On the weekend i went to Shareanidea, an expo of ideas about the rebuilding of Christchurch's CBD after the earthquakes. It was run by the city council.
All up, 10,000 people went. The place was busy on the Sunday morning. Some of the area was divided into spaces for aspects of the rebuilding process - called life, space, move and market. People put post-it-notes with ideas on them on walls. They also logged them on computers, recorded them on Youtube videos and, for children, drew them or made them out of lego on wooden maps of the city.
i listened to Mark Quigley, our resident celebbrity geologist, talk about his own idea for the future CBD and how geological engineers can do anything provided they have time and money. People clapped throughout. i agreed with most of what he had to say.
There were lots of families. Groups of children were thinking hard about what to put on the walls, debating with the charming ernestness of ten year olds. An older man was talking to a young boy, saying 'If we make the right decisions today, it makes a difference to your future'. People acted as if they had a true stake in this city. They seemed to believe they were making a difference, and their views would be heard.
There were definite themes among the ideas. People wanted a small, green, low-rise, CBD with good space, art, and local colour and less vehicular traffic. There was not much call for green technologies as such, but they were often implicit.
In other words, lots of people think like me! i was genuinely surprised and pleased.
The woman i went with talked about how voting means little to her, but going to the expo and posting her ideas meant so much. We are seldom given a chance to say more than yes or no on a TV text poll, or vote for the next Whatever Idol. And more people voted for American Idol than in the US elections. On the weekend, Christchurch people thought they had a stake, so they got off their couches and came and said what they thought, with words and pictures and voices.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
..and the blood of unbelievers dripping...
'We will see Saladin carrying his sword, and the blood of unbelievers dripping from it'
- Osama bin Laden
What is a hero? i mean this in the sense of the Jungian archtype explored by Joseph Campbell in 'The Hero with a Thosusand Faces'.
The hero has mysterious or incongruous origins. He (he is usually male) may not know his parents or the circumstances of his birth. The birth itself may be miraculous or unusual. He may show early promise. He experiences a rebirth, or a conversion, in his early life and maybe takes a new name, or discovers his true one. He has a period of time in the wilderness where he contemplates his cause and is perhaps tested. His rise to prominence is sudden or unlikely. He is a charismatic figure. His end is as mysterious as his beginning, and there is often some doubt about it - maybe he is not really gone, maybe he will return.
Obvious heroes in Western culture are Herakles, Dionysus, and King Arthur. Jesus and Gautama fulfil the hero archetype. Some historical figures have had a heroic gloss to their stories, Frederick the Great being one. In modern literature Aragorn is a hero, as is Harry Potter.
OBL is a lamentably a hero. This is what is popularly thought about him (the detail is less important than the shape of the story:
He was born into the Binladen family (note the differnt spelling), a wealthy Americanised Arabic family with ties to US politicians and business interests (which, when it comes to oil, are often the same thing). He underwent a conversion to an austere version of Wahabism after becoming angered at the American presence in Saudi Arabia. He left his life of luxury and lived a simple lifestyle, using his wealth and contacts for his cause. Despite being well known in Jihadist circles, he really shot to fame after 9/11. Then, he became an elusive figurehead, an inspiration. Then, he died.
It is the end of his life that interests me with regard to the hero myth. The hero is often not really dead, or is resurrected. Some heroes are deemed to have died, but we await their return. Examples are King Arthur, or Frederick the Great. When England needs him most, King Arthur will return to lead the people into a golden age. When Jesus returns, of course, history ends. The death, and the return, are important.
i think that the Americans have a responsibility they may not appreciate, or may not be able to control. There is just enough doubt about bin Laden's death for mythmaking, for the hero archetype to fulfil itself. They 'buried' him at sea. We have no photos. Al Qaeda have admitted he is dead. But maybe that is a deep game. Maybe he is not really dead, maybe he will return somehow and sweep the jihadists to victory. i suspect that the mythmaking will happen no matter what the Americans do now. It disturbs me to say this, but it reminds me of neo Nazis claiming Hitler did not die in the bunker.
i think it matters because bin Laden is already such a 'made' figure. In part this because he has been in seclusion for so long; he has been a figurehead, a legend, a unifying force, a symbol. It is important how his story evolves now. Chris Hedges, in his excellent article 'Chris Hedges speaks on Osama bin Laden's death' www.truthdig.com talks about how we make the monster.
The quote above gives a hint of how bin Laden may have seen himself in history. Saladin, that humane and chivalrous leader, was another 'returning' hero. The quote comes from Scott Atran's book 'Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to be Human'. More good thinking about the topic. Lots of good thinking out there!
i am also here totally indebted to my husband the Archduke Piccolo. The Archduke studied the hero archetype through the medium of children's literature, and many of the views above are his.
- Osama bin Laden
What is a hero? i mean this in the sense of the Jungian archtype explored by Joseph Campbell in 'The Hero with a Thosusand Faces'.
The hero has mysterious or incongruous origins. He (he is usually male) may not know his parents or the circumstances of his birth. The birth itself may be miraculous or unusual. He may show early promise. He experiences a rebirth, or a conversion, in his early life and maybe takes a new name, or discovers his true one. He has a period of time in the wilderness where he contemplates his cause and is perhaps tested. His rise to prominence is sudden or unlikely. He is a charismatic figure. His end is as mysterious as his beginning, and there is often some doubt about it - maybe he is not really gone, maybe he will return.
