I was once concerned that living out in the country might get a tad boring. Not that we’re living in the country full time yet, but we’ve managed to log about two weeks a month here in Wainui over the last few months And hopefully, once we’re back from our May state-side visit, we’ll shift out here for good, just in time for winter.

Reading the local rag recently, The Akaroa Mail, I came upon an advertisement by Rural Women in NZ offering a free two-day chainsaw course for women. It was titled “Chainsaw Chicks.” Who could resist? I immediately called and signed up.

There was an overwhelming response to the ad and several dates were offered for the course. I did mine on April 12th & 13th.

The course was run by Agribusiness NZ and our instructor, Matt Durning, had worked for the forestry service for many years and was an excellent instructor. There were eight of us for this particular weekend course and I was one of the youngest, with the oldest probably in her early 60’s. Several had used chainsaws; most of us had not.

Day one was the ‘theory’ day and we spent six hours talking about chainsaw safety (how to assess your site, proper gear to wear, issues relating to the Health & Safety In Employment Act); and chainsaw operation and maintenance (the nine safety features on the chainsaw, refueling, taking apart and cleaning the chain, how to sharpen the cutters and maintain depth gauges, how to properly start the saw). Needless-to-say I was a bit overwhelmed as I had a great big fear of using such a powerful machine. During one of the breaks I had to ask (recalling ‘The Chainsaw Massacre” and other such horror movies), “So, can one really accidentally saw off one’s limb?” To which he replied, ‘No, but you can seriously harm yourself,” and later on showed us several slides of mangled faces and limbs. This offered little relief to my anxiety. However, during the day we did some hands on ‘touching’ and ‘handling’ of the chain saws (ie: we did not turn them on) and I started to feel more relaxed.

Day two was ‘practical’ day and we met out by the woolshed on someone’s property. Here we spent the next six hours implementing everything we learned the day before. We suited up with our safety gear which included our hi viz vests, safety chaps, and hi viz helmet/mask/earmuff combo, and the first thing we had to do was take apart the saw and check that the chain was clean and installed properly. Once we managed that, then it was time to refuel in the safety fueling zone, and then time to power up the saws. The moment we’d been waiting for. It was pretty easy and not too scary. Then we had to practice our cuts using relatively small pieces of wood and practice our ‘form’ when cutting on the ground. Easy peasy. After lunch break we moved on to larger pieces of wood, working on a felled tree with limbs protruding at waist height. Here we had to demonstrate a downcut, upcut, and borer cut (straight into the middle). We each went one at a time and had the instructor criticise our technique. After that we each had a go at filing the saw cutters and filing the depth guages. It was a long and tiring yet worthwhile day!

All in all it was a great course and I met some neat ladies of the peninsula. Agribusiness puts on a whole host of other courses, some of which cover Fencing, Basic Tractor Skills, Farm Bike Safety, Basic Tree Felling, Deer Production, and more. See? Life is full of excitement here in the country!

I’ve come down with a bad cough this week and have sporadic nights’ sleep. Last night I awoke at 3 am in a coughing fit which lasted the good part of an hour. I turned on the lights, made some tea, and sat in bed, trying to calm my breathing. As I lay there I realized that it was 11 am in Florida, just about the time the church service was to occur. I sent out my love to the family and tried to be present.

Joy wrote and delivered a beautiful euology at the service:

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I want to thank everyone for being here today. I know that everyone feels a lot of sadness in their hearts as a result of Nettie’s passing. She was a caring, spirited, fun-loving woman who lived her life to the fullest – as a wife, sister, mother, grandmother and friend she brought joy to all our lives. She will be dearly missed.

Nettie’s life was an example that I hope inspires us all. She grew up in the Depression and lived a hard life. Yet, she always had a smile on her face and always knew how to enjoy life and the people around her. Many of you know Nettie from church, from bridge, or from being her neighbor. You know that she loved to keep busy and was sharp as a tack at the card table.

I look at today as a celebration of Nettie’s life and all that she brought to all of our lives. I know I’m very fortunate to have had her in my life for so many healthy, active years. I’d like to share some of my favorite memories which honor her spirit. These are the memories that I will always cherish.

My earliest memories of my grandma and grandpa are from my annual visits to Florida. I’d look forward to these trips for weeks, not only because I might get to go to Disney World, but because I cherished this time with my grandparents. We had so many traditions at their house – we’d go shrimping, spend countless hours in the garden, and stay up late into the night playing pinochle on the porch. Then of course, we’d feast on the wonderful cooking that my grandma was so well known for. I like to think I inherited some of her Italian culinary talent. I know I got my card playing skills and my competitive edge from her!

She’d often share stories with us about her childhood – they were hilarious. She was a spunky, strong-willed tomboy who loved to play sports and had no fear of climbing out the window to see her boyfriend, who she later married. They’d sneak off and go out with their friends, only to get in lots of trouble when her grandparents later found out. I still remember her laughing as she told me the story about her sister Mary getting drunk in the wine cellar because she didn’t know how to siphon the wine. They didn’t have much back then, but they had each other and they had a lot of fun.

