The Angels of Paris

Count the days.  

In three weeks' time, maybe a month, facebook profiles will shed the tricolour filters and normal transmission will resume.  Passions will subside.  The bitter residue of shock will linger and perhaps manifest in sideways sympathy at a thing we called Islam and a people called Muslims.   They are our community but we will look at them differently.  We won’t remember, or even bother, to ask why.  Because if we bother to ask why, we will be confronted by the weakness  of our own ideologies.  In three weeks from now we might not realize that the “terrorist” has struck us hardest and worst by changing our view of things, by changing the way that we look at “others”: our neighbours, our colleagues, our classmates - the friends who move amongst us but persist in not looking like us. 

In three weeks, the tricolour filters will fade and go the way of the #jesuischarlie.  Bombing of all varieties will continue silently in those other places whose names suggest a heightening awareness of the world: Kobane, Mosul, Kirkut, Fallujah, Baghdad, Beirut.  In Aleppo and Tal Abyad the Turkish government have a historic opportunity: tacitly using ISIS to get rid of the Kurds once and for all.  Turkey will have to choose her enemy wisely: the one with morals who can’t be bought or the one who can be bought but with no morals at all.  But the bombings and  and the beheadings are not the ends.  They are the means.  The ends are to make us fearful, watchful and hateful, to make us . . . un-neighbourly.  The media-backed terrorist will defeat most of us without firing a single shot.

In three weeks the tricolour filters will fade  and we should ask ourselves this:  at what cost do we budget our moral indignation to spend only on our traditional allies.  Because the people of the world are being savaged and if we continue to ignore those other victims, that same savagery will come to visit us in evermore fierce and frequent measure. 

In three weeks, after the tricolours have faded, the Angels of Paris will go on to teach the world it's most important lessons.  If they leave a noble legacy it will be in teaching "us"
to mourn the unknowns and the unsung, those who have shared in similar horrors - from Paris to Pakistan, from Syria to Sudan, from Nairobi to Nigeria.  The Angels of Paris will teach "us" that we are soldiers in a war against ideology, extremism, hatred and violence.  They will teach us that the only useful weapons in a war of this kind are the ideas we plant in the minds of our youngest.  They will teach us that many of us don't know yet know which side we are on.

Three weeks.  Count the days.

Something Exciting, Something Incredible.

There are things I notice and I’m not sure why.  Two months I took a plane trip to Wellington and I was very excited.  I hadn’t been on a plane for close to ten years and this flight would only last 45 minutes.  I felt like an astronaut.  I imagined I was doing something nobody had ever done before, that nobody could ever do.  I was going to be in the air, in that sky above me.  I would be doing something absolutely un-human – flying in the face of gravity.  There were others on the plane but I didn’t care.  The pilot, the girl who gave the instructions, the other passengers . . . irrelevant.

But they weren’t irrelevant.  I was trying hard to contain my excitement.  I wanted to communicate to my fellow passengers that I was seasoned, I was a veteran, I had done things and I wasn’t phased.  A woman appeared at the departure gate and I strode toward her with my boarding pass.  She asked me to go back and wait until the gate was open and the control desk was being attended.  I tried to make sure that nobody had seen me and the my cover had not been blown.  I took a seat in the waiting area and tried to look cool and relaxed.

It seemed like an age before I was finally sitting in the plane looking out across the wing.  I couldn’t stop smiling and was fighting the urge to look around the aircraft, to touch things and try things out.  I took the coffee, and the biscuits and the cup of water and the lolly to suck on and I read all the magazines and the in-flight instructions.  Why?  Because it was there.  And then the plane landed.  And I stepped out of the plane and walked across the tarmac like somebody important who’d just done something incredible.  And I had.  I’d sailed in a tin can at 40,000 feet and made it from Hamilton to Wellington in 45 minutes.  Anybody in a plane should always have something to write home about.

Good for Nothing.

There are days when one is struck by the bleakness of all things.  Days when we feel goaded into a frenzy of activity for the simple reason that we feel we should be doing something.  If we aren’t doing anything . . . then what is our purpose?  From the corner looking on, much human activity looks pointless.  It seems to bear no productive or positive or meaningful end result.  The purpose appears to keep people busy, to give folk something to do.  It is becoming increasingly a matter of morals.  To do or not to do.  We can’t have people just sitting around doing nothing.  They should be doing . . .  something.  People need to be busy, people should be busy because, well . . . 

