shhh…

I’m at my desk at home, and I’m meant to be working on my research essay. I’ve just finished the section on Tea From An Empty Cup, the part that goes

Yuki, likewise, discovers that in order to recreate Old Japan it is necessary for her to “open” herself to Old Japan, and allow herself to be controlled by three puppet handlers in order to perform bunraku, the classic puppet theatre of Old Japan. Unlike her earlier experience, bunraku is a different sensation, and has a different purpose:

Something rippled through her, like a sensation from someone else’s body, as if someone else were sharing the suit with her by some remote access. Except this time, it didn’t feel hideously obscene, like being invaded by a stranger from within.

There was a gentle touch on her shoulder and she looked up to see a large doll-woman in traditional Japanese costume floating in front of her on the table. It bowed and began to move slowly and precisely, with as much grace as a living person.

Not a doll. A puppet, with several living persons behind its movements. Her movements. Bunraku. Not a children’s diversion but the classic puppet theatre of Old Japan, as serious as Noh and Kabuki, a demonstration of skill and grace, control and cooperation. Now she could see the outlines of the people moving the puppet if not their faces. See them and feel them- (p. 219.)

The distinction between the two types of possession is important. The first type, as initially experienced by Yuki, as well as Konstantin’s victims, is a twist on any sort of lifeworld prostitution; while the second depicts nothing less than the manifestation of Levy’s knowledge space, Ryan’s potential, emergent worlds, Galloway’s social ‘control and cooperation’, and Hayles’ complex commingling of ‘disembodied information’ and an ‘embodied human lifeworld’. In short, the climax of Tea From an Empty Cup can be seen as a unification of each of these seemingly different approaches. Cadigan’s future portrayal of cyberspace does nothing less than to envisage a technical, cultural and spiritual unity, where virtual emergence is initiated through nothing less than a massive societal unity.

The problem, I’ve just realised, is that I want to discuss both Snow Crash and The Diamond Age, but is it tacky to have two books by Neal Stephenson, and just one by Pat Cadigan? Somehow it seems inbalanced, and well, just wrong.

9:41pm. Still in my work clothes, plus my Rosa sweater that I’ve been stitching together. I’m wearing it with one arm missing. That’s the sort of evening this one is winding up to be.

I miss traveling. I guess that’s one of the main drawbacks about living in New Zealand. James mentioned something similar in an email he sent me a few days ago. He really likes it here but it just takes so long to get anywhere.

When I left Dublin he gave me a CD of the Stone Roses, and a book of Kavanagh poetry. I like “Ploughman”:

I turn the lea-green down
Gaily now,
And paint the meadow brown
With my plough.

I dream with silvery gull
And brazen crow.
A thing that is beautiful
I may know.

Tranquility walks with me
And no care.
O, the quiet ecstasy
Like a prayer.

I find a star-lovely art
In a dark sod.
Joy that is timeless! O heart
That knows God!

Woo! New fibre (fiber?)

Just finished making an order with Crown Mountain Farms. They had some sweet looking hemp top, as well as some plain tussah silk and I caved and got myself a silk hanky. Oh, and then I got some sock yarn. *sigh* I have no self-control this month. Anyway, as of Monday I’ll be at my new job and will be too busy to spend all my hours trolling the internet, ordering things I can’t afford and updating my blog with such regularity.

It’s Thursday and I’ve got one more day here at work before I finish up. Things have really got hideously boring lately, what with handing over all my tasks to other people, and now I am stuck with nothing to do but answer the odd question.

Yesterday, after work, pissed off at the crap job I had done dyeing some merino earlier in the week, I tried Hello Yarn’s oven method. Even though I didn’t even bother to mix up any new dye, and instead of adding vinegar to the dye I just sprayed it with my spray bottle of white vinegar, it really came up fine. Quite vivid, even though the fuschia/brown combo had quite a bit of dye come out in the rinse. I put it on the clothes rack to dry and spent the rest of the night working away on my über fine lime green number that has taken what feels like forever to complete. I still have no idea what to do with it once it’s done. Socks? Who would want lime green socks? Even if they were some rad pattern? Still thinking.

Speaking of Fuschia, I want to go here. I went to Doolin when I was living in Ireland, and it was the most mad place I think I’ve ever visited. There was one pub, and it was totally crowded with everyone from town, all drinking and playing music. It was one of the most freeking awesome places I’ve been to. And I’d love to go back to Connemara while I was there too.

Sigh.