My happiest memory is of my grandma being able to attend my wedding last summer. As I planned the wedding, I didn’t know if she’d be able to come, but as the day drew closer and she remained in good health, I gave thanks for her presence at the most special weekend of my life. We had borrowed a wheelchair for her, and after an hour of using it, she promptly claimed that she didn’t need it and could do just fine on her own, thank you very much.

Sometime in the last 10 years, I started to call grandma “sunshine.” I’d call and say “hello sunshine” and she’d immediately laugh and know it was me. Last weekend in San Francisco, we had the most beautiful, sunny, 80-degree day, which if you know SF, you know that is a rare occurrence. I found out later that night that she passed that day. I realized though that my sunshine is always around me and she’ll stay in my heart and in my memories forever.

I love you grandma.

It’s a sad week for my family and I as our dearly beloved matriarch of the family, my grandmother, passed away last Saturday. She died peacefully in her sleep at the lovely age of 96. Although we knew her time was close and we’d had months to prepare (she’d fallen twice in the last six months, had broken a hip each time, undergone full hip replacement surgery, and then endured physical therapy and rehab), and had said goodbye several times, it still doesn’t prepare one for the ultimate finality. And so it has been a week of crying and grieving and coming to terms with this finality.

However, with the tears of sadness are also tears of joy. For grandma Nettie lived a full and abundant life. For the last several days I’ve allowed my mind to drift back in time, to retrieve the memories that have been stored over the decades. I’ve been surprised and yet delighted at what kinds of things have been recalled for I’d forgotten many of them.

Gran was born in Naples, Italy in 1912. She was the third of four children, having an older sister Beatrice and brother Joseph, and younger sister Mary. Her life in Italy was short-lived as both her parents succumbed to the Influenza breakout in 1915/1916. Various relatives had migrated to America years earlier and so the four children, aged 3 through 10, were sent via boat in 1917 to join their aunt & uncle in New York. Gran used to tell the story about how shortly before she was due to travel, she was out getting the goats and she got caught on the goat’s lead and the goat dragged her down the hill causing injury to her head. With bandages around her head, she was put on the boat and sailed to Ellis Island. She was almost turned away because of the injury and a cousin had to argue with the authorities to allow her entry into America with her siblings, lest they break up the family. She got in.

Her childhood was somewhat tough as her aunt & uncle owned a small grocery and the kids all had to work in the shop. The girls didn’t get much schooling and I don’t think she ever finished high school. Gran was a tomboy and a stubborn one at that, and she used to tell us about how she’d climb out the window at night to go meet up with her sweetheart, James ‘Jimmy’ Santora.

She married Jim in 1932 at the age of 20 and together they created a family, having a son, Donald in 1933, and a daughter, Carmella in 1939. I’ve heard stories about them surviving the Depression, how grandpa would wait on the food lines, how they made do with so little. But they scrimped and saved and in 1944 they bought a house in New Rochelle – 14 Island View Place (that address forever sticks in my brain!).

My mom got married in 1962 and I was born in 1963. For the first two years of my life, we lived with my grandparents at the house in New Rochelle. I have such fond memories of that house and can still recall all the details of the rooms, the furniture, the yard, and all the smells that went along with it. My grandparents were the center of their extended families and their house was always a place of big gatherings and parties.

Some of the things I remember from these years were their amazing vegetable garden and giant fig tree, the spaghetti and ravioli making days, Saturday ladies-poker day with the cousins (where I got to tag along and often was given a few pennies as a treat), stopping at roadsides to pick ‘cicoria’ (Italian for chicory and/or dandelions), and the endless pasta dishes: pasta fazool (pasta with chickpeas), pastina with spinach & egg, and of course, Sunday spaghetti day with homemade meatballs and pigs feet (eeyeew!).

In 1978, gran and gramps retired to Rockledge, Florida where her eldest sister had already moved. Other cousins were also there. I was 15, Joy was 5. We made annual trips from New York to Florida, often for Christmas or Easter. And the thing that became associated with visiting them was going to Disneyland and Sea World! They created another garden and gramps was often featured in the local paper for growing some unusually large vegetable. And now they had an abundance of fruit trees.

They made friends easily. They were avid golfers and belonged to the local golf club (where we got to go for lunch sometimes); they bowled, they continued playing cards, and they liked to dance (polka if I recall correctly). It was during this time that I was taught to play pinochle and this has carried on over the decades as a family tradition.
They traveled the world and always brought me back a doll from each country. I think at one point I had a collection of 25 dolls from different places around the world.

In 1990, after 58 years of marriage, grandpa passed away from lung cancer. Gran continued to live in the house and carried on; the golfing and bowling had stopped, the card playing continued. I moved to San Francisco in 1989, and in the early 90’s, Joy, gran, and her sister Mary (both now in their late 70’s) came to visit. The four of us, separated by over 50 years in age, had a great time. We took them up to wine country, had a picnic, went sightseeing, played cards.

In 1997, my parents retired to Florida, a bit further south than where gran lived. She was now in her late 80’s and it was time for her to be closer to her children. So her house was sold and she moved within a few miles of my parents in Boynton Beach.