Obvious heroes in Western culture are Herakles, Dionysus, and King Arthur. Jesus and Gautama fulfil the hero archetype. Some historical figures have had a heroic gloss to their stories, Frederick the Great being one. In modern literature Aragorn is a hero, as is Harry Potter.
OBL is a lamentably a hero. This is what is popularly thought about him (the detail is less important than the shape of the story:
He was born into the Binladen family (note the differnt spelling), a wealthy Americanised Arabic family with ties to US politicians and business interests (which, when it comes to oil, are often the same thing). He underwent a conversion to an austere version of Wahabism after becoming angered at the American presence in Saudi Arabia. He left his life of luxury and lived a simple lifestyle, using his wealth and contacts for his cause. Despite being well known in Jihadist circles, he really shot to fame after 9/11. Then, he became an elusive figurehead, an inspiration. Then, he died.
It is the end of his life that interests me with regard to the hero myth. The hero is often not really dead, or is resurrected. Some heroes are deemed to have died, but we await their return. Examples are King Arthur, or Frederick the Great. When England needs him most, King Arthur will return to lead the people into a golden age. When Jesus returns, of course, history ends. The death, and the return, are important.
i think that the Americans have a responsibility they may not appreciate, or may not be able to control. There is just enough doubt about bin Laden's death for mythmaking, for the hero archetype to fulfil itself. They 'buried' him at sea. We have no photos. Al Qaeda have admitted he is dead. But maybe that is a deep game. Maybe he is not really dead, maybe he will return somehow and sweep the jihadists to victory. i suspect that the mythmaking will happen no matter what the Americans do now. It disturbs me to say this, but it reminds me of neo Nazis claiming Hitler did not die in the bunker.
i think it matters because bin Laden is already such a 'made' figure. In part this because he has been in seclusion for so long; he has been a figurehead, a legend, a unifying force, a symbol. It is important how his story evolves now. Chris Hedges, in his excellent article 'Chris Hedges speaks on Osama bin Laden's death' www.truthdig.com talks about how we make the monster.
The quote above gives a hint of how bin Laden may have seen himself in history. Saladin, that humane and chivalrous leader, was another 'returning' hero. The quote comes from Scott Atran's book 'Talking to the Enemy: Violent Extremism, Sacred Values, and What it Means to be Human'. More good thinking about the topic. Lots of good thinking out there!
i am also here totally indebted to my husband the Archduke Piccolo. The Archduke studied the hero archetype through the medium of children's literature, and many of the views above are his.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The State of Emergency has been lifted.
Over the weekend two significant events took place here - the lifting of the State of Emergency, and the coming of CERA, the Christchurch Earthquake Reconstruction Authority.
i had half forgotten we were in a State of Emergency. Life has gone on here. i have resumed walking to work. It used to be one of my pleasures, forty minutes through town and along the river bank. i would walk home after my shift ended at 11 pm.* After the earthquake happened, my work moved and the cordon was too large to walk around. Now, the cordon has shrunk enough, and some of my work is at the hospital. i figured it would take an hour to walk there.
The first time was in the daytime and it was raining. It was a stiff schlepp in the mud, and some of the route i had driven wasn't really walkable. i arrived wet through and mostly everything looked miserable. It took an hour and a quarter. The next time was in sunshine. It was still slightly weird, as everything still is here. Bits of the road surface had broken out like a teenageer's face. Great pumps and drills delved under the streets and spewed up unmentionable things. There was almost a festive atmosphere as families were out at the edge of the cordon, photographing the wreckage. i have always liked wreckage. i like how things are outside that should be inside. i like to look at structures in different ways. i like the small sights - a washstand with soap still in a dish, a tidy row of files, pot plants.
Walking back at night was different. Rats! i had heard that the city was infested with them because of the deserted food outlets. i was promised rats! i was expecting to form a circle of light with my torch and they would be blinking their red eyes and backing away slowly and then the torch would blink out and one of them would shourt "Get her!'... i saw none (rats!).
Normally on a Saturday night the town is alive with revelry. Some of it even looks like fun. (It probably isn't. And all the young women look identical. There is only so much you can do with a short skirt and high heels). But this time of course there was nobody about, because the town was all closed, and it was dark. A few of the lights were out even on the bits of street that work, and it was torchlight. i was thankful for sensible shoes, and being a girly swot i always carry a torch and a whistle and a swiss army knife and a compass and a rubber chicken.# The lack of revelry and general people-ness made me uneasy. There was one pub open on the edge of town, pooling light and warm beer smells and conversation. A solitary drunk spat and lurched off into the teetotal darkness. i kept on going, into more familiar and less damaged territory.
And now, que CERA CERA. This Authority has very wide powers. From now on it will run our lives, and nobody elected it and nobody can stop it. Truly worrying is the fact that it has no experts on it - noone who knows about disaster recovery, or geology, or community development. There is already concern that it will sell the city's assets, because that would be in keeping with the ideology of the imcumbent national government which has appointed it. There is very little mandate for community involvement, for small solutions or local participation.
