After six blog posts in a row last Saturday and a weekend spent in that grim halfway state of staying on the internet, waiting for something to happen, I decided to take what, for want of a better phrase, I dubbed a spiritual detox. It is no disrespect to you, gentle reader, to say that I’m feeling much better for it: I’ve got a lot of reading done, for one (although I’ve yet to finish the weighty tome I’m showing off in the Amazon link at right).
This final non-teaching week also gave rise to a lively social round. The señor and I called mid-week on Governor’s Bay Jay, whose lovely blog you can now find here. Today we took Evie and Fern to visit Ashburton Jay and friends, some of whom were very young puppies. You can see my too-fast panning and unsteady walking zooms of Coco, Zsa Zsa, Evie and Fern below.
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For a long time I lived through other people’s stories, and created pseudonyms in order to tell them here. Browsing my archives uncovers quaint and curious monikers alike. One of the main challenges was whether to make up a new name for everyone with whom I interacted or whether to include them by their relationships to already-christened people I knew. It seemed polite not to try and draw everyone into my narrative fold.
One such person whom I omitted from my storytelling was Dangermouse’s best friend, whom I knew from orchestra days. Fewer than three years ago, he and his girlfriend had a baby and last year they married. I ran into them from time to time socially but didn’t presume to incorporate the little family into this journal, since our circles overlapped only intermittently. They were a handsome couple with a cute wee son.
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Maria is back from her annual stretch in China and I shall see her next week. She is now a three-book academic, no mean feat in her field and at her young age (well, she’s older than me, but still). As if tweaked by her presence, one suburb over, my unconscious has started conjuring for me dreams so vivid I don’t know they’re illusions. In these dreams, I am in China: Beijing, Xian, Xuzhou, following my texts.
The China research project I have tentatively initiated will be slow to bear fruit, and rightly so, but things would speed up a little if I could get myself to Beijing for two or three weeks in the northern autumn. For it to progress through its middle stages, I need more language, reading skills and on-the-ground experience than I at present have. I can save the fare in that time but will need to find funding to cover my on-the-ground costs. To trying to find this I am both looking and not looking forward.
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Among the many themes with which I could clad this year’s experiences is Meeting People from the Internet. The Christmas presence, earlier this week, of Stephen and Kathy, completed a happy trifecta which began with meeting Jo and Lisa in Wellington in February, followed by Heather and of course Fran here, around the end of the first semester.
Bearing in mind Stephen’s history as a North Islander (and allowing for cultural changes wrought by Kathy’s transplanting from south to north for the last few years) I took the elevated approach to a night out. We wended our way along the Summit Road from Dyer’s Pass to Mount Pleasant, noodled out to Scarborough for a walk on the promenade at high tide, where the surfers were being thrown against the rocks like hydro-powered lemmings, then drove back into town for dinner at the Dux and a final rendezvous with the dogs at home (“what,” said Stephen, “if it’s pronounced Soh-burn?”, which has pricked my imagination ever since).
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The idle pleasures of these days
31 December, 2007
in at home,commentatrix,in Aotearoa,O internet,the social round,we are family
Among the many themes with which I could clad this year’s experiences is Meeting People from the Internet. The Christmas presence, earlier this week, of Stephen and Kathy, completed a happy trifecta which began with meeting Jo and Lisa in Wellington in February, followed by Heather and of course Fran here, around the end of the first semester.
Bearing in mind Stephen’s history as a North Islander (and allowing for cultural changes wrought by Kathy’s transplanting from south to north for the last few years) I took the elevated approach to a night out. We wended our way along the Summit Road from Dyer’s Pass to Mount Pleasant, noodled out to Scarborough for a walk on the promenade at high tide, where the surfers were being thrown against the rocks like hydro-powered lemmings, then drove back into town for dinner at the Dux and a final rendezvous with the dogs at home (“what,” said Stephen, “if it’s pronounced Soh-burn?”, which has pricked my imagination ever since).
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