A Week in the Pacific

"Pacific" seems a very appropriate name for the spot we spent our holiday, given its meaning. We didn't plan our holiday as an escape from the earthquake aftermath, but it was certainly well-timed coming when it did.

Norfolk Island is an interesting little island and it helped put a few things in perspective. It is halfway between New Zealand and New Caledonia, about an hour and three quarters' flight from Auckland (which is an hour and twenty minutes from Christchurch) - closer to New Zealand than Australia, although it is actually a territory of Australia. It has a population of 1800, swelled another 1000 by tourists at peak times. When we were there, we spotted a sign in the Westpac bank stating there were 495 visitors on the island. With only a few plane loads arriving each week, I guess it is an easy matter to count up the arrival and departure cards and do an exact count. No real need for a census, then!

It was populated early on by Polynesian people, who left for unknown reasons. In 1788 it was resettled as a convict settlement - which was closed down in the early 1800s. Another convict settlement followed in 1825 (also closed down). And then in 1856 the island was given by Queen Victoria to the descendants of the Bounty mutineers, when their original home, Pitcairn Island, became overcrowded. About 40% of the inhabitants today are descendants of the Pitcairners. Surnames like Christian, Adams, Qunital, Nobbs are so common that the phone book lists people by their nicknames as well as their actual names. The owner of our accommodation was a descendant of Fletcher Christian - as was another woman we met on our introductory tour of the island.

In Christchurch after the September earthquake there were empty shelves at the supermarkets. The distribution centres in the west of the city had been damaged and goods had to be trucked in directly, which led to delays when stocks ran out. This time round, there were not so many empty shelves as the distribution centres were undamaged - the west being mostly unscathed this time. But there were occasional shortages, and runs on emergency supplies like bottled water, baby supplies and so on. Some supermarkets - the ones that were actually open - had limits on various items.

In Norfolk I was surprised to find quite a large number of items were "temporarily out of stock" at the supermarket. (Only two small supermarkets on the island). I was also taken aback slightly by the prices - about double those of New Zealand or Australia. Everything is either air freighted in or shipped, so it is expensive. We bought fresh milk the first day we were there, and when I went back for more later in the week, they were almost out. That's when I realised that it was a New Zealand brand, and there is one flight from New Zealand a week - so, fresh milk once a week. The rest of the time there is UHT milk in cartons. The whole island is one big cow paddock, but they are beef cattle, and there is no dairy industry. The fruit and vegetables on the other hand are all local and seasonal, apart from potatoes and onions. Apart from cost, strict biosecurity regulations are the reason for the lack of fresh produce imports. This meant that the range available was much more limited than we are used to - and again, it was expensive. With the exception of oranges, which were free from the tree outside the door of our accommodation! (There was also a fig tree - just finishing its season - and a pawpaw tree - its fruit not yet ripe).

Electricity on the island is diesel generated and about four times the cost that it is in New Zealand. So all ovens are gas, and there are no air conditioners. I am used to hand washing dishes, so it was halfway through the week before it suddenly occurred to me that there was no dishwasher in the unit, which would be most unusual for four-star accommodation anywhere else.

So - adequate enough accommodation, but not really luxury, except that it felt like utter luxury to have hot showers with uncontaminated water, to wash dishes without first having to boil the water, and to have access to a swimming pool - outdoor and unheated, but comfortably warm from the sun. There is nowhere in Christchurch to swim at the moment as the pools are all damaged (our main Olympic pool has sunk a metre) and the beaches are contaminated by sewage flowing from damaged pipes.

Of course it also helped that the people are friendly, the island beautiful, the climate temperate and the local fish absolutely delicious.

Photos to follow, and also some more earthquake updates, but I have had too many late nights this week catching up, so will now head to bed.

