I've been reading about this — where you assign characteristics to another person that may be an amplification of and distortion of their real character, or may be unrelated to what they are actually like.

But it strikes me that we must project personalities onto everybody we know. We don't receive personalities directly, just the behaviours of those personalities in a subset of situations, mediated by our senses. We must construct models of the people around us, which we improve as we interact with them. When we ascribe personality traits to people we know, we choose traits that best fit the evidence we have received, and we project these traits back onto the person.  

This may or may not be accurate, but it's always simplistic, as we will never have all the evidence. So we need to be careful not to announce that we have someone all figured out: it's insulting, and it's probably wrong.

O: Overall, this is a joyful double album, although as usual, it's rooted in a lot of difficulty. At one point, you express the sentiment that beauty will save the world. How difficult is it to sustain that feeling on a day-to-day basis?

NC: I think you need to be vigilant. I'm a kind of hard-wired pessimist. I can't help but see the world in a certain kind of way. For my own sanity, I find it necessary to seek out beauty in the world, and I do that through music, and through literature and nature, and in the same ways that everybody else does, I suppose. That seems to be important to me.

In Saturday's paper I apparently used the metaphor: "Learning three different ways to cut up an onion when you really only need one." So anyway, I thought I'd tell you (since people are asking) how I dice an onion.

1. Slice off both ends.
2. Sit the onion on one of its newly truncated ends, and slice in half.
3. Remove skin
4. Place half down flat and slice from one end to the other.
5. Repeat at right angles as best you can.
6. Same again for the other half.

If you meet someone who slices an onion the same way as you, hold onto them. These things are important.

The plan was to camp overnight at Craigieburn Forest Park, which is now officially "The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe" country. You can see containers and trucks and busses and cars on the terrace opposite Cave Stream, and tents and buildings (presumably housing wardrobes) in the distance farther down the valley.

But we decided the Craigieburn camping area was a bit dark and cold looking, so (after a quick repair involving rubber bands to the underside of the car) we drove on to the Hawdon Shelter at the edge of Arthur's Pass. This is a beautiful spot to camp on a terrace above the river. There is space for thousands -- on Saturday night though, it was just us. A robin came to visit, perched on various points of the car (both wing mirrors, rear bumper, towbar, corner of door of open boot), sat on our picnic rug, attempted several times with no success to perch on the handles of a plastic grocery bag, had more success with one of the camera tripods. A kea showed up later too, checked us out from the top of a tree, told us what it was a few times ("Keeee-aa! Keeee-aa!") and then flew off to peck bits off the abandoned trampers' cars.

That night, a frog and a morepork serenaded us to sleep. Or, for Grace, kept us awake: "Every 5 seconds!" — that's how often the frog was croaking, which was, apparently, unreasonably frequent.

So yesterday the "well, we've come this far" effect set in properly so we continued on to Arthur's Pass. Walked up the Bealey Valley past hillsides abloom with New Zealand giant buttercups (Mount Cook lilies). The whole valley was hanging with scent. If you want to see them, now is the time to go (Now! Take the day off work and go!). The Temple Basin car park is a walking-free alternative place to see them.

At the head of the Bealey Valley is a false glacier. I don't know if anybody told it though, because it sure looked like a regular glacier. Its foot was completely buried under a thin layer of moraine and shredded alpine plants. You realise with a start you're already standing on the glacier — scratch the dirt aside and there's the ice secreted underneath. It's false as it forms from avalaches off Mount Rolleston that collect on the valley floor here, rather than directly from snowfall. Perhaps the best easy walk in Arthur's Pass, especially when the lilies are out, and not nearly as long as the DOC sign indicates — it's an easy 2 hours.

If you turn to the last page (that's I30) of the Careers section of yesterday's Christchurch Press . . . yes that's me: me and my career, such as it is, lurking in the obscure backblocks to be ignored and recycled by a readership of no less than 222,000 households.

The last time I was in the Press I was on the front page above the fold, and the picture was bigger. But I didn't get to say anything. Alas, my student protesting days are over.

I didn't have lunch and you'd think with a subject like that I was quite conscious of the fact. Well, I clearly am quite conscious of the fact given the previous self-conscious sentence. Nevertheless I was thinking of quarks for some reason. OK but now I'm thinking about cheese. Which is a peculiar hobby of mine.

Anyway the point: you can now either post a comment or send me an email. You'll see the email link under this post. Comments are better but if you come over all shy or want to propose something illegal, send me an email. (If it's merely immoral, go with a comment.)

There has been some discussion over at Sarah's secret clubhouse about ways this feature may be made more amusing. And that may come to pass, depending on the weather this weekend.

Oh yeah, in other news I'm thinking of splitting this weblog in twain to move the "nature" stuff off into its own space. But not sure yet as that would just leave the whining.

Fundamentally, I don't know why people come here. Would it be better if things were more focussed?

My friends Thomas and Delwyn feeling exhausted on a hot day on the Queen Charlotte track.

We'd just run out of water as we passed a sign declaring the campsite was only 15 minutes away, which we were rather happy about.

This is a long track. I would recommend people mountain bike it rather than walk it.

I'm thinking of electricity as you wrap your arms around me. We are stator and rotor and I whirl in your fields. Or fluid dynamics: I am the hollow eye of the wrapped in your elegant vortex curves.

But your warm pressure slows my dizzy mind and I feel the moments stretch out around me as if I'm watching a spinning top about to trip onto its side. There — I stop: thinking nothing, just sensing.

