Finding Your Place

Every evening, when the hard, hot sun has slipped over the edge of the land mass that is the North Island, I slide out the front of the house (the entire wall facing the street is left yawning wide all day). I choose the direction the cool wind is blowing and I walk. Not because I love to walk in the evening (which I do) but because I feel the need to stretch my context - my understanding of where I stand - into large quantities of heavy concrete sidewalks, acres of shaded yards and masses of stiffly held lavender clumps. I face outward and look up, arranging in my mind the subtle shiftings of the enormous streaks of white cloud as the sun sets. The insistent caress of the constant breeze marks it rhythm into me. The rich throaty chorus of insects subterfuging the grass swathes and holds me. There are differences between walking where you are home, and walking where you are merely trying to gently grope for a marker, where you are merely trying, at the bottom and end of the earth, to find your place.