But what can anyone be doing or producing that someone else is not already doing perfectly adequately and in sufficient quantity?  There is it appears an  overwhelming surplus of activity.  Busyness, creating friction, creating heat, smoke and then fire - a not so spontaneous combustion consuming oxygen at an alarming rate.  In that world the person sitting around doing nothing ,makes a contribution to society at least as valuable than the man spinning himself into a frenzy trying to accomplish everything.

The person who does nothing is at peace.  He goes quietly and creates no wreckage.  He burns no excess of fuel or energy.  He leaves plenty for others.  He is selfless in his quietude.    The person who does everything is driven by a dangerous cocktail of fear and greed, stirred and disguised as ambition.  That person creates havoc, waste and chaos.  He leaves devastation in his wake.  There is only the ego at work on itself, agitating, inflating, imposing it’s will onto everything and everyone.  That person has an insatiable appetite for activity and attention and for possession.  There is no need for his excesses but he refuses to be empty-handed.  What a terrifying burden.  No wonder that person tries so hard to force it on to others.

Ye Shall Know Them By Their Works.

While some of my very best friends are Mormons I don’t make it habit to write about them or about myself.  But an interesting thing happened to me recently.  I was walking home carrying three heavy bags of groceries and a fourth in the pack on my back.  Striding towards me were a tall older man and his wife wearing shorts, t-shirts and sneakers.  It was a Saturday afternoon.  The couple were politely trying to outpace two much younger men walking either side. They had short tidy hair parted to the side.  Both wore dark suits, white shirts and neckties.


Walking alone, weighed down with my shopping I was an easier target.  They paused, waited for me to approach and as soon as I was within range, they introduced themselves as Elder this and Elder that.  They were very polite and asked me the usual things.  Had I heard of the Book of Mormon?  Had I had the lessons?  Did I know about the Church and would I like for them to come to my house and talk about God’s plan?  Yes, yes, yes . . . no.  Was I sure?  Yes.  Was I sure I was sure?  Yes . . . yes.  My arms were tiring but I wasn’t slowing down and they were keeping up.


I was tiring and so were they.  It was becoming obvious: I wasn't going to say yes to the lessons, I’d already heard the message many times over.  I did not care for more talk.  Plainly I was not a good prospect and clearly in a hurry to get my shopping home.  They wished me a nice day, turned around and walked back in the direction we had come from.

Bicycle Riding Dole Bludger Stopped by Hamilton City's Finest.

The clients, as they are known, of WINZ Hamilton East were treated to a random act of state-sponsored street theatre last week, courtesy of Hamilton City's Finest.  It could have gone unnoticed but the reception area was so full, the automatic doors wouldn’t close.  Standing room only, it was a beggars banquet minus the banquet, a wearied, burdened audience of 40-50 year olds.  Tired, cynical, dejected.

The collective quiet was broken by the “woop” and honk of a police siren, a patrol car shepherding the offender to the roadside.  It was a young man riding an old bike.  He was unshaven, wearing jandals, torn jeans, t-shirt, leather waistcoat, rasta-beads and a  khaki shoulder bag.  He wore nothing on his head except for an impressive afro, reminiscent of the late great 1970s.

We know about judging books by their covers, about the difference between appearances and realities.   But the audience saw him immediately as one of their own, a man with neither work nor money.  They understood that the price on his un-helmeted head would take out the best part of his week’s money.  Most of them however, didn’t see anything at all.  They were staring into the tough industrial grade carpet under their rough-shod feet, gazing into their own certain futures.

Egypt Bans Internet, People Meet in Person, President Resigns.

The news is out and everywhere – the web, the net, cyperspace, the blogosphere, the cloud, all reverberating with the resignation of Egypt’s Mubarak.  Social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter have been given much credit for making it all happen, for galvanizing a discontented people, bringing their critical mass to a boil, finally driving them out on the street in resolute protest.  But how did that happen in a country where all internet was reportedly switched off?  How did the internet bring revolution to a people without internet?

