Today, at 12.57, the town of Christchurch observed two minutes' silence, one week to the minute from the eathquake that ravaged our lives. i was in a park with a friend and everyone around us stood in their groups, and some held hands, or embraced, and there really was a silence.
When the earthquake happened i was at home, putting lunch on the table. i dived under the table, saw the dog lurch past and grabbed him and shoved him in front of me. My husband was at the computer and he watched as everything in the room hit the floor. My poor dog has a very enlarged heart and i could feel it against me, like a butterfly beating against cupped hands.
The power was out. The water was out. The neighbour next door was screaming; she is young and pregnant, and her mother was shouting at her. Water and silt began flooding from under their house. Within an hour there was a traffic jam outside our house; people were trying to get out, get home, get anywhere, get to loved ones. We dug a toilet. A hole of problematical depth formed on the street corner, with the power pole still teetering in it. Being a girly swot i had 30 litres of water, candles, a radio and batteries, three sources of cooking, and enough hand sanitiser to drink if i decided to turn to alcoholism. We checked the neighbours. i texted my daughter and once she responded i knew i would be OK.
Christchurch is the most class conscious city i know. What school you go to can make or break your career, if you care for such things. Very, very roughly the east side of Christchurch is the poor side. Most of the people around me are worse off financially, and the area is fairly transient. i thought there were two main ways of coping with the crisis as it emerged. Our way was to hunker down, work out what we had and conserve it, and share what we could. Of our neighbours, another way was to head out and get stuff. The east side turned into a grand food bank. i went down to the marae because i had heard you could do laundry there, and everywhere there were charities giving out cans of cola and beans and water in bottles. No laundry, though. There were rumours and rumours of rumours, about what was open and what was available, and how to get there. i spent an hour and a half driving with my neighbour to get water. That was how long it took to get about 10 kms, with the roads broken and the traffic jammed. We lent out a camp stove and a shovel and had barbecues and people who were on their own came and helped us empty the freezer by eating our food. i fear for the state of Christchurch's oral health. For days we lived on soda and juice as water was so scarce!
Many people have left Christchurch. i suspect they are often the people who are best resourced to do so. i was amused to hear that schools in Wanaka and Queenstown have had a wave of Christchurch children enrol, the news report stating blandly that many Christchurch residents have holdiday homes there. On my side of town, sometimes all we have is what you see. No holiday homes, no relatives offering respite, just people in their fractured homes hanging on through the aftershocks and reaching out in more or less functional ways to each other.
Why did people drive around so much? We were told to stay off the roads, to keep phone and cell traffic to a minimum and stay put. i think people drove to connect.
The founder of attachment theory should rightly be considered to be Darwin, who observed in The Voyage of the Beagle that within a species individuals that form relationships and connections do better than those that are solitary. Yes, we should have stayed put, but people got into their cars and queued for gas and drove and drove. One woman drove about 35 kms for a shower. My neighbours drove for hours to find missing friends and to get fish and chips. Comfort food! My young pregnant neighbour refused to shelter herself - she had to hear from her partner, and Che hadn't texted her, and CeeCee said she hadn't heard from Josh, and ... Get under the table Shaniqua! yelled her mum, You're fucking pregnant! but she sat on the bed and cried and texted and texted. Everyone had to be OK or she wouldn't be OK. My workmate hitched into work for company and water and a shower. Travel has been difficult on the east side. Bridges and roads are out, and there is mud and sand and holes and sudden irruptions in the road, as if someone has drilled a hole in the road from below. So people were really wanting to travel. As for me, after three days of being told by my sensible daughter not to visit her, that emergency vehicles were unable to save lives because they were getting stuck in traffic, i got in the damn car and visited her anyway. i knew she was OK, but i had to see her. We drive to connect.
i worked on the night shift the day of the quake. i drove in because i was slightly injured and also because we had already heard about looters. (i usually walk to work). i allowed three quarters of an hour to travel 2.5 kms. It was dark with no power, so i was never sure what was under my wheels. i managed the cordons by showing my ID but many of the roads were just plain blocked off with rubble and detritus. After that i did two more night shifts. i had my moment of weepiness after the third one. i left the hospital at 8.30 in the morning and stood outside, by the cordon with the LAV's and the soldiers, and heard a bellbird call, high and clear in the air, asking nothing of me, just alive and real and marvellous.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Saturday, February 26, 2011
the blood black rage against the sky
You probably know more about the Christchurch earthquake than i do. i am without power and have only intermittant water, and so have only my experience, and what people tell me, to go on. i have internet access at work only. So this post will be as scattershot as my own experience.
