still got it ;)

"First, utterance meaning might be identified with the meaning that a suitably informed receiver would ascribe, as intended, to 'an idealized [utterer], an [utterer] who can be held responsible for everything in the [utterance], being aware of all relevant features of context, conventions, and background assumptions, an [utterer] for whom we may imagine that everything is there by design, on purpose. Second, utterance meaning might be identified with the meaning that a suitably informed receiver would ascribe, as intended, to the actual utterer, given the evidence such a receiver would possess precisely in virtue of being 'suitably informed.' In this case, meaning depends on the ascription of hypothetical intentions to the actual utterer, whereas in the former case, we are ascribing intentions to an idealised hypothetical utterer."
(David Davies, Aesthetics & Literature p86)

Today I read these three sentences, smiled, and placed a sticky post-it flag on the page right next to them so I could find this quote again. It said exactly what I was looking for, and I knew I'd want to locate this passage again easily.

The exciting thing about this moment was that I realised I could still read this kind of theoretical literary scholarship and make sense of it...

I used to be able to munch up big lumps of this stuff when I was a PhD student but working at university keeps one busy with teaching, writing and reading 'instrumentally' (as my very clever friend Nadine puts it, perfectly describing the process of reading bits of books and parts of essays in order to scoop out the bits I need to fit with my project and not getting back to the rest of it). I've been a bit worried that I would have lost my ability to work with material written like this - and although I don't think it's necessarily a skill everyone in the world needs in order to survive, I also don't discredit the value of this kind of writing just because it's not, well, plainly written. Sometimes, as my friend Jolisa used to say, something is written in a complex way because it's a complex idea!

Now I'm on sabbatical I'm reverting to my PhD student self, a bit like the curious case of Benjamin Button but with a lurch back to ten years ago and no moving further back since then. (Thank goodness - I wouldn't want to try to read the above sentences as a 12 year old!) I'm keeping crazy late-nite hours, I love writing in my PJs, I eat randomly, I go to the library and want to take home everything off the shelf.

But can I still read like my PhD self? Or is that kind of writing too hard for me now, seeing as I've been so out of practice?

This quotation above is a complex idea, but it's one that in which I'm interested. When I'm trying to work out what a Maori way of reading a Maori poem might be, do I assume that the 'Maoriness' of the poem rests with the writer (who has deliberately put in the writing every single thing that I as the reader identify as 'Maori'), or do I assume it rests with me as the reader (and my knowledge about Maori stuff which means I can spot the Maori stuff when I see it, whether or not the writer was intentional in putting it in the text)?

I don't think I'll ever write such a 'theory-ish' book, but this kind of writing puts me in touch with ideas that help me think better thoughts. For tonite, I'm just stoked that I've still got it!

Who else has still got it?

The Warriors.

Manu Samoa.

Oh, and John Campbell for getting behind the fundraising to pay the extortionate $10K the International Rubgy Board fined Samoa because one of their players used the wrong brand mouthguard. (The little matter of England illegally swapping a ball in the middle of another game? The IRB turned a blind eye to that.)

The IRB definitely doesn't still have it.

Rugby? Does rugby still have it? Part of me wants to say yes, for the sake of Grandad and my uncles (Uncle Fatty, Uncle Martin, Uncle Alan and so on) but to be honest, with this kind of bigotry undermining the sport at every turn, it's getting more difficult.   

these are a few of my favourite things

* fabulous students
* smart books, smart articles, smart people
* getting close to a deadline and thinking i'll make it (against the odds)
* great discussions with colleagues/ peers
* laughs
* putting together a nice outfit from clothes i hadn't thought to wear together
* finding time for enough exercise to feel energised and tired at the right times of the day
* good kai
* ginger beer (yay for jamaican style ginger beer! close to the kind from home!)
* activities which have the capacity to translate into action, moving us all a little closer to futures we dream of (you know, the cool futures with humanity and equality and dignity and justice and love and integrity and intact communities)
* sitting up late gossipping with a dear friend
* a nice balmy warm evening and a soft bed which is beckoning...
good nite x

kai

Apparently the sense of smell is very closely linked to memory, and although we spend a lot of our time using our senses of sight and hearing to engage with the world around us, it is smell that can jolt the memory most abruptly.

For me, I find a lot of my memory is also linked to another sense: taste.

Different kinds of kai remind me of specific experiences and people.

Tonight as I type this I am eating a small bowl of raspberries - fresh raspberries - from a punnet I picked up at the supermarket earlier this evening. I bought them because as soon as I saw them I remembered Nana. I suppose I was thinking about Nana because it's getting close to her birthday... I found a hilarious card for my cousin whose birthday is on the 15th and I always link his birthday with Uncle Mike's five days earlier and Nana's three days before that. It's October birthday season and Nana's was first in the lineup.

My Nana was amazing and awesome and all of those other things that words just can't describe, even though even saying that is a cliche, and she loved raspberries. I like very much that these were her favourite berries - they are kind of humble and not dramatic but also not dime-a-dozen. They're delicate but still pack a strong flavour. They remind me of her.

My fingers smell of garlic - really strongly of garlic - plus a bit of ginger. I've been marinating some steak for some Pasifika-style chop suey I'm making for a reading group which is gathering tomorrow night... I've realised I'm missing some food from home, but am also just missing cooking for a large group of people (if six or seven counts as large) so it has been so so great to boil potatoes and eggs for potato salad (I would add beetroot Kuki style, but they don't tend to like beetroot much over here - so wierd!), get the steak ready for chopsuey, and check on the rice, chicken drumsticks and the closest thing to kumara. Yum!

Prepping the kai tonite, I can't help but remember the time I cooked a similar kai a few weeks after I'd moved to Ithaca in 2000, when I invited some mates over to eat so I wouldn't be forced to eat kai for six people by myself and I don't know how to cook this kind of food for one. (I doubt it can be done.) They trooped up the stairs in my apartment in N Geneva St, looking a bit unsure about what was to greet them on the table (such kind souls, coming to make me feel less homesick, having no idea what I was going to cook), and then managed to chomp their way happily through all of it! (Even though they were a bit doubtful that so many forms of carbohydrate and meat can work together - I served it all with bread of course haha - they were won over to the kai and loved it.)

Raspberries and chopsuey. These are my memories. This - this strange combination - is what makes me who I am.

zumba!

So, this is the day of getting a bit of structure... and I've found that my early afternoons have been the least productive when I have these writing days at home... so I decided that if I went and did something active in the middle of the day that would be a nice break. And it was!

I decided to go to the gym for my break, and went to a zumba class for the first time - it was totally fun! All of you who know what zumba is, you're in big trouble for not dragging me along sooner - ! I knew I'd enjoy it - I just didn't know *how much* I'd enjoy it. The instructor was awesome, the music was great... and I got a chance to exercise hard out while having fun. I know that I'll have some achy muscles in the morning - but it wil be so worth it.

I made a big list of things I'm doing this week on my whiteboard right behind my desk here at home in my study, and all of the things for today are either wiped off or redistributed... I need to work on my after-dinner transition - that can get a bit precarious in the time wasting dept too... but in all, I'm pleased to report that my first day of the new routine went very well...

I'm off for a bubble bath, then sleep, then Tuesday - with eleven things to cross off the list. Yes we can :)

word on the street

Q: What are all of these people doing, at a central city Toronto park on this lovely warm autumn Sunday?

A: They're a part of the fabulous and amazing 'Word on the Street' festival that was on today about three blocks from my house in Queen's Park.

http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/toronto

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/books/story/2008/09/26/word-street.html

According to the CBC, there were going to be around 200,000 people there today and it certainly felt busy but also very, very relaxing. Oh, and inspiring.

For several hours, writers and publishers speaking and reading their works in smallish tents (and a couple of good sized marquees) dotted around the park. It felt a bit like WOMAD but for books, and I loved it. The mixture was fantastic - people reading their own work from various genres ('serious' fiction, magazine writing, genre fiction, poetry, memoir, cookbooks, self-help books, kid's books, YA and so on) as well as people speaking in panels on various book-related themes.

