Stuff From July & August 2018

        The Last Morning In June 

I was looking for a book

like the one I’d just finished,

but they (whoever they were)

had rearranged things,

and all I could find

was a large, flat, white book;

I had no idea what it was,

so I was late for the buffet

and all the plates were gone;

the people just ahead of me took the last ones,

and the woman in the white server’s outfit

handed me some

porous cardboard paper plates,

but they wouldn’t do,

so she took them away

and I went to the drain

to wash a just-returned dirty dish,

but I was having trouble

getting some baked-on

cheese and pasta sauce from it,

and I figured that

all the food would be gone from the buffet

by the time I got to it,

so I said, ‘Fuck this dream. I’m getting up.’

And I did.

I opened my eyes,

had a good, long stretch,

climbed to my feet,

turned on the light,

donned my dressing gown,

and headed for the loo and the shower.

Everything was where it should be.

                  Cheesy Politics  

Not being an ideologically motivated vegan,

I sometimes buy a brand of sliced cheese called Yolo.

Havarti, Gouda, Emmental, Mozzarella.

It usually costs a bit less than Dairy Works.

This does present me with a values dilemma, though,

since Yolo is imported from Germany.

All those food kilometres!

Burning all those hydrocarbons

just to bring it to my local Pak’n Save.

I googled German dairying, though,

and learnt that since 2015

Germany has had the most stringent

animal welfare regulations

in the world,

and from what I can tell,

the New Zealand dairy industry

(it has become an industry, Wal)

seems to base its livestock-welfare practices

on the principle of sadism.

I can’t win on this one.

  

         Let Me Put You Wise: 

Children have enormous wisdom,

but puberty strips it away from most of us,

then after we acclimatise ourselves

to our urge-to-reproduce hormones

wisdom can start to return,

bit by bit,

in fits and starts,

for those of us

who let it

and don’t close it off,

until (if we don’t die)

in old age we approach

having the wisdom

that should have been obvious all along

when it’s already too late

to make effective use of it,

but part of that wisdom

is to know that this doesn’t matter.

(El diablo sabe más porque es viejo que porque es el diablo.)

      White People and Toilet Paper

I remember when I was seven or eight

reading a story about how a girl in western Virginia,

or some such Appalachian place,

when it was what they called the frontier,

had been captured in a raid by irate locals,

or Indians as they were then called,

whose land her people had stolen

and who had, in return,

munted all the rest of the colonising invaders

in the settlement where she’d been living.

The story then jumped ahead a few years

to when some colonising frontiersmen

had found her, thoroughly acculturated

and integrated with her adoptive people,

married and a mother,

and it told how she refused to be liberated

and returned to white civilisation in Virginia.

In my child’s mind I wondered,

knowing that Indians were savages

who lived in camps in the forest –

what the book called the wilderness –

without streets or other civilised amenities,

I wondered how she had been able to live

without toilet paper,

the idea that white people

didn’t have toilet paper

back in the seventeenth century

didn’t occur to my little head.

       A Reflection On Extinction 

I really shouldn’t watch video clips

that show me what’s going on in the world,

with real people and everything.

It makes me feel shame for being a human,

for being another member of their species,

due to the evil and cruelty, yes,

but even more,

I think,

due to the stupid.

                 Blowing Bubbles  

Y’know, when I was much younger,

university undergraduate age, and thereabouts,

I thought it was a worthy goal

to be able to mix, and fit in comfortably,

with any kind of social company,

upper class, middle class, or desperately poor,

bosses or workers,

urban, suburban, or rural,

ancestry from any continent or country

or ethnicity or mixture thereof,

educated or just-went-to-school,

artistically aware or just plain square.

I thought that this would give me

a richer life experience

and awareness of a more diverse range of perspectives,

than just, as people say in 2018,

staying inside my bubble,

so I tried to give it a go.

A half-century or so later

I have a somewhat different viewpoint.

A lifetime of experience

and the tardy, gradual growing of my self-awareness

have convinced me that

I’m unable to feel at ease mixing socially

with any kind of company at all.

I don’t even have a bubble.

       Snake Oil, Anyone?  

She dismissed all of science

with a dismissive sneer

as ‘male and Western’ –

being, as she was,

in the business of selling

unscientific therapies and remedies.

I wonder about the respect

that her blanket dismissal showed

to the more than one and a half million

Chinese woman scientists.

