel annex (and the fact that the previous parenthetical aside actually happened) how can we stay here?

I zip back to the in-town Hostel and, through my persuasive powers and the long yarn of an untrue tale unraveled, I get our money back and cruise back to the annex to snag the girls.

The sun now beating back the gray as we head toward Gillespie Beach.  Down the dirt road and we pop beer tabs in the gravel parking lot to welcome back the sun.  Gone since we left Christchurch.

“The devil must be beating his wife,” the sun shining through the occasional drizzle.  But the clouds dissipating as we sit and drink.  And after a while a friendly Frenchman who has been eying the girls since our arrival approaches, knocks on the door of the Mazda and invites us all to join him and his friend for drinks.

Knock ‘em back until the beer is gone and it’s bed time and the wasted Frenchies wander off somewhere while we crawl into the tent to make PB&J sammies and play rummy across the wrinkled synthetic table-top of sleeping bags spread.  The Frenchies yelling for us, yelling for the Americans late in the night.  Roll over and sleep.

Great Loop-Dee-Loop: Part I

Boxing Day blues, the sky long and flat and gray and flat gray and long when we wake at the batch the day after Christmas.

Once again it is move fast.  Not to depart for a destination planned, but instead to get out of this pre-planned destination.  Checkout is ten o’clock, and we rush to clean up .  Beer cans and beer boxes, bagged trash and the everywhere scatter of belongings.  To pack up to pack in to begin once again to put rubber to road and move fast.

Eva catches a bus at 10 that takes her to Picton where she will catch a ferry that will take her to Wellington.

The sisters and I are off to Christchurch after a series of blundering interactions between the batch owners and ourselves.  All of the blundering mediated by the litigating Caroline over a scratchy cell phone…

As Eva boards the bus I speed back to the batch to drop off the other half of the money owed.  Whoops.  And when I return from filling full the Corolla gas tank I must take another trip to the batch to return a towel accidentally snatched and packed in the rush to get out and go.  This time the owner waiting in the driveway with a hand on her hip.  All right, Sassy.  I’m sorry and I’ll be on my way.

Back to Christchurch.  It is Highway 1 south, the Corolla keeping pace with the Mazda 323.  And the radio searching—always searching—for a signal struggling through the static.

Spend the night in the homebase flat after returning Christmas flicks and picking up groceries in the city and the following day it is wake and shake loose the sleepy to shimmy the arrangement of the Mazda packed full.  To Tetris the bags and boxes to allow for another backpack.  The backpack sliding down the sunny screen from Corolla to Mazda.  Packed full.  And full proof as I slide behind the wheel, this an automatic transmission, and I am ready to drive.  Away we go.

Highway 73 West toward Arthur’s Pass and aiming past the pass to the waiting West Coast.  And toward the rain.  The sun beating down as we swerve out the city.  The sun beating down on the roof of the car, on arms exposed out of windows, on the windshield.

But already—through the sunglass shades—we can see the gray wall.  The gray wall set solid into the approaching mountains.  Built by a water god, this castle of clouds.  But not the transient cloud castle of a sweet-dreaming child’s dream.  But instead the kingdom above descended here to this world.  And the gray wall set fast up above in the hills.

It is strange this suspended moment.  Shirtless and shoeless behind the wheel of the car, the car in the sun and the sun beating down.  It is strange in this moment to see so far ahead.  To see the rain that will splatter the windshield.  To see the clouds that will cover the sun.  To see it all there, the gray wall in the hills, and to hold the course straight and steer on.

Past Sheffield and Springfield, the pie-stop shops, alluring even as we speed past.  Push the Mazda up and over Porter’s pass, the highest road in the country, up and over Porter’s pass in low gear and sweep down the skirt on the other side.  Into the gray and on and on to Castle Hill.

The sky spitting and we wander through the grass between the behemoth limestone sculptures.  The boulders looming beneath the enormous cloud-covered sky and we beneath them: Lilliputian explorers holding cameras to eyes and now fro each one a flash and the snap snap snapping away.

This is a spiritual center of the universe, this.  This is a tour for the girls, this.  From a boy in the know.  A boulderer’s bit as we weave between the stones.  Walk through in figure eights, walk through in loop-dee-loops.  Walk through in swooping patterns, through the Quantum Field and then back to the car. 

Deeper and always deeper into the gray wall.  Arthur’s Pass and the gray wall.