From the corner it looks like it was the very absence of the internet, the inability to Tweet or Facebook, that compelled people to network in the most social way of all: to go outside, meet people, wave a flag and get mad.  It got them out from in front of their computer screens, into the street and talking to each other face to face.  In the "wireless-less" space of Tahrir Square the most social of all social media appeared reborn – the mass protest.

The “Pharoah” has now gone and announcing his departure, hard-man Omar Suleiman invoked special powers: “May God . . . help us all”.  With the military now in charge, and many of its generals on the former payroll of the ex-president, historical trends might suggest the worst is yet to come.  However, Egypt so far has managed to avoid many negative trends to a degree.  With good people at the levers, the new Egypt could prove revolutionary in so many more ways than one.  But without them, they will need all the help that God can get.

Anything You Want To Be.

It’s a new year.  A time for making decisions.  These are the times when the world is full of choice.  Your own decisions.  Whatever is happening right now in your life is what you have chosen to happen.  If you want anything you can have it.  If you want to do something you have the choice to do it or not to do it.  That’s it.  You can do anything you want to do.  You can be anything you want to be.  Choose it.  Do it.  If you want it bad enough, it will happen.

Unless of course, it can’t happen.  And unless of course you can’t do it, and unless of course you can’t be it.  There is a young woman for example who lives in a third world country who has recently been made redundant.  She’s one of the lucky ones.  She has a university degree in Marketing and actually had a job for four years as a PA to the CEO.  The company went bankrupt and now there’s nothing.  Does she want another job?  Has she tried to get another job?  Oh yes.  Can she get one? No.  At least not yet.  Not soon enough.

She wants to relocate to New Zealand or Australia, to land a good position in a stable firm, to advance her career and settle into a life less desperate.  But with her father murdered when she was a young girl, her mother barely getting by as a caregiver in Dubai, and her left support her younger sister through high school then varsity, her options are narrowed.  Those blessed with the natural born freedoms, do the kindness of urging the less fortunate: "do what YOU want to do,  be what YOU want to be.  It's your choice."  Meanwhile, the real people of the real world be who they have to be, in order to do what they must.

Blog Love?

Blog love is being bandied about willy nilly so rather than contribute to the noise . . . here's my 2 cents:
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Media Explosion at Pike River Mine

It is virtually impossible to say anything about the Pike River Mine incident without sounding patronising, trite, clichéd or a combination of all three.  Twenty-nine men are buried 1500 metres underground.  Immediate rescue impossible.  As the hours haul themselves around the clock, brows furrow and greyness sets heavily into the eyes of friends and families.  Hope beds itself in for a long haul.

In reality there is little more to be said, and yet there would be barely a soul to say nothing.  That is a sure indicator of the deep shock these kinds of tragedies hammer home.  Even the most reticent are compelled to utter, to mimic even, in order to speak of "unspeakable things".  People, previously unknown to pray, miraculously begin to offer prayers.  News reporters, as if by reflex, ask passersby: “How are you feeling?”

There is a time when words become empty tokens, expulsions of breath with no force of meaning.  They tread close to becoming unintended insults, unwanted injuries.  Perhaps that time is much closer to the event when sympathy, prayers and sorrow do not require the gesture of speech to be shared.  Such time rather for “the news” to step back, watch and listen.  Pike River is not a media explosion.  It is the everyday lives of ordinary people being played out against the background of something awful.

The Girl in HR

They rarely play a straight bat but they are ubiquitous so you have to take notice when the TV news tell you that the job market is getting tough.  It’s getting harder for people who already have jobs, more difficult for those looking for jobs, and damn near impossible for older people in the workforce to stay there.  Nobody needs TV to tell us what's going on, but there is an uncomfortable comfort in media confirmation of our less favourable fears.

They say, that if you have a job, you’ll be working longer hours.  They say that if you don’t have a job, you’ll be spending longer trying to get one.  If you’re around the age of 40 and looking for a change of direction . . . good luck with that.  If you’re over fifty looking for something new, forget about it.  No matter how much of a "silver fox" you think you are, you’ll be pushing it all sideways and upwards to get your CV past the girls in HR.  If you're not sexy, get on welfare.

