I’m visiting Te Awa Kairangi and Pukeatua with my family and yesterday we had a rather auspicious encounter. We were out near Te Papa, the national museum of Aotearoa, and I saw a Māori elder in passing. They had one hand wrapped firmly over the top of a light-coloured wooden cane, and the other clasping something rather peculiar:
A conch.
But not just any conch. One decorated with a very long wooden mouthpiece carved with traditional Māori designs, and a few feathers to boot.
It felt like seeing a yamabushi in the wild for the first time.
Very cool. I was in awe.
This elder’s energy alone was enough to know they were special, but I had learned a few years ago (through interpreting for Te Porohau Ruka Te Korako and Master Hoshino) that only distinguished Māori elders can hold a cane like that. To be honest, it kind of felt like coming across a rare Pokémon.
I wanted to respect their time so I let them pass, but this extremely short encounter started my mind off racing quite a bit.
One thing that became apparent, that wasn’t before, was that in a way, this newsletter is me searching for myself. I don’t particularly know why I write this newsletter. I mean, I enjoy the process very much, and I have all these crazy ideas that need some way of escaping, but why did I start in the first place? Where did the urge to dedicate so much time to this come from? To be honest, it just felt like something I should do, something I felt would be worthwhile.
And I was right.
Until this encounter I had never thought about it like this, but any creative endeavour is us trying to capture a moment in our search for meaning, or our search for finding our true selves. Unfortunately, or not, you never can. However hard we try there’s always a discrepancy between what happens in our hearts, and what comes out.
And that’s fine. That’s life.
At the same time it’s fortunate because it keeps you searching, and it motivates you to continue.
That’s also fine. That’s also life.
Life is just a series of millions of connected moments that change from moment to moment. One moment the sensation is there, the next it fades, like passing an elder in the street.
This time around in Aotearoa I understood something rather profound, well to me at least:
The search takes you back home, wherever home may be.
I am quite honestly torn between Japan and New Zealand. Both feel like spiritual homes to me. But coming back here to the place I was born, seeing the people I grew up with, and the people who know my family so well, including of course my mother and father, I guess this is home after all.
Which leads to yet another realisation: Home doesn’t mean you have to live there. You can go away with the intention of coming back.
Or not.
But when you do, you rediscover a part of yourself, in the most uncanny of encounters.
Now where can I get myself one of those pūtātara…