Into the flooding rain forest.  Into the hills weeping silver.  Into the liquid silver spilling down the dark green.  A thousand waterfalls instant.  Taps in the mountainside, the water spilling down.  And down and down to the roadside where it rushes in river gutters.  The tide swelling through the valley green.  And swelling silver still.

When we arrive at the Franz Josef Glacier it is cats and dogs, the windshield awash and the tires in perpetual puddle.  We cannot camp.  We cannot camp so we wade into the town beside the glacier.  Book the last room in a hostel and hunker down for the evening.  Cats and dogs outside and VHS on the wall-mounted T.V.

The goodnights whispered between sharers of the Hostel bed.  And the rain beating down on the roof.

So this is Christmas

Move fast.  Wake on the couch with the left foot through a hole in the afghan.  Wake on the couch with the dry mouth and the sick stomach.  Move fast, slow-witted, move fast.

The chocolate pudding and the yogurt half-consumed and sticky in the bowl.  Move fast the spinning world.  Move fast.

But my arm is injured.  My arm is injured because pool cues are not built to be broken.  And I am moving slow.  This slow moving with things to do, with things to do, with things to do today on Christmas Eve.

So?  Get out and go.  I run errands in the much too earliness.  To Videomart, to Blockbuster, to Alice in Videoland.  To each of the video stores collecting Christmas videos.  Collecting DVD disks for the holidays, and already I’m sweating through my shirt. 

Back to the flat.  Back to the flat to flat pack the backpack.  Then to drive to the store.  On the way out of town to drive to the store to buy perishable presents for the girls.  The girls already on the way to Kaikoura.  And I’ve got to go.  I’ve got to get out and go.  But it’s all too slow.

In the squeal of wheels around the round-a-bout, in the haste of an exit poorly planned, I drive an hour in the wrong direction.  Gas guzzled now hanging in the atmosphere.  Gas guzzled by pistons still gulping as I tear out of the Shell Station with a new sense of direction.  To back track the trail of burned petrol.

Through the city streets and it is Blastoff once I hit Highway 1.  North toward Kaikoura and toward the Mountains.  North along the coast and into the hill country rising.  North toward the  promise of a sun-tanned Christmas.  Swerve around the slow movers because now—and only now—am I moving fast.

The Corolla my tool and I am building a bridge from Christchurch to Kaikoura.  With a speedometer and a steering wheel.  With a clutch and a stick.  And it is pedal to the metal.  Move fast.

But I don’t arrive until four p.m.  Swerve into the gravel at 118A South Bay Parade.  And all of a sudden there are Carolina beach babes in the summer sun.  All of a sudden.  Before my eyes, in the land south of the south, there are familiar faces.  Here.  These faces here are familiar faces here in this alien place.  And Oh!  How absolutely and how absolutely undeniably gorgeous a smile can be. 

A smile on a freckled face.  These freckles.  Oh!  These freckles here are the leopard-print snare of the fashionably good-looking.  A print to go with any print.  Or maybe.   Maybe they are instead the dark snowflakes of some Santa Clause Cupid.  Maybe they were thrown and thrown haphazardly by some randy St. Nickolas .  Thrown into the shining sun of the summer Christmas, as he swerves through the sky in his love sled.  Love.

It is a snapshot in a postcard.  This re-greeting in paradise.  And the season is upon us.

We rush to the grocery store before the automatic doors can slide shut on the Christian consuming.  Ingredients packed into the shopping cart and boy is it bustling here in the Countdown as we countdown the moments until holiday proper.  We’re on our way.

In the checkout we ask if we have enough.

And Holy Hell that question is answered soon enough.  And it is answered emphatically with the unbuckling of belts and the buttons unbuttoned, these exclamations from everyone in the aftermath of the Christmas Eve Chow Down.  What was to be the “appetizer dinner” turned out to be a full meal.  And a half.

Rap:

A feast of corn chips and guacamole, corn chips and queso,

Corn chips and salsa, let’s pick up the pace.  Yo,

There were crackers with cream cheese, pepper jelly dyed red,

And stuffed mushrooms zesty that went straight to the head.

There were cherries and strawberries beside sugar in bowls,

And cookies, sweet cookies, that we felt in the soul.

Pair it all with a goon and some bottles of wine,

And sit down to the set-up.  Yes, it’s time to dine.

