As life advances I find myself so often faced with the dilemma of questioning what it is that I demand of others, so often it is their unquestioning loyalty and when they challenge my requests so often the challenge is valid. For a greater part of my life I was the one putting forward the challenge and now the situation is reversed and I find that I struggle to come up with valid answers.
It is as though the image in the mirror has been reversed by the passage of time, the questions I once asked are now not being answered by me. I know the right response but I do not have the means to put an answer politic to the questioner that will satisfy both he and me, is this an impossibility?
The picture is wider and the need to respond in such away that will draw the best of the person forth is high but unfortunately the skill is lacking. The boy I was at 18 and the boy I am at 54 still have the same ideals but time has tempered them from requiring a personal solution to that of needing a universal solution.
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I have been gone for some time now, preoccupied with a new job that is stretching me beyond belief, I am enjoying it but some times I just wish that there was a little time left to do some navel gazing. In the past couple of days the weather has picked up and there is the promise of summer in the air. I can't quite explain it other than to say that there are triggers that draw memories from the depths of your being and yesterday was one of those times, I don't know if it was the sun on my back, or a smell or a sound but I was drawn back to a time 30 years ago when I was camping on the Coromandal Peninsular NZ at Stony Bay and I wrote; A summers morn before sun rose dew deep and grass wet on the knee air harsh in throats fresh from sleep warm sleeping bag smell clings a reluctance left . The still glazed by water on pebbles and ripples between banks with the heavy nearness of sleepers near wake and crickets in last song we crept from camp. The boy with promise before him and unknown depths of despair to come by my side climbed the hill grass seed clinging to bared legs above ocean away to horizon Patagonian plains glacial mountains high the sun soon to rise from deep deep grey turning green then so blue , clinging reluctant let go and powerless sink away. Grassed water dries on skin and sun sinks deep to bones ache and sleep is pushed aside. A day for always, a boy to be sad but once glad in thrall, remembered for ever. As I say, I have no idea what it is that draws memory from so deep, but this one ended so tragically a life ended by stpping in front of a truck, so desperate to end it all, no longer capable of coping with the world.
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Richard Sennett writes in his 1994 book Flesh and Stone "when the psychologist Hugo Munsterberg first looked at the silent movie in 1911 he thought that the modern mass media might dull the senses; in the a film " the massive outer world has lost its weight," he wrote, "it has been freed from space, time and causality"; he feared that the "moving pictures...reach complete isolation from the practical world" just as few soldiers taste the movie pleasure of ripping other bodies apart, filmed images of sexual pleasure have very little to do with real lovers' sexual experience. Few films show two elderly naked people making love or naked fat people "
A great deal of time has passed since Munsterburg wrote and over a decade since Sennett commented on Munsterburg's writing but reality shows that Munsterburg was so right. Each day we are exposed to the atrocities of the world displayed in graphic detail on modern media by the media moguls, to titivate and to increase ratings, all is done under the guise of the evening news. The "moving picture" has followed the same trend in order to achieve ratings and box office returns, historical precedent was the circus of Rome. How long will it be before the mob calls for real blood? Perhaps they get that already, "snuff" movies for example and of course there is the evening "circus" we call the 6 o'clock news. Is it no surprise that the atrocity of TV is pushed for everything that can be squeezed from it, zoom in,see the angst, see the pain, it shows a real return.
]]>I have an old friend, I've only known him about 11 years, he was old when I first met him at the occasion of my wedding Tha was the first time that I met him and I knew that one day we would be friends, it was if I have known him all my life, as though he was an elder and wiser brother or cousin. Anyway; he is what one would call slightly alternative. With his wife he lives to the north of here close to the little town, Whangateau, which up until a few years ago was nice and quiet, a back water, idyllic and rural that is until the 4x4 shopping basket, child ferrying, fancy coffee drinking crowd arrived. Don't get me wrong I love coffee and big 4 x 4s in the right environment. The problem is that these people like to be seen and their obnoxious children like to be seen and if you do not notice them then, be assured you will be made to notice them and "admire" how successful they are. They live in a wealth *ghettos, places of their own choosing, protecting the rest of the population from their greatness and success. For my old friend this is likely to be a bonus, him with a surplus of land and them with a surplus of someone else's money, a marriage made in heaven (thank god I'm an Atheist), they are running out of land on the sand spit and he has land for sale that has elevation... mmm global warming..?
Any way that is not where I planned to go tonight, I have digressed and the story of my old friend will wait for another day.