Over the last 15 years, my memories of gran are all centered around family vacations as we started to do ‘destination’ vacations in addition to having us kids congregate in Florida. Me, Joy, mom, dad, and grandma have been to numerous places together, often with friends tagging along. We’ve holidayed in Maui (1993), Cabo San Lucas (1995), Cancun (1997), California (1991, 2002, 2007), and cruised the Caribbean islands (1999). Always good natured, I seem to recall her dancing in the conga line on one of these trips!

Gran was a good friend, a loyal parent, a loving grandparent. She enjoyed life’s simple pleasures – a good home-cooked meal, a game of cards, a romance novel. She was a smart consumer (coupons are king!) and she always had friends.

I’ve really appreciated these past two years since I’ve moved to New Zealand and started my own garden. I would often share photos and stories with her about what’s growing and what we’re harvesting, and she would always have some words of advice.

I’m amazed at how similar all the women are in our family. We love a good game, we enjoy cooking, we love to travel, we’re all pretty stubborn and willful, we’re all quite social. Well, if we’ve inherited all these genes, I hope that we’ve also inherited the genes for a long and healthy life. I hope I am like her, spunky till the end, living on her own, mind as sharp as a tack, appetite strong.

Gran, I thank you for being you. It’s been wonderful having you for so long and I know you’ll continue to watch over us. Rest in peace. Till we meet again………. We love you.

March 2 marked a big milestone for us as it was our 2 year anniversary in New Zealand. Why is this so significant you may ask?

We migrated to New Zealand with Permanent Residency (PR) status under the Skilled Migrant category. If we never ever wanted to leave the great shores of Aotearoa, we’d be fine and would continue to be granted full residency privileges for life. However, if we did want to leave, either for good or for a holiday offshore, we’d need to apply for a Returning Resident’s Visa, else lose our PR status and our ability to return into the country.

The first Returning Resident’s Visa (RRV) one receives is good for two years. Thus, our two year anniversary became important as our RRV’s expired. Obtaining your second RRV or what is called an Indefinite Returning Resident’s Visa (IRRV) is a little trickier as one must fulfill certain requirements in order to be granted the IRRV which is good for life. The most basic requirement is that one must spend at least 184 days (6 months) in each of the two years in New Zealand. Easy peasy.

On March 10th we trotted on down to the local Immigration Office and queued up in the rather long line and waited 45 minutes to speak to a person at the reception desk. The form to fill out is the RRV Form.

Boring details on the process: The primary applicant (me) fills out the form and includes details about the secondary applicants. The fee is $140 no matter how many people you are applying for. You include the application and all relevant passports and put them in an envelope and put it in the drop box. Immigration guarantees to process all applications and return to you within 10 days. (If you are leaving the country sooner and have a ticket to prove it, then they will process the application immediately). NOTE: If you are pursuing a different pathway for obtaining residency (ie: not Skilled Migrant & less than 184 days in each of the preceding 2 years), then you will need to show proof of certain items asked in the RRV Application which can be found on the immigration website in the Guide for Returning Resident’s Visas.

So we dropped off our passports and left not feeling a bit celebratory. It felt strange to leave our passports behind. However on March 20th, we received a call that our passports were ready and I went and picked them up today.

Whoooo-hoooo! Time to celebrate. We are indefinite and NZ residents for life!

Now all we have in front of us is another three years and then we can apply for New Zealand citizenship!

Kiwiburn07 was pretty darn good – many of us felt the event achieved the essence of Burning Man. At only 120 attendees and only a small amount of theme camps, we were able to meet practically everyone and everyone seemed to move en masse together and shared similar experiences. It was delightful. But this year, we exceeded expectations. For a relatively small festival (180 in attendance), we participants really stepped up to the plate and delivered a remarkable array of theme camps and art. So much so, that one had to actually choose what they wanted to do and one could not do everything. Just like at Burning Man.

