Sin esperanza

She slid on to the floor,

Felt the threads of carpet burn,

Saw the despaired,

pale,

haunted,

detached

face stare back;

In the eyes.

Then the tears came. Free flowing.

It was just so desperate.

She’d felt it all week,

But now she was alone.

Alone to let those bare feet lightly dance on her

Titillate her,

Confuse her.

‘it’s all your fault’

 he said teasingly

‘if it wasn’t for your convincing arguments on polyamory,

we wouldn’t be in this triant mess’.

She wanted to correct him;

This mess, this mess?

This mess that I laid out my week

To shuffle through neck deep

While his bare feet and hands

Plucked the fruit of ideals of his early teen future?

This mess was nothing to do with being three;

And complete in three.

Because, that never happened.

It thought it happened.

But it only got that far.

But then the taxi came,

Just like it always does in movies.

 ‘you know I’m free after 9 both days’

but by then he had already pulled a face

while the car pulled away

a pale face of contrived gratitude and love

and another making light of a very deep, deep problem.

----------

She looked back at the gaunt face,

It was so miserable it brought tears.

A dialectical mirror of tears.

She can’t let it in now,

She can no longer get involved in these things.

She has herself to take care of.

Primarily.

This winter.

---------

The heat rose to her cheeks,

Her eyes smarted,

Her lip might’ve just wobbled.

The icy finger of reality

May have settled on her heart

‘I’m disappointed in your unreliability

I’m disappointed in your email;

And this,

I’m disappointed even in this medical certificate’.

She was surprised that she could stare this woman in the eyes,

Straight into her eyes,

And not cry.

‘I shouldn’t have trusted you’.

She ran up those stares,

And those stairs

To the bell of room 66

Paralysed woman who needed the toilet.

She stopped.

She thought.

She sank.

Her eyes smarted.

Again.

‘she’s frail and very weak these days

don’t take your chances’.

Her shaken fingers fixed the Velcro,

The buckles,

Check 1. Feet.

Hands on handlebar. Check 2.

Buckles, check, upright body.

Remote. Check. Check.

Wobbly voice. Frail voice.

‘help. It hurts. It –hu-urtsss. Help.

It hurts’.

Then the song switched on,

The composure wrought the coping body

‘Don't get any big ideas


They're not gonna happen


You paint your house white and feel the noise


But there'll be something missing



And now that you found it, it's gone


Now that you feel it, you don't


I'm not afraid
’.

She has a seizure.

I Panic.

The bell is pulled.

Three people come.

‘It's a lovely day tomorrow

Tomorrow is a lovely day

Come and feast your tear dimmed eyes

On tomorrow's clear blue skies

If today your heart is weary

If ev'ry little thing looks gray

Just forget your troubles and learn to say

Tomorrow is a lovely day

When I was young

My mother would watch me

On the days when it would rain

She'd see me so unhappy

My nose against

The dripping windowpane

And I would hear

Her singing this refrain’

And I burrow my face

Into her withered collar bone,

And seek comfort in this body,

In knowing that every breath I breathe on her,

Her skin feels

And she doesn’t feel alone.

We can’t feel alone in pain.

I stroke her hand

While she holds tightly to me,

Now I know what to hold on for dear life is.

Breathing. That soft skin of 93 years.

The wheezing of her lungs.

The SILENCE.

The morepork of the night,

Rattling my body.

Said it.

This morning I woke up to hearing a native birdcall echo around this Aro Valley, as the wintery sunshine made its appearance in fragmented kaleidoscopic shapes on my bedroom wall.

This morning I woke up to hearing about the beginnings of the Wairarapa Eco Farm, and their uncertain beginnings after coming to New Zealand from the Nederlands.

15 years, 4 children, and many risks later they have 100 customers, 3 workers and many volunteers who work tirelessly to get organic vegetables and fruit to Wellington every Thursday evening.

They are, simply put, committed to the ideal of healthy soil, healthy environment, healthy food; healthy people.

Healthy communities.

I hear these phrases loosely toyed with in conversations around me,

I hear the words organic, health and environment float about;

But often strung deftly in there is the word supermarket, polished, beautiful; bigger, better.

Tasteless.

Wellington is lucky to have green areas, many of them. Wellington is lucky to have cusped community gardens. But these are struggling to survive due to little commitment to the gritty feet, the mud under the fingernails; the burrowing fingers into the rich, moist soils of early winter.

