So you lovely ocean at my doorstep a bathtub almost full then half full tepid, warm and freezing
my blood pressure rises and falls at whim sending my head spinning and a cold shower is but a bitter consolation
I want to swim in you my dear friend the sea I check my land, air, water app for the key If it's red, I must not swim E.coli lurks in the wake of a storm But orange is just a warning, like don't swallow the sea just swim in me and I do
I wallow, kick, swim, lie back and adore stand, watch through waves, admire the sea floor, random starfish, seaweed I adorn myself with kelp bulbs, imagine sharks but briefly, watch the sun rise above the pines
watch the ferry leave, see latecomers running, coats on unaware I'm there, neck deep or floating sometimes kicking vigorously dodging waves if it's an orange day my mouth closed or practising my newly learned freestyle face down
At age 5 I would shiver out of the water standing in hot sand, teeth chattering covered in goosebumps, towel around my shoulders, licking an ice-cream then giddy and sick on the sea-saw
At 73, emboldened by you, my darling sea fearlessly entering you, unfazed by your freezing arms, blood rushing to greet you
It was the 70’s sort of mid-way or thereabouts Auckland coming of age, Antoines & Clichy Ad Agency reps being wooed all over town wine for a full-colour triple-page spread
Rick was his name, a groovy photographer fresh from the Outback, his camera slung carelessly across his neck, the strap festooned with luggage labels like a Pacifika lei
He wore these labels like a pro and I guess he was they flew him to Huka Lodge with some journos put him up where Zane Grey once slept some rustic extravagance (I did the expenses)
The journos caught trout at Lake Taupo doing the sums, it seemed viable they’d paid a scuba diver to watch out for them feeding their fishing lines for the story
It was a great story, Muldoon and some sheep on the front cover of the South Pacific issue and some incorrect stats about Maori infant mortality – hey, they only had three days and
hey they sold a triple-page full-colour spread to the likes of Philip Morris – it’s a while ago now I can’t be sure but mostly back then it was tobacco companies funding TIME MAGAZINE
souls sold over flash white tablecloths mostly men in suits possibly French wines we girls in the back office doing the sums typing up the invitations making reservations
Time has moved on and now we have Casey bringing back the good old days (a ciggie with your lunch anyone …)
Orange road cones appear to incite brain fog community Facebook pages bedecked with outrage traffic disrupted, slowed, held up, drivers fume and the sea lap laps at the road edge unaware
and the sea laps, the sun shines, the birds sing
all over the motu, angry motorists decry cycle lanes fury spills over orange road cones onto Facebook people calculate the lost seconds, minutes even imagine hours of their happy lives destroyed
and the sea laps, the wind blows, the birds fly
sometimes traffic lights accompany the road cones those infuriating orange road cones (don’t you wish you had shares in the company who makes them) people idle away in cars waiting, waiting, fuming
and the sea lap-laps, the sun shines, clouds scuttle
late model tinted window turbo charged saloons rev their engines impatiently owners sweat on leather seats, cursing, checking Apple watches fearing the lost seconds, minutes possibly hours
and the sea splashes, the birds cry, clouds fly
European sports cars, boat trailers, camper vans, double cab utilities even caravans big diesel buses and electric build your dreams ageing Tesla, Jaguars with branded spotlights
everyone is in their car, or so it seems
and the sea lap laps and the birds sing
and then one day all the road cones float away and the sea swallows them all
Cross your fingers we used to say as kids, when we heard the siren saw an ambulance racing somewhere blow your nose we said and hope (because it rhymed) you never go In one of those
Except of course, unless you’re dying and that’s a good enough reason perhaps to dial 111 although nice if someone else can do it for you because it’s tricky assessing life and death when you’re worried about inconveniencing everyone
So, we were super impressed with the 20 something driver who backed down our driveway (you have to see the tricky bend at the top to get this) right almost to our front door and oh golly, I wonder what the neighbours were thinking
the teenager (well he looked that age) with dreadlocks, head paramedic entered our shoeless house in his boots (it wasn’t a good time to announce our house rules) followed by a bright-faced young woman who as it turned out was a trainee and full of smiles - they all were
lots of explanations, questions, kindness and nek minnit I’m in the back of the ambulance (no chance to cross my fingers or even blow my nose) and the trainee girl full of smiles is putting in her very first canula OUCH but hey, there’s a first time for everything me in the ambo and her with the canula hubby hot on our tail in his car
Would you like some fentanyl? I was surprised such a nice offer and in shock I declined worried that I might be out to it before we arrived at the hospital and I wanted to be compos mentis (you know, so I could explain to the doctors just how I was feeling) and now on reflection I wish I’d said, yes thank you