Many of the folks who’d been part of fledgling camps in ’07 came back with a vengeance this year. The Tauranga firespinners created Balrogs Playpen and dazzled us each evening with their exciting pyrotechnic skills. Pink Moa came with a lineup of pink-haired DJ’s including Helix, Jet Pilot, and Rich D’Rich, and really pinked it out, creating an circular dance space under the stars complete with beanbag filled chill space. HiDive totally upped The Sheep End this year with an amazing sound system set upon a hilltop paddock (ironically which was full of sheep) which pumped out tunes in the wee hours of the morn. More important was his mobile sound system – the black tricked out van, complete with a 4 foot paper mache black sheep head with solar-lamps for eyes perched on front – which careened across the paddock day and night pumping out tunes and creating an immediate dance party wherever he parked. HiDive’s mobile Sheep End saved the day many a time when other camps’ sound systems crashed. Roy and Alfred’s small chill space of ’07 morphed into The Drop Zone this year with centralized paddock placement. Offering a 24 hr chill space, they provided lovely tranquil indian/middle eastern music by day and a movie zone by night. Urs & David brought us B-Movie Camp which featured a variety of, well, B-Movies, and brought a smile to my face as I paused to watch for a few minutes each time I was on my way to the loo. The Jafab group came with a mighty crew and provided us with The Skullfu*k Bar & Dance Zone featuring DJ’s Linus and Dave and often pumped out heavy metal to accompany Anne Bonny’s Thunder Ditch battles (last year we had Thunder Dome, this year, Thunder Ditch). Hippie Tim came with a group of friends and formed Camp Pedro, featuring disco music and cheap wine. Not always the music of choice of attendees when psytrance and dubstep were being offered a short walk away; however, one or two happy folks could periodically be seen dancing and twirling under their marquee. Loveable nonetheless. Polly’s Put The Kettle On provided many of us with our daily intake of tea and coffee and could always be seen from anywhere in the paddock with its giant yellow 10 foot teapot frontage. I have unending respect for Trailer Trash camp which morphed into Los Caravanos de les Muertos (Caravans of the Dead). Jen and Ants and Scotto, Jess, Allan, Hana, Lily, Poppy, Cora, and all the other lovely ladies of the camp worked tirelessly throughout the year to make gorgeous paper mache skulls, 6’ tall cacti, a chapel, and a float all fully decorated with Day of The Dead themed items. The detailing that went into their camp was remarkable. And of course, Cass, Jeremy, Bruce, & I brought back The Green Fairy, our black-light lounge complete with delicious libations, tasty treats, and music, which seems to bring smiles to so many. As soon as the flouro-lights were turned on, we could always expect a few people or a crew to pop on in.

As for art, well, let me tell you. Dr. Windy outdid herself yet again with The Wendy Box, a 12’ x 12’ x 7’ covered cube which one had to climb up a ladder and descend into, and which was full of hundreds and hundreds of balloons. Oh the laugher and giggles that came out of the Wendy Box as a group went in and furiously kicked around and popped the balloons. I think everyone managed to get into Wendy’s box that weekend which brought a huge smile to her face. Rich outdid us all and brought us the thing we’d all talked about and hoped for: a floating art boat. And not just any old art boat, but a full fledged pirate ship, aptly named the Dodgy Roger, complete with mast, pirate flag, and, quite often, a pirate or two! Moored at the lake’s edge, the Dodgy Roger was often host to the children of Kiwiburn who found delight in diving/jumping off the deck. Ian brought us The Impossible Triangle — three 10’ long x 1’ x 1’ wooden boxes, joined at two sides with the third side not connected. The ‘almost’ triangle was perched on a 5’ pole and the whole thing rotated. The idea was to maneuver the triangle sides in such a way so that, from a distance, it looked like a perfect triangle. Ian had written ‘clues’ on the ground for people to follow. It was quite cool. Shelley and Abbey brought back The Cookie Tree – made from found branches and formed into a tree from which little baggies of tasty cookies were hung. They also added The Candy Tree which was conveniently placed on the path between all the dance camps. Many plucked late night sugary sustenance from its boughs. Mark “Yonderman” brought us Cincophoria, a 6’ tall ‘friendship circle’ comprised of six stick-figured men with covered halogen solar lamps for heads and which glowed at night. This art piece was a tribute to Kiwiburn’s 5th year and to Kiwiburn08’s theme: CombustInUnity, whereby all participants were encouraged to make ‘man’ icon art pieces to display and the burn with the Man.

Speaking of the Man, builder Kiwi volunteered to make him and came up with an intricate design whereby the 10’ tall Man would sit perched in a chair throughout the festival until the day of the burn, at which time he would stand up and raise his hands towards the sky. Lots of moveable parts. Kiwi worked on his design and model for several months at his place on Waiheke Island. Finally ready for Kiwiburn, Kiwi and his MPW (ministry of public works) crew of young, strong, teens and twenty-somethings, worked tirelessly for days to build a burn platform, and then build a square, pyramidal-shaped base on which the 10’ Man was placed. Not satisfied with just a plain décor for the Man, burner Arno took it under his wing to ‘trick out’ the Man and he, Dougal, and others spent the entire week cutting, painting, and fitting with el-wire, various shapes which were added onto the Man, so that by the last day, The Man was a colorful, glowing, beautiful art piece featured centrally in the main paddock. Many people found enjoyment sitting on the staircase-like base, watching the goings-on of the festival.

And then there was the Temple of Unity, an interactive, spiritually based art piece created by the collaboration of Kiwi and Bruce. Bruce, for the last year or so, has been exploring the nature of orgone accumulators, orgonite, orgone generators, and merkabas. What’s that you say? Let’s see if I can explain in one short paragraph. Orgone is related to life energy, prana, chi, good vibrations, etc; an orgone accumulator concentrates positive or negative orgone; orgonite is a passive device made from metal pieces, polyester resin and quartz and converts negative orgone into positive orgone. A merkaba is a three-dimensional structure of two nested triangles, one inverted over the other. The overlapping of the triangles represent an integration of spirit and mind with body and soul. It is said that if you sit in one, it can take spirit and body (or one’s interpretation of reality) from one world or dimension to another. Got it?

