Sunday Scribblings: I Carry

Better late than never ...

I Carry

I carry Karekare sand

between my toes,

Opanuku silt in the

pores of my skin.

This hair hides

silvered fern snagged

in passing through

Waitakere bush,

supplejack has wound

itself around my bones.

Take me from the land

but the land will find

ways to travel with me.

Concrete and glass

have not found such organic

purchase in my soul.

More Sunday Scribblings here.

Sunday Scribblings: Power

In the stoic shoulder of
red, the soft arm
unused to manual labour
upheld.

In the quiet refusal
of that which would
be given, the integrity
of Karmic accumulation.

What is the power
wielded here against such
gentle determination?

Photo courtesy of Racole.
More writing on the theme of power here.

Sunday Scribblings: Writing

It used to be all about the paper. I love school exercise books - the ones with the big wide lines and space above for pictures, and the ones with the lines close together that we were allowed to 'graduate' to once our penmanship improved. I love the crisp whiteness of a fresh page, the staples in the middle, the space on the front of the cover to write my name. I love scrapbooks - whole blank pages waiting for me to give them a personality.

I wrote my first novel when I was still in primary school. It was about a flying cow called Cloudy. It took up two of those wide-lined exercise books. I started writing poetry around the same time. When we were 10 we started intermediate school. Creative writing became confined to a narrow part of our curriculum, and my enjoyment of the education system suffered. Later there was the vocal Jewish English teacher who smoked like a chimney during parent teacher evenings in the library, and swore like a trooper. Outside of class she insisted I read Shakespeare and dragged me to third form camp against my will.

After there was Mary, the spaced out hippie with half a daisy tattooed on one ankle. I was left to my own devices to some extent. My poetry appeared in school magazines and I learned how to perform my work in front of an audience. I also learned how to use a typewriter. I fell in love again with the materials of writing. I loved typewriter ribbons, Tippex, the feeling of my fingers hitting the keys, the rhythm of it and the sound of letters being marked on the page. I loved the speed with which I could commit word to paper.

At university I struggled with digital composition. I continued to write my essays by hand, typing them into the computer afterwards. It wasn't until I was forced to write reports for work years later that I ever learned to compose onscreen. I even wrote my thesis by hand, although I'm incredulous now! Writing my thesis was a different process again. I loved the research, the recording of material worthy of quotes, the formulation of an argument, the linear process of it all. I loved the carefully typed, green hard-bound product of my labours. I loved the gold lettering and my name on the cover, and I loved the grade I got at the end!

Years later I find myself writing my poetry at my desk. Avoiding work my brain seeks ways to distract me from the task at hand. I find my creative muse, a mischievous elf, tapping me on the shoulder with ideas for the first line of a new verse. Now writing to a computer screen seems normal, natural. I enjoy the flexibility of the delete key, the space bar, the enter key and the back button. I email my home email address, then publish my work to my blog, and the world (or at least those of you who have stumbled across me), sees it.

Of course there is the little red notebook with the thin blue lines and the magnetic clasp. There are the inspirational writing books full of prompts and the two slim volumes of work by Mary Oliver on the art of writing poetry. These sit my my bed on a small chest of drawers, beneath a white lamp and next to my radio alarm clock, a bottle of water, some moisturiser and a pen. On the floor below are the novels I am reading. These are the private places, the writing you will not get to see unless I feel they are ready to be shared.

After all, every writer needs her secrets!

More writers talking about writing here.

Sunday Scribblings: Decision

Deciding to commit to the climb. Grafton Rd, Mt Victoria, July 2007

Back in March 2002 Hamish and I were living in Auckland, the city where I had grown up. We had a little one bedroom apartment in Ponsonby, a hot inner-city suburb, that we'd bought shortly after we got married. Hamish was working for a corporate staging company and I had been promoted to a fairly senior role in my office, the large regional branch of a significant government department. Life was good, and we could have continued that way indefinitely, if it weren't for my need to always be working towards something.

I had reached a stage in my career where it was time to make a decision. If we were going to stay in Auckland I had two options: either apply to join the management pool, or go private and become a client advocate. Neither option particularly appealed. The only alternative was move to Wellington and become one of those policy wonks. To me the biggest obstacle was my commitment to my husband. How could I expect Hamish to leave the job he loved to follow me?

Life is funny. I an still remember the exact conversation Hamish and I had as we were driving through Cox's Bay on the way home from a visit to my parents. I mentioned that there were two three-month secondments on offer in Wellington. Hamish told me to apply for them. The bottom fell out of what I had previously thought of as my safe little world. I pointed out that if I moved to Wellington I wasn't likely to be coming back. Hamish didn't have a problem with that. Turned out that there was a whole new world underneath the floor of the old one.

Less than a month later I was flatting in Wellington, working as a business relationship advisor, and making a concerted effort to get to know my new city. Every two weeks I commuted back to Ponsonby for the weekend, doing the 'suit run' with numerous other working-week bureaucrats.

On the day I arrived I found my way to Island Bay, to the house of the Buddhist woman who had kindly agreed to allow me to stay with her for my first few days. I wandered down the hill to a fish and chip shop, then down to the beach on the Southern coast to eat dinner. As I sat there watching the seagulls fly past and the waves wash in, and as I looked out to the Orongarongas, I knew I wasn't going back to Auckland. It was that simple.

On my first day of work I wandered down the Terrace, looked at the Beehive, and knew I had arrived. This felt like the centre of something important. Three months later Hamish had quit his job, rented out our apartment, and we had moved into a rented house in Brooklyn with a panoramic view of the harbour.

Five years on that one decision has triggered a chain of events that has been fundamental to the people that we are now and the way that we live our lives. Hamish ended up working for his dream company, doing his dream job. After a brief flirtation with a couple of other government agencies I ended up back at that same department, where I'm now employed as a senior business analyst on a big project.

After a year and a half we sold our little apartment to buy our villa in Mornington. It was the second house we looked at on our first day of 'checking out the market'. I knew by the time I was a couple of feet in the door that it was the right place. I think this house itself made our decision for us. It ticked all the boxes I had on my mental checklist, then opened its heart to us.

My decision to get to grips with the local dance music scene here led to us becoming friends with a dance party promoter, which then led to Hamish getting his first VJ work. That then led to him getting work with a local band, and in turn to work with a wonderful theatre group. My own desire to give something back to this city led to my involvement in volunteering at the local wildlife sanctuary. Living here was also a catalyst in my getting involved in running and multi-sport, and in my beginning to write again.

Life is a series of decisions, and the big ones can have far-reaching consequences. Nic and Leonie, when faced with a big decision, sold everything and set off to travel around the world. My mother, in her 50s, chose to leave West Auckland for the first time in her life to move to Taranaki.

Making the big decisions is not safe. Any big decision is likely to involve an element of risk. However the big decisions carry the greatest rewards. I know from experience that I can do anything I want, no excuses. I just have to decide that I want whatever it is badly enough.

My biggest question right now is what do I want that badly? I know that the reason I'm feeling so rootless right now is that I have achieved my main goals of the past couple of years. I need to face facts and make some hard decisions. It's that time again.

What will my answer be?

More decision-makers here.

