A Peaceful New Year My Friends!

Here in New Zealand 2008 is already 9 hours old. For me New Years Eve has been a deeply reflective time. I found myself wanting to reach into solitude and pray rather than join the revellers. Not just for the will to change personal habits and break patterns and stop eating so many Danish pastries! My prayers are for every person on this planet. That each one of us might find a measure of inner peace for it seems to me that world peace can only arise from hearts that are truly at peace. And then, what good is a world at peace if the planet that is home to every last one of us is tortured and scarred by our thoughtlessness? I pray that, above all, each of us will act in small and positive ways in our everyday lives to reverse the march of global warming. Bless you all.

To This!

Sometimes nothing else will soothe my soul but making fresh berry jam. And then of course this labour of love must be artfully partnered and mindfully consumed. Here is my very last baking for 2007; saffron infused scones. I adapted an old family recipe given me by my mother (and which has found its way via word of mouth the length and breadth of Dunedin!) by infusing the water called for in the recipe with saffron before preparing the dough. The scones blush with a pleasing saffron hue but on tasting I decided they needed something! Enter my freshly made strawberry jam and a blob of marscapone cheese. Ahh the delight! In my more poetic moments I am inclined to say that saffron is the flavour of eternity but on an average day I am more likely to explain that as the flavour of tobacco, hay bales and dark bitter tasting honey.

This combination of ingredients is a playful and exhilarating farewell to 2007. Rather like lying back in a field of hay eating just picked strawberries dipped in a bucket of fresh cream you hauled there from the milking shed! Well yes perhaps it is a tad decadent but is this not New Years Eve!!!! (Well right now it is where I live)

From this ...

Oh the unadulterated joy of fresh strawberries!

The Measure of Distance

The true measure of how far apart my love and I are is to be found in the fact that for me out here in New Zealand Christmas Day is all but over. For her it has not even begun.

I am writing this post at 11pm on Christmas Day. Families and friends all over this country have come together and long since taken their leave from each other in various states of exhaustion. Wrapping paper lies in piles in every corner of the land, some folded neatly for reuse and some scrunched into balls and stuffed in rubbish bins. With luck the presents this wrapping concealed are continuing to evoke delight in the hearts of those they were intended for. The roast lamb and organic ham and fresh peas and new potatoes and luscious dark gravy that graced our Christmas table have now assumed the role of leftovers. There are of course the inevitable symptoms of over-indulgence and the discussions about dealing sensibly with yuletide debt have already begun in our media.

All this and the great love of my life has not yet awoken to begin her day of Christmas festivities!

A Thousand Roses In A Storm

Even the presence of a single rose is vaguely disarming. But the presence of thousands of roses is like a drug that stills the ceaseless motion in my mind. Thoughts are no match for this thick honey sweet air that, by some peculiar chance, seems to hint at the nearness of my love. Now I am a thousand times disarmed! How does one preserve such a place as this? Yesterday the winds and rain were wild and so I walked far out of my way to pass through my rose garden, for fear of her safety. But I should not have worried for a thousand roses in a storm are every bit as beautiful as they are in times of peace. Perhaps more so. Now they spin and swirl wildly and droop to lie heavy upon the dark moist soil. Now the air is thicker still with the scent of love and the ground slippery underfoot with the silken paste of rosepetals and rainwater. Now, all about me here, there is character and resolve as well as delicate beauty!

A Mockery Of Distance

Sometimes in the dawn I find you there with me, softly like the thin curtain of daylight that brushes against the sleeping body of the night. And in these times you and I make a mockery of distance. In these times there is no ocean , continent, international border or decree that can stand between us. For you have come to me. And I to you. And it is we alone who triumph.

My Two Worlds

Last weekend I flew to my parents home in the North Island of New Zealand and spent some time here on this secluded beach. The sandhills are strewn with masses of oddly formal little flowers that seem to have been carved from bars of soap. When the tide is just right and the moon looking kindly upon you one can wriggle one's toes in the wet sand at the water's edge and find shellfish we call pipis hiding just below the surface. These delicacies are delicious when cooked in a bucket of boiling water over a fire on the beach. (Though now and then one of these shellfish will take its revenge by filling your mouth unexpectedly with sand!) The island just offshore is a nature reserve where rare and endangered birds are offered protection and sanctuary.

