Ice, White & Blue

Redhead Amok in Antarctica

Borborygmus In The Night

So there I was in my dorm room one bunk over from a French woman and an Irish woman, both of them sleeping peacefully, and I was awake.

Why was I awake? Well, my tummy was rumbling. Loudly enough to wake me, and I was certain loudly enough to wake them. Zipped up to my chin in my mummy sleeping bag, I listened to the noises emanating from around my middle, certain that the gas I was suffering was on its way out the only exit it had available at that point. I turned over. The gas rushed to my left side. I sounded like an deep sea diver, or a old haunted house. The gas bubbles squeaked and slithered and hissed around inside me. Creaking doors, loose floorboards, wind whistling in the eaves, water dripping somewhere: I was sure I was gonna give these women nightmares they'd never understand.

I turned over again. I lay there dreamily listening to myself as my mind took me under water to the gentle bubbling sounds of a deep sea diver hissing and burbling with incredible watery views before me. But I knew I was loud, and that it was traveling. There was no way I could let this gas out without sounding like a brass band warming up and startling these women awake. But I didn't want to get out of bed. I turned over again. Burble gurgle squeak roil boil hiss sploot inside me as the gas rose back up, sliding wetly around the corners of my intestines to get back to the upper side.

If I'd been at home, my cat, Tomoe would have been awake and talking back. She has this habit of responding to my bodily sounds, internal or external, as we have begun a conversation. This can be annoying in the middle of the night when my tummy has not quite woken its owner up.

So I got up and left the room. Found the loo, sat down.

Nothing. Not even a wee squeaker to relieve the sounds inside me. No pain, just this orchestra of tumbling bubbles traveling left to right, up and down, roller coastering around inside me the host of this show. I sat for awhile until some of the gas whistled gently out. Then I got up and walked the halls, doing stretches, trying to move the rest of this embarrassing gas along to its conclusion.



Ah. Thunderous poot toot floot-t-t-t like a sad trumpet announcing the dawn way before the sun has reached New Zealand. I'm sure I woke the whole floor as it ripped out of me repeatedly. Relief. Back to bed.

I blame the orange juice. One whole litre in one sitting. I have a sore throat and I'm on a plane home in a few days. I will not fly sick so I'm dosing myself with vitamin C, OJ, cough drops etc. My colds always start in my throat. Hell, I can stub my toe and I'll feel it first in my throat. My throat is the harbinger of all ills in my body. I'm not looking forward to fast forwarding whatever minor sniffles I may have into another case of walking pneumonia.

posted by: coldwish at 12:04 | link | comments (4) |

Can't Post Folks

I've been trying, this is a test.

What the frell? This time it worked.


Waaaaahhhhh! I don't want to have to be dealing with this shit while I'm traveling.

Let me try my original post again.

posted by: coldwish at 12:00 | link | comments |
nz 2006

Honest To Bleep, Folks

I HAD paragraphs and the correct font. But motime has been funny since I got to Auckland, none of the computers I've gotten on have allowed me to so much as do more than comment on my own damn blog. So I apologize for the three posts below, sans breaks and spaces and in tiny tiny font. It's the best I can bloody do.

May 29th, 2006 :  Howard? Everything's still fucked. I have access but I can't post!!! The only thing I can do is edit an old post. Not on a Mac anymore. Using Mozilla Firefox this time but the last time it was IE, both on PCs with Windows.

posted by: coldwish at 13:48 | link | comments (9) |
nz 2006

City of Sales

On my way north to Auckland I met two cheeky, common birds whose habitat was indoors. One tiny songbird hopped about the carpeted atrium of the Picton Ferry Terminal, flying only when the human traffic forced it off the ground, but often just hiding under a chair,tiny and showing no signs of panic or fear.

The other bird was in a mall in Wellington: a pigeon. An unhealthy, unkempt and strung-out-on-crack-looking pigeon. Feathers askew or missing, mottled and dirty, it wandered the tiled floor of the enclosed food court. The majority of teenagers and families were oblivious to this opportunistic bird, and continued eating in that ineffably messy way humans in food courts do. Given the buffet feast to be found on the floor under the tables, you'd think this would be a bigger, sleeker and fiercer looking pigeon. But this pigeon (an imported bird, not native) had problems getting a good grip on the floor, so when it grabbed a chip (french fry) and tried to tear off a smaller, more negotiable, piece of it to swallow (like a tiny avian bulldog shaking it about) it nearly fell over each time. The pigeon would let it go in order to right itself, and the chip would skitter off under another table metres away. Still it kept trying, dodging the oblivious teeming humans, in pursuit of a free meal. Bloody immigrant birds, gotta admire their nerve, starting at the bottom of the food chain and by virtue of hard work and dedication surviving and cornering the market. There was no pigeon competition for this bedraggled creature.