               Snapshot Us  

Our long and stumbling

series of tiny incremental changes

from being animals of the forests and fields

to palaeolithic hunters and gatherers

to the multifaceted, glittery, destructive,

cruelty-based mess that we have today

has been painfully uneven;

we’re now gathering the harvest

of our evolutionary mismatch

between intelligence and egotism:

We have the brains to construct

fabulous civilisations

and the vestigial sort of

primordial atavistic survival instincts

to destroy each other en masse.

We’re able to look at the stars and wonder,

but our brains have also evolved to focus

on our personal lives and self-absorption,

and most find it awkwardly difficult

to acknowledge our insignificance

in a universe of a size we’re unable to imagine,

let alone picture,

so over the millennia we’ve tried

to explain it all on a human scale,

preferring to create explanations

that put us in the centre

to just enjoying the wonder,

even though with a bit of uncowardly thought

it’s obvious that we’re not.

        Power & Culture 

We are supreme on this planet!

We don’t eat what we kill!

We don’t kill what we eat!

We’re victorious and glorious;

warriors deserving of dominion

over all life forever!

Aren’t we?

        European Spiritual Art 

She told me that when she was in Italy

one thing that struck her was

that there seemed to be

an architecturally significant church

on almost every city block,

and that some local Italians

approached her,

in her traditional long, Navajo plush dress,

full turquoise adornment,

and striking Navajo features

and asked her for spiritual advice.

She told me that she wondered

what all those churches are for

if they’d approach her with this;

“And I’m a fucking lawyer,” she added.

When I see images

of mediaeval or renaissance paintings

of saints and such

that purport to be spiritual,

what I usually see is depictions of people

whose faces seem to indicate

that they’re having digestive difficulties.

Maybe it’s those expensively gilded

circular things around their heads.

          The Wisdom of the Ancients  

I scoffed at his complicated woo-woo folderol,

and he said, ‘Who are you to question

the Wisdom of the Ancients?’

and I couldn’t help but snicker:

The Wisdom of the Ancients?

What about the stupidity of the Ancients?

Or the mediocrity of the Ancients?

Or the piss-taking of the Ancients?

Or the guesswork-and-bluffing of the Ancients?

The Ancients were, you know, people just like us,

and capable of the same bullshit as we are,

only the ones with wisdom

had less knowledge to work with

than wise people have now,

since wise people are also curious people,

and have always passed on new stuff that they’ve learnt

to the next generation of wise people,

while the stupid people,

being too stupid to know that they’re stupid,

and unable to distinguish wisdom from dog vomit,

just keep repeating the same old ancient shit.

             Elitism   

It seems to me that,

in recent years at least,

the word ‘elitism’

has increasingly become

a pejorative that people

with more or less

average mental ability

use to pass disparaging judgement

on people who are

significantly smarter than they are,

but who lack the good taste

to pretend that they’re not.

Stuff from May & June 2018

            Nom de Bar

 

Linda told me,

‘I never give men in bars my real name.

I tell ’em it’s Cindy.

Or sometimes Sandy.

Cindy if I’m in town;

Sandy if I’m at the beach.

It’s easier to keep track of that way.’

               Her Answer  

The editor of the Weekender

told me that he wanted a story

about the women who go to clubs and bistros

and what they’re looking for – what they want.

I thought it was an okay assignment,

as it gave me a chance, an excuse,

to approach unattached women

in that sort of louche environment,

something I ordinarily found hard to do.

One slender woman with a bony, jutting jaw

in a somewhat upmarket boozerie

looked at me with dead seriousness and said,

‘What do I look for in bars?

I’ll tell you what I look at.

Crotches.

Crotches and asses.

It depends on whether they’re coming or going.

Of course, if they’re coming,

that means they’ll be going to my house.’

Best impromptu answer I ever received

to any interview question I ever asked.

We ended up having a bit of an affair

that lasted for a month or so;

I forget why we broke up.

Thirty-seven years later

and I can’t remember her name

off the top of my head,

though I remember that answer

word for word.

                  Guinea Pigs  

When I was about five or six,

soon after I began watching sport

on our first-ever black-and-white TV,

my mind started to imagine myself

playing American football.

I especially liked it when the ball carrier

would slip through the middle of the defence,

dodging and squirming into

the opposition backfield,

and I imagined myself doing that

and, being little,

slipping by between their legs

whilst they failed to tackle me,

grasping at the air above my head.

The image came to my mind

of a pack of guinea pigs –

small, fast, squirming rodents, lots of them –

thoroughly befuddling the thick, burly linemen;

thinking of it today it seems

a remarkably imaginative image for a five-year-old.