*"Ghetto" has such interesting Venetian and not so **sinister origin, the original meaning being "a foundry". The two most famous being the Ghettos Vecchio and Nuovo. During the 14th century, when Venice was the world's super power with the worlds wealth being funneled through her ports and banks the ruling elite decided that foreign emissaries were a danger to the economy and the best way to safeguard the cities wealth and the future of the city was to lock the evil foreigner away during the hours of darkness to ensure that they could not get up to any hanky panky, where better to do this than in a isolated foundry (Ghetto).
**Sinister, another fascinating Italian word that means the "left" also construed as evil or the sign of the devil, this is why there used to be such a down on left handed people.
]]>The rain was light and misty when on Saturday we visited Te Porere Redoubt located on the road south of Turangi (Taupo) on the way to National Park. Saturn's day, the day of the Roman God of war seems appropriate as this was the site of Te Kooti's last stand.
Te Kooti Arikirangi Te Turuiki had fought on the side of the government for most of the NZ Land Wars but had been suspected of helping the "enemy". After a series of battles following the killing of the missionary Carl Volkner at Optiki he had been incarcerated, without trial, on the Chatham Islands. Whilst serving time Te Kooti had a vision that resulted in the founding of the Ringatau (the Upraised hand) faith and his escape on a commandeered ship with 300 followers.
On the mainland Te Kooti set about exacting utu (revenge), ensuing battles saw him retreat from Matawhero in Poverty bay to the the southern end of lake Taupo where in 1869 he constructed two redoubts at Te Porere. The redoubts had been designed following a european rather than Maori pattern. On 4 October 1869 500 government troops under the command of Colonel McDonald attacked the stronghold. 37 of TeKooti's followers were killed in the battle but Te Kooti managed to escape into the bush finding sanctuary at Te Kuiti in the King Country. The Battle of Te Porere redoubt was the last pitched battle of the New Zealand land wars. In 1883 Te Kooti was granted a pardon
A visit to this site is a must if you are in the neighbour hood, in the mist it is not difficult to imagine the tension that the defenders felt as they awaited the assault of governement troops and of the pitched battle that followed. See photos.
]]>What is art? I understand that it has something to do with the "beholder" and if he/she says it is art then it is art. Anyway moving on from there we are now told that there is a move in NZ to bring the country into line with other countries and to legislate that if a piece of art is sold a bonus will be made to the artist or to the artist's estate, the bonus? some 25%.
Now back to my original question, what is art? I behold that it is a BMW R100R mmmm. Some might behold it as a Morris 1100 so what happens then? do we pay 25% bonus to Mr Morris or BMW or his estate, in the case of Morris that could be somewhere in China with the sale of MG.
Then how far do we go back? Michaelangelo Buanarotti? W?ho now owns the estate? Granny make an atistic mug so every time it is sold at the OpShop does 25% of the sale price goes to granny, yeah.
]]>I am about to move on to new pastures, to a new job. This is the second time that the role I am in has been disestablished, a sanitary way of saying fuck off we can better utilize the money we pay you to improve the dividend to our share holders. I work with good intelligent and humorous people but there is only so much that they will be able to take, the toll is rock bottom moral and in a number of situations stress related illness.
I work for "A New Zealand" company whose executive and senior management team, in the majority, come from the UK, 99% of the goods that are traded are manufactured in China, it becomes hard to see where NZ fits into it. I read that our CEO is paid something more than $2M per annum plus bonus, this does not seem right when the majority of staff earn only a small fraction of that and are often treated as being expendable when the ledger book is in need of titivation.
Of course this is not a singular or isolated situation and It becomes apparent that New Zealand companies do not give a damn about New Zealand or New Zealanders unless of course those New Zealanders are share holders. We see company after company closing their manufacturing operations and relocating them to Asia. Do they have any concept of corporate responsibility to the people that work for them or to the nation other than that foisted on them through legislation?
I cannot help feeling that the country is charging towards bankruptcy and one day we will all wonder what happened as we sit in the dust searching for grains to feed our starving children.
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Again it is time for bed, the long weekend is over and Easter finished for another year. Easter a Christian celebration steeped in pagan symbolism and taken advantage of by the non religious to break from their working lives, I happened to spend the weekend decorating our living room, some break, I am knackerd but satisfied and the living room looks pretty damned good.
As I prepare to go to sleep this night I am thinking about how complicated humans are, some choose to be complicated and and deliberately set about confusing situations which I take as an attempt by them to prove their superiority and then there are those that are confused and are unable to communicate their thoughts or needs, instead of understanding this, frustration and arrogance are often the response, sad. Problem is I am not sure which of those camps I inhabit I suppose that can only be answered by others who are on the recieving end.
I plan to aid sleep by reading "The curious incident of the dog in the night-time" (Mark Haddon) I have read four pages so for and it appears to be very readable, I will keep you posted. Good night.
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