Tuesday Poem: Related Events by Jessica Fox-Wilson

related events

set one bowl, empty on a counter. count
each breath until you fill it.

sit down, alone in a room. count
each breath until you talk or move.

set two identical bowls, side by side on a counter. fill
one bowl with honey, one bowl with rocks. which
is heavier in your hands?

live your life in your body. on one good day,
how light do you feel? on one miserable day,
how heavy are you?

set three identical bowls, side by side. same
counter. fill the left bowl with marshmallows,
the right bowl with mud. leave the middle empty.
which do you hold?

after your good day, after your bad day, sit
alone in a room. count each breath, until
you cradle yourself in inadequate arms.

fill one bowl with water. find the perfect
place to see your reflection. count
each breath until you dip your fingers
in the water, blur your picture.

one morning, stand naked in front of a mirror.
count each breath until you walk away.

hurl your bowl against the wall. gather
its remains. count how many shards it made.

live through life long enough to be devastated. walk
through life, not feeling your fingers anymore.

glue together the shards of your bowl. re-
construct its original shape. fill your bowl
with water, watch the water trickle out the seams.

try to remember feeling whole.

*****

Jessica Fox-Wilson is a part-time poet and a full-time educator. Throughout her career, she has pursued her twin vocations of unraveling poems and serving college students, with varying degrees of balance, luck and success. She writes about this balancing act at her blog, Everything Feeds Process.

related events is included in her recently published collection, Blameless Mouth. Jessica has worked on this manuscript for the last five years, exploring questions of hunger and consumption from a wide variety of angles, particularly as they relate to women's experiences. Woven through the collection are poems that are based on the stories of Eve, Hansel and Gretel, Red Riding Hood, Persephone, and others that explore modern pressures to consume more, while leaving us always unsatisfied.

I started reading the collection before the earthquake of February 22nd. I finished it while returning from a week's break in Norfolk Island - of which I will write more shortly - to a city where most shops are closed, and desires are more for dust-free roads, a hot shower and water that doesn't have to be boiled than for the latest consumer objects. It brought a strange shift in perspective. I debated which poem to post from the collection, until I came across this one near the end, and there seemed to be no question any more that this was the one to post. I chose on instinct, but perhaps it is the images of brokenness and wholeness that called to me.

Jessica has been conducting a blog tour to publicise Blameless Mouth. Other stops on the blog tour are listed on her blog here.

More Tuesday Poems are linked to from the main hub site - click on the quill icon in the sidebar.

Earthquake: Day 12

It felt strange this morning to get up and not have to go to work, it made me feel quite restless. I decided that it was OK to do a small load of laundry now that we have water back on, tidied up a bit and then drove the girls to the airport.
Later my brother came over to borrow my preserving kit. This is a large stainless steel waterbath with an electric element in it, and a tap on the side - it hadn't occurred to me, but it will be very suitable for boiling a large quantity of water (though it takes quite a long time to come to the boil) - so he can use it while we are away.

He also asked if he could bring over some laundry and have a shower, although I haven't had a shower myself yet (I've been washing in a small bowl of water) I said OK since he doesn't have water at all. But when he arrived I discovered the water was off again. It seems to go off every day while work is done on the pipes.

D works as a postie and had spent the morning checking out the routes in the hill suburbs, which have been badly hit, to see which were safe to deliver to. He had seen extensive damage, big modern houses which had just collapsed or split in two.

Talking about the waterbath reminded me that I had done some preserving a couple of days before the quake and there were sixteen jars of peaches sitting on the kitchen bench on the day of the quake, waiting until I was sure they had sealed properly before I removed the rings, rinsed off the sticky syrup from the outsides of the jars and put them away. (See photo above). I arrived home convinced that they would be smashed all over the kitchen floor, but not one of them had fallen. It all seems to be something to do with direction - I think they had moved towards the back of the bench while china in cupboards on the opposite side of the room had moved forwards, the doors had flung open and china had fallen on the floor and broken.

I noticed some of the stacks of china were leaning off kilter this evening so I unlocked the cupboard (which we locked after the quake to keep the doors from opening in aftershocks), Just as I straightened it up we were hit by a loud rumble - a 4.8 aftershock, the biggest for a while.

I'm looking forward to getting away for a break. The cordon around the central city is to be reduced slightly tomorrow, I wonder how things will be when I get back?

I noticed that my readership stats were up by 300% last week. There must be a better way to achieve that than an earthquake!