Sunday Scribblings: Hair

My hair and I have never had a particularly easy relationship. When I was a toddler my hair was so thin and pale as to be non-existent. No matter how frilly the dresses my mother dressed me in I was repeatedly mistaken for a boy.

I guess Mum despaired of ever being able to do anything with my hair. She kept it short when I was growing up, always parted to one side and sometimes held in place with a single clip. Of course I grew it as soon as I was old enough to have my say in these things, and by the end of my teens it reached right down my back (although I could never quite sit on it, as my mother once could). Always dead straight, as my hair grew it suddenly started to kink. Photos of me at the age of 17 reveal that, for a time at least, I had hair to die for. Honey-blonde and wavy, it was a small source of vanity.

I left my hair long well beyond the point at which I should have surrendered myself to the mercy of a good hairdresser. Ten years passed without a single trip to a salon. I finished university, got married and started my first job. After a while it became impossible to even find someone who would contemplate the big cut. Not even the English-speaking hairdresser my husband and I found on a trip to Paris would consider allowing me to chop off my locks. She did take off a few inches, but that was all I was allowed.

A few more years passed, and the appeal of long hair was steadily giving way to a frustration with the twenty minutes it took every morning to tease out the knots. Even worse, it didn't feel terribly professional to still be wearing my hair the same way I did back in high school! After a long hunt I finally found a young male hairdresser willing to do the deed. I told him that I didn't really know what I wanted, but that I knew I wanted it cut off. Off it came, and it was only afterwards that it occurred to me that I may have been able to sell it.

I was thrilled with the results, but I had no idea how to replicate the look at home. I've never been any good at styling, so any cut has to be very much 'wash and go', with a quick going over with a brush and hair dryer. Over the years I stuck to a fairly basic jaw-length bob, either middle or side-parted. I went through a phase of blonde highlights, until I realised I was spending huge amounts of money to colour my hair only a shade or lighter than its own natural hue. I went copper once or twice but that was about the extent of my daring. I've flirted from time to time with ideas of going pink, or perhaps getting dreadlocks, but I don't think either option is really me.

This year a dissatisfaction with my usual salon, laziness and the practical realities of multisports training have seen my hair grow back to just below shoulder length. To my surprise I really like it. Sure, it's still thinner than you'd expect, and it gets frizzy because I don't treat it that well, but it feels more feminine and forgiving. Plus it's great just being able to tie it back and forget about it. However it really does need some attention, so I've booked myself an appointment with a local apprentice who was advertising free haircuts at my local gym. I only want a couple of inches taken off, some layers put through, and a little shape around my face. I'm telling myself she can't mess things up that badly. If she does then I will simply have to go back to a jaw-length bob for a while. No great hardship!

Although I have always complained about how hard it is to do anything with my hair, things could have been worse. Now, my sister's childhood Janet Frame afro curls... there's hair that was hard to control!

More hairy scribblers here.

Sunday Scribblings: Eccentric

As a child it's called being precocious. Later it's excused as teenage rebellion. In our twenties it's youthful exuberance. during our middle years we might allow ourselves to be thought of as a little odd. It's only as we become older that those personality quirks we carry with us are allowed to flourish into full-blown eccentricity. Why is it that we feel we need to wait until we are old to permit those quirks that truly define us to reveal themselves?

It's taken a long time, many years of trying to find somewhere to fit in, trying to find people who were in some way 'like me'. My generation grew up with sitcoms like Friends, and we were sold the idea that we gravitated around our tribes more than our families. If you couldn't find a place to fit in, then there was something wrong with you. There is something wrong with you.

Perhaps it's this city, with its craziness, fusion of government and culture, urbanity and wilderness. Perhaps it's easier to be an individual here, the rules less defined. At some point I think I stopped trying to tone down the dialogue, stopped trying to knock off the rough edges. Here at times I embrace bluntness, refuse social nicety. I'm not yet wearing purple, but I'm sure as heck embracing rose-toned pink. Strangely, people seem to like me anyway.

My mother's generation, and her mother's before here, spent their lives striving to be normal, only relinquishing the veneer as twilight crept in to tap them on their shoulder. I am encouraged by signs that my generation of stroppy women seems to be less afraid of consignment to the asylum. I think I may possibly be odd. If I try hard enough I may one day be able to achieve mad cat woman status. Bring on the eccentricities.

More eccentric types here.

Sunday Scribblings: Some Like it Hot

When he first met Susannah it was her hair that he noticed first - long dark waves that hung around almond eyes of a similar shade. However it was her food that everyone else talked about. Susannah was known for the wonders of her kitchen.

And so it was that as he got to know Susannah he came to learn that it was more common for that sensuous hair to be tied back at the nape of her neck, one lock escaping free, often dusted with a scattering of flour. It wasn't so much that Susannah was a chef, rather that she lived to cook. Or perhaps she cooked to live. He could never be sure which.

Before long they moved in together, and soon food was flowing from his own kitchen in volumes that belied the few bags of potatoes and tomatoes he would carry from the car every weekend. It was once Susannah had firmly established herself both in his house and in his heart that the sorcery began, and the heat began to climb.

He had always had a sensitive stomach. His mother had raised him on a solid diet of Sunday roasts and apple crumble, and his constitution had never learned to cope with anything more adventurous than the occasional pinch of paprika. However, as their relationship grew ever more passionate, the fire that burned between them began to burn into the food Susannah placed on their table.

His meals began to be measured by expanding mercury. Susannah prepared a tomato pureed flood of meals, all infused with ever increasing amounts of chilli. A series of curries and Mexican delicacies passed over his table. If breakfast was baked beans then it would be augmented by a generous dash of chilli sauce. He would bite down onto a sandwich at lunchtime only to discover it dripping with jalapeno relish. An innocuous minestrone soup would be laced with sambal olek, a kumara soup with curry powder. Even Susannah's chocolate of choice contained hidden chunks of chilli, that crept up and burned the back of the tongue long after any sweetness was gone.

Slowly but surely his body began to rebel. Every time he downed another of Susannah's lovingly prepared meals his stomach would stir up a fresh batch of acid. His throat ached constantly, his eyes and nose watered, and the less said about the gases this new diet incited in him the better. Eventually even his heart burned from causes less than romantic.

He begged and he begged his beloved for mercy, that she tone down the seasonings in the food she prepared for him so faithfully. He even suggested that he take over some of the meal preparation. However she was her mother's daughter, and this idea was to her unthinkable.

Finally matters came to their inevitable conclusion, and one night poor Susannah left, taking her sauces, flakes, powders, pastes and chillis both dried and fresh with her. He felt his stomach release with a final gaseous sigh of relief. However as the days went by he realised that, with Susannah's departure, a fire had gone out that he could somehow never reignite.

For the rest of his days his food was mild and easy on his constitution. But he was never, ever warm again.

More Sunday Scribblers getting spicy here.

(And yes, by the way, I'm one of those horrid people who order 'Indian hot', and who ask for extra chillis on everything. I can't help it. I just like it that way!)

Mask

For several years, while we were heavily into the Wellington outdoor party scene, Hamish and I used to carry masks around in our VW Polo. At a moment's notice the masks could be called into action. Hamish spent many an evening, having assumed his Yetimon alter-ego, VJing from a corner of the dancefloor. Standing focused behind his mixing desk with mask in place, I often saw him completely weirding out anyone who happened to look closely enough to notice.

