Noise in the static/ Notes in the silence

People keep asking me the same old, tired questions: 

"What are you doing now? What do you want to do?" 

I reply: "I want to see the world",
 but still, they persist; 

"What do you want to do after that?"

They talk of marriage, of cars, of finance, of all the details of life before death that punctuate our lives in short sharp bursts
 - isn't life but a fleeting moment?


And the question still stands silent and unanswered:

"What do you want to do after you see the world?"

I want to know why - why then, is it not enough to see the world?
Or more importantly, to live in it?
The earth we live on is so vast, full of wide open spaces both within and without, these places I long to explore and to discover.
In our twenty-first century madness where everything is available at the push of a button on your phone, we still have so much to see.
What do I want to see after I see the world?
I want to see more of it, and I want my eyes to be constantly wide open at the beauty of it all. 

And From Back Home...

Over the last two months as I went about my daily business in Italy like it was nothing new, words were forming around at the back of my mind. Somewhere alongside the memories of New Zealand, of surfing with my brother, ugly sweater parties, constant drives to the Stomach to plug in my guitar and get lost in the music, of the desire to leave....

Somewhere alongside these, words like "Leaving", "Home" and, most frighteningly, "What's next?" were already starting to rear their heads. Caught in the moment, I'd put them to the back of my mind and stay busy with living. Yet in the moments of quiet: on Via Monte Zebio when no one was home, at night when I was trying to sleep, and most often when walking back home from Bar 77 in the cold, they'd push their way forward until they were right on the tip of my tongue. And they'd leave me feeling paralyzed because quite frankly, I couldn't imagine life outside of Italy.

Four months is a frustrating length of time to do ANYTHING, let alone study abroad. My friend Kayla wrote about this a lot better than I ever could (which you can read here) , how all of a sudden you can go from arriving to leaving, and how it felt like it was too soon to go. I can't really add much to that, because it's seriously one of the best things I've ever written. This one will be a lot more scatter-brained, because, even though its been over a month since I left Europe, I'm still trying to figure out what it all meant. And I'm still asking myself the same questions....

I've never been good at saying goodbyes. The one in Viterbo on a cold Friday night was no exception, but it proved to be a lot harder than I was expecting, knowing these were people I absolutely loved, some of my best friends and we had to go back to living on opposite sides of the planet.

Despite having such great views, life in NZ sucks sometimes. 

But every time you go somewhere, every time you take that next step, you have to leave something behind. To go to Italy I had to leave my band, my family, my church - everything I knew and was comfortable with to pack it all up and head to the other side of the world. Similarly coming home I had the same thing in reverse - leaving my new friends, new apartment, new language and new culture I'd somehow manage to work myself into in the short space of four months.

Still wishing I didn't have to leave these guys behind.

It should feel like starting over again. I wrote a song before I left with the line "Adventure is calling me, far across the sea to another time, another place...". Where you are can be as much of an adventure as you make it. As one of my best friends Leo told me, a lot of people explore and travel a lot but never really stop to look around their own area. While he was referring to Viterbo, I suddenly realised the statement kind of held true for me - there's so much of my own country I have yet to experience (and surf!). So despite the mess my head's been in since I stepped off the plane in Wellington airport and it all just stopped, I'm excited to see just WHAT New Zealand has to offer me. At least for the next little while.

Because I promised I'd be back.

At least 50% because I miss views like this.

But until then, its figuring out what to do next, in order to live and save enough to make it back over. Plane tickets sadly don't come cheap! Yet while its necessary, it's so damn draining trying to even decide how to go about it.

Morgan, my best friend in Italy and one of my favourite people in the entire world, once gave me a piece of absolute wisdom one night when we were walking home. I can't remember her exact words, and I left my journal with the proper quote in on a bus in Florence, but it was something along the lines of how I was afraid to live in the everyday, ordinary parts of life. It's been something I've thinking about a lot since I've been home, especially on the days when everything's just seen so flipping boring. 

Miss this homie and her great advice! Even if she's the reason this post so long coming because we were supposed to skype and blog at the same time, a feat of extreme measures WAY hard to organise when you don't hang in the same time zone.

[Side note: I really should just give up my derailed train of thought here, and finish this post with some more gems of wisdom from my extremely quotable friends.] 

"Insert joke about America/your mum/something else hilariously inappropriate" - Bryce, one of said quotable friends.