Free afternoon

I got a phone call this morning from Brian to say he couldn’t make it this afternoon, so I’m here at work with no trip up to uni, but still it’s a little bit of a relief. Not that I don’t enjoy our discussions of my (slowly) developing research paper, but it will be good to be able to go to the next meeting with a bit more to show for myself.

Work’s incredibly quiet and dull at the moment and I’m finding it really difficult these days to maintain some degree of enthusiasm for what’s become a highly repetitious, mind-numbing set of routines.

Yesterday Steve and I went to the Wellington city gallery during lunch and had a look at the “Telecom Prospect 2007” exhibition. As with a lot of modern art, some was exciting and interesting, some pretty ho-hum. I very much like the gallery though, set in the middle of the Civic Square. It reminds me a little of the area around the library in The Hague, which I used to bike to every week or so when I lived over there.

- Some days I biked out to Scheveningen too, which was awesome. I miss being able to cycle everywhere. Wellington’s a great city, but a lot of people who drive are still real jerks when it comes to looking out for cyclists, plus the streets are often too narrow to give any cyclists real space. I don’t bike at all here, and I miss it.

Those days were really awesome, and though it’s weird thinking back to times spent with an ex, I felt good in myself back then. I was writing a lot, reading a lot, working very little, discovering The Hague, cycling around, seeing loads of great art as well. Not just Van Gough and Piet Mondrian (who I fell in love with), but a lot of other contemporary European art as well. I very much think the not working had a lot to do with it, but there was also the excitement of discovering a new place, having the time to write and read copiously, and having free reign over Aart’s apartment when he was at work. Plus it was great getting to the point when I could communicate with shopkeepers in dutch, or order things in pubs (not just ‘twee bieren’ either) . And I love foreign supermarkets, hehe.

I’d love to re-connect with that feeling again. And I do think it’s possible to do that in Wellington. There are so many things I have here that completely top what I had back then, especially Steve and Sooty, who make me feel so amazing. But my work situation really is bad news, I don’t like what it has done to my brain and my self-confidence. I need to explore more, do some more stuff on my own. (Quit and get some kooky random job…)

Well, I’m 30 now.

And to be honest, I don’t feel all that different. I’m back at work, after a nice long Christmas break up in Taupo, and flew back to Welling-town this morning. Steve picked me up from the airport. It was so wonderful to see him again, I couldn’t believe how much I missed seeing his smiling face, after just three days away.

It’s a terrible day today. Grey, windy as hell, wet road and sidewalks out the window. I’ve been scouring the net for any interesting organisational software, etc. and didn’t really find that much. Something called PageFour, but I’m not really sure how good it is. I was reading about some dude on the net, a published writer, who uses this outlining software, but I really wonder how much of it is bunk and avoidance, and how much of it is useful. (I thought it could be a good way to do some brainstorming and general information gathering at work.) What I really need is some sort of note organiser. My desk is covered with notes - notes everywhere, stuff that I don’t want to throw out because it all seems important somehow. If I could compile everything together in one place then maybe I could clean up the mess a little.

Speaking of mess, Steve and I moved into a new place at the start of the month. There are still boxes everywhere (all my junk) and even though I have my own study now, I really don’t know where to put anything. I need some filing cabinets, I think. (Organisation, again!) Maybe I just need to get hard and throw everything out. I don’t know.

I’m really looking forward to getting home. Having a look around. Giving Sooty a wee tickle (O yes! My new cat! He is awesome!) I want to look out the dining room window out at the backyard, at the wet, dewy grass and dark green trees. I want to sit in my study and look out the windows at the next door neighbour’s huge ferns growing up and past the house. It has huge fronds as big as my fist.

I’m also really looking forward to trying out my new drum carder that Steve got me for my birthday! Yes, it’s an Ashford one! The drums are covered in this soft pink rubbery material, and the teeth are fine and shiny (even though it is a coarse carder, it’s nothing like the one I bought on TradeMe a while ago. Ye gods, that thing’s a monster!

I’ve also been lucky enough to find a notebook of morning pages from when I was living in Dublin. I started reading them last night in bed, but because I had to get up so early (5:30) to get my flight down to Wellington, I didn’t get the chance got have a good read. I was so organised, so creative, so hopeful about the future! I want to tap into that somehow. I’ve become…placated somehow.

(And I was also lucky enough to find in archives.com, some of the missing diary-x entries that I was never able to recover. Nowhere near all of them, but something small to remind me of what I was doing back then. I’ll try and add them to this blog, so I can at least have everything all together in one place.)

