The Seasons & The Weather

       Commenting About The Weather

“Damn!” he said, “It sure is hot!”,

then looked at me as if expecting

some appreciative corroboration

of his insightful observation.

All I could think of to say was,

“What the fuck do you expect of South Texas in August?”

Thought for a Sub-Zero Morning

One of the many things

that I disliked

about living on

a tropical island

was the absence

of autumn,

winter, and spring,

and the temperature range

being the same

every day,

rainy season and dry,

except during

typhoons.

                    … What A Man’s Gotta Do

I don’t know why I was so spaced out that morning,

but I left for the dog exercise park

on a day characterised

by a disturbed westerly flow

having forgotten to take my umbrella with me.

Although the sky was blue-dome when we left the car,

I knew that our chances of a dry, full-length ramble were slim,

and sure enough, a half an hour later,

as we were crossing the lawn toward the stick tree

I felt a gust of wind at my back,

turned, and saw a mass of black clouds

approaching rapidly

from the southwest.

Without hesitation I started striding briskly directly back toward the car,

the fox terrier following.

It started spitting as I descended the ramp past the boathouse,

then began raining for real after I’d strode

maybe twenty metres along the riverside footpath.

I ran,

with a thudding, lumbering gait,

the last eighty metres of so

to the Swarbrick Landing car park

and the shelter of my funky old Ford.

It was the first time I’d run in years.

                     Layers

One morning at the park in early April

I had to adjust the layering

of my outer garments

eight times in fifty minutes

as the sun seemed to be playing peek-a-boo with the clouds

and the breeze rose and fell.

For me that’s one of the more lovely things

about living where I live.

I like weather that does something

and doesn’t just sit there.

        Precipitative Indifference

I do love rain,

as did my flowers, herbs, tomatoes, and jalapeños,

back when I cultivated them,

and rain on the roof is one of my favourite sounds,

but when it really pisses down

it did put a crimp on my ability

and inclination

to exercise my dog

when she was alive,

and also to exercise myself

with long, solitary walks

since her demise.

The rain, of course,

doesn’t give a shit

one way or the other

about my attitude toward it.

          Aguas de Amazonia

One chilly, rainy morning,

with my wipers on and off

as I’d driven to the dog park,

I’d been listening

to a Brazilian ensemble called Uakti

playing minimalist compositions by Philip Glass

called Aguas de Amazonia

on mostly home-made percussion instruments and flutes

made from whatever they’d had lying around.

The river was up, but the rain had lightened,

so we were able to make

a complete circuit of the park –

albeit shorter than our usual one

and no game of stick.

As I strode, with the aid of a brolly,

along the surging, rising river,

the somewhat complex last four bars

that had been playing

before I’d switched off the ignition

engulfed my consciousness continuously

and guided my feet

in a magical combination

of mantra and marching music.

Music about the Amazon by the rainy, rushing Waikato:

it worked.

           Here it Comes

That just-before-it-rains

grey-sky thing

with the high overcast,

decreasing atmospheric pressure,

a breeze picking up from the northwest,

and the air dancing

with negative ions –

that’s when the weather

feels best to me.

     Remnants of a Depression

I love rain,

but when the wispy remnants

of an early-summer

subtropical depression caught me out

on the way home from the 4-Square,

the droplets blowing onto my sleeves

despite my umbrella

and the air’s oppressive stickiness

had a telling effect

on my ageing body

and I spent the rest of the day feeling unwell.

My plants loved it, though,

as did, apparently,

the neighbourhood birds,

who tucked into the birdseed in the feeder

on the wall of my front patio.

How the neighbourhood cats,

who keep hoping to get lucky with the birds,

reacted to that wet warm front

I couldn’t say.

                      A Cloudy Sunrise

The sunrise refracting through clouds

during my morning walk

temporarily distracted me

from my sorrow, desperation, and despair.

Clouds make everything so much better.

When I returned home, however,

everything was the same.

Cloudy sunrises don’t last.

