freak: My Summer Reflection

Today marks the end of my summer holidays as tomorrow I will be embarking on my first day of my last year of school. I should be devastated but instead I'm happy. These holidays have been deeply gratifying and have given me opportunities to "break the routine", gain memorable experiences and befriend new people that I didn't expect I would befriend. If my holidays were boring, I would be dreading to go to school since I would be yearning to make up for the lost memories. Thank goodness my holidays were fucking great.

I started my freedom from school with 'On the Road' written by Jack Kerouac, who drew inspiration from his hitch-hiking travels across America and the strange people he met. I didn't actually finish it because it became a bit tedious and boring but I thought it was a beautiful idea to explore the world beyond our own. Coincidently I ended up hitch-hiking a few times this summer (with friends of course) but it obviously didn't compare to the pages of Kerouac's journey. Rather than travelling across my country, we travelled from party to party like typical teenagers. Disappointingly, we didn't meet anyone interesting enough to be mentioned on here. The most interesting were probably the bogans that were on a mission to "score some weed". They were thankfully friendly and stupid enough to have 8 people in their Corolla and I can tell you that it wasn't a comfortable ride sitting on a stranger's lap.

With the benefits of friends and their drivers licence, we weren't limited to the small boundaries of central Auckland suburbs. The ease of transport dissolved worries of being home before curfew as it gained us more time. We could do many different things before our parents began to call, "What time will you be home?". We went to a hidden (but not-so-secret) beach and waterfall. We walked through our schools in a different light as the sun slept. We explored the deteriorating rooms of abandoned and haunted houses while we wondered about the people that lived in them and how the houses came to be this way. My favourite place has been the Carlile house in Ponsonby because it has a certain beauty accumulated from the eerie, distraught and desolate environment. The crumbling walls were covered in quotes and drawings by, I assume, the drug-addicts and the homeless people that occupy the house at night or simply just bored teenagers. According to the internet, the house is heavily haunted but nothing supernatural happened. However there was a constant melody that sounded like a child's toy but it was possibly the neighbour's wind chimes. A door also slammed behind us but I guess it was a relatively windy day ( I hope. I don't remember). I'm just trying to convince myself that I wasn't in the presence of any ghostly characters otherwise I would not be able to sleep peacefully tonight.