two violins by Danny Andreini
On Lambton Quay, Bach
for two violins; small boy
stands captivated.
(16 May 2016)
On an autumn afternoon, unexpectedly, a vivacious counterpoint crosses Lambton Quay and stirs up in me both joy and nostalgia.
sunflower (08 March 2012)
Buses on route 2 (Miramar to the Wellington railway station) are so well patronised you’ve got to wonder why they don’t run more often. Be that as it may, I don’t mind standing as long as I have somewhere to hold on securely. And I must not get crushed into a position that makes getting off difficult.
Thursday morning, at around eight-fifteen, I’m about to get off at Arty Bee’s Bookshop. I have my Snapper card ready. I can see myself able to squeeze through to the front door. I pick up my bag. Because it’s made of paper, however, and because it has been in the rain, it abruptly collapses. Books, bananas, bits, and bobs spill onto the floor.
A quiet calm settles upon me as the kind people around me pick things up and hand them to me. With surprising clarity of mind, I take stock … Yes, I have everything, thank-you, people. Once off the bus, I reorganise myself and my belongings. Then it dawns on me: I haven’t tagged off. But that’s okay, because people are still pressing their way in.
Calmly … sublimely serene … I reach into the bus and tag off.
I am loved. I am cared for. Aren’t people lovely?
PS: Posted this little anecdote first on Facebook. My sister-in-law enquired: “Did you make it to Porirua or did you abandon your weekly visit [to see father at Kemp Home] due to the flooding out here?”
My response: “I made it to Porirua, but one of the other passengers on the 211 had her mobile running reports on the flooding. So I got Dad on the phone and told him he’d have to do without the bananas and chocolate. We had a good chat.
“Then I walked through the rain from Pataka to the railway station. At one intersection, the water was ankle deep. The journey back home was uneventful, but I was happy to change into dry clothes and wait for the arrival of the two boxes of wine I’d arranged to have delivered after lunch.”
thin red line (23 December 2015)
“You like buildings, do you?” A mature female voice is addressing me.
I am in Victoria Street, and about to click the shutter on this image, an uncommonly handsome view of the Central Police Station – a strong contender, I reckon, for the title of Wellington’s ugliest building.
Standing at my right shoulder, the speaker is clad in a striking mauve jumpsuit. Jauntily perched on her head is a smart little summer hat. She is not someone I know.
I smile as she wishes me the compliments of the season.
“I like anything that catches my eye,” I tell her. “So be careful.”
The clock ticks three times as she registers what has been said. And then both her thumbs go up. “Nice one!” she declares.
chimney cats (07 May 2015)
Today (14 May 2015) is the last day for Avid Gallery’s limited edition of the Chimney Cats made to celebrate Bronwynne Cornish’s exhibition of work currently showing at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt.
Originally intended to guard chimneys from witches coming down them, the first group of Bronwynne’s chimney cats appeared 1982.
Japonaiserie (19 March 2015)
Whilst the arrangement of the items in this photograph (taken today in Cuba Street, Wellington) has little or nothing to do with Japanese art, my ‘seeing’ was certainly influenced by it.
The Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent van Gogh used the term Japonaiserie to express the influence of Japanese art.
In a letter to Theo, his younger brother, Vincent wrote: “One of [Jules] De Goncourt’s sayings was ‘Japonaiserie for ever’. Well, these docks [at Arnhem] are one huge Japonaiserie, fantastic, singular, strange … I mean, the figures there are always in motion, one sees them in the most peculiar settings, everything fantastic, and interesting contrasts keep appearing of their own accord.”
“The West moistens everything with meaning like an authoritarian religion which imposes baptism on entire peoples.” (Roland Barthes, in Empire of Signs)
For my daughter, Arabella.
The image that follows these comments was first posted on 09 May 2014, when the blogger, Journey Back to Words went by the name, suitablefish.
…….. In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, ‘ since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ‘ patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
…….. Is immortal diamond.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins: That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection)
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
(William Blake: Fragments from “Auguries of Innocence”)
antidote
Ah! Lady Grey tea,
fragrant, red-gold, freshly made –
a French glass teacup.
__________
On the table, soldiers of wholegrain toast spread with butter and marmalade. Antidote for a troubling dream – scrambled shards of memory, gasps of grief long ago abandoned.
boy T-shirt template by Muraviedo
The subject of T-shirts came up at lunch a few days ago, and I admitted to having around thirty. “Joshua has about fifty,” my sister told me.
But then, yesterday morning, tidying up my wardrobe, I began counting.
Emptying the shelves, I stacked and sorted: black, white, red, grey – all my favourite colours – mostly plain, but a few with appliqué or graphic designs.
Then I sorted through the basket of items to be washed – two of them khaki – noticed the three airing on the bamboo screen, the one I’d just ironed …
Including the one I was wearing, I counted forty-nine.
You can never have too many T-shirts, Elton John is quoted as saying. We agree, don’t we, Josh?
skateboard wallpaper – royal
A day or two ago, I saw something I’d never expected to see: a young man riding a skateboard … using his crutches to propel himself along. And it instantly put me back in touch with something I’d scribbled down the day before, whilst reading a novel called Ru:
“He had stopped time by continuing to enjoy himself, to live until the end in the lightness of a young man.” (Kim Thúy)
I am not a young man … and thus no longer immortal. Whenever the pain from the osteoarthritis gets bad, I have a mantra: “My feet kiss the earth.” It helps.
But I’ve taught myself something that helps even more: whenever I find myself bracing my knees and hobbling along stiff-legged, I have learned to relax my joints and saunter instead. I’m not saying every step is pain-free, but it sure feels better. And I whisper my mantra. And I smile.
__________
NOTES:
Thúy, Kim. 2009 [Copyright © 2009 Éditions Libre Expression]. English translation Copyright © 2012 Sheila Fischman. Ru. New York: Bloomsbury.
The skateboard wallpaper image comes from: http://www.wallpaper4me.com/wallpaper/Royal/
My title is a parody of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, a 1984 postmodern novel by Milan Kundera. The story takes place mainly in Prague in the late 1960s and 1970s. It explores the artistic and intellectual life of Czech society during the Communist period, from the Prague Spring to the Soviet Union’s August 1968 invasion and its aftermath.” (adapted from the Wikipedia article)
a twisted pair 