ma na ma na; do dooo do do do!

It's nearly a new year at home, but it's still the old one here in Toronto tonite. I'm even closer to the moment when I will need to finalise and declare my reflections, joys and regrets about 2011 and my resolutions, commitments, goals and hopes for 2012.

Matiu, Megan, Dominique and I went to see the Muppets Movies today. It was awesome: I laughed, cried, was nervous, knew how it would end, was suprised, remembered things,  got excited, had my memory jogged, sang along to bits...

A lot like 2011 really.

Hmmmm...

snow

It snowed today... proper snow.

Megan, Dominique, Matiu and I all loved it... so fluffy and clean at this end of winter...

A good reminder that this isn't home, but at the same time it sparked memories of when this kind of climate was home for me too...


We were dreaming of a white Christmas, but it wasn't to be. It's still a winter wonderland though!

Matiu's first snowman

on the cusp

Today is halfway between Christmas and New Year. Between a chance to slow down, enjoy, celebrate, reflect on innocence and memories... and a chance to get excited, enjoy, reflect on future possibilities.

I'm quietly slow-cooking some resolutions, but for now...

Christmas was lovely at the Lyden-Elleray house, and followed by a sleepover and a slow and fun Boxing Day breakfast with bacon and latkes... then a streetcar ride home, a walk up Bloor to see the lights and window displays... and a day yesterday of lazing at home and going to the mall. Today I took Matiu and his wee friend Kingsley (Anne and Michelle's son) to the movies... we all ended up back at Anne and Michelle's for tea. Matiu is now sleeping soundly in bed, having had another two chapters of The BFG read aloud to him by his Auntie Lala (I loved the book when I was a kid, and gave it to him for Christmas). Megan and I are watching Notting Hill, one of our favourite crappy movies, and she's sleeping on the foldout couch tonite before heading off to pick up our friend Dominique who's flying in in the morning to spend New Years with us.

Sometimes being on the cusp is nervewracking... so many ways things could turn out, so many things unknown, so many risks. The past month has been full of suspense and things out of my control...

Tonite, the cusp feels different: I'm poised between here and there; then and now. Surrounded by family and friends, and hearing from family and friends in Aotearoa and other places around the world, right now I'm trying - mostly with success - to appreciate this cusp between 2011 and 2012, and all that came before and all that will come after.  

christmas eve

A small party at my house tonite: Megan, Matiu and me; the Lyden-Elleray family, including Auntie Cathy; and Bridget and Sarah my Toronto friends. Kids decorating gingerbread houses, Christmas-themed charades, nachos with lurid red and green 'Holiday' corn chips, a few prezzies from home, so much delicious sweet kai, hot chocolate with peppermint sticks, and good times.

Matiu is knocked out in bed, and Megan and I have finished packing up after the party. The Christmas iTunes playlist continues to quietly keep us enveloped in the festive mood, on nonstop shuffle, and will do until I close this laptop in a few minutes.

We're in it: this is it; this is Christmas.

After a time of preparation - Advent - this is finally the real thing. The season of getting ready has given way to the actual celebration. Before we rush on to regret already the too-soon passing of this time together, let me spend time enjoying and appreciating every part of it...

Of course I'm thinking about home, and whanau around the world, and friends elsewhere... for Lauren and Jed, this is the first - and much hoped for - first Christmas with Holden and Alex... for us, the first Christmas without Grandad. People are travelling, visiting, hosting, standing still. People are spending time with people, missing other people, feeling deeply satisfied, feeling deeply lonely. So many family memories: Halcombe, singing at the 'Upper Hutts' when Megan and I were the first kids of our generation, waking up on warm early-summer mornings, elaborate table decorations, church, church, church, more singing, lots of good kai, returning home to the smell of a Christmas tree that's been drying out and filling the air with its aroma in a warm house in Auckland, Christmas dinner leftovers at the Te Punga cousins picnics... so many more... some that Matiu will share, and others he won't experience... but one day when he's an old man he'll tell people about his few dim memories of his six-year-old Christmas in Canada.

This is it. Christmas.

in more than one place at once...

I'm home. Well, I'm in my apartment in Toronto... and Megan and Matiu are in the next room; last nite we got back to Canada after spending time in NYC and Ithaca. My closest whanau are enjoying a long Christmas Eve celebration in Hamilton at my cousin's place. Earlier this evening we skyped with them, and they stood around holding bottles of beer, wearing short sleeves, grinning at the camera; here, it's -7 degrees and we don't even start Christmas Eve celebrations until tomorrow evening. 

Ever since I moved to the States in 2000, living 'here' has always been about not being 'there.' Christmases are about time with various people, but also time without others. My first US Christmas was in Rochester with my friend Dorollo's family; my second was (oh no! I can't remember!); my third was supposed to be with Jolisa and Richard in Ithaca but I was snowed in and ate the chocolate mousse I'd prepared to share while watching back to back episodes of 'changing rooms' on TV; my fourth I was home on a research trip, and preparing my eventual return to NZ; and my fifth was with Anne & Michelle and their kids, who we'll join on Christmas Day this year, as well as Alyssa who spent Monday with us in NYC, and the lovely Johnson who'd travelled from Hawai'i to share Christmas before I moved home.

Tonite, about to embark on another 'away' Christmas, I am deeply grateful for Megan and Matiu sharing 'here' with me, and at the same time I find myself thinking about people in other places: family and friends, yes, but also people I don't know. Christchurch. West Papua. Attawapiskat. The Philippines. And so many more... Surely these places, these people, are the reason for the season.

'twas the night before the arrival...

