Damned Questions — What Auckland Is — Wellington Fraternity

I.

I find myself, now, avoiding the questions. Attempting to follow a path of thought beyond the hmmm I wonder. Forcing myself to abandon all that I don’t know in search of what I do… [entry in notebook dated October 14, 2018]

II.

Auckland is the largest city in Aotearoa New Zealand, situated toward the north end of the North Island.

It’s the view I stumble upon my first morning in this new place, from the top of a small valley in Myers Park.

Auckland is the Auckland Council, a creation of 2010 that brought together seven distinct local councils into a single mega-one, at the bidding of Parliament.

It’s the cold I contract my second day, the one I can’t shake because I don’t stop walking in the wind or up hills.

Auckland is a metropolitan area of 1.6 million people.

It’s these new mates — an American, a Brit, two Belgians, a Fin, and a German — taking the ferry to Waiheke for a day of wine tasting and tramping.

Auckland is home of the pohutukawa tree, lovingly referred to by Kiwis as the New Zealand Christmas tree, on account of its bright flowers in December.

It’s eyes tracing the massive and meandering branches of a tree whose name I must know — so I ask an older gentleman maintaining the plant bed in a public park.

Auckland is a huge swath of land — nearly 2,000 square miles — with relatively low population density, earning it the reputation of being entirely too auto dependent.

It’s a pot of water I’m convinced will never boil, thanks to a bottom so warped that less than five percent makes contact with the electric burner. It’s standing there, awkward and alone and hoping for bubbles, listening to a hostel full of blonde-haired — seriously, so blonde — backpackers abuzz with joyful Germanic conversation.

Auckland is a port city with over 2,000 miles of coastline, loads of islands, and ferry rides to carry you to and from its many water-separated parts.

It’s a merino wool Buff that keeps my ears, neck, and head warm — until it’s left on a recently unoccupied bus seat, its still cold-ridden owner stepping off oblivious to what he hasn’t got in hand.

Auckland is a place, and as such it will always be susceptible to our assertion that it’s that even while we know that it’s always and ever just this — and this and this and this, the sum of every individual experience and perception, pushed toward that calculus-like infinity where we’ll finally, once and for all, derive the area beneath the curve of that lovely pohutukawa branch where it just nearly touches the ground, or of the Harbour Bridge with its adrenaline-rushed bungee jumpers, or of the hole in our ozone layer that leaves the sun beating down unbearably upon my cheeks, only moments before I seek cover from the chill of rushing wind in the warmth of a merino wool Buff, now lost forever to a bus that will continue its journey along the Inner Loop, in search of all those travelers and commuters whose experiences, while not mine, are, just as surely, Auckland.

III.

Walking to the store this evening in Wellington, I have to talk myself down — the hostel I just checked into a total nightmare. Like walking into a frat house and you don’t speak Greek. A house full of hipsters and longtimers, cool kids whose mess is an order I can’t see into.

I walk back and heat up my soup, wearing some semblance of determination. I pull out my laptop and sit down to work on this, smack dab in the middle of it all. Someone asks if I’m working. Or writing a book.

Clearly, the coolest one here.

In Place explores what it’s like to be in this place, Aotearoa New Zealand — and what it means to be in place more generally, what it means to belong. For more posts, visit https://medium.com/in-place.