Due also, perhaps, to little awareness of the inextricable links between a healthy land and a healthy stomach, we commit to our stomachs and bodies with the best knowledge that we have.

The bought and sold knowledge of instant gratification?

But imagine. An hour a week in a garden of sewing, growing, harvesting could bring hours of better living, happier thoughts, tastier food and bodies and minds that were more in tune with the pulses of the land; the same rhythm of this eternal river we float down.

That hour of wholesome food tending/gardening could reduce your medical bills and your stress levels. What if we were committed to the ideal of healthy soils, healthy environments, home grown food; healthy people? Healthy communities?

Would it really be so bad.

What if we knew it wasn’t always going to be easy; that it could take as much time the farmers at the Wairarapa Eco Farm took, as many risks and as much trial and error to sustain what they have now?

But what if we knew that we would be so much better for it in the end?

So now, with the sunshine out, the earth nicely enriched by the recent rain and the birds echoing around this luscious valley we have, put on some gardening gloves and plant some broad beans, corn salad, garlic, mustard greens, peas, radish and spinach!

Happy gardening!

in earnest

“and the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”

--arundhati roy

i sat down to write this ritualistically

with pen and paper

to only remember i don't have your new address.

i am listening to arcade fire,

which of late

has become my new soul stirrer.

for me it releases the hormones of

utter love, despair, hope and

general exhaustion at the incredible emotions that can

whisk us into being,

into being human.

it's so tiring to live life in its entirety;

but it is that concrete filled sack of fatigued bones

and that sleepy eye lid twinge

that satisfies

that allows this decaying body to sink into inspired peace.

its all of the above i feel now.

its all of the above that i felt

on sunday night

when i sat on r's bed

and watched him read out

a letter/card you wrote to him from india,

when he had just returned to nz.

the tiny writing,

the revelation,

the regret,

the inspiration.

the paths of pursuit;

the microcosm of tolstoy

the warm embrace his writing gave/gives you.

the stirrings.

i was held captive

controlled by the power of your thought,

the selfless pursuit for a better being,

the demeaning ways upon yourself;

the ideals.

oh, the ideals.

and deep within me,

when i saw a solitary tear glisten down r's cheek

i realised just how much i wanted to know you more.

how i wanted to talk about all these things

you mentioned in the letter.

the ways of being moral.

of what it is to be.

to be.

i became acutely nostalgic for the first few times we hung out,

(almost a year ago now....)

the music, the thoughts, the late nights.

the wonder.

the endless river.

and i wonder what happened.

i firmly believe we don't live in one moment,

that we cannot afford to hang onto one facet of a person.

i feel each person is a liquid cosmos unto themselves,

a colourful world of meaning, quest, fragility and knowledge

that ebbs, flows, and shifts.

so i don't lament on the interactions we have had since,

i merely wonder whether our priorities are shifting

and whether the alcohol shadowed nights are a habit?

or individually have sincere meaning?

i don't expect you to hold the answers or to grasp the meaning

of what i am trying to articulate with my limited control of language.

i just hope that we can be children together again,

without letting the earnestness of adulthood bury our thoughts.

love.

Vouched for Seed

I have had many a garden shaped revelation.

But it took me exactly 23 years to connect it to the bigger picture.

A few weeks ago I was caressing a furry mallow plant leaf in my own back yard when a familiar face popped over the fence line.

In the mid-morning, golden sunshine of Aro Valley she told me about one of the former tenants of this house (I now live in) having an epiphany in this very same garden, and then in the Aro community gardens. He had come from Chile to study something obscure, and very un-garden related in Wellington.

But stone by stone, turned this trashed piece of land into almost a Piet Oudolf vision.

His garden curiosity took him to the Aro Community Gardens, which set him well on the path of ecology and community gardening.

A few years later an email from him appeared out of the ether talking about how, now, he made a living out of his passion; he taught, and encouraged Chilean kids gardening and permaculture principals.

I looked back down at this mallow leaf, and dug my toes deeper into this almost sandy, starved soil of the summers and overflowed with gratitude that such a story could be passed on; that such a story could empower.

This clipping of history resurfaced last night when I sat on the floor of the Sustainability Trust listening to short speeches by local growers, food creators and consumers. It was the launch of the Local Food Week (April 2^nd – 7^th), and the aim was to inspire local (approx. 200 km radius from Welington) food production and consumption.

I felt so wholesome listening to all of this, and returned home to a moonlit garden loyally awaiting when I would next give it attention.

Happy Autumn! Happy Harvest!