Stopping in small towns

On the way to Turangi we stopped at Foxton.  Mainly we stopped to go to the toilet.  I can tell you that the toilets at Foxton are good.  While I was waiting in the car for my turn I noticed this,

Which made me smile.  To be honest it was a bit of a smart-alecky, city-slicker smile.  Not entirely kind, but not entirely unkind.  I do like small towns like Foxton.  A main road that is a jumble of buildings and empty lots behind which are only fields.  Some of those buildings are quite substantial, and have a bit of style, but around them are only empty spaces where other equally grand buildings failed to materialise. 

After we left Foxton we only stopped one more time, for dinner at Taihape, before we got to our house north of Turangi at about 8pm.  In the house the next morning I found Bill Bryson’s book The Thunderbolt Kid on a book shelf.  I like Bill Bryson books.  Sometimes he is very, very funny.  The Thunderbolt Kid is about Bill’s childhood and it is a good read, but this passage in particular jumped out at me:

That was the glory of living in a world that was still largely free of global chains.  Every community was special and nowhere was like everywhere else.  If our commercial enterprises in Des Moines weren’t the best, they were at least ours.  At the very least, they all had things about them that made them interesting.

Which struck me as being true. 

In Wellington there is an old department store called Kirkcaldie and Stains.  Sometime, probably in the 90s, it was modernised.  They kept the facade of the old building and built two office blocks that rose out of the shell.  A newer, shinier department store remained on the bottom three floors.  Somehow though, visiting Kirks as a child, when Kirks had not been rebuilt, was an infinitely richer and quirkier experience.  The old store had elevator operators, and a kind of mechanical puppet display on one wall, and cavernous bathrooms with attendants, and a tea room that proudly displayed photos of all the women who had won the Miss Kirkcaldie and Stains competition.  It had strange corners filled with rugs, and little nooks where you could unexpectedly come across an accounts department.  It was, in short, unique.  A conglomeration of things accumulated over time.  Which I rather liked, although I believe glossy and organised is generally more admired by shop designers.

In Year 12 Classics there is a topic on Athenian Art and Architecture in which we usually begin with the Parthenon.  When I first taught this topic I was dutifully impressed with the Parthenon which is justly famous for its pleasing proportions and architectural tricks that create the illusion of perfection.

But as time has gone on I am less interested in this building and more interested in a nearby shambles of a structure called the Erectheion (sounds like you’re saying “erection” with a lisp).

The Erectheion is a very bitsy building designed to accommodate an awkward site, and some already extant shrines and places of significance.  Which makes it kind of a mess of styles, but also a tremendously dense site of Athenian myth and history.  The hole in the roof may be from Poseidon’s trident, and where that trident struck the ground was a salt spring.  The olive tree was supposed to be the first olive tree, a gift from Athena.  Inside you could find the statue of Athena Polias, the most ancient and revered of the statues on the Acropolis; a statue that had reputedly fallen on that spot from the heavens.  Here you could find, tucked under a wall, the tomb of Athen’s first king who was half snake. 

Something about all of this makes it a richer building.  Certainly a more interesting one to talk about than the Parthenon.  It is often this way with places and people though.  Character comes out of difficulties or little shapes we mold about our oddities.

In Venice – to take another example – I bought, like many tourists, a copy of John Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice.  Unlike many books about architecture or about Venice, Ruskin’s book explained to me why I liked the buildings of Venice.  It was because they were mostly a bit bonkers.  Even the buildings that weren’t and were considered fine examples of something else ended up looking bonkers because of all the higgedly-piggedly stuff around them.  It was Ruskin who made me look at the Ducal Palace properly.

Ruskin pointed out to me that the two windows on the right are a different design and on a different level from all the rest, and that they have two funny little square windows above them, and that this is partly why the building “works”.  This oddness is at the same time something you don’t notice, and something that you do.  It gives a little splash of character.

Which is something, I am beginning to conclude, we could do with more of as we are now very much in the hands of global chains, and large-scale property developments, and an idea of making ourselves international. 