Featured as the Temple’s altar was Bruce’s 10’ tall merkaba complete with orgone accumulator material, orgonite, an orgone generator and a platform at its center from which one person could sit. Surrounding the merkaba, at each of its six anchoring points, were 8’tall x 3’ wide pyramid-cubbies. Everyone was invited to decorate the pyramids. I took one, and with the help of Purple, Lady Steph, Cass, and Jeremy, created the “Temple of Remembrance”, dedicated to those who have passed on as we’ve been touched by many, many friends who have lost loved ones in the preceding few months. I was pleased. But back to the merkaba. One afternoon several of us were out in the hot sun building the merkaba and pyramids. I approached the center of the merkaba and discerned a slight drop in temperature. It felt cooler and just a little less humid. Many of us there could feel the difference. Bruce left a journal for people to record their experiences and the theme that emerged was that people felt calmer, more peaceful. It was, and is, a powerful structure and the Temple of Unity offered a calm oasis away from the sea of chaos and bacchanalia that framed most of the festival.

There was no lack of performance art as well. The most memorable, because it had been talked up for months, and ended up being quite short, was the marriage ceremony of the Jafab and Trailer Trash camps. The two Auckland based groups formed a strong friendship over the year and decided to make their ‘union’ official by having a full weekend wedding celebration complete with hen party, stag party, and civil ceremony. Preparing all day Saturday, the brides and grooms were quite, let’s say, ‘under the influence’ by the time the ceremony rolled along. They raucously delighted the guests along with officiant Kiwi, who, trying through the bullhorn to perform the marriage ceremony, could often be heard yelling ‘shut the f*ck up’ to the excited brides and grooms. Performance art at its finest. I was particularly pleased with the Kostume Korner which was set up in the main marquee as a clothing ‘storefront’, stocked with bags and bags of opp shop found burner attire, and which was available to anyone and everyone. On Saturday afternoon, Janet , Dougal and I morphed into the fashion police, complete with mobile clothing rack, and spent an hour or so roving the paddocks citing people for their fashion faux pas, the fine for which was to be dressed by us in lingerie or other appropriate apparel. This segued into the first ever Kiwiburn fashion show. MC’d by Helix and featuring a wooden catwalk under the main marquee, the lovely band of paddock-fabulous dressed contestants entertained and dazzled the equally well-frocked audience. Those of us watching may never forget the acrobatic flare and derrière of one nameless participant from Camp Scrumpy. Hilarious! Oh, and there was more. Throughout Saturday morning we were treated to mellow music performed by various burners; Jez and Andrea offered lessons on The Silks – an acrobatic ‘rope-climbing’ art of sorts; Jodi offered hula-hoop lessons. We had the ‘hug me’ guy, a burner with a sign which read ‘free hugs’ and who was bombarded with endless burner love. And last, but not least, brought back by unpopular demand, was our lovable, and sometimes hateable, DJ Helix, offering us Radio Insomnia, a 7:30 am Sunday morning ‘breakfast show’ of sorts, blaring loud music and inconsequential blabbing to an already sleep-deprived, not-too-happy captive audience of now wide-awake paddock-filled burners. There has been some debate as to whether this ‘performance art’ falls under the burning man ethos of radical self-expression or whether it constitutes blatant badgering; perhaps next year there will be a radical ‘performance art’ kidnapping of said DJ and the paddock will be able to slumber in peace! Beware, Helix (we love you no matter what you know)!

People came from far and wide to attend the festival, often planned as part of their New Zealand travelling experience. Black Rock Ranger Spice and his partner Sugar hailed all the way from Utah; Fargo Dan and Lady Steph from Reno; Max, Josie, Johnny Payphone, Maria, Janet, Jake, Celine, Adam, Sam, Marie and others from all around the US; Dougal from Scotland; Beave and Matt from the UK; Arno from France; US expat Roby from Italy; Tom & Astrid and their beautiful kids Clara and Linus from Austria; Cass, Jeremy, and MsMeegs from Oz. We were well represented and truly an international event.

And we did not forget the locals, for we are eager to build and connect with the local community inside and outside of the festival. We placed an advert in the local Mangakino paper inviting all the townspeople to come in for free on Sunday afternoon, to see what we’re about, to have a tour around, to have tea with us at Polly’s Put The Kettle On Mad-Hatters tea party. While a few of the younger locals managed to come and participate in the night-time festivities, a group of about 25 people – families and children – came for a couple of hours on Sunday. I think we successfully conveyed the burner philosophy to a few; one trio consisting of a 40-something couple and the wife’s 80 year old mother, whom Bruce & I entertained for tea at The Green Fairy, said that they’d be back next year and the octogenarian offered to cook food for people as her contribution; another two women dispensed with their children and came back that night regaled in their finest paddock-wear and danced the night away at Pink Moa with their new found burner friends. And of course there was Nate-Nate, the farmers right-hand-man, who came day and night and helped out wherever he could and befriended everyone.

