From the window of our apartment overlooking the hills and the sea, I can watch the planes take off from the airport and hear the deep rumble of their engines as they gain altitude. In the morning, before the sun has risen, I watch their flashing lights grow smaller and smaller as they climb into the still dark sky. In the evening, I marvel as the late afternoon sun lights them up like comets shooting upward from the earth. Some people would not want to live near an airport, but I find it to be a comfort.
After a month in New Zealand, the novelty is starting to wear off and the weight of the reality of life here is beginning to bear down on me. I am still intoxicated by the beauty of this country, the friendliness of its people, and the more relaxed way of life that seems to be a part of the culture here. But I don’t know anyone, and nobody knows me. I feel so far away from everyone and everything I’ve ever known.
But then I look up again from my loneliness and watch another plane climb into the sky and I know that everything is closer than it seems. All I have to do is walk down the road, pay my fare, and I can be anywhere I want to be. And then I remember that it is even simpler than that. If I close my eyes and listen to my heart, I know that I am never alone and that anywhere is everywhere.
I sip my coffee and hope that the muse will arrive. I can feel better about this cup of coffee. We spent the extra to make sure that it was organic and fair trade certified. Whether or not this really does much to help or if it just makes someone with too much wealth already a little bit wealthier I cannot know. But it soothes my conscience, a consumer ashamed of my consumption, ashamed that my actions cause harm to others. I see a field far away in a hot, humid place, a life spent picking the beans from the plant one by one, placing them in a canvas sack so that I can sit here thousands of miles away and stimulate my adrenal glands to make up for the lack of sleep my first world worries have caused me.
The rain fell hard this evening after the workday was done. I put on my shoes and out the door I went as the drops began to fall. They gathered steam as so did I. Around the town my footsteps fell while the drops hit the ground. A chill wind blew and the beacon flash from across the sound at the Cape Lookout lighthouse was masked by veils of water. Shirt soaked through, water squishing out the mesh of my shoes and dripping off the tip of my nose. What could be more exquisite than this?