meeeeeeeeemmmmmreeees

I’m not sure what I want or need – sometimes there are narrations in my head that want to be written and it feels silly that after all these years and lifetimes, I continue to wrestle with the inability to stop trying to express what I can never capture in these letters.


I was walking. Pushing an apple green pram- with a tiny face staring up at me beaming a smile brighter than any summer day I’ve known. The sky was a perfect blue swept by wisps of white- this country is amazing in its ability to be so at ease in the presence of all the beauty that surrounds it. The houses, the streets, the shops… and just beyond it the green of hills that hold every town in an warm fortress of peace and comfort.

I hate the way the words form sentences that are contrite and ineloquent. All the vocabulary I know never does reality any justice.

I feel a desperation looming- I do not want to leave here but at the same time I know there are also things I need that are far away from this life we have here. Mangawhai is beautiful. It is beautiful in the way a child is. Unaware and inexplicable. It catches me at moments and takes my thoughts away. It shows me like they have at one stage or another- that there are times in this confusion of existence- that do not need to be anything more than they are. Quietly miraculous.

I struggle daily with the must-do’s and to –do’s and the innate wanting to float away. I don’t know sometimes- which would be more beneficial to the little minds that watch me.

Before I forget the things I have loved here- Wellsford in all its warmth despite the wind and frost of winter. The librarians and library with all the love for stories echoing in every shelf along the walls.

Wellsford with the warm timber floors and the windows that looked for roses and beautiful things to enhance them.

Wellsford with its cold nights and rainy days and all we had to do to keep warm and sheltered and all the comforts that make those nights feel like memories made of sunlight.

Maungaturoto and the fields of green, the sunsets that never seemed quite real. With its timber walls that made animal shapes inspiring water-paintings and thoughts of the lives within the trees. The kids running up and down the hallway. A wedding that made ripples and no tidal wave. Gentle and natural.

The stars that looked like fireworks suspended in the sky. Discoveries of how hay is rolled and fields of dried grass harvested.

I miss old energies. But I love this place. I love the time I have been afforded here. I love that we have had this experience. And that life as we've known it has never been boring.