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Well, I’m back

And sheesh, we had an incredible time. I’m not even going to try and start describing the trip - rather, I’m going to update the blog with notes from my diary and accompanying photos. Just give me a week or so…

In other news, Steve and I have signed up for a new flat! I say flat, but it’s actually a complete, standalone house, with three bedrooms, a big lounge, big kitchen, dining room off the kitchen, huge back yard and a garage! The third bedroom is more of a sun room, which I’m dying to turn into a study. Steve’s already made off with the garage for his own, and has been mentally filling it with mountain bikes, his motorbike, and the dream scooter he wants to buy, as well as tools and gardening equipment. The back yard’s perfect for Sunday barbecues, and apparently gets a lot of sun. And I’m going to get a cat! I can hardly believe it. Found one on trademe that looks awesome, a three legged sweetie named Spanky. I’m going to go meet him on Saturday to see if we hit it off. (If he turns out to hate me then I’ll probably go look for another cat at the Cats Protection League.)

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Heading up north

Yep, heading up north in an hour and twenty minutes. We’re leaving work an hour early and driving up to Taupo for a nice long weekend - the world mountainbike champs are on in Rotorua (Steve’s got the link on his blog), and we’ve got tickets! Forecast is for rain though, and the Desert Road’s been closed for the past few days due to snow and ice. It’s only just re-opened today, so here’s hoping we can get through without too much trouble.

I’m taking books, some pretty wool and alpaca I’ve just spun recently (just to show off) and some socks that I’ve started knitting from this wool I dyed and then spun myself. It’s really an incredible feeling to make something from scratch, no matter what it is. I love it. Taking polyprops and my raincoat too.

Feeling sleepy. Had a nice kebab from this great place on the Terrace called Daniel’s. I don’t know a lot more about it, aside from the fact that their felafels have mint and other fresh herbs in them, and the food tastes a lot more…real than other places. Poor Steve and Brent got suckered in with an email Simon sent out this morning about how Chow Main Cube was having their first birthday, and were celebrating with $5 lunches. They both queued up and got their cheap lunches…an hour later! I got a kebab instead, and Simon, coming down the road from Unisys, saw the queue and made the quick decision that maybe Chow Main Cube would be better for dinner after all, hehe.

Last night we went back to Flying Burrito Brothers for dinner (and frozen margheritas). We had the pork crackling and salsa verde again (heart attack food! but so good!) and some pretty little tortilla and mole chicken starters. Steve had the enchilladas and I had more Mole Chicken that in the end I couldn’t finish. It was beautiful though.

Oh my god, I forgot to mention this earlier. Colette and David are going to be taking part in this year’s supercar rally. Even though they’re the official photographers, they are still getting a Maserati to drive! Lucky bums!

got the tickets!

I know it’s been a little while since I’ve updated here, but wow, wow, wow! Steve and I decided a little while ago that we were overdue for a holiday, so we’ve booked ourselves in for five weeks in Vietnam! We just picked up the tickets today. We’re leaving on the 3rd of October, getting back to New Zealand on the 3rd of November. It’s just so exciting. We’re already making some tentative plans - the flight arrives in Hanoi, and then we will be making our way down to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) and departing from there. Before that though, we’re going to head south and spend a week on a lovely quiet beach, in a place called Thang Loi.

It’s going to be so wonderful. I just want to walk around and explore somewhere new. We’re travelling light - just one pack between us - and it’ll be lovely to be in some warm weather, eating beautiful food and seeing the world.

Catch up time

Have been rather busy lately. Steve and I made a trip through the Whirinaki National Park last week, which was muddy, tiring and so much fun! I’ll definitely be putting in some pictures in the near-ish future. In the meantime, I have an essay to write (on “the grotesque”), a screenplay to think about writing tomorrow, and I’ve just handed in a new preview for the Superman Returns game to NZGamer, who I’ve recently started writing for.

So far I’ve only done a couple of previews, on Untold Legends: The Warrior’s Code, and The Movies: Stunts and Effects. Both were pretty fun to write and research, though I’m looking forward to doing some more reviews. It’s just nice to have a few little projects on the side, I guess.

I’ve also applied for a couple of jobs, though I’m not sure how that department is going at the moment. I didn’t even get an interview for a library job I applied for (part time even!), and had a phone call yesterday for a testing job at Trade Me. You never know though, so I’m not going to start holding my breath. If something happens I’ll be pleasantly suprised. I don’t really want to bad mouth where I am at the moment - it just has a slowed-down, not as happy feeling these days. I’m just not happy. But yeah, I’m working on it.

