angel mouse meets santa mouse

10Dec09

(And they both live happily ever after.)

Tonight Angel Mouse met Santa Mouse. Santa Mouse winged his way to us in a FastPost bag, quite unexpected; Angel Mouse was waiting patiently on the tree. Perhaps she knew all along.

Sometimes you just know these things, even if you don’t know you know them.

Sometimes the nicest surprises come in small parcels.

Sometimes the nicest things are the ones that come out of left field, or from the dark regions of a blindspot.

It is nice to have a companion. Angel Mouse and Santa Mouse were meant to be together.

Angel Mouse has always been my favourite. It’s a pleasure to rediscover her every December. I’m pleased she now has a buddy. They look good together.

I will package them up close together, side by side, when this season is over. For their hibernation. And then they will emerge again, closer than ever.

Filed under: animals, love, seasons, things I like   |  1 Comment
Tags: adornments, love, trinkets

these are my bedroom eyes

09Dec09

Not really. What I mean is that I am tired. I am usually tired when I write this, as it’s usually more or less bedtime.

A summation of today:

I

got a bob

got thwarted by a locked steering wheel

talked about whether a leopard’s spots are hard-coded into the skin or if you shaved it the spots would disappear (still not sure, so thinking about googling ’shaving leopards’ later)

got momentarily jolted by a 5.1 earthquake (momentarily thought that someone had driven into the building)

drove into the eye of a bomb scare (Featherston Street) but got diverted by the nice policeman in his fluoro get-up

tried to sleep through live comedy

got a hangnail that is now about an inch long and precariously attached due to compulsively but absentmindedly pulling at it

got given a present and a compliment, and from two entirely different people, for two entirely different reasons

heard that we all came from Africa once upon a time (it has just been discovered)

did a fancy trick with some HTML

got uncharacteristically carried away with ledgers

left work early

And that’s about it. Now drinking a white russian, shirking work, listening to the wind with the windows open. I wish there were more to report ( – actually – I don’t mean that at all – I’m just saying that) but there’s not.

Filed under: daytoday, meandering, windows   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: black and white, diary

photos of photos, and there’s no place like home

07Dec09

God, I did it again. Accidentally hit the back button and lost my unsaved post halfway through (although I say halfway through I can’t really be sure. I was somewhere in the depths of things, heading somewhere mostly unspecified, which is the glory and the risk of unsaved, unpremeditated blog posts, perhaps).

I hate myself and the internet in general when the wipe-out happens. And now I will summarise in a slipshod, irritated, get-it-over-and-done-with kind of way.

I was saying that this is a photo of a photo of the Harbour Bridge, taken today whilst waiting in the Gate 50 boarding lounge for my homeward-bound plane. I was also saying that I like this photo more than I would a run-of-the-mill first-hand snapshot of the HB in situ. Then I think I said I didn’t know why this was, or that maybe I did, but I was too many wines in to recall my Derrida, or Lacan (or whoever the clever head-bending chap was, whose name and point eludes me right now).

Then I said I am in the kitchen, back in New Zealand, with the lights dimmed, listening to The Necks, as a parting farewell to my Aussie stint. The Necks are pretty damned awesome. We saw them a couple of years ago at the Arts Festival. That’s kind of beside the point but I would recommend seeing them, not that I’m a music reviewer or anything ridiculous like that.

I love Sydney’s noisy birds and its shiny cars. I love the fact that it is big and brash and bright and sprawling, and that it is home to some of my favourite people in the world. But still there is no place like home, as Dorothy would say.

Tonight, back on terra familia (I think I just made that up, but you know what I mean) I spent more on groceries than I did in an entire Sydney long weekend. I cooked a nice meal. The French doors were open. God forbid – it was even quite nice weather here in Wellington this evening. I have a poinsettia arrangement on the kitchen table and we assembled the Christmas tree – our best yet, might I add – listening to The Rogers Sisters LP (average) and The Clean LP (very catchy), and I managed not to fall through the hole in the floorboards. [Every day above ground is a good day, as they say.]

It almost feels like Christmas. All I need now is Snoopy.

Filed under: daytoday, digitalia, music, photos, travel   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: diary, dorothy doldrumatic, every day, sightseeing

Curse of the big hair (Annandale, NSW)

05Dec09

I write this from the streets of Annandale, Sydney. 9 or so pm. Hot but not altogether bothered, although this impromptu getaway could be longer. Who’d have a day job. [That was a rhetorical question - I don't want an answer to it - so I am not going to dignify it with a question mark.]