We bought the masks while we were still living in Auckland. I think someone had invited us to a masquerade party. I stopped into a local costume hire and picked up two cheap masks - a cat face covered in brown feathers, and a matching owl. Hamish became the cat, and I the owl.

Some time after we moved to Wellington we were involved in an outdoor party at Tunnel Gully in Upper Hutt. Hamish spent the day running cables and I spent the day creating a fire circle. In the heat of summer I formed a circle out of stones, dragged log stumps around that circle for seating, decorated the space with found objects from the bush, then spent the rest of the day gathering firewood.

By the end of the day I was hot, sweaty and dusty, and it was at this point that it occurred to me that I had completely forgotten to bring a change of clothing. I didn't have any kind of costume with which to take on an alternate, party identity. I was just Pip, bedraggled and scruffy looking, in an owl mask.

However darkness and firelight can be forgiving, and I spent much of the rest of the evening sitting quietly amidst the drummers, saying little and observing. Countless party-goers would sit down across from me, then see the owl for the first time. They would wonder whether they were really seeing me, whether I was a hallucination brought on by whatever substance they had chosen to imbibe that evening. Perhaps I was even a visitor in spirit, summonsed by the beats that shook the earth beneath us.

Masks can hide us, but they can also liberate us and enable us to experience being something other than what we are from 9 to 5. That evening I wandered freely through the crowds on the dance floor. I acknowledged those who chose to interact with me. I danced with strangers, I responded to challenges. I laughed.

Some time during the night a woman in a floating cotton floral dress tried to get me to remove my mask. Flustered, I was unprepared for her flirtation. With this mask I could play along with her. Without it what would she see? Hair in need of a comb, an old t-shirt and dusty cotton trousers. And me - ordinary, old and very much part of this world me. She coaxed, but I demurred and, with regret, backed away until I was hidden on the dance floor.

I'm braver these days, and wiser. Now I like to think I would have had a change of clothes with me that more accurately revealed my inner self to the other party goers, and that I would not have been afraid to have removed the mask. Who knows, the person who eventually got me to remove that mask may even have liked what they saw.

More Sunday Scribblers hiding behind masks here.

Sunday Scribblings: In the News

Until a couple of years ago my parents lived in a house in West Auckland that had unfortunately been built on a flood plain. When they moved there flooding was supposed to be a 50 year event, but climate change and subdivision upstream lead to floods being a much more frequent event.

Many years ago now I was 23, still living at home and dating Hamish, who lived with his own parents in Mt Eden. My much-loved Mini had just been written off by an insurance company after I was rear-ended in town. I had replaced it with a little banana-yellow Mitsubishi with brown velvet velour on the dashboard.

I spent the evening with Hamish, but around mid-night I decided it was time to go home. There was a huge storm over Auckland, and I drove home on roads covered with surface water. Once home I considered leaving my car up on the road, which had always been above the level of previous floods. However my new Mitsubushi leaked, so I decided instead to park it in the garage under the house.

The inevitable happened, and I woke at 2am to the sound of dirty brown stream water running past my bedroom window. Mum and Dad got out of bed and went outside to rescue the cars while I put my contact lenses in (without which I was blind). By the time I could see anything the water had risen to the point where Mum had clambered onto the roof of the Mitsubishi to avoid being washed away. Dad had somehow (and we still don't know how) managed to tie a rope around the car's bumper, attaching the other end to the fence. Without that the car, with Mum onboard, would have been washed away.

I called Civil Defense, my sister called emergency services. By the time the fire service arrived so had the news media. The next night Mum was the star of national television news. There she was, dressed in nothing more than a wet, thin cotton nighty. She was stuck on the roof of the car, the water washing up the windscreen. The camera showed a middle-aged and paunchy fireman dressed only in skimpy Jockey's underwear. He made his way through the flood. tied another rope between the car and the road, helped my mother down and escorted her to safety.

Drama over, I prepared to go back to bed. However the rescuing was not over. Despite my most fervant protests I too was escorted into the freezing water, and taken to 'safety' roadside.

Poor Mum. She was interviewed from the front passenger seat of a neighbour's car, cold, shaking and in shock, and trying to protect her modesty. And that wasn't the end of it. A year or so later we were watching one of those reality television disaster shows, and there she was again. No one had bothered to contact us to let us know they would be reusing the footage.

Our family has had ongoing brushes with the media over the years. My sister featured when she sold a rare 5c piece on auction site Trademe. I appeared on several occasions in the local community paper whilst at school. However Mum is the true star of the family, however much she wishes she weren't. It raises some interesting questions about consent, questions that have certainly been debated in New Zealand. One couple, filmed after a crash caused because one of them had been drinking, took the media company that had used the footage to court. The couple lost the case, with public interest being deemed to be of greater importance than their own perceived right to privacy. It's an interesting issue, and I'm not coming down on either side. However I do think it's telling that no one ever asked Mum whether she wanted to be on television in her nightie.

Deepest Darkest

Once upon a time there was a little girl with blonde hair and big eyes that always looked like they had just seen something scary hiding in the wardrobe.

This little girl lived with her mother and father and her younger sister in a little wooden house high on a hill. To get to the house the little girl had to walk up a long, narrow path through the forest. If she was late coming home from school the path would be very dark, and she would have to run the whole way to escape the strange noises in the trees.

Her mother and father always tried to tell her that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that noone was going to hurt her, but the little girl still felt afraid, even though she didn't know why. So she didn't play on the merry-go-round with the other children, because she was afraid she would get hurt, and she didn't follow her sister when she went off exploring in the forest, because she was afraid she would get lost. Instead she stayed at home, sitting on the sofa in the corner, reading her books. After a while her father realised that she was afraid of everything, so he did his best to protect her the world.

One day her parents got a phonecall telling them that her grandmother was very ill. They sat her and her sister down and told them that they were to be good girls and to stay at home. Their neighbour would be over to get them before it got dark. Then the girl's parents walked down the long path to the road, got in their car and drove away.

The little girl and her sister waited and waited, but nobody came. It got dark and the wind started to blow. The little girl was cold and hungry, but there was no one there to turn on the heater, and she was too afraid of the stove to cook dinner herself.

Finally the girls' sister got tired of waiting and decided to walk over to their neighbour's house on her own. The girl tried to tell her to stay home, but she wouldn't listen and disappeared off into the dark forest. The little girl turned to go back to the house, but just as she did there was a huge gust of wind and the front door slammed closed.

The little girl was very afraid. The door was locked and she was stuck outside in the dark. She didn't want to go into the forest, because she had been told that all kinds of mean creatures lived there - creatures that liked to chase little girls. The boys and girls at school also said that there was a wicked witch living in the forest, who liked to lock children up in cages until they grew fat and tasty. But the little girl did not want to stay sitting outside her house, and she didn't know when her parents would come back.

So the little girl summonsed up what little courage she thought she had, and began to walk through the dark forest on her own. As she walked the light of the moon lit the ground enough for her to see that there was a kind of path, lit by tiny glowing mushrooms. The path seemed to head towards her neighbour's house, so she started following it.