My small elderly dog keeps trying to get in the car. He wants me to take him away. My 18 year old daughter has now seen four dead people and a building collapse in front of her. Two friends visited on bikes; one of them had his mother die on the day of the quake so they were touring the damage as a kind of therapy. The suburb of Sumner is half evacuated; the main roads out of town are gridlocked. i spent the morning down in the police cells. It was gritty with silt and part of it had been evacuated. They had set up a mess tent and the place was swarming with uniforms - army, police from different places, security guards. We were visited by the Australian Federal Police yesterday. In the evenings when it gets dark my husband and i lie in bed by lamplight and listen to the battery radio, like it is the 1930's.
i knew one of the people who died, slightly. He was a 22 year old young man, a very talented actor, a truly gilded youth. Mostly i have not thought about the deaths, but last night i did not sleep and i was drawn to imagine dying under a desk in an office. And i hoped he died quickly, and then i thought no, that is what i would hope of a feral dog, i cannot think anything useful when i think of him dying. There are no words and no thoughts, just blood black rage against the sky.
When i worked in a particularly harrowing job i would head home and find a voice within myself keening, the way i see in other cultures. When my father died i would take breaks from the family circus and walk around the streets singing. Last night i got up as i have done feeling for the firs titme in years there was no source of comfort. This is a playlist for standing in the dark in the back yard, with the power off, on the cracked and stressed earth:
You gotta Move, by the awesome Mississippi Fred McDowell
Don't Explain, by Billie Holiday
Lake of fire by Nirvana
Working on the Building by Cowboy Junkies
After the Gold Rush by Neil Young
Those totally weirded out gospel numbers from Brother Where Art Thou.
And this, set to music:
I believe
I believe I can hear
I believe I can hear the Lord saying
I believe I can hear the Lord saying
You gotta seek no other helper
'Be thou content with Me
and seek no other helper.
For none but Me can ever suffice thee'
My small elderly dog keeps trying to get in the car. He wants me to take him away. My 18 year old daughter has now seen four dead people and a building collapse in front of her. Two friends visited on bikes; one of them had his mother die on the day of the quake so they were touring the damage as a kind of therapy. The suburb of Sumner is half evacuated; the main roads out of town are gridlocked. i spent the morning down in the police cells. It was gritty with silt and part of it had been evacuated. They had set up a mess tent and the place was swarming with uniforms - army, police from different places, security guards. We were visited by the Australian Federal Police yesterday. In the evenings when it gets dark my husband and i lie in bed by lamplight and listen to the battery radio, like it is the 1930's.
i knew one of the people who died, slightly. He was a 22 year old young man, a very talented actor, a truly gilded youth. Mostly i have not thought about the deaths, but last night i did not sleep and i was drawn to imagine dying under a desk in an office. And i hoped he died quickly, and then i thought no, that is what i would hope of a feral dog, i cannot think anything useful when i think of him dying. There are no words and no thoughts, just blood black rage against the sky.
When i worked in a particularly harrowing job i would head home and find a voice within myself keening, the way i see in other cultures. When my father died i would take breaks from the family circus and walk around the streets singing. Last night i got up as i have done feeling for the firs titme in years there was no source of comfort. This is a playlist for standing in the dark in the back yard, with the power off, on the cracked and stressed earth:
You gotta Move, by the awesome Mississippi Fred McDowell
Don't Explain, by Billie Holiday
Lake of fire by Nirvana
Working on the Building by Cowboy Junkies
After the Gold Rush by Neil Young
Those totally weirded out gospel numbers from Brother Where Art Thou.
And this, set to music:
I believe
I believe I can hear
I believe I can hear the Lord saying
I believe I can hear the Lord saying
You gotta seek no other helper
'Be thou content with Me
and seek no other helper.
For none but Me can ever suffice thee'
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Efate
Efate is the main island of commerce in Vanuatu. It is the perfect South Pacific island with white coral beaches and coconut trees. i told a serious young man i met on a tour that more people in Vanuatu are killed by falling coconuts than by traffic accidents, and the poor chap believed me, but maybe i was right, with my made up statistic. There certainly don't seem to be many accidents, although the fabulous ring road around the coast of Efate is another story.
Built by the Americans, it has connected villages in a way the internet first connected the cyber world. Before the ring road, if you wanted to see your friends you bush bashed with a knife for hours. Now, you walk along the ring road. So on the ring road people sit, and play, and dogs wander, and a famous elderly man is wheeled in his chair, right down the middle as befits his age and status. Vehicular traffic is almost secondary, and needs to watch out for picnics.
