Location

Sunday Morning – Home At Last

Two days after

I arrived in Otorohanga

from a Catholic island

in Micronesia

I went out for

a Sunday-morning

jog around the town.

That was long ago,

when I still jogged.

What struck me the most

was that more cars

were parked outside

the bowling club

than outside all

of the town’s churches

combined.

Aotearoa!

I knew I was home at last.

                 Guam To Otorohanga

In 1988

I relocated with my family

from the small Micronesian island of Guam

to the even smaller rural King Country town of Otorohanga.

The change was, surprisingly,

devoid of any particularly radical shocks.

I had expected and anticipated

the obvious difference in climate

from tropical to never-all-that-hot,

which was for me a welcome pleasure,

and in contrast to Guam’s almost birdlessness,

thanks to an accidentally introduced species of snake,

Otorohanga seemed to be almost lousy with birdsong.

Both places are basically rural,

the more urban, touristy district on Guam

being on the other side of the island to where we’d lived.

Otorohanga’s Maori people, furthermore,

didn’t seem all that different to Guam’s Chamorros.

What did seem odd to me, though,

were all those Pākehā men wearing shorts

and those shin-high rubber boots,

gumboots, my first Kiwi friend told me with a grin,

on the main shopping street.

It took a while for me to grasp that phenomenon.

                   Don’t Matter Where

Whilst perambulating the canine unit

on 29 August 2009,

I observed a spiritually

coloured sunset

and listened

to the riotous

and beautiful

insistence of

various birds

in various trees.

Not a suicide bomber anywhere,

although the taggers and

the litterbugs in the park and

the arrogant-idiot drivers,

whether hormonal or not,

and miscellaneous other sociopaths

do their best to add ugliness

and generally

fuck things up

for people they don’t know.

They can’t fuck me up, though,

’cause I’m fucked up already,

and all that peaceful pleasantness

is wasted on me, anyhow.

        Any Reasonable Perspective

There it is:

my household’s infrastructure –

insignificant from any reasonable perspective,

yet essential for my insignificant efforts

to make it through the day.

               February in the Waikato

February in the Waikato

is too hot and sticky,

and at nine in the morning

the sun’s too high

for my taste and for that of my dog,

so we had to get to Day’s Park when it was still dark

if I was to avoid the murderous drive-time traffic.

February in the Waikato

is when my jasmine is long gone,

my marigolds start dying off,

and my impatiens begin to fade.

My tomato plant produced abundant foliage

in February,

but little that was red

until the last day of the month.

February in the Waikato

does at least bring a fairly low power bill

a few jalapeños from my plant,

and generally an easy time of it

finding a handy car park at the Pak’n Save.

February in the Waikato

is, however, most of all

fly season.

         Specialisation

I remember

from several years ago

when I still maintained delusions

about being an actor,

filling in the time

between my arrival in Auckland,

early to beat the traffic,

and the start of my futile-but-fun acting classes,

walking around that part of the city

and seeing in front of a Herne Bay villa

a sign saying

‘Doctors on Jervois’

and being disappointed

by not seeing under it

a caveat pronouncing:

‘Specialising in Diseases of the Rich.’

        Exotic Murder Locales

I read mostly mystery novels,

and for the past few years I’ve taken to reading

ones set in what are for me

exotic, far-off places

rather than in familiar settings.

Even though I lived in Los Angeles on and off

from 1968 to 1972, however,

the LA of the twenties through the fifties

remains a foreign country to me.

                Night Life

Walking through

what’s called the entertainment district

after dark

for the first time in many months,

it was impossible not to notice

that many of the restaurants and clubs

I’d enjoyed when I hadn’t been so poor,

had closed,

and many that I might have enjoyed

but never did

because they’d opened after

my situation had deteriorated too far,

had also closed,

so I never would enjoy them.

New restaurants and clubs,

many of them horribly enticing,

that I’d probably never have the dosh to check out,

had replaced most of those that’d closed,

testimony to capitalism’s capacity

for creative destruction.

It reminded me of when

I’d been living in Hollywood,

except Hamilton has

fewer marvellous things to do and eat

that I can’t afford

than had been the case

when my home had been

in Hollywood.

Any one person’s capacity

for such night-life luxuries

is limited, anyhow

              Fantasyworld

My real-life world

for most of my existence

having been, for the most part,

a lonely, unfulfilling vacuum,

filled with

games of solitaire,

I’ve lived mostly in fantasies,

and still do.

My fantasies, of course,

have never actualised,

but when they’ve come close

the outcomes have always been

far from what I’ve imagined.

                      BFD

So here I am,

insulated from terrorism,

able to survive on my pension,

suffering from the repercussions

of having had an abusive nuclear family

and an unhappy childhood,

and feeling guilty about it

when confronted daily by images

of childhoods grossly abused by war,

but my suffering is suffering nonetheless,

and it makes me a pain in the ass

to all who know me.

Shit.

   Size Matters, Unfortunately

Considering the behaviour

of the governments of

the United States, China, and Russia,

with Brazil’s government apparently

doing its best to emulate them,

I’d say that the bigger a country is

the greater its government’s capacity

for evil and destruction.

I don’t know that much about India.