There are some truly disastrous examples out there of how big, autocratic planning benefits only the wealthy few. The scariest is Hurricane Katrina. Big private interests used racial stereotyping and fear to drive out poor people from their traditional neighborhoods and bring in the rich. And this was entirely in accord with Bush administration thinking - that government exists only to fund defence. In Thailand, after the terrible tsunami, fishing villages were displaced inland and hotels for tourists were built in their stead. This is called Shock Doctrine. Some good writers on this are Naomi Klein with her book of that name, and the inspiring art critic and environmentalist Rebecca Solnit.
On a micro level, the organisation i work for has done the same thing. For some years they have planned an unpopular restructuring. Now they have used the State of Emergency to declare because of the earthquake things must change, and that they no longer need to consult about change - and, guess what, they plan to restructure us in the same way they were planning before the earthquake.
We culd have a new, clever, green, smaller Christchurch with many small smart ideas and we could study the best ideas from other disaster areas, and we could thin and talk together. And people could come and look and use our model. But we won't. There will be impatience, and hurt, and greed, and fear, and vested interests, and we won't.
Oh, i nearly forgot. The first time i walked through the city, in the rain, i saw this written on a blackboard, among the orange cones and rubble and cracked walls. i don't know if it relevant, but maybe nothing is every irrelevant:
'If the doors of Perception were cleared Everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite' - William Blake.
* i have always walked in the city at night, wherever i am. We humans are the scariest things i know, but i insist i am safe if i am confident in my step. The more women who walk, the safer we are.
# i lied about one of those things. Guess which one?**
** i think if ever i am approached by a person who has evil intent i will shout 'Have a look at THIS, motherfucker!' and i will pull out the rubber chicken and they will be so appalled they will run away. There are few things more appalling than a rubber chicken at midnight.
i had half forgotten we were in a State of Emergency. Life has gone on here. i have resumed walking to work. It used to be one of my pleasures, forty minutes through town and along the river bank. i would walk home after my shift ended at 11 pm.* After the earthquake happened, my work moved and the cordon was too large to walk around. Now, the cordon has shrunk enough, and some of my work is at the hospital. i figured it would take an hour to walk there.
The first time was in the daytime and it was raining. It was a stiff schlepp in the mud, and some of the route i had driven wasn't really walkable. i arrived wet through and mostly everything looked miserable. It took an hour and a quarter. The next time was in sunshine. It was still slightly weird, as everything still is here. Bits of the road surface had broken out like a teenageer's face. Great pumps and drills delved under the streets and spewed up unmentionable things. There was almost a festive atmosphere as families were out at the edge of the cordon, photographing the wreckage. i have always liked wreckage. i like how things are outside that should be inside. i like to look at structures in different ways. i like the small sights - a washstand with soap still in a dish, a tidy row of files, pot plants.
Walking back at night was different. Rats! i had heard that the city was infested with them because of the deserted food outlets. i was promised rats! i was expecting to form a circle of light with my torch and they would be blinking their red eyes and backing away slowly and then the torch would blink out and one of them would shourt "Get her!'... i saw none (rats!).
Normally on a Saturday night the town is alive with revelry. Some of it even looks like fun. (It probably isn't. And all the young women look identical. There is only so much you can do with a short skirt and high heels). But this time of course there was nobody about, because the town was all closed, and it was dark. A few of the lights were out even on the bits of street that work, and it was torchlight. i was thankful for sensible shoes, and being a girly swot i always carry a torch and a whistle and a swiss army knife and a compass and a rubber chicken.# The lack of revelry and general people-ness made me uneasy. There was one pub open on the edge of town, pooling light and warm beer smells and conversation. A solitary drunk spat and lurched off into the teetotal darkness. i kept on going, into more familiar and less damaged territory.
And now, que CERA CERA. This Authority has very wide powers. From now on it will run our lives, and nobody elected it and nobody can stop it. Truly worrying is the fact that it has no experts on it - noone who knows about disaster recovery, or geology, or community development. There is already concern that it will sell the city's assets, because that would be in keeping with the ideology of the imcumbent national government which has appointed it. There is very little mandate for community involvement, for small solutions or local participation.
There are some truly disastrous examples out there of how big, autocratic planning benefits only the wealthy few. The scariest is Hurricane Katrina. Big private interests used racial stereotyping and fear to drive out poor people from their traditional neighborhoods and bring in the rich. And this was entirely in accord with Bush administration thinking - that government exists only to fund defence. In Thailand, after the terrible tsunami, fishing villages were displaced inland and hotels for tourists were built in their stead. This is called Shock Doctrine. Some good writers on this are Naomi Klein with her book of that name, and the inspiring art critic and environmentalist Rebecca Solnit.
On a micro level, the organisation i work for has done the same thing. For some years they have planned an unpopular restructuring. Now they have used the State of Emergency to declare because of the earthquake things must change, and that they no longer need to consult about change - and, guess what, they plan to restructure us in the same way they were planning before the earthquake.
We culd have a new, clever, green, smaller Christchurch with many small smart ideas and we could study the best ideas from other disaster areas, and we could thin and talk together. And people could come and look and use our model. But we won't. There will be impatience, and hurt, and greed, and fear, and vested interests, and we won't.