Anyway, it wasn’t life threatening even if It had felt like it at the time with a heart rate out of control, chest pressure and woozy woozy Like I was dying I told my GP a week or so later … when she explained I’d had a bad reaction to the antibiotics she’d prescribed
And Hutt Hospital has to be nicest place (via the back door) if you think you might be dying
I was walking down the zig zag this week and peeked over the fence at my old garden (roses now in bloom), got a bit nostalgic and wrote a poem about the Nor’wester …
then, this morning a dear friend in Sunny Nelson sent me a photo of her blooms
November means roses erupting all over the show bundles of scented beauty in clusters on arbours standard and staked, rambling and rambunctious glossy leaves before the aphids arrive, thorns rise up and out in defence protection agents before grandma or whomever arrives with secateurs
quickly, take yourself down to the garden to breathe in the fragrances, heavy, light some say green tea or honey, but rush, rush why don’t you before that damn Nor’wester arrives to startle the tuis, shift the kereru, entwining cabbage tree flora to sway and dangle
why did you plant those roses right here in line of the wind, in clay soil near the sea, surrounded by manuka, kanuka, kawakawa, beech those cabbage trees, the flax bushes, the kowhai did you think your Constance Spry would not fly away shedding petals in November?
But still, year in, year out you cosset them Your favourite flowers, out of place in your native garden where geckos manoeuvre unseen where tuatara might once have been, but no you wanted roses, by the sea, so you could glimpse perfection, inhale summer then you curse the Nor’wester
You will learn your times table under Mr Luxon Turn off your mobile phone and focus in class You will have multiple assessments under Erika And you’d better make sure that you can pass
Forget the Arts you silly child, ‘cos they won’t make a buck For you, or for anyone, and it’s not just down to luck You’ll need to learn to multiply, to know how to cook the books Make a spreadsheet work for you and not just for the crooks
How to cancel a ferry build and make it look like saving And when the bill gets larger, pretend you’re well just waving And not drowning – mathematicians are not frowning Decide to build a bridge instead calculations in your head
A tunnel here, a tunnel there, and speed limits upping everywhere Phonetics will only get you so far but speed will move your motorcar And should you crash, your head might smash, and oh alas A and E is not so flash, they’re understaffed I hear…
There’s tele doctors everywhere and if things get really rough We could fundraise for a helicopter just before you snuff it But never fear, a plan is here, mathematics to the rescue Let me test you, oh what a shame, the accident has hurt your brain
Hold up your hand and count to five, to prove to me you’re still alive We’ll pop you in the hallway while we ask our 14 layers to assess The likelihood that you’ll survive, oh no, you cannot count to five You’ve died… well, that’s not good, too late to test your mathematics
A hymn or two, perhaps a poem, let’s hope the eulogists are known wordsmiths or they could recite the ten times table
I inadvertently generated 98 comments on Facebook. Admittedly, many of those 98 comments are my responses to the comments. The topic is the devastating news that Alice Munro, a literary hero to many of us, had willingly and knowingly, covered up the sexual abuse of her nine-year-old daughter.
What are we to do with this news? I was first alerted when a Creative Writing teacher I admire, posted on Twitter that she will never teach Munro again. I was taken aback by this and even once I knew the full story, I wondered if this cancelling of Munro was the right thing. It ran through my mind that teaching Munro in the light of this new evidence would be, well potentially fascinating. But then I stopped and thought about this and realised it would be vicarious and abusive to have students interrogating stories she has written that allude to such abuse… something akin to abusing her daughter all over again.
Another friend described what Munro has done as reprehensible but also ‘moral frailty’ and I liked this description. But it also appears to forgive or excuse, and I found myself, to some extent wanting to do this. Someone else in the lengthy thread mentioned that often mothers who have themselves been abused are more likely to turn a blind eye when abuse happens to their own daughters. I recall a school friend who I stayed in touch with, she married early and had four or more children. She married the boy who used to deliver our fruit and veges. We knew his Dad and we knew him. He had the loveliest open face and was a hard-working reliable young man with an alcoholic father. Roll forward many years, and my friend left her hard-working husband whom we all really liked and admired. It turned out he had been physically abusive. It turned out too that my school-friend’s father had also hit her mother. She told me her mother had ignored her black eyes.