I couldn't write this post in Italy, I couldn't write it in Germany, and I couldn't write it for the last three weeks of being back home in New Zealand, despite having all the time in the world. But now it's time to start writing again, start doing things, start finding out what 2016 looks like for me, and start living again.

I wrote this down on a physical piece of paper the other day (because I'm hip yo and I like keeping it oldschool sometimes), and I want to finish with it:

"Europe started out with a step, which turned into a mountain of frustration and paperwork, which turned into a song, which turned into a plane ticket, which turned into the best time of my life. And now all that's waiting and up in the air - all that is similarly only a step away.

It's like coming up from a crashing wave on my surfboard out there in the place we call the "impact zone", where all the waves are dumping down on you. You've just come up, beaten, grasping for air and with your salt-drenched hair hanging down over your eyes. Already a second wave is looming, too close behind the wave which just absolutely wrecked you. In that split second, it's all about the pause - or the lack of it - which determines the rest of the surf. You either hesitate too long and get smashed by another twenty sucker punches to the gut, or you  push the hair out of your eyes and gun it, pushing yourself to the absolute limit just to get over that one wave.

And here, in re-entry, I've got to make it over the wave. I need to make the new feeling of uncertainty transform into feeling alive once more. To push for the new pastures and wide open seas ahead, to long for something and chase it, to travel where I am now and not just where I have been,

And if all else fails, give me a guitar and 365 days, and Europe I'm coming back.

Behind/ Reflections

I'm about seven blog posts behind where I want to be, and I don't think I'm going to be able to catch up until I get back to New Zealand and things slow right down again.

Over two months in and less to go, I can't say I'm relishing the thought of leaving, especially as there's so much I would like to do here I just know isn't realistic or plausible. Once again in my life I find myself torn between doing and wanting to chronicle the actions of the doing.

However, studying abroad's given me a bit of a fresh perspective on this one:

I think I'm constantly torn between the moment and reflecting on the moment simply because of my innate creativity. The fact is both things bring me great joy: there's a beauty in being part of an incredible moment, in feeling intense emotion, but consequently if you even have a spark of creativity, there's beauty in re-creating that moment through your art. Through exaggerating it, turning it into something new or simply from learning from it and moving on - its an incredible gift. For me there is no subject I know both as much and as little about as myself, and to rephrase the things I feel through music really is the most incredible gift to have been given. Not that everything I write is autobiographical - in fact often I stray away from this - it's just for me the best things I ever written peel back a layer on my soul and show something which doesn't often come to light as much as it should. I've always held by the statement that if you really want to know me, don't try reading me, try reading my words.

At the same time, this process is at times incredibly self-indulgent and stressful, spending so much time away from the real world reflecting can really do your head in. More and more I find myself refreshed from simply soaking it all in. I think that's what drew me to surfing so much: out there on the ocean all your attention is focused on the next wave, and the next wave only. Over the other side of the world I'm also slowly (as Italians say "Piano, piano") learning to live life one breath at a time. I photograph a lot, but more often than not I'm more content to put my camera down and just see. I write little because I'm suddenly more involved in the doing. I play music less because between studying Italian, teaching English and travelling I'm really interested in getting out from behind the shield my guitar often is and really getting to know the people I share this side of the world with. I read the Bible less than I'd like, but I see God a lot more in the world around me, in the cathedrals and the spires and the lakes and the forests.

In conclusion, I think I'm coming to peace with the fact that I need both states of being. I need to live the moment, reflect on it to get out of the heady, privileged rush that studying abroad can give you, and then come back out of my creative daydreams refreshed to repeat the whole cycle again. I need to reflect and create and sing and play and dream, but I also need to realise what's right in front of my eyes and appreciate it for what it is.

Here's some pictures from my recent adventures:

Artist at Assisi, Italy

Arch in Milan, Italy

Photo-taking, Perugia, Italy

German woman in the moment, Munich, Germany

Glockenspiel, Munich, Germany

Surfers at the Standing Wave, Munich, Germany

Rooftops of Munich, Germany

Snippets of one crazy weekend in South Italy

 After three weekends in Viterbo (which is admittedly one of the nicest places to spend your weekends), I was getting itchy feet and decided that the upcoming weekend would be the perfect time to see a little bit more of Italy.

Now there's a couple of things wrong with this supposedly "genius idea for a weekend" I had in my head...