And then there was burn night. How do I describe the culmination of the festival with the Sunday evening burn, everyone gathered, everyone partying, two firetrucks and twenty volunteer local fireman with smiles on their faces, all to watch the burning of the man, the burning of the merkaba, the burning of the pyramid cubbies, followed by a walk through Pearl’s fire labyrinth? I don’t. Some things must be left to the imagination and to entice those of you curious-minded-readers-who-didn’t-happen-to-make-it-this-year to come and experience it for yourselves. Words can’t really convey the feeling anyway. Let’s just say the Man kaboomed ; we danced; we released; we enjoyed.

Yes, with all this wonderful art and music and dancing, its hard not to be happy and joyful all the time. But, just like at Burning Man, the constant stimulation and noise can take a toll. People are partying day and night. It’s hard not to be sleep deprived. It’s hard to ‘be on’ and ‘be extroverted’ all the time. It’s hard sometimes not to feel lonely or excluded. We can’t always all be on the same schedule and sometimes one just wants to yell ‘SHUT UP’ (or at least I found myself wanting to several times). One needs to know how to take care of oneself when under such conditions. My ‘this is too much’ moment came late Saturday afternoon – I worked hard all day and just wanted a moment of peace and quiet, a moment to reground and regroup. I couldn’t get it. I started to feel my elevated mood heading for a rapid decline. Best to remove oneself from the environment, so off to bed I went at 9 p.m. and fell into a deep slumber despite all the noise. Wide awake by 2 am, I got up and spent a few hours in The Green Fairy chilling and listening to jazz with a handful of folk, determined to see sunrise which is a special thing to do on the playa. Having outlasted everyone, Bruce & I made our way out to the temple and sat in the merkaba. Silence. Everyone, but one or two, was sleeping. Beautiful scenery. Birdsong. A magical moment.

Someone on the forums asked what was our favorite experience of the event. How does one answer that question when all of the above was present? It boggles the mind at the level of dedication and creativity that was brought and shared by such a small group of burners. Of course, often a moment or two makes an imprint in one’s mind that defines the experience for us. For me, my memorable moment occurred towards the end of the festival when I was having a conversation with two newbies. Chatting along about this and that, they each turned to me and said “Thank you. Thank you for bringing what you brought, for doing what you did. Thank you for making my experience so enjoyable.” I don’t know that it gets any better than that – to know that I made an impact on someone else. And I hope that every one of you was thanked, at least once, if not a hundred times, for your creativity and vision and for being your wonderful selves. You have made an impact on me; you allow me to reach down within myself and find a well of creativity and playfulness; you bring joy to my heart. Thank you!

Kiwiburn09? Bring it on!

PS: I know you readers want photos but I’m still trolling through 500+ of them to find the best. To be added soon…..

As if that wasn’t enough, we decided over Christmas that we should sell our Clyde Street/Christchurch house and we should do so ASAP. (All you friends out there that said to us back in October, ‘so when are you moving?’ to which we replied, ‘we’re not moving for another year or so’ – oh, you had such wisdom and foresight!). Yeah, after all the back and forths we’ve been doing to Wainui, we decided we need to preserve our sanity — we felt that maintaining two big properties was starting to be a bit much. And we need to preserve our capital as our big vision for the Wainui property is going to cost lots of money. We sat down one night and ran through some financial options for Clyde: redevelop into two units; rent to a family and redevelop the back building into a place for us; take on flatmates; or sell; and selling came out on top. So the question was when, and since we’re in the height of summer and properties always sell better during nicer weather and our house tends to show better when it’s WARM, and since the market is showing signs of leveling off and will eventually follow trends in the US, we decided to move it ASAP. We had Maggie and her A-team (Lee & Denese) over to tell us what we needed to do to optimise the sale: “uhm, you need to get the whole yard tidied up, move the bees, wash the windows, clean the house, powerblast the driveway and patios, patch up holes in the walls, get your crap off the floor, and do a MAJOR tidy up of the property, and bring in a furniture stager to do some ‘in-fill’ staging”. Oh no, only three weeks to pull this off. Okay, kick into high gear and find people to do some of the work. A week of calling around, collecting bids. A week of having service people here every day. Three weeks of Bruce & I packing boxes to ‘tidy up’ the house.

And, on top of all that, we decided to push forward with our redevelopment ideas for the Wainui property. We want to build another dwelling on the property – a nice, warm, sustainable house just for us. The existing house, while lovely, is not ideal – it is perfect though as a guest house and will be used to house family & friends and wwoofers. However, putting a second dwelling on the property is not currently allowed by the city council. We’ll need to get a special resource consent and will probably need to jump through big hoops to get the approval. We need to hire a planning consultant to help navigate through the council rules & regs. We need an architect. We need a civil engineer to come do a site survey of the property. Since the property is not on a city sewerage system, we’ll need to figure out our grey/blackwater disposal method and we specifically don’t want to put in another septic tank – instead we want an eco-friendly greywater system. So we have to hire a eco-wastewater engineer (just happen to know one) to come out and do a different type of survey and help us file a different type of resource consent application. Just a few things to do.

Oh, and friends Alex & Tobi were evicted from their really nice house about a week before the holidays and they haven’t been able to find another place so they’re moving into our house the day we leave for Kiwiburn.

