Don’t really know how this stuff works but have to have a go – actually its quite nice to know that my typing hasn’t improved but i think that with each glass of wine I will improve no end and eventually won’t be able to see the mistakes anyway so why worry??

hI BIG GUY thanks for the postcard love that artistic flair not to sure about the subject matter – I think you missed a year though Caleb is 6 now been at school for a year – time flys – especially those little black ones with watches.  He cried when he got your card – he loves you dude.

The new house is finished and all the good stuff is in there it is very nice warm cosy and roomy, lots of neat techno freak stuff that is supposed to future proof the place and this works of course of the future is the week after next!! Been in 6 weeks.

 

http://www.thecoast.net.nz/ListenLive/ Great music from the old home town.  They treat you like you’re the only one listening.

Now for the no news practice bits (rule one)

.

The nature of stuff

But it’s soggy
every morning, I hear myself say
that’s just what Weetbix does
that’s just its way.

 

MMmmmmm not bad for a kick off

.

The leather coat …… 

A pair of sandals, old black pants
And leather coat — I must go, my friends,
Into the dark, the cold, the first beginning
Where the ribs of the ancestor are the rafters
Of a meeting house — windows broken
And the floor white with bird dung — in there
The ghosts gather who will instruct me
And when the river fog rises
Te ra rite tonu te Atua —
The sun who is like the Lord
Will warm my bones, and his arrows
Will pierce to the centre of the shapeless clay of the shapless clay of the mind

 

MMmmmmmm Apologies to JKB!!!

The Old Hooker

Stranded at the train station, the old hooker stands.

Where her customers walked last night, beer in hand.

Holes in her stockings death in her heart.

Sorry, stranded, crazy old tart..

 

Mmmmmmm don’t know where that one came from. sounds good in the style of Sam Hunt tho Bit like Beer Bottle Creek

 

Other Stuff happened in NZ

1967

LSD and mescaline outlawed in New Zealand, 7 July; Mark Young convicted of possession and jailed for six weeks.

Carmen opens her International Coffee Lounge at 86 Vivian Street, Wellington.

Gary Baigent, The Unseen City: One Hundred and Twenty-three Photographs of Auckland. Auckland: Paul.

Warren Dibble, ‘Lord dismiss us&emdash;’: a drama in one act. Christchurch: British Drama League (NZ Branch).

Janet Frame, The Pocket Mirror. New York: Braziller.

Hilaire Kirkland, 8 Poems. London: Flowering Hand, for Hilaire Kirkland, c 1967.

Sometimes it just got weird How many of these do you remember?

1970

Founding of Wellington Women’s Liberation Front, Auckland Women’s Liberation Front and Women’s Movement for Freedom (Auckland University).

Violence outside Intercontinental Hotel in Auckland, 11.45 p.m. 16 January, as police charge protestors demonstrating against visit of US Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew.

Tim Shadbolt (CURRENT MAYOR OF INVERCARGILL) says ‘bullshit’, ’shit’, and ‘pissed off’ in Alberton Ave, Auckland, 23 March, while speaking to a group of school students over the fence at Mt Albert Grammar. He is arrested for indecent language and jailed 25 days for refusing to pay the fine.

Mobilisation against the War, 17-18 July. At Auckland University this includes Guerilla Theatre in the quad (AUSAPOCPAH) and a campus teach-in.

Media attention as first feminist pub liberations occur August and September at Britomart (Auckland) and the New City Hotel (Wellington). Women enter and demand service in public bars.

Patricia Bartlett (Never seen in a public bra or bar) presents a petition with 49,000 signatures to Parliament, requesting stricter censorship laws.

Margaret Orbell’s Contemporary Maori Writing (Reed) includes poems by Tuwhare and Habib.

Ken Rea founds Living Theatre Troupe, summer 1970-71, with Sally Rodwell, Steven Gordon, Farrell Cleary, John Darville, Bryan Divers and Janet Chafe. They work out of the University Arts Centre at 24 Grafton Rd.

Sam Hunt, A Song About Her, When mornin’ comes (a flat fat blues). Paremata: Bottle (broadsheets).

Bill Manhire and Ralph Hotere, Malady. Dunedin: John McIndoe for Amphedesma.