I said that Cathy and I made one more stop for dinner after we left Foxton.  I must glumly inform you that we stopped at McDonalds.  I don’t mind the food at McDonalds, but I mind almost everything else.  When Cathy and I walked into McDonalds in Taihapi I had that same sinking feeling that I have whenever I darken the doors of a Starbucks, or a Wishbone, or a Mojo, or a Borders.  It’s the feeling of entering a place with no past, or no future; of entering a space that is a constant present representing on-trend corporate chic according to someone in an office ten thousand miles away.

Happily small towns are off-trend.  Global chains pass them by.  Those towns have old buildings that have been buggered about with, and dusty one room museums, and mural displays, and strange cafes that smell like sausage rolls and play National Radio.  I increasingly like them.  As much as I like the funny two windows on the end of the Ducal Palace, and the clumped together Erectheion, and wandering about the old Kirks in my memory again.

And I can tell you that we didn’t stop at McDonalds on the way back home after our trip.  We stopped in Foxton.  I gave Rosamund a bottle on the side of the road and we watched the long shadows stretch across the mostly empty street as the sun went down on the crumbling pub, and the second hand store, and Foxton’s fantastic murals.

A trip to Turangi

We went away in the weekend to Turangi with some friends.  The plan was to take the kids halfway up Ruapehu and play in the snow.  This part of the plan was very successful.

Standing up to my knees in powder watching a bunch of kids hoon down slopes on their sleds, and build a snow man, caused me to reflect that this was definitely the good stuff in life.  The stuff that comes up every now and then and puts a cherry on top of the day-to-day.

I was in such good spirits that I was able to maintain my mood at 1 am the following morning when Eleanor woke up, ran to the toilet, and threw up, and then continued to do so every hour until 9am.  As we were sitting, sleep deprived and slumped in the shower at 10am, I was able to reflect again, calmly picking bits of sick out of Eleanor’s hair, that even this – in a way -  was a moment we shared, bound by love, and only fleeting.

Update

When I came to work this morning I opened my emails and discovered that a boy I knew at my old school had died.  I taught him as a Year 10 and as a Year 13, and we went on the Japan trip together.  When I read the email I felt drained of life, and my arms (strangely) felt cold and numb.  Such a lovely boy.  In Year 10 he was the most inquisitive student I had ever met.  On the Japan trip he was simply hilarious, and good-natured, and enthusiastic.  I am so sad.

I am so, so sad.

Remember to live, and to look out for each other, and to hold on to the ones you love.

Remember the cherry on the top days.

A holiday in New Caledonia

When I was eleven I went to New Caledonia.  It was the first time I had been overseas and it still remains with me as a vivid dream.  As is the way with dreams and memories, as you get older each remembering finds new meanings.  Perhaps a childhood holiday in 1984 to a Pacific island could be yet another way to look longingly toward the past, or maybe it has some connection to the present or suggests something about the future.  Increasingly I suspect that every story contains within in it all possible stories and all possible lessons if only we take the time to tell it well, and linger.

We spent the first part of that holiday in 1984 on a tiny island you could walk around in about half an hour; the second part of the holiday in Noumea and visiting nearby touristy islands; and the third part on a tour in a Landrover that took us around the whole main island.  Each part of the overall holiday is very clear in my mind, and each part was wonderful in its own way, but of the three probably the final part – the tour around the island – was the best.

The guide and driver was a Frenchman with long blonde hair and a beard.  There were a couple of other people on the tour and it was fairly basic as guided tours go.  Sometimes we slept in tents at night, and meals were usually on a blanket with a French stick and some cheese and fruit.  Most of the trip has fallen out of my memory, but I remember the Frenchman very well, and the orange coloured Landrovers, and the ferocious ants that bit you at the tent sites.

The far side of the main island of New Caledonia is not really French.  Nature has more of a hold, and the native people predominate.  One day we came to a series of limestone caves which were up a muddy track and through the dense and dripping trees.  After the surreal, lunar interiors of the stalactites and stalagmites, we wandered back down the muddy track and out into a village.  There were fales about, and in the fales the enormous shells of turtles hanging from the posts that supported the thatch roofs.  Mainly I remember the strangeness of the place where the plants seemed so lush they almost grew before you, and the flowers stunned your eyes with their painful, beautiful colours.  Most of all though I noticed that there was no one there.  All the fales were empty.  It made me feel like an interloper.  As if I were in someone’s bedroom, going through their things, anxious that they would return and spring me.