The other lagacy of the American invasion of World War Two is botanical. The main plant on Efate is morning glory. With its big, heart shaped leaves it can grow a metre in a day. It coats the canopy like a net, smothers the trees, and make the landscape uniform. Tendrils grow onto the roads. There are no plans for its eradication, as there is no money. If the Americans wanted to do something for Vanuatu, they could exorcise their own botanical demon. i could get quite exercised about it myself!
i took several tours including climbing the gorgeous Mele Cascades. You climb hanging on to ropes, and at the base of the main cascade is a limpid pool of cool water deep enough to swim in. There are also small caves behind the waterfall. Undine fairyland.
Other tours involved kastom villages where ni-Vanuatu people perform in 'traditional' style. You enter the village, and the men and boys leaps out and threaten you, brandishing spears, clubs, ukeleles and the terrible tea chest bass. The idea is to evoke scary cannibal shit. Some of the tourists are quite sophisticated and mug for the cameras, pretending to be speared and eaten. i photographed Seru the guide, photographing the tourists, being photographed with the villagers. Actually i thought the jumping-out-and-scaring-people ritual was more like the Maori poowhiri, the welcome ceremony where the visitors are challenged, and once the challenge is met, they become part of the village and are no longer visitors.
Kava does not agree with me. i lay in my hotel room as the hotel band played Livin' on a Prayer (the windows are shuttered, so there is no sound proofing), exhausted from trips to the toilet, and decided from now on i would live a blameless life, and was grateful for the 'Gudfela toilet paper blong yumi ' and for clean sheets. A travel tip: food is expensive In Vanuatu but it is totally worth paying for something that stays down.
i had three nights in Port Vila, on Efate, and then went on to Tanna - and the volcano!
Built by the Americans, it has connected villages in a way the internet first connected the cyber world. Before the ring road, if you wanted to see your friends you bush bashed with a knife for hours. Now, you walk along the ring road. So on the ring road people sit, and play, and dogs wander, and a famous elderly man is wheeled in his chair, right down the middle as befits his age and status. Vehicular traffic is almost secondary, and needs to watch out for picnics.
The other lagacy of the American invasion of World War Two is botanical. The main plant on Efate is morning glory. With its big, heart shaped leaves it can grow a metre in a day. It coats the canopy like a net, smothers the trees, and make the landscape uniform. Tendrils grow onto the roads. There are no plans for its eradication, as there is no money. If the Americans wanted to do something for Vanuatu, they could exorcise their own botanical demon. i could get quite exercised about it myself!
i took several tours including climbing the gorgeous Mele Cascades. You climb hanging on to ropes, and at the base of the main cascade is a limpid pool of cool water deep enough to swim in. There are also small caves behind the waterfall. Undine fairyland.
Other tours involved kastom villages where ni-Vanuatu people perform in 'traditional' style. You enter the village, and the men and boys leaps out and threaten you, brandishing spears, clubs, ukeleles and the terrible tea chest bass. The idea is to evoke scary cannibal shit. Some of the tourists are quite sophisticated and mug for the cameras, pretending to be speared and eaten. i photographed Seru the guide, photographing the tourists, being photographed with the villagers. Actually i thought the jumping-out-and-scaring-people ritual was more like the Maori poowhiri, the welcome ceremony where the visitors are challenged, and once the challenge is met, they become part of the village and are no longer visitors.
Kava does not agree with me. i lay in my hotel room as the hotel band played Livin' on a Prayer (the windows are shuttered, so there is no sound proofing), exhausted from trips to the toilet, and decided from now on i would live a blameless life, and was grateful for the 'Gudfela toilet paper blong yumi ' and for clean sheets. A travel tip: food is expensive In Vanuatu but it is totally worth paying for something that stays down.
i had three nights in Port Vila, on Efate, and then went on to Tanna - and the volcano!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Wan Gudfala Nasen: Vanuatu
The title refers to a sign i saw in a van in Port Vila, Vanuatu. In its entirety it read :
Tugeta long loa tugeta long jastis
Wan gudfala nasen.
A sensible call to nationhood.
Bislama, the language of the ni-Vanuatu, began as a pidgin. It looks amusing but it is a language with considerable historicity and is not as easy to understand in spoken form as you would think from reading it. There are some words i could pick up, from prior knowledge, like 'picanini' which means a child in most pidgins, and 'save' which is in every pidgin and originates from the Portuguese. It means 'know', like our term 'savvy'. i have no particular talent for languages, and to me Bislama sounded like any other foreign language ie: incomprehensible, nuanced, complex.
i photographed two other signs, one on a cigarette packet which said:
Sigaret i kilim man
No specifics, but no punches pulled either.