       Vernal Indication

I’m not usually out after dark,

but when I did come home

after an evening performance

in late September

I crunched two snails underfoot

in the three steps

between my gate and my door,

without even looking down,

thereby convincing myself

that Spring had indeed arrived.

   Unseasonal Visits

I wonder if

the rare fly

that comes in my open doorway

when it’s well into autumn

does so

because it’s lonely,

or don’t flies get lonely?

Hell if I know.

     Limits To Comprehension

Wind, rain, lightning, hail –

these I can understand.

Money, religion, egotistical power lust –

these make about as much sense to me

as wearing a double-breasted suit.

The Return of Personal Stuff

    The Illusion That Is Me

I know that I’m still handsome,

for an old bloke –

what a fucking joke –

and have wide shoulders,

a powerful voice,

and a strong presence,

but all this only gives

the people I meet

and even those I’ve known somewhat

for years

the wrong

impression.

I’m really

an insecure

nine-year-old boy

with no self-confidence,

low self esteem,

and no self-belief

who’s afraid of everybody,

and have been since 1955.

                      Vertigo

I don’t know if it’s all in my mind

or just in my middle ear,

but vertigo’s been a part of my life

for as long as I can remember.

It’s not that I’m afraid of heights –

I can enjoy the view

out of a twentieth-floor window or from an airplane –

but whenever I’m unsure of my underpinnings,

whether I’m walking across

the outside lane of a windy bridge

or changing a light bulb three steps up a ladder,

an icy sensation shoots back and forth

between my ankles and my knees,

I become dizzy, disoriented, or both,

my sense of balance seems to desert me,

and I have to fight to prevent myself

from lurching into a disastrous fall.

          I Am A Thing

Although some may find

things that I do

to be competently useful

or mildly entertaining,

I find it hard to believe

that anybody gives a shit

about what goes on in my mind

when I’m alone –

which is most of the time –

or about my feelings

or my pain.

My experience has been

that other people –

and even my dog –

behave toward me

as if I were a thing,

rather than a human being,

and I long ago came to accept their judgement.

                   Motivations Obscure To Me

I’ve observed these people –

on TV and when I’m out and about –

who have full beards and shaved heads,

and it’s beyond my capacity for empathy

to understand in any meaningful way

why they do.

It’s the same with elaborately trimmed-and-shaped beards

that require high maintenance,

and trendy hairstyles

that require frequent barbering

and expensive product.

Words come to mind –

fashion, machismo, vanity, narcissism,

obsessive affectation –

and I know what all those words mean,

but I’m incapable of knowing

what those things feel like.

Although I did experiment once,

extremely briefly,

with a goatee when in my early twenties,

I stopped shaving,

or allowing barbers to shave,

any part of me when I was nineteen

because I didn’t like to do it,

didn’t like the way it felt,

either during or after the process,

and could find no compelling, rational reason

for doing it at all,

and that’s it.

               A Brief Assessment

I’m just a psychosocially deficient old man

who occasionally churns out amusing words.

                        I Don’t Feel Ethnic

I don’t feel ethnic

even though I was born into a definite ethnic group.

Ashkenazic.

Eastern European Jewish.

Two grandparents from what is now Poland

and two from what’s now the Ukraine.

Still, I love most of the ethnic food I grew up with –

chopped liver and sour green tomatoes and kasha knishes

and sable, which is smoked black cod, and,

although I haven’t had any in many years,

gefilte fish with hot horseradish – comfort food, all,

but I also derive comfort from stuff from the hot bread shops,

and just about every other kind of ethnic food,

and when I cook it’s more likely to be

some form of Mexican or Italian or Indian or something

I’ve improvised

than Ashkenazic.

I don’t deny my heritage,

but the religion part,

and most of the in-group cultural stuff of it never stuck.

I guess the thing is that although

I’m a member of the tribe for sure,

I just don’t dance with the rest of them

around some metaphoric campfire.