I love literary readings: they're really just storytime for grownups. When literary readings are usually a case of going out to hear one, two or maybe three writers, today I heard a vast range of people read from their work... I heard poetry about lactating; snippets from a memoir about a career of publishing Canadian authors, YA fiction about a girl who can't get on with her mother; short stories and novel extracts about a woman working in a cafe whose boss makes her kick out a homeless woman, a Jamaican student arrested by police in Toronto for the mistake of WWB (Walking While Black) on a rainy night, a young girl who quietly learns to hate her own body, a sister and father who fall through the ice when skating on a frozen river... and more... hehe I realise these all sound like dire stories! Well, I suppose the Canadian national psyche could be as morose and harsh as the NZ one... but also, I suppose this is the stuff one remembers at 11pm at night...

The tents for readings were dotted all over the park and then around the outside were rows and rows of tents with bookish organisations (publishers, magazines, more writing organisations and groups and alliances and associations than you can shake a stick at - horror writers, writers against oppression, crime writers, Canadian PEN, and so on...) and you could even get gorgeous spunky 'book porn' - books, yes, but also tshirts and bags and waterbottles and magnets and bookmarks which were pro-reading and pro-books...

The panel discussions and questions were awesome - one guy spoke about how he supposed people who write fiction are doing it because they know that reading saved their own lives and they are passing that one for other people. He suggested that people read non-fiction so they can learn thing, and they read fiction so they can learn. A woman passed on advice from a former writing teacher and acclaimed novellist, Anne Michaels, who refuted conventional writing advice by saying "write not what you know but what you want to know."

What do I want to know? 

I want to know why we don't have anything like this at home. I was struck - deeply struck - by how amazing it was to be in a crowd of people who care about books, and I want to know whether and how this kind of thing could happen at home. This is the power of critical mass, I suppose. Toronto simply has a big enough population whose bookish percentage of the community will be a larger number than Wellington or Auckland, for example. And yet there was something else as well - Akld, Welly and ChCh have their Readers and Writers festivals but they are expensive and held in locations (at at times) where they can't be browsed or even easily accessed. They end up being a club rather than a festival. At the most recent festival in Wellington, only one (only one!) of the many, many international and NZ writers was not white, until an additional side reading starring Patricia Grace and Briar Grace Smith (from memory) was put together. Those festivals aren't celebrations of books as much as they are celebrations of white middleclass Culture with a capital C. The NZ literary scene is appallingly divided between a small circle of privileged buddies and a large number of disparate, struggling, interesting individuals and small groups. Those on the Inside wring their little hands and whine with their Liberal Whines about there not being many Maori poets (to name an example I was talking about with someone this week) at the same time as they are blissfully unaware of the machinations which keep them in the limelight and keep everyone else offstage!

Sure, things could be said about who was/ wasn't there today at Queen's Park, but it was free and diverse and represented a wide range of literary, bookish and writing interests, and it was held on a Sunday. A lovely, beautiful gorgeous Sunday in late September. A Sunday which reminded me why I'd come to Toronto for my sabbatical, which fed me some stories, which gave me things to think about, which made me ask questions about home...

A Sunday on which, yes, of course I found my way over to the stalls between a couple of sessions, and I was very pleased to find a tshirt I'll wear with pride:

Speaking of tshirts, at the end of a session in one of the tents today I saw a woman walking past with a yellow tshirt which had one word printed on the front in large red letters: "NERD."

I write a lot about my community, my family, my students, my friends as 'my people.' Nerds? The word on the street is that these are my people too :)

so lucky to be Maori :)

You know it's election year in NZ when the mainstream media starts saying bad things about Maori people. Well, all years are pretty awful when it comes to media representation but election years are particularly bad. These years, Maori are all criminals and violent and stupid and need some kind of heroic rescue - which is handy because then various political parties and individuals can win votes by proposing 'solutions' to 'the Maori problem.'

Oy. (As my friend Sarah would say.)

(Actually, journalism in NZ is pretty bad any day of the week, so we should expect to have low expectations anyway... and this is coupled with the underbelly of NZ racism which I admit that I forget about some days because I tend not to spend much time with people who hold these ideas.)

But, combine all of this, and it turns out that (drum roll please...) Maori people get all the special treatment in NZ... we're the lucky ones. The cute thing about this particular form of racism is that (like most other forms of racism) it is a boringly yawn-inducing cliche: the idea that the Natives are on a Gravy Train can be found all around these settler colonies.

Let's check out how this idea sneaks its way into two items in the 'news' today:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/5679886/Brain-drain-claims-third-of-New-Zealands-PhDs
This uplifting little space-filling article is such a house built on sand that the walls have no chance of standing at all, and the whole site is littered with crumbled and collapsed logics and statistics and half-thought-through guesses. It looks at the number of people who gained their PhDs in NZ in 2003 and considers how many of them are working in NZ and how many are working overseas. It manages to miss any of the meaningful factors in why people might work overseas, the entire PBRF dimension of things which places pressure on mercenary leadership to avoid hiring junior academic staff, the international trends of hiring PhDs and how these might line up with the NZ story, and (and I suppose this affects me, as a recipient of a PhD from the US) the NZ people who have PhDs from overseas in the equation. It was bad reporting, badly written. A waste of space.

The comments section is actually quite interesting - there are a few people on there who have raised some good points (about postdocs etc) and I was scrolling through these when I found this:

"It doesn’t take a PhD to figure out why a lot of people are leaving. They are sick of double standards in this country - one for maoris and one for everybody else. TOW handouts will never end. Get out while you can"

Now, I have to say that I agree with this writer. It is true there are double standards in NZ. For example, Parliament passed legislation that removes the legal right of "maoris" to investigate their property rights to the seabed and foreshore, a right (to legally investigate property rights) extended to "everybody else," and in fact the Crown unilaterally claimed the entire seabed and foreshore (a move which the UN found racially discriminatory and therefore that there was indeed a "double standard" with one law "for maoris and one for everybody else"). When "maoris" (and quite a few people who are a part of "everybody else") protested this legislation, their protests were unheeded, whereas when a small group of farmers protested legislation by which the Crown was clarifying and extending its title to a thin strip of land each side of rivers and waterways, this protest was taken seriously and the legislation did not go ahead. Yes, another "double standard." Oh, and another example would be that "maoris" make up 40% of the people tasered by police despite only making up 15% of the general population. Our schooling system has lower expectations of "maoris" compared to "everybody else" and we even get to die earlier than "everybody else." Yep, it also doesn't take a PhD to figure out how much I warmly encourage this writer to "Get out while [they] can."

Our other fun story for the night is RWC-themed.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/5679093/Te-Papa-in-haka-row
It turns out that an amateur historian has been very busily tracing the origins of the Ngati Toa haka "Ka Mate" which was written by Te Rauparaha, and he has found that it was not in fact written by him at all! Yes, this self-appointed specialist of "folk songs" has found some written evidence that suggests Te Papa has been taken for a ride, and through the current RWC-linked exhibition 'Ka Mate' has:
"obliterated this history in order to massage the image of a local tribe with a notorious ancestor".
Wow. So, Te Papa has done all of this in order to "massage the image of a local tribe"? What a lucky tribe! What lucky people Ngati Toa are! They get to have the All Blacks use their haka without permission for years, they get to fight to have the haka recognised as their intellectual property, and then they get a museum to "massage [their] image"!
And Te Papa is spending so much time being concerned about the image of Ngati Toa that they fully back them up when the reporter rings up to ask for a comment! Oh wait, no they don't:
"A Te Papa spokesman said the "Ka Mate" exhibition was authored by Ngati Toa, not the museum, so the historical content was the iwi's responsibility."