A bell rang and we looked across the village and up to a hill where we noticed for the first time a church.  It was large and painted white, and as the bells rang the double front doors opened and streams of brown skinned people came out.  It at once explained everything about the emptiness of the village (it was Sunday morning), and heightened my sense of isolation for I am not and have never been seeking the guidance of Christ.  I don’t think we lingered long after that.  I have no memory of us talking with any of the locals or buying any souvenirs there, although it whetted our appetite for such things, and at an unmanned roadside stall with an honesty box my mother later bought a small native axe and a small statue made of a smooth soapy rock.

After that I remember that there was a day of heavy rain, and crossing a bridge over a river that had transformed itself into a roaring torrent of rage lashing the river banks in a snaking wall of energy.  But we were able to cross the bridge, and the weather cleared and we made it back to Noumea where I was anxious not to try my pitifully small vocabulary of French (I practised asking for a Coca Cola over and over in my head, but never did).  I don’t think that I ever noticed that French people didn’t really belong on that island until that day at the village.  That day at the village I had a strong sense of being an outsider.  An outsider to the landscape, and the people, and the language, and the culture and the religion.  It’s the reaction to the religion that is perhaps the most perplexing, because it was the religion of my culture, and yet if failed to make any kind of sense.

On one of our last nights in New Caledonia my mother went to a casino, and I stayed in and watched a movie on TV.  There were no casinos in New Zealand at that time, and the prospect of going to a French casino seemed quite glamorous and James Bond (rather than Las Vegas and strippers).  By chance the movie they were playing on the hotel’s video channel was Gallipoli by Peter Weir.  It was the first time I had seen this movie and its emotional impact on me was tremendous.  It is probably in fact one of the main forces that shaped my views on war, and the final, awful minutes still have a capacity to fill me with sickening dread.  It leaves you with the question: how can this happen? How this waste?  How this capacity for man to do this to man?

On a less serious note, the movie Gallipoli also introduced me to Jean Michel Jarre.

A holiday interlude

We went to Greytown for a bit.  There are a lot of churches in small towns.  I went into this one and there were a bunch of elderly ladies having cups of teas and sandwiches.  I suppose that their dads  may have known some of the fellows on the memorial down the road.   The Greytown war memorial is an  ornamental gate with a list of names on each post.  There is a sentence about the glory of God, and at the bottom this line:  “May we be worthy of their sacrifice”.  It often seems to me that war memorials were designed by the people back home who didn’t go to war.  If the ones who came back had built the memorials I wonder  if they would have mentioned God so often.

This marae is quietly down a back road off a back road and was once a place of great moment.  I had taught my students about the kotahitanga movement, and  I felt a surge of history coming to life as I guiltily snuck around the edges taking some photos.  There was no one there of course.  At least colonial buildings on the main street set the right tone for Trelisse Cooper and fabulous antique stores, funny old maraes are so awkward to incorporate into wine and olive tasting tours.  On the main street of Greytown, and  in all the shops I  went into I realise now I didn’t see any Maori.  Which is probably why I noticed that all three guys doing the rounds on the Greytown rubbish truck were.  I’m so pleased not to live in a segregated society.

Eleanor wanted to know why we had dragged her to the middle of a field in  the scorching sun to look at  a bunch of concrete posts.  After being badgered with a series of why questions I embarked on a brief attempt at explaining a henge, until I eventually agreed with her: what is the point of building a concrete henge?  Across the road, on the other hand, was an incredibly cool, ruined farmhouse.  Perhaps when the original owners realised that there view towards the ranges was about to be  interrupted by a few tonnes of concrete in the shape of a henge they torched their house, and moved deeper into the countryside.

I think the highlight of the trip for Eleanor may have been  discovering  that the TV had Kidzone.   Whilst watching a show about a bumble bee the bee said “remember, we’re all special”, to which Eleanor responded: “We’re not all special you silly bee”.  

I was quite proud of her.

As usual.

Mono no aware

The title of this post is in Japanese.  I say this because you may think, if you happen to be American, that this will be about a person with undiagnosed mono (glandular fever), or perhaps that it will be about how today’s youth are unaware of what existed before stereo sound.  It is about neither of these things.  It is about – put on your best Maori pronunciation (if you have no Japanese) – mono no aware.

