Awakenings and Little Deaths

Since September of last year, I have traveled eastward through nineteen time zones. In New Zealand, I am 21 hours ahead of myself were I to be at home in the USA. When I communicate with people there, they are in yesterday and I am in tomorrow.

After so many exotic sights and sounds, foreign experiences, awakenings and little deaths, I am transformed and don't know how I will pick up where I left off once home. I want to continue sharing what I have seen and experienced. Fortunately, all the paintings I have sent back to the USA arrived safely from Italy, India and Thailand, and I have with me the others made in Cambodia and Bali. The photos I have spent countless hours creating are on my laptop and backed up on an extra hard drive. So far so good.

After densely populated Bali, there is more solitude in New Zealand, even though it is summer tourist season. Nature has greater contrasts here and it is more of a struggle for inhabitants to exist year around. Days are gorgeous now, easy to enjoy, and the sun does not set until two hours before midnight. In the winter, days can be seven hours shorter. New Zealand has glaciers, as well as volcanoes.

Today I hiked to the foot of a glacier and was lucky to hear and see an avalanche. Flowers bloomed and made a carpet at my feet, the mountains capped with snow and ice soared above and waterfalls cascaded off shear rock cliffs. Wisps of clouds gathered to play around the peaks. I took off layers of clothes along the way . . . but never ended up as naked as in Bali!