After a while the little girl came across a small stream. The stream bubbled and gurgled down a small waterfall and down into a clear pool. The pool seemed very deep and still, and when the girl looked she could see the stars reflected in its surface. The little girl realised that it had been a long time since she had drunk any water or eaten any food. Forgetting to be afraid, she knelt down and took some long deep gulps from the stream. She then turned around and started eating some of the shining mushrooms. It seemed to her that she had never tasted water so sweet, or food so satisfying. She forgot that she was supposed to be walking to her neighbour's house, and continued eating and drinking instead.

The little girl ate and drank and ate and drank, until suddenly she started to feel very sleepy. She lay down on the soft ground, and when she looked up she could see the stars spinning around above her. She was able to stay awake just long enough to see a furry face with big teeth appear silhouetted above her, then she fell into a deep slumber.

When the girl awoke she was lying on a small hard bed in the corner of a strange room. There was a light coming through a small window high on the wall, and she realised that it must be morning. When she sat up she saw that there was an old woman dressed all in black sitting on a stool by the door. She had skin that was covered in deep wrinkles, and her eyes were such a pale blue that they were almost white.

The little girl was very afraid, but she summonsed up her courage again and asked the old woman where she was. The old woman laughed, and, in a voice that contained all the ice of the long-past iceage told her that she was both everywhere and nowhere, and that where she was was not the question, and was in any case not important.

The little girl heard the pattering of claws on wooden floor, and she turned as a wolf entered the room. The wolf had a long shaggy silver coat, and was bigger than she was. The little girl looked for somewhere to hide, but there was nowhere to go. The old woman saw that she was afraid and laughed. "You can't be afraid if you ever want to leave here", she said, and with that she turned and left the room.

The little girl sat very still and watched the wolf with huge, frightened eyes. The wolf sat watching her, occasionally moving its tail from side to side or scratching at its ears. They stayed there together for the day. Finally the old woman entered the room again. "Are you hungry?" she asked, and the little girl realised that she was. "Well, you will have to fetch some potatoes from my garden", the old woman said.

The little girl walked out of the little room and into the kitchen of the house. From the kitchen door she could see that it was still very dark outside, and that it was now raining. The wolf walked up and stood behind her, turning its head to look deep into her eyes. The old woman pointed to a path that led back into the forest. "The garden is down there." she said, "Be quick".

The little girl was very afraid, but she was more frightened of the old woman and the wolf than she was of the dark, so she did what she was told and walked out into the rain. This time when she followed the mushrooms and passed the stream she did not stop to drink. The wind blew and the rain dripped down the back of her neck, but she did not turn back. She ran and she ran until finally she came across a scarecrow guarding the old woman's garden. The little girl quickly dug up some potatoes and raced back to the house. The old woman made the little girl put on dry clothes, then she cooked the potatoes over a fire that burned with a strange blue flame. Once she had eaten the old woman told the girl to go back to bed. The little girl lay still in the night, watching the wolf's still gold eyes glowing in the corner by the door.

The next morning the girl woke up to find that sun was streaming in through the small window. The wolf was lying asleep in the corner, its nose twitching gently as it slept. The little girl crept out of bed, past the wolf and into the kitchen. The old woman was sitting at a table weaving deep green moss into a long cloak. The old woman looked up and, seeing the little girl standing next to her, sighed deeply and blinked her old pale eyes. "Do you see that tree out there?" the woman said. The little girl looked out and saw a huge oak tree, with branches that reached all the way into the clouds. "Well", said the old woman, "I want you to climb it and fetch the eggs from the nest at the top".

The little girl swallowed hard and her hands began to shake. In her mind she could see herself falling from the tree and falling all the way to the ground. But the wolf came to stand next to her, and she was more afraid of the wolf and the old lady, so she did what she was told. She climbed the tree all the way into the clouds, then tucked the eggs into the pockets of her skirt and made her way back down again.

The old lady did not seem happy, even though the little girl managed to not break a single egg on her way back to the ground. Instead she looked at the little girl with a deep frown and pointed at the fireplace, where the fire that had burned the night before was now dead. The old woman ordered the girl to light the fire and cook the eggs.

The little girl was very afraid. She had never lit a fire before, and she was afraid she might burn herself. She was also scared that she would burn the eggs, and that the old lady might make her climb back up the tree again. However she was so hungry by now that she decided she should try her best. She stacked up the branches in the fireplace, just like she had seen her father do before. When the fire was burning she picked up the heavy frying pan from the bench and prepared the eggs.

The old woman put the eggs onto three plates, then put one on the floor so that the wolf could eat as well. When they were all finished she sat back in her chair and looked straight at the little girl. "So, what is your deepest, darkest fear?" she asked. The little girl went pale and shook. "Well, I guess I am afraid of the dark", she answered.

"Not good enough," replied the old woman, "I think there is something that scares you more than that".

"Well," said the little girl, "I am afraid of the spiders that weave their webs in my bedroom at night".

"No," said the old woman, "that's not it".

"I'm afraid of the storms that blow around our house at winter" the little girl said.

"That's still not it," said the old woman, and with that she walked outside and disappeared into thin air. The little girl was very shocked. She thought about running away, but she realised that she did not know what direction to run in, and the wolf was still standing there watching her. So, without knowing what else to do, the little girl picked up a broom and began to tidy the little house.

The little girl worked all day, and finally it began to get dark again. Just as the little girl was thinking that maybe she should go to sleep, the old woman appeared in the doorway, as suddenly as she had appeared. The little girl was not as surprised this time. The constant fear of the last few days was taking its toll, and she only wanted to rest. However the old woman had other plans.

"Tonight I want you to sleep with the wolf" the old woman said. The little girl started to protest, but then realised that the old woman would not change her mind. The little girl turned to look at the wolf, larger than she was, and blinking slowly in front of the fire. The little girl was suddenly afraid again, more afraid than she had ever been before. She thought that the wolf might try to eat her, so huge did its sharp teeth seem.

The little girl walked slowly into her room, followed closely by the wolf. The old woman shut the door tightly behind them. The little girl curled up on her hard bed, and watched the wolf as it sat silently beside her, resting its head on the mattress. It was a cold night, and the little girl had only one thin blanket. She shivered and shook, trying to keep as still as possible in the hope that the wolf might forget about her and go to sleep itself.

Finally the wolf raised its large head and, whining softly, jumped up on the bed next to her. The little girl found herself pinned against the wall, unable to move. The wolf pawed at the bed beneath it, licked at its shoulder, and then placed its head on the girl's stomach. The girl was now looking straight into the wolf's eyes, its big teeth resting against her skin and its breath warm on her face. The little girl stayed very still, almost too afraid to breath. However the wolf did nothing more than close its eyes, its breathing becoming slowly deeper. The little girl reached out one cautious hand, and discovered that the wolf's thick coat was incredibly soft and its body warm. The wolf's heat spread slowly through her, and to her own surprise, she found herself falling into a deep, sweet sleep.

The next morning the girl found that the wolf was gone, and that she was on her own. The old woman was not in her kitchen and the house was empty. The little girl decided to walk down to the old woman's garden, where she found some ripe red tomatoes growing. She climbed back up the tall oak tree to get some more eggs, and then she cooked the eggs with the tomatoes.

When it started to get dark again the old woman and the wolf reappeared. The old woman took a look at the little girl, who was sitting at the table trying to weave. She sighed deeply and asked the little girl again what her deepest darkest fear was. The little girl told her three of her fears, but the old woman again was not happy with the girl's reply.