And the other, in the toilet at Tanna airport:
PISPIS
LONG
TOILET
BOWL, NO
PISPIS
LONG
FLOOR
which was a wise sign, because from the look and smell of the place many people had pispis long floor.
Tugeta long loa tugeta long jastis
Wan gudfala nasen.
A sensible call to nationhood.
Bislama, the language of the ni-Vanuatu, began as a pidgin. It looks amusing but it is a language with considerable historicity and is not as easy to understand in spoken form as you would think from reading it. There are some words i could pick up, from prior knowledge, like 'picanini' which means a child in most pidgins, and 'save' which is in every pidgin and originates from the Portuguese. It means 'know', like our term 'savvy'. i have no particular talent for languages, and to me Bislama sounded like any other foreign language ie: incomprehensible, nuanced, complex.
i photographed two other signs, one on a cigarette packet which said:
Sigaret i kilim man
No specifics, but no punches pulled either.
And the other, in the toilet at Tanna airport:
PISPIS
LONG
TOILET
BOWL, NO
PISPIS
LONG
FLOOR
which was a wise sign, because from the look and smell of the place many people had pispis long floor.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Hospital diary
i was hospitalised with chest pain some time ago, and i bought a small notebook and made journal entries. Foucault talks about how the first Western institutions were prisons, and how all subsequent institutions have taken prisons as their model. He was referring particularly to psychiatric hospitals, but i have always agreed with him about other institutions, and anyone who has been to boarding school would know what i mean.
So this is the prison diary - oops Michel i mean the hospital diary - of me, standing on the shoulders of other great prison writers such as Lenin and Mandela. :)
i was brought in by ambulance (that's BIBA to the cognoscenti) and spent the first few hours at the ED. The ED i understand. It is like an airport or any other place of placelessness. It was the usual trick of waiting. Suspend time a little, distract self from discomfort, watch and wait, take an interst in the environment. Time is suspended because you have no future here, one way or the other.
It was very busy and we were all stacked on gurneys like a fishing fleet at anchor, side by side, no room for proper beds. Someone vomited wretchedly inches away from me. We all tried to make eye contact with nurses, in the hopes they would come to us. They all avoided eye contact with us, in the hopes of not having to come to us, at least not yet. My chest pain had gone. The nasal prongs became annoying.
Then they said there was a bed for me, and won't that be nice, it will be much quieter up there.
i arrived on the cardiology ward and said something about leaving once the blood results were done, and the nurse said no, you are an inpatient now. There were four older women in the room and when i said i was leaving once the bloods were back, they literally slapped their thighs and laughed uproariously, and said yes, we all thought that too. And here we still are.
So i was welcomed into the strange world of cardiology.
i watched the sun set and the pigeons wheel around the trees outside, and heard the women talked about the church service, and their dreams, and premonitions of death.
Here there is nothing between breakfast and infinity.
All the ordinary worldly medium term stuff happens elsewhere. Here, you talk about knitting, or the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha.
My father was delirious when he died. He believed he was part of a terrible conspiracy, and he had been kidnapped by nurses who were trying to kill him. At the time it was harrowing. But in hospital i could almost link in with his paranoia. The nurses who looked after us were also in charge of us. They also performed arcane tests on us and took lots of blood - with all the symbolism of blood, and life-and-death. And they never told us what was really going on. They kept us uncomfortable and they controlled food, light, and space.
It felt like a cross between a prison and a very long haul plane flight with a very cheap airline.
In these places i am adaptive and wary. Learn fast, trust no one, get out as soon as you can.
Some of the women had been there for weeks, and some came and went regularly. They knew each other. At three pm, the husbands came. The women always had orders for things to be brought in from home, and the husbands always brought the wrong stuff. i thought that must have been traditional. Like maypole dancing or something. Some sort of ancient courtship ritual, perhaps.
Me, i listened to Tool and System of a Down through headphones and watched them fold things and read and potter. We watched the news. i read Moby Dick. i didn't mind much. i hadn't had free time like that in years. i was amused by the food. (The difference between meatloaf and casserole is lumps). i liked the sense of being suspended in time. i even coped with the arcane experiments - ECG's several times a day, treadmill exercises. i figured they just started testing and then found some random stuff and then felt obliged to keep on testing evenn though none of it related to anything i was actually experiencing. i actually wanted my sinus infection treated but this was a cardiology ward and no one was interested.
i thought about the beautiful psalm that starts 'I lift my eyes to the hills'. What sort of God is this? This is the God of Israel. How do i become part of Israel, who has this special God? And yet this is no local deity, not this late in Judaism. This is the One who made heaven and earth, who will always guide us. Always, there has been this tension between universality and specialness. Am i on God's side? Can i be anywhere else?