At its core is a deep, empathetic appreciation of the ephemeral beauty manifest in nature and human life, and is therefore usually tinged with a hint of sadness….  Literally, “a deep feeling over things”

Keys to the Japanese Heart and Soul

Sei Shonagon’s Pillow Book offers countless examples,

In autumn, the evening. The setting sun burnishes the edges of the mountains and the birds fly home. . . . A trembling line of wild geese flies into the distance and disappears.

The scene is beautiful and vivid and/but it is fleeting.

Close to mono no aware is the concept of mujo,

the doctrine that everything that is born must die and that nothing remains unchanged

There is a famous poem from the medieval period in Japan’s  history called Hojiki that exemplifies mujo, and parts of it run like this:

A house and its master

are like dew that gathers

on the morning glory.

Which will be the first to pass?

Sometimes the dew falls away

while the flower stays.

But they will surely

wilt in the morning sun.

Sometimes the flower shrivels

while the dew holds on.

But it will not

outlive the day.

The man who wrote this describes the city of Kyoto in destructive flux, and his retreat into the forests of the mountains to find the heart of things.  It is a work not too dissimilar to Walden.

***

Recently I have been watching Ozu movies in the middle of the night when I am feeding Rosamund.  It has taken me back to our time in Japan. It’s been seven years since Cathy and I came back from Japan.  Seven years.

About five years ago, I suppose, I thought it would be pretty cool if I could take all of our mementos and photos and bits and pieces from Japan and create an art work out of them.  Somehow I never managed to get around to doing it.  Part of the problem was that I had no idea how to do it, and the other (larger) problem was my ability to interminably put things off.  Watching Ozu late at night, and suffering the stresses of being a new born’s dad again seemed to spark me into action however, and I have spent the last couple of days assembling, and arranging and gluing my “art work” together.  I finished it around lunchtime today and it is sitting now against the wall in our dining room waiting to be hung in the hallway.

Now that I am done with the business of making the thing, I have time to look at it and I find when I look at it that I have mixed feelings.  Those feelings might best be described as mono no aware and mujo.

***

Each object on there, each photo, each card or cloth has a powerful emotional hold on me and at the moment my dominant feeling when I look at this “picture” is sadness and yearning.

Take something as simple as the repeated frames that show the rusty, red cloth.  The cloth was bought at a little shop on Mido-Suji (the Queen Street of Osaka), next to Nova’s old head office.  We bought a few different things at that shop because it had such nice things.  We bought some Japanese lanterns there, and some prints, and a rather nice bento box.  For years Cathy wrapped her purse in that cloth.  Her purse was rather expensive and we bought it in a Japanese department store for quite a bit of money.  It was a lovely green, leather purse that folded in on itself and clipped shut with silver clasps.  A beautiful object to look at, but also tactile.  Because it was so nice Cathy kept it wrapped in this cloth.

And so I think of the shop where we bought the cloth, and the place we bought the wallet, and the everyday life it saw with us -  the friends we went to bars and isakayas with, the subways and the train tickets, the chou creams we bought at Family Mart.  Memories on top of memories that have a peculiar ache to them: sadness, mainly sadness now, with a little of the original happiness drifting through.

What is this sadness?  An appreciation of the ephemeral beauty in nature and human life; an awareness that everything that is born must die and nothing remains unchanged.

***

It’s the Ozu I suppose that brought all this on.  Sitting up at night holding Rosamund and watching Ozu movies.  He is my favourite director by such a margin that I simply place him in a different category from other directors.  There is Ozu, and then there are all the other film makers.  I don’t think he was a genius, but I do think that he was a master.  He also happened to work with Setsuko Hara who I could happily watch on screen every day and night for a week and never tire of.

I am going to talk about Ozu some more in a bit, so I will leave him to one side for the moment.

Should I say that I wish I could go back in time to those places that I see in the pictures on the wall?  Back to the karaoke bar, or the cherry blossom viewing picnics and the friends and the laughter?  I can say that this desire exists and doesn’t exist.  Since those moments captured in those objects Cathy and I have gone on to new things, with new people, and we have had the chance, the wonderful chance, to meet our daughters – something neither of us would want to give up for a second.

Life is an accumulation of things I suppose.  Complicated.  A pulling of the heart towards the past and into the present.