July and August

About a month ago I felt I was coming out of the fog, which has been hanging over me for so long it was hard to remember life before it. I had about a week of clarity, and then got a cold and I was back in the fog again. But at least I realised I was in it, and worked to find my way out. Life is just plain difficult in the fog. Motivation to do anything much is fleeting.

Mark and I were just talking about it the other day, as we drove through broken streets, noticing gaps and buildings being demolished. I wish I could wake up and it was all a dream. Mark thinks it is like having been away from Christchurch, and wishes he could go back. But it isn’t a dream and the Christchurch we knew is no longer. We can’t go back.

The traffic is very sad. It takes me twenty minutes to bike to work. With no traffic it takes about seven minutes in the car. One day I left for work soon after 8:00am and it took forty minutes to get to work. I was in a line, just about the entire journey. Consequently I now take the bike unless I have to carry stuff or it is raining.
The roads out east are so bumpy. It is even tiring just driving over them, and you have to be alert all the time, particularly at night.

I wonder when you stop feeling damaged? I feel damaged a lot of the time, and I wasn’t even in a very traumatic situation like many. I think I feel the pain of the city, to a small degree. It is a collective ache. Mark went back to the Palms, a shopping mall near us that has finally opened after being broken in the February quake. He said it was like a piece of familiarity back again, and found it like coming home. I wonder when there will be an edition of the Press that does not mention the earthquake. I wonder when the aftershocks will stop. I wonder if it will ever really be over in my lifetime.

A friend told me today about her experiences in Australia. They left Christchurch and their damaged home soon after the February quake, as had previously been arranged, but found it very difficult as people didn’t know what to say, and she felt they were avoiding her. There was no-one to talk to about it.

Mark now works in the Central Red Zone from time to time. He finds it quite unnerving as it is so flat and empty. There are almost whole blocks with all the buildings removed. Makes surveying more straightforward without the buildings and traffic getting in the way. Also the buildings are often as they were left on the day of the quake, with office equipment sitting idle, jackets draped over chairs etc.


I have finally removed all that I want from my old office. We have had fairly free access over the last two weeks to sort our stuff for storage, taking home or disposal. Most of mine will be disposed of. I found it challenging to start with, but walking away from an office full of paper that I no longer need is strangely liberating. I hadn't realised how much I had been dreading that until it was over and the weight was lifted off me. At one point we needed some kind of trolley so I went scavenging along the corridor. The smell at one point was pretty dire; we suspect someone was foolish enough to open a bottle of milk. Or else it blew up. I found a trolley and useful boxes, felling like someone out of a post-apocalyptic television series.