Yes, it’s time to dine.  And before the sun sets on Christmas Eve we are too full for the wine to take effect.  Yes, we are sleepy-eyed slouching on the sofas. 

How the Grinch Stole Christmas in a Technicolor funk fest across the television.  Something is wrong, the colors distorted.  But we all watch on, too lazy to do anything about it.  Now the belt unbuckling and the buttons unbuttoned.  Dr. Seuss painted in day-glow pixilation, and too soon it is time for bed.

Only to wake with distended bellies and begin cooking once again.  “So this is Christmas.”  The water outside set on fire by the sun.  And already the fire balloon drifts high in the sky.  Shirtless, shoeless.  Shades on the face and swimsuit wearing.  Sun pilgrims after three-egg omelets packed fat with veggies, after an epic fail at hash browns—these black fritters, fried, baked, and woofed down despite the hard crack of the outer-shell crunch and the liquid hot magma of the mush in the middle.  Sun pilgrims after Miracle on 34^th Street.  After another batch of cookies popped into the oven.  Sun pilgrims.  “So this is Christmas.”

We sit on South Bay.  The batch backing up to the water’s edge, the small black-pebble beach as a barrier.  Mountains across the water west and mountains all around us.  The point and shoot Sony digital camera does not do it justice, the scene.  The scene liquid and living.  The mountains and the sea.  It is drama, this landscape.  It is once again paradise.  Paradise out the backdoor of the batch and seagulls soaring in the sunset.  Merry Christmas.

But it does not feel like Christmas at all.  The full stomach, yes.  But everything else is a farce.  It is sunshine and sweating here.  It is pop-music, rock-music, rap-music on the radio.  Where are the Christmas Jams?  It is swimsuits and a cookout for dinner.  Potato wedges and hamburgers.  This is the tradition here in the Land of the Long White Cloud.  And it is fun to participate.  Yes.  But it does not feel like Christmas.

Top Gun more appropriate than It’s a Wonderful Life, we watch Tom Cruise speed-needing on a local television channel while Jimmy Stewart sits caged in a rented DVD case.  This is just the way it works.  And it does not feel like Christmas. 

But it feels like something else.  Here in the gloaming, the seagulls soaring in the sunset.  The soft glow of the paradise postcard viewed through the sliding-glass door.  It is something else.  A family of Carolina ex-patriots, some of us missing home, some of us happy not to be there, but all of us together.  Feeling fat and happy in the rented house on the summer sea.  Lazy and languid on couches sprawled.  It is something else.  And the fact that we are all here makes it A-O.K.

Pre-holiday Prep-work

Front after front sweeping through.  And the radar rainfall maps look always as if they are covered in ROYGBIV jellybeans.  The color spectrum always darkest where there is the most rain and then radiating outward toward the rind of the citrus colors.  And always Christchurch is covered in the orange, in the yellow, in the green.  Front after front after front.  But I am yet to see a single drop of rain.

Since the day that Caroline and Brittany and Eva packed up and zipped away north in their Mazda, I am yet to see a single drop of rain.  These are the hot days.  Above 30 degrees Celsius, reaching the upper 80s and into the 90s on the old F scale.

The cloud cover complete.  A dome of white heat and the sun baking us from without.  We are the innards of a hot pocket popped into a microwave.  We are the soupy guts of mulligan stew within the aluminum foil wrapper.  We sitting silent and brought almost to a boil here in the coals of the campfire.

But it is not a stagnant heat.  See.  Though the rain gods have spared this Christchurch City, the winds and always the winds rage constant.  Billowing the bulge of the trees, the foliage like living sails, leaf bags full of wind and bending the trunk-masts.  All of it anchored only by roots and some of the trees still look certain to take flight.  To jibe into the sky and beyond.

Day trips to Castle Hill. 

Afternoon trips to Jellie Park. 

Another night on the town.  First it is goons slapped on the hardwood: full bellies of wine.  Then it is goons slapped on the hardwood: empty bags plastic.  And empty.  A troop headed down.  Down from the girlfriend’s swank pad.  Former girlfriend now after a silent battle royale where we were all present and apparently oblivious to the breaking.  Or maybe it was just me.

But what is done is done.  Mark is a free man.  And the pretty lights shine and we eventually make it to Mackers.  What?  Grease?  “Get ‘ur down ‘ya.”  Yes, a meal before moving on.  And on to the bars.  But the night wilts fast and we find ourselves on an empty dance floor with drum and base music thumping in the empty around us.  It is done.  Cabs on the street and back to the flat.  It is done.