But really that mall should have had wekas. This is New Zealand after all. But the North Island has been ceded to the pigeons and seagulls; there are no wekas here. They have all been driven out by the human habitats that fester on this lovely land. The North Island has 3/4s of the population of NZ, and compared to the South Island is veritably cheek-by-jowl with humans and human towns and cities.

For this reason, I chose not to hitch hike in the North Island. My only hitching issues in the South Island were those of having to hitch through towns and cities. I could get a ride in the middle of nowhere, with only sheep and pukekos for company, from the first car that came along. But any substantial human centre would add 3-5 hours to my hitching time, since I had to make my way, usually on foot, from the one end where I got dropped off, through the city/town to the outskirts in the direction I was headed. There I would start my long walk, burdened with a backpack big enough to make people laugh and point but not stop to pick me up, despite the increased numbers of cars passing me. This in the relatively unpopulated South. I saw immediately in the North that the towns were more frequent, larger and who knew how many days it would take me to get from Wellington to Auckland if I hitched. So I bought a bus ticket and rode overnight through the North Island to NZ's biggest city.

Auckland is a strangely uncity-like city, perhaps because to my eyes, it retains an oddly English pastoral scenery, except for the frequent volcano that still pushes up here and there, green and lush with trees. Hemmed on both sides by ocean bays, a mountain range (the Waitakeres: promounced "Why Tackereez") to the West, you can drive 30-40 minutes and you are on the water somewhere. The land is lush and green and few houses do not have a surrounding of verdant garden, even when the section is tiny and not much more than a house and a parking space. My image of a city is, of course, heavily influenced by my two years in New York City, or my two years in Montreal, or my five years in Tokyo. Auckland has great qualities, and like any city, its drawbacks. I love the green jewels of parks found everywhere. I love the green peaks of the volcanoes, like Mt Eden (at whose feet I stay); a green bulge in the flat of the city with a deep hollow inside, a steep and grassed centre sacred to the Maoris. It looks like nothing else but a volcano, small and innocent in its green finery, hemmed in by millions of vulnerable humans. I love the glimpses between tall buildings out to the harbour with its numerous white sails. City of Sails indeed. I love the many many Asian stores, with food and stationery and tchotchkes from Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Southeast Asia. I love the colours and variations of the faces, after so long in the white of the South and Antarctica. I love the fact that people are still so incredibly helpful and friendly, even in NZ's most populated region.

But it is still a city, and one has to gird one's loins in order to venture out into the crowd, the noise, the stink of cars. It is impossible to exist here without bleeding money, and to get out of town to these lovely day hikes one must have a car. It has a relatively good public transportation system (clean, not too expensive, efficient, friendly), but it is restricted to the city. There are books devoted to all the walks one can do "in Auckland", but for the vast majority of them a car is necessary to get you to the start of it. I feel handicapped without one. There is much of this city I will be leaving unexplored, until next year, and the year after that. I think I will return here.

posted by: coldwish at 13:46 | link | comments |
nz 2006

Mere Glimpses

I am happy in NZ, my adventures here with nature go far beyond the ache in my right knee (reminiscent of fencing issues), the sweat that slimes the sunscreen on my face, the weight of my pack, the wind shrieking endlessly and painfully in one ear only, the sore muscles the next day, the soles of my feet tender and soft after a day's long hike in boots, squatting to pee and backing into gorse prickers in error. These are minor complaints in the face of the sheer accessibility of the wide open spaces.

I marvel at the mysteries of the mountain top goblin forest, blowing clouds whipping past like silk scarves tearing and streaming on the trees draped in grey green moss;

The unexpected yet frequent encounters with feral pigs cautious in the twilight, some solid black, one blond like Marilyn Monroe but spotted with black in perfect round circles, untouching, from cup to round serving platter in size;

Young kids baa-ing enthusiastically in the bush in response to my own baas (until hushed by their wiser elders);

Australasian Gannets sailing effortlessly on the howling winds past the cliff where I am perched, eye height, mere metres away, not a wing flap or adjustment in sight as they float and hover off to the sea to fish;

Green-shadowed beech forests warm with the vivid sweet scent of honeydew, wasps buzzing and humming on the blackened tree trunks as they harvest the sap;