Someone else posted a link to an article written by the daughter of Jan Morris, another one of my literary heroes. ‘Conundrum’ was a ground-breaking memoir in 1974. Morris’s travel writing and more recent musings on ageing have accompanied me throughout my life. I’ve admired what appeared in the public eye as an almost seamless transition from one identity as a male journalist on Hilary’s expedition to Everest, to a gender reassignment and an ongoing loving relationship with her ex-wife (they divorced but continued to live together). It’s a kind of fairy tale. Alas, Morris’s daughter Suki Morys who was only six when her then father began his transition, sees Morris and their journey as parent and daughter in quite a different light.
Suki wrote an account of her childhood and confusion in the British Sunday Times. She claims that Morris was ‘selfish, neglectful, sexist and deeply unkind’. Gosh. And as we all recognise, every child has their own version of childhood and accounts from siblings and parents may vary. Of course, it is entirely possible Morris was all of these things and also an extraordinary writer.
But when sexual abuse occurs as in the case of the Munro cover-up, there is no alternative version. And deeply concerning is that Munro knew this would eventually be known. Such lack of courage not to have faced this head on, and to hell with her literary legacy. So, we her readers are left to loathe, cancel, or try to understand… the more comments that came into my thread, the more I realise it is impossible to understand.
A few years ago, I watched a short clip of Sam Hunt and Gary McCormack visiting a Girls School somewhere in New Zealand. I cannot locate the clip on you-tube anymore, so perhaps it has been removed. It was in the height of their fame as minstrels and roving poets. Indeed, I recall returning to New Zealand from my OE, living in Auckland and being enchanted by the sight of Sam Hunt leaping a small picket fence outside a pub or café in Parnell to entertain patrons. It looked entirely spontaneous. But I digress. The clip I am speaking of, has disturbed me ever since. Gary was wearing some very short shorts, Kiwi-bloke-style and I think Sam was in his usual stovepipe attire. The thing that startled me was these young schoolgirls sitting doe-eyed and attentive (in the company of two adult women teachers watching over them), as Sam read a poem overladen with double entendre. From my observation of the short clip, the young schoolgirls were oblivious to the sexual innuendo, but the teachers could not have been. I was struck by the power imbalance and manipulation at work. And yes, I know, it was a different era, and I might have even laughed myself, had I watched it back then. I wonder how the teachers who sat there, back then, if they reflect, feel. What might they have done? To react would have drawn attention to the inappropriate insinuations in the ‘poem’… letting it wash over their heads as it seemed to, may well have been the right choice. Our lives on replay are complex as we move from an era where men set the agenda more often than not about what was or wasn’t okay.
Recently, my book group read ‘Life with Picasso’ by Francoise Gilot. It generated really strong feelings and responses. Personally, I found the book riveting and felt that Francoise Gilot had reclaimed her agency and her art along with candidly admitting to her own complicity in the acceptance of what was a very abusive relationship. I learned so much about Picasso the man and the artist through her lens and I was full of admiration for the way she reclaimed her space in the art world against all odds. The word ‘hate’ was used in regard to Picasso in some of our vivid responses to this work. Some in the group felt hate was far too strong an emotion and others were unequivocal. We bring our own stories to our reading of any novel or memoir, and I never fail to find new ways to see the world through belonging to a book group.
We read to find ourselves. Do we write to find ourselves? Was Alice Munro writing these stories because she failed in her moral duty to take the right action for her daughter, herself and her family?
But, Munro was not alone, the whole extended family were complicit in the cover-up. Her father and stepmother, even after hearing of the abuse, allowed her to go on holiday year after year to see her mother and this monster Gerald Fremlin. The idea that the father insisted her sister accompany her to protect her beggar’s belief. Imagine two daughters being molested by your ex-wife’s husband? It seems the entire family was willing to keep the silence for the sake of Munro’s literary legacy… until now where they appear to be fully supportive of Andrea Robin Skinner’s story.
And then of course, the discourse will continue, whether to cancel, Munro, (indeed all the literary Monsters) and I’ve ordered ‘Monsters’ by Claire Dederer from my local library (as urged to do in my thread of 98 comments and climbing).
Most of my literary friends are judging Munro ruthlessly and without reservation. I blame my Catholic childhood where all sins could be expunged, or forgiven with a few devout Hail Marys, and a really fervent Glory Be. I want to understand the complexity of her feelings for such a ruthless swine as Fremlin. With all the public prestige that she had, to think she needed his affirmation even more than the safety of her own daughter and grandchildren.
Is this why we read and why we write. The answers continue to elude us. The same stories repeated as if new and ghastly, yet really on replay.
And here is a brutal take down of Munro’s legacy (ouch)..
a curious half hour 