A few hours ago, Megan texted from the Tokyo airport departure lounge. She and Matiu are flying to New York City via Heathrow, and soon I'll drive down to meet them there.

This is my last nite in a one-person apartment until the end of January... once we return to Toronto on Thursday it will be a three-person apartment! There's expectation, hope, excitement in the air :)



********

Am not sure how often I'll be able to blog over the new couple of days, while I pick them up from NYC and we return to Toronto, taking our time along the way. Will try - or else will provide a good update once I'm back. In, yes, an apartment for three! :)

the finishing of things

It's the 17th of December... yes, this is Friday's post... but you know how I'm the late-nite girl who rarely posts during the time alloted for the day by her calendar. Four months ago, on the 17th of August, I left Aotearoa, and arrived in Toronto... after four months of being in Canada, things are still fresh and new and exciting... but all things are ultimately governed by seasons, and for some things the season is ending.

People are saying goodbye to people... I know of several people who are farewelling loved ones who have passed away.

Mum and Dad are spending this weekend packing up the house in Epuni... yes, next week the house I moved into halfway through 2009 when I got back from three months in Sydney, will finally be vacated and left for another family to enjoy. 

Megan and Matiu are on an amazing trip around the world on their way here, and they only have one more day left in Japan with the host family she lived with twenty years ago. They've been having an amazing time, and Matiu has been having a ball, and Megan has been connecting, and soon it will be time to say goodbye.

People in the US and Canada who teach at universities have been busily grading essays and exams all week, after finishing classes and saying goodbye to students. The feeling of finishing marking is always bittersweet: the grading is never something to look forward to - it always feels like such a task - but as you enter the grades and see the outcome of the work you and your students have put in over the past semester you suddenly realise how lovely they were; how smart, how fun, how engaged... you realise that, because teaching is about giving of yourself, that you've left a part of  yourself there too. 

Christmas and other holidays and celebrations are heating up... which involves the beginning of things, but also the finishing: getting to the end of the present wrapping; buying the food; making final decisions which cannot help but quietly close off possibilities... after weeks of pouring over magazines, I've finally chosen the cookie recipes we'll use when Megan and Matiu are here... the other contenders will have to be made by other people; that decision is done.

There are many things I'm supposed to be finishing, or saying goodbye to... the large list of things 'to do' is far longer than it should be right now. And so, I realise, I feel excited about the newness and thrill of New Year and having family around and Christmas and thinking about the future... but I'm weighed down by the things I regret, the things I'm embarassed to have not finished, the promises I've made and broken.

I never wanted to be one of these kinds of academics: someone who finds I always have about 27 hours worth of living to squeeze into the 24 we're all allotted; someone who misses deadlines, doesn't reply emails, isn't as prompt as I'd like with feedback for students, takes too long. I realise that this has implications for people beyond myself... there are flow-on effects of every incomplete task and I find myself feeling responsible for all manner of anguish and stress that I cause by not being as good at finishing things as I am at starting them.

I make resolutions, I read books about organisation, I take heart in what I do get accomplished, I make lists. These strategies all have variable effect... some days I'm pleased by what it happening and some days I feel awful giving in to my tired body and gonig to bed despite the things I haven't done.

It's okay, gentle reader, I'm not a complete mess about this... I have perspective on the situation... I don't need sympathy.

But. I do want to become as good a finisher as I am a starter.

It's not a resolution - it's too early in December for them! - but it's something for me to think about as I reflect that I am halfway through December, and the end of December is halfway through sabbatical. I am almost at the summit of te tau okioki... and maybe this is why the pack is starting to feel a bit too heavy. I've been loving the climb, but I brought a few too many things on the journey and I thought I would have dispensed with more of them by now.

So, rather than thinking that the upcoming trip to NYC to pick up Megan and Matiu, then Christmas, then a visit from Dominique and then New Year is a distraction, something that will torturously keep me away from the slow burning sense of panic about what's not yet done, I'll see it as a chance to put down the pack for a while, stretch my legs, reshuffle the pack a bit, look at how far I've climbed, appreciate the view from here, and get ready to enjoy the rest of the journey.    

a wise person once said...

"Alice, sometimes good news doesn't come in the package we expected. We're surprised by the package it arrives in, but that doesn't make the good news any less good."

So, so true.

Tonite I'm thinking about the wise person... and about what he said. Both of these thoughts are making me smile.

Moe mai ra, e Carmen...

Carmen passed away in Sydney, aged 75. She was the stuff of legend; facebook tributes and news reports following her passing have been heartfelt.

In her poem about Parihaka, JC Sturm writes "If you don't know about Parihaka, be sure your children do."

Tonite I feel the same way about Carmen: if you don't know about Carmen, the fantastic Ngati Maniapoto entertainer, transvestite, businessperson, mayoral candidate and community leader, be sure your children do.

In some ways, perhaps, Carmen was born in the wrong time... but she worked hard to make sure she helped to usher in a world that would be the right time for the next generations... and one of the things that grieves me is the extent to which we still need her.

It's still not an easy place to be takatapui... for many families and communities, being Maori is about being straight. We work so hard for our young people to have the opportunity to be Maori on their own terms... I hope we don't accidentally forget to also work so they have the opportunity to experience, develop and celebrate their gender and sexual identities on their own terms too.

Queer/ Takatapui Maori youth continue to have high suicide rates and high rates of substance abuse, migration overseas, and depression. I don't want to suggest that this is a necessarily fatal story... takatapui youth and adults are not only an unhappy picture, but the unhappy dimensions of the picture are something for which all of us need to take some responsibility.