Suddenly the wolf whined from its place in the corner of the room. The wolf pawed at the ground and waved its tail, and the old woman's face curved into a sad smile. She turned to the little girl and asked her if she had been afraid sleeping with the wolf. The little girl answered that the wolf had been very polite and had kept her warm so that she could sleep. The old woman nodded, and seemed to think hard for a long time, before slowly lifting her head again to look into the little girl's eyes. "Tonight you will ride the wolf," she said.

The little girl gulped as she looked at the huge wolf, with its big teeth and yellow eyes. She imagined the wolf running fast through that dark forest until it reached its lair, then tossing her to the ground and swallowing her in one gulp. However she knew that the old woman would not change her mind, and so she walked to the wolf, her hands shaking.

The wolf lay down on the floor so that the little girl could climb on. She wrapped her legs around the wolf's sides, and buried her hands deeply in the fur on the wolf's shoulders. The wolf padded softly out of the door and into the night.

At first the wolf walked slowly through the trees. The little girl was too scared to do anything other than hold on, and she kept her face pressed against the wolf's coat. After a little while the wolf broke into a gentle trot. The little girl gasped and held on more tightly, raising her face ever so slightly to see where they were going.

The wolf continued on every more deeply into the forest. At one point the wolf's path was blocked by the trunk of a large tree that had fallen over in a storm. The little girl could see what was going to happen, but had no time to do anything more than cry out and wrap her legs more tightly against the wolf's sides. Suddenly they were flying through the air, and the girl was looking up at the stars in the sky, shining through the branches of the trees high above her.

The wolf landed on the ground again with a soft thud, and began to break into an even canter. The little girl was amazed that she was still on the wolf's back, and her attention was caught by the beauty of the stars shining above her. She felt the wolf's back warm and strong below her, and she remembered that she had slept against its huge body all night and had come to no harm.

The girl looked up at the stars again. The wind blew through her hair as the wolf increased its pace. She started to unbalance, but the wolf shifted beneath her to keep her upright. Suddenly she felt full of a new and strange sensation. Exhileration hit her for the first time in her life like a thunderbolt, shining brighter than anything else in the sky. She leaned forward and whispered in the wolf's ear, and the words that came from her mouth were brave and true. "Faster," she cried, "faster"!

The wolf broke into an agile gallop. The little girl breathed in the night air. They broke through the forest and ran up to the crest of a high hill. The entire world was spread out below them, a moon shone bright and full in the sky. The little girl found herself laughing, louder and louder, peals of mirth rippling through her body, till even the wolf shook with joy beneath her. They reached the top of the hill, and only then did the wolf stop, tipping her carefully into a thick tussock of grass. The girl lay there, still laughing, while the wolf rolled on its back with its feet in the air, scratching its back on the grass and growling in pleasure.

At last the girl and the wolf grew tired. The little girl climbed onto the wolf's back again, and the wolf carried her slowly back home. She feel asleep to the sound of the wolf's breathing, of its paws padding along the path leading to the old woman's house.

The next morning the old woman called the little girl into the kitchen. The little girl fetched and prepared food for breakfast, feeding some to the wolf in front of the fire. The old woman turned to her with her pale old eyes, and asked her again what her deepest darkest fear was.

The little girl thought hard. She thought about the oak tree, the wolf, the dark forest. She thought about the stream and the mushrooms and her sister and parents. She thought about the children at school and everything that she had been too afraid to do in the past.

The little girl turned to the old woman and looked her straight in the eye. "My deepest darkest fear is that I am braver than I will ever know" she replied. The old woman nodded, the wolf thumped its tail, and the room went dark.

When the little girl woke she was curled up asleep against the front door of her parents' house. Her parents were walking up the path towards her, and her father was carrying her sister. He explained that the girl's neighbour had gotten confused and thought that she was supposed to be looking after the girl and her sister tomorrow. Her sister had made it to the neighbour's house, but noone had been home and she had waited there for several hours before anyone arrived.

The girl's parents were tired, but they told her that her grandmother was feeling much better, and they were very sorry that things had gone wrong. The little girl just smiled at them. She realised that there was no point in trying to explain what had happened while they were gone. Instead she followed them inside, where she drank some warm milk and let them put her to bed. And when she woke in the morning there was the indent of a wolf's body, and tufts of thick wolf hair, on the bed beside her.

And she was not afraid.

More deepest darkest scribblings here

Kitchens I have known

The kitchens of my life have been places of colour, feasts for the eyes as well as the nose and mouth. I think I'm right in saying that my mother's kitchen at first had orange cupboards. I then think they may have been a dark blue. However the colour I most vividly associate with my mother's kitchen is a bright sunflower yellow. Mum has never been afraid of colour, and for many years the kitchen walls were painted a bright, glossy sunflower yellow. This was combined with some wonderful brown and white vinyl wallpaper in a large flowery pattern, and brown patterned vinyl. I don't think many people understood Mum's yellow kitchen, but to me it has always seemed inspired. It was a place of joy and creation - Mum's own happy place.

Eventually the yellow had to go. However my mother has never known how to be meek when it comes to colour. There is a wonderful photo of me standing next to Mum on the morning of my wedding, Mum in lavender mother-of-the-bride slendour, me in bridal cream and lace. The same old scuffed brown vinyl can be seen on the floor, a plate of uneaten cheese and crackers sits on the steel-surfaced kitchen bench. And the walls? A light but somehow still vibrant and in-your-face shade of blue. I can see why our photographer loved that shot so much. It was the very image of the kitschz suburban kitchen.

I moved out of home and in with Hamish in my early twenties. For the first three months we housesat for a friend in nappy-valley suburban nightmaresville. I don't remember the kitchen at all, but I do remember the first meal I cooked. Mum being the domestic goddess she still is, I had never cooked a dinner before in my entire life. I could have gone to the supermarket and bought something processed and packaged, but for some reason I felt an obligation to cook a 'real' meal to commemorate this new life together.

After agonising over my few cookbooks for hours I decided on spaghetti bolognaise, and spent hours cooking the sauce from scratch. The meal was delicious, but it's the one and only time I've ever made a bolognaise sauce. Ever since I've used bottled sauces from the supermarket!

Thankfully over time I lost my kitchen angst. I discovered that I'd absorbed a lot of my mother's culinary wisdom simply from watching her for all those years, and I also discovered that the occasional meal of sizzlers sausages, packet rice and a little tinned pineapple never killed anyone either. The only meal I've ever cooked that was inedible was a beef stirfry, and that only because I accidentally put in several times too much ginger!

After leaving our friend's house (trying not to cry as their cats watched me drive away), Hamish and I rented a small bedsit underneath an old villa in Newmarket. It was ideal - cheap and an easy walk to town. The kitchen however was fairly unsavoury. The vinyl floor was 70s faded, in dirty white and orange. The kitchen bench was covered in small khaki coloured tiles, which were rotting and falling away.

Dad to the rescue. It just so happened that he had an old kitchen bench (maroon coloured formica) hanging around underneath his house. To the consternation of the landlord's brother (who lived upstairs), we spent one afternoon ripping apart the old kitchen bench and replacing it with Dad's hand-me-down. We covered the old formica with vinyl in shades of grey and mauve. It clashed fabulously with the floor.

