Curio Bay

So much has transpired since my last post but I'll attempt a sufficient synopsis.

I have mastered the new driving situation. The first 30 minutes of driving, for my brain, very uncomfortable. I kept fighting the urge to swerve over to the right, my mind going against every driving moment its ever experienced. Finally, like I said, after 30 minutes, my brain sent up the white flag, surrendering to the New Rule and it was all smooth sailing from there (well..almost-you'll hear about it later) I love road trips--the driving with the radio up and we're somewhere between here and there mixing in with the passing of light over the surrounding landscape. Yesterday I almost died when the sun began setting over the hayfields and I passed a herd of deer, lit up like luminescent silouhettes against the hillside...and then the moment was gone. This happens over and over driving south through the world populated by sheep, deer, cows, and horses. There are more livestock than people on the South Island and the only concrete is the road, which gives way to gravel and dirt in many areas. There are of course cities, but these eruptions of density are few, comparatively.
The drive is accompanied by the radio and the radio is all American sounds with the Kiwi accented host saying names like Soundgarden, Megadeath, Metallica--if you haven't heard the Kiwi accent I think of it like this. Imagine the typical US accent saying Megadeath. Now imagine a lasso caught around the word, hog tying it up and cinching the sounds together-so Megadeath sounds more like meegadeth--which is so hilarious to me. Megadeath loses is heavy metal cred fast when caught in the kiwi lasso.
There is something I find priceless when cultures are layered upon themselves like transparencies. There is me, of course, in a Nissan Pulsar sedan, driving through the green, green hills of NZ with Billy Joel's track "My Life" blaring out of my windows. I have, of course, completely forgotten how GREAT this track is and I am fully singing along. I am like this with almost all the tracks coming out of the radio and I blame this on the ectsasy of adventure which transforms every piece of music I hear, flipping it so I see through the kaleidoscope of anthropological psychedelia. Everything is so obvious at home..of course madonna, of course billy joel, of course meegadeth. Its ALL so obvious that most of us turn to irony to create some level of new contextualism. On this adventure though, nothing is taken for granted anymore. Lady GaGa's "bad romance", her voice "Ra ra ra ro ga ga" and the beats are polished by the spit of a new scene. Although, I have to admit, the third time I heard this track on the radio, a far side comic panel flashed through my mind of the one of the hillside sheep turning to its neighbor and saying "Jesus, you'd think the tourists came to escape shit like Lady Gaga." or "you know I liked Lady Gaga for a while but now I just wish she'd just fall off the charts".
Its mind boggling how far the pop cultured hand of the US reaches. I start to wonder what astronauts listen to in the space station. Are they also under the Lady Gaga spell? Are they up there doing anti gravity hip thrusts to Paparazzi? I erase this image quickly and replace it with one more pleasing to me--they listen to Fever Ray and to dreamy electronics. Regardless, all the films showing at the cinema are US made, all the music I've heard thus far is US or UK born, and being in Curio Bay now for a week, I am thankful to be almost completely cut off from it all.
There is someone waiting to use the computer, the only dial up internet access anywhere near by so I need to go.. I didn't get to the surfing, the dolphins, the constant play-fights with the sea lions or to spell check...but next time. XOXOXO