It breaks my heart that our youth (and some of our adults - shame on them for not knowing any better) still use the term 'fag' as an insult. Homophobia is rife... but our community is affected by other kinds of problems with sexual health (access to sex education, etc) which Carmen spent time working for and advocating. I don't believe (as some do) that the Maori community is any more homophobic than any other community... but this is mostly because I don't think such comparisons get us anywhere. They don't help us think about who we are, the terms on which we want to think about sexuality, who we might become.

There are many stories of Carmen, far more than you or I will ever know. She was dynamic, extraordinary, passionate. Carmen can't be reduced to her activist and symbolic work, but neither should these be forgotten. If you don't know about Carmen, be sure your children do.

Moe mai ra e Carmen... he kotuku rerenga tahi.

 

love/ writing/ love

The thing, you see, about love... is that it is like writing.

I'm a prolific writer. I can write 5000 words in a day if I'm in the right space... certainly 3000... regularly 1000. My writing process involves freewriting (writing whatever's in my head) then extensive sessions of editing... reworking, returning to my overall plan, deciding whether a new unexpected dimension is the point of the exercise or a distraction, culling, fixing, and smoothing.

Some people hold back and wait for the perfect sentence to appear in their mind and then transcribe it onto paper with quiet confidence... I tend to write messily, knowing most of it won't be there in the end but that all of it will have got me to the final version. It hurts to edit out so many words, but it's also a joy to learn from each of my clumsy phrases, my red herrings, the times I stare out the window or at the wall behind my desk and wonder if I'll ever find another word.

I love writing.

When I write, all of me is there: I sit at the computer or the paper and I can feel that all of me is present in the room while I start to channel words and fill the blank space. All of my hopes are there... and my fears, my experiences, my training, my family, my travels, my hurt, my joy, my aspirations, my imagined futures, my embarassing pasts... it's all there. Everything is there.

Because everything is there, the writing process is exhausting but also incredibly rewarding. It requires extra dollops of trust in writing as a process, not just a product... I deeply trust that writing will bring me to a better relationship with all of these things that are there in the room as I write... whenever I try to practice writing as a secular, product-oriented, detached activity it just never works. I've got to be there in order to be there. It hurts, it makes things intimate, I risk lots... but it's ultimately why I write!

Of course, writing is not only personal therapy. It's also about the collective... at its heart, it's about communication. As a process, writing provides me with an opportunity to communicate with myself... but the process is only worthwhile (perhaps only ethical) when it is also underpinned by a commitment to creating something bigger... between me and the reader, between the reader and their world. Between all of us.

Indeed, this means that audience is key, and yet in a very delicate way: if I write only for an audience I lose my own voice; but if I write only for myself I lose direction, passion, interest, perspective. The finest finest balance must be struck, between writing for myself and writing for my reader... betwen the process and, well, the final version.

We're all writers, but we all write differently.

There are so many theories about writing. People are always happy to give tips and advice about writing... there are so many books, so many websites, so many moments when people tell me how to write. These tips are almost always shared with love, and the trick isn't to decide whether the writing tip or perspective on writing is 'true' or 'false'... it's to recognise that this truth - this theory, this advice - makes sense to the person telling me about it, and I have to work out how or whether that would work for me.

I have deep regrets about trying to follow other peoples' rules to the letter, which always involves shutting down my own voice for a while and trying to write like someone else. It has never worked for me in the end.

And yet, I cherish moments when I get to sit with other people and talk frankly about writing... these moments always make me a better writer. Sometimes other writers are examples, and sometimes they are cautionary tales. Either way, I learn about writing.

There's always more to learn about writing!

People have said writing comes easily to me. "I don't write as fast as you" they say. "You have this capacity to just keep on writing, come what may." This is all true, of course. It's tiring, but it's the only way I know how to do it and still be me.

Writing is hard work. It's not all flowery sentences and breathtakingly simple yet complex turns of phrase. The best writing is writing that hides the hard work which has gone into its creation. Simple, clear, elegant writing is almost always evidence of a huge amount of work. The more you write, the more you know this is true.

Writing requires commitment, but some writing was never supposed to proceed beyond a draft. Reworking is never going to make it better; it'll always feel incomplete, it'll never be done; just walk away.

Some writing has been with you for so long, and one day you pick it up and realise your masterpiece was here all along. It still needs work, possibly lots of work, but it was already there and you just didn't realise when you first penned it that it was something of a refrain which would keep coming back until you were in the right place, re-reading it in the right light, to see it's your magnum opus.

Sometimes I read something I've written and unless I knew it was by me I wouldn't recognise it... I will have no recollection of being present in the act of writing, and I know that this was a rare moment of true inspiration. At its best, writing brings a writer out in me I didn't dare imagine I could be. I'm so proud of these moments, although slightly in awe of what they might mean. I am also a bit anxious when I realise just how much control I have to give up - how much trust I need to have - in order to be able to write like this.

I want to write like this, this inspired almost out-of-body way. But it's also kind of scary. What risk!

This thing, you see, about writing... is that it's like love.

our amazing tamariki

It's the season of school prizegivings and final reports in New Zealand, and every time I log onto facebook I see family members praising their kids and shouting out about their accomplishments.

It's such a humbling and awe-inspiring position to be in: seeing all of these clear statements of aroha, closeness and high aspirations for our tamariki. These kids are doing amazingly: at sports, academics, speech competitions, effort, leadership... the list goes on!

