It’s one of those days with a To Do List of 856 items and all I want to do is find a cozy pub, a few good friends and drink until it’s dark outside.
When I was a student I did this a lot. It was exhilarating to bunk off lectures and go the Ori to play pool and drink whiskey sours. Talking politics and poetry in a seedy bar was the best part of university life for me; I felt like I was in a Kerouac novel (even though I was less than 30 miles from where I grew up and all that I had ever known. And I have no doubt that everything I said was very annoying). I wanted to know about the world. And I knew I wouldn’t learn about it from books. Or work. I wanted to be taught by the crazy kids on the sidelines who could see this whole Life Business was all a bit of a game. A cosmic joke.
Little Brother and me grew up in a tiny coastal village in New Zealand. The parents of everyone we knew worked at Cherry Farm, a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of town. The hospital grounds were vast: there was a chapel, a swimming pool, a massive industrial kitchen; we often had school events there. The residents were safe and warm and fed and part of our community (when a family friend got married in the little church, a resident with a multitude of mental health issues, not least of which was Tourette’s, burst into the church and forcibly chastised the entire congregation. He questioned everyone’s parenthood and invited us all to engage in procreation. It was the funniest thing I had ever seen).
There was something very very honest and real about growing up there. It has led to a love of the blackest humour and of the dingledoodies that I am lucky enough to come across from time to time. There is also the pull to reject the Rules of Life: the job, mortgage, pension plan, 2.5 kids. To run away from all of this often ridiculous pursuit of things we don’t need for a purpose I cannot fathom. To cross the line. From respectable, functioning adult to… what? Seeker? Artist? Traveler? Vagrant? We are taught to be terrified of that life; we need a job, a house, money, a 42inch plasma tv. Otherwise we have failed.
For most, crossing that line is not a choice. And its only two pay packets, a psychotic episode or a divorce away. But maybe there is something in walking through that fear.
The older I get, the more I think Hall was right: all we need for happiness is Three Acres and Liberty.
‘A psychotic drowns in the very same stuff a mystic swims in’ ~ Pema Chödrön
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Nic and I often talk about what it would be like to remove one of the biggest expenses from our life – that of paying rent or a mortgage. Without that expense, what could we do that we aren’t doing now? How much MORE freedom could we have? We don’t own much (more than some, a lot less than others) and we don’t owe anything to anyone, aside from a fiver borrowed here and there when we find ourselves out for lunch somewhere that doesn’t take plastic.
Perhaps it is a NZ thing more than anywhere? To say f-you to The Man and create a life that is totally outrageous, and free.
Perhaps, we just attract people to us that share this same crazy dream and engage in thought and discussion about living a less ‘conventional’ life?
Brilliant. Perfect timing. On the money. You’re fab.
You wonderful woman. You just reminded me that actually, if I’m honest, I ASKED for this and that the fear is to be expected.
Awesome. xxx
i want to be from new zealand.
knowing (and loving) you is the next best thing.
BBC communal living feels ever closer (and thats nothing to do with the mental hospital).