And it looks like we’re US-bound again in May to celebrate the nuptials of good friends Kat & Drew and thus we’re trying to get plans sorted out for what’s looking to be a month-long trip.

And 95-year-old grandma has fallen twice in the last two months and each time has broken a hip and has barely survived surgery, but is doing well, but can’t go back to living alone, so the family is working to figure out her care options and navigating through the medicare/medicaid application process. {nightmare}

So, chaos. Insanity. High energy. Drive. Pushing Through. Being squeezed through the tunnel.

And what has happened in the first 25 days of the new year?

Glorious creation.

Our Kiwiburn projects have come together. Bruce, with the help of friends Sess and Dennis, did a successful test build of the merkaba in the yard in less than 3 hours. Miraculous. What a beautiful structure. Bruce’s hours on the computer modeling the merkaba, figuring out the cutting angles, has paid off. He’s really elevated his carpentry skills. Not to mention his electrical engineering skills as he’s taken apart and wired up a CD player to run through the merkaba and back out the CD’s speakers. I am totally pleased with my stockpile of clothing for the Kostume Korner and my morphies. The bigger one which is not fully decorated yet will be standing sentinel in The Green Fairy and will be part of the interactive activities of our camp.

The Clyde Road house looks amazing. I’ve now got a perfectly clean, partially staged, fully functional five bedroom house complete with two furnished lounges, a den, dining room, and office. And a big, well-groomed, lawn complete with veggie garden and fruit trees. It’s going on the market in under two weeks and we’re praying that it sells in under three months time. Send some good vibes our way.

We pushed it hard for Wainui too. Met and hired a city planning consultant. Found a civil engineer to come out and do a survey. Hired our architect and started first stage discussions of the dream house. Met with the wastewater eco-engineer and got some preliminary feedback from him. Looks like it’s going to be a tough-but-potentially-doable project. It’s just going to cost lots of money.

And in the midst of juggling all our projects, we managed to entertain a family of seven in Wainui last weekend and be entertained by our lovely friends who are never short on smart-alec jokes and laughter. Thank you!

It’s all good. And as I’ve taken to saying lately, LIFE IS FOR LIVING, so let’s get busy.

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a stellar holiday season, filled with joy, laughter, friends, family, and relaxation. May we all have had time to pause for a moment, reflect on our lives, give thanks for the good, honor the bad, and make plans for our collective better future.

Well, time has been flying by. Two months have passed since my last ‘life volume’ post and much has transpired as usual.

Since early November we’ve logged 31 days at Wainui. We’ve been living in this strange duality as we alternate, almost weekly, between city life and country life. When in the city, much of my time has been dedicated to running around locating things we need for the country house, spending endless hours on the internet, and keeping the garden going. Then we pack up the van for a weeklong stint in Wainui, lugging out a weeks’ worth of food and whatever gear I’ve managed to source. Once on the property, we live a quiet life on the land, almost always never setting foot off the property until it’s time to head back to Christchurch.

Much of our time in Wainui has been spent mowing the lawns with our electric mower. We have several areas (front, side, and back areas of house, the orchard, and two other sections) that need tending to and by my count, we spent on average about 10 – 12 hours per trip mowing! That’s a lot of grass cutting and a time consuming task as not all the land is flat. However, we make the most of it, looking at it as a source of endless mulch for the trees and also as an opportunity to observe and learn the contours of our property. I find it to be quite zen.

Speaking of zen, earlier in December I attended a three-day ten-hour yoga workshop that was organized by Anusara yoga instructor Katie Lane and featured world-renowned Anusara teacher Desiree Rumbaugh. I’d never been to an Anusara yoga class before and had only recently even been made aware of it, as I’d come across an article about John Friend, the founder of the practice. Anusara means flowing with grace. The yoga style combines the asanas (poses) with a focus on the heart (or the divine within) and uses Universal Principles of Alignment. It is very uplifting. (I am second from the left in the photo below).

Desiree was joined by another instructor, Andrew Riven. Andrew holds classes in San Francisco, at YogaKula on 16th & Mission. All you San Francisco friends – go check him out. The weekend was great, I loved the practice, and I met a bunch of cool people from all over New Zealand, including several Americans who have also migrated here. I have promised myself that I will do more of these long workshops and hopefully even go on a weeklong yoga retreat this year.

We rolled through the holidays with a bang. We honored the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday by dining out with a few American friends. December came along and Bruce & I decided we should have a holiday party complete with homemade eggnog, the UV-blacklight-flouro reactive snowflake room, and kris kringle game – similar to the Christmas Eve parties we held in San Francisco. It’s summer here and December 21st is the solstice, so we did a combined theme of solstice and holiday party. All the ex-pats were invited as well as our usual friends. We had a great turnout with close to 45 people. I think the highlight of the party was when the majority of us went outside, formed a circle, a few people said words of thanks to the universe, we sang a round of Silent Night, and one of the couples sang a Maori blessing. That combined with the hilarious kris kringle game really made for an excellent party. It felt like Christmas! And I got my soul necklace to boot, which made for an awesome present to me (see previous post).