Frederick C. Parmee, Two Poems of Revolution: Early Poems in a New Movement in New Zealand Poetry. Onerahi: Parmee (broadsheet).

Hone Tuwhare, Come Rain Hail. Dunedin: Bibliography Room, University of Otago; 2nd ed. Caveman, 1973.

Merlene Young, Underground Sunday. Pukerua Bay: Kosmick Studios; rpt. 1991.

I remember it was a great time of debate with parents and teachers – most of whom wanted to be 10 years younger – I was 11 and think it had a great influence on me. 

 

1975  (While I was finally getting to see the girl next doors knickers while she was still wearing them the big people continued to be weird)

Witi Ihimaera and Sam Hunt are Burns Fellows. What!!!

Hone Tuwhare reads his poems on Kiwi LP recording Wind Song and Rain (Reed Pacific). Jan Kemp, Jonathan Lamb and Alan Smythe produce New Zealand Poets Read Their Work (Waiata Recordings) in two versions, one edited for schools.

Herstory exhibition organised by Dunedin Collective for Women, tours the country. First feminist art group meets in Christchurch. Auckland feminists organise an International Women’s Film Festival.

Progressive Youth Movement protests installation of the Wanganui computer: ‘Demolish Police-State Computer. Unite against $23.2 million of electronic fascism!’ (PYM Rebel cover, February) and publishes Pull the Plug on Big Brother.

Jack Body’s Second Sonic Circus in Wellington, 8 March. Participants include Theatre Action, Red Mole and Russell Haley. Dadson’s ‘On-A-Theme’ instructs the National Orchestra: ‘Singly and in groups Orchestra and Chorus traverse the space to & from all directions, greeting the audience and each other with warm exuberance. In place of the normal greetings “Hullo”, “How are you”, “Nice to see you” etc; performers use words from a social/political context with the intonation of a greeting & shaking hands wherever possible:

economy unemployment woolworths depression the nation trade unions watties immigration banks education stocks & shares primeminister the worker task force inflation etc etc

At the height of activity, the conductor enters from the side wearing the national flag and makes his way slowly to the centre, shaking hands as he goes. In his own time he initiates gentle applause by quietly clapping and smiling about him’ (Sonic 2 programme). The National Orchestra withdraws its offer of participation in Sonic 2; Dadson invites anyone wanting to perform as the People’s Scratch Orchestra and Chorus to contact Jack Body and keep an ear open.

NZSAC Four New Zealand Poets Tour (Alan Brunton, Denis Glover, Sam Hunt and Hone Tuwhare), 29 March-4 May: ‘First performance Mercury Theatre Dunedin . Promises to be a regular circus’. New Argot (March 1975).

Liberation of Saigon, 30 April. The Republic of Viet Nam surrenders unconditionally to Provisional Revolutionary Government.

Sisters for Homophile Equality (SHE) reprint Collective Lesbian International Terror (CLIT) Papers in Circle 20-22 (July-September) as magazine and organisation decide on heavier political orientation.

Red Mole performs Cabaret Paris Spleen, Wellington, September. Baudelaire’s Le Spleen de Paris inspires ‘this replication of a night in old Montmartre featuring Brunton, Rodwell, Haley, Greta Campbell, Ian Wedde, Rose Wedde, Bill Manhire, Brent Southgate, Jenny Stevenson, Frances Edmond, Jan Preston, Deborah Hunt and Francis Batten’ (programme).

Three Poets filmed in Wellington: ‘Richard Turner meanwhile plunges in at the deep end turning a movie on alternate weekends with Ian Wedde, Russell Haley and Alan Brunton’. Parish Spleen, Spleen 1 (September). The film is later sold to Japanese television.

Maori Land March on Wellington, 14 September- 17 October.

Death of Hilaire Kirkland, aged 34, in Auckland.

Stephen Chan, Arden’s Summer. Christchurch: Pegasus.

Sam Hunt, Time to Ride. Martinborough: Alister Taylor.

Jan Kemp, ‘Quiet in the Eye’. Auckland University archive deposit.

Rachel McAlpine, Lament for Ariadne. Dunedin: Caveman.

Ian Wedde, Pathway to the Sea. Taylors Mistake: Hawk; Earthly. Sonnets For Carlos. Akaroa: Amphedesma.