When I burbled this to my family

my two-years-older-than-me brother

started to chant, in the timeless bully’s singsong:

‘Riki thinks he’s a pi-ig! Riki thinks he’s a pi-ig!’

I actually tried to explain to him

how that wasn’t what I’d said,

but he just kept it up, louder and longer,

clearly relishing my frustration and vexation.

For several years afterward he would

from time to time slip into conversation

remarks such as, ‘Well, you said that you’re a pig.’

For years and years.

Taught me a lesson, he did.

       Distance, Size, and Time 

We look up and see clouds moving

far above the tops of our heads,

huge floating things that make us look little,

but they’re really laughably close and small

compared to the stars and the galaxies and the void.

I’m relatively old for a human,

but my age is hardly a moment

compared to the age of our species,

which is piddling

compared to the antiquity of DNA,

which is next to nothing

compared to the age of everything.

I’m full of wonder that we humans have evolved

with a sense of wonder

about what’s beyond ourselves

in terms of distance, size, and time;

we have the urge of curiosity about such enormities,

and the desire to find out what we don’t know,

but the insecurity necessary for our survival

and a bloated sense of our own importance

has led us to convince ourselves,

or at least to pretend,

that the stories that we have made up

to explain things that are beyond our ken

actually have some basis in reality:

it’s called effing the ineffable.

I prefer revelling in my uncertainty and ignorance

in regard to what’s beyond me:

it’s called wonder.

     What & Who 

What are you?

Are you a Christian?

What are you?

Are you an atheist?

What are you?

Are you a refugee?

What are you?

Are you a pansexual?

What are you?

Are you a woman of colour?

What are you?

Are you a Gemini?

What are you?

Are you a Muslim?

What are you?

Are you a Texan?

What are you?

Are you a Jew?

What are you?

Are you a rape victim?

What are you?

Are you a vegetarian?

What are you?

Are you a Kiwi?

What are you?

Are you a disabled person?

What are you?

Are you a straight white man?

What are you?

Are you a Canadian?

or an American?

Knowing all this kind of what-you-are, though,

tells me jack-shit about who you are.

              Unworthy 

I’m not surprised

when people who pretend

to be my lovers and friends

have acted as if I’m a thing, just an It,

and discarded me like an empty wine bottle

without a second thought

when they fancied

I was no longer of use to them.

The way my mama brought me up

meant that I went out into the world

convinced deep-down

that I’m unworthy of love.

The ability to be loved

is a skill

that people have to learn

when we are little.

I didn’t.

        Not True Or False 

When somebody says or writes

the phrase, ‘the fact that …’

as the lead into expressing an opinion

in my mind

they immediately lose credibility

for anything at all

they have to say or write afterward,

or else I just ignore it.

Some people might call this

a snobby, elitist overreaction,

but I value integrity highly,

as I do accuracy in language,

so those people can stuff it.

     Cold-Weather Customs 

Walking my dog

on an icy-cold morning,

me wearing six layers,

a beanie, and a hood

and still shivering

(old age and all),

watching the high-school kids

walking to school,

some of the boys wearing shorts,

this being New Zealand and all,

and some of the girls

wearing hijab scarves

wound tightly about

their head and ears,

undoubtedly glad that the things

have at least some uses

in addition to pleasing their parents,

this being New Zealand and all.

Stuff from April 2018; #120 in this series

                             Fanfare 

My Lotto slip matched up three numbers and the bonus,

putting me in division zed or something,

which meant that instead of losing outright, as usual,

I had $23 coming to me,

off a seven dollar output,

so my margin was actually plus $16.

Still, better than a kick up the bum.

Impersonal things can be like that.

When the lady scanned my ticket

the Lotto machine played

a brass fanfare,

or more precisely the recording of one,

and I wondered.

I wondered who composed that fanfare –

was it someone specially commissioned to compose it,

or some semi-famous composer

who wrote it long enough ago

for it to be in the public domain and therefore free?

I wondered who it was that decided on it,

and indeed on a brass fanfare at all –

was it somebody in Marketing,

or some tech geek who put together the software?

Is it supposed to make me feel special and important,

celebratory and giddy with excitement,

and therefore likely to buy more Lotto tickets?

Do they – whoever they are – think people are that stupid?

Are people that stupid, at least some of us?

The world is full of these mini-mysteries.

I wonder if discovering their answers

would ruin everything.

                  Grumpus

I don’t know if it’s just me,

but the grizzled old stereotype

of people becoming more conservative

as our years pile up

into grumpy-old-fart territory

clearly misses the boat.