From that flat we purchased our first home together, our trendy little Ponsonby apartment, with its tiny two-element stovetop, chrome appliances and tame white cabinetry. It all looked good, but it was hopeless for any real cooking. We spent a lot of money on takeaways and cafe meals. All the same, I did manage to cook a wonderful Christmas dinner for Hamish's parents one year.

We lived in Ponsonby for two years before moving to Wellington and renting an old house with a huge kitchen. The floors there covered in squares of black and white vinyl, the wooden cupboards were painted a pleasant blue. I loved the space, but suffered from the lack of a dishwasher. To add to this, the kitchen came equipped with nothing more than a beer fridge. I lived for a year and a half without a freezer. I'm not sure how I coped.

So from there on to our villa in Mornington. And again I'm living in a house with a kitchen that is a riot of colour. Although the kitchen bench is varnished wood, and the cupboards an earthy green, someone saw fit to paint the walls yellow and fire-engine red. I love them, and I love cooking in this kitchen where the french doors open to a courtyard and the sun shines in on long summer afternoons.

I am, it seems, my mother's daughter. When I have the time, Sunday has become cooking day. I love big pots of soup bubbling on the stove, the Moosewood cookbook open on the bench. I love flicking through the Edmonds Cookbook, and claiming the recipes that were my Nana's once, and are now mine. There's nothing like long afternoons spent listening to Americana on the Tivoli, steam billowing up into the ceiling and the aroma of garlic and tomato spreading down the hallway.

More writers talk about their kitchens here

Inspiration

There is a small girl running through my dreams. Can you see her? She is maybe two years old, no more than three. She is wearing a sleeveless white cotton dress. She is testing her newfound agility as she flies across the grass. She is giggling to herself. Her hair is white blonde and wispy long against her neck. I'm not sure why she has insisted on introducing herself to you today, but here she is. She has, of late, been a corner of my imagination, a source of my inspiration. I have found myself trying to understand the meaning of her.

I write to test the meaning of things on the world. The thoughts that mull around inside this skull of mine find their way through my body's cellular structure and out through my fingers. Often I am sitting at my desk at work, gazing out the window at the insurance offices next door, or up the hill towards the Turbine spinning on the ridge. I keep a directory of poetry on the personal drive of my office computer, and email it to my home email address so that I can post it on my blog.

I write about the physical world around me. I write about the wind, the bush, the sun and the rain. I try to connect myself to a larger system than myself. Who am I in this place? Where am I in this place? When I was a teenager I wrote about people, and I positioned myself in relation to them. Now the people are still there, but I do not find a need in my writing to link myself to them. My link to people is instead my work itself, and the public posting of that work. Although there is that little girl, who seems to have taken up residence here next to me. I will have to take the time to get to know her.

What inspires you?

Dreaming of Journeys

I'm lucky enough to know that New Zealand is the country in which I want to live. This place is home, and for now this wonderful city has my heart. When I was 17 I went to Holland on exchange and met an American girl, Liz, who for many years wanted nothing more than to be able to go back. Me? I loved Holland, but I didn't want to live there.

In New Zealand the tradition is for young people to go on their OE once they finish university. Typically this has meant going to London for a couple of years, living with other Kiwis, and getting drunk in Kiwi pubs. Over time things have gotten a little more sofisticated, but London is still home away from home.

Flash back 10 years or so. I was working for a local bookstore, having graduated with a BA. I didn't know what I really wanted to do with my life, but I had a vague idea that I might travel. I didn't know how one went on an OE. I didn't know the slightest thing about how one found somewhere to live, or found a job. When I look back now my cluelessness astounds me. However there I was, making some kind of effort to save, with some unformed plan to head back to Europe at some unknown point in the future.

Fate had a different plan for me, and I found myself engaged to Hamish and heading back to university to complete an MA. Before I started back Hamish and I took a month out to travel around the planet to Holland, where Hamish met my host-family and we spent a week in France. And, other than a honeymoon in Sydney, that was it. Since then I haven't left New Zealand once.

The lack of travel hasn't really bothered me that much. We've been busy with our careers, getting married, buying an apartment, moving to Wellington, buying a house, trying to get settled again. The world outside New Zealand hasn't necessarily seemed like that attractive a place, and we've been very grateful for the peacefulness of this country.

However there ARE places that I want to travel to, things that I want to see. I have, for example, always wanted to go on pilgramage to India. When I was diagnosed with Addisons one of the first things I read was that people with this condition should not travel to countries where there was a risk of stomach bugs. That seemed to put India firmly off the agenda. Thankfully my no-nonsence Endocrinologist quickly dismissed that particular travel advisory. India is a possibility, provided I'm careful.

Hamish and I went through a phase of watching lots of Lonely Planet on television, particularly if it was Ian Wright doing the travelling. I remember one episode in particular on Micronesia taking my fancy. I've also always wanted to travel to Tibet, and the Trans Siberian appealed until I saw Marcus Lush's Intrepid Journey there. If a guy who is train obsessed can be disappointed I figure it would probably be a letdown. Since learning to swim I've been thinking about going somewhere like Fiji (especially at the moment, because it's so cheap) so that I can snorkel.

There are other places I'd love to go - Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. I want to go anywhere with a good underground dance scene. I want to go back to Holland to visit my host family, and I want to go to Hungary to visit my host brother and his wife and their two children. I want to go to Greece because it just looks amazing (and for dancing on the beach), and I want to go to Mexico for too many different reasons.

I want to go to America because Liz is there, and because San Francisco looks amazing. I want to go to New York for the sake of going to New York. I want to go to Canada, well, just because. I want to go to Africa, because Africa just is.

I want to go everywhere, really. The only barriers are those that I have put in my way. Like Nic and Leonie I could sell up and just go. Except that Hamish would have to want to do so as well, and how could we leave the cats? No, when it comes down to it I can see myself travelling for maybe a couple of months at a time, max. And to do that I'd have to take some money out of the mortgage or stop spending it all on exercise and put it in the bank instead. However for the first time in years the cogs are turning and the intent is forming. So it might just happen yet. Pip may still end up leaving on a jetplane, and not just in her dreams.

Yummy, Or the Memory of Scent

Nobody owned a coffee perculator in suburban West Auckland in 1990, let alone an espresso machine. People drank instant with milk and sugar, or black gumboot tea, also with milk. In Holland, however, coffee was thick and dark, and taken from large bowls that were clasped in two hands and held up to the face. To a barely 18-year old Kiwi kid in Europe on student exchange this was the height of sophistication.

Joosje was my second host mother. She was a slight woman with long straight grey hair that she wore parted down the middle. She could speak English with a British or Chicago accent, depending on the occasion, and worked in a small literary bookstore. At home her living area was dominated by a large collection of modern English-language literature.

Some of my fondest memories will always be of cold winter afternoons nestled on Joosje's big, comfortable sofa with a stroop waffel warming on the radiator and a book on my lap. The coffee perculator would be quietly bubbling away nearby, and the scent permeated the entire living area. Now when I walk past one particular espresso bar on my way to work the smell of coffee wafting from the open doorway always takes me back to that time, and its associated memories of homeliness, literary companionship and calm.

