Rediscovering Christchurch, the Reboot
At the start of this year I made a pact with myself to get out and explore my city a bit more. The earthquake that hit us in September last year literally shook me out of my rut. As I figured it might have done the same thing for other people I eventually started blogging about what I was doing to share the experience of reconnecting with Christchurch. I started posting a series I called Rediscovering Christchurch where I got out and about and reconnected with the city as well as highlighting businesses which needed our help.
That all came to a crashing halt at 12.51 pm on Tuesday February 22nd when the 6.3 aftershock struck and destroyed the new world we were growing. I was shattered, broken, demoralised and depressed by what happened that day. I live in an area which was badly affected and while our house escaped basically untouched (again), life has been very difficult. It took all my energy to just keep going and I had nothing left to give anything back to the city this time. Besides that, it all seemed so very futile - the very sense of healing and recovery that my series of posts had given me had been brutally ripped away and I lived with the daily sense that it would just happen again. I had lost hope.
Lately, I've been actively trying to turn that idea around. In my head I had committed to staying in the city and helping it recover but I wasn't doing anything that would really help. I was sending out a lot of negativity. That was understandable, of course, but it wasn't helping - not me, not the city and not any of the other people around me. So I made a pact with myself to always write or say something positive when I talked about my experiences from then on. It has helped me enormously and now, a month later, I feel much happier and more positive about the future of the city.
However, I have noticed an alarming trend among some of my friends and family and in parts of the wider community that I can see online. There is an aura of negativity and defeatism which is starting to grip people around me - and it's getting more deeply entrenched every day. Obviously I understand that feeling; I was gripped with it myself for around 11 weeks and even at times when I tried to turn my thinking around. But it seems to me that, even more than before, the city needs people to go in to bat for it. Yes, of course there is a lot to be sad about. We have lost a lot, and we will lose a lot more, but there is also a lot to be proud of still and much of the city is alive and well and not just functioning but vibrating. I feel a need to go out and find out what's good about the place right now. There's no need to wait for future Christchurch to find things to be positive about - there is amazing stuff happening around us every day. I expect there will be some sadness on the way, given the enormity of what happened that's impossible to avoid, but my overall purpose here is to take a look at the good things we have going for us.
To get started, this week I visited the western side of the cordon around the red zone. I felt a need to start there - the area inside that cordon is quite obviously the centre of the destruction and it is only in understanding what is going on 'in there' that I can really appreciate what is going on 'out here.' The centre of the city is an eerie place - the army still guards it, signs still flutter outside shops and yet it is lifeless. It is, in a very real sense, a place stuck in time. The thing about this side of the cordon, though, is that the damage is less obvious. I didn't stand at a road entry and look down a vista of a long, empty street filled either with destroyed buildings or newly empty lots, the way you see at other points in the cordon. This is the side most filled with hope - there is enormous hope for the future here, particularly for the future of Cashel Street as it edges closer to becoming a central city shopping hub later this year. I'm planning to come back periodically to watch as it emerges.
While I still want to visit the rest of the cordon, I focused myself on the west because it is there that we should see the most signs of a resurrecting city appearing. It's also where the cathedral can be best seen. It sits squarely in the heart of the devastation and has been called the 'broken heart' of the city. In a way that's true and yet I've seen the way people have rallied around it. People are dedicated to rebuilding it, in one form or another, once again as the symbol of this city. As the heart of our city it may be broken, but that commitment from the people of the city means it's still beating even if those beats are slow and unsure right now. There in the middle of the hollowed out centre of our city the cathedral sits as the best representation of hope, so it makes sense that it should be from here that I go out and rediscover Christchurch again.
Time may be at a standstill in the centre of the city, but it flows around outside that hub. Outside that darkened heart is a body that still lives and breathes. So I'm turning my back on the cordon for now, safe in the knowledge that the heart of the city is still there. It may be dormant but it's not dead, and it's time to find out what the rest of the city has to offer.
That all came to a crashing halt at 12.51 pm on Tuesday February 22nd when the 6.3 aftershock struck and destroyed the new world we were growing. I was shattered, broken, demoralised and depressed by what happened that day. I live in an area which was badly affected and while our house escaped basically untouched (again), life has been very difficult. It took all my energy to just keep going and I had nothing left to give anything back to the city this time. Besides that, it all seemed so very futile - the very sense of healing and recovery that my series of posts had given me had been brutally ripped away and I lived with the daily sense that it would just happen again. I had lost hope.
Lately, I've been actively trying to turn that idea around. In my head I had committed to staying in the city and helping it recover but I wasn't doing anything that would really help. I was sending out a lot of negativity. That was understandable, of course, but it wasn't helping - not me, not the city and not any of the other people around me. So I made a pact with myself to always write or say something positive when I talked about my experiences from then on. It has helped me enormously and now, a month later, I feel much happier and more positive about the future of the city.
However, I have noticed an alarming trend among some of my friends and family and in parts of the wider community that I can see online. There is an aura of negativity and defeatism which is starting to grip people around me - and it's getting more deeply entrenched every day. Obviously I understand that feeling; I was gripped with it myself for around 11 weeks and even at times when I tried to turn my thinking around. But it seems to me that, even more than before, the city needs people to go in to bat for it. Yes, of course there is a lot to be sad about. We have lost a lot, and we will lose a lot more, but there is also a lot to be proud of still and much of the city is alive and well and not just functioning but vibrating. I feel a need to go out and find out what's good about the place right now. There's no need to wait for future Christchurch to find things to be positive about - there is amazing stuff happening around us every day. I expect there will be some sadness on the way, given the enormity of what happened that's impossible to avoid, but my overall purpose here is to take a look at the good things we have going for us.
To get started, this week I visited the western side of the cordon around the red zone. I felt a need to start there - the area inside that cordon is quite obviously the centre of the destruction and it is only in understanding what is going on 'in there' that I can really appreciate what is going on 'out here.' The centre of the city is an eerie place - the army still guards it, signs still flutter outside shops and yet it is lifeless. It is, in a very real sense, a place stuck in time. The thing about this side of the cordon, though, is that the damage is less obvious. I didn't stand at a road entry and look down a vista of a long, empty street filled either with destroyed buildings or newly empty lots, the way you see at other points in the cordon. This is the side most filled with hope - there is enormous hope for the future here, particularly for the future of Cashel Street as it edges closer to becoming a central city shopping hub later this year. I'm planning to come back periodically to watch as it emerges.
While I still want to visit the rest of the cordon, I focused myself on the west because it is there that we should see the most signs of a resurrecting city appearing. It's also where the cathedral can be best seen. It sits squarely in the heart of the devastation and has been called the 'broken heart' of the city. In a way that's true and yet I've seen the way people have rallied around it. People are dedicated to rebuilding it, in one form or another, once again as the symbol of this city. As the heart of our city it may be broken, but that commitment from the people of the city means it's still beating even if those beats are slow and unsure right now. There in the middle of the hollowed out centre of our city the cathedral sits as the best representation of hope, so it makes sense that it should be from here that I go out and rediscover Christchurch again.
Time may be at a standstill in the centre of the city, but it flows around outside that hub. Outside that darkened heart is a body that still lives and breathes. So I'm turning my back on the cordon for now, safe in the knowledge that the heart of the city is still there. It may be dormant but it's not dead, and it's time to find out what the rest of the city has to offer.