Nat's Weblog

Day Three in New Zealand

It’s been a day of driving, a three hour ferry ride, and more driving. We are in the Rai Valley, just outside of French Pass. The ferry ride was comfortable and the views beautiful: first the North Island and the Capital city of Wellington receding as the ferry appears to enter the open ocean, then the South Island appearing, and for a while the islands, equidistant, are visible and seem very close to each other. After more time, and after the North Island disappears, one enters what looks like it will be a bay, but instead one enters a labyrinthine “sound” where it seems at once that there are many ways to go and perhaps nowhere to go as tiny islands and toothy rocks emerge at each turn of the ferry. I am surprised at the landscape I am seeing, just as I was with the North Island. Steep slopes are grazed by sheep with some areas sloughing, revealing sandy soil, or planted with exotic conifers, or the stumps of those confers in extensive clearcuts. The native vegetation, the “bush” as it is called, seems to be a low, shrubby smudge of mixed pastel greens that occasionally patch the hillsides.

My last entry was two weeks ago and when I had just left Bangkok, Thailand. Now it’s many days later, and Whiteblack and I have passed through Phuket, Thailand; explored the the hills outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand; spent three days learning to be a “mahout” elephant keeper in Lampang Province; hiked the part of the Bibbulmum Track in Australia; and jumped across the water to New Zealand.  I find myself now in the town of Wanganui on New Zealand’s North Island.  Whiteblack is taking a break from the adventure and I am now with my son, Ben, who has spent the last few months in this place on the underside of this world (from my point of view).  I have been so busy, going from one place to another, that I have not had time to settle my thoughts.  A feeling of disorientation, of reversal, has set in, and I feel compelled to look backwards.  That is, I start from this moment (if not in this moment), and peer into the recent past.

the reversal

Any travel involves taking one out of the usual and comfortable world of home and  jarring one into another context.  Having been born in Guatemala and lived for many years in Costa Rica, this is not unusual for me.  However, I have never experienced a world that seems in reverse.  The first inkling of this mirroring came in Thailand, and not from the musical language that I could not understand, nor from the wonderful elephants I learned to communicate with and to ride.  I did learn some Thai, though the elephants still knew more by the end of my visit.  While I did not understand Thai, it feels to be an intimate language.  The lumbering elephants were variations of other creatures I have known and loved — an elephant does not seem to be so different from Poppy the cow I milked this fall, though I found the elephants much more cooperative.  The bustle of Bangkok and the simple living of people who are poor in material wealth — and often rich in other things– was familiar and comfortable for me.

Read the rest of this entry »

Whiteblack, Jenny and I have been a week in Thailand and we have experienced a whirlwind of activity. The afternoon we arrived, Sunday, we decided to tour the Sunday market. Here we began to get a feel for the color and crowd, scents of spice and the aroma of many flowers — as well as the smell of exhaust and wastewater. The sound of the market is together musical and discordant: tonal Thai is spoken, shouted and sung accented by the the cries of myna birds . The market is a labyrinth of stalls selling everything from t-shirts and kitchen items to fine Thai silk and antique Buddhas, and everything in between.

Monday I launched into my joyful work: three Chalk Talks, two in hospitals and one in a school. As always, it is so rewarding to be with children and draw, and a special privilege to give something to children who are ill and in the hospital. I got a chance to make it through most of the drawings in Curious George Learns the Alphabet for one class, reinforcing English lessons. At Queen Sirkit National Institute for Child Health I received as well as gave: the children drew as I Chalk Talked and gave me their drawings. I had quite an art lesson: much of the artwork surpassed what I was offering…

Monday evening was a special treat as Whiteblack, Jenny and I dined with Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn at her palace. Jenny was fearful that my usual table manners would prevail, but I managed not to disgrace myself. Whiteblack loved the Princesse’s dogs, four of which came into the dining room at my request and ran around the table, barked, and tried to snatch food: it’s nice to know that my dog, Hali, is not the only one who does these things.

On Tuesday we toured the Grand Palace, and grand it was, a glittering city within a city, filled with past royal residences, temples, wats, statues, marching palace guards, Buddhist monks, as well as a gawking and polyglot flow of tourists. Things growing ornamented many of the buildings. Orchids overwhelmed, dozens of species with a rainbow of colors and a variety of sizes and shapes. Because we are guests of the HRH Sirindhorn, we managed to sneak into parts of the Palace that are off limits to others: the throne rooms of various kings and queens, receiving chambers for ambassadors and other dignitaries, rooms filled with gifts from the Royals of Europe, and a hall of portraits of generations of kings and queens.

