Too Fast And Too Slow

The big annoying thing in my life at the moment is that it turns out I am not going to be performing at the next hafla after all. No, I haven’t finished my coin bra yet and yes, there are plans afoot to do the duet in September maybe, but it’s still annoying me way more than it should that I don’t get to do this right when I want to. My poor coin bra: will it ever be jingly and jangly and sparkly and wonderful? Will I ever do a torso rotation or a chest drop in it, and if I do, will it be in Wellington or somewhere else? I do not know. I cannot tell you. I am having a hard time accepting that it’s almost time to start making some more big decisions about 2008 and the rest of 2007, and for some reason this small blip in my plans, the inability to do something I really want to do at the time I want to do it, has really thrown me.

I’m just about done with my time here, you see—the visa runs out on the 7th of August, at which time I plan to be on the wallaby farm in Queensland– and all I do all day every day is think about a) my trip to the South Island that starts this Friday, Friday Friday Friday Friday! b) my trip to Australia, which starts on the 16th of July, and c) getting a job and getting a visa so I can stay another year. I mean, I still think about things like how much I would enjoy some nice pasta with broccoli rabe and sundried tomatoes, and about how I am enjoying my new cute striped hat that bears more than a passing resemblance to a tea cozy. Over the weekend I spent some time thinking about how much I like chocolate cake and about how much I don’t like bars where the music is extremely loud and yet simultaneously impossible to dance to. I thought about yoga pants. I thought about library books. I thought about all the dead moths on my bedroom windowsill, and I thought about central heating and New Zealand’s comprehensive and far-reaching lack of it.

But that’s all surface tension, just noise. Time is going too fast and too slow and everything is right around the corner or too far away to even start thinking about. August 7, when the visa is up? Is next Monday. This coming Friday when I get on the plane to go down to Queenstown? Is three years away. I’m going to Australia sometime in the next decade but I have to make sure to finish up everything at this job before my last day on July 13, which is in about an hour and a half, two hours.

I’m trying to manifest staying. I’m trying to train myself to say “Yes I would love to do that in October,” instead of “If I’m still here, yes, I’d love to do that in October.” I’m trying to take the long view and believe that New Zealand and I are not done yet, that having found a place here I can remain in it, for a while. I want this so much. I want this so much. I’m trying and working and scheming and calling and reminding and updating and emailing, every day, trying to make this happen. It’s been so strange to tell people at home, when they ask when I’m coming back, “Uh, well, either October or…next summer. I think. I will get back to you.”

I feel like I write this entry every couple of weeks, and I always say the same thing: what next? What will I do? What happens if I have to go home? What happens if I stay? I have come to no answers about any of these as of yet, which is really annoying, when you consider how much time I’m spending asking them.