Back from NZ somewhat the worse for wear. Seeing my mother becoming frailer was very depressing: her mind is pretty much what it ever was but her body is beginning to go, and dragging her capacity (and her will?) to enjoy life with it. And of course it's so hard to be close to this not just because you begin to share mum's suffering but because that suffering carries with it the message: this is likely to happen to you too.
It's nice to be back in Baltimore: I found Auckland restricted, it is stunningly beautiful and the day I spent at the Gow's sculpture park on Waiheke Island was glorious, but the place is culturally and socially so bland: the opportunities to catch complex social self-reflections and commentary in the public sphere at least (and truth to say in the private sphere too) are so rare, and everyday encounters with a range of different peoples and values barely happen, even if Maori and the new migrant communities are very present too. Maybe what I am really trying to say is that the country's imagination of itself is trapped in self-satisfaction.
But for all that I totally understand why a certain kind of American dreams of migrating there.