It's a bit like watching the crowd who is watching a game of rugby... seeing them cheer and yell is just about as fun as seeing the game itself. Facebook has started collected posts together which have a common word (like 'Christmas' or 'Maori') but if they collected together the posts which included the word 'proud' - well - that would be a whole lot of posts! A whole lot of uploaded photos with smiling kids holding certificates and grinning at the camera.

And, I have to say, it's so fantastic to see such proud families... the shout-outs are coming from parents, but they're also coming from siblings, aunties, uncles, grandparents...

On a personal note, this means a lot to me, because as matiu's auntie I can say that sometimes I have been understood as part of Matiu's whanau and that sometimes I have been treated like a random person who could only have a minor interest in his learning... Matiu's reality, and the reality of lots of our tamariki, is that his parents are certainly very engaged in his learning but the circle of family support, encouragement and accountability extends far beyond himself, his Mum and his Abba...

It's graduation day at Victoria today as well, and that reminds me that family engagement and excitement about education doesn't stop after school. For me, a highlight of my job each year is going to graduation ceremonies and meeting the families, friends, partners and children of students who are graduating... they're so proud, it's so lovely to have a chance to be reminded that although I necessarily experience this student as an individual, they are part of a much bigger picture and their degree has meaning for people beyond themselves.



(It is a waste of time to even bother thinking about the ways that this interrupts the expectations that media (and, sometimes, people involved in education) can have of Maori and Pasifika families and kids... in fact, these attitudes and assumptions are so ridiculous that I'm not even going to bother writing anything more about them!)



Following on from election season, we could turn to theories and policies about education, but for now I just want to bask in the bright future of our people and come up with a bit of a seasonal collective aspiration or, perhaps, prayer:

• may we recognise the talents and gifts our tamariki have;
• may we provide everything that's needed to encourage and extend our kids in areas where they aren't so strong; 
• may we fight for educational justice so all of our tamariki have the opportunity to excel according to the terms that matter to themselves and their families;
• may we broaden our ideas about what counts as 'family' engagement in education;
• and may we do everything in our power to make sure the fabulous amazing tamariki of today are not prevented (by systemic problems, poverty, racism, and the like) from being fabulous amazing adults in the future.

I'm so, so proud of so many of the tamariki I've been hearing about over facebook, email and the phone... and of their families who love, nurture, inspire, encourage, discipline, extend and adore them.

:)

getting back what was stolen

I just had a great korero with Tasha, my best mate from school days, who I haven't talked to on the phone since I got here in Canada... we had so much to catch up on!! Updates on ourselves, kids, parents, jobs, etc...

During our conversations we talked about her daughter Te Morehu who has been at kohanga her whole life and who is as proficient in the Maori language as she is in English... and Tasha's oldest son Johnny is also learning te reo now; his partner is fully bilingual and their adorable boy Lamarn has been in kohanga and a bilingual home environment all his life too. We also talked about Matiu and his experiences in immersion early childhood education and now school... and how all of these kids (sorry Johnny, I know you're not a kid anymore!) are so lucky to be able to take for granted that the Maori language is in thier worlds.

We're very jealous, Tasha and I, of their bilingualism... but also very proud. "We were robbed" Tasha commented at one point, and it's true, we were. Something was stolen from us, and we have felt the gap it has left every day of our lives.

This next generation is getting it back... but the beautiful thing is that their kids could be in a position where speaking Maori is no longer a political or unusual act... when Te Morehu and Matiu next have a chance to play together perhaps they'll speak in Maori, at least some of the time, but that's still a little unusual and they may well use English as a default when they start talking...

We're getting back what's stolen - and as well as finding ways to pass on the language we need to find ways of not passing on the shame associated with not knowing... that's a burden for us to hold close and not inflict on the next generations if at all possible, including when the shame is expressed as jealousy or resentment that the language is so accessible to them in ways it wasn't to us.

I hope by the time Tasha and I are old ladies (hehehe) the kids around us will be able to take the Maori language for granted... not in a way that suggests they think it's boring, but in a way that suggests they think it's theirs. Which, of course, it is.

into the big wide world...

Today I was standing at the back of the Women's Bookshop here in Toronto (actually just around the corner from my house) enjoying the launch of Scott Morgensen's new book Spaces Between Us: Queer Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Decolonization. The book is an older sibling of mine, in that it is form the same publisher (Minnesota), and is a great contribution to Indigenous Studies. Woohoo yay Scott!

As we celebrating the arrival of the book into the big wide world, I received a txt from Megan, reporting that she and Matiu had arrived in Japan and were on a train heading towards her host family... they had a wonderful time in Sydney yesterday, seeing family and friends (Matiu got to catch up with his dear mate Aliyah who he first met when I was living in Sydney in early 2009), and the boy had slept the whole way to Japan. This is great news, not only because it means Matiu will be able to enjoy his time in Japan without spending a day of being grumpy and tired, but also because it bodes well for the big flight in a week when they fly to Heathrow and then New York City.

Meanwhile, it was a very cold day and I was comfortably schlepping around home in PJ bottoms and a hoodie with the arms cut off (my idea of high fashion when I'm at home and unlikely to see another human), and Sarah rang and talked me into going for a walk to Kensington Market to have a slice of delish pie at Wanda's, a great bakery/ cafe we found there... admittedly it didn't take a lot to convince me!

This evening, after the book launch Nadine and I came back here and made dinner (my new party trick: a yummy shrimp/ prawn rice thingie which is described in the recipe as a 'Greek paella' and which reminds me of very yummy rice rissotto) and toasted our own book success with wine given to us by our dear friend Katherine, who had brought the bottle back for us from Italy. Yum! We had agreed that we would enjoy the wine when both of our books were out into the world... or at least the first stage, off our own laptops!