Oh, i nearly forgot. The first time i walked through the city, in the rain, i saw this written on a blackboard, among the orange cones and rubble and cracked walls. i don't know if it relevant, but maybe nothing is every irrelevant:
'If the doors of Perception were cleared Everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite' - William Blake.
* i have always walked in the city at night, wherever i am. We humans are the scariest things i know, but i insist i am safe if i am confident in my step. The more women who walk, the safer we are.
# i lied about one of those things. Guess which one?**
** i think if ever i am approached by a person who has evil intent i will shout 'Have a look at THIS, motherfucker!' and i will pull out the rubber chicken and they will be so appalled they will run away. There are few things more appalling than a rubber chicken at midnight.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
In old Hoi An, a kitten dies by the side of the road
Hoi An is an old and beautiful city in the middle section of Vietnam. It floods like Venice, and people boat down the streets. The buildings are the colour of butter. It is famous for its overnight tailoring. i got excited about the tailoring, my first experience of being fitted for clothes by anyone except my Mum. i frequented the rather funky Blue Sky Tailoring Company where i got silk shirts made for male family members, and a silk suit and linen pants for myself. Needless to say, i have grown out of them (see my entry, The earthquake shrank my clothes).
i was on my way back to the hotel with my bags of new tailor made clothing, and walking with me were James and Graham, both Londoners. James was a banker. He was keen to meet people and share business wisdom, and he had lots of opinions and ideas. He enjoyed bargaining and buying. Graham was a factory worker, who had travelled a lot in the South world, and had a very laissez faire attitude to other cultures. He was used to roughing it and travelled light.
On the way, we saw a kitten on the side of the road. It was raining and the kitten was wet and hunched. Its ears were huge and its face was pinched and it was clearly dying. It was a baby kitten, not a young cat, and helpless. Nobody seemed to notice it.
James and Graham argued about it. James wanted to save it, but Graham thought that was impossible. James felt that we simply couldn't do nothing, that we could at least feed it, that we could not know about the kitten and not take up the responsibility to care for it. Graham argued that Vietnam does not have the infrastructure to deal with stray animals, and without that, it would be misguided to help just one animal who will die later anyway.
On the whole, i agreed with Graham, although i didn't say much. It's dysmorphic, i said, it is going to die no matter what we do.
What's dysmorphic, asked James. Fucked, i said.
In the end, of course, we did nothing. We walked on. But the kitten wounded my heart and disturbed my thoughts. Later that night we went back down the street to have dinner. i did not want to pass the place where we saw the dying kitten. i tossed my thoughts about in my mind. Either the kitten will be there or it won't. If it is there, it will be either alive or dead. (Damn that Schrodinger!) If it is alive, it will still be sick. If it is dead, it will be (gulp!) dead. Either way i will be sad.
Well, the kitten wasn't there, but its tiny presence has lasted a long time.
For a srart, why did i use the word dysmorphic? Dysmorphic does not mean fucked. It was a word they used in a Neomatal Unit where i worked as a social worker, with sick and premature babies. A baby is described as dysmorphic if there is something wrong with its features. You have no idea what can go wrong with babies until you have seen a Neonatal Unit. i have seen babies who are further away from me chromasomally than chimpanzees, and it makes you wonder what is the definition of a human. Social work in such places requires a true compassion and a stern lack of judgment. And at times a strong stomach. Informally, such babies get called FLK's which stands for Funny Looking Kid, i regret to say. Another awful term is NFC or NFK. In the UK, NFC is Normal for Cornwall, and in New Zealand it is Normal for Kaitangata. (Kaitangata is a small coal town in South Otago). Very occasionally these pejorative terms get written up in babies' files, and naturally there is hell to pay if the parents see them and ask what they mean.
Both the informal and formal labels for babies are professionally useful for several reasons, but one reason is that they distance us from the subject. We can use our clinical terms or our humour to disance ourselves from the raw painful human stuff that just leaks out and upsets people and makes it all too hard. When i said 'dysmorphic', James and Graham were unaware of this, but i was evoking all that need for distance, for carrying on regardless, for doing the job, for surviving. You know it, that way of coping that means you drink some stiff gins in the bath and have a bit of a cry, and then get back on the next shift, rewired by that tender sense of clarity that is the hangover's special gift to the next day.
And so, the kitten undid us, with its small life and its death so small as to be invisible. What does it matter? Most countries do not have the infrastructure to manage stray animals. That sort of charity work requires a leisured middle class. From what i saw of Vietnam, its middle class is anything but leisured. i have come across versions of our Cats' Protection League in Kuala Lumpur and Port Vila but those are wealthier cities with a stronger ex-pat presence.
My response to the kitten was layered. There were the words and the analysis, but underneath there was pathos, and underneath that, the fear and revulsion that comes from sickness and death and wrongness in the world. The world should not have such things in it and i should not have to experience them. We should all be like Gautama Siddhartha, the prince, living in his palace, deliberately removed from all age and sickness and death. Except that it was his destiny to discover those things, and to leave the palace and undergo all those spiritual trials, and become the Buddha and give us the four Noble Truths.