I’m considering a dip in the pool. I think you call it a plunge pool – the opposite of an Olympic pool, but there are no goldfish or lilypads in it, so I think I am safe. I’m a little bit scared of the wildlife – but these are suburban dwellings and not the outback, or so I tell myself. If you never hear from me again after this, I may well have died at the hands of a garden variety skink. I’ve seen a few of those today.

I forgot my togs. (I also forgot my camera, sunglasses and I’m sure there was also something else, which I have now forgotten, ironically enough.) I managed to lose a vital piece of documentation in between customs and quarantine/big silver x-ray machines, and thought I might be stuck in no man’s land with officious khaki-clad Aussies for the rest of my days. But then I found the elusive smart card - after sort-of-frantically circling the baggage carousels looking for a small piece of fallen paperwork – right down in the fragile parcels depot. And I walked free, my duty free a-clinking.

I flew no frills (but not as no frills as Jetstar – never again, mark my word). This was fine but I got moved down the plane just before takeoff and all my shit was in the overhead locker further back in the plane. I was in the window seat and stuck, sans everything, including any time-telling mechanism. First off I tried to sleep and thought I did pretty well at it, but I had no way of knowing. Turns out I think I slept for a maximum of 3 minutes (albeit a deep sleep which restored my inner energies and left me wide-eyed and bored as fuck). The rest of the flight was interminable. I didn’t even have a pen with which to attempt the beginners’ Sudoko. I asked the cabin attendant (is that the pc word for them these days?) and she said she had given hers to someone and that she could lend it to me after, but then she never came back. The guy in the aisle seat was watching True Blood on his laptop. I toyed with the idea of asking him to share half his ear phones with me so I could watch too. Of course I would never actually go ahead and do it, but it’s the sort of thing I torture myself mentally with – the prospect that I might, or could – and then I usually ponder the person’s hypothetical response to my imposition. Like the time I kept contemplating asking the 10 or so year-old boy sitting next to me to hold my hand for comfort during an especially bumpy descent into Wellington. I didn’t, of course, but I did manage to disturb myself with the compulsion.

It’s kinda hot here. Humidity does nothing for my big hair. My skin is fairly well luminous though. Attributable more to L’Oreal than baking in the sunshine, though, I think. This year I tried to bring big hair back, but it never caught on, and now I am sick of it. Maybe I’m more trend follower than trend starter.

You can’t wear lots of black here, and sheets are no good at night. It’s nice, though. The birds make funny noises, the sky is blue and Lily is the cutest wee milk-guzzler in the universe.

Filed under: family, things I like, travel   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: diary, seasons, sightseeing, travel

Words for Baxter

01Dec09

A while ago I wrote a little something for Sylvie. I told Baxter it wasn’t a case of favouritism, but I still felt a bit bad. It’s just that he’s a much tougher subject to master. More nuanced. More shades of grey, both inside and out. Less fluffy and flirtatious and all-out-in-the-open.

Even in photos he worms away so all I’m left with is a faceless blur of tabby. And meanwhile I have veritable reels of cutesy Sylvie photos, posed just so, like a teddy bear in cat form. Ach, but that’s enough about Sylvie. There she goes again, taking over.

I said last night (out of Baxter’s earshot – I’m not that unkind) that you’d need to raise Samuel Beckett  or Albert Camus from their graves to get a decent account of the intricate inner workings of our half aloof, half desperately needy only boy cat.

Some days he is one way, other days another. He is a sort of feline chameleon. I couldn’t possibly capture the essence of him.

[And speaking of essence, that reminds me of my unsuccessful and short-lived foray into philosophy in my first year of university. I can't remember exactly how it came to pass, but basically I dropped out in anger, having been told that my dog didn't have a soul. But Pavlova was one of the most soulful people I knew!]

So anyway. In an attempt at in some way conveying the enigma that is Baxter Robinson Sweetman, I’ve come up with some words for Baxter, which go a little bit like this. (And even these don’t do it.)

smooch addicted, rain catcher, pensive, bunny pawed, possum pelted, moochy existentialist, expectant, particular, outsized-limbed gangler, pensive, demanding, spongy contortionist, diesel engine hearted, stripy-browed loner, proud but nervous, fence-sitting, attenuated, love-hungry, lean & dense, intense, white-socked, insistent, sleep-twitchy, intermittently hygienic, pale-bellied, wary, faux Burberry-collared, food bowl patrolling, arrogantly skittish

And there we have him (or don’t).

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Tags: cats, things I like

house of questions

30Nov09

This will be piecemeal. Or maybe I just mean it won’t hang together well.