Finally, I spent a long time this evening fb chatting with my dear friend Ka'imi in Hawai'i - and her lovely son Kikau, who fb chatted with me for a while; we compared the decorations on the Christmas trees in our respective lounges. When Ka'imi and I chatted online, we both had a glass of wine in one hand and a laptop in the other, and covered a massive range of topics (jobs, family, children, love, being Indigenous, the Struggle, education, Christmas, faith, and so on) while we sipped and typed... our words flew and swam back and forth between us as we typed.

It's a huge world we live in, and it's exciting when new things are launched and when links are affirmed... they remind us of the spaces between us that are not the absence but the presence of connection.

silent movie

Saw a great movie tonite - 'The Artist' - which is about a silent movie star whose fortunes change when the 'talkies' come in... and the cool thing was, this is a 2011 movie but is itself a silent movie!

(To be honest, despite loving the job I had ushering at the movies at home many years ago when Rudolph Valentino's 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse' played at the Civic with a live orchestra, I was feeling a bit lazy tonite and when I heard it was a silent movie I wasn't really that keen - I wasn't in the mood to watch an arty movie that was 'trying too hard' - you know the kind - so I was particularly pleased to have my expectations blown out of the water - it was amazing!)

So, one of the things the main character had to deal with was change... change that was outside of his control, and which he couldn't fight... change he had to find a way to adapt to and make the most of... change as a part of life and all that jazz...

There are a few changes I'm happy with today: Carmel Sepuloni and another Green Part MP in Parliament at home; Megan and Matiu boarded a plane in Wellington this morning on the first part of the journey towards Toronto; and I got some more writing done :) 

Heh heh I was also going to try for another change: to be in bed before 2am... but, um, perhaps that's change that will have to wait for another day...

Thinking about Glen Innes tonite

I was facebooking with Damon Salesa earlier this evening - Damon is an amazing Samoan historian who has been teaching at Michigan for a past few years but is heading home to take up a position in Pacific Studies at the Uni of Akld. Damon is one of those people who other people expect me to know through academic networks, but I knew him first as someone else who grew up in and around Glen Innes. Or, as those of us from that part of Auckland know to call it, GI.

GI is in the news every once in a while... and it's back again now because Housing NZ is keen to sell off some more of its housing stock and land in GI in order to make the most of the high property values of land in some of the neighbourhoods circling around GI. (Some info here if you aren't up to date with this: http://www.waatea603am.co.nz/News/2011/December/War-on-poor-sparks-GI-hikoi)

This isn't a new story for GI... every few years a few more houses are shaved off the sides of the neighbourhood, and in order to make the newly available land palatable for potential new owners, the names of streets are changed or a whole new 'sub-neighbourhood' is created through the imposition of a new name. I knew someone whose mother's house, which she had bought off Housing NZ a few years earlier and which was located by chance on a particular side of the new line drawn on a map, increased in value by $35000 overnight when a slice of GI was renamed Wai-o-Taiki Bay.

All of this reminded me of a poem I wrote a while ago about the time this process took place near where I lived. I thought I'd share that poem here today.

mad ave.

i.

dave dobbyn wrote a song about madeleine avenue.

dlt helped him out with it

and it’s a good song

to those of us who grew up in the area,

the street they sing about was never the kind of place you’d call ‘madeleine avenue’,

because it just couldn’t carry off that kind of name.

to us it was just mad ave.

ii.

parallel to mad ave was esperance,

the road we walked along on the way home from school.

we’d start off a big group walking slowly at the end of the day

talking and laughing and yelling ‘see ya’

as kids peeled off to go in to their houses.

because my street came off the other end of esperance,

I’d walk all the way to the end.

iii.

walking home down esperance was always a bit scary because of the dogs.

that was also part of the thrill though,

and sometimes I’d imagine a dog waiting till i was all alone

at the end of the road

and choosing that as the time to attack.

my friend stephanie’s big sister saw a dog run over on esperance once.

the car ran straight over its stomach,

then the dog jumped up and kept running down the street.

we would tell and retell that story,

shaking our heads, laughing at that kind of dog

- ‘those dogs on Esperance man’ -

impressed by the sheer resilience of the unsquashable dog

and also (secretly)

horrified by the idea the dog in question might still be out there,

dodging all reasonable efforts to kill it.

the dog that i was most scared of wasn’t an unknown quantity at all, but was a very familiar feature;

the dog I was most scared of was Max,

the giant black dog that hid behind Mrs Mafileo’s flowers,

and when Camille and I used to sneak out of school at lunchtime

to visit our friend Tasha and baby Jessie,

we’d walk up the steps 

holding on to each other

stomachs in our throats,

wondering if Max’s head was going to pop up behind the chrysanthemums.

iv.

those trips to see Tasha were a big part of my last two years at school.

after i snuck from school, through mad ave, to esperance,

we’d drink some diet coke, watch oprah or days of our lives,

chatter away about big and small things.

although i didn’t always go back to school afterwards,

when i did I’d sometimes have a little bit of Jessie’s milky sick

on the shoulder of my regulation blouse

and if it was really bad I’d cover it

with Tasha’s old school uniform jumper.

i remember the time Tasha brought Jessie to school as a baby

and that principal of ours

who’d been so mean and so inflexible during the pregnancy

asked Tasha if he could hold Jessie.

to our delight, which we fought hard, but failed, to hide,

as soon as she was in his arms,

Jessie turned her little head

and sicked all over his pristine shirt sleeve.

