Packing for the Future, Again (E noho rā)

His mind is full of change and curve and hope, and he knows it is being lightly tapped. He laughs.
Maybe there is the dance, as she says. Creation and change, destruction and change.
New marae from the old marae, a beginning from the end.
His mind weaves it into a spiral fretted with stars.
He holds out his hands, and it is gently taken.

 – Keri Hulme, The Bone People

At the end of summer 2011, I bought a new pair of sneakers, and I planned to wear the bastards out as I set out with the most motley crew you could imagine (except for maybe Mötley Crüe) for a three month stint in the United Kingdom. It was a year ago today that we woke up before the sun and came back home. My sneakers had taken me down the cobbled walkways of London, up the Eiffel Tower, down wooded pathways at Ekoparken in Stockholm, and to the edge of the Mediterranean in southern Spain – and yes, the flaps around the ankles are getting a bit worn, but there’s still plenty of wear in them, even now.

Well then. I do believe it’s time for another adventure.

Somewhere in the midst of that trip, I figured out that travel is one part looking for something, another part running away from something. I was more naïve when I wrote that (in the same way that, when I look back on this in a few month’s time, I’ll think I’m being naïve right now), but I think I still managed to hit on something fundamental. Life can have a funny way of balancing itself out, and living in the extremes can keep you on your toes. When I came back to St. John’s in January, I’d discovered some new stuff, but left other things behind – the next twelve months would see uncertainty and clarity, frustration and elation, love and heartbreak. If there hadn’t been that bizarre balance, I wouldn’t be here right now, with a one-way ticket to New Zealand.

This time, I don’t just plan on upsetting the scales. I’m planning on flipping them upside down and inside out, and seeing what happens when the dust settles. Running away, perhaps, but with both eyes opened wide.

I think it happened something like this. Around the middle of the summer, I was eating lunch at Harbourside Park in downtown St. John’s, and it dawned on me that I had another year at my 9-5 office job, after which I was going to [hopefully] end up back at school, with a suit and a career waiting at the end while a tiny voice in the recesses of my skull held up a fist to the man, or something melodramatic like that. And as much as I was pretty comfortable (balanced, you could even say), that thought still kind of sucked.

 If that tiny voice had a face, it would look like this dude, who uses the word “dude” a lot

“If only,” I probably said to myself, although I don’t really think internal dialogue goes in complete sentences, “I could have one last hurrah. I can’t possibly bail now though, because there’s only a few months until Christmas when I’d want to be home. January though, that would be sweet, there’s just enough time – too bad it’s so damn cold everywhere.”

Wait. Except . . . in the southern hemisphere . . .

Where the world is upside-down, they eat Kraft
Dinner with knives, and the points don't matter

Once upon a time, a few years after sea serpents disappeared from sepia-tinged maps, cartographers guessed used math and stuff to figure out that the farthest distance you can get on the earth is something like 20,000 km. That’ll bring you to the antipode, the spot on the earth you’d eventually reach if you started digging down and didn’t get nullified by magma, crushed to the size of a matchbook, or end up in China. Modern day Columbuses just have to go onto Google Earth and drag a path halfway across the globe; when your path switches from east to west instead of west to east (or vice-versa), you’ve reached that point. Or use this antipode map. Turns out that the farthest point from Newfoundland is somewhere off the southern coast of Australia – at 15,000 km though, New Zealand is pretty close. And by close I mean close to the farthest.

That thought terrifies me. To leave everything behind me again, and this time everyone as well, and literally put the entire earth between everything I’ve ever known. At the same time, that’s precisely why I have to do this, and why the time is right now. Not so long ago, someone much smarter than me made me realize how easy it is to get caught up in the ins-and-outs of all the stuff around you, so much so that you lose track of who you actually are at the core. I know I’m too naïve to know if that’s a bad thing or not, and at the time I certainly didn’t get it. Now, I think I’ve been given a chance that comes along once in a lifetime, and then only if you’re lucky. In 9 months, I’m going to law school and setting off on a completely different kind of adventure, but first I'm going to New Zealand, halfway around the world, by myself. As far east of Cape Spear as this globe permits – because I want to, am unbelievably, unabashedly excited about the idea, but on some level because I need to find out who the guy standing in my slightly ragged shoes really is.  

If I ever manage to figure it out, I’ll let you know.

Soon, I’m going to be moving from St. John’s, maybe for good. I’m flying out of Deer Lake in the wee hours of January 14, the day after Mom’s birthday, and after bouncing around Halifax and Toronto, I’m touching down in Los Angeles sometime in the mid-afternoon. It feels good to be getting emails from Hostelworld again – this time, my one-night stay is at the Hollywood Youth Hostel, directly across from the Dolby Theatre (you probably know it as the Kodak Theatre, the spot where they host the Academy Awards) on Hollywood Boulevard. A day later, I’m going to be crossing the Pacific Ocean, the Equator, and the International Date Line in one fell swoop, arriving in Auckland, New Zealand after a 4 hour stopover in Fiji.

For the first time in a year’s time, I can say with conviction: this isn’t real life.

Ron Hynes taught me that all the sailors got a story; some are true, some are false. For better or for worse, this one is mine, and I promise it will be mostly true. Next month, I’m going back through the looking-glass – just like last time, I invite friends, family, and the occasional enemy to read on and find out about what I find there. Packing for the future (again) starts right now.

Cheers,

rb