The road not taken

Bear with me if you don't like poetry.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,


And sorry I could not travel both


And be one traveler, long I stood


And looked down one as far as I could


To where it bent in the undergrowth;



Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim


Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there


Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay


In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh


Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—


I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost 1915

 ...

Black poppies at Dunedin's Botanic Garden.

The state of uncertainty has a bad press but not embracing it denies the seeds of growth. The alchemy of turning an uncertain situation into ways forward is tackled in the new book by a blogger I follow Jonathon Fields.  The book is called ‘Uncertainty’ and it’s about turning fear and doubt into fuel for brilliance. http://www.theuncertaintybook.com/

Writing my blog is an attempt to deal with uncertainty and consider choices.

My aim is to explore and try to be comfortable with the “stuck” space between choices without resorting to fight or flight.  

Keats called it Negative Capability—the skill ‘of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts’. It is about being conscious and realizing there is infinity of choice.

I’m in the interface between outdated concepts of work and home as I knew them eight months ago and the components of a new life still being tested and considered.

Edyta sent me a text: ‘I trust the process of life. All I need is always taken care of. I’m safe. Repeat till the fear of lack of money is gone.’

Louise at Bluff.

I gave up certainty and comfort to live more edgily for a time. The reorganization of my former workplace left me feeling compromised to the point where I could barely function according to my lights. It was and is time to find a new niche.

Choosing to move from place to place I’ve taken the path less traveled. And I trust that will make all the difference.

 …

There is some to tell on the travel front.

Despite its chilly weather patterns Dunedin is a beautiful city. I love the proliferation of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. There are hardly any monstrosities of conspicuous consumption as in Auckland.  The baches or cribs on the peninsula have been allowed to remain as is where is. So refreshing! But I couldn’t settle here.

On one of my first Dunedin nights we - Claire, Gilbert, Violet, Malcolm, Kate and Dan – ate up large at the wonderful restaurant The Asian.

We three.

Claire and Dan Bell.

Dan’s exhibition was the Rice and Beans gallery’s last show and several nights later the experimental art community marked the event with mean cocktails. The end of Rice and Beans coincides with the gallery’s invitation to exhibit for two months at the prestigious ArtSpace in Auckland. This is a really big thing for the founders of R and B, Claire, Gilbert and Al. I’m particularly pleased for Claire to be taking art to her hometown.

Staying in Louise’s vegan household meant not consuming any unmentionables on the premises. I appreciated the welcoming attitude of this lovely bunch of people. Rory whose parents own the house cultivates vegetables on every possible space. Coriander grows from bathtubs in the front garden and there is a wilderness of edibles out the back.

At the public art gallery I became engrossed in a talk by historian Professor Dame Ann Salmond who was discussing tapu. In the late 19^th century Maori, European and Tahitians consented to have their heads cast in plaster and their moulded likenesses have languished away in the storerooms of a Paris museum. NZ photographer Fiona Pardington’s large-scale photographs brought them back to life.

Salmond marveled that the cast maker persuaded Maori chiefs to have their heads used in this way (they had to be partially shaved) considering the tapu-ness of their chiefly heads.

Louise and Nick: old Taupaki friends.

Louise and I set off for the deeper south in the trusty Pissan Nulsar. At Balclutha we stopped to say hello to our long time Taupaki neighbour Nicholas Pickolas who was on the verge of moving back to Wellington to round off his medical studies. We sat chatting in the main street; vegan Nick scraping dairy product off his sandwich.

Nick has a healthy disregard for the medical model; he says mainstream doctors earn too much, consider themselves above the herd and refuse to accept alternative theories.  He will make a difference somewhere.

Wongy's at Balclutha.

Ate an oyster pie at Bluff in a café owned by a native of Los Angeles. Was not overwhelmed by the general look of southland; the pastoralists have had things too much their own way.

Papatowai.

At Papatowai village we found a perfect rustic cottage to use as a base. The bush meets the sea in this Catlins’ landscape where the population is measured in the small dozens. The bush meets sea aspect is rare in NZ and the bush has the look of being untouched by fire. From Papatowai we roamed around the district.

 Back in Dunedin and after staying again with Lou and a couple of r and r nights in a motel, I’m now staying with Claire at an artists’ community and gallery in the city. It’s called ‘none’ and tonight I’m dusting off my old habit of dressing as a nun for a show tonight. Sunday I go to stay at Aramoana.

…..