Employment is yet another one of those vital social organs, those sphinx-like edifices, being rapidly dissolved by the desert storm of adolescent vanity.  At least so it would seem from the perspective of job seekers.   It must be galling for an experienced senior professional to have their CV vetted, their credentials picked over, their remaining career years held dangling in the magnificently sculpted fingernails of the girl in HR.

The Moleskeine Effect

The Moleskine has an illustrious history as the notebook of choice for some of history’s great artists and writers.  The "nameless black notebooks" fell into obscurity until 1997 when the new owners of the old company cranked up their marketing machine and put them back out on the bookshelves.  Moleskine are a “family of notebooks, diaries, and city guides”.  They're subject to high quality control standards such as “traction test, weigh check, glue and ink examination, cover thickness measure, rubber band resistance control”.  What do they do exactly?  Nothing.

Despite their relative passivity in the act of creation, they have become a defining accessory of the urbane and innately “creative”.  Fair enough.  Dressed in its beautifully cut black leather jacket, the Moleskine does cut a handsome figure.  It is well proportioned, stupidly expensive and its mythology goes almost so far as to suggest that the notebook itself is the source of creativity.  But the Moleskine reality is a story of aspiration and posture.  A Moleskine can be high self-parody, an empty briefcase at a ruthless job interview.  If it was a person, it may be a recent resident of Ponsonby or Grey Lynn.

I've only owned one Moleskine.  I love the look and feel, its black leather European-ness, its modern classicisms.  I’ve had it three years and most of its 180 pages remain blank.  I'm scared to soil it with my scrawl.  Weighing in at forty dollars, it felt too precious to write anything in.  So I didn’t.  By contrast, the humble 1B5 exercise book, at 70 cents for 80 pages, offered far more scope for experimentation.  For the price of one Moleskine, I could buy 57 1B5s, a whopping 4,560 pages.  Pound for pound, there is simply no contest.  In my book, the 1B5 closes the chapter on this creativity myth and calls out Moleskine “the anti-creative”.

Devoutly Non-Mormon

Church College is the well-known Mormon secondary school at Templeview, just outside of Hamilton.  The school and the community are a story well worth telling for many reasons, too many to list here.  I taught there as a devoutly NON-Mormon student teacher almost ten years ago.  I was overwhelmed by their fellowship, the friendship that was extended to me and also by their easy acceptance of my own beliefs.  It felt good to be called “Brother” by complete strangers, students and staff alike.  It was a nice departure from the more stentorian “Mr.” or “Sir”.

In spite of my devout non-mormonism, there were one or two folk who, in great humour, would test the depth of my convictions.  Brother McTavish asked me if I’d like to teach full-time at the school.  “Sure,” I replied “but I’m not a Mormon.”  He assured me that wouldn’t be a problem. “When do you want to get baptised?  I’ll put the call in.”  Knowing that the school preferred it’s male staff members to be married men, I informed him that I was still unattached.  “No worries!  We’ll find you a woman, get you married, not a problem!”  It was a tempting offer, but I managed to resist.

Brother Chase, the school maintenance man, was well into his seventies but with an almost supernatural youth.  “I’ve been married almost fifty years boy.  You marry the right woman, it’s beautiful man, beautiful, paradise!  It's just like living in heaven.”  And if you marry the wrong one?  “Oh, marry the wrong one?  You might as well go shoot yourself.”

The Church authorities in Salt Lake City Utah have since closed the school down.  The buildings are still there, a little older, a little sadder, a little more-grey looking.  There is a stillness around the campus, a resigned type of quiet that I don’t recall.  It’s possible that I was an easy target for conversion, but even as a devout non-mormon with a deep love for coffee, I miss the place greatly and the sense of community I experienced there.  I remember it with great affection.

Feet On The Ground, Head In The Clouds.

On a sweltering Sunday afternoon in Auckland, my friend and I sat, alone, in a tiny basement theatre watching Land of the Long White Cloud, by Florian Habicht.  It is a beautiful, beautiful film about a fishing contest on Ninety Mile Beach.  For five days, the “contestants” (for want of a better word) stand toe to toe with the toheroa and tuatua casting their lines into the boiling west coast surf.  They peer into the ocean . . . concentrating, meditating, waiting.  They dream of catching a fish.  The biggest snapper.