And the first Truth is that there is suffering. And underneath the fear and revulsion there was an acknowledgement that any death, no matter how small, diminishes us, and that we call our sense of that diminishment our sadness, and that we are right to be sad, and to know that we are.
i was on my way back to the hotel with my bags of new tailor made clothing, and walking with me were James and Graham, both Londoners. James was a banker. He was keen to meet people and share business wisdom, and he had lots of opinions and ideas. He enjoyed bargaining and buying. Graham was a factory worker, who had travelled a lot in the South world, and had a very laissez faire attitude to other cultures. He was used to roughing it and travelled light.
On the way, we saw a kitten on the side of the road. It was raining and the kitten was wet and hunched. Its ears were huge and its face was pinched and it was clearly dying. It was a baby kitten, not a young cat, and helpless. Nobody seemed to notice it.
James and Graham argued about it. James wanted to save it, but Graham thought that was impossible. James felt that we simply couldn't do nothing, that we could at least feed it, that we could not know about the kitten and not take up the responsibility to care for it. Graham argued that Vietnam does not have the infrastructure to deal with stray animals, and without that, it would be misguided to help just one animal who will die later anyway.
On the whole, i agreed with Graham, although i didn't say much. It's dysmorphic, i said, it is going to die no matter what we do.
What's dysmorphic, asked James. Fucked, i said.
In the end, of course, we did nothing. We walked on. But the kitten wounded my heart and disturbed my thoughts. Later that night we went back down the street to have dinner. i did not want to pass the place where we saw the dying kitten. i tossed my thoughts about in my mind. Either the kitten will be there or it won't. If it is there, it will be either alive or dead. (Damn that Schrodinger!) If it is alive, it will still be sick. If it is dead, it will be (gulp!) dead. Either way i will be sad.
Well, the kitten wasn't there, but its tiny presence has lasted a long time.
For a srart, why did i use the word dysmorphic? Dysmorphic does not mean fucked. It was a word they used in a Neomatal Unit where i worked as a social worker, with sick and premature babies. A baby is described as dysmorphic if there is something wrong with its features. You have no idea what can go wrong with babies until you have seen a Neonatal Unit. i have seen babies who are further away from me chromasomally than chimpanzees, and it makes you wonder what is the definition of a human. Social work in such places requires a true compassion and a stern lack of judgment. And at times a strong stomach. Informally, such babies get called FLK's which stands for Funny Looking Kid, i regret to say. Another awful term is NFC or NFK. In the UK, NFC is Normal for Cornwall, and in New Zealand it is Normal for Kaitangata. (Kaitangata is a small coal town in South Otago). Very occasionally these pejorative terms get written up in babies' files, and naturally there is hell to pay if the parents see them and ask what they mean.
Both the informal and formal labels for babies are professionally useful for several reasons, but one reason is that they distance us from the subject. We can use our clinical terms or our humour to disance ourselves from the raw painful human stuff that just leaks out and upsets people and makes it all too hard. When i said 'dysmorphic', James and Graham were unaware of this, but i was evoking all that need for distance, for carrying on regardless, for doing the job, for surviving. You know it, that way of coping that means you drink some stiff gins in the bath and have a bit of a cry, and then get back on the next shift, rewired by that tender sense of clarity that is the hangover's special gift to the next day.
And so, the kitten undid us, with its small life and its death so small as to be invisible. What does it matter? Most countries do not have the infrastructure to manage stray animals. That sort of charity work requires a leisured middle class. From what i saw of Vietnam, its middle class is anything but leisured. i have come across versions of our Cats' Protection League in Kuala Lumpur and Port Vila but those are wealthier cities with a stronger ex-pat presence.
My response to the kitten was layered. There were the words and the analysis, but underneath there was pathos, and underneath that, the fear and revulsion that comes from sickness and death and wrongness in the world. The world should not have such things in it and i should not have to experience them. We should all be like Gautama Siddhartha, the prince, living in his palace, deliberately removed from all age and sickness and death. Except that it was his destiny to discover those things, and to leave the palace and undergo all those spiritual trials, and become the Buddha and give us the four Noble Truths.
And the first Truth is that there is suffering. And underneath the fear and revulsion there was an acknowledgement that any death, no matter how small, diminishes us, and that we call our sense of that diminishment our sadness, and that we are right to be sad, and to know that we are.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
The irrational nature of a positive attitude
Since the earthquake on 22 February, almost everybody i know has engaged in highly rational behaviours due to equally rational concerns about further earthquakes.
i know people who won't drive, who won't go into shopping malls, parking buildings or anywhere that is above a single storey. i know people who check for the proximity of walls or trees as they move around the city. i know people who are constantly alert for earthquakes - they sleep clothed or with lights on, they jump whenever a loud noise is heard and remain as prepared as they can at all times. i know other people who have left Christchurch. All very sensible under the circumstances.
Of course all this wariness is wearying. Hypervigilence takes its toll on the body. Running just a bit rich in aldrenalin and cortisol all the time affects sleep and appetite and mood. Citywide, people are stressed. The domestic violence rate has increased, as has problematic alcohol and drug use. People are facing long delays in dealing with bureacracies and it is easy to become cynical. Gestures of symapthy are cheap. Fixing our stuff isn't. Whatever Dunkirk spirit people had is long gone.