v.

so why would dave dobbyn write a song about a street?

because

all of the flats up and down mad ave and esperance

were slowly emptied out

- there was a time when there were bits of gardens

and bits of boarded up windows all in the same street –

and then, the final insult,

they were all knocked over,

demolished.

gone.

my mum says the saddest thing about the homes there

was driving though the streets

and seeing that even though the houses were gone

there were still some remaining bits of taro patches

the weedy offcuts of gardens,

resistance at the level of leaves and stems.

vi.

the last time i was in new zealand i drove through mad ave,

although it’s not called mad ave anymore.

it’s mount taylor drive, thank you very much,

after the english name for taurere,

the mountain that’s really much closer to a molehill

and sits doggedly at the end of the street.

mount taylor drive is a bit different to mad ave, aye.

each house takes up the space of about three or four mad ave families

there aren’t any cars on blocks in the front yard,

there are no taro patches in the back

or old ladies chatting as they walk up the road

there also aren’t any kids walking home from school

or crysanthemums.

and even though I’m sure the new places don’t have the problems of rot,

mould, burned-out kitchens, or worn-out-ness from overcrowding that the old places had,

to me they look like a gust of wind might make

the walls topple over

the roof fall in

the windowpanes crash to the ground.

‘mount taylor drive’ isn’t really a change of name for the same street, then,

as much as it’s a new name for a new thing.

vii.

when i was 14

i was in a school production about taurere

and the stories told about the people who’d known the landscape

before mad ave, before mount taylor drive.

I’m still not sure who has the right to mourn

who has the right to say

that their place was taken away.

somewhere between 'full of woe' and 'far to go'

Once again I'm writing the blog in the early hours of the day *after* the day the blog is supposed to be about. These blogs have turned into the thing I do before I go to bed: a last-nite activity; a lullaby of sorts. And these early-hours blogs are written on a kind of cusp, suspended somewhere between the day I've had and the day that's yet to come. I'm on borrowed time: borrowed from tomorrow, which is technically today.

For some reason, tonite I've got an English rhyme in my head:

Mondays child is fair of face,
Tuesdays child is full of grace,
Wednesdays child is full of woe,
Thursdays child has far to go,
Fridays child is loving and giving,
Saturdays child works hard for his living,
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.


As I write, right now, I'm somewhere between Wednesday and Thursday. If days were Venn diagrams, this moment would be where Wednesday and Thursday intersect. According to the nursery rhyme, this means I'm somewhere between full of woe and far to go.

Which is funny because I just got off the phone from cousin Terese, and we had a massive talk about the distance between home and away... we talked about the luxury of proximity, and the ways we have always had of keeping up connections across space and, perhaps, time... we talked about the problem of not travelling outside of familiar space and the risks of not travelling home... we talked about the ways in which practical, small, human, inclusive, welcoming practices can be the difference between coming and going... we talked about having 'far to go' (a long way to go before reaching an acceptable standard) and having 'far to go' (many amazing possible journeys stretching out in the future ahead of us)... and we talked about how being full of woe - including the remnants of woe - can deeply shape your attitude and openness to movement and curiosity and, ultimately, connection.

Sure, some of this discussion was about individual physical lives but it was also about emotional and spiritual lives, and about collectives: families, hapu, marae, organisations, and so on.

So, between being full of woe and having far to go.

While we talked, I was wearing a new pair of boots I bought tonite in a sale. They felt a bit snug in the store, but they were on a huge discount and were not just gorgeous but snow-ready, so after I was assured I could bring them back as long as I hadn't worn them outside I paid for them and brought them home. I wanted to try them on to see if they would stretch a bit, and to see if this kind of tight is too tight. I've had the new boots on for about two hours now, and I'm sad to say that I think they might indeed be a bit too tight! One thing I've noticed, though, is that over the course of time my feet have shifted between feeling squashed and sore, and feeling fine. The times my feet are feeling fine, I need to explain, are not when the boots have stretched to fit (they haven't, and likely won't) but they are instead when my feet have been so tightly compressed that they fall asleep! After a while, I get pins and needles, then they hurt again, and then - miracle - I can't feel them anymore! (Nope, not because they had room to wriggle. Yep, because they're asleep.)

This process of waiting for the consctricting boots to fit, and my realisation that the feeling of my feet is not a good indicator of how well the boots fit unless I consider how my feet feel over a longer period of time, reminds me a bit of this idea of proximity and movement and migration and distance. Sometimes constriction feels squashy and tight, but sometimes we adjust to our conditions... not because the conditions have become better but because we have ceased to have the ability to tell anymore; our own warning systems have given up on warning us about the problem of not giving ourselves room, and this means, ultimately, thast we're less likely to move.

Nancy Sinatra's boots were made for walking, but these boots were not. I've got far to go and the woe these boots will cause will prevent me from getting far, even in those moments when I think they feel fine, or at least adequate.

It was a good chat with Terese tonite. Tt was good to be reminded of the vast and multi-layered histories of migration which we have inherited as Taranaki people: across oceans, across land, across generations. Full of woe, far to go. But also far to go...

w a i t i n g

w   a   i   t   i   n   g

w  a  i  t  i  n  g

w a i t i n g

w.a.i.t.i.n.g


Yep, it turns out that I'm not very good at waiting... I've got a 'to do' list as long as my leg, time slipping through my fingers, and deadlines coming towards me like bugs towards a windscreen...


Some days, the mystery of life is exciting... and some days, I wish I could see into a crystal ball - just for 5 minutes - to see how things turn out... then I'd be happy to get back into the business of taking each day as it comes. Yeah, I know, that's cheating...