Your hair. Your heat. Your breath. Your pressure. I feel the beat beneath my fingertips. Is it my heart or yours?

I look in the mirror expecting my face might betray me. But there's nothing there. My hands: just a shake, nothing my pockets can't bury. I look at my feet and think as always: time for new boots.

I kick open the door, and feel myself slip. The planet and I meet, not for the first time. I was once a supernova and the world beneath me was one too. We condensed together out of dark gasses. If I were that vapour today, I'd float into the sky, ever thinner, spreading to enclose the earth, a few atoms of me there in every breath.

Birds at the edge of the mudflats.
An awkward distance. I try to make them out:
black shapes against the water.
I envy those birds, walking on mud.

I keep to the path but in my head
I'm one of those birds
not sinking but floating
on that shining border.

The billboard near the art gallery (or is it near Cranmer Square): "Time waits for no dude."

I don't quite get Scribe. He talks about coming from the streets of Phillipstown. OK so it's not Fendalton, but hey it's not that bad. It's suburbia, dude. I just think people could be a little more honest with their lyrics but then what do I know? He did win a (shared) best songwriter award recently for this. Maybe it's me: I prefer lyrics that make sense.

I'm reading Games People Play, on which I'm reserving judgement as I'm only up to page 37. Written in 1962, it's full of quaint archaisms: housewives, businessmen, salesmen, hostesses, dinner parties, even "old-fashioned Oriental potentates."

I've found an interesting passage talking about parties as a form of ritual. People who are uncomfortable with the ritual (i.e. aren't very good at it) may prefer to switch ritual for procedure by assisting the hostess in the kitchen. I wonder if this is the origin of that group of people that still congregates in the kitchen at parties? I know there are other factors — often there's just no room anywhere else, often a slightly more intimate space is more fun, and it is after all where the food comes from.

But taking myself as an example, I'd probably much rather be washing the dishes and talking to the person drying them than mingling in a large crowd. I guess I'm crowd-antisocial. Perhaps that's because I approach social situations procedurally rather than ritually. I can talk to somebody on a deep level, but not so easily on a superficial, ritualised level. Unfortunately, that superficial level is part of the way we initiate social interactions.

This brings me back to that post about asking people you've just met what they do for a living. It's silly but it's a de facto part of the greeting ritual. We watched Toy Love last night where somebody substituted the line, "What do you think?" The other person was totally flummoxed by this — "About what?"

I've always been a night person. I have a long Circadian rhythm, which means I could happily go to bed several hours later each successive night. And at one stage when I was in between jobs this is exactly what happened. My ideal day should be around 27 hours. The effect of this is that I usually don't get enough sleep: my rhythm keeps me up late then my alarm clock wakes me up early.

Except that I've recently switched to being a morning person. I keep waking at six in the morning and getting tired before it gets dark. I figure it's OK though as I'm still not getting enough sleep.

I once (many years ago) fell asleep holding a cup of hot coffee. I woke up still holding the now cold cup. Something in my brain I guess was alert enough to tell me not to roll over.

A friend of mine said a few weeks back that she was impressed by how much I achieve. I have a job and I run my own business and I have this weblog and I take photographs and I run another portal website and I have ideas for new websites I want to build and I run a household and....

...And it's all an illusion. I don't do any of these things well, except perhaps my job which has a fixed quantity of time allotted to it. I've been spending time writing to friends recently and that time has come directly off running my business. The time spent running my business was already time withdrawn from running my tramping website. I don't spend enough time taking photographs and I don't have time to do anything with the photographs that I do take. I don't even run a household. It just looked like I did to her as I always seemed to be doing things.

I don't have time to do all the things I want to do. It's a vicious circle: the more I try to do, the more I feel myself failing (and given that I do none of these things well, I think that's a fair assessment). But the more I fail, the more I try to compensate by doing more.

I guess I cannot find success as it's not something one discovers in the outside world: it is something you discover within yourself. Unfortunately, I'm all out. I'll never succeed, no matter how much I accomplish.

I know this all sounds a little too self-pitying, but that's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm just trying to figure things out.

It's been a busy few weeks here in Matthewland. I...

• Went to Kaikoura to watch albatrosses;
• Embarked on a wildlife photograph posting spree to make myself feel like a normal human being;
• Drove to Punakaiki, camped, and explored caves;
• Went to a wedding in Oamaru where I met my ex-wife briefly, then skulked out to commune with deserted limestone buildings;
• Met up with another ex and felt thoroughly crappy afterward;
• Spent a lot of time cuddling an old friend and teaching her beautiful daughter silly words;
• Walked most of the Queen Charlotte Track in Marlborough and enjoyed watching the sunset on the drive home most of all;
• Had a difficult conversation with Grace in which I resolved to try to be less of a jerk;
• Scared myself with some of the personal things I've been posting here lately;
• Made a plan to spend an hour a day writing.

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
 -- Frank Lloyd Wright

Smelling the sea again, watching green stars radiating from your fingertips as you plough them through the black saltwater; sneaking up on a shining cuckoo for the first time ever; watching a peacock displaying its albino fan for the benefit of a bothered white duck; being with good people; feeling the weight of a camera in your hands; watching a young possum climb down off its mother's back to see what food she has found; marvelling at the lemon sky of the coast sunset on the road back home; saying goodbye.

None of these things are on the brochures. The track itself is long and a little dull.