And i wondered about praying for help. i don't get that bit. i think you pray because it is the proper relationship with God, and because you can't help it, it is an act of trust. In my experience prayer does not stop anxiety or make stuff happen or make stuff not happen. And yet in monotheistic faiths there is the idea that God can help us. Every day i pray and tell God that God is 'the help in peril'. Am i in peril? How do i know i am in peril? Do i wait until i think i am in peril or do i approach God now about this in case of later on? In the psalm it said that help comes to me from God. On the night i came into hospital i thought about the psalm and i lifted my eyes to the hills, automatically, just as my ancestors would have done. i think this is what my favourite ecologist Edward O Wilson (who is a complete atheist, by the way) calls 'deep history'. i am sure the writer of the psalm knew it. The shit just got real!
There were also some new thoughts, by the time the psalmists were writing. This was not just the awful thundering sky father God of our deep history. This God knows us and guides us, all of us of the house of Israel, for ever. And this was not just the God who subdued the forces of chaos. This was the creator God; at this point people were beginning to think about a God who was outside of the world, who created the world ex nihilo. This remains an incredibly difficult thought. It was not one i could get a grip on, even from my bed in the cardiology ward.
i also entertained myself be reading my medical notes. You aren't supposed to do this. But i'm a rebel and i'll never be any good. i read the first cardiology registrar's note:
'Obese
Sitting up
Eating toast'
i was mortified. Well, yeah i was eating the fricken toast but it's not like there was even anything on it. and i'd been there all night and it wasn't like there was even a cup of tea or anything. WTF! And obese, yeah OK, it's not like i can argue with that, it is a technical term, but it's not like i'm Jabba the fricken Hutt. It's not like i was lying there mainlining melted butter for fuck's sake. i sat on my bed waiting for the next arcane experiment, fulminating. The moral of the story is that they are right, don't read your notes. It will only upset you.
Meanwhile, the medical stuff. There was nothing wrong with my heart, like i didn't already know that. i did have a hepatic reaction to Erythromycin which was taking for the sinus infection. That was a bummer, because it is the first line treatment for bubonic plague and if ever i am the plague belt (which runs roughly from Kazakhstan to Mongolia) i won't be able to take Erythromycin and will just have to avoid eating the marmots. And i have a really interesting recipe for marmot cooked with a blow torch, which i will now never be able to try.
So there i was, ineligible for the cardiologists, but not yet picked up by the gastroenterologists. And the hospital was going in and out of what they rather theatrically called 'red gridlock' which meant there were no beds anywhere, and they would not discharge me, no matter how much i asked them to. Clearly the place was run by the finest graduates of the Franz Kafka School of Medical Administration.
After a few days of this i became vaguely manic. i skidded around corridors in my socks and ran up and down the stairs. My husband came to see me (and brought all the wrong stuff, despite my very explicit instructions - clothes i hadn't seen for years. How could he do that? It really is a tradition!)
Finally a kind gastroenterology reg. (and Tool fan) came to see me special-like and i was discharged. It was 9 pm on a frosty night. The darkness outside sparkled. i stood at the bus stop in my old ill fitting clothes, with the potted gerbera my workmates had given me, and was free.
So this is the prison diary - oops Michel i mean the hospital diary - of me, standing on the shoulders of other great prison writers such as Lenin and Mandela. :)
i was brought in by ambulance (that's BIBA to the cognoscenti) and spent the first few hours at the ED. The ED i understand. It is like an airport or any other place of placelessness. It was the usual trick of waiting. Suspend time a little, distract self from discomfort, watch and wait, take an interst in the environment. Time is suspended because you have no future here, one way or the other.
It was very busy and we were all stacked on gurneys like a fishing fleet at anchor, side by side, no room for proper beds. Someone vomited wretchedly inches away from me. We all tried to make eye contact with nurses, in the hopes they would come to us. They all avoided eye contact with us, in the hopes of not having to come to us, at least not yet. My chest pain had gone. The nasal prongs became annoying.
Then they said there was a bed for me, and won't that be nice, it will be much quieter up there.
i arrived on the cardiology ward and said something about leaving once the blood results were done, and the nurse said no, you are an inpatient now. There were four older women in the room and when i said i was leaving once the bloods were back, they literally slapped their thighs and laughed uproariously, and said yes, we all thought that too. And here we still are.