Back in New Zealand home was a much more bustling affair, where my mother was always up to something in the kitchen that would invariably involve the extended use of a loud blender, a radio station playing continuously on a cheap transistor in the background. My memories of my childhood are tied up with the smell of a Sunday roast - chicken, leg of lamb or side of beef. Crisp potatoes sucked up artery clogging, delicious animal fats and salt as they cooked. Our plates would overflow with creamy gravy. We ate peas and cauliflower mushed up in a white sauce.

After Hamish and I moved in together I did what I could to spend as many Sunday dinners with my parents as possible. As we got out of the car and walked around the side of the house to the back door the smell of that roast would travel out on the cooling early-evening air. Even now a Sunday roast signifies family.

A year or so ago I walked into a fruit store and fell upon a display of old-fashioned table grapes. Their distinctive aroma took me back to the valley where I grew up. There, each autumn, row upon row of vines would ripen, releasing a sweet, distinctive cloud of fragrance that would settle over the neighbourhood.

Similarly, a bowl of Christmas plums brings forth memories of summer holidays spent bagging fruit and placing it at the front gate with an honesty box. The greasy smell of fish and chips recalls trips with my father each Thursday night to the local shop to fetch dinner.

Hamish accuses me of having an overly sensitive nose, and I do seem to rely on my sense of smell rather heavily. It's one of the reasons why I'm considering doing a Wine Master's course and following his father into the wine industry. Someone, after all, has to show an interest in the family business!

Goodbyes

I don't want to be writing about goodbyes right now. I don't want to because I'm in denial. I don't want to because in too short a time I'm going to be saying goodbye to an amazing, inspirational, challenging, frustrating, crazy, sane, brave, funny, loving woman, and I don't want to have to do that yet.

Oh, I don't mean goodbye as in 'never to have contact ever again'. I'm sure there will still be emails (daily on my part, bored from my work computer) and phonecalls (I'm soon to discover the joys of Internet telephony). But we're not talking 'staggering distance' down the road contact, or 'see you at 6am for a ride to the gym' contact, or brunch at our place, dinner at yours weekends.

You know who you are. You're going off to have some huge amazing adventures, and I've never been more proud of you and the way that you approach life face on. But I'm going to miss you. Just thought you ought to know that ...

Other writers have also been saying their goodbyes over at the Sunday Scribblings site.

Anticipation

The Sunday Scribblings scribes obviously had Christmas on their minds when they thought up this week's prompt. Me, I'm trying really hard to get past Frankenfurter mouthing 'antici-', stockings hitched, bustier tightly laced, high heels poised, leaning ever so slightly towards the audience as we scream, as we have done so many times before, 'say it, say it, saaaaayyyyyy it'!

Finally the not-so-lady sings, as the words ring out breathily around the theatre... '-PPPPatiooonnnnn'. The crowd goes wild...

From a youth misspent learning the audience's lines to The Rocky Horror Picture Show (the writer was a New Zealander), it's a difficult segway into my childhood Christmas reminisences, but I'll try anything once.

Christmas was always a big deal in our household. Mum made us Christmas stockings out of pillowcases, painted with fabric paints. On Christmas morning the stockings would be overflowing, propped up against a pair of child-sized rocking chairs next to the Christmas tree.

Santa was a man of habit. There was always a book in the stocking, usually some kind of inflatable toy for our pool, a whole series of cheap and disposable plastic games and other amusements. At the bottom of the stocking there was always a handful of Mackintosh's lollies, an orange, and a couple of peaches or nectarines.

Under the tree there was always a present from Santa. There was always a 'large' present, and there were always presents from both Mum and Dad. We were spoilt rotten, but only once a year, and I think that somehow we always realised how lucky we were. We certainly never took anything for granted.

The smells of Christmas were always tied up in the anticipation of the day. Christmas Eve was almost as important as Christmas Day itself. There was, of course, the odour of the pine tree in the corner, the Christmas pudding and mince full of alcohol on the bench. When we buried our heads in our pillowcases to get to the very bottom they always smelled of the fruit lurking in their bottoms. To this day a bowl of summer fruit reminds me of Christmas. There's nothing like a few Christmas plums to get me homesick for childhood and Henderson Valley. All that is gone now. There is nothing left of that house, and the trees are too far away to harvest.

Christmas Eve meant lights on the tree, carols playing on the cassette player, running around on the grass in the warm dark night, driving around the city spotting other Christmas trees in other lounge windows, all lit up with the same gaudy decorations. Christmas Day meant presents, swimming, then lunch at an Aunt or Uncle's place, comparing our bounty with that of our cousins.

Christmas dinner meant turkey, ham, roast potatoes, Kumara, pumpkin, peas, Christmas crackers, trifle, chocolate log, pavlova, fruit salad, Christmas cake and Christmas pudding. It was the one time of the year we kids drank sparkling grape juice, pretending it was wine.

One year Dad took us into town to test out our new fishing rods. On the way home it was getting late, so he bought fish and chips, which we ate in the car. When we got home Mum had cooked a huge Christmas dinner, and so, secretly already stuffed, we sat down and ate the lot. I don't think Dad ever admitted to his blunder.

Ever since I left home Christmas has become a slightly fraught experience. With my parents living in Taranaki and Hamish's in Auckland, there's no way we can be everywhere, with everyone. Last year we stayed with Hamish's brother and his wife in Auckland, and my mother got extremely upset when I tried to change our arrangements to have a pre-Christmas dinner with my family the weekend before. The anticipation was gone. We were tired of messing around with all that driving, staying in beds other than our own, trying to keep everyone happy.

This year Hamish and I quietly put our foot down. This Christmas there will be just the two of us, at home, in Wellington. It will be heavenly. We will eat all day - pancakes for breakfast and something luxurious and not too complicated to make for dinner. I'm stockpiling bubbly and good wine. It won't technically be Christmas. We won't hang decorations, and we will celebrate summer solstice. If we decorate our house it will be with branches of some sweet-smelling native.

The anticipation is back, and the anticipation is also partly for what will follow Christmas. Every New Years we spend two weeks in Golden Bay, pretending to be feral hippies. I say that in the nicest possible way, full of aroha for the wonderful people we would meet up with there. For several years we would head South on the ferry on Christmas Eve, spending Christmas Day with the hippies, often cooking in a vegan kitchen. We would spend nearly two weeks under canvas, setting up the festival, helping run it, then packing down, before heading home to Wellington and going straight back to work.

A couple of years ago we were helping out at the first year of a new festival, Full Circle, in Cobb Valley. Facilities were slightly more primative than we had been used to, but that was fine, and the people involved were some of the nicest we'd worked with. Unfortunately the weather was not on our side. We ended up camped out in three days of heavy rain warnings. Water gushed forth in springs from the limestone beneath our tents. We were all forced to abandon set up and pitch our tents in the relative shelter of a large marquee that was to be the chill-out cafe during the event.

Just when it seemed things couldn't get any worse, I developed food poisoning. I was bundled into a four-wheel drive and transported the half-hour drive into town where I was hospitalised on New Year's Eve. I spent the night warm and dry in a pleasant little room of my own, watching the truly awful Coyote Ugly on my own private television before falling asleep. Hamish spent the night wet, cold, worried and trying desperately to VJ from the back of an old Holden on the main dancefloor. With the wind too strong to erect a screen, he was forced to project onto the side of the hill. It was, to slightly understate things slightly, not the highlight of his VJing career.