In a lovely sleight of hand, the journalist then writes about the recent "official" acknowledgement of the origins of Ka Mate right before talking about the length of time that Helpful Mr Archer has been 'researching,' also reinforcing the "oral" nature of the history compared to the documentary evidence preferred by Archer.
"Ngati Toa's association with "Ka Mate" via Te Rauparaha has been passed down in the iwi's oral tradition but it is only in recent years that it has gained official acknowledgement.
Archer, 70, has for decades been researching the "folk process" whereby songs are modified over generations and the stories attached to them change."
Yep you guessed it folks - there is no comment from Ngati Toa (because they didn't answer the phone - which in NZ journalism could mean they didn't ring the right number, or they couldn't spell Ngati Toa so couldn't find it in the phone book, or they called someone once and got no reply and never followed up on it all) and so the journalist and Archer both tell the Ngati Toa side on their behalf. Hmmm. This is a piece of journalism which is entirely based on an amateur historian who has an axe to grind on the basis of his bizarre and salmon-esque (ie swimming upstream) claims, and which therefore has no purpose at all except to give airplay to what could at best be described as a minority view.

And finally, to finish things off with a nice flourish and confirm that there is a difference between non-Maori 'factual' accounts of things and Maori 'poetic' or 'untrue' accounts of things, Archer comments:
"They're trying to turn Te Rauparaha composing it into historical fact, rather than an interesting poetic truth. It would be like in science classes in schools if they were to teach that Maui pulled New Zealand out of the ocean as historical fact."
Clearly Archer has no concept of the scientific (and historical) information contained in the rather complex story of Maui pulling the North Island out of the ocean... but for me I'm interested in who "they" might be... is it Te Papa? Or is this more broadly the work of these evil people who lurk around NZ handing out privileges to Maori people all the time?

 Oy.

writing... and writing... and writing... and wanting to write...

I've been writing a lot today. The chapter I'm writing for a book which is due to the editors on 1 October didn't exist this time last week, and now it is around 4000 words long. It's called 'Approaching the ancestral house" and draws its title from an amazing poem by Katerina Te Hei Koko Mataira called "Restoring the ancestral house." I'm looking at some poems by Maori writers where a person goes home to their own marae, and I'm interested in what happens when you read these in a 'Maori' way (and ask what a Maori way of reading might be). I think these poems are about the collective, and about sustainability and connection, whereas most discussions of them suggest that the poems are about individual disconnection and cultural loss. And I'm like, yeah but you only think it's about cultural loss because that narrative of Maori disconnection and dysfunction makes you feel comfortable and so you'll find it wherever you look for it, but there is so much happening in the poems that you can't even see... so, ahem, I've got more to say and I'll have some editing to do, but I think I'm on target for the dealine.

It has been so lovely to write, but I admit that I've written less than I thought I would... when I dreamed of sabbatical I thought I'd write continuously, constantly, feverishly, obsessively. I dreamed of having the time and space to write. To tip my hat to Virginia Woolf, Toronto was going to be the room of my own.

It is, and has been, great to write as much as I have... but it's not as much as I thought it would be. I'm not being too harsh on myself for what I've done (or haven't done) so far, because I arrived in a state of fatigue and needed to get healthy and strong again before I could start cranking out the pages. Plus, I've had a lot of 'service writing' to do and that hasn't helped. Referee's reports, feedback, letters of support... these things all take time. Writing time. And yet I can't blame it all on them.

While I've been working on this chapter I have been astounded by the low standard of some of the scholarship out there. I know this sounds like a pretty stink thing to say, and certainly there is some amazing fabulous incredible scholarship which I adore (Chad Allen, Lisa Brooks and Sarah Ahmed - I intellectually swoon around these three whenever I'm in proximity to their work. And of course many more too, but these three I've been reading this week.)... but really, a lot of stuff out there is either nonexistent or pretty awful. Which, I must say, rather than making me feel grumpy (like it sometimes does) has made me feel a bit more inspired. It has lowered the bar enough, and clarified the state of things enough, that I am now revving up to write a lot - a LOT - A LOT! There is so much to say! There are so many things to write! Some of the basics still need to be written, as well as the complex stuff! Very exciting!

So, to segue for a minute, the other thing I did this week was that I filled in the info for signing up for e-Harmony, which is one of the dating sites here in Canada. I haven't actually paid any money yet, so at the moment I get an email each morning which announces that there is a bunch of men they've found who are well suited for me and I get some information about each of them. Not being a member of the site yet, I can't see their photos or communicate with them, but I'm not sure I want to actually sign up anyway. I was just curious to see what the process was like... and I must say, e-Harmony is known (I know this because I've been asking the single ppl in my life here) for having long in-depth questionnaires and then using some spunky algorithm (hmm, it how that is spelled?) that miraculously matches you with people you are totally made for ;) The questions took ages to go thru - they were multi choice, so I multitasked and did it while I was watching TV and am now hoping I read them all carefully and they're not setting me up with axe murderers because of something I accidentally said haha -

Anyway one of them kind of had me stumped. "Do you set personal goals and meets them?" Well, yes I am.. right? I mean, I decided to do a PhD at an Ivy League university and I did it. I decided to visit NY last weekend and I did it. I decided I wanted am omelette for dinner tonite and that's what I had. All goals, all accomplished... But then I realised that if I heard a guy had said 'yes' to that (actually, the categories were a continuum from never through sometimes to always) I might wonder if he'd be kind of controlling, self-absorbed, uptight... and then I had the awful realisation that maybe this is how I would come across!

And of course, being a girl, and so having lived through 35 years of messages from a world (I mean generally, not my family etc - just to be clear) which tells me how girls ought to behave I did what I was supposed to do: I started to doubt myself, and thought that probably I wasn't actually someone who meets my own goals after all. Perhaps if I was a boy I would have thought 'no it's possible for me to be a man who meets my own goals' - but I'm a girl. Of course, the next step (because in my conscious life I'm a feminist girl) was that I told myself off and decided that I can in fact be someone who meets my own goals and a nice person... and then the next step (because I am a nice girl as well, really) was that I reminded myself that a man who sets goals and meets them might be a nice guy too! Actually, he might be a nice guy with his s**t together, which I have to say sounds like a good combination! 

And what does this diversion into my insecurities and bizarre e-Harmony moment have to do with writing? Well, being Little Miss Meets-her-goals, I have decided this evening that I am going to make a bit more of a schedule. Between now and the end of November I am going to finish *something* and either send it off for publication or present it at a conference (I've got a few conferences in October)... yes, it sounds like a lot, but it's something to aim for.

So, look fwd to weekly updates about my specific goal setting and achieving my writing goals :)

Oh, and e-Harmony? Still haven't decided whether to finish the signing up process by entering my credit card details. Will keep you updated on that too.

writing, living...

NAACP banner, NYC 1938

In the 1930s the NAACP would hang a banner from their base in NYC to let people know when a lynching had occurred. The photograph has circulated on facebook and blogs today; people are seeing the connection and recognising the need to draw a link between lynchings and Troy Davis's death last night, but also the importance of making visible these acts so that people cannot say they didn't know.

We know. Troy, we know.

“This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.” -Troy Davis



So today was a day of getting on with things... fighting for justice in my own little way: writing. I wrote a couple of thousand words today, fleshing out some ideas about Maori aesthetics and how they might relate to poems by Maori writers where someone returns home to their own marae after a period of being away. Justice sometimes comes by revolutions or quick jolts of history, but justice can also be a slow accumulation of coral, small bits growing on top of each other until eventually there is enough heft and bulk and foundation for life to flourish there.

Georgia on my mind...

Thousands of people are killed every day in illegal and immoral wars, by famine, as a result of violence inflicted by family members and lovers, because of reckless acts like drink-driving and not bothering to buckle in the kids, in territorial fights exacerbated by poverty and deep fatigue.

Thousands. Tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

So why should we all stop and pay attention when one man dies?

Tonight the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis, a man who was found guilty of shooting an off-duty police officer by a jury who heard the eye witness accounts of nine people, seven of whom have since recanted their statements. Amnesty International, the NAACP, the Pope, Archbishop Desmond Tutu - with these people in your corner you would think justice would be carried out.

But this is Georgia, and this is the USA, and the problem with repeating the refrain that your nation is a beacon on a hill is that after a while you start to believe it. The problem with claiming to be the leader of the free world is that after a while you can no longer see the vast and complex restrictions on freedom which take place within your own national borders (as well, of course, as beyond them).