1) I suck at planning or organizing ANYTHING. I'm a very go-with-the-flow, spontaneous kinda person so the idea of actually having a solid plan kind of terrifies me. Honestly, I have no idea how I even got to Italy most days.
2) It was a full-on study week, so I had little time to actually plan anyway.
3) I somehow was struck down with the nastiest eye infection/hayfever combo I've ever experienced in my lifetime.

Because of this lethal combination, I ended up booking the tickets the day before we left, going to a place just on a whim which I'd only ever heard about twice. I'm not lying when I say I knew literally nothing about what I was getting into. Luckily though, I had three great friends with me who are quite adventurous and very trusting, which was really what I needed for this trip. Thanks guys!

So, we ended up in Salerno.

Viewz

For me, the absolute best thing about Salerno was the fact that I finally saw some Italian surfers.

My people

We stood and watched them for a good quarter of an hour, and it was too good. The swell was gentle and rolling, but looked like a lot of fun. I swear I'm somewhat addicted to surfing cos I honestly had the biggest cravings to go surfing after that, it almost hurt to be on dry land and not on a board out on the sea. Unfortunately, Salerno didn't have such a thing as a surf rental shop though so in the end I had to walk away from the ocean, half severely disappointed and half super-stoked to find out you can surf in Italy at all.

Amalfi: Up close and from far

We reached Amalfi after a very loooooong bus ride surrounded by unruly youths who I pretty close to knocking out at some points. The town was lovely, but we spent a long time wandering around trying to find a place for lunch (getting our priorities sorted as usual). After a great feed of pizza and limoncella (the local beverage which is flipping delicious) we finally got to soak up the atmosphere and art of the place.

The Duomo in Amalfi and some of its "art"

 The Duomo (church) in Amalfi was incredibly stunning, both inside and out.

The figure of Christ inside the Duomo was awe-inspiring. I could have stared at it for hours.

We finished our time in Amalfi watching the sun go down from on the wharf and exploring some natural rock formations. 

Pictured: The "natural" rock formations

Some of the best times in my life have been sitting with a few friends watching the sea. Amalfi was no exception: sitting watching the waves lap at the edge of the wharf and passing round a bottle of wine with these people I only met four weeks ago was the perfect way to see the day out.

The following day we caught the afternoon ferry to Positano for more good times.

Aforementioned good times

Going along with the general Italian trend of good-looking views and people, the ride in was spectacular. Once there, Positano completely blew my mind despite the short amount of time I got to spend there. Naturally, I chucked my togs on and hit the beach to do some swimming at 5pm. I love that you can do that here. Even in full summer back home in New Zealand, I sincerely doubt I've been out in the ocean past 4 without a wetsuit on. 

The ride in.

One ferry ride back into Salerno, dinner was on the menu. And afterwards, I had the extreme pleasure of sampling a local delicacy from a gelato place called "brioche".

The picture doesn't do it justice.

\If I was to simply translate brioche into "icecream sandwich" I would probably be speaking the truth but at the same time I'd be doing a grave injustice to the beauty of this food. Although initially concerned, on my first bite my taste buds were all like "Oh hello there!", and then by about the third bite in I swear I could hear angels singing. Brioche isn't just food, it's heaven. It's just as well they only serve this in Salerno, Italy because I'm pretty sure it would be illegal anywhere else. It would cause torment and pain, obesity rates would skyrocket in the US/NZ, and even I would get fat. But man. Just the thought of that brioche and my mouth is already salivating. Thanks Italy for doing your food right, once again.

I'm going to continue the food train of thought here because gosh darn it I'm hungry. As a friend so quipped to me, I might as well re-name my adventures "Eat-ily" because that's pretty much all I do here. Well, Jono, you're not wrong. Eating in Italy though is a little different from just filling your stomach, its an experience which in itself brings me great joy. Dishes are cooked to perfection and every region has its local specialities which are completely worth sampling. Food itself here is like another whole adventure, and for once I enjoy eating not for the sake of getting full but for the explosion of flavor you get with the meal. Maybe I'm turning into a food snob, or maybe I just appreciate it more because I take twice as long to eat pasta because I can't master the perfect fork twirl. I just don't know.

Anyway, we ate spectacularly well in South Italy. They have the best little bakeries in the world which serve up incredible pastries and decent coffee, the local drink of limoncella, and in Naples, which we went to on Sunday I had the best pizza of my entire life. Eat your heart out Domino's. Oh and did I mention Brioche?