I’ve also been tossing and turning about whether I should do a research topic as part of my honours degree or not - and I’ve finally decided that I think I’d be happier if I gave it a shot, rather than wondering if I should have done it or not. I want to do it on Haruki Murakami’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, tying it in with gothic. It feels like something nice to write about.

camping on the weekend

Just thought I’d post a few photos of the trip Steve & I took on the weekend. We went down to Palliser Bay, on the south coast of the North Island, near Lake Ferry.

in Taupo

Steve and I are in Taupo for the weekend. It’s a nice change from rushing around Wellington. It’s quite sunny and warm, and the sleep in was good. We’re going to head out for lunch with Mum, and Dad’s back from a conference in Nelson tonight.

Had my second interview yesterday, this time with another person who I would be working with. I think it went well, though I won’t find out until Monday if I’ve got the job! Quite scary, really, things could be changing soon…quite considerable changes really. New place of work, different people around you during the day. I hope it’s the right decision. The work will definitely be more interesting, but everything else really is a complete unknown quantity.

Steve says at least this way I can bring Hell Pizza home for dinner, as they’d be just down the road.

Will let you know more as soon as I hear anything.

dampish fishtank massage Pacific pigeon freak

Hey. Well, things have been going pretty well here, in this place - the Capital city of the most isolated country in the world. It’s Friday, and for we poor slobs who live from 6pm - 7:30am Monday to Friday, plus weekends, it’s like being on the verge of a religious epiphany. In this part of the world it’s Autumn (as opposed to what seems to be the rest of the world - even Australia’s still practically in the middle of Summer), which means shitty, overcast days and a general dampish feeling in the air. Still, from where I’m sitting, if I crane my neck around about 50-60 degrees, I can see one of the Picton ferries coming into the harbor, catching the sun. It’s pretty peaceful.

I splurged last weekend and bought myself an all in one fishtank (well, I did have to get a heater). It’s very, very cool, and has rocks and plants and even water in it, which has been nicely aging over the last week. All I need now are some fish. My parents are coming to stay at my place over Easter (four day weekend!!) and mentioned they might bring me a fish or two as a housewarming present!

I don’t have any major plans for the weekend, aside from using my voucher for a half-hour massage tomorrow. I’m booked in for 11:30. Mmm…massage! After that I’m meeting Daph and Graeme at the Black Harp at 1:00 for lunch. (They’re using their vouchers from 12-1, then we’re going to use another prize voucher Daphne won at the Black Harp.) Should be a cheap day! Can’t go wrong! I’ve also got a pile of books I intend to work my way through, plus there’s Italian study for the test we’ve got coming up on the 9th, and some Old Icelandic translation and reading to do. I’m actually considering doing just Old Icelandic next semester. I love Italian, but at the same time, it’s going to get more complicated as we go along, and I am going to start running out of free time. I can just see it now. Plus it would only mean one day up at uni per week. Not that I don’t enjoy it up there, but it gets rather stressy when you’re constantly trying to get back to work etc. etc.

Travel is on my mind again, especially now that I’m a permanent employee here and thus eligible for a nice 4 weeks worth of holidays per year. I really want to save it up and then use it for a month’s holiday somewhere. But where? I’m thinking maybe the Pacific somewhere. Rent a place for a month and hang out.

*********
This from Monday’s Dominion Post:
Pigeon Gets A Gong
A Royal Air Force pigeon that delivered the first news of Allied success from the Normandy beaches on D-day - June 6, 1944 - will be recognised as the greatest pigeon to have served its country. Gustav, a grizzle cock pigeon, will be honoured in a London exhibition at the Imperial War Museum’s 60th anniversary show. He will get the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of Britain’s highest military honour. He died when his breeder stepped on him.
*********

It’s about half four and time is ticking (initially wrote ‘tickling’) by slowly. I’m really looking forward to tonight. No plans, just some reading, writing, gin and tonics and a little Old Icelandic translation. Most of my weekends have seen something similar.

Aedan is apparently in NZ - in Wellington - at the moment, over from Ireland. James went out for dinner the other night with him but I decided not to go. Sometime back during the time I was in Dublin we had an incident where he asked me at lunch if New Zealand had an IT industry. I said “no, we ride around on sheep and use abacuses.” He stood up and picked up his tray and said “everything’s always a joke with you!” and stormed off. He didn’t speak to me again - what a freak. Nobody else could believe it, and I didn’t think it was worth the hassle to try and figure out what his problem was.