Much of the focus of the fight for justice in this case has focussed on Troy's innocence and the doubt introduced by the repeatedly tricky trial and criminal justice system. This is appropriate, but for me it is not enough. Even if Troy shot the cop, even if he was clearly guilty, he still should not have been killed. For me, the reason to abandon the death penalty is not to guard against the possible killing of innocent people but to guard against the loss of our collective humanity.

People keeping vigil across the street from the prison wore tshirts that read 'I am Troy Davis' and perhaps this suggested that if Davis could be killed for a murder he didn't definitely carry out, then any of us could be. This is the 'there but for the grace of God go I' approach; the 'speak out for him because I hope someone would speak out for me if I was in the same position' argument. And these are good and important claims to make. But there's another way we can recall that 'I am Troy Davis.' With his death, something is killed in all of us. Our collective humanity, the basic contract which underpins our ability to live together, is challenged when someone like this man dies. You and I may not be the people who put the needle into the veins, but we are part of the world in which it happened.

We are Troy Davis not because he is innocent but because he is human.

Troy Davis was executed tonight and who watched it happen? The execution was attended by the McPhail family whose relative Mark was shot in a Burger King parking lot in August 1989. Mark was off-duty and working as a security guard at the Burger King; Troy at the time was an unemployed black man in Georgia. This is a story of poverty and desperation from all angles, but killing someone else doesn't make it right.

I wonder what solace it was to the McPhail family to watch this black man die. Because of course this is about race. Of course this is about a black man being killed in America, and it's also about the Maori men who make up half the prison population despite us not making up even twenty percent of the NZ community. It's about the Indigenous Australian men killed in custody. It's about Aboriginal men being left by police to freeze in the snow in Canada. It's about the American Indian nations who used to live in Georgia before being marched across hundreds of miles to Oklahoma. We're all Troy Davis.

Troy was due to be executed at 7pm and when I turned on the TV to see if there was coverage of the vigils on US news channels I found that America was going about its business. Even BET (the Black channel in the US), which had a speaker on their live music video show to talk about the situation at 6.45pm, had ushered him off and returned to Beyonce by 7. As it turned out, the execution was further delayed when the US supreme court held things up at the last minute while it decided if it wanted to intervene. Which, in the end, it didn't. The death penalty was carried out by lethal injection at 11.07pm and at 11.08pm Troy Davis was pronounced dead.

I am Troy Davis. I am the thousands of people killed every day in illegal and immoral wars, by famine, as a result of violence inflicted by family members and lovers, because of reckless acts like drink-driving and not bothering to buckle in the kids, in territorial fights exacerbated by poverty and deep fatigue. We all are.




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The 'location' button on this blog will be set to Georgia tonite because, although I'm writing this on a humid Toronto night in my Spadina Ave apartment, my heart is down in Georgia.

still more tears.

Early this morning Pete passed away. Pete is Dad's cousin Alison's husband, and I've known him as an uncle all my life. He realised he was unwell recently and when it was confirmed they found out he didn't have much time. I had a chance to spend a sunny but brisk Saturday morning at the Hutt hospital before moving to Toronto not long after he was diagnosed.

I've thought quite a bit about Pete since I moved here because I knew I wouldn't see him again in this world. I remember the party at their place when Megan and I were little and Ali convinced us that Pete was actually deaf and when she called his name she also stamped her foot and he could tell she needed him because he could feel the vibrations through the floorboards. I remember the many times (dressed in tino rangatiratanga t-shirts some days, work clothes some days, or most recently in long black skirt, raukura and piupiu to welcome Hillary C to NZ) he has met me at reception at Parliament where he worked in Security. Most of all I remember his gentleness - despite being tall and strong and all that jazz, he was gentle and always thoughtfully deeply kind. The time I spoke to him before I went to see him in hospital was when he called up the night before I went to Sydney in early July and he wanted to wish me a good trip.

Mum rang me today to let me know; Ali and Pete live in the Hutt valley too, so Mum rang when she and Dad got back from spending time with him this morning.

When Mum rang, I was reading a part of a novel by my favourite writer in the whole wide world, Patricia Grace. I'm writing a chapter for a book and in one part I'm referring to something that happens in Cousins, when a character goes to her home marae for the first time since she was a child. She is accompanying her cousin home who passed away in the city, and at the point in the process where the group stops to mourn for the person they are bringing on, she realises that she has an opportunity to grieve for the unfairness but also the depth of it all.

Pete and Ali, this one's for you.

"In the middle of the big lawn we all stopped. Pahe and Josie started to weep with high sounds and tears were running down their faces. The people waiting began to cry more loudly. Something was happening to me. Something.
My eyes were filling with water. Water was running from my eyes. Streams of water. Water was running from my nose and dropping onto the ground, streams of water. I had never cried before in all my life and now I felt that it would never stop. We all wept for a long time there. All my tears were falling and I was just letting them run. I had never cried before. Years of tears. And I heard the sounds coming out of me, the crying sounds, just like the sounds of the women around me.
Gradually our crying lessened and we began moving forward again."

No reira e Matua moe mai koe i roto i te Ariki...

places to go, people to see, tears to cry...

Sorry I've been offline again team - I have returned today from an awesome trip to central NY. Growing up on an island, I don't know if I will ever get used to the idea of driving to another country. But that's what I did over the past few days. I had places to go and people to see...

The edges of things: flags marking the US/ Canada border (with UN flag in the middle) on the Peace Bridge border crossing at sunset last nite.

Places to go.

No, not New York city; New York state. I lived for five years in Central NY (well, three and a half technically, but that's a long story) and so I went back to visit some friends. I travelled to the hotspots of Ithaca (the town I lived in between 2000 and 2004), Utica, Syracuse and - for a mere snippet of time - Buffalo. Finally, last nite I drove across the border back to Canada and went to Hamilton which is the city where Nadine lives, about an hour south of Toronto. I drove the final leg of the journey home this afternoon, taking advantage of the rental car to stop in an IKEA and a gigantic supermarket.

I love driving: I love road trips with other people, and I love driving alone. I enjoy the time I get to spend just thinking... often not in a structured 'no I must solve this dilemma' way... just spending time looking and driving and perhaps singing a bit to the radio seems to put my brain out of gear for long enough for it to do some actual thinking. Things 'occur' to me while I'm driving... I have realisations. And so, after a month here in Canada and with many big things to think about, I decided to drive down to CNY.

Once I got off the interstate, I wound my way down state and county roads, eventually twisting alongside Cayuga Lake, at the end of which sits Ithaca. And on the hill beside Ithaca is Cornell, perched up there like the very incarnation of an ivory tower, holding on to the jutting rock between deep gashes in the landscape which keep water flowing into the lake. 'Ithaca is Gorges' according to the famous green tshirts, and it is.

Just before Ithaca, though, I pulled over to take a photo of another sight which is unique to the rolling hills and flowing water of the surrounding region:


Public display of ignorance, CNY roadside. Perhaps this photo could be called "Ideological roadkill."


Yep, Cayuga Lake shares its name with the Cayuga Nation, an American Indian community which (along with the five others; Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca and Tuscarora) is part of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Confederacy. Yep, Cayuga Nation has been in Ithaca since long before it had a Greek name and an Ivy university. And now, some of these Johnny Come Lately local settlers are a little irate that these Indians want to actually be recognised as such. The signs such as the one in the photo above are supposed to suggest that Cayuga Nation is not a "sovereign nation" and therefore should not have a reservation. Oh, the complex and deep politics of Indian-white relations in CNY. There's just no escaping it!

People to see.

The main reason I went to Ithaca was to visit my dear friend Lauren who has not one but two baby sons! Her twin boys Alex and Holden are adorable - and arrived quite early and so have soldiered (with Lauren and Jed) through a myriad of health complications over the past months. It was awesome and amazing to spend time with Lauren, and Jed was such a lovely supportive husband and host while I was there. The boys are great fun and have very different personalities. Can't wait to see them again!

I also caught up with an awesome Maori student who has just started his PhD in Economics at Cornell! Hautahi was great - keen, smart, fun, enthusiastic, sociable. He'll love Cornell and it will love him back. I hadn't met him in NZ but I heard he was in Ithaca so tracked him down (thanks Amy Gale). We met for coffee and a bagel and I quizzed him on what he was doing and tried to impart some of my hard earned knowledge and memories from Cornell days :) Amy came and met up with us at the end of our catch up, and she and I dropped Hautahi at a rugby game before we headed out for a gossip and, in the mid afternoon I left town...