Post quake anxiety may not be helpful in the long run, but short term it is highly adaptive and entirely rational. Of course we want to be ready to run. Of course we don't want to put ourselves in the way of danger. The fact that we can't predict the next 'big one' doesn't help those primitive but effective parts of our brains that are designed to save our lives.
Me, i seem to do it differently. i go wherever i want. i wake briefly for aftershocks or not at all. i suspect (although i haven't tested it) that my resting heart rate is the same as it was last year. i don't seem to be subject to any more moodiness or pessimism than usual. i am reminded of the earthquakes as i move around the city, but i don't grieve terribly and i don't wait for the next one. At first blush, i may seem more onto it, because i really do keep calm and carry on. Now, how rational is that? Hardly.
i am not known for a sunny and positive outlook, nor am i less subject to anxiety than the usual person. i am a political and environmental pessimist, which is partly why i support activism. i think the reason the earthquake bizzo does not bother me is sheer lack of imagination. i honestly can't imagine that wall falling on me or that building catching on fire. i don't have enough imagination to be anxious. i don't have enough persepctive.
Nothing particularly awful happened to me. i lost a few things i don't much care about and we were inconvenienced for a while. i was sad for the city's losses and felt hard for the deaths, while they were happening. i think i would feel very differently if i had been more personally affected. My perspective would have changed. But for now, bad things happen to other people.
i know people who won't drive, who won't go into shopping malls, parking buildings or anywhere that is above a single storey. i know people who check for the proximity of walls or trees as they move around the city. i know people who are constantly alert for earthquakes - they sleep clothed or with lights on, they jump whenever a loud noise is heard and remain as prepared as they can at all times. i know other people who have left Christchurch. All very sensible under the circumstances.
Of course all this wariness is wearying. Hypervigilence takes its toll on the body. Running just a bit rich in aldrenalin and cortisol all the time affects sleep and appetite and mood. Citywide, people are stressed. The domestic violence rate has increased, as has problematic alcohol and drug use. People are facing long delays in dealing with bureacracies and it is easy to become cynical. Gestures of symapthy are cheap. Fixing our stuff isn't. Whatever Dunkirk spirit people had is long gone.
Post quake anxiety may not be helpful in the long run, but short term it is highly adaptive and entirely rational. Of course we want to be ready to run. Of course we don't want to put ourselves in the way of danger. The fact that we can't predict the next 'big one' doesn't help those primitive but effective parts of our brains that are designed to save our lives.
Me, i seem to do it differently. i go wherever i want. i wake briefly for aftershocks or not at all. i suspect (although i haven't tested it) that my resting heart rate is the same as it was last year. i don't seem to be subject to any more moodiness or pessimism than usual. i am reminded of the earthquakes as i move around the city, but i don't grieve terribly and i don't wait for the next one. At first blush, i may seem more onto it, because i really do keep calm and carry on. Now, how rational is that? Hardly.
i am not known for a sunny and positive outlook, nor am i less subject to anxiety than the usual person. i am a political and environmental pessimist, which is partly why i support activism. i think the reason the earthquake bizzo does not bother me is sheer lack of imagination. i honestly can't imagine that wall falling on me or that building catching on fire. i don't have enough imagination to be anxious. i don't have enough persepctive.
Nothing particularly awful happened to me. i lost a few things i don't much care about and we were inconvenienced for a while. i was sad for the city's losses and felt hard for the deaths, while they were happening. i think i would feel very differently if i had been more personally affected. My perspective would have changed. But for now, bad things happen to other people.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Now that we have established the social order
In Hoi An, in the middle part of Vietnam, i met two men in a very local pub where i was eating 'running chicken'* and banana flower salad. And lo, they were from Christchurch, and we began a conversation you can only have with Christchurchians. They asked me where i lived (ah, Linwood! and we even have an inside toilet!) They then told me what schools they went to (posh ones). i figured, now that we have established the social order, we need to know nothing more. Even on the other side of the world, in the pouring South East Asian rain, in a scene from a Tom Waites song, Christchurch rules work. Ye canna break the laws of physics...
Images of Vietnam, a country not a war:
- A small boy monk reads his manga comic, tucked up in old monastery. Near him a very old woman sleeps on her side on a stone slab, just out in the open.
- A bride in a pink pavlova tiptoes through a muddy field. Her groom wears cream satin flounces; he follows grappling with her train. Mud is a feature here, especially as the monsoon kicked in. No wonder Napoleon said it was the fifth element.
- In the evenings people burn paper money and paper models of cars and washing machines for their ancestors in the next world. The money is US dollars.
- We watch a propaganda film from American War of the 1960'S. Propaganda in Vietnam is strident and unsubtle compared with ours.
- Delta life on the Meking is slow and lazy like the great river. Every meal ends with song, and after dinner a drunken jam session on guitar and two stringed violin. All the songs are local, about the river and its life; there is little 'pop music'.
- On the night train i share a grubby cabin with strangers, and we have intense conversations about Chilean politics.
