I’m reading Russell Brown’s collection of other people’s essays, Great New Zealand Argument, and at the same time I’m reading The Nationbuilders by Brian Easton. Both tackle the subject of what it means to be a New Zealander. I’m reading them in bite size pieces: Easton’s in the bedroom and Brown’s in the bathroom. Uh, so to speak.

They’re fascinating. Lots of things I’d never thought about, such as the fact that we’re the only country where our national day is always (and has been since the beginning) an occasion to question why we even have a national day, whether it means anything, what we might do instead, and what we’d celebrate if we had such a day. And also things I’d always wanted to know, like who Bill Sutch was.

The coolest thing so far has been realizing that I’m a Kiwi. Time and time again, when Kiwis are polled for what they think defines them, “the land” comes up again and again. Five generations of my family have been where we now live, and the place resonates. But beyond the immediate homestead, the country itself–one reason we continually ask visitors “so, what d’ya think of New Zealand?” (and have done so since visitors first started coming to NZ) is because we’re feeling out whether they have this bond too.

Russell’s book also quotes from an early visitor to NZ saying that the people were self-reliant, assertively democratic, but with absolutely no introspection about how they came to be that way. “No abstract thought,” is how it was put, I believe. We take problems as they come, but don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the deeper political or philosophical matters. Of course, anyone who can emphathize with a lack of abstract thought in those terms is probably pretty capable of abstract thinking, but never mind the details :-)

I went out on the boat with Dad today, from about 7:30 to 4:30. We sailed and motored out to Little Barrier, half-heartedly attempting to fish. We were looking for gannets diving, as it shows where the schools of fish are, but it must have been a lean lazy for the gannets–it was for us! We fished from Little Barrier, but caught only little snapper that we threw back. Then we sailed and motored home. Things like this are why I moved back. As Dad said, a day on the boat helps you detox from stress and work.

Now I’m sunburnt and my world is still tilting even though I’m back on dry land. I need something to detox from that :-)