And drove to Utica, NY. I hadn't been to Utica before but it is where my friend Katherine lives. She was one of the Americans who drove here for my birthday a couple of weeks ago so I told her I'd repay the favour. Her birthday party was great - an awesome mix of people and literally over a hundred cupcakes made by her husband Thomas (even more impressive because his allergy to sugar means he can't eat any - he can't even lick the bowl or his own finger while baking!). In the morning I relaxed and chilled out with them and their lovely fun little girl, Matilda, and in the late morning I left town...

And drove to Syracuse, only an hour away from Utica (unless you ahem get ahem lost). Syracuse was a real base when I was in Ithaca because it was only an hour away and it was a much bigger airport (as in, planes bigger than 12 seaters and more than one airline) and had much bigger shops. It also had (drumroll here, which could be mistaken for a grumbling tummy!) Dinosaur BBQ, the yummiest deliciousnest awesomest biker bar BBQ place in the world. Well, in the region anyway. So, I went to Dinosaur BBQ to meet up with another Maori student doing a PhD - Hayley, who is doing a PhD in Education at Syracuse University. She was heaps of fun, clever, interesting and (by virtue of the fact we agreed on lots of things haha) very awesome! She's doing really great graduate work and it was a good opportunity to put an actual face to the name of someone I know only through facebook! After I ate half a pig and quarter of a chicken (or so it felt), in the late afternoon I left town...

And drove to Hamilton. You know what happened there because I've already told you: I stayed at Nadines, and we talked and talked until very late. This morning I dropped her off at her university so she could teach her class, and in the late morning I left town...

And came home. So many people! So many conversations... so many amazing, awesome talented, smart, connected, fabulous people!

Tears to cry

While I drove yesterday I found myself thinking about things and, before long, crying. I had to keep taking off my sunglasses to wipe my tears off my cheeks and when I would put them back on I could feel the cold remnants of tears clinging to the ridge of the glasses frame. 

Don't worry, I wasn't crying because I am falling apart or because things are going badly here. If anything, I was crying because things are going so well. I knew that I needed a chance to cry, and I'm glad I had the chance to grieve.I knew this would happen - it's the point of te tau okioki, I suppose, to have the chance to reflect on things.

Returning the favour of looking at home from here: looking at the Canadian border through my poi.

I was crying for myself, and also for my people. Now I am so far away from home things are blurrier in some ways but much clearer in others.

I wasn't crying for our past, I was crying for our future.

Because right now it's hard to imagine what our possible futures might look like: for Maori in universities; for Maori students and scholars; for our iwi; for my heart.

overheard

This was my lunchtime today.  Eating teriyaki chicken, reading an article, minding my own business.

And then I hear:

"I think the problem is that you're smart and not easy..."

"Yeah it's a problem they find our I'm a doctor..."

"What kind of neurosurgery are you doing? ..."

(Conversation continues in this vein - the neurosurgery vein - for a while, with the three women in the conversation talking about the politics and differences between doing medicine here and in Africa, where one of them has spent some time working.)

(One girl answers her phone and goes outside. Comes back all smiles.)

"He's really adorable but it's not going to work because I won't do long distance anymore. I know it doesn't work... so we're just friends... he's really smart and funny and he taught me how to surf and..."

(At this point, the woman who had been talking about her three year marriage which had been a trial of divergent goals, bad communication and adultery, put her chin in her hand and looked dreamily across the table.)

"This gives me hope - there are good guys out there."

(Conversation returns to a discussion of professional matters, the tension between the expectations and aspirations of professional women, and other such matters of the heart.)

I finish my teriyaki. Tuck the article (with verbatim notes from the conversation in the next table) into my bag. Pay my bill. Walk home.

making things

Today I made pikelets, a classroom and some poi.

Daniel and I met our students at U of T today - they were an awesome bunch and it was great to be in the classroom even just for a couple of hours :) It was awesome 'making a classroom' with someone else - so often teaching is a bit of a solo affair - and it was fun to do quite a bit of back and forth with Daniel.

Before going to class, though, I made a big bunch of pikelets (which the students all insisted on calling pancakes! hehe) for all of the students to enjoy. Having made pikelets for the crew at Aboriginal Studies last Friday, I'm thinking that soon I will be able to make big batches of them in my sleep ;)

We're teaching in a cool old building... here are a couple of shots of me posing in front of where we taught!

Finally, this evening I went to grab takeaways (yummy pad thai mmmmm) and made it home in time to watch the Canada/Tonga rugby game replayed on TV... during the second half of the game I made poi. I have missed having poi around! I found some wool at a nearby discount store and once I retrieved an ideal plastic bag I looked around for stuffing... poor my cushion which is a bit deflated now haha... I made poi for me but also for my friend Katherine's daughter. I'm off to Central New York to visit a few mates this weekend and will be repaying Katherine's favour of coming up to my brithday by attending her birthday party on Saturday evening. I am going to stay with her and her family, so I reckon poi for her little girl Matilda might be just the thing :)

Tomorrow I will be making something else: many many pages of writing. Wish me luck!

teaching as aerobics

Tomorrow is the first day of the course I'm helping my mate Daniel teach here at U of T. Because I'm on sabbatical, my priority this year is research and writing... but I am going to contribute some co-teaching in this course as a way to connect with, learn about and contribute to the place I'm staying. I miss teaching when I'm not doing it, and am looking forward to meeting the students tomorrow afternoon.

Speaking of teaching, this afternoon I went to aerobics after work... I went and joined up at the gym on Friday and intended to go to zumba yesterday but got held up... today, though, I made sure I left in time to come home and get into shorts and sneakers before heading over to the gym. I was so nervous! I don't know what I thought it was going to be like - but of course it was absolutely fine and I was pleased I went. The instructor was totally cracking me up - if Steve Erkle had a half brother whose dad was Barry White, then I've found him. Even funnier, he was obviously good at what he does and the regulars in the class knew what was coming next, but for the rest of us, the little matter of his instructions being totally random and unclear left us in a confused cluster in the back half of the studio most of the time.

Funnily enough, though, I found my experience in the aerobics class was a good reminder about teaching which I will be able to reflect on as I get ready for class tomorrow:
* People can be nervous even when it's not their first class... the unknown can be nervewracking no matter the context. People bring their own fears and anxieties to class with them...
* When you're the teacher it's easy to assume that because most people in a class are following then your explanations are adequate and the ones who don't seem to be following will figure it out with no further clarification...
* Sharing heaps of 'in jokes' with, and focussing mostly on, a small number of people makes the others feel like they are not valued...
* Encouraging people by saying 'you're doing great' is only meaningful if they feel they're doing great... otherwise it just sounds like their experiences are invisible and so feels disingenuous...
* Ultimately the teacher is only one element in a classroom... along with the other students, a student's own aspirations and anxieties, and the wider context of the time and place...

And finally,
* Wearing white socks with dark shoes is always a mistake. Seriously. Always.

proximity II

After blogging last nite, I watched a bit of TV... and found that on two quite different channels right next to each other there was a piece of home!

First, on a Canadian show about ppl who do major renovations on their homes and stay at home through the building etc (like most reality TV, the people look pretty ridiculous and this after all is the appeal) - in this episode (which is the first I've seen of the show - honest!) the builders were 'Kiwi contractors' (or maybe it was Kiwi builders) and the main builder was known as 'Kiwi' - the two main builders were NZers and I was cracking up laughing at how hilariously understated NZers can be! The younger builder in particular was awesome with his deadpan straight talking which is only emphasised when it's in comparison with the high dramas of the family whose house is being rebuilt.