And on another night, a lunar eclipse as soon as darkness descends on the city sky.  Through the cloud reefs watch the moon disappear in an ever descending crescent.  We sitting on car roofs in the driveway of the flat.  We spooning ice cream and steaming hot chocolate pudding from bowls.  We eyes and our eyes glued to the shrinking circle.  And then out of the other side the brightness swallowing the shadow until she inhales and is full again.  The clouds like streamers drifting, and Mark wonders aloud “how many people will kill themselves tonight.”

The string of north westers as sure a sign as any that there are unhappy people in the city of Christchurch.  “It’s a statistic,” he says, “more people kill themselves” under the cloud cover of the north wester sweep.  “It’s a statistic.”  And the wind howls through the channels of the city.  The scream of the thriller.  With the moon buoyant there in the black and the clouds streaming over her.

There is no room for discussion.  For inside the movie waits, paused in mid-sentence on the laptop.  And we file back into the house, one after another, like moths to the digital glow.

On Wednesday the clouds have blown past.  Gone with the full moon.  So it is all blue skies on the drive to Taylor’s Mistake.  Alone in the car, blue skies and the sun beating down as I navigate city streets, as I steer vaguely toward the coast. 

Another day of breaking in the boots.  Already I have exhausted the immensity of Hagley Park and the Botanical Gardens beside the hospital.  Hagley to Christchurch as Central to New York, New York.

And now to move on to the coast.  The Corolla rolling around the water’s edge.  Through the town of Sumner.  Through the town of summer and through the town Sumner and over the hill to Taylor’s Mistake.  Taylor’s Mistake named after the faulty map that Captain Taylor drew.  The map that failed to show the inlet where the inlet was.

A beautiful black sand beach packed with bunches of babes in bikinis and the blue-green water peppered with surfers and body boarders languid in the swells and always looking for the next big wave.

In the parking lot I strap black leather over wool socks and set off toward Godley Head—into the Port Hills—up and up and up and over the hard packed winding, the waves crashing below against the rocks and the wind gusting over the grass.  A rippling.  A rippling golden current over the land swelling.

And the people I pass must surely think I’m a Douche.  Here is a beach track.  Here is a beach track people.  Shirtless and in swimsuits.  People in flip-flops and sunglasses.  Here is a people laughing and skipping.  People kissing in the grass beside the track.

And here is the hardcore.  Here is the hardcore hiker coming at them.  Power walking in clodhoppers and calf-high wool socks.  Here is the hardcore with a backpack strapped to his back.  Here he comes sweating and breathing heavily.  Here he comes.  Get out of the way.  Here he comes.

What a day.  Boots beaten but not yet broken.  But they are on the way.

And I am on the way.

After a trip to Castle Hill.  After a send fest at Castle Hill.  I am on the way.  After a send fest at Castle Hill and after driving back and drinking rum out of a Power Aid bottle at the flat.  After squirting rum into my mouth like a sports star at the Alcoholic Olympics and taking a bus to the bar where Mark pretended to hit me with a pool cue and then forgot that he was pretending and broke a pool cue over my arm.  After all this I am on the way.

On the way to Kaikora.  Christmas Eve and sunny skies.  To the east coast for hot fun in the summer time.  To the east coast to meet my gorgeous North Carolina Comrades.  To the east coast for pretty girls, good food, and cheap wine.  To the east coast for Christmas.  To the east coast.

And I am on the way.

Here One Moment and...

Early morning cruising.  Bright horizons and burning rubber on the way to the Mecca.  Marky and me.  Castle Hill day trips now, in the summertime prelude to the holiday season.  Everyone else gone.  Everyone else gone but The Hill is there and waiting.

I need to write about he last few days.  I need to write about the last few days, and I have.  But how personal should this writing be?  My personal diary is one thing.  My personal diary with the heart embroidered on the cover and the little golden key that I wear around my neck.  This is one thing.  But a blog is something Oh! so different. 

And now that I have learned how to post pictures, I will surely change the format of the entire blog in the aftermath of the New Year.  But for now I will say this:

Caroline and Eva roll through late on Wednesday.  Late on Wednesday while we are wrinkled from the afternoon trip to Jellie Park and sitting with bloated stomachs in the living room.  In the living room, and empty bowls litter the carpet, the devilled sausages having been demolished.

