Just Around the Block...and Over the Tasman Sea

I've moved to a new flat, just around the corner from the daffodil yellow cottage that I arrived at on my first day in Christchurch. The morning that I moved, I drove my old housemates--a couple from Austin, TX who were leaving NZ after 8 months abroad--to the airport. My first two and a half months in Christchurch were well spent in this home filled with other travellers from around the world, but I was ready to plant myself in a flat with Kiwis, without the comings and goings of expats and exchange students. After packing up my belongings without attention to organization, my friend Rebecca from Auckland helped me load my red Subaru and followed me on my bike to my new home.

Without sheets or a duvet, I once again enclosed myself in my sleeping bag. For a change, sadly though, I was not on a mountain, in a tent, or below a sky plump with stars. I'm in my new bed at 337 Armagh, across the hall from my new Kiwi flatmates: Sarah, Chris, and Basil the cat. As I learned from my first night at home, they leave the house very early, always before 7am to get to work: Sarah works as a barrista at Vanilla Bean Cafe and Chris is an electrician at the airport. But this morning I beat them as I was out the door by 3:50am to hop on a shuttle to the airport to begin my journey to Sydney, Australia and the Somatechnics conference on bodies, technologies, and society (http://www.somatechnics.org/conference).

It was my first time moving through Christchurch in the thick cloak of darkness of a sleepy weeknight. The streets were clear of cars, cyclists, pedestrians, and even sex workers. Only airport-bound travellers with droopy eyes and overstuffed baggage stood in the easy glow of streetlamps. After paying my departure fee, I headed for gate 32, which was quite empty until at least 40 Korean tourists excitedly and happily filed in. I was glad for their enthusiasm and bubbling energy at such a delicate hour. They made up for the rest of us who were quiet, sleepy, reserved, and slumped in our chairs awaiting our boarding call.

I shut my eyes for taxi, fell asleep for take-off, and dreamt as we cruised over the Tasman Sea. I seemed to wake up in line at Australian immigration and standing in the "Others" line: Czech, German, British, Middle Eastern, East Asian, South Asian, frat boys, sorority sisters, veiled mothers, Irish expats, and me. We moved slowly as the parade of aircraft personell--pilots and flight attendants--passed us by. Against the wrinkled and shlumpy masses, these professional flyers gleamed in crisp, color-coordinated perfection.

Attempting to find my shuttle to the backpackers, I hear my name called out. I whip around towards this suspicious sound and see a man with gray hair and glasses who's face is strangely familiar and misplaced. Another look behind him reveals Jenny, my long lost mate from Barnard, whose arrival in Sydney wasn't expected for another few weeks. The man is her father, Tom, tagging along and offering help as she settles into her life down under. I'm still in shock and unsure if the encounter was real. Perhaps I was still in a sleep-deprived daze after traversing the Tasman. Anyhow, I should be meeting up with my Australian mirage of a friend later in the weekend.

Later, frazzled (and frizzy: it's terribly muggy here). I walk into the first Somatechnics keynote address by Michele Goodwin from DePaul University. I catch enough of the last half of her talk "Black Markets: Supply and Demand of Body Parts" to know that I'm in the right place among academic friends. Skipping out on one of the afternoon sessions, I find a cheap internet cafe down the street. After checking and sending some emails, I found myself drawn to the NY Times website and reading about the victims of this week's massacre. Their photo's--displayed across the page in yearbook format--are disturbing, touching, uncanny, and alluring all at once. I read a brief description of each portrait and life. Perhaps each click of the mouse, scrolling down the page helps to reclaim these lost lives through this practice of cyber-eulogizing. Just hours ago, 'The Victims' were a mournfully opaque black box, without faces, names, hobbies, or origins. Through the magic of the internet, they've been humanized, their ghosts have been conjured up, and their lives have been invoked through school photos and shrapnels of biographies from Myspace and Facebook pages.

Most were students, some faculty, and a fair amount were international. Peru, Romania, Egypt, Indonesia, India, and other nations have lost bright and ambitious individuals to one man's struggle with rage and a nation's struggle with gun control. They were an aspiring airforce pilot, a holocaust survivor, musicians, dancers, a valedictorian, a saluditorian, sons, daughters, fathers, partners, athletes, christians, muslims, jews, scientists, and engineers. Dying at the hands of a weapon technology and resurrected by the identity-forming technology of the internet, so that I, in Sydney, surrounded by Chinese gamers, can learn, share, and attempt to make sense of my nation's grave loss. Oh what a glorious and tragic somatechnical world.

Cheers,

D