Pieces to camera present these “simple” folk as thinkers, philosophers and theorists.  Sure enough, their social and political commentaries are informed by meaningful things - the roar of the breakers, the huge cloud-filled sky.  A local man shares the secret to his wisdom, his key to a beautiful life: “keep your feet on the ground and your head in the clouds.”    Ossie Perie a large, grey haired man finally catches a snapper. After eight years without a bite it's not the big one, not even a big one, but it's a snapper nonetheless.

Just over an hour later we emerged into the city and it’s bristling, cloudless summer.  The streets were pouring with people, the road choking with motor vehicles.  There was movement everywhere like white noise . . . static.  My head began to burn and I found myself asking why.  It all seemed profoundly unimportant and I wished myself onto the windswept sands, to stand beneath the colour chromatic skies of the far north.  Just to catch a fish.

Mau Paparazzi Madness – Only in New Zealand.

Alison Mau is MAD.  She HATES paparazzi and being photographed and being in the public eye.  Hang on a minute?  Isn’t Mau a media personality, a reporter/presenter whose job is to present the same kind of stories about people just like her.  That alone makes her out and out outrage hard to sympathise with.

Okay so somebody took a couple of photos of her kids.  Tough call.  But if you’re going to play “Who Wants to Be a Celebrity” it just goes with the territory.   From Di on down, it’s not just you in the papers … it’s everybody you know.  Now if her kids were mad, that would be a different story.  They could always write to Michael Laws.

Strange thing is this.  Mau (and fellow media fugitive Mike Hosking) must have reported hundreds if not thousands of comments or stories on other “personalities”.  Does anyone recall either of them ever speaking out against paparazzi before they themselves were personally targeted?  Nope?  Me either.

The real issue is clearly not to do with paparazzi, privacy or the rights of children.  The real issue here is that New Zealand has long suffered from a celebrity drought.  When some guy in a Corolla spends Valentine’s Day taking pictures of news-readers and weather presenters you know, you can only be in New Zealand.

2009 – Year of the Facebook

2009 (thankfully behind us) saw the ascendancy of planet Facebook and everybody, yes EVERYBODY was online and getting connected. Facebook has helped people keep in touch, to share overseas experiences, to show our pictures at Angkor Wat and the Pyramids at Giza to friends of friends of friends of friends.  It’s the perfect tool for stalking ex partners (not that I would but I’m sure others do), or poking them in the eye.  Facebook showed that our lives transcend interesting and fulfilling. It told everyone at once … our lives are FUN!

Surely it was no coincidence that 2009 the Year of the Facebook, was also 2009 - the Year of the Breakup.   As much as Facebook brought us together it busted us apart.  No more sure way to seal the end of an affair than to change your status from “in a relationship” to “single”.  Keep it between you and your other half, you can always take it back.  Share the mistake with your mutual friends, exclusive friends, groups and networks and it’s permanent.  All you can do is watch your ex move on in pictures. Unless of course he/she banishes you to Facebook wasteland.  Facebook reconfigure our most private lives, in the most public way possible.

Perhaps for that very reason, Facebookers were reminded in ‘09 to update their security preferences.  Like a virtual VIP nightclub, you could decide who to let in and who to keep out.  For a tiny moment in Facebook time everyone got cautious.  But not for long.  The insatiable appetite for page views, friend requests and event invites would get the better of many, prompting them to throw back the cyber curtains giving away full and unimpeded access to their new and improved lives.  Are we being defined by our Facebook fictions, our publicised private successes and failures?  It certainly seems that way.

National's Key to the Tax Groove.

Much disappointment but very few real surprises from National.  Tax cuts across the board and loopholes tightened for residential property investment but no capital gains tax.  GST goes up to 15% despite saying they wouldn’t do it.  But nobody really believed that.  We all know what elections are won on.  Over inflated catch phrases masquerading as promises.

Who does this hit the hardest?  GST hits low income earners and beneficiaries obviously.  Household essentials have pretty much a base minimum price and it’s no lower for poor people than it is for the rich.  Tax cuts?  Not much real difference to a low wage earner facing increased GST on, well, everything.  As for closing the loopholes on residential investment property?  Wait and see.

