Oil On Canvas, the sound of it.

A borrowed Walkman, siding the cassette in, also borrowed, lying on the lower bunk.

Japan, Oil On Canvas made feel nostalgic the very moment I listened.

The warm afternoon sun coming through the over washed windows warming the quiet dorm on Sunday afternoon.

1984

I carried a copy of it with me for years, to Australia, on to become part of the sound track of the rail and bus system of the Vancouver period.
Coming back to the Pacific, home, but to a more empire influenced region than the the last stand of the Maori where I grew up. The grey stone former glory of the place I wore well with my mood.

1989

Five years, but time is not as linear as I once thought it was. Those five equal twenty.
There, that point in time. I lost my copy.

1999

I lifetime later, I acquire a second hand CD.

Now, March 3, 2010, it plays.
I am at work in a studio, and I feel, nostalgia.

Why I left New Zealand ~ Part I

Growing up in rural New Zealand was a pleasant experience. But by the time you are in high school and you find your self enjoying history classes, and the history mostly concerns everywhere but New Zealand you start to have a feeling.
That feeling is that "the world" is out there. Over seas.
If you don't journey across those seas you will be missing out on what is real, on the history that is, on life, real life.

Living in New Zealand is still living with your parents, and your watching TV instead of going to the dance. Maybe, maybe it's a great dance, you might have a great time. Sure it might be a not be, but it might be, great. What you know for sure is the living room of your parents house holds no possibility of great.

When I left the boarding school the very few friends I had made in those years had returned to there respective home town and country. Far from me.
As I went through my first post high school year I felt a profound sense of sadness. I concluded that primary reason for this was the absence of real friendship, and that real happiness can only be achieved through having real friends.

I was looking for a job and then I found a job and heaven knows I'm miserable now... That was scrawled on the wall of the packing room in the factory where I worked.
Laboring in a factory means that you have a lot of time unoccupied by thought.
But thoughts still come. After the usual, "what will I be having for dinner" kinds of thoughts you are confronted with just how empty your life is.

I tried to keep in contact with my friends through letters. In one of these letters Jason told me that his family was planning to move to Canada. I was technically Canadian, so I should come too.
An opportunity to fee. Flee the drudgery and loneliness, to go. A possibility of something. Rather than the nothing that was my life. An invitation to the dance.

20th

A wooden picnic table, gold metallic butterfly wall paper, cake and ice cream, and mum, dad, brother, two younger sisters and the youngest a brother, none of which were related to me, and a gift - a cassette tape - "Pretty In Pink" sound track.

I was a citizen of this country that I left when I was 0. I had no living relatives here, and was over seven thousand miles from what I called home.

I was unemployed, no job skills, and totally broke.

I was coming up on one of the best years of my life.