I don’t dig klezmer,

and I didn’t dig it when another member of the tribe

came up to me at a recent function

and told me an ethnocentric, ethnic-stereotype joke,

having lost my ability to appreciate

humour based on ethnic stereotypes – except Australians –

many decades ago.

I didn’t feel simpático with that landsmann,

to mix my Spanish with my Yiddish.

What I felt was alienated from my roots,

just as I do from the wider culture.

   My Own Confirmation Bias

When I don’t feel confident

about being able

to do something competently,

but have no choice but to do it anyway,

and it comes out okay,

this result has no effect

on my underlying lack of confidence

at all.

            I Come Last

One of the many things

that I internalised as child,

having learnt it within

the dynamic of my family,

that my life in general reinforced,

and that became solidified during the years

when I was primarily a spouse and parent

is that when I am involved or engaged

with one or more other people,

my interests, my preferences,

my feelings, my desires,

my needs, my time – my life,

definitely have less importance

than those of the others.

I accept this as natural and inevitable,

but I don’t like it.

         Early in the Morning

For a long time now,

the worst part of almost every day for me

has been that early-morning moment

when I grudgingly have to acknowledge

that I’ve awakened and am unable

to get back to sleep.

From time to time, however,

things become worse,

such as when I’m at my desk before dawn

and am unable to distract myself sufficiently

to maintain mental numbness.

       Without When Within

It got to the point

at which even whisky gave no comfort

from my rattlings about in my own absurdity;

I had no children, or old men like myself,

around to connect me

with card games or dominoes

and laughter about nothing.

I no longer had even pathetic congress

with the plants in my pots.

No new facebook notifications.

No new emails.

No phone calls or text messages,

as usual.

No hugs and cuddles.

No cosy time-passing.

No sharing of secrets.

No enthusiasm or expectations

that the courage required to hit the world

would result in reward.

Of all the music in the world,

much of it at my fingertips,

I didn’t know what to play –

something that would reach me

but not really touch me

would have been most appropriate for the situation,

but the situation seemed incurable, anyhow,

even with jazz fusion.

           Within When Without

Fear afflicts me

most of the time.

It afflicts me the worst

when I’m away from my hole.

All sorts of fears afflict all sorts of people,

but – except for vertigo –

most of the common ones,

such as the fear of death,

bother me little or not at all.

What terrorises me, of course,

is people.

Okay, most of the people who take my money

in the shops and so forth

are like balm.

But when I venture into

the world of people

who may give a shit

or should give a shit

or pretend to give a shit

or who I want to give a shit,

I’ve learnt to keep my defences up,

and let the performer hide the child,

being highly suspicious of what is actually there.

My form may be within your range of vision, y’see,

but I’m not there.

Authority

               Street-Corner Obedience

I cross Claudelands Road

at the CBD end of the bridge

several times a week.

I know how the lights there work

and I know how the traffic flows,

and if no cars are heading southbound

in Victoria Street’s left lane

I cross without waiting for the light.

Actually, I never consult the light.

The same at the mid-street traffic island.

If no cars are approaching,

or if they’re stopped at the light,

I just keep walking.

Many people, however,

always push the microbe-encrusted silvery button

and stand there waiting for the walk-don’t-walk sign

to flash its little green walking man.

Sometimes these people give me the evil eye

for ignoring the lighted little-red-man symbol,

even when no cars are in sight.

One half-bent-over fortyish man

once gave me a shy, conspiratorial, bad-teeth smile

and said with a nervous giggle,

as if I were the naughty kid he’d envied in year four,

‘Crossing before it changes green, eh?’

as I walked past him

This raises the question

of the purpose of walk-don’t-walk lights.

Are they there to control traffic?

To ensure pedestrian safety?

Even when no traffic visibly threatens that safety?

Or is it to enforce Obedience?

                   Rebellion ― Sorta

It was 1986, if I remember correctly.

A 12-year-old boy showed me an editorial he’d written

denouncing his school’s dress code’s

prohibition of boys wearing earrings to school.