We spent a week in Wainui for Christmas and New Years. Alex, Tobi, Ingrid, Mark, and Dennis (and a few gate crashers) spent a few days over Christmas with us. We made pizzas, and my favorite, stuffed shells. Maggie & Roelf joined us on Boxing Day for a day of eating, playing games, and a bit of R&R. The weather was glorious and we managed to get down to the beach in between rounds of mowing. New Year’s Eve turned out to be quite spontaneous with Amba and Gen coming out for the night. More pizzas, chatting, dancing, and star-gazing were on for the night.

So here we are at the beginning of 2008. According to the Chinese Zodiac, it is the Year of the Rat and the beginning of a new cycle. We can expect 12 months of plentiful opportunities and prospects relatively free of turbulence. Sounds pretty good.

New beginnings. New opportunities. New intentions to set for ourselves. Let’s open our hearts more, open our minds more, share with one another more, and take one small step to further ourselves along our path.

We’d been talking about this for a few months, but had been putting it off for it was going to be a bit of a tricky endeavor to move two hives built from four boxes of bees, each box weighing 30-70 lbs. In commercial bee-keeping, the beekeeper uses a flatbed truck to transport the hives, and has special bee boxes that can be closed when the bees are all in at night. The boxes can be kept together, without breaking open the hives, and they get driven from site to site. Bruce had to build special travelling bottoms for the bee hives which would mostly keep them in the hive and still allow air to get in. We only have our van, and we couldn’t lift the three-box hive all at once, so it was going to have to be taken apart and reassembled twice and Bruce would have to be in the van with the bees. I did not volunteer to join him.

The bees need to be moved during their quiet time – usually at dusk or later or in the early dawn. Not being a morning person, Bruce chose the former.

I was the lead scout on this mission, heading out to Wainui in the late afternoon so I could get some mowing done in the area Bruce had chosen for the bees. The grass was well over a foot long in most places, but it was relatively easy to mow. I cleared the path and space in under two hours. And then I waited.

I talked to Bruce around 9 pm as the last bit of daylight subsided. “I’m not ready yet. I’m still distilling (kiwiburn project). Not sure when I’m coming out,” he said. By midnight when he still hadn’t arrived and I could no longer keep my eyes open, I retired, worryingly, to bed.

Tossing and turning, I awoke many times, carefully listening for signs of Bruce. Finally I heard some clanging around in the kitchen. It was 4:30 am and he’d just arrived. “I need to keep going and move them now rather than go to sleep and get up in two hours at dawn.” I was too tired to assist in the darkness, so I puttered, worryingly again, back to bed.

During the next few hours, in my half-dazed sleep, I had many surreal dreams about the bees and I could hear a lot of puttering in the house. At 7:30 am, I got up as Bruce was making his way to sleep. He pulled an all-nighter. He moved the bees into position and lived to tell the tale with only two stings. He said they were not amused and had been agitated, but he was able to put each of the four boxes holding hundreds or thousands of bees, one by one, into the wheelbarrow and wheel them down the hill and over to their new site in total darkness. It was only during the movement of the last box, as the light of dawn lit the sky, that a bee had gotten into his headpiece and stung him right at the base of his throat – ouch! The other was on his wrist. Not pleasant, but not too bad for moving several thousand bees.

And now the bees are in their new home. Lucky them. They have an awesome view and an abundance of pollen right at their doorstep.

Mission Stealthy Sting complete. Over and out.

Bruce says:

Kathy had very kindly given me the option of moving just one of the hives — the smaller one, and leaving the large one, which was in a corner of our property, in place during the sale of the house. Since I started bee-keeping, I’ve seen that people really freak out about bees, so it didn’t seem like a good idea to leave a hive at a house we were trying to sell. And moving the bees was such a specialized operation that I wanted to do it all at once.

I didn’t leave Christchurch until 2:30 AM, between taking apart the hives, finishing the distilling, unpacking the van from a timber run for the Merkaba earlier in the day, repacking the van with everything else I could squeeze in as we try to de-clutter our house for the sale, and then getting gas. I only saw one other car for a few blocks in Christchurch during the whole trip. Friend Ali asked if I was worried about falling asleep while driving. Taking apart the hives, wheeling the boxes one at a time into the van, getting stung the first time, putting them back together, and then driving the bees was such a hair-raising experience that there wasn’t much danger of falling asleep.
And Kathy pointed out that even a minor accident with the van would have broken apart the hives and filled the van with thousands of very angry bees. It probably would have been fatal.

Once I got to the property, despite Kathy’s crucial mowing job, I still had to clear the remnants of a thorny rose bush prunings pile from the bee site, and then get a spade (shovel) and level out the site. In my adrenaline-fueled-bee-moving-madness, and my leather-gloved beekeepers outfit, this was surprisingly easy.

It was the first dawn I have seen at the new property, and it was beautiful, with pink tinged hillsides and bird calls and acrobatics. Given my sleeping habits, I don’t usually catch dawns from the morning side, so it was a really lovely end to a long tense day.