-Out of Hue, the old imperial city, i take motorscooter tour of the countryside. Scooter offroading! The air is indistinct with the coming monsoon. There is no horizon. Land and water mix and i ride through floods and up stop-banks. The brightest colours are seen in the cemeteries, where the graves are newly painted for the festival of Tet.
- Luxury in Halong Bay after trekking - a night on a junk, the most lovely sight of thousands of tiny limestone islands in a still sea.
- Dogs live with people in an older form of the canine-human relationship. They keep away intruders and in turn get fed scraps. They live in compicated whanau arrangements, keep their pups in line and lie around in the shade. i was always feeding them and sometimes i could pat the pups.
- A Goth/Emo/Punk shop in Ho Chi Minh City. i am unsure why a Vietnamese youth would want to be a Goth.
A final note about the Confucian/Taoist/Buddhist mix. In Vietnam the world of spirit is everywhere, ancestors and saints are with us, and the religions seem to blend. In the western tradition, the sacred and the profane are separate. It is important to know what is of God and what is of the world. In Vietnam spirituality is less dualistic. i am reminded of animistic cultures, where spirit is in natural phenomena and is to be negotiated with as much as worshipped. Spirit is thus very natural and everyday and taken for granted. I never really got to grips with it. It seemed quite odd and superficial - like the people spending real money to burn fake money to send to their ancestors, who could use it in the afterlife. On reflection, though, i felt that the world of spirit was just no big deal - it is as real as food and love and children, a part of life and death.
*Running chickens are not raised in cages and are thus more expensive. This one was was running, i saw it go.
Images of Vietnam, a country not a war:
- A small boy monk reads his manga comic, tucked up in old monastery. Near him a very old woman sleeps on her side on a stone slab, just out in the open.
- A bride in a pink pavlova tiptoes through a muddy field. Her groom wears cream satin flounces; he follows grappling with her train. Mud is a feature here, especially as the monsoon kicked in. No wonder Napoleon said it was the fifth element.
- In the evenings people burn paper money and paper models of cars and washing machines for their ancestors in the next world. The money is US dollars.
- We watch a propaganda film from American War of the 1960'S. Propaganda in Vietnam is strident and unsubtle compared with ours.
- Delta life on the Meking is slow and lazy like the great river. Every meal ends with song, and after dinner a drunken jam session on guitar and two stringed violin. All the songs are local, about the river and its life; there is little 'pop music'.
- On the night train i share a grubby cabin with strangers, and we have intense conversations about Chilean politics.
-Out of Hue, the old imperial city, i take motorscooter tour of the countryside. Scooter offroading! The air is indistinct with the coming monsoon. There is no horizon. Land and water mix and i ride through floods and up stop-banks. The brightest colours are seen in the cemeteries, where the graves are newly painted for the festival of Tet.
- Luxury in Halong Bay after trekking - a night on a junk, the most lovely sight of thousands of tiny limestone islands in a still sea.
- Dogs live with people in an older form of the canine-human relationship. They keep away intruders and in turn get fed scraps. They live in compicated whanau arrangements, keep their pups in line and lie around in the shade. i was always feeding them and sometimes i could pat the pups.
- A Goth/Emo/Punk shop in Ho Chi Minh City. i am unsure why a Vietnamese youth would want to be a Goth.
A final note about the Confucian/Taoist/Buddhist mix. In Vietnam the world of spirit is everywhere, ancestors and saints are with us, and the religions seem to blend. In the western tradition, the sacred and the profane are separate. It is important to know what is of God and what is of the world. In Vietnam spirituality is less dualistic. i am reminded of animistic cultures, where spirit is in natural phenomena and is to be negotiated with as much as worshipped. Spirit is thus very natural and everyday and taken for granted. I never really got to grips with it. It seemed quite odd and superficial - like the people spending real money to burn fake money to send to their ancestors, who could use it in the afterlife. On reflection, though, i felt that the world of spirit was just no big deal - it is as real as food and love and children, a part of life and death.
*Running chickens are not raised in cages and are thus more expensive. This one was was running, i saw it go.
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
And then the native porters deserted us...
We trekked in the hill country of Vietnam. We trekked and we trekked. Eventually the native porters deserted us for fear of evil spirits. Thent the evil spirits deserted us because they were bored with endless chatter about the exhange rate, the cost of the last meal, how much money you could save etc etc etc...
Actually, we trekked in the hill country. It will be all right, they said, it's mostly downhill. Except the downhill was clambering down small rock faces and sliding in mud and schlepping it through rice paddy fields where the only tracks were rows of muddy rocks. The theme here is, you got it, mud and rocks. The scenery was spectacular, and if i had been fitter i would have enjoyed it properly. As it was, i required some help at times from Thul. We were accompanied by a group of women who went with us in order to sell us things. Thul of the Black Hmong assigned herself to me (i know it sounds like a chaacter from Conan the Barbarian). Thul was 53, and tiny. She trekked wearing plastic sandals and carrying a large basket of handcrafts she wanted to sell us. Here the women build the houses, seemingly; i would see them carrying on their backs loads of asbestos roofing, up the hills. Thul's hands were dyed black form the indigo she uses to dye the handcrafts. She had a heap of kids; i met one of her daughters. The birth rate is high in the hill country. She probably saved me skin and certainly my dignity and at the end of the day i bought cushion covers from her. Cushion covers! i then had my brains removed to make more room to carry the damned cushion covers...and towards the end of the mud-and-rock combo trek, i fell headlong, flat out, and wrecked my knee.
