Avatar. Oh, and Butter Chicken.

Last night I watched James Cameron's Avatar for the first time. Yes, I know. Talk about otherworldly powers of procrastination! I managed to put that one off for even longer than I'd dared imagine. My friend Daniel had to re-watch it for a piece of writing he's doing about the film, and knew he could count on me to be glass-half-empty and grumpy about it. Little did he know I hadn't seen the film before, so it wasn't remnant or vestigial but First Encounter grumpiness! The Real McCoy!

We watched it, and I have to say it: I was bored. It was yaaawny. Boooring.  Sure, there were pretty scenes and cool special effects, but the film itself was snooze-inducing. Yaaaaaaawn, stretch, yaawn. I nearly died when the DVD stopped at one point and a helpful note came up to invite us to watch the rest on the second DVD. The second DVD!? This was cruel and unual punishment!

Oh, but it wasn't. It was cruel, yes, but not unusual. Not unusual at all. Actually one of the main sources of boooooredom was that this wasn't unusual in the slightest. Other people have already written many deep and clever and witty things about the horrendousness of Avatar, paying special attention to its not-even-veiled imperial structures (human vs 'indigenous', 'aboriginal,' 'savage'; a white man 'going native' and falling in love with a local woman; militaristic technology vs spiritual eco-connection; yadda yadda)... so I won't even bother to go there. This, to be honest, is why I hadn't ever watched the film: I never found the hours (hours!) of my life or and dollars in the bank that I wanted to kill off by seeing a movie that I already knew was going to make me grumpy.

Enter: Daniel and his DVD and a quiet night with tasks to avoid. The scene was set.

So, what's this got to do with butter chicken?

Well, Daniel and I ate delish Indian food before watching the movie, and when I woke up this morning I walked to the fridge and pulled out one of my favourite leftover meals in the world: leftover curry and rice, heated in the microwave. YUM. As I ate my bizarre but scrumptious breakfast snack, I allowed myself to fixate for a little while about just how much I love leftover butter chicken. It's second only to leftover chicken tikka masala. Yum. So there I sat, enjoying my food and thinking about leftovers. Leftovers. Leftovers. Avatar, Leftovers. Mmmm... I started to think about how Avatar had mobilised the cliche of the imperial story (which rendered the entire movie a total waste of time, narratively speaking, which meant the flash effects had to do a job that was ulimtately beyond them - keep someone's attention for hours on end - because from the very first moment when Jake opened his eyes he was destined to open them in the final scene as 'an indigenous' - yeah, don't even get me started on the grammar!)... and I started to think about how reusing an old story isn't itself the kiss of death for a film; many films rework old storylines much like the reheating of butter chicken. It's richer for having tasted it before, and it's a treat one gets to enjoy beyond the first intended experience. Yum!

But no, Avatar is not reheated rice and butter chicken. It's more like leftover rice when it has spent the night in the fridge and hasn't got any sauce: bland, dry, and - it's true - painful.  

home again

Someone told me today that he's sad I'm leaving Canada soon. Someone else emailed to start arrangements for a farewell. Sure, I'm not leaving Toronto until mid-June - but the tide seems to be shifting direction again. I can feel the first tugs of the undertow, cheeky and fleeting but definitely there. The pull will only get stronger from now I suppose.

My body is home in Toronto... but I've been thinking about Aotearoa and Hawai'i today as well. As Lesley drove me to the airport, we talked more about Pacific literature, and as I flew to LGA and finally YYZ I made more lists of tasks to complete here, at home and in Hawai'i. I remember an early blog post, in the first delicate weeks of sabbatical, when I was in Sydney and was thinking about tasks I needed to do in Sydney, at home and in Toronto.

I suppose that time shifts regardless for all of us; for me, it seems places do too.

A strange Polynesian triangle I'm living in: Toronto the farthest point, across to Hawai'i and down to Aotearoa. A lopsided three-sided shape which approximates the feel of my heart.

Words Live Here

I'm in a house of writers. Poetry lives here, as does fiction. Books are everywhere. Writing is a normal family activity and point for discussion. I like it.

While I've been here in Virginia I've been staying with Lesley and Chris and their two kids, and it has been great in many ways... one of the things I have treasured about my time here has been the place of words here: in this house, and also in my trip. Today I visited one of Lesley's classes and we talked about poetry... then we had a lunch at Women's Studies where I talked about the 'Ghost Writers' book I'm working on... then tonite I was the 'feature poet' in a poetry reading at a gallery in town.

I forget some days just how much I love words, love poetry, love fiction, love writing, love editing, love talking about it all...

This has been a great reminder.

I'm inspired to find ways to keep poetry and words and books nearer the middle of my life; not somehting I get to after other things, but something which is integral to the way I function.  want to seek out conversations about literature, and I want to find time to read and write and read and write and read and write...

Thanks, Virginia: here I fell in love with fried chicken, and here I fell in love with words all over again.