Then Eva and Caroline roll through.  They fresh from Milford Sound and the Fijorlands and only in Christchurch to pick up Caroline’s sister.  Caroline’s sister Brittany who is due to touch down in the Land of the Long White Cloud the following evening, in transit for some 40 hours.

Caroline and Eva full of stories from life on the road.  Chitchat Chitchat, and afterward, when Eva confiscates the computer for some much coveted time with that dear departed friend: the newly resurrected internet, Caroline and I walk.

Both of us in jeans, both of us in hoodies, she in sandals, and I am barefoot.  Hoods loose and gaping, dark halos vertical: stare into and out of the void.  We walk arm-in-arm like the members of some secret society.  A secret society, yes secret, but anything but solemn.  There is always the bright white flash within the holes of the hoods, the smiles, the teeth, the always talking.

And how do I write about Caroline. 

It’s been two and a half years.

From Thiland.  From California.  From Road Trip.  From Plane Ride.

It’s been two and a half years.

We globe trotting travelers on separate trajectories.

Two and a half years, yes, two and a half years.

And what has changed?

We walk and talk and blend into the streets of Christchurch like we blend into the streets of Chapel Hill.  And really there is no blending at all, and there never has been.  But instead the sharp contrast of curry powder spilt into the unassuming bowl of vanilla ice cream.

And how do I write about Caroline.

She and Eva stay at Simon and Anna’s that first night and I take Chester to the airport and then run errands with them the flowing day and they pick up Brittany that night and then the following day, after a trip to Castle Hill, Mark and myself buy dented Ready-To-Drink cans of Bourbon and Coke out of a bargain bin at the liquor store and drive downtown and drink with Mark’s girlfriend and her sister at their swank downtown apartment and, after catching a buzz, we all go out to a bar called Goodbye Blue Monday and meet Caroline and Eva and Brittany and all of us drink together until it is time to go.

Pretty lights.  The neon that always seems liquid and ready to melt into the streets.  Pretty lights and he noises of consumption from alleyways and from the windows of brick buildings.  The collective noise all around us in the street like an audible fog.  Let it lift lead-heavy feet from the side walk.  And walk.  Away.  Walk away.

Goodnight.

The girls head toward Abel Tasmin and Golden Bay the following day.  Toward that paradise perched at the northern tip of the Southern Island.  And though I originally had aspirations to go with them, I will instead stay put.  I will climb and read and write.  I will wear-in my hiking boots.  And I will wait until the holiday season kicks into full force.  I will wait until the 24th, until the eve of Christ's miraculous birth, before Carolla cruising to Kaikora to re-unite with the sisters Holcomb and Eva Bland for an American Christmas.  Eighty-five Hundred miles from the Old North State but reppin’ the Cackalack abroad, and reppin' harder than Petey Pablo ever thought possible.

"Come on and raise up"

Returning Damaged Goods

The beginning of the end:

In the Backseat of the Boat and in route to Arthur’s pass for rest day number two.  In the backseat of the boat with Chester and the Chili-bin between us.  The textured white top stinking and stained, a result of the chicken chopping that Carl did cooler-top in preparation for our first dinner of the trip.  That being several days ago.  Now the salmonella stink, bits of chicken skin dried and knifed into the plastic.

Sunday morning swells through the mountain roads, the sway of the boat around the curves, the motion of the ocean.

And soon we are sipping Kool Aid our of glass mugs at our rest day abode: the familiar Kennedy Lodge.  We seem to fall into chairs like sacks of potatoes, we seem to rise with a creaking of bones.  Torn up and sore from our days at Castle Hill.  Wishing still, though that we were slapping up boulders in the Spiritual Center of the Universe.  Down the road and awaiting our return tomorrow.  Torn up and sore.

TORN UP: Abrasions, the shiny pink plains spread over our knees and our elbows.  Over our chests, because of the beached whale top-outs, we sliding shirtless over the rocks.  Castle Hill road rash and spreading.  Then there are the deep tissue chomps—the gouges in the fingers above and below the knuckles.  A favorite sound bite being “Shit, I should have taped up.”   Locking and cranking on the dignitary lobes of this, the human camming machine.  Cut calluses on the toe knuckles—the shoes much too tight—bleeding bites on the inside of the anikle bones from falling off of heel-hooks.  Finger tips on fire, our skin left behind on the boulders, and we are left only with pink bulbous globes opposite our finger nails.