At exactly the same time, Discovery channel had a doco about an English guy who read in Cook's journal about a man being eaten by an 8 ft monster in NZ - and he wanted to find out if this was a plausible story. He decided it was probably an eel and then spent the programme rushing about talking to NZ scientists, eelers and boaties... again with the hilarious deadpan understatement! At one point he asked a weathered looking boatie who was dropping him off out the back of lake Manapouri whether he thought it was possible for someone to be eaten by an eel. The guy conceded without using much facial expression at all and barely moved his mouth as he mumbled that "someone could fall over and knock their head and land in a river and then it could happen" as if this was something that happened five times a day! Funny as.

I do find myself wondering about my nostalgia for 'NZness' which is often characterised by dominant Pakeha male attributes... how does the boatie remind me of home so much, beyond the scenery behind him? I don't know many people like that. I've never even been to that part of the South Island! How do 'Kiwi' and his Kiwi chippie make me feel a deep recognition even though I don't spend a lot of time with builders (this isn't a policy statement - it's just how things have turned out).

And, importantly given the flurry of grumpiness on fb about the RWC opening ceremony, what is the line between these white men being adorable reminders of home and John Key's spectacular and unsurprising refusal to include any Maori language at all in his speech welcoming the world to NZ? The stakes are different of course - but there's something else as well. There's something symbolic, there's something emblematic about a Prime Minister who is stubborn enough to stay so narrow after such - yes, I'll say it - proximity to other perspectives, including Maori perspectives?

Why am I so happy for Kiwi the builder and the anonymous boatie to stand in for NZness but so angry when John Key attempts to do the same? Where do we draw the line between Key as an individual whose narrow ideas unfortunately get airplay because he's the PM and the deeply racist and colonising roots and ongoing practices of the NZ Rugby Football Union? (1960. 1976. 1981. http://www.nzonscreen.com/title/patu-1983 No Maori 'rugby diplomats' for this RWC. NZ Maori team undermined and not supported. etc etc etc) Why are people actually surprised by Key's inability and unwillingness to take us as Maori seriously? (Don't they know anything about his policies or kaupapa?) Why are they surprised that the multilingual head of the IRB made the effort to speak Maori when the monlingual PM of NZ didn't? (The stakes are so different - for the IRB guy it's just another language; for Key it's a symbol of Maoriness against which 'NZ' needs to be defended.)

That's something for me to reflect on... but as we near a general election in NZ it's something for all of us who vote in NZ elections to reflect on as well. No, don't worry this blog isn't going to become a party political broadcast between now and the elections in November... but some days it's worth calling it when you see it. And tonite I'm calling it.

proximity

When I stroll from the back door of my apartment, across the yard and driveway, down the street and around the corner to the front door of the library it takes 3 minutes and 54 seconds. I know this because I timed it when I went to get books out of the gigantic U of T library this evening.

My apartment is in a pretty amazing location anyway: this morning I met Jason for coffee at Kensginton Market which is a ten minute stroll away... I then walked home through Chinatown which is right next door to KM and is also ten minutes from my place. I'm across the road from a streetcar stop, a couple of blocks from a subway station, and crazily close to so many other places as well. My bank is across the road from my house, as it a beer store, two pizza parlours and a convenience store (AKA a dairy). I've never lived 'inner city' before and I can see how it can get addictive... and also how it can feel misleadingly complete, as if there is no reason to ever leave the city blocks surrounding my house.

Anyway, back to the library. (In the time it took me to write the previous paragraph I could have walked there again. Amazing.

The library is massive (famously - it's one of the top libraries in the world) and it took me a while to figure out how to get to the stacks (the floors of the library with actual books on the shelves. Now, finding your way to the stacks is not always as easy as it sounds; I spent the first two weeks at Cornell unable to figure out how to get into the 'books' part of the library and far too embarassed to ask anyone for help.

Once I worked out where I should go and showed my new spunky U of T ID card to security to gain access, I then couldn't work out how to get the lift. As in, I couldn't figure out whether to swipe or wave my card in front of a little reader thing on the wall or if there was a button I couldn't see. Yes, it turns out that a PhD and position as Senior Lecturer is not guarantee of ability to use a library! Well, not the first time anyway :) During my first trip to the U of T library while I'm a lecturer on sabbatical, then, I was reminded of the my first trip to the library as a PhD student... suddenly I felt that my 25 year old self was in close proximity: I remembered what she was like and how her transition to the US had gone...

With the exception of one book from Indigenous Australia, the books I got out tonite were all Maori focussed... it seems that now I am so far away from home I finally find myself with the opportunity to read books from home about home. This evening I'm going to read about Maori people and places and histories before I go to bed.

Distance - from my 25 year old self, and from home - in this case has produced proximity.

brick by brick

Today was lovely.

This weekend I was keen to go and experience a new part of Toronto and I've found three already!

I went with Sarah and Ash to some old brickworks which haven't been used since the early 1980s... they have been taken over by a conservation organisation called Evergreen, which take over thse kinds of sites and turns them into amazing eco-happy green spaces.
http://ebw.evergreen.ca/
The brickworks buildings have been tarted up and in some places gutted... there's a plant nursery, gift shop,  cafe and on Saturday mornings they have a farmer's market which includes a bunch of stalls with great food to eat on the spot. Out the back we found small lakes with wildflowers and trails we could walk through; we saw turtles and fish swimming in the water, dragonflies buzzing over the lilypads and even a family  with small nets catching butterflies! The sun was shining and there was barely a cloud in the sky. Yes, it was so fantastic and serene it was ridiculous.

Sure, it was a pretty middle class affair (we keep getting the giggles at all the purebreed dogs! not a mongrel in sight!) and the tour of the site we'd been looking forward to was so bad we quietly slipped out early, but it was a great expedition and I was very happy to bring home a prolific basil plant which I will be able to use for my cheese and crackers when I'm outside on my porch :)

After the brickworks we went and grabbed icecream and strolled up a street which, it turned out, was Greektown! Amazing shops and places to look at, and we even saw two guys who were 100% dressed up like the mafia. Or maybe pimps. Or maybe just a blast from the past. They were oozing so much testosterone it was like a tidal wave of masculinity splashing up the road. Or something like that :)

And finally, after Sarah and I came home to sit on the porch and have a drink while the sun went down, we walked along to a great place a couple of blocks from here which had outdoor seating and made amazing burgers.

All of these different parts of the city, and many more besides, make up Toronto. Brick by brick, and neighbourhood by neighbourhood, this city is made up of all of its parts.



Meanwhile, if I was at home this weekend I would have gone with my Mum and sister to the AGM of my iwi trust... my tribe is also made up of its various parts, each of us adding a dimension to the collective. Since our settlement with the Crown in 2008 we've been working on building something together... well, that's the theory anyway. In practice this is slow heavy work, carefully placing bricks and keeping an eye on those who are more interested in taking bricks home than building something together. And yet, it is important to keep being a part of it all... taking along bricks, making bricks, planning things we can build.  

watching RWC with mum and dad

I've decided that I can't trust myself to stay awake too late tonite, because of major sleep deprivation from last nite, so I'm blogging now at 5pm.

Last nite, shortly after posting my 'Thursday' blog, I realised that I wasn't able to pick up the right cable TV channel here to watch the RWC opening event (or indeed the NZ vs Tonga game) after all. Gutted!

However, a bit of Kiwi ingenuity and we were good to go... here's a picture of me watching the RWC last nite (or, in the case of people who live in the same time zone as me, at 5am):

Watching the RWC opening match: Mum and I cross our fingers for Dan Carter (should have crossed them harder)

No, I haven't cut my hair or moved home to NZ... that's Mum... I'm watching via the ipad that's obscured but is propped up by the back of the blue chair right in front of the TV.

Yes, thanks to skype and my parents and Maori TV, I have free access to watching rugby, complete with the great multi-person commentating and backchatting rugby-watching tradition with which I was raised... including such gems as:
"hey those people with the red and white flags must be Switzerland" (very funny, Dad)
and
"what an idiot! OMG! how embarrassing!" (Mum and me, after John Key included NO Maori language greeted in his boring speech... like, seriously John? do you really think the 100,000 tourists you raved on about came to NZ to hear you greet them in English?...)

We caught up with each other during the ads (during which Dad was asking 'do you miss Bunnings?' and holding a mallowpuff right in the middle of the screen so close I could taste it yum!) and yakked away (and ooohed and aaaahed) through the whole ceremony.