The highlight, however, was the traditional arts school located in the Grand Palace and sponsored HRH Princess Sirindhorn. Here young (and some not so young) adults are provided scholarships to study traditional arts and crafts. These include flower art, embroidery, cooking, drawing and painting, wood carving, clay relief sculpture, inlay, gold leaf application, and more. The work, which requires patience and long practice, is testimony to a different vision of art than we are used to: individual’s originality is expressed in the mastery and interpretation of traditional form rather than breaking of precedent and paradigm.

This day was capped by a visit to the Queen’s Support Foundation in the old parliamentary building. Here we witnessed the most intricate and accomplished examples of the traditional art we saw being learned, works celebrating such events as the 80th Birthday of the King. We saw the products of hundreds of artisans working for up to two years on a single piece: thrones inlaid with glowing luminescent blue beetle shell and covered in gold leaf; carvings, paintings and embroideries of scenes from various Buddhist and Hindu stories; models of ceremonial ships made from gold and studded in diamond; kingly elephant saddles…

Thursday took us to another Royally supported project, this one for wastewater treatment. Ponds, grasslands, constructed wetlands and compost bins processed wastewater for many thousands and “garbage” (organic waste for compost) for many hundreds. The site is also a research center with hundreds of students working on masters and doctoral degrees in biosolids, wetland ecology, and productive uses of bio-residues — such as a project to use pond sediment for ceramics. The final release of purified wastewater is a natural mangrove full of fish, crabs and other seafood that is harvested by locals

And Friday? We flew to Phuket, which is another story…

Whiteblack and I have made it to Bangkok, though it appears that today is tomorrow in New Hampshire, if that makes any sense.  For us it is now Monday morning, and we have a full day of Chalk Talks ahead of us!  We’ll report later.

A delayed flight and time distorted by travel have left me and Whiteblack parked at the Paris de Gaulle airport waiting for a connection to Bangkok Thailand. The afternoon light come through the largely transparent roof and walls of terminal F. Clouds  bands are grey, muddy blue and lightly touched by violet. Filters in the roof turn make the light aqua blue, lighter at the edges and deeper at the center as though I am looking up into tropical sea and beach. Finally evening comes and the sky darkens to night blue decorated by smudged points of red, yellow and white airport lights.  The rhythm of the terminal is a curious mix of frenzy as people rush to flights, children and bags trailing, and an unsettled calm that is itself a form of simmering anxiety.  We wait for our flights, some of us retreating into books and various electronic diversions while the rest of us walk randomly until seemly magnetically  pulled into one of the shops of the airport mall.  The great expanse of the terminal makes for revealing acoustics: childrens’ voices seem to carry particularly well from one corner to another, mostly in sweetly accented french.  Office phones ring from hidden cubbies, while a discordant chorus of cell phones punctuates the otherwise general mummer of many voices.  Periodically a dulcet voice rises and echos throughout, first in French and then in accented English, Word from above, bringing if not wisdom, at least information.

Soon I will be in another world entirely.

10:00 am

The chatter, murmur, rumble, squeak of Charles Street, Boston Massachusetts is a contrast to the silence of New Hampshire’s winter forest. A dog with blue booties trots on wet brick edged by last night’s snow, or whatever it is becoming: the snow seems not sure whether to be invisible ice, grey slush or stay true. Whiteblack and I are enjoying morning coffee at Starbucks, sitting with my attention divided between the screen of my computer and a window framed in such a way to be a series of evolving street portraits: booted and sweatshirted dogs and perambulating infants and parents — twins! Parking meter and

overflowed trashcan remain the same, as does the brick wall and windows with decorative black shutters across the street. A sign for “Helen’s Leather” is also a constant, as is the red sedan parked in front. Across this stage speed cars of various makes and ages, and more slowly, collections of dark wool coats, colorful down jackets, bobbing hats and jiggling scarves, gloves and mittens swinging pendulum style, pattering boots and shoes. Nested and floating alongwith with this flotsam are faces. Some are youthful white and cream with rose spots, others creased, life stories written into the skin. Scowls and smiles,

secret thoughts of angers and pleasures, worries, cares, joys. Shared laughter; singular indifference. Of course, each face also carries eyes that are wide or slitted, red-rimmed, dark, luminous, windows that reveal (or conceal) the world to each person, and each person to all others. Through them I pass into the many portraits parading before me.

This afternoon Whiteblack and I begin our journey to Thailand. Still a few hours of Boston to explore — perhaps a trip to the Public Gardens…

Welcome to Nat’s Blog. In the coming weeks you can come to this site and follow Nat as he makes his way with Whiteblack the Penguin to Southeast Asia and Oceania (Australia and New Zealand).