When I am in America I am constantly astonished at the variety of small animals which share our woodland home with us. In New Zealand, above all else, it is the bird song I notice. Here we have no squirrels or groundhogs or wild turkey or bears or chipmunks or skunks. No bambi on the deck just beyond my window and no otters or beavers in the lake across the road. During my childhood here in New Zealand I found these creatures only on the pages of my story books and for a time suspected they were merely a figment of Walt Disney's colourful imagination!

From Helen To Helen

I was so grateful for your kind enquiry as to how the great love of my life is faring following her car accident. Her whiplash injuries are taking some time to heal but she is a strong woman and, in terms of character, a force to be reckoned with and I know it will take more than a bout of whiplash to bring her down. Sadly though while she was recuperating with family our little house in the woods was broken into and the place ransacked and burgled. Even from ten thousand miles away I feel grossly violated. It saddens me that I cannot be there with her to take care of her injuries and to bless our home and reaffirm it as a place of peace and love.

This Quality of Sheer Magnificence

(Photo By Helen)

Worrying News From Afar

I have just heard via email that the great love of my life has been involved in a car accident. She has minor injuries and concussion but thankfully it seems she is otherwise ok. When I spoke to her on the phone she sounded so vulnerable and it was obvious she is in a lot of pain. I am walking around in circles unable to settle. This sense of helplessness is cruel beyond words.

The Cheesecake Incident

For those of us here Downunder who love an American today was Thanksgiving. And soon tomorrow will be too! In the eight years I have known the great love of my life I have spent only one Thanksgiving with her. One. (And for that matter one Christmas also) When yet another solo Thanksgiving rolls around I invariably revisit that day I spent with her and in particular I love to revisit the cheesecake incident. Here below is my journal note from Thanksgiving 2005.

"It was Thanksgiving here this last Thursday. This being the very first I have ever experienced I diligently plotted and planned for days. I scoured the net for tips and, two days before, disappeared into the kitchen posting "Do Not Disturb" signs all over. Nothing about the recipes I was tackling made too much sense to me. There were seemingly discordant flavour combinations and vegetables with odd names and unexpected flesh colour. And there were sacred old family recipes which I rapidly learnt one must never ever ever tamper with! My whispered protestation about how the stuffing recipe seemed "just a little bland" and my private fears about its texture went unnoticed. The most this novice from Downunder managed to get away with was to slip a lttle pumpkin in the cheesecake!

Ahh and what a cheesecake it was!!! Mouthwatering though I do admit it caused a few anxious moments. When it came out of the oven it looked superb but the settling process was alarming. I suppose the sight of the two of us nervously huddled over that cheesecake watching it slowly crack wide open must have been rather amusing. Cheesecakes, I discovered that night, do not respond well to pleading. Or begging. Or shrieks of horror.

In the end I filled the enormous crack with roughly grated chocolate and I do not believe anyone was any the wiser. Since this was the first cheesecake I have ever made, and of course my first ever Thanksgiving, I was hanging out for compliments and our friends from New York and Chicago did not let me down. Both assured me it was delicious. Since neither of these good people are burdened by English sensibilities and since I would expect them to both know their cheesecakes (better than a novice from Downunder) I felt I could depend on their honesty! "

Hot Tea and Cool Jazz

The Oamaru Victorian fete was held last weekend and thankfully my friends urged me to go with them. The era has always conjured up images of fusty and overstuffed rooms in museums which for me hold no hint of life or passion. But on Sunday the period came to life for me and reconnected me firmly with my roots, so much so that next year I plan to join others at this weekend of heritage festivities in full period costume! The fete was set in a once derelict warehousing area that has been restored to provide the perfect Dickensian street setting for this event. The day buzzed with an irrepressible energy which I must confess I became totally caught up in. My reaction to the pipe smoking contest was a great surprise to me. For a while watching the row of men sitting quietly smoking pipes at a long table felt a little like watching paint dry but somewhere along the way I managed to forget myself and the era of sensory overload in which I live and actually found myself excited by this slow paced and simple old time event! (By the way this contest was won by a woman in it's first year. Perhaps one day the great love of my life will be here in New Zealand to enter it. I do adore the smell of her pipe tobacco!)

(Photo By Helen)

Gratitude

Being a left-brainer the great love of my life likes to make lists. Long weighty pragmatic serious work-related lists of the kind that lead to deep frown lines on the forehead. Now and then one of her lists is accompanied by hoots of laughter. Those kinds of lists are usually very long also and begin with the words "Helen's To Do List". Then there are the lists she likes the least. The feelings lists. The latter, though written by her, are generally elicited by me. (No surprise there) I always marvel though at the ease with which she produces these and how lengthy they are!