Before Napoli, we stopped off in a place called Pompei. You might have heard of it.

Seen in Pompei

The historical centre of Pompei was just immense. It was easily the biggest set of ruins I'd ever wandered around before, and that was with half of it being shut off on Sunday. Such an incredible place, it was really easy to imagine it as a bustling city before the volcanic disaster wiped it out. The modern town of Pompei was great as well. Wrapping my face around a giant panino (sandwich) which was almost bigger than my mouth, I made my way to the center of town with Jamie to enjoy some sunrays and hang by a fountain. Such an Italian way to spend the afternoon. Eat your heart out Subway cos that was the best damn sandwich I've had in my life.

Vendetta's against fast-food restaurants from back home aside, our journey continued to Napoli and then after the aforementioned pizza (which is worth mentioning again because it was so great), made our way back to Viterbo. Despite it being an unplanned and disorganised little venture, everything had run so smoothly that I started to relax. We caught the last train to a town in the middle of nowhere called Bracciano, and everything was going fine.

Except then it wasn't.

In a typical "We're to tired to think" and "Everything will work out perfectly" tourist mode, none of us thought to ask if the bus stop we were hanging out by was the right one to catch the bus back to Viterbo. Guess what? It wasn't.

The result of our poor life choices

So what do you know, we spent the night in a train station. Things started off fine with a good few rounds of cards and some wine (to help us sleep of course) but took a turn for the worse when we moved inside to get out of the rain. Some very shady looking characters also decided that the train station was a great sleeping spot (it wasn't) and came and joined us. I was naturally to sketched out to sleep, so spent an uncomfortable couple of hours staying awake keeping watch while my friends all somehow managed to grab a few hours of sleep. To this day I have no idea how, as the train station floor was more uncomfortable than a bed of nails and the inside was hotter than a sauna with all four of us plus the three shady extras spread out inside. What a night. Finally caught a train back the next day at 6.30 in the morning and somehow still made it to Italian class on time.

After somehow surviving that, I really think any travelling from now on is going to be ok. Just hoping I don't have to sleep in any more train stations.

Art

Usually my art only really takes a place across limited mediums - of words and music.

Lately, I've been working towards shaping art in a different way: through a camera lens. I'm not particularly skilled in this area and a lot of my best shots have been on the fly. Luckily, when travelling abroad its not to hard to capture a lot of amazing sights just by being in the right place and having a somewhat vague idea about framing.

Here's my favourite shots from Italy so far:

Tarquina Lido, 4th September. Shot on my Iphone

Civita di Bagnoregio, 3rd September. Shot on Canon 300D.

 Flower at the Dying City, 3rd September. Shot on Canon.

 Flags at the Santa Rosa festival, Viterbo, 3rd September. Shot on Canon.

Riomaggiore from the ocean, Cinque Terre, 12th September.

Bricks at Manarola, Cinque Terre. 13th September. 

Busker in Rome, 15th Sepember

Morgan & Tessa, Rome. 15th September

 Pillar at the Forum, Rome. 15th September

Destroyed pillar, Rome. 15th September

 Unknown tourist, Rome. 15th September

 Old stones, The Forum. Rome, 15th September. 

 Road sign, Rome. 15th September. 

 Overlooking the city. Rome, 15th September. 

 Photography class, Rome. 15th September.

 Unsymmetrical flower, Rome. 15th September. 

 Column, taken same as above. 

 Walls, Rome. 15th September. 

 Monster Garden, Bormazo. 18th September. 

 The "Sacred Wood", Bormazo. 18th September.

 Woods near Bormazo, 18th September. I walked into a giant spiderweb after taking this shot. 

 "Italy in one shot", Lake Bracchino. 19th September.

1.  Angularia, Lake Bracchino. 19th September

 Sunset over Viterbo. 19th September. 

 Watching the barrel races, Viterbo. 20th September.

 Racing, 20th September. 

 Steps near Bormazo. 23rd September. 

 Alex re-enacting the Titanic. Bormazo, 23rd September. 

 Still-life. Bormazo, 23rd September. 

 Still-life in B&W. Same as above. 

 Viscente contemplating pizza. Bormazo.

 "Pizza is a difficult philosophy". Same as above. 

Snapped taking snaps, ft. Kayla. Bormazo, 23rd September.