I returned back to the festival on 1 January, still feeling fairly miserable, and not altogether certain I wanted to be back in our damp tent, with thousands of mosquitos for company. However things did finally start to dry out a bit. I spent most of the night curled up in the front seat of the station wagon, where I could see the dancefloor and hear the music, and where our friends could come and talk to me. I dozed until 3am then went back to bed.

The next morning Hamish woke me at around 7am. He'd been up all night and felt he had to get me up. It was, he said, a gorgeous morning, and the sun was just about to come up on the dancefloor. It was as I was walking across the site towards the dancefloor, in tears because everything was 'just soooo beautiful and there was sun and it wasn't raining' that it occured to me I might be slightly messed up. Still, that was a great party for a few, warm and dry hours. Unfortunately the weather and poor promotion led to some very nice people being left very out of pocket.

I've been to two parties at that site, Cobb Valley, now. The first was the last Gathering, a miserable affair in which a group of previously-close friends did their best to rip each other to shreds. The second was no less stressful, if ultimately rewarding. Cobb Valley is an imposing place - a steep valley with a river down one side. As I mentioned, the ground is full of limestone and quartz. Originally there was a whole commercial pine plantation on the left wall of the valley, but when we returned for Full Circle the trees had all been torn from the ground. There were rumours a forestry worker had died there.

Some places have an unexplained energy, and Cobb Valley is one of those. It is a strong place, and could potentially be the site of many amazing parties. However the people who choose to put parties on there also need to be strong. The site needs to be blessed, and permission needs to be asked for people to gather there. None of those things were done. A number of the women involved in the party felt threatened when they first arrived. Several of us had questioned what we were doing there, and had wanted to leave. We were sent a challenge. Cobb Valley is not a place where you can party without intention. You need to assert your right to a place there.

One of the things I needed to do when we returned to Golden Bay last year was to visit Cobb Valley. The photo at the top of this blog is of me at the entrance to the site. After that photo was taken I sat down quietly and told the valley that it hadn't defeated me. I hadn't given up and I had returned. I wanted to make peace with the land. I hope that it listened, because I really do need to experience another party there.

After that we decided to take a bit of a break from crewing parties for a while. Last year we stayed at home, which was ok, but it wasn't exactly something you look forward to with anticipation. We did, however, spend a lovely couple of weeks in the South Island, just chilling out and enjoying spending time with the people we knew down there. We met up with the Full Circle organisers in a lovely valley near the Riwaka Source on the other side of the hill. The land welcomed us, the weather was kind, and we danced in the sun and lay in firebaths at night. When the party began I was overwhelmed to tears, but over the next few days I could feel I was beginning to heal.

This year we are making a cautious return to the festival scene, with Hamish VJing at Uprising, a party at the legendry Canaan Downs site on Takaka Hill. We're arriving on the 30th, Hamish is vjing, and then we're leaving (or hanging around for the afterparties) to go wherever we wish. We may stay in Golden Bay, we may head to Central Otago, where Hamish's father has bought part of a vineyard. The anticipation has returned.

Within an Hour

Late this week thanks to our Net connection going down at home. It's amazing how bereft we've felt being disconnected to the outside world!

Anyway, I'm posting this clandestinely at work, so here it is, my Sunday Scribblings post:

A baby is born. An elderly man stops breathing and dies. An earthquake causes a huge wave that will eventually wash thousands away. A plane crashes into a building causing damage that will lead to its collapse. In a garden somewhere a flower unfurls. In a nest high in a tree a chick hatches from its egg. A woman completes her shopping and drives to the local school to pick up her son. Another woman finishes sewing her thirtieth pair of running shoes of the day and wipes the sweat from her brow.

A man plants a tree in an urban park. Another man chops down a tree in a rain forest. A fallen trunk is painstakingly carved into a canoe by a group of young men who are taking part in a community probation project. A tramper pauses while crossing a river to roll a smooth, cool pebble between their fingers. Rain falls on the coast. Drought-stricken farmers brush dust from their eyelids.

A student finishes their homework and logs onto Myspace. A swimmer takes off her goggles and cap and heads for the showers. A body builder flexes his muscles and readies his mind for another deadlift. Someone decides at the last moment not to mug the old guy standing at the cash machine. Another is overcome by the heat of their anger and beats at their partner until she stops moving and lies pale on the floor. A cat licks at the kittens suckling at her belly. A horse nudges her foal to its feet as it squints at the world in which it has just found itself. An insect unfurls its wings and flies into a spider’s web, where it hangs, frantically buzzing.

An asteroid burns up as it enters Earth’s atmosphere. On the ground a young child points to a falling star. A ceasefire is broken. A car bomb explodes. A man with little intelligence and even less understanding of what he is done is led to an electric chair. A woman who has swallowed ten small balloons filled with a bitter white powder is stopped as she walks through border control.

A young boy kisses a young girl. Two teenagers wander gossip about a film star who has been admitted to an eating disorder clinic. A department-store worker hangs up sale signs. An admin assistant accidentally hits ‘reply all’ and creates a major diplomatic incident. Another hits save two seconds before his computer crashes.

Big things happen. Little things happen. Momentous decisions are made. Inconsequential decisions are procrastinated over. Historically important events are witnessed by millions. Significant ones pass unnoticed. The minutiae of everyday existence continues to ebb and flow without anyone particularly paying any attention. Life happens in an hour.

Heroes

Like some of the other Sunday Scribblers I've been browsing through this week, one of my favourite programmes at the moment is the American series "Heroes". Although I like all of the characters, my favourite is probably the Japanese man who can stop time. I like the fact that he doesn't always get it right, but still tries to do his best. I like that he has failings.

It struck me that most 'superheroes' spend a lot of time trying to keep their identities secret. They keep their deeds separate from the image they present of themselves to others. They often face internal anguish and wrestle with moral and ethical issues because of their powers.

I believe that the real life heroes are also often the quiet ones. They are too busy doing to try to talk up what they have done. A few days ago there was an article in the newspaper about a New Zealand man who tried to save the life of a woman who had been set alight by her husband. Although he put the fire out she eventually died. He was so moved by the experience that he retrained and became a police officer so that he could continue to try to help others. Now that is a real hero.

I admire those people who make huge shifts in their lives in response to some kind of calling. Another woman I admire lived a comfortable middle-class life until she discovered Buddhism. She sold her home and became a Buddhist nun. She now teaches meditation practice in an inner-Wellington Buddhism centre.

For me it is a lack of selfishness that marks someone as a hero. It is not that they have some kind of super strength, that they are somehow morally superior, or that they never make mistakes. It is that they are prepared to put themselves on the line for something they believe in. However even as I type this I realise that some of the worst kinds of religious extremists would fall within my definition. I therefore add one more criterion to my list of things I regard as signifiying a hero. I believe it is important that, in pursuing what you believe in, you should also pledge to do no harm, or as little harm as possible.

In other words it may be preferable to kill one man than to allow him to live and let him sink the ship he is piloting, thereby killing 100 people. Or, to use a Kiwi analogy, it is better to kill one possum than allow that possum to kill a forest.