Ben’s also coming back soon - in a month, I think? And I even got an email from Brugt recently, saying he was also coming over, sometime in November, to try and get work in a mountain hut. Nice. So it would seem that leaving (for the moment) is not all that necessary - everyone seems to be coming to me, these days.

busy busy busy

I have been really busy lately, a state of being slightly off-kilter with my normal mode of existence. Ever since Friday, basically, I’ve been on the go. It’s a little distressing, really. I’m really starting to crave some idle ‘me’ time. It just doesn’t seem to be happening, unfortunately.

On Friday I caught the 7:50 bus to Taupo, arriving there at twenty to two in the morning. My poor father had to drive to the bus station to pick me up (though he insisted he was really quite happy about being able to sit up and watch the late-night movies), and then we arrived home, Mom was up, had a chat, played with the cats and then went to bed. The next day consisted of trying to sort through boxes to find all my stuff from my flatting days in Wellington - four years ago. Managed to find most of it, though I think there is an elusive box of good stuff still out there somewhere. We (Mum & I) went over to my grandparents’ (which is in the process of being sold) and she basically emptied out cupboards and gave me all sorts of things. An electric frypan, martini glasses and a bartender’s guide. A set of seventies teacups (black on the outside, green inside) and saucers. A glass packed with my nana’s collection of swizzle sticks. A bottle half full of Pernod. A yellow hand-mixer, to match the yellow electric fry-pan. One of those long-handled cast-iron pans, also yellow, to make omlettes. A mixing bowl. Six wooden salad bowls, with large wooden platter to arrange them on. Two green wood (rather ornate) trays - one large, one small - made in Italy. Three crazy candle holders in increasing heights with circular plastic bottoms and a glass cup that fits into them - complete with orange candles inside.

These things are wonderful - it’s a real treasure trove, going through the boxes I brought over with me - but there is still so much of my grandpa in them, so much life still lingering in these things. And of course, of my grandma too, who is of course still alive. It feels wrong to use these things, even though I know had he been alive, my grandpa would have wanted me to use them. He was too alive, too real, for him to be dead now. It just still doesn’t seem possible. Out of all the people I know, his death just seems the unlikliest. Maybe it’s because when I was younger I used to fixate on the idea of my parents dying. I’d try to imagine what it would feel like to be alone, what life would be like without them. It was (and still is) one of my greatest fears. I guess I just never thought about my grandpa dying.

It’s a crap argument, and I know it, even though I still write it down here. Just because I used to obsess about the death of my parents when I was younger doesn’t mean that I’ll be any more prepared for it when it does happen. And note that “obsess” doesn’t mean I was hoping for it to happen. It’s more like the fear you get sometimes in the night - the fear that something’s in the walls, that someone’s broken into the house, the fear that the ghost of your long-dead grandmother will come visit you that night - the fear that you can’t stop thinking about, the fear you can’t shake loose. That’s what I mean when I talk about obsessing over the death of my parents. It was, I suppose, what all children obsess about when they start to think about mortality.

I have noticed that since November 17, most of my entries end with some sort of rumination on death. It’s not even as if I sit around thinking about death all day long - it just seems to creep into my thoughts as I sit here writing. I read something somewhere lately that quoted from Peter Pan. Apparently Peter says death will be an “awfully big adventure.” If that’s the case, then I think my grandpa will still be happy - somewhere, somehow.

P.S. Feb 20 - my 3 year D-X anniversary!

Day four in the wee house

So I’ve been in the wee white and red house for three days now. After the floods over the weekend I think things are still trying to dry out. I think the floor in the kitchen is nearly there. What a nightmare. It was raining so heavily. I know I haven’t really explained all of this, but I’ve got an entry I wrote at home I’ve been meaning to stick up here. To be honest I’m tired of talking about it. Forgive me. There was a leak into the kitchen, I had to call the landlady up in Auckland and then call a plumber to get it fixed. He came out in the pouring rain but couldn’t do anything till the next day. Things got a bit damp. Luckily it was contained in the kitchen.

But that aside, I’m really enjoying living there. I thought that it would take a while to get used to living alone - but I love it! Perhaps it’s because it is such a little place - the thought of another person living there is just out of the question! (It’ll be interesting to see what happens when Aart comes over. I’m sure it will be fine. But it will be…cozy.)

I’m heading home this weekend. Getting the bus up there, and then driving my grandpa’s car back to Wellington as my aunt is buying it. So I will bring down a load of things for the kitchen - plates, cutlery, pots, pans, a popcorn maker, coffee pot, one of those hand blender things. A toaster. It’ll be good to be able to cook properly, even though there isn’t an oven.