A Crooked Path to Somewhere

Hello. That's me on the left. For anyone who got lost on the Internet looking for porn and who doesn't know me, I'm C.T.

Do you like my bucolic photo? Better yet, do you like my neck plant?

Okay, to be fair, if this were Dances With Wolves, you could call me Smiles With Back Flora. But then you'd have to invite me in to your teepee and give me two donkeys, your white woman and a share of the Little Bighorn Casino.

To prove how Teddy Roosevelt I am, please, fear not Global Warmers, vegans, and horticulturalists of the world: I've had the plant surgically removed from the back of my head and it is now resting comfortably with other ex-neck plants in a Northern Virginia townhouse. Tell Chief Ten Bears that I'm quite sure somebody from Mexico is tending to its every need as you read. It coexists symbiotically with the tonka.

Speaking of plants, I'm a blogging seedling, a virgin, if you will. Oxygen deprived and sated with carbon dioxide, I've begun a blog, light-headed and headed overseas. Why does the world need another blog? It's like Frodo needing another awkward man-hobbit stare from Rudy as the latter professes his platonic love for the former in the shadow of Mt. Doom (wait for the connection...). Just as we squirmed when those two held eye contact for about 17 seconds too long, you're probably squirming with the thought of another self-centered, emotionally myopic, and parochial blog.

Welcome to my blog!

In short, it's a question for which I have no answer. What I do know is that like Frodo, I'm off to New Zealand in one week's time. Whereas everyone's favorite hobbit was all about saving Middle Earth, I have a more selfish reason for going. I can. I'm lucky. I'm lucky because I've made pretty decent choices on this crooked path to somewhere and I have a supportive--if not apprehensive--family and wildly encouraging--let me know when you have a couch--friends. "There and Back Again" was Bilbo's title to his book of adventure with dwarves and wizards and dragons in The Lord of the Rings. It's time for a sequel, I thought, only this time we'll add an addendum: "There and Back Again: With No Misspellings."

Or "CT in NZ." Whatever.

Okay, so I'm just like every other person in the Western world as it seems the entire Western world is blogging. In fact, I'm pretty sure Constantinople fell because too many people were blogging on their parchments and not enough were watching the hundreds of thousands of Turks marching up to the gates. I might be the last person not currently living in Burma or North Korea to have a blog and if it weren't for Don, I most certainly would be. But now's the time...

What makes this one unique, you ask? Well, I'm not that unique, to be honest. I don't think most people are. Oh, everyone has different tastes and opinions and idiosyncrasies and predilections, but people's emotional constitution is, I think, essentially very similar. The other stuff is window dressing. Life is fairly simple, we simply make it unfairly complicated. You've heard the saying, "I'm unique. Just like everyone else?" Well, I'm probably just like everyone else. I'm just in a unique position as I'm 16 flight hours away from the other side of the world--the Land of the Long White Cloud, the designation given to New Zealand by its original indigenous people--the pygmies. I mean, Maoris. Yes, I'm late for my cultural sensitivity class. Regardless, it should be an exciting time as I'm out to prove that not all Americans are inward-looking, self-absorbed, philosophical neanderthals. Some of us are just self-absorbed.

One reason I enjoy history so much is because it provides an escape for the mind. We're usually pretty taken with the day-to-day routines of our lives, so history for me is akin to jumping into a binded paper wormhole to be transported back to the very environment I'm reading about. It's a roundabout way of saying that truth is actually stranger than fiction and history allows me to lead a double life, so to speak. At least in my mind for a brief time. But now, I feel like I'm actually jumping into the history book with this trip. There's a sensuality to New Zealand that evokes in me romantic thoughts of isolation amid a geographical paradise. I'd be willing to bet that the 12 hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland will reinforce that sense of isolation.

The extent of my blogging conceit is limited to a desire for others who care about me--and for whom I care a great deal--to share a little bit of my adventure. And to convince you to come and visit me. The Vegas line on the over/under for number of visitors to see CT in NZ is currently .5. That's right. One-half of one person. Even 18th Century slaves got 3/5ths in the Constitution. All of this means that only one person needs to visit to bring Vegas to its knees. Remember: big risk, big reward.

"Hello. That's me on the left," thus begins one of a google of rather anonymous and eponymous blogs that weaves together to form the tapestry of our probabalistic quantum blogging universe. This blog is indeed a very small--a quantum--thing to share. In reality, it's pretty insignificant. But besides perhaps providing free accommodation (or directions to a hotel), it's about all I can do from the South Pacific.

I have no illusions of writing grandeur nor do I aspire to write about some sort of contrived self-discovery. I'm going to New Zealand because I'm curious. I always have been. About different people, cultures, and geography. I like doing something different, sure, but I've learned as I've gotten a little older the extent to which I dislike regret. And I would regret it if I didn't go (more on this in the next post).

Maybe New Zealand won't be that place I have envisioned in my mind's eye--the country constantly talked about as one of the most beautiful in the world. Maybe it will. Either way, I'm hopeful that you too can be transported, if only for a few minutes on occasion, into the adventure that is Aotorea.


C.T.