And

SORE: The elbow and shoulder joints worked over despite the pronator and reverse wrist curl exercises, despite the uncountable push-ups and the thera-band exercises.  The Castle Hill compression working its black magic.  Then the latissimus dorsi, the would-be wings of human beings failing at simple tasks, such as the opening of car doors.  Lower back pain for some reason.  Falling?  The repeated falls off of the rock?  The repeated falls off of the rock?  And legs unbendable, they are bone stilts extending from the pelvis. 

We move like dumpy clowns through the hut.  Ancient.  Let us sit.  Let us sit and watch films on the laptop.  Let us sit.  Let us deck lounge in the sun beneath mountains.  Beans and rice in a pot on the stove.  And hopefully we are healed by sun-up tomorrow.  Unlikely.

That is what I wrote then, and prophetic it turned out to be.  Thus, the end:

Retreat Retreat with tails between legs, with hands held cupped in our laps.  After only a half day at the hill on Monday we retreat.  Beaten, torn up, tired, and sore.  Done a day early and on our way home.  Shoulders, Elbows, Tendons of fingers: done.  A day early and on our way home.

And back in Christchurch:

A poker game after a massive four dollar feed at the Chinese fish and chip store down the street.  I have never been given this much food for so little money.  A wrapped package of grease.  The entire meal fried golden delicious.  A package a package under the arm, like a mailman delivering cardiac carnage.   Jog down the street to the flat, each and everyone with a package, a package, the packages hot and grease stains spreading like inkblots on the paper.  We wash down the golden feast with pale white wine from a bag.  The goons flow freely, space bags filled with liters of wine.  They are chucked from one person to another—across the room—to the separate picnic areas.  The couch, the chairs, the table, the floor.

Then Texas Hold ‘em on a card table unfolded green.  Let the chips click-clack together.  Let the money loosing begin.  Dub music out of laptop speakers.  Carl’s pile dwindling, he goes all in on a long shot and, after loosing, ends up buying a plane ticket home to Rotorua in the couch-sitting aftermath of the chip exchange.

Simon follows suit soon after.  And then it is Mark, Chester, and I, the big dogs eying each other behind big stacks.  Stone faced and sipping on mason jars full of bag wine.  The play eventually degenerates to unmatchable bets thrown willy-nilly from player to player to player.  Half-stack blinds and it comes down to the luck of the draw.  Chester on a streak and smiling. 

Three cheers.  Drain the jar and find a spot on the floor to sleep.  Back in Christchurch and flip the switch OFF.

The Fish is gone before we wake.  On a plane and flying north.  Back to home base, back to the sulfur city.  Chester will follow tomorrow.  Simon the day after.  But while we wait for departures we will do it in style.

Jellie Park Jellie Park let the agua flow forth.  Let the healing begin in the liquid rebirth.  Baptized in the chlorine-colored water of the city spa.  Ah.  Jellie Park.

We roll up shirtless and shoeless with towels slung over our shoulders.  Marky, Chester, Myself.  We are grown-men totem-poles swaying through the crowd of the after-school swarm.  It is a constant jostling of waist- and shoulder-high cadets through the turnstiles, they stripping off ties and shirts and shoes and desperate to take the plunge into the pool.  Hot fun in the summer time.  The vibration of memories echoed in the diving board bounce.

We marathon through the steam room, the outdoor pool, the indoor pool, the Jacuzzi—Oh!  Ho!  The Jacuzzi, each jet like the arm of a massive masseuse pounding the knots out of our backs, out of our arms and out of our legs—back to the steam room, the outdoor pool, the indoor pool, the Jacuzzi—Oh!  Ho!  The Jacuzzi…

And two times is enough.  Shower and exit.  Wrinkled and rolling from one foot to the other like opium addicts pricked and swaying slightly with smiles on our faces.  Rest and relaxation.  The drugs of leisure.  “It’s all right to take a little nip.  But don’t you fall down, bust your lip.”

Mark and I compare the insides of our hands once we are inside of the car.  Skin falling off in wet flakes, finger prints demolished—only craters above the last joint of each digit—palms cut, calluses bleached white and sagging, both of us looking like burn victims examining the damage.  Leprous and laughing as we start the car and head for home.  Planning always and always planning the next trip to Castle Hill.