Fried chicken and General Lee

After a lovely lazy morning at home, Lesley and her daughter Madeline and I went for a walk through the drizzle to lunch, after which Lesley and I went for a walk through her university campus on the way home. Now, Washington and Lee University is named after two men: the Washington you'll already know about (or guess - yep, the first American president; the Lee is General Lee, an important man who led the Southerners during the American Civil War in the 1860s. Although the South technically lost the war, (a) don't tell that to some people in the South who still believe in what their side fought for, and continue to wave confederate flags at any and every possible opportunity, and (b) General Lee came home to the South a hero, and upon his return was offered many opportunities to continue to extend his leadership. He decided in the end to come to Washington here in Lexington, Virginia, where he served as president for five years (during which the student enrolments rose from 40 to 400) and brought the school back to its feet after the decimation of the civil war. After his death, the school was renamed Washington and Lee University in order to recognise him and his role: both here at the school and in the South.

We went to the university chapel, which doubles as a crypt for the Lee whanau, and they have a fullsize marble statue of Robert Lee on his sickbed (which sits directly above the place he is actually buried) and a small museum in which various parts of the school's (and Lee's) history are presented. History is a tricky kind of thing, and when one tells a story for a mixed audience is can sonud even more awkward. The signage in the museum was minimalist, quietly offering whispered context and carefully avoiding taking sides. Taking sides? Well, taking sides means a lot here in Virginia, and people may well come through a museum such as this with strong feelings (either for or against; the strength is more important than the direction) and it is difficult to produce an account of things which will satisfy everyone. American Indians were not mentioned at all, and Black history was delicately skirted around.

As I walked around, I was struck by the dates of the civil war - the first years of the 1860s - which of course is the same as the wars at home. The Land Wars, as they used to be called, are now known as the New Zealand Wars and were between Maori and the Crown. The result of the wars was, at least from the point of the view of the Crown and History and the Ownership (more correctly, the confiscation) of Land and Law, that Maori lost the 1860s wars and there is an extent to which this is true. And yet, surely our continued claim of separation from the Crown - evidenced by our ability and desire to engage with the Crown according to the terms set down in the Treaty - takes for granted that the wars were one important moment of interaction between Maori and the Crown but not a definitive moment or endpoint. As long as we continue to exercise our ability to imagine our sovereignty, surely we are contradicting the most bald and simplistic accounting for the outcome of the New Zealand Wars? I'm not saying that sovereignty is imaginary as in not real but imaginary as in a fiction which we all choose to believe and which belief compells people to act in specific ways. After all, Maori sovereignty is no more or less imaginary than New Zealand (or indeed American) sovereignty.

In this way, I found myself in the awkward situation of realising there is a link between my commitments to Maori sovereignty and the Confederacy movement here in the South. Ouch! But seriously, consider the links between them: both espouse a series of specific values and perspectives which are central to what they are; both suffered historical (specifically 1860s!) military defeats (after attempting to demonstrate their own desire to conduct their own affairs without far-away and inappropriate government intervention) which on the surface removed power and self-determination but which continue to provide nostalgic and aspirational symbolism; and both have produced a situation in which people are capable of strongly holding two loyalties at once - to the nation, and to the specific group. Oh, and both are represented in media and other 'public' spaces as backward, stuck in the past, anti-progressive and - well - embarassing.

This is not a realisation that has made me any more sympathetic to Confederate (or Republican, for that matter) ideals or aspirations, but it has helped me think through the meaning of the Confederacy for some people in the South. What I mean by this is that I had not really been able to understand how people who were so clearly militarily defeated in the past are still interested in, well, literally, flying the flag? Why bother with a failed identity? Isn't it a bit embarassing? Pointless? I mean, really, it's not like the South is ever going to actually get to secede again - and if it tried, there are too many people who live here who don't hold the same ideas for it to succeed in any way. I am appalled by Confederate political and social ideals; I abhor their underpinnings of racism, imperialism, sexism and homophobia; and the sight of a Confederate flag flying (or stuck on a car or work on a tshirt) always makes me feel a bit sick. But, in terms of the structure of feeling - the way some people here remain committed to something despite everything - I am able to understand things just a little more.

Dinner tonight was a shared meal here at Lesley and Chris's place with a whole lot of cool people from W&L University, and one of the dishes was fried chicken. Yep, Southern fried chicken. Now anyone who has eaten takeaways with me knows that KFC is among my least favourites: it's greasy on the outside, dry on the inside, and leaves me feeling gross at the end. I'd never been able to understand why Southerners (or anyone else) got so excited about fried chicken, and although friends of mine from down this way have told me it's better down here, I wasn't sure how something like KFC chicken could get so much better that I'd actually like it. But! I tried the chicken tonite and it was amazing: delicious light crispy batter and fluffy moist dense chicken. An absolute joy to eat, and - seeing as I always thought I didn't like fried chicken - truly a revelation.