The RWC opening totally rocked: I was so blown away by the sheer scale of innovation and creativity, and remembered how gorgeous and cool home really is. (I'm not homesick when I write this as much as I'm proud.) We have our problems (exhibit A: the PM's apparent inability to say kia ora after three years in coalition with the Maori Party, symbolising the continued massive unevenness in terms of where people are 'at' with bicultural relationships and understanding) but we're also pretty damned fabulous. Hey, kind of like the All Blacks!

Today I've been dragging my tired self around feeling tragic and old, after last nite's almost four hour sleep which followed hot on the heels of a short sleep the night before. I am heading out to the nearby shops to get some basic groceries and perhaps some wool from 'Honest Ed's' amazing discount store so I can make some poi with Anne & Michelle's kids sometime soon, and I suspect I'll just come home, make some dinner, and crash out on the couch.

But having watched the RWC opening ceremony with Mum and Dad, being a bit bleary eyed today is a small price to pay.

part of a community

It's Thursday (well, technically Friday I suppose, but who's counting) and people at home in NZ are absorbed into the chaos of the Rugby World Cup - the first game btwn the All Blacks and Tonga kicks off in 3 hours (4am here! am hopeful that I'll see it, but not sure I'll stay awake) and the rugby-related facebook status updates are coming thick and fast.

Meanwhile, I'm in Toronto and there's nothing RWC going on but another kind of fever has hit this town: TIFF (the Toronto Intl Film Festival), with its glamour and big lights and busy streets... tonite Jason and I met at the corner of Spadina and Bloor to go and find coffee, then got swept up in the feel of the streets and ended up walking to Younge St and finding a great Korean place for BBQ (memories of Sydney!) and soju (memories of Seoul!)... we then followed the buzz down Yonge St, along Queen, and eventually to King St, the centre of TIFF where the crowds were pumping...

This is also the beginning of my fourth week here... three weeks ago I had just arrived and was sitting in my new whare looking around wondering what I'd signed up for... and now I'm part of a community. Well, part of a few communities I suppose. Part of the RWC-crazed (or RWC-fatigued, depending on who you're talking to) will-always-be-home the-place-where-I-belong NZ community... and part of the T.O. bigtown brightlights a-chance-to-experience-so-much community... and quite a few others as well.

Yesterday I got my small rectangular piece of plastic that confirms I am part of the U of T community: my ID card which means I can now take out books from the library, go to the gym (once I finalise my membership), and generally be a part of things here. I now even have a U of T email address (am still using the Vic one too though). I thought I'd take a few photos of my ID card yesterday when I was at Kensington market with Daniel, enjoying some coffee:

My ID - at Kensington Market (10 mins walk from my place)



My U of T ID with that Canadian treat, pumpkin pie, in time for Canadian Thanksgiving (end of Oct)



Early this afternoon, I sat in Hamilton (about an hour away from here) drinking coffee with Nadine, Daniel, and Rick Monture (awesome Mohawk guy who teaches Native Lit and Native Studies at McMaster) and we planned an 'Indigenous Literary Studies Reading Group' - I'm going to get to hang out with these guys (and a few others as well) once a month, sharing food and talking about recent scholarship in our field. Yes, sure, I'm a geek - but for me the possibility of being part of this kind of community is exciting.

Tonite, now I'm home from a nice night out enjoying the Toronto nightscene with new friend Jason, I'm making pikelets to take to the Aboriginal Studies meeting tomorrow morning. This will be my first chance to meet up with many of the other staff there, and I figured pikelets were fairly uncontroversial and unstuffupable :) This will be my community for the next year... other people dedicated to Indigenous Studies here at the University of Toronto... part of the much larger community of people working in universities around the world with the collective aspiration of improving and celebrating and extending the experiences of our people.

This morning, I was at McMaster which is the university in Hamilton where Nadine teaches. While Daniel was at an appointment, Nadine and I decided to go the on campus gallery and check out an exhibition of paintings by artists who were on board Cook's voyages around the Pacific. One of the portraits, which is usually at the Canadian National Archives in Ottawa, was a Maori woman... it was apparently drawn on the spot (as opposed to later on the ship or back in Europe 'from memory' which was more usually 'from fantasy') which meant the picture presumably bore more than a passing resemblance to the woman who was its model in the early 1770s. Amazing. All this time, she's been stashed away in an archive here in Canada, and suddenly I have a chance to meet with her.

I felt moved to find some greenery to place nearby the picture, as a customary way to acknowledge her, and muttered to Nadine that I might 'smuggle in some leaves' to which Nadine reasonably replied that I could always just go and ask if it would be be okay - which of course was a good point, and so I went downstairs to the reception area of the gallery and asked. They weren't entirely sure what to make of the request, but thought it sounded okay as long as there wasn't any water near the paintings, and when I returned a few minutes later with a spring of greenery in my hand they were quite excited and had even called Igor, the main curator of the gallery, who was keen to come and observe along with another staff member. Up the stairs we went: me, Nadine, Igor, and the other gallery person, and as they explained that they were very excited to just see what I was going to do, I realised they actually expected me to do something! Something, well, cultural. I had intended to just lay down the leaves by her (as I have done in other galleries in London and Hawaii) and then leave, but I didn't want to be the cause of a gigantic anticlimax, so as I walked towards her I thought I would quietly karanga to her as a way of acknowledging her presence and significance. So yes, it turned out that I 'practiced my culture' in that particular visible way because it felt like that was expected by the people in the gallery in that moment, even though it felt a little bit disingenuous because I hadn't originally planned to. But the thing with tikanga is that either you do something because it's the right thing or, sometimes, because you do something it becomes the right thing... as I completed the short karanga, I found myself starting to tear up and felt my throat thicken... if I am honest I know that I initiated the performance for the sake of performance, but by the end of it I had had a chance to connect. To become part of the community of Maori who are over here in Canada.

I have been a bit homesick over the past couple of days, and my connection with this woman in the portrait extends and comforts me. I'm not from here and no matter how long I stay in Toronto in lots of ways I never really will be. And yet, reflecting on the wahine from the Archives in Ottawa, along with my relationships with the tangata whenua of this place (Rick, Kateri, and so on), yep, I am ready to respectfully say that I belong here for the moment too.

short and sweet

Too tired to blog tonite... but had a lovely day... and will blog tomorrow for sure. Good nite :)

on track

Today's date stamp should read true to label - I'm finishing writing this on the 7th in the wee hours, but I started writing it on the 6th. I am working on getting back to working in the Toronto time zone - the late nites and sleeping in is fine for a while but now it is time for me to do some earlier to bed and sooner to rise...

I'm also getting back to the exercise I enjoyed so much at the beginning of my sabbatical: tonite I went for a nice walk in the evening and tomorrow I'm joining up at the U of T gym which is (in my bizarrely and ridiculously awesome set up here) a short block away from my house, and I can cut along a driveway access and get there in about 2 minutes. They've even got a pool (actually 3 pools) and do aqua aerobics classes which I've been meaning to get into for ages... woohoo!

And I've been reminded today that even when I am struggling to make the right decisions around keeping on track, I'll get the signs I need. Early this evening I went to an amazing literary reading at First Nations House here at U of T, starring Lee Maracle (awesome amazing novelist, poet, playwright etc) and Waubgeshig Rice (lovely gorgeous spunky man who is a journalist in his day job but has released a collection of short stories). I went there, which makes heaps of sense in lots of ways... I mean, I am the Indigenous lit girl; this is what I love. I knew it was this afternoon (it was in my diary, on my wall calendar and under a magnet on my fridge) but when the time came to go to the venue (FNH is just upstairs from Aboriginal Studies) I was really nervous going on my own and decided to be too shy to go and so walked downstairs back towards the street even though it was starting in ten mins.
I told myself that if I saw anyone walking up to FNH as I walked down the stairs I would turn around and follow them back up, but even though two guys were heading up in the opposite direction I then decided still not to follow them. I stood outside on the footpath and felt awful for not going but tried to make excuses to myself for not going. I was shy. I felt sick. Who would know anyway, if I didn't go. Etc etc etc... Seriously, I was being my 15 year old self to a T. I wanted to ring my sister to see if I should go but I don't live in the same country as her anymore and I knew what she would say. Of course I should go. Hmm. I felt guiltier, but no more motivated than before.
I turned around, and saw an older lady standing beside me - and realised it was Whaea Jackie, the lovely woman who runs the library at FNH. We got talking and she asked me if I was going to the reading... and told me to go! Hahaha as I walked back up the stairs I was reminded that there are many ways we are given to keep on track... and in this case, she was one of them.
And the reading? It was fantastic. Of course it was.

love is in the air...