Climbing around a crumbly, volcanic, gold & terracotta-striated cliff face into a tiny enclosed sand beach only to realize when I arrive that I am eyeball to unblinking eyeball with a barely awake fur seal reclining luxuriously in the sun on a carpet of bright green moss. It never budged;

The many curious fantails displaying their tails and flitting butterfly-like and acrobatic, even swinging upside down off branches to stare at me before launching into another spread-tailed display;

Spiderwebs built like hanging wire bridges architecturally magnificent, improbable and opportunistic in the corners of windows or beneath overhanging rocks;

Wetas hitchhiking up a long hard hill beneath my sodden rain pants, emerging leggy, prickly and prehistoric but satisfied with the ride as I remove my pants;

A blue cod 2-feet long curiously nibbling and taste-testing my ever pale toes as I stand belly-button deep in the clear waters of the sound on a windless day, sea like forgiving crystal encasing me, pauas larger than my fists covering the rocks by my feet, tiny striped and brown minnows darting in to taste also;

Possums sitting upright, big-eyed, and curious, peering through my lighted windows at my naked body, making me slightly self-conscious with their stares, furless as I am;

My first preying mantis, a fresh spring green, who landed on my shoulder and crawled up my neck. I removed it to peer closer and was hypnotized by its devoted crouch, triangular head tilted inquiringly one way then the other. It reached out its Popeye forearms simultaneously in prayer, flashing two blue eyes on the inside of each arm.

I am a lucky lucky woman, to go from the utterly indescribable beauty of Antarctica to a country as green and innocent as NZ with it's welcoming and generous citizens and its curious wildlife. I have 5 more weeks here, and I hope I can take more than just the extra freckles and multitudes of photographs home with me.

posted by: coldwish at 13:43 | link | comments |
nz 2006

I Got The Blues...Penguins That Is.

One night several weeks ago, walking back from the lighthouse on Cape Jackson, during the magic hour after the sun has sunk behind the darkened seaside cliffs, hills and mountains of the land jutting black & solid out into the silver seas west of our point, I was serenaded lustily in the quickly fading light by the mating calls of the tiny blue penguins. Less than 4-5 lbs (2 kg) apiece, these smallest of the worldís penguins emerge after dark onto landmasses, climbing steep rocky cliff sides into the brush. They are looking for holes in the cliffs, piles of dead brush, tree roots, small caves, woodpiles, and often the undersides of seaside dwellings. There they stay to croon to potential mates, greet neighbours, mate and lay their clutch of eggs. The Queen Charlotte Sounds rang and echoed with the loud urges of these tiny swimming birds. In the pitch dark one could have kayaked home starless and blind by the ringing bellows along the shores. The sounds these wee birds make are all out of proportion to their size, startlingly loud and unflinchingly rude. I have been woken by snorers with less vigour and more rhythm. I have met jackasses, donkeys, with less lung capacity to announce their presence. Imagine, if you will, the moist honking braying sound that rattles the hills, and my sleep, to the core as the blue penguins draw their breath in, then as they exhale they click whirr purr vibrate to an equal extent. Not all of them sound the same, there is difference there. Some are like wee elephants trumpeting, some like snorers with sleep apnea, some purr metallically, some hum wetly. There are long snorts, watery whistles, braying fluttering exhalations. No matter their style, they make their presence known. At Queen Charlotte, I slept over one such penguin, who had chosen the open bit under the house beneath my bedroom to roost. I marveled, in the middle of the night, sleep disrupted, at their lung capacity. My closest neighbour held forth loudly, and long, and I tested my own breathing against his, or her, inhalations and exhalations. I breathed in for the moaning bray and exhaled for the burping purr, as long as the penguin kept it up, for several minutes. In and out, in and out. I did not have enough air in my lungs to keep up. How inefficient are my lungs compared to theirs. Think about how this capacity makes them suited for a watery life, diving repeatedly to fish. Somewhere along the line, I feel I was cheated by evolution. Imagine being able to dive so efficiently, so deeply, so sleekly as that. Each night I heard these birds I woke with a grin plastered on my face, ear to ear. The loud, crowded, noisy nights of New Zealand and its varied bird life please me enormously. Even when I have had to put earplugs in just to get some sleep. Small sacrifice to be surrounded so energetically by living snorting scurrying crying life. Sorry about the run on, I seem to have the ability to post again, but no control over the layout.

posted by: coldwish at 13:40 | link | comments |
nz 2006