Albert Wendt, ed., Some Modern Poetry from the New Hebrides and Some Modern Poetry from the Solomon Islands. Suva: Mana.

Merlene Young, Solar Stone. Poetry 1970-1973. Pukerua Bay: Kosmick Studios, 1975; rpt. 1993.

 

enough enough Dunedin was a great place to grow up.

 

lol Don and Caleb – send us your phone number dude.

 

 

 

we know where we’ve come from

 

 

we accept who we are

 

 

we recognise how others may see us

 

 

and we just don’t really realise how lucky we are

 

 

oh, and we don’t take ourselves too seriously!

 

Hope you enjoyed it!

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wow!! Just watched highlights of the 2008 ARL finals: Warriors – Storm game and the Warriors -  Roosters game. MAGIC!! Haven’t had that feeling for some time, and that was just from watching the highlights and after my son had already told me about the games, and told me the scores. Made me remember the adrenaline, the fingernail biting, the tension in the room, the euphoria that follows a wonderful Warriors moment. Ah Tobe I wish we were watching the next game together – I would probably start smoking again just so I could get right back into it!!

 

Someone tell me what were the beards about? Something to do with Ruben? Tobe told me that this year is his last year. What an icon – a NZ/Aoteoroa icon. As a man he seems to epitomise all that is great about Aotearoa men, and not least of which is his partnership with Steve Price. These combination of these two men has symbolised what has made the Warriors great in the last few years. 

 

Anyway enough of that, I’m off to find a venue to watch the game at on Saturday morning, about 10 I guess – may have to watch it at a Walkabout in amongst a while lot of Aussies. GO THE WARRIORS!!!

 

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAKA

 

Wow, I came across a business card between the pages of ”The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell. That in itself proffers the humble card-cum-bookmark some mythological significance. And as for the page and the point it was marking, those will be in a later korero called ‘decay, disease and death’, so keep your eye out for that one.

 

The card, which in itself is a work of art,  I was given a couple of months ago when I visited Greenwich Village with Cari, her son James and his partner Helen. Greenwich is a very nice place, the boat trip up the Thames was enjoyable as much for the commentary as anything else, and we walked to the top of the hill and straddled the mean time. We stood with one foot in the East and one in the West.

 

 

 

I have been unable to use the terms ‘East’ and ‘West’ so readily since that day.  If this is it, I thought, then what the hell is all the fuss about. They aint so different after all, East appears very similar to West, when you look at it up close.

 

I loved the Market, it reminded me of Victoria Street Market back in Auckland, Aotearoa, with more art and more street culture and a little less large commercialism, more an arts and crafts feel, but a quality arts and crafts, if you know what I mean. Crickey I’m articulate!

 

 

Does anyone remember Cook Street Market? Anyone?

 

 

I digress.  At the Market (Greenwich that it) there was this AMAZING stand with fabulous artwork on it. .. no not the one below, and isn’t that way cool though? I think I might buy a picture like that for Cari if I ever manage to get a job, ever…

 

 

 

This other stall was even more AMAZING.  Just jaw-dropping stuff.  And I briefly spoke to the young woman there (who may have been Claire) -she was very nice and gave me this card that I found today in Joseph’s book.

 

I had forgotten it, I had forgotten what it signified.  It has come back. This time  I followed it to a website. Clare Rollet is the artist.

 

Clare your work is magnificient. The detail and the colour are perfect.  The choice of subject, the angle – magic. It inspires me, it takes my breath away.  It is exquisite, almost difficult to look at.  I hope that one day you will visit Auckland, New Zealand.

 

And I love cities too. I love walking through them, through all the varied and various parts of them. Along roads and paths, past shops and houses, across parks and commons, around in circles and in particular around the corners. I love the colours and the noise and the smell. I love the wabi-sabi.

 

I love the people who inhabit them. I love those who see the magic surrounds them. I love those who do not see the magic surrounding them.  The magic that is in them. The magic that is them. The magic that is.

 

 

So my friends I recommend you all follow the link below for some absolutely stunning pieces of art.  Clare could be coming to a city near you, or even a city all around you – but for now let’s start with London -

 

inkcities

 

 

Thanks Clare.

May you be liberated, may you be happy, may you always share in my dharma.

 

 

x bhavatu sabbe mangalum x