Or, I am going through the few unrelated shots I have on my phone from the weekend, before I relegate them to the recycle bin.

Why is it Hawkes Bay always looks something like this, in photos? Glorious and blue and green. Or glorious and blue and brown towards the end of summer. Say you take photos of people, with a vinyard and some flawless sky in behind. And the backdrop usurps the foreground. The people become just some punters in straw hats, posing.

I like the blurriness of photos taken from moving vehicles.

What I was going to say was this. Tonight I was killing time and flipping through books, unable to settle on just one.

I bought a second hand copy of Margaret Atwood’s Interlunar the other day from Quilters and today I found one of my favourite old poems.

I had it written out in an old diary, from school, but I couldn’t find it before, when I looked for it. It was one of those old poems I came to know nearly by heart. The kind whose lines pop into your head a decade later, due to some subliminal match with the emotion at hand. Back then it was synonymous with teenage angst and boarding school.

For now, it has taken on a whole new meaning, no less meaningful. As immediate as ever. Poetry can be kinda versatile like that.

This is a good poem for now. It is a good poem, full stop.

LETTER FROM THE HOUSE OF QUESTIONS

Everything about me is broken.
Even my fingers, forming
these words in the dust
a bootprint will wipe out by morning,
even these words. Even, almost,
my will to do anything.
I would spend the rest of my life
in a house corner, in the sun.
If there were a house. If there were sun.
 
Those who imagine our bodies
for their own pleasure, in their beds
that smell of mouthwash and lotion
have never been here or anywhere like it.
We stink. Our clothes and breath
and the pissed floor and air
and the wounds they picture as the stigmata
of desire, which are just holes
dug in the flesh and filthy
with neglect. Blunt and vicious,
nothing to do with the arabesques
of civilized lust they invest.

Lady, I saw you once
in a photograph in a magazine
before I was brought here.
You were in a kitchen, with children
seated at a table. You stood,
serving red and yellow and green food
and holding up a bottle.
Everyone smiled. I have forgotten
what you were supposed to be
selling, but I remember you,
with your white teeth shining in the room
which was so clean and beautiful.
I lie on the floor and hold on to you
as if you were here. As if you were
a picture of myself
when I still existed.
Look down on me. Explain to me
why this is happening. Send food.
The saints having failed me,
you are the one I pray to.

Filed under: Idols & icons, daytoday, photos, poetry, travelling   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: diary, poetry, road trip

collecting stickers

30Nov09

This is just a selection of them. This was practically the best thing about the weekend just been. Finding Simon’s childhood sticker collection. That, and hanging out in a swimming pool. And Popcorn Chicken in Paraparaumu (technically outside Wellington, so I wasn’t breaking my no KFC in Wellington rule).

My childhood sticker collection has long since gone the way of gone things. Mine were delicate and shiny or furry and came on small sheets of paper. For a while there were scratch ‘n sniff. Mine were cute. Ducklings and bears. There were also scented rubber collections, pressed flower collections, stamp collections. For a while I think I also collected mini soft drink cans, the sort you used to get on planes on long-haul flights. I kept them in a special wooden display case, mounted to the wall.

Growing up I was a collector type, I guess (and by that I don’t mean butterflies, or a predilection for confined underground dwellings). I was a little bit haphazard or – shall we say – laissez faire with the whole thing. Fads came and went. Stickers and rubbers got swapped. Things got lost and demolished. I forgot about them. I grew up and then only suffered occasional pangs of nostalgia for things I fleetingly remembered and then forgot again.

Being the first of four voracious, hard-wearing children, not many kiddy trinkets survived to see my adult years. If they did, they were usually re-gifted, in whatever shabby state, or farmed out to clear garage space for golf shoes, defunct mobile phone accessories, old-model TV remotes, empty wine bottles and old framed school photos. Some of the hard-backed books escaped a Salvation Army fate. The dolls’ house did (but is in dire need of a 21st century interior re-fit). Franny Lanny the Cabbage Patch Kid did. Even if she is now scalped (someone cut off her yellow wool hair for finger-knitting) and one-armed, and vivid-stained, and smeared in glitter (god knows how the glitter happened).

Simon, on the other hand, has pristine evidence of his childhood pastimes. Toys still in their original boxes (eBay here I come). Complete collections of undefiled Golden Books, their spines still entirely functional. Boxes full of stickers. Stickers!