He submitted as his reasons

that it was old-fashioned

and the school needed to keep up with the times

and to stop oppressing young people,

and also that the prohibition

was a violation of his free speech,

his earring being statement of rebellion against the powerful,

expressing to the world that he was a rebel.

I agreed with him that the restriction was onerous,

as it discriminated according to sex for no rational cause,

but questioned other parts of his opinion.

For one thing, it wasn’t a new, young-people-only thing,

as I’d had friends, men then in their forties,

who’d worn earrings twenty years previously.

For another thing, I didn’t think it was young people,

or rebels of any sort,

who owned the gold and silver mines

or otherwise made big bucks

from extending the market for a type of jewellery,

or by producing and marketing it,

but heartlessly exploitative global corporations.

I went to the trouble because

he was in my Gifted and Talented Education journalism class.

I wonder if it raised his consciousness.

      Guilty of Contempt

Law courts throughout the world –

in the US and the UK

and Russia and China

and the Middle East and Mexico

and so on and so on –

with their solemn pomposity

and disregard for justice

are, overwhelmingly, jokes.

Only not funny ones.

       As The Ice Melts

All of those people,

or almost all of them,

residents of islands and lowlands,

ordinary people too poor to escape,

thrashing about

fighting each other

over nothing

or what will soon be nothing

for the sake of something to do,

as a distraction

from hopelessness.

So what?

They won’t have my surname.

If any of them went to school with me,

or educated me on the playground,

I won’t know it.

My children won’t know them.

So they’ll starve or murder or survive

or all or none of the above

as our species culls itself

and those with money

extend their control over the rest of us

who survive above the waterline,

employing thugs to bully and murder

those for whom their smooth bullshit

has become meaningless

and who therefore dare to resist

as our species culls itself

with endless combat everywhere.

Pointing blame-fingers at each other

as if that meant anything.

         Think Small for Survival

The larger the scale of the organisation,

whether it’s political or economic or business

or social or religious or educational,

the greater the certainty

that it will be inhumanly oppressive.

     World & Domestic Affairs

I watched Aljazeera on mute

and wondered in despair

about how so many people

all over the world

are able to treat each other

like less than human,

less than shit,

with such casual,

strutting, unfeeling violence,

for reasons,

when viewed from a distance,

that are blatantly stupid, pointless, and ugly,

reasons that almost nobody

here in out-of-the-way

provincial New Zealand

would even know about

or think twice about if they did.

           Russians and Ukrainians

I find it hard to get as worked up

over Russia bullying the Ukrainians

as much as I suppose I should.

Maybe it’s because I have trouble telling them apart,

or because my grandparents fled from Kiev

to get away from both nationalities.

            Better Polled Than Poleaxed

Even though I was half drunk

and in the mood to be left alone,

I was happy to cooperate

when the woman from the polling company

phoned to ask for my opinions.

Responding to a poll,

particularly a political poll,

is the only time that I feel that I have

any meaningful power.

I wouldn’t like to feel that way every day,

or even particularly often, though.

                     Activism

A whole lot of what is wrong

with how people live,

and organise ourselves into systems,

and work within those fucked-up systems

to bring out the worst in ourselves,

thereby being likely to make

the lives of our progeny living hell,

has become, over the years,

unmistakably fucking obvious to me,

but I have no idea

of what I can do about it

within my pathetically limited skill set,

personal resources,

and personality limitations.

            The Still, Small Voice

The handsome young Israeli spokesman

fronted up to the cameras

to defend some horridly inhuman

Israeli government policies and actions,

his face saying that he knew

that what he was doing was wrong,

but that he was determined to defend it at all costs,

and that he was terribly afraid.

Self-Confidence, Testosterone, & Righteousness

I see these TV images of men,

mostly young ones,

all over the world,

brandishing lethal objects,

bristling with egotistical confidence and testosterone,

convinced of their own righteousness,

gleefully bullying and killing people who are weaker

and less in love with violence

than they are,

and wonder that I’ve managed to survive

this long.