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.

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.

Life At Home

          1 February 2014 – 5:45 am

I’m listening to music that speaks to my soul,

drinking hot coffee,

and reading a good book.

I have three bottles of wine in the pantry,

two bottles of beer in the fridge,

some sleeping pills in a vial in my office,

four plums in a bowl and one in my belly,

and a bit of money in my pocket.

No point lamenting the likely loss of love

or the unlikeliness of ever experiencing it again.

         Afternoon Dilemma

Every afternoon,

after tucking away my daily meal,

I settle down in my favourite chair

with a mystery novel on my lap

and a bottle of plonk on the table,

not far from my right elbow,

and confront the dilemma

of which takes precedence.

The bottle will inevitably make the book

irrelevant,

but I do enjoy reading what is for me

the literary equivalent of comfort food.

I know I should limit my interaction

with the bottle – and its successor –

to occasional wee sips,

but I never do.

The book will be there the next day.

I’m never all that certain that I will.

     Mundane Everyday Soul

Traversing the familiar tracks

from bed to toilet to computer and back,

which I do daily, and often

– and likely do nightly in my sleep

without remembering –

is something ingrained in my being.

It’ll mean nothing

and be nonexistent

once I’m incapacitated or dead.

                     With the Sound on Mute:

watching daytime TV during August 2014 included seeing:

young Swiss and Scandinavian women

with expensively even dentition

competing at snowboard half-pipes somewhere in the Alps,

every dimension of the half-pipe meticulously set –

a young widow in Nepal wiping away tears –

ads featuring self-satisfied, confident, upward-mobile types

gloating about the dream houses

that they’d paid the contractors who put them on the telly

to build for them –

houses exploding from drone strikes –

a re-run of a documentary

about a Hungarian-speaking town in Romania

whose citizens are mad

about ice hockey –

a doco of reptile-eyed Brazilian military torturers from the 1980s –

adorable soft-nosed cattle munching on hay

somewhere in Australia,

followed by a shot of an adorable little girl

helping her mum put a roast in the oven –

archaeologists and tourists examining Angkor Wat –

men from around the world wearing camouflage fatigues

strutting while they flaunt assault rifles –

the sheer joy of dark-skinned cricketers playing their game –

country Kiwis growing turkeys for slaughter –

a flag-waving American redneck mob

shouting and snarling at wretched migrants at the border –

self-righteous, sadistically psychopathic Daesh shitheads

rolling over brown landscapes

killing for fun as they go

and making claims about establishing a global caliphate,

their flag flying over the White House –

lying neo-fascist politicians smirking.

          Obvious Strategy

It was mid-afternoon in mid-Spring.

The weather outside was pleasant

and my front door was open.

The first fly of the season zipped in,

but my pyrethrum spray convinced it to depart.

I was less than halfway through

my first bottle of wine for the day

when my loneliness overtook me,

making me shudder and sweat.

The obvious strategy for addressing this

involved concentration upon

drinking, not thinking.

               Habitat

A really large arachnid

crawled up onto my arm

as I was settling into my reading chair

with a bottle of whisky

and a Nero Wolfe mystery.

I flicked it off onto the coffee table,

then went and got a paper towel,

picked it up,

squooshed it,

and put it and the balled-up paper towel

into the bin.

The poor thing had just entered

the wrong habitat,

as I’d done so many decades ago,

only I haven’t had

the easy escape

of a fast and unexpected death.

           Preferring the Rut

I was waiting for someone,

so I stepped out onto my balcony

shortly after noon

on a midsummer’s day –

something I rarely do.

The songs from what seemed like

dozens of species of birds

filled the air around me,

and blessed clouds easing by

blocked the discomfort

of exposure to

direct, ozone-free sunlight.

It struck me that I should do this more often,

but I haven’t.

  

                            Beyond Me

It’s a block of five townhouse units

away from the street

at the end of a longish right-of-way.

The row of five letter boxes

stands facing the driveway

just inside the footpath.

I’m in unit three.

A young couple who moved into four

had a newspaper subscription,

but never collected their papers,

which became soggy and spilled out onto the ground.

I couldn’t figure this out.

Maybe they found a vista

that included rubbish on the ground

to be attractive,

or spiritually or morally uplifting,

or a mark of class,

as they passed it every time they came or went.

Maybe they thought that removing it was their mothers’ job.

I’m not their mother,

but since the sight of their rubbish on the ground

in front of my home

did nothing to please my aesthetic sensibilities

or to lift my morale,

I picked it up from the ground

if I was walking by

and stuffed it into the back of their letterbox

until recycling day,

when I’d have to set it out.

I would rather have stuffed it somewhere else,

but squabbling with neighbours never pays off,

and they moved away

shortly after I called noise control on them one midnight.

                       Indoors-Outdoors

I’m fondest of the colder months,

when I can close myself inside my house,

away from the unpleasantries teeming outside,

dress warmly, and seal my body snugly away

from the elements.

My heating bill during the colder months is, however, a worry.

As the days lengthen and warm,

the temptation grows to open the front door

when I’m downstairs

in order to let in the balmy breezes,

the view of my potted flowers and herbs,

and the smell of the jasmine

growing over my front patio wall.

It also lets in the pollen,

and means operating the pyrethrum anti-fly spritzers,

but that’s way cheaper than heating.

By February the jasmine’s finished and it’s fly season;

the fly-repellent devices can do only so much,

and leaving the doors and windows open

and running the fans

against the heat

is sometimes only marginally effective.

Autumn is always welcome.

I like closing the front door with the earlier sunsets.

I’m basically an indoorsman, anyway.