We had talked about our sticker collections, and collections in general, at length, but my eyes had never actually beheld the wonder that was (is) Simon’s sticker collection. Until this weekend. Ah, the elation! The immense affirmation I felt, knowing I have well and truly found my soulmate! Who else would collect the stickers that were never supposed to be collected? The blank tape stickers out of VHS boxes. The retail sale! stickers that really haven’t changed so much since the 80s. Plain red dots. Kiwis and sheep. Bumper stickers (including one that said: if you smoke after sex you’re doing it too fast, apparently won at the A&P fair, but Simon’s grandmother snaffled that one up, claiming she was going to stick it on her bedhead). Alf. Garfield. The usual suspects.

Now we collect other stuff. Books and wall adornments and music. And jugs. And cats’ eyes. Maybe not because we’re deliberately collecting, but more like hoarding in a very small house, because we can’t help it. It’s harmless, even if things sometimes fall out of the cupboards.

Filed under: arrested development, clutter, found stuff, things I like   |  1 Comment
Tags: collecting, eternal youth, things I like, trinkets

J’ai mal à la tête

26Nov09

 

I guess if you translate the French, having a headache = having a bad head.

I am at work with a sun umbrella, sweating. I’m on sort-of-secondment, and I’m starting to miss my real desk/cocoon.

Today I have a bad head.

Tonight, a road trip.

I must buy cat food.

If you keep your chin up, you don’t get double chins in photos, so I’m told.

That’s a pretty good reason, even if it works out to be the only one.

 

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Tags: diary, weariness

digital detox, deep ends & premature proliferations of tinsel

24Nov09

I am banished. I am not allowed upstairs until I have done some writing.

Let me tell you about the predicament which has led to my digital detox. Nearly two weeks ago my laptop adaptor died. I had someone at work assess the situation and then I promptly ordered a new one online. For the last week I have been in a raging battle of oneupmanship with the shonky couriers, and still have no adaptor. Someone should start a courier frustration society. I would most certainly sign up.

Now I am writing on Simon’s laptop. I get to borrow it from time to time if I promise to do actual writing, and not late night work emails. (Unfortunately it just so transpires that I am better at late night work emails than I am at writing.)

The other digital option available to me is our screwed old back-up laptop. The internet on it is worse than dial-up, and on bad nights Word struggles to keep up with my lightning-quick typing.

When I talk about my digital detox, I don’t mean that I have been frolicking in fields of daisies for the last fortnight. I mean that I have had no computer outside of the 10 or so hours a day at work, and the sneaky Facebook and Twitter checking I manage to wrangle after hours on this hot little machine.

I forget my point. I think I had one. All of a sudden I feel really, really tired. But I am not allowed back upstairs, even to sleep.

If the exile were self-imposed I would overrule it with a lack of willpower. But I have Simon acting in my best interests, and he is a little bit harder to argue with than my willpower.

Right now I can’t imagine true digital detox. I can’t even imagine unwinding. Or a holiday that feels like a holiday. Maybe it’s just that time of year and all that fucking tinsel. Some times I think deep ends are good and sometimes I think they are bad. I guess it comes down to the end result, i.e. the sink or swim part. Either it’s a valuable learning curve or a really bad mistake.

But how are you supposed to know which it is until after the fact?

Filed under: daytoday, digitalia, online, writing   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: diary, digitalia, every day, online, weariness

Hello Lily

22Nov09

Yesterday the coolest thing happened. Lily Frances Morrow (my niece) came into the world. I haven’t met her yet (she’s in Sydney) but she looks very cute and sleepy in the photos (I have seen two so far). She sounds pretty cute on speakerphone, too.

No doubt taking after her mother, Lily had had enough of all this waiting business and wanted to get a move on, and out she came at 35 and a bit weeks, perfectly formed with a head of dark hair. Last time I talked to Bex (Lily’s mum) she said: I just want to meet her. I think Bex always knew Lily would come early.

I went to work today and kept getting distracted by the picture of Lily and Reece (Lily’s dad) up on one of my screens. I wonder what she will be like.

Last night we went to Dave Dobbyn and I sat there with Lily’s arrival sinking in, thinking how huge it was: the first day of your life. How new. How much potential. So much unknown. I thought about all the things I would like to tell Lily, how I might start a list. How Liam (Lily’s cousin) and Lily will be friends. How we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t wind up with an Australian accent. And some other stuff I can’t remember now.

Then a picture of Bex came into my head as a teenager and – forgive the cliche – it seemed just like yesterday. Little Becky now with a little girl of her own.

Not wanting to steal the thunder with the two Lily photos I have in my possession, I rounded up some photos of us, when we were little. It doesn’t seem so long ago.

Hello, little Lily. I can’t wait to meet you.

Filed under: family, photos, things I like   |  2 Comments
Tags: caring, family, things I like