Today was Labour Day, and like most of the other academics in US and Canada (where Labour or Labor Day is commemorated today) whose fb statuses I saw, I spent most of it parked up at my desk working away. Labouring away. Finishing a few labours of love.

I was just starting to get a bit of cabin fever when Toronto friend Sarah rang up to see if I'd like to meet her and other Toronto friend Ash for sushi at a nearby place in half an hour... and as I walked the barely ten minutes along busy pretty city streets, I fell in love with Toronto a little bit more.

Sarah told us about a hilarious blog she'd been reading about a woman and her grandmother who are both internet dating. I've been reading it tonite (and listening to the hilarious voice messages from the grandmother which are posted in the blog) and it has been cracking me up! Thanks Sarah for putting me in touch with a great blog: http://grannyismywingman.com/ ... the girl and her granny intergenerationally and hilariously (and honestly) face the dramas, excitement and traumas of actively looking for someone to love.

That's three aspects of love. Is there a fourth? Love for Alice? Someone for Alice to love? Is this te tau aroha and well as te tau okioki?

Um.
I hope so.

4, 3, 14, 473, 1

These are the numbers of my day.

4 = the number of people who were sleeping in my house when I woke up. Alyssa, Shirleen and Katherine left to return to the US this morning. It is quite an adjustment to get used to living alone again, and having the girls to stay made my house feel nice and full and buzzing...

3 = the number of episodes of a money-advice reality tv show I watched this morning after cleaning up the kitchen, rearranging the furniture, getting the washing on, and sweeping the floors... I am pretty sure I dozed a bit through the last one... catching up on some zzzzs I'd msised over the previous couple of nites...

14 = Shonagh (Anne and Michelle's girl) turned 14 today! A and M invited me over to join in with the fun of chopping millions of tomatoes for pasta sauce which they preserve in jars for the rest of the year, and after a lovely time drinking cold beer on this hot day while dicing tomatoes, I was a part of their family birthday dinner and dessert...

473 = After returning home from A & M's place, I went up to my neighbours' place to join them for birthday celebrations for Blake... he and his partner Marco had friends over for drinks and nibbles and the people I met were really very cool... they were all mad on film, and so we talked and laughed about movies most of the nite... Blake has a film in the upcoming Toronto International Film Festival, which is pretty cool! Anyway, 473 is the number of films one of their friends has already seen *this year* (yes, films; TV and DVDs don't count)...

and 1 = the number of people in my house tonite after a lovely social day. Am exhausted but happy. Good night :)

hot in the city!!

Today was a day of hotness: hot people and hot weather :)

Following up on the fun party last nite, today us GTA girls (Nadine, Sarah, me) cruised the streets of Toronto with The American Carload (Katherine, Shirleen and Alyssa), Aotearoa's Emissary (Ra) and the Guelph Stalkers (Jade and Kate; they know why they're called the stalkers).

We were hot!
So hot, in fact, that a bus stopped for us after we realised we weren't going to make it to the actual bus stop in time... the guy saw we were wanting to get on the bus (after we had brunch in an awesome cafe, the Universal Grill) and the sun was burning down, and the bus just pulled up on the kerb in front of us, and as we gratefully climbed on board he commented "well I had to stop for six pretty ladies..." Yes, we were stoked.

We were so hot!!
Oh my gosh the mid-afternoon walk in 30 degree weather along Queen St W (during which we stopped at some very cool shops, including a paper shop and an icecream shop which sold 'white squirrel' icecream: white choc, cranberries and pecans) was sooo hot! SO HOT!! We ended up picking the shops by who had air conditioning...

We're actually still quite hot... after dinner at a yummy place on Bloor and some good gossipping tonite... at almost 2am it's still 22 degrees... the fans are on, the windows are open and the four of us staying here at my place are all under sheets with blankets flung to the ends of beds and air mattresses.

After this weekend (which is a long weekend in Canada because of Labour Day on Monday), the people who have come to help me feel settled in will have headed off...

In the morning The American Carload will be heading back to the States... it has been awesome to have them stay here and so great they came up for the weekend. This evening I said goodbye to Ra, who is heading home to New Zealand. I am really going to miss her, and I really appreciate and value her observations about my situation here and her perspective that this will be a good year for me; I'm in the right place.

Yes I am. I'm hot (hehehe) and in the right place :)

party girl

Alyssa, Cornell buddy from way back, is lying on an airbed in my lounge. We've been talking about the birthday party here this evening, and she just yawned and said "it was a good party Alice" and it was.

(She's now giggling a bit because I told her I was quoting her.)

It was a great party: three friends from the US drove up for it (one even got a passport especially for the trip!); local Toronto and 'GTA' mates came along in full force; and my neighbours whose apartments are in the same house as mine all came which was awesome. Food, drinks, reunions, new people, connections, balls and balloon animals. Aya made Nadine and me an amazing fabulous chocolate cake for our combined birthday too.

Lots to write about, but no energy to write. Which means, yeah, it was a good party. Good night. xx

birthday lovin'

This is day three of the 2011 Alice Birthday Season. You might have noticed that day two (the 'actual' Canadian birthday) didn't produce a blog... but here I am, at 9.22am the next morning, reflecting on a lovely relaxed day.

Of course, Ra is staying from home so I spend the day with her. We got up, had a leisurely coffee and chat outside on the famous flag deck chairs, and headed out to check out some of Toronto... we caught a streetcar (Ra's first!) down to Queen St W, a fun street with a mixture of shops, and had crepes for brunch before heading off looking at more streets and shops before meeting Daniel for birthday coffee. We came home, relaxed some more, then headed out to meet up with Jason (yes the Jason I met on the plane to Toronto two weeks ago) who had invited us to have kai and drinks with him on top of his building, which has amazing views of the whole city. I'll share a couple of pics here, so you can see the bright lights of this big city...

Ra and me with the CN tower:

Ra in front of the sparkling lights of buildings and traffic:

With our lovely host:

In front of the building we were on top of (we were in the one on the right) (and yeah, sorry guys I haven't figured out how to rotate a picture on blogspot yet!):

We stayed late, chatting and having a couple more drinks. Meanwhile, people contacted me by phone, txt and facebook to send their birthday wishes. SO MUCH LOVE! I feel very humbled and touched and warmed by the messages and thoughts...

Today Nadine and I are having a birthday party at my place, and soon she will arrive in Toronto and we'll get ready for that. More people! More love :)

Birthdays away from home are strange, but that doesn't necessarily need to mean they are lonely. Thanks team :)





 

on the cusp

As I write, I'm having my birthday in both countries: according to my phone which has a magical setting that shows NZ and Toronto time simultaneously on my main screen, it is currently 2.31am (here) and 6.31pm (there) on 1 Sept.

I'm off to bed - my funk soul sister Rawinia is in town from home, and we have been up gossiping the nite away before spending my birthday together tomorrow checking out Toronto.

The plan: wake up whenever, breakfast at home, head out to see what's to see in Toronto hopefully including the Toronto islands (in honour of Matiu/Somes!) and a streetcar ride for Ra. In the evening, we're catching up with the lovely Jason at his place, to see views of the city and lake and say 'cheers' for my big day.

On Friday, we'll be partying for the combined bday of Nadine and me, at my place first then heading out on the town. We've even got a carload of mates coming over form the States for the fun and games!

All very exciting. Although, seeing as I'm getting older, I find I need to do a preemptive strike as well as a slower catchup in the sleep department than I used to need...

Zzzzzzzzz...