My ideas about fried chicken have been shifted, but so have my ideas about the ways in which some people in the South make sense of their world. This insight into the Confederate scene here in the South is not - it's not - in any way a support of the values or claims of that scene, but it has enabled me to find a way to understand how people tell specific stories about themselves regardless of what those stories are. Surely, this is the point of education: the "practice of freedom," says bell hooks; the production of empathy.

seasons

It's night-time and thundery in rural Virginia. Well, not rural rural, but in the small town of Lexington where my friend Lesley teaches at Washington & Lee University. I'm staying with Lesley and her family between now and Tuesday, and will be visiting her class and giving a talk/ poetry reading on Monday.

Unseasonal. The weather here in unseasonably warm: thunderstorms are not due until later, and plants can't work out if it's time to bloom or not. Like inexperienced dancers in the wings of a stage, excited and dressed to perform but knowing the cue hasn't yet been given, a couple of people being pushed out and being seen by the audience even though another scene is theoretically in play. It hasn't snowed much in Toronto this year, and a man on the flight from Charlotte NC told me that scientists are worried about what the warm temperatures might mean for bugs whose population and spread is usually kept in control by freezing each year during winter time.

Seasonal. Today is the 24th of March, and Matiu is now seven years old. Seven! Amazing! I skyped in last nite (which was, of course, the 24th at home) and sang with the others and watched him blow out his candles. Hard to be away from my dear chicken for his birthday, but great to get to see him and hear from him too! Birthdays are such seasonal affairs too... a quiet cycling through the year: Aunty Martha, Megan, Matiu, Amy. And so on, through the family until we're back in January and it starts all over again.

Seasons give our lives rhythm, either by following the pattern we have come to expect or, by deviating from the pattern, confirming our expectations.

court

Court I

Words which came to me while looking at the photos of the 'Urewera Four' after the verdict was returned in their trial yesterday: relief, support, consolidation, depth. Browsing the photos on the stuff.co.nz website, I was distracted by the 'Maori photos' which some website's algorithm decided might also be of interest. A black and white photo of the face of a kuia with moko kauwae, a vibrant shot of a young man during the powhiri at Te Matatini in Gisborne, some tourist snap of 'Maori culture.'

Of course, this is how it always is: ourselves, the Crown, dominant media representation. It is impossible to understand the vigour and paranoia displayed by the Crown throughout this circus since the raids and arrests in October 2007 without taking a step back and noticing the long, slow shaping of non-Maori views of Maori people as noble, savage or comical - and nothing else. As the crown has bumbled violently around, like a bull in a rodeo, enraged by the deep pain of its own violent underpinnings, bucking and stomping in a way which would be hilarious if it wasn't for the fact that this is real: there are real victims here; real lives, real people.

The courtroom has long been a place of theatre, drama, performance; it's a stage in its purest form. The court has, despite rare moments of proximity to justice, frequently been an industrious worker bee in the hive of imperialism. Who could disprove of the high ideals of truth and justice? And yet, who could look at the role of the courts in the theft of our land and not wonder whether the courts are too saturated in blood to ever produce a clean decision?

This case brings to mind a line I wrote about Parihaka in another poem - 'The day the Crown morally defeated itself' - and yet moral self-defeat of the perpetrators of violence does not magically remove the burden of the victims. This outcome isn't a victory for truth: it's justice with a migraine, wincing and squeezing the temples to dull the pain.

Court II

Today my sister attended the Maori Land Court in Wellington on behalf of our Mum and Auntie, in order to complete the process of legal succession for Grandad's Maori land. We buried him last year, singing 'Au e Ihu,' crying, holding onto one another, watching him go down back into the earth beside Nana. And yet, his connection to earth - to specific ground - was legal as well as physical. Although Grandad was born in a house on land which had been ours through inheritance in the depest sense of the word, by 2012 his shares in several blocks of land are now the only link we have to the literal dirt of home. Sure, emotional and relational links are important too, but whenua is whenua is whenua and that's why my sister was there this morning representing all of us. It's not quite a burial, but it feels like today was another important stage in the process of saying goodbye to Grandad.

She txted from outside the court, saying she wished she was a poet so she could convey the feeling of being there. Later, she sent through an email that described the event, and I have decided she's a poet after all. These are all her words - I hope she doesn't mind - which I have gently pushed and shaped into quiet rows.

Everyone sitting outside
clutching their bits of paper,
as if they had people with them

Whispered snippets:
‘trusts’ ‘whānau’ ‘iwi’

Mostly old nannies and koro
with a young thing holding the paperwork

Court started late:
ushered in;
stood for the judge,
karakia,
mihi.

We were the first case called.    


Court III

The court giveth and the court taketh away.

a chance to have time, energy and focus...

3 o'clock in the morning...

I flew home on the 'red eye' (night time) flight last nite from Vancouver. Since then I've talked about 'school' stuff with quite a few people: an Aboriginal Studies class and my Saami colleague Rauna K during the day (in 'real life'), this evening with Daniel J over dinner and then during and after a documentary we watched here at my place, and finally with Niigaanwewidom S over facebook tonite. All of these conversations and exchanges have been about scholarship, ethics, community relationships, sovereignty, race... and all of them have been intense but also invigorating.

Te tau okioki is a chance to have the time and energy and focus to read widely, and to seek out like minds, and to talk...

Oh, and to write.