;)

He waharoa

This morning, the community of Te Herenga Waka marae at Victoria University of Wellington, held a dawn ceremony for the new waharoa at the entrance. Carved by Dr Takirirangi Smith, tohunga kaiwhakairo and scholar who also carved the wharenui itself which was opened 25 years ago, the waharoa - a gateway - is a large, imposing structure which clearly marks the entrance to the marae which is accessed down an alleyway off Kelburn Parade.

I've heard about the opening through facebook today as people posted acknowledgements and memories of the ceremony, and through hearing about it directly from my Mum and sister who attended the ceremony in order to represent me (seeing as I would normally be there if I wasn't, well, here) and also in order to add to the tangata whenua (as in, Taranaki whanui) presence at the occasion. Just as the waharoa is the face of the marae, they were kanohi today as well. Mum and Megan both said the waharoa itself is amazing, but they also said the event was great: meaningful, well done, lovely. I find myself missing the marae today - often I miss Waiwhetu and Te Tatau o te Po, but today I really missed Te Herenga Waka - the feeling of being a part of the community of people around the marae - but also the buildings, the trees, the offices upstairs - all of it!

It has been a day of waharoa. A few months of waharoa. Seven years of waharoa, if you consider that it is seven years (perhaps to the day?) that I defended my PhD thesis before moving home.

So many waharoa.

The things about waharoa is that they are gateways that simultaneously draw us into the future/ beyond and root us in the past/ here. Waharoa bear histories that can tells us things about ourselves: how we connect to the place we are coming to, who the local people are; and even when they are illegible to us - when we can't 'read' the meaning carved in front of us - that also tells us who we are. Waharoa provide an opportunity to gather - to gather ourselves but also to gather with others - before moving through a process and across a specific space as a group.

There are quite a few waharoa in my life, a few gateways I'm considering at the moment, and tonite I find myself asking questions about them. Must one always enter or is it okay to look for a while and then keep walking? How does one read? Do we have a speaker and someone to karanga? Who carves? What is the connection between the waharoa and the marae? If we talk about people keeping a marae warm, does this extend to the waharoa; are waharoa warm too, or does their location leave them in a different relationship with the people?




The new waharoa at Te Herenga Waka marae, Victoria University of Welllington


I'm not the only person thinking about gatweways at the moment - people in my life today have been thinking about moving house, moving countries, embarking on new adventures, committing newly or more deeply to relationships, applying for jobs, preparing for interviews, getting ready for Christmas and travel; making decisions, standing on edges, looking through, thinking about whether to step further...

zzzz....

a long day after a short sleep:

a christmas tree
a play called 'rez sisters'
a trip to a bar to discuss the play
a lazy-sunday-nite meal with nadine
a good chat on fb with a friend
a million things to think about
a thousand things on my to do list
a hundred tasks i thought i'd do today that i haven't done
a formal reply i'm waiting for
a txt i'm waiting for
a yawn!

so tiring!

another yawn!

all these things!

am off to bed x

advent

Tomorrow I'm picking up a tree - Anne will collect me at about 10am and we're heading off to get real trees for our homes...

Today I bought decorations from a fair trade shop: palm leaf stars, recycled paper baubles, and the like. I also bought a Christmas CD to enjoy while I decorate the house tomorrow, and a couple of things for Megan and Matiu to add to the tree once they get here so we'll all have a decoration to remember our snowy Christmas (ssshh don't tell them! ;) hehe)...

A small pile of prezzies is on the hearth in the lounge: a box that has arrived from home, and a bag of things I'm taking to the post office on Monday to send along the same route. Cards are on the table and I'll write some tomorrow and send them too.

I've got a shopping list on the microwave, and a list of things to do over the next week. I've sent emails to sort out a few deadlines and have a couple more to send tomorrow. I've got nutmeg and cinnamon and other baking supplies for biscuits (cookies, for the non-NZers) and will pick up more butter and seasonal cookie cutters on Monday.

I've located the most recent copy of my manuscript of poetry and will give myself a whoel day this coming week to work on it, so I can fulfil the promise I made to my dear friend Moira that I'd have a manuscript to her by Christmas this year - a loving deadline she set me to make sure it didn't keep slipping down the 'to do' list :)

Once Megan and Matiu arrive we will spend time in NYC with Gemma and Alyssa, in Ithaca with Lauren and her whanau, and then Toronto with many people... we're having a Christmas Eve celebration here and I've started reading magazines to get ideas for the desserts and mulled wine. Dominique will visit from LA, we'll go visit Matiu's kuia in Ottawa, we're going to Alberta and Penetanguashene and Ohio and other places too. People and rental cars and days and departures and arrivals are being lined up... things which were written in pencil are steadily being erased, shifted, rewritten, corrected, ammended, and - finally - overwritten in pen.

Advent is a time of preparation.

Getting ready.

It's easy to get stressed with the rush of it all... but the thrill is in the chase, the journey is in the destination, preparation is itself - sometimes - the thing you find you've been preparing for.

Whakawaiwai ai... Te tu a Taranaki

This weekend I'm going to get (with Anne and Michelle's help) a Christmas tree - and so today when I was out at the shops I picked up a few decorations and some sparkly tree lights. I'm looking forward to decorating the tree, and to adding to the small bits and pieces I've been getting in place through the rest of the house. I love Christmas, fully and unashamedly, with all my heart: it reminds me of family, friends, home, growing up, dreams of futures... all of it!

