h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

<< The very best being invisible, IMO.>>

I agree...

Vicky

Thank you for those images. You do seem to like your bridges in NZ. Are they bridges to other worlds? Do you ever cross them?

Sadly, it's just the North Shore (although there are fascinating parts of it.) There are better bridges in the middle of the country... Have you ever seen Vincent Ward's film about NZ as the gateway to elsewhere? It think it's called Navigator..

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095709/plotsummary

Here it is, weirdly wonderful, and wonderfully weird. (He also wrote the 3rd Aliens movie.)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103644/fullcredits#writers

Vicky

Yes I have seen that film a long time ago. I love its philosophy. I'll maybe watch it again. The idea of making such a connection. Bridges have always fascinated me. When I had that first severe manic psychosis, I made this reckless journey on my motorbike from north london where I had been living, back to south London where I was staying with a friend, where I had previously lived. South London came to represent everything good to me, as it still does. Crossing Waterloo bridge over the Thames took on mythic proportions for me. I was convinced these things like the 'Furies' were following me, and I had to make the connection across water. I had it in my mind that the Furies couldn't cross water. All of that psychotic episode was about making an impossible connection. It's highly complicated and to do with my life at that time.

The motorbike ride was of course insane. But I'd lost the ability to make rational decisions. It's a miracle I got back here, it was just up the road from where I now live.. I don't know how I managed to negotiate the complexity of London streets and traffic, half hallucinating as I was, and kept feeling I was about to pass out. Everything kept turning from bright white light to darkness. It seemed like some momentous act of meaning. I had to use every ounce of concentration and fierce determination I had. When I got back I felt impossibly euphoric and ran up the road and burst into someone's house, an artist luckily, to tell him the good news. He called the doctor to give me an injection of strong sedative.....

When I got back from Australia I was obsessed about thinking about it thousands and thousands of miles below my garden, when it was winter here. I had such a longing for it.

Wow, that motorbike road was mythical, in the true meaning of the word - that is, it was redolent with deep meaning, and even if you can't *quite* recover the meaning now (or maybe you can?) perhaps it wasn't as random or weird as it now seems..

As you're presently living in South London, it's where your heart is at home...

I used to sigh to myself in the evenings, "I wish I was at home", when I was first married, and strictly speaking, I was at home. (With my husband.) I thought I meant, at home with my parents and sibs, that is, at a past home, and the distance was time, not space... Yet, it wasn't even really that! I actually kept a suitcase packed... I thought it was common sense, as we lived literally up the road from a not-dormant (though I didn't know it then) volcano. (I heard a few years later, an old woman talking on the radio about how it was that only she in her street had walked away from a landslide that destroyed every house in the street, with more than just the clothes she was wearing at the time... She'd taken her ancient father's advice and always kept a packed suitcase by the door, in case of natural disaster, and we have them in abundance here! )
The old lady's disaster
http://www.otago.ac.nz/geology/whatis/landslides.htm

http://www.teara.govt.nz/EarthSeaAndSky/NaturalHazardsAndDisasters/Landslides/5/en

It all raises the question - where is home? Can it be reached on a motorbike? Is it in Australia?

(What kind of bike was it? The biggest I ever had was a Suzuki 125, what my father would have called a Phillishave! )

Vicky

Where is home?

You know when you're there, if you listen to your heart. But some of us are gypsies, and get restless....

.....

It was a black Honda CG 125, which I called Finnegan. I have mentioned to you before that I later rode a red Moto Guzzi V50, 500cc, which is ridiculously attractive to my mind. But my heart still belongs to Finnegan. We call small bikes 'hairdryers', at least *I* do. I have no idea what my old dad calls them.

I've a couple of faded photos of both bikes I'll email you...

........

That's quite funny that you kept a suitcase packed. I wonder what you kept in it? A bible? a few more dozen books? a cooling down kit for heated up larva? A face net for guarding against birds coming towards your face?

I'd have loved the thrill of living near a volcano. You really should build up that sense of adventure in yourself a bit more.

My 125 was named Stella (my brother said it should be a name that could be bellowed, as Marlon Brando does in Streetcar...)

<>

yes, please!

Auckland is built on seven volcanoes, as my old Mum used to say, although she always said "hills"... like Rome. I was stunned to discover a few years back, that they're *not* all dormant!

Here's something I didn't know! :shock:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4455483a11.html

A general overview
http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/volcanoes/nzvolcanoes/aucklandprint.htm

Hey I love that volcano erupting under water. The heated up exploding thing in the cold ocean - that's completely brilliant.

And living around volcanos in Auckland. I'm starting to see it in a whole new light. Especially with that amazing bridge.

Funny my parents didn't mention all these Romantic aspects. Too busy having cups of tea at a water front cafe probably....

I'm just recording blackbirds and others birds singing now as it gets light with this camera. The sound of it is almost science fiction with this microphone.......

Wow, just as it gets light! How magical!



Yes, there's a famous childrens' boojk/TV series called Under The Mountain... it was being filmed in the crater of Mt Eden and we (my brother, my *darling's* brother and I) snuck on to the set, at 3 am. Awesome!

It's about beings who live in the crater, which is reality is filled with who'd be barbecued mutton if/when it erupts again...

Vicky

I looked up on the web about NZ volcanoes. One I really like is White island. The vent is underwater, but the sides of two craters form the island. It also has a lake. It's very active.

It looks amazing.

But I found 3 hilarious You Tube videos of it. 2 kiwi ones, and one made by some really embarassing Brit tourists...

All the imagery is brilliant but it's the way the films have been made. One of the kiwi ones features these amazing scenes visually, but they've stitched together bits from The Planet suite using 'Jupiter - the bringer of Jollity' as backing. It's *so* inappropriate as music. Why couldn't they have use 'Mars - the bringer of War'? And the group of people treking along with their yellow helmets are really funny

Another one involves a kiwi woman attempting to explain all about it, clearly with not much clue about anything.

And the Brit one shows a group of them stumbling along, whilst all is so imaginatively described by this northerner bloke.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-YdW3wi7BIY&feature=related

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4xyr1Ql74m0

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DgiUeegRGQs (Brit one)


This link is good for web cams. When I saw it earlier, the images were from at night, and you could see the stars.

http://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/volcams/whiteisland/index.html

But those films I found hugely amusing. They somehow manage to castrate the whole heated upness of the thing.......