New Zealand is not my place. It’s beautiful here, and the people are nice, but it doesn’t call to me. Apparently it doesn’t call to my family either: moving to New Zealand has made my mom realize how much she misses her family, and my brother realize how much he misses the academics of Bainbridge High School. But as they struggle with the logistics and the emotionally-charged issues surrounding the sudden decision to move back early, I have come to learn how much my life has become separate from theirs. I think it helps them to have me around as a neutral party, someone to talk to and bounce ideas off of without making promises or commitments, someone with so little stake in the final decision that the conversation doesn’t turn into an argument. I sit in the middle of the turmoil, watching these people I know so well, whose lives are lived as one — a family — and the tension between them only makes the bonds of a shared life the more obvious. And somewhere along the line I was given a lot of slack so that now, in some way, my own life is independent.

I could leave if I wanted and travel the country, go on some grand adventure by myself. But I have my projects here — I might even get a job. It seems too much like running away, and anyway, there’s a lot of adventuring to be done right where I am. Yesterday I went caving with my dad in Waipu. Other than the Oregon Caves National Park, they were my first limestone caves. And my first wet caves. I even got to do a vertical entrance and exit in Bouquave, an unexpected (and not entirely welcome) surprise when we couldn’t find the proper ways in and out. That one had some tight squeezes, and the stream went up to my knees in some places. After a particularly tough spot, only my dad, the trip leader Trevor, and I continued. The exit was a free climb through a vertical hole of rocks back out to the sheep fields. Quite tricky! The Waipu Tourist Cave, on the other hand, was mainly just scrambling over muddy rocks, a much simpler task; but oh, the glow worms! When we turned off our headlamps, they became like the night sky that never was: millions of green-white specks of light so bright that you could see the ripples in the water below. Truly breathtaking.

Speaking of stars, I am currently reading about my favorite angel, the Morning Star, Lucifer. That’s right, Hum 110 didn’t satisfy my hunger for classics (however mild that hunger may be) and so I find myself halfway through Milton’s Paradise Lost. The cosmology is not my cup of tea, good and evil too clearly defined, like black and white. Plus Eve’s happy subservience drives me up the wall, even if Milton meant it as social commentary. It is still more gripping than X-Men 3, though less so than House, a television medical drama that I started watching recently. Here’s a weird coincidence: the director of the first two X-Men movies, Bryan Singer, also directed The Usual Suspects, and of all things, House! And he’s directing the new Superman movie. Hopefully one movie this summer won’t be a disappointment.

In other news, my lack of respect for George Bush just keeps growing as he tries to make his personal bigotry in to a federal law banning same-sex marriage; an Amazon tribe that can’t count is threatening Noam Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammer; I got some poi at last (for twirling, not eating), but my self-consciousness keeps me from practicing (read: whacking myself in the face) while others are present; and as always, I have a million half-born ideas floating about.

I feel like I’m living in a dream sometimes.