The New Zealand I hold in my heart
For the "Other Loves" series, we've asked some Headland writers about what they love to do other than writing, and how their interests feed into their writing. Tim Snedden, author of The Flooded Temple in issue 24, here reflects on his experiences of living away from New Zealand.
The New Zealand I hold in my heart is not the same one that exists. It’s an idealised version of home—and that’s OK.
Leaving Auckland Airport, I keep my eyes peeled for the milkshed. Surrounded by paddocks dotted with gorse, hemmed in by number 8 wire fences and macrocarpa shelter belts, it’s a quintessential New Zealand scene. The milkshed in my mind’s eye is like the Colossus of Rhodes with a beacon aflame to guide the ships home.
But it’s sobering to see how small it really is—its roof noticeably sagging, ferrous vitiligo spread over another half-dozen sheets of corrugated iron.
Reality asserts itself. Home isn’t a place where magic is real, in fact it’s a helluva lot like Western New York. Sun comes up, goes down; the people all speak English; same stuff on telly; same political and social ills. That goddamn milkshed, why’d it have to look so run down? Talk about a disappointment after building up this trip for months on end, not to mention all the homesickness I’ve been fighting.
I return to my pages and weave a little magic. It took me quite a long time to figure out the best cure to homesickness, and it’s to keep 100% Pure New Zealand in a little snow globe on my writing desk.
Great pieces of fiction like Once Were Warriors and The Luminaries flirt with the magical but are rooted in the real, true tales of human struggle. I should try that. But what’s that gnawing on my heart? Screw it, I say, and commit to the falsehood.
Kiwi readers can, to put it plainly, smell the bullshit. But it’s no matter. I’m like Zane Grey, adventurer of Tales of the Angler’s Eldorado: New Zealand, writing for the American audience I desire to impress with tales of the antipodes. Gather ‘round and let me tell you about a magical realm at the ends of the Earth.
It feels really good to spurn reality and write a little fiction. If you’re a fellow expat aching for home, I recommend spinning a little yarn.