My lists are almost always feelings lists and uppermost amongst those is my "gratitude list". Some entries on that list change day to day but some, such as friendship, are always there. It is impossible for me to imagine living here alone in New Zealand without the support of friends. Because of them there are the free range hens eggs, the freshly picked rhubarb and the delicious roast lamb with homemade mint sauce on a Sunday night. The long walks on the wild Otago beaches discussing Norman Mailer and the various joys and perils of flying. There are the scrabble games and the walks on the shores of the breathtaking Central Otago lakes. The full-bodied wine and the vibrant conversation shared at dusk amidst world-renowned South Island scenery, barely a stone's throw from Lord of the Rings country. My friends are good to me. They are people of substance and well deserving of their place on my gratitude list!

My Prayer

I will not ever view the marginalisation of same-sex love to the fringes of our society as a reflection on the calibre or worthiness of my love. It is indicative rather of a fear that exists somewhere else outside of me and outside of my relationship. I forgive those who, in suffering this degree of fear, attempt to visit it upon me. I give myself full permission to celebrate my love no matter how others may view it or pass judgement upon it or write laws that discriminate against it. I pray for eventual enlightenment in the hearts and minds of those people.

For As Long As It Takes

Living in this long distance bi-national relationship could very easily see us wishing large chunks of our lives away. There is no doubt that the times we spend together are lived to the fullest since we barely leave each others' sides for a minute but what of the long periods of time we are forced to spend apart? I know many people will view this lifestyle as one of deprivation but I do my best to view it differently. There are days of course when the pain closes in on me but on a good day there IS joy to be found in this unconventional lifestyle. It is all a matter of how one views it.
The challenge I set myself when I am alone here is to seek out the face of my love in the world around me. I may find her in an unfolding flower or the laughter of a stranger. She may be there in the faint aroma of tobacco in my pumpkin & paprika relish, or in the windfalls that lie beneath my neighbour's apple tree. It is more than mere association and not just that these things act as memory prompts, though they do of course. There is something about a love as expansive and deep as this that enables it to redefine itself and still survive.
I doubt that the makers of discriminatory laws will ever grasp this fact. That true love will not cower. Nor will it lash out in anger. It will simply endure. For as long as it takes.

Thoughts & Love From Afar

My American partner's immediate family, who include amongst their numbers conservative fundamentalist Christians, have embraced us both as a same-sex couple with warmth and love.

Tonight my thoughts and love are with one member of that family who is facing a very serious health challenge. I long to return to America to stand beside my partner as she struggles to come to terms with this situation. I dare not fly back so soon after leaving because I could well be turned away at the border; a situation that would see me banned from re-entry for some years.

Over the years I have learnt that I must find a resting place for the complex emotions I feel when I reluctantly leave my American partner in New York. Sometimes that place is a piece of writing and sometimes it is visual, as in this scrapbook page I created in 2003. Activities such as this enable me to move past the grief I feel and reconnect with my joy for the duration of our time apart.

Unrequited Desire

I hope you will not dispute, dear reader, that I AM making an earnest effort to settle back into my solitary life here in New Zealand. I have unpacked my suitcase finally, albeit a few too many weeks after my departure from New York, and I have arranged my day-to-day life so that I see her photographs and wear her clothes and smell her Cartier and hear her voice on the phone at least once a day. I have hauled out the "big book of us" which keeps getting bigger by the year and begun to add the most recent installment "Summer of 2007". I listen often to "Beauty & the Beast" and the various other music, romantic and otherwise, which she recorded for me on my iPod. Yes I truly am trying!

BUT there are the inevitable hiccups. One is shown above. This is my new car. The great love of my life bought it for me yesterday. There is only one problem. It is ten thousand miles away! Now not only do I have to hunger endlessly for that elusive tactile connection with her. Now I must hunger for same with this sexy little wagon! The jury is out, currently, on how long I will be able to endure this unrequited dual desire!

The power of an unbroken circle

It occurred to me today that, over the last several years of living in this predominantly long distance bi-national relationship, we must have learned many things. That she and I are still so devoted to each other and that we wear identical gold rings indicates that yes, that has to be the case. Just today, during our phone call, she mentioned the comment a friend of ours made to her when she showed signs of buckling under the strain of a crisis that has befallen her family ~ "Remember that ring on your finger". There have been many many times when a glance at that beautiful ring is enough to repel the onset of emptiness and summon forth the courage to carry on in the face of this discriminatory situation. Most couples who are committed to each other wear a ring but ours must encircle not only our fingers but the entire globe!