Not in all senses, no. But in this sense, yes.

I would have liked to have grown up without a religious, metaphysical gut-level fear of ‘the World’ as something that would invisibly and indetectibly steal or corrupt my soul if I strayed beyond approved boundaries even in thought. This fear has warped and cramped my life and spirit and is something I have to constantly, consciously battle every day.

A sense of freedom and possibility and just plain common-sense normality is something I deeply envy in almost everyone else of my generation. There’s a sense of connectedness and being-at-home here in my country which other people seem to take for granted, but which I as a second-generation resident of a heavily walled pocket subculture don’t have, and probably never will experience this side of the grave. I miss that.

There are other problems which New Zealanders of my generation face which possibly I do not, or at least face differently, and in the end I think we all have our own separate paths to tread which come from different directions to the same centre. So nobody’s life is really superior to anothers in the absolute sense; we’re all learning different lessons.

But that’s what I would have liked to change; and what still brings me to tears of more than just nostalgia when I look back at the 1980s.

‘Why do dreams die? Why does anything die? If we knew that, we wouldn’t let them, would we? So ‘why’ is a question without an answer. Here’s one for you: Why are you asking me questions that you know have no answer?’

‘Because I want to find out what you’re afraid of.’

‘No, you don’t. Because you’re afraid of it too. Nobody really wants to face their fear.’

‘Perhaps there’s nothing to be afraid of?’

‘Or perhaps it’s *nothing* that we’re afraid of. What do you say to nothing? To the void? Hello, void, would you like to eat my face? Kind of a one-sided conversation. So no, you don’t want to go there and neither do I.’

‘Some dreams don’t die.’

‘Name one.’

‘Friendship. Love.’

‘Friends change, move away. Love usually turns to breakup, if people even manage it once. Unless you’re arguing about abstract quantities that nobody can actually *touch*. I guess I can’t disprove you there. I’m talking about this world; the real world. Here, everything dies. Everything.’

‘And you want to die too? Is that it? Get the inevitable over with?’

‘It seems like it would save time, yeah. But I’m not sure I even want that. Even self-destruction would require being able to form a coherent desire.’

‘Desire, itself, is something you want.’

‘Right. But there’s nothing left to *see*, if you know what I mean. Nothing I can actually *touch*. The only things left to desire are abstractions, and they don’t help. I want a world I can believe in, that I can kick, that won’t be taken away from me. That can’t.’

‘And no such world exists?’

‘That’s what I’m asking.’

Why what?