We spent the night in a home stay, marae style, under mosquito nets, while animals barked and quacked and the river rushed by. In the evening we swam and played joke card games. It was Ho Chi Minh's birthday and we toasted Uncle Ho with the local firewater. Every house has a still out back. By bedtime i suspected my knee was infected and my legs were sore and my elbow was still bleeding. i felt humiliated and i thought, i am a liability in the group. i will be expelled from the tent. Oates was pushed, you know. Hot tears of anger and other cliches were shed into the night.
On the bright side, my nasty rash had subsided, the weird lumps on my face had gone, and my shit was no longer green. And gosh, the scenery was gorgeous and the hills were emerald rice and i had lots of new cushion covers!
Sa Pa is the main centre in the hill country, and it is a small town in transition. Over the last 15 years tourism has changed it. There are many different tribes, some with very small populations, and they each have their own customs and dress. Now, the traditions have become tourist attractions, and this had led to them becoming ossified and weirdly quaint within a generation. We seldom saw men (they work in the forests), but the women were everywhere, mostly trying to sell us things. A group of teenage girls hung around our hotel, i suspect partly to look at a good looking member of our group. The brightest and most assertive of them would stand under his window and shout 'You buy from me or i KICK YO' ASS!'
Vietnam is very wired. There was wi fi everywhere, and everyone has cellphones, and the coverage is excellent. i was amused to see an older tribeswoman in traditional hand made dress, being photographed helping a member of my group down a difficult bit of track - and then her cellphone rang, and like everyone all over the world she was torn between doing her job and answering the phone. The electricity is less sophisticated and sometimes plain dodgy. Thick black clusters of wires tramp the streets. People walk on them. They are so low slung they get propped out of the way with forked poles, like washing lines.
Each day held new experiences and things to think about. i was caught in a cycle of looking and wondering. Not everything was fun, but it was all cause for thought.
Actually, we trekked in the hill country. It will be all right, they said, it's mostly downhill. Except the downhill was clambering down small rock faces and sliding in mud and schlepping it through rice paddy fields where the only tracks were rows of muddy rocks. The theme here is, you got it, mud and rocks. The scenery was spectacular, and if i had been fitter i would have enjoyed it properly. As it was, i required some help at times from Thul. We were accompanied by a group of women who went with us in order to sell us things. Thul of the Black Hmong assigned herself to me (i know it sounds like a chaacter from Conan the Barbarian). Thul was 53, and tiny. She trekked wearing plastic sandals and carrying a large basket of handcrafts she wanted to sell us. Here the women build the houses, seemingly; i would see them carrying on their backs loads of asbestos roofing, up the hills. Thul's hands were dyed black form the indigo she uses to dye the handcrafts. She had a heap of kids; i met one of her daughters. The birth rate is high in the hill country. She probably saved me skin and certainly my dignity and at the end of the day i bought cushion covers from her. Cushion covers! i then had my brains removed to make more room to carry the damned cushion covers...and towards the end of the mud-and-rock combo trek, i fell headlong, flat out, and wrecked my knee.
We spent the night in a home stay, marae style, under mosquito nets, while animals barked and quacked and the river rushed by. In the evening we swam and played joke card games. It was Ho Chi Minh's birthday and we toasted Uncle Ho with the local firewater. Every house has a still out back. By bedtime i suspected my knee was infected and my legs were sore and my elbow was still bleeding. i felt humiliated and i thought, i am a liability in the group. i will be expelled from the tent. Oates was pushed, you know. Hot tears of anger and other cliches were shed into the night.
On the bright side, my nasty rash had subsided, the weird lumps on my face had gone, and my shit was no longer green. And gosh, the scenery was gorgeous and the hills were emerald rice and i had lots of new cushion covers!
Sa Pa is the main centre in the hill country, and it is a small town in transition. Over the last 15 years tourism has changed it. There are many different tribes, some with very small populations, and they each have their own customs and dress. Now, the traditions have become tourist attractions, and this had led to them becoming ossified and weirdly quaint within a generation. We seldom saw men (they work in the forests), but the women were everywhere, mostly trying to sell us things. A group of teenage girls hung around our hotel, i suspect partly to look at a good looking member of our group. The brightest and most assertive of them would stand under his window and shout 'You buy from me or i KICK YO' ASS!'
Vietnam is very wired. There was wi fi everywhere, and everyone has cellphones, and the coverage is excellent. i was amused to see an older tribeswoman in traditional hand made dress, being photographed helping a member of my group down a difficult bit of track - and then her cellphone rang, and like everyone all over the world she was torn between doing her job and answering the phone. The electricity is less sophisticated and sometimes plain dodgy. Thick black clusters of wires tramp the streets. People walk on them. They are so low slung they get propped out of the way with forked poles, like washing lines.
Each day held new experiences and things to think about. i was caught in a cycle of looking and wondering. Not everything was fun, but it was all cause for thought.
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