So i was welcomed into the strange world of cardiology.
i watched the sun set and the pigeons wheel around the trees outside, and heard the women talked about the church service, and their dreams, and premonitions of death.
Here there is nothing between breakfast and infinity.
All the ordinary worldly medium term stuff happens elsewhere. Here, you talk about knitting, or the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha.
My father was delirious when he died. He believed he was part of a terrible conspiracy, and he had been kidnapped by nurses who were trying to kill him. At the time it was harrowing. But in hospital i could almost link in with his paranoia. The nurses who looked after us were also in charge of us. They also performed arcane tests on us and took lots of blood - with all the symbolism of blood, and life-and-death. And they never told us what was really going on. They kept us uncomfortable and they controlled food, light, and space.
It felt like a cross between a prison and a very long haul plane flight with a very cheap airline.
In these places i am adaptive and wary. Learn fast, trust no one, get out as soon as you can.
Some of the women had been there for weeks, and some came and went regularly. They knew each other. At three pm, the husbands came. The women always had orders for things to be brought in from home, and the husbands always brought the wrong stuff. i thought that must have been traditional. Like maypole dancing or something. Some sort of ancient courtship ritual, perhaps.
Me, i listened to Tool and System of a Down through headphones and watched them fold things and read and potter. We watched the news. i read Moby Dick. i didn't mind much. i hadn't had free time like that in years. i was amused by the food. (The difference between meatloaf and casserole is lumps). i liked the sense of being suspended in time. i even coped with the arcane experiments - ECG's several times a day, treadmill exercises. i figured they just started testing and then found some random stuff and then felt obliged to keep on testing evenn though none of it related to anything i was actually experiencing. i actually wanted my sinus infection treated but this was a cardiology ward and no one was interested.
i thought about the beautiful psalm that starts 'I lift my eyes to the hills'. What sort of God is this? This is the God of Israel. How do i become part of Israel, who has this special God? And yet this is no local deity, not this late in Judaism. This is the One who made heaven and earth, who will always guide us. Always, there has been this tension between universality and specialness. Am i on God's side? Can i be anywhere else?
And i wondered about praying for help. i don't get that bit. i think you pray because it is the proper relationship with God, and because you can't help it, it is an act of trust. In my experience prayer does not stop anxiety or make stuff happen or make stuff not happen. And yet in monotheistic faiths there is the idea that God can help us. Every day i pray and tell God that God is 'the help in peril'. Am i in peril? How do i know i am in peril? Do i wait until i think i am in peril or do i approach God now about this in case of later on? In the psalm it said that help comes to me from God. On the night i came into hospital i thought about the psalm and i lifted my eyes to the hills, automatically, just as my ancestors would have done. i think this is what my favourite ecologist Edward O Wilson (who is a complete atheist, by the way) calls 'deep history'. i am sure the writer of the psalm knew it. The shit just got real!
There were also some new thoughts, by the time the psalmists were writing. This was not just the awful thundering sky father God of our deep history. This God knows us and guides us, all of us of the house of Israel, for ever. And this was not just the God who subdued the forces of chaos. This was the creator God; at this point people were beginning to think about a God who was outside of the world, who created the world ex nihilo. This remains an incredibly difficult thought. It was not one i could get a grip on, even from my bed in the cardiology ward.
i also entertained myself be reading my medical notes. You aren't supposed to do this. But i'm a rebel and i'll never be any good. i read the first cardiology registrar's note:
'Obese
Sitting up
Eating toast'
i was mortified. Well, yeah i was eating the fricken toast but it's not like there was even anything on it. and i'd been there all night and it wasn't like there was even a cup of tea or anything. WTF! And obese, yeah OK, it's not like i can argue with that, it is a technical term, but it's not like i'm Jabba the fricken Hutt. It's not like i was lying there mainlining melted butter for fuck's sake. i sat on my bed waiting for the next arcane experiment, fulminating. The moral of the story is that they are right, don't read your notes. It will only upset you.
Meanwhile, the medical stuff. There was nothing wrong with my heart, like i didn't already know that. i did have a hepatic reaction to Erythromycin which was taking for the sinus infection. That was a bummer, because it is the first line treatment for bubonic plague and if ever i am the plague belt (which runs roughly from Kazakhstan to Mongolia) i won't be able to take Erythromycin and will just have to avoid eating the marmots. And i have a really interesting recipe for marmot cooked with a blow torch, which i will now never be able to try.