One thing is certain: it's going to become easier for a rich man to pass through a property tax loophole than for a poor man to enter the kingdom of Godzone (whatever that is).  The cost to landlords will be “absorbed” by tenants - the same people buckling under increased GST, who will make do with the crumbs that fall from the tax cut table.

Sarcasm. Yeah Right.

Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit.  It relies on an exaggerated tone of voice to convey that you mean the opposite of what you’re saying.  Sarcasm assumes “zero intelligence”, which is why it is the “comic” device of choice for dumb people.  It flatters no-one.  But it’s even less flattering when it doesn’t credit the audience with the intelligence to see that it is, in fact, sarcasm.  Enter Tui.

Tui are clearly not banking on the collective intellect of their drinking public. While pure sarcasm assumes that one's audience has the brains to “get it”, Tui billboards don’t.  Their bitey “Yeah Right” end note makes the assumption that the Tui audience need to be told: “sarcasm lives here”.  They need the joke explained   These billboards are almost as bitter as the beer they sell.  They want you to sneer not to smile.  Laugh at a Tui billboard and the jokes on you.

Sadly, Tui may well have judged its audience bang on.  I recently wrote a blurb for a company profile, many a Tui drinker among them.   I mentioned in the piece that “the owners brought the company to life”.  “Oh no!” they informed me earnestly, “they didn’t buy the company, they started it up themselves.”

Moon and Night Sky

On summer nights when it is hot and clammy indoors, when you can feel the sweat beading and running down your back, take a few moments to stand outside and gaze into the sky.  There is so much happening up there.  The clouds, the stars, the colours, the many shades of darkness and shadow and myriad layers of quiet.

It's a rare kind of comfort that comes from the darkness of night, from the coolness of the moon.  It radiates with a light that washes everything in its cool and calming blueness.  It soaks into the fibre of one's being, seeps into your grain, relaxing, soothing and relieving the heat that bundles up in your muscles after the stress of days.

It certainly is a strange kind of an energy that emanates from the light of the moon.  Lonely, cool, calming and soulful, washing over everything like a silver blue rinse.  And it's comforting to look up past the stars, into all that deep night and know that we really are a part of something far huger than ourselves.

Ratana

Today is the anniversary of the birth of the prophet T.W. Ratana.  25th of January every year and the whole of Ratana as well as well wishers from all over the country converge upon Ratana Pa in Whanganui.

I attended the celebrations once with Sister Heeni, a well known and highly respected Maori Methodist deaconess and Charlie Fenwick, a Pakeha man and also highly respected in the Maori community and within the church.  Charlie had been a bridge builder and overseeing road-gangs had built bridges all over the north island.  Most of them are still around today.  He's well known and highly respected at Ratana Pa.

Walking up onto the marae atea at Ratana Pa on the 25th of January is an incredible experience.  The air trembles and vibrates with the punch of haka powhiri while the brass bands march on ahead splitting the air into matchwood.  It feels like a first contact between worlds, an eerie and profound experience where the crossing of cultures is as literal and present as it ever could be.

The Black Dogs

Strange thing happened to me recently.  I'd been feeling pretty bloody depressed.  It had been making me angry, resentful and incredibly bitter about a long term relationship that had ended some months previously.  For months I had felt extremely hard done by, and violently angry.

And then one day, I came home, put out the rubbish, walked in the door and decided to go evacuate my bowels, ie take a poo.  I closed the lid, flushed and gazed out the window for a few minutes.  I washed my hands and left the bathroom still feeling like unleashing hell upon the world.  I went and sat at my desk, looked at the computer and felt the sun on my shoulder and across my face.  After several minutes I became aware that for the most time in many months I felt completely peaceful.

It was as if a big scary menacing black dog had been living in my house for nine months, walking around behind me.  And then all of sudden, I go to the toilet, have a poo, I come out and he’s disappeared.  Gone without a trace.  Incredible.  Anger, embitterment, resent . . . after almost a whole year of solid intense hatred, it had vanished just like that.  I don’t know how it happened, but I’m not sticking around to ask.