The older I get the more that what passes

in the current lexicon as conservative

disgusts and repels me,

and the more that radical change

in global social and economic

concepts and attitudes and systems and values

seems attractive and plausible to me.

I also have become less conservative

in my day-to-day efforts

to cope with the general crap

of the world of humans

and my situation in it.

I don’t feel the craving to cling to things,

or to depend on individual people,

as much as I may feel the compulsion to do so;

my desperation’s lost all its urgency –

urgency ignores the cosmos –

death’s not all that far away any more,

and stamping my foot and having a hissy fit

won’t change that, or anything, really.

I take solace from my cosmic insignificance,

old age having released me

from the distracting illusion of love,

and freed me to feel almost nothing

without feeling guilty about it.

                Dehumanisation 

I can’t pinpoint

even the approximate age

at which I first became aware of it,

but since early childhood

my perception has increasingly been

that the more that a person knows me

the more likely that person will

behave toward me as if I were a thing

rather than a fellow human being.

As my self-awareness

increased and improved over time,

I became convinced that it was me,

that one or more of my unconstructive

concepts and default behaviours,

which I developed whilst my mind was forming

in a dangerously toxic family environment,

radiates subtle signals

to others that I am, indeed,

no better than a thing,

and deserve no better treatment,

but then it struck me

how triumphant capitalism

commodifies everything and everybody,

and that this objectification and dehumanisation

were probably widespread realities

throughout the system.

Still, deep down in the core of my personhood,

I can’t escape the stubborn conviction that,

Nah, it’s me.

    Taste Arbiters & My Sociability  

If a piece of music –

or of writing or painting

or sculpture or comedy

or anything else

someone has created –

does something for me – or to me –

somewhere deep inside my nervous system,

or if it definitely turns me off,

or fails to do anything in particular

and just leaves me cold,

that’s what happens,

and it doesn’t matter who tells me

that I should or shouldn’t think that it’s art,

or that it’s great, or just okay,

or that it’s crap,

no matter how knowledgeable and respected

or numerous

such taste arbiters may be.

Sometimes, I suppose,

it would be socially advantageous

for me to fake my response –

oh, definitely! –

but I can’t.

                         72  

When I was just a wee thing,

maybe four years old,

it somehow got into my mind,

I don’t know how,

that my ‘lucky number’ is 72.

It soon expanded

in my child’s consciousness

to being a magic number,

and I’ve never been able to shake that,

even though I’ve been basically anti-superstition

since about puberty,

and thoroughly so since the mid-1960s.

So, every time I’ve had to come up

with a random number for anything

I’ve always put down 72 –

or seven or two if it had to be one digit –

and of course that’s made fuckall difference to anything.

But maybe, I used to think,

it was a stroke of prescience or something,

if such things are possible,

which they almost certainly aren’t,

and something major –

from my perspective –

is going to happen when I’m 72 years old.

Maybe it’ll be my age when I die,

or get rich,

or find happiness and fulfilment at last.

Well, my seventy-second birthday

is now well in the past,

and I haven’t experienced anything remarkable

or life-changing or life-ending yet.

I don’t notice much change from being 71, actually.

                          Luck  

Only occasionally, but far too often,

I’ve heard people say,

almost inevitably with smugly assertive pride,

‘I don’t believe in luck.’

Now, I’ve learnt from all-too-tedious experience

that people who say that they don’t believe in luck

are egotists who probably mean either one of two things:

There’s the ‘it’s all part of a plan’ crowd

(God’s plan, Nature’s plan – it doesn’t matter.)

So what?

It’s just my luck that God’s plan

has screwed me over so badly.

It’s just blind luck that Nature’s done the planning,

and not some ancient aliens’ digital device.

Then we have the ‘We make our own luck’

and ‘It’s all choice, not chance’ evangelists.

Right.

That toddler chose to have abusive parents.

Those 12-year-old girls chose to have thugs in military gear

invade their villages and rape them.

That middle-aged nurse chose to win Lotto,

and two million others chose to lose.

‘I don’t believe in luck.’

So pick another word for effects

resulting from innumerable causative factors

beyond anybody’s control,

like why that one sperm out of hundreds of millions in that spurt

fertilised that egg to create you.

As if belief has anything to do with it.

It’s like saying,

‘I don’t believe in the direction “down”.’

 

         Wake Up Sheeple! 

I awakened from my siesta

with this sentence ringing in my head:

‘In less than two weeks you’ll be at my door,

chasing your witch-wives away

with their own mules.’

I have no idea what it means

and can’t remember the dream that spawned it.

I wonder if reading this

has enriched your life?

Not much, I expect.

Oh, well …