So there i was, ineligible for the cardiologists, but not yet picked up by the gastroenterologists. And the hospital was going in and out of what they rather theatrically called 'red gridlock' which meant there were no beds anywhere, and they would not discharge me, no matter how much i asked them to. Clearly the place was run by the finest graduates of the Franz Kafka School of Medical Administration.
After a few days of this i became vaguely manic. i skidded around corridors in my socks and ran up and down the stairs. My husband came to see me (and brought all the wrong stuff, despite my very explicit instructions - clothes i hadn't seen for years. How could he do that? It really is a tradition!)
Finally a kind gastroenterology reg. (and Tool fan) came to see me special-like and i was discharged. It was 9 pm on a frosty night. The darkness outside sparkled. i stood at the bus stop in my old ill fitting clothes, with the potted gerbera my workmates had given me, and was free.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
She considers his lost years - a poem, and an explanation
SHE CONSIDERS HIS LOST YEARS, AND SIEVES THEM THROUGH THE WORDS OF THE GREAT POETS
You were never exactly going to live a normal life, were you.
You will be the flaming out.
You will gather the greatness -
the pain
and the glory.
You have no filters.
You hold your heart open.
You don't run
don't privilege
let it
rain
down
on you and through you and your filling and your emptying
is the great original sigh, and we are filled and emptied in your presence.
i am amazed by you.
i am amazed you have survived this long,
in this world of tread and toil and trade.
i think you have been with the monks.
i think you have studied surrender,
the study of absence,
the study of exhalation,
and hurting and healing and helping and hearing
and hurting.
Honestly, i had my times of breathlessness.
There were times i wondered if i would hear you sing again,
and i almost didn't care. i could ask nothing more of you.
To wrench open the door of my heart
was an act of holy violence.
------------------------------------------------------------
This poem is more literary than it sounds. i had in mind stylistic ideas and even phrases from the great romantic/transcendentalist poets, such as Blake, Yeats and Hopkins. (i am especially fond of Hopkins.) i believe i can poach so freely because i liken the subject, singer Altiyan Childs, to them.
i also had in mind some very old ideas, because i think when we consider greatness we are often drawn to our oldest and most developed ideas. One idea is about breath (prana, ch'i) being the source of life. Another idea is about being emptied. This is called kenosis in the Greek, and 'fana in Sufism. When we experience Spirit, we are emptied of our ordinary selves and transported into greater realities. In early Hinduism sound was considered generative of all life and was used as liturgy to shock people out of their ordinary selves. Music and dance have always been used in this way. i use the word shock here advisedly, because we cannot experience kenosis and remain the same, and because the experience itself can be as confusing and disturbing and problematic as it can be glorious and exciting and joyful. It has been for me.
You were never exactly going to live a normal life, were you.
You will be the flaming out.
You will gather the greatness -
the pain
and the glory.
You have no filters.
You hold your heart open.
You don't run
don't privilege
let it
rain
down
on you and through you and your filling and your emptying
is the great original sigh, and we are filled and emptied in your presence.
i am amazed by you.
i am amazed you have survived this long,
in this world of tread and toil and trade.
i think you have been with the monks.
i think you have studied surrender,
the study of absence,
the study of exhalation,
and hurting and healing and helping and hearing
and hurting.
Honestly, i had my times of breathlessness.
There were times i wondered if i would hear you sing again,
and i almost didn't care. i could ask nothing more of you.
To wrench open the door of my heart
was an act of holy violence.
------------------------------------------------------------
This poem is more literary than it sounds. i had in mind stylistic ideas and even phrases from the great romantic/transcendentalist poets, such as Blake, Yeats and Hopkins. (i am especially fond of Hopkins.) i believe i can poach so freely because i liken the subject, singer Altiyan Childs, to them.
i also had in mind some very old ideas, because i think when we consider greatness we are often drawn to our oldest and most developed ideas. One idea is about breath (prana, ch'i) being the source of life. Another idea is about being emptied. This is called kenosis in the Greek, and 'fana in Sufism. When we experience Spirit, we are emptied of our ordinary selves and transported into greater realities. In early Hinduism sound was considered generative of all life and was used as liturgy to shock people out of their ordinary selves. Music and dance have always been used in this way. i use the word shock here advisedly, because we cannot experience kenosis and remain the same, and because the experience itself can be as confusing and disturbing and problematic as it can be glorious and exciting and joyful. It has been for me.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Christmas dinner on the firm
This is an email i sent to the CEO of the firm i work for. Those of us rostered on Christmas day traditionally get a meal from the cafeteria.
'Dear ...
I am not normally given to complaints but i wish to make one in the strongest terms regarding the lunch (and presumably the dinner) provided to staff on Christmas day.