I've also been thinking about the thrill of having Megan and Matiu come to have Christmas here in Toronto... I pick them up in less than three weeks! - and I am really looking forward to the three of us sitting here drinking hot chocolates, watching the tree lights, being together.

So, in order to help get the house ready I got another set of lights, which are strung on a white cord instead of green, so it doesn't stand out quite so obviously when it's run along a background that's not, you know, a tree.

Now, I hadn't figured out the best powerpoints for the lights yet - actually I'm still deciding between two places for the tree to go in the first place - so I thought I'd plug in the white-stringed lights and suspend and drape them along the mantlepiece so I can hold off on putting up hooks or pins until I get the actual tree and configure everything from there. The mantlepiece and hearth are a major feature of the main room, so I already draped along the length of the mantlepiece, and I've put Christmassy things in three glass vases at one end (pomegranates, nuts, red-and-green-wrapped chocolates), so i figured I might as well add to what was already happening in that part of the room. There's a big picture hook above the mantlepiece which usually holds some flax 'poi' made by Mum which I brought with me, so I made use of that for the lights too, just to make it look a bit exciting and not too cluttered with the decorations, ribbon and family photos.

After I'd switched the lights on, I walked across the room and turned off the main light and then flopped on the couch and looked back at the mantlepiece... and realised my little Christmas display was a sparkly Taranaki!

 

I suppose it's true what they say: there's no place like home.
And, I like to add when I'm living far, far away: no matter what destination was written on your most recent plane ticket, you never really leave home after all.

A partridge and a pukeko in a pear tree...

Today I met a pretty important deadline, and after emailing off the thing I'd put together I went out for dinner with Nadine and Sarah. Fun chats with the girls is always a lovely thing... and then the three of us walked up Bloor St and Nadine headed off at the subway to catch the train then bus to Hamilton, and Sarah and I decided to keep walking and do something we'd been planning to do for a while: we walked up and down to look in the shop windows on Bloor (lots and lots of big shops up that street!), enjoying their Christmas window displays.

Our favourite (I'm pretty sure Sarah feels the same way) was the a massive multi-window display in which life-size manequins were placed in scenes from the Christmas song 'a partridge in a pear tree' - I wish I'd taken my camera with me so I could put some snaps on the blog, and I'll head back soon to do just that :) But in the meantime you just have to believe me: it was gorgeous!

I'll paint the picture.

Cold, it was cold. Not snowy and not bitter, but I was very pleased to have my lovely new down coast buttoned all the way up to my chin. We'd popped in to grab coffees for the walk, so as we strolled up the road we held warm cardboard cups of warmth... in my case, my little seasonal obsession, a gingerbread latte. All up and down Bloor are bright twinkly lights, and most of the shops have really made an effort with the windows... and then this one, Holt Renfrew which is a very spunky store, had gigantic green pears half my height, with a huge partridge on a branch which stretched across a window that was maybe 3 or 4 metres long. It was fun cracking the code... and, although they had some of the words as a part of a piece of sheet music for the song which was a backdrop to a couple of the sections of the display, most of the words were not there and we found ourselves trying to remember them. (Easier for me, because Sarah's Jewish and so hasn't grown up with quite so many Christmas carols around!)

It was fun, it was lovely, it was the start of December and the start of a wintry Christmas.


*******************************************************************************


PS - I got home and goggled the lyrics, so I didn't have to stay up half the night lying in bed trying to hum them into my consciousness... and look what I found! Who knew!?

Religious symbolism of The Twelve Days of Christmas (The 12 Days of Christmas) 1 True Love refers to God 2 Turtle Doves refers to the Old and New Testaments 3 French Hens refers to Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues 4 Calling Birds refers to the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists 5 Golden Rings refers to the first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace. 6 Geese A-laying refers to the six days of creation 7 Swans A-swimming refers to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments 8 Maids A-milking refers to the eight beatitudes 9 Ladies Dancing refers to the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit 10 Lords A-leaping refers to the ten commandments 11 Pipers Piping refers to the eleven faithful apostles 12 Drummers Drumming refers to the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

    

Tough questions

Asking tough questions isn't necessarily an indication of aggression... often they can be an expression of love.

Today I've heard, and asked, some tough questions. In the context of teaching, in terms of research and scholarship, and on a personal level.

Sitting around with a group of people at the Aboriginal Studies lounge tonite, discussing a particular book (yes - a geeks book club of sorts!), we realised that we were all asking hard questions of the book, and yet we all appreciated and valued the book for what it was doing. Rather than criticising the book's gaps in a way that rubbished the book (or the writer), we found ourselves identifying the gaps in order to think more and better about the issues the book raised. The book - as one person in the group said - opened space, including the space for us to have a conversation about its very topic. This is a good thing - A Good Thing, even - and is not at all the same as saying the book is not doing important work. Indeed, we agreed, our decision to read the book carefully and pitch all of these questions and identify its weaknesses as well as its strengths was a demonstration of our support of the book! (All the arguements I've had with people who get grumpy with me for 'killing' a movie by wanting to pull it apart and discuss it for ages after...) If we hadn't thought the book was worth engaging with we wouldn't have cared enough about it to come up with the tough questions.

This doesn't always carry over easily into personal questions or teaching... it's one thing to ask tough questions of a book but quite another to ask tough questions of a person, especially when that person is standing in front of you. And... it's also not easy to have tough questions asked of you either. But this isn't the same as saying tough questions aren't a lovely, generous, affirming thing... quite the reverse: sometimes, when someone has the courage, compassion and aroha to ask you a tough question, you're being given a real gift.

That's what I reckon anyway :)