By the time I opened the polystyrene box the reputation of the contents had preceded them. The general thinking was that because there were compaints last year, by some Orwellian twist of managerial logic the plan was for an even worse meal this year.
What was inside looked like 'Your Brain On Drugs'. There was a slice of grey and white matter which purported to be a vegetable terrine. I suspect eggplant was involved. It looked like something I would not have transplanted into my body to save a life. There were some desultory greens. The cucumber was slushy. The tomato tasted like fridge. There was a truly wretched yellow knob of what could have passed for broccoli in poor light. The whole arrangement seemed to have been frozen, or chilled for several days. It was definitely not 'Made With Love'.
There was also a pudding. It was pink. More slush. I ate some of it, because I think by then I was in a regressed state where anything pink and pappy looked attractive.
Now, I have a reasonably adventurous palate. I have been to Vietnam, and to Hokitika. I have cheerfully sat down to meals where I recognized none of the ingredients. But this one had me at a stand. It was inedible. It was a waste.
I am aware that (my employer) is financially stretched and I think I have my priorities straight. would I rather have (vital piece of equipment) or a slap up Christmas feed? Would I rather have (excellent service) or a slap up Christmas feed? Clearly, the former in each case.
Which is why I am requesting you do not bother. To give us staff food that is inedible is insulting and undermines our loyalties. It is also horribly wasteful - the food must have cost something and most of it went into the bin. Heaven knows, we do not do this job for the perks. Save the small amount of money it costs. We heard ont he day that the City Mission provided the best nosh ever. From now on I will be heading down there. '
This was the reply, a superb piece of managerialism of the sort designed to strip language of all meaning, in its own flow-chart style, a piece of brilliance:
'Dear...
I am in receipt of an email delivered to (CEO) on the 28th December 2010 with regard to the Christmas meal as delivered to yourself on Christmas Day and from the tone of the email I understand this meal did not meet your expectations.
I can ssure you that the appropriate amount of planning, preparation and presentation went into the meal that you ahd on Christmas Day. I apologise for the fact that you did not enjoy the meal and you (sic) comments are duly noted.
I would like to thank you for your time and your feedback.
Yours sincerely (Catering Manager)'
'Dear ...
I am not normally given to complaints but i wish to make one in the strongest terms regarding the lunch (and presumably the dinner) provided to staff on Christmas day.
By the time I opened the polystyrene box the reputation of the contents had preceded them. The general thinking was that because there were compaints last year, by some Orwellian twist of managerial logic the plan was for an even worse meal this year.
What was inside looked like 'Your Brain On Drugs'. There was a slice of grey and white matter which purported to be a vegetable terrine. I suspect eggplant was involved. It looked like something I would not have transplanted into my body to save a life. There were some desultory greens. The cucumber was slushy. The tomato tasted like fridge. There was a truly wretched yellow knob of what could have passed for broccoli in poor light. The whole arrangement seemed to have been frozen, or chilled for several days. It was definitely not 'Made With Love'.
There was also a pudding. It was pink. More slush. I ate some of it, because I think by then I was in a regressed state where anything pink and pappy looked attractive.
Now, I have a reasonably adventurous palate. I have been to Vietnam, and to Hokitika. I have cheerfully sat down to meals where I recognized none of the ingredients. But this one had me at a stand. It was inedible. It was a waste.
I am aware that (my employer) is financially stretched and I think I have my priorities straight. would I rather have (vital piece of equipment) or a slap up Christmas feed? Would I rather have (excellent service) or a slap up Christmas feed? Clearly, the former in each case.
Which is why I am requesting you do not bother. To give us staff food that is inedible is insulting and undermines our loyalties. It is also horribly wasteful - the food must have cost something and most of it went into the bin. Heaven knows, we do not do this job for the perks. Save the small amount of money it costs. We heard ont he day that the City Mission provided the best nosh ever. From now on I will be heading down there. '
This was the reply, a superb piece of managerialism of the sort designed to strip language of all meaning, in its own flow-chart style, a piece of brilliance:
'Dear...
I am in receipt of an email delivered to (CEO) on the 28th December 2010 with regard to the Christmas meal as delivered to yourself on Christmas Day and from the tone of the email I understand this meal did not meet your expectations.
I can ssure you that the appropriate amount of planning, preparation and presentation went into the meal that you ahd on Christmas Day. I apologise for the fact that you did not enjoy the meal and you (sic) comments are duly noted.
I would like to thank you for your time and your feedback.
Yours sincerely (Catering Manager)'
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