Earthquake: Day 11

I thought I would start with this photo of my office taken before my boss and his wife started to tidy it up. The chair in the foreground is where I was sitting when the shaking started, I wasn't too worried at first as I tend to think "oh, another aftershock, it's a bit bigger this time". So the first thing I tend to do is put a hand on the monitor to steady it. Then all the file boxes started to fall down on my desk, and the filing cabinets behind me tipped out and the cabinets started to tip forward, at which point it seemed a really good idea to duck under the desk.
When it all stopped and my boss said "That's it. Go home" I actually wondered about tidying up because there was so much stuff on the floor I couldn't reach the door - in the end I just climbed over. I still didn't realise at that point just how bad it had been.

Today I worked half a day, it was supposed to be until 1 pm but by 12.30 we had both had enough. So I had lunch and set off on my errands - warrant of fitness for my car, foreign cash etc. At the bank I said "do you have any Aussie money?" and the teller looked worried and said she thought they might have run out, however she managed to find me some, all in $10 notes. We are leaving for a week in Norfolk Island on Sunday. Two of my daughters are going to Palmerston North while we are away. My brother has just returned from Wellington to go back to work as a postie. My cousin has gone to Queenstown. About 20% of the population of Timaru - a small town about two hours drive south - is from Christchurch at the moment. And in the worst hit areas of Christchurch about 40% of houses are empty. No wonder it was decided to cancel our census, due March 8th. It would have led to some very strange results. Some of these people will come back, others have had enough and have left town for good.

I have been trying out different routes to get from our side of the city to the less damaged northwest - dubbed "Shower City" because they have power, water and sewage all intact. I decided this time not to choose the nearest bank because the nearest open one for me is the nearest open one for about half the population. It made more sense to go a bit further and find one with shorter queues. In the car park about two thirds of the cars were bright and shiny, and one third were covered in fine dust. It was a hot windy day and by late afternoon my eyes were hot and itchy - more than I can ever remember them being. I wear glasses which should be some protection but I hear that wrap-around sunglasses are being recommended, as well as dust masks.

I took these photos on my way back home.

One of the cordons stopping people from entering the city - I feel sorry for these soldiers, it must have been hot boring work. You can just about get some glimpses of damaged buildings from here but it's not very clear. I didn't notice till I looked at the photos later that there is a flag in the photo, and it is at the top of the flagpole. All the other flags around town are flying at half mast. This one is inside the cordon and must have been like that since before the quake.

This is the Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament just north of the cordon a couple of blocks from the first photo. When the soldiers saw I was taking pictures they said I could go closer, if escorted, so one of them walked the hundred yards or so up the street with me to directly opposite the cathedral, where I took the photo. I think they were bored with standing around and were glad of something to do. There are cordons within cordons - there is another just north of this and I'm pretty sure there was no way they were going to let me go any further, even if I'd asked.

When I got home I was on rabbit ferrying duty, as the pet rabbits are going to stay on my other daughter's back lawn while the two younger ones are out of town. Between delivering and setting up the hutch, and the second trip to transport the rabbits, we made a trip to the supermarket where we filled up the boot of the car with goods to take to the Food Centre in Aranui, a low income area on the badly affected east side of the city. The TV cameras haven't ventured here much - all the focus has been on the business district and the rescue effort there. But there are people still without power, water and sewage, and many of these people also have no transport and are ill-prepared to know what is going on and how to get help. Our donations were gratefully received and in return we were offered water, and bread, which we declined.

Earthquake: Day 10

I slept much better last might, although I did wake a few times - including being woken by a sharp aftershock at 2.55 am, followed by another 4 minutes later.

I had a physio appointment in my lunchbreak. I was chatting to the physio about her workplace and she told me that their other clinic at Pioneer Stadium is now open. The gym, however is still being used as a Welfare Centre by Civil Defence, and the pool is out of action until inspected and repaired if necessary. It was not too bad, she said - QE II pool, the city's (only, I think) Olympic sized pool has sunk a metre and will have to be demolished and rebuilt. There is nowhere to swim at the moment - thinking of a relaxing day at the beach? Think again - the water is full of sewage from broken pipes.

Not being able to swim is trivial really compared to what some households are going through. 22,000 households remain without power and many more without water or sewage.

I arrived home to find that the emergency teams had got around to us and given us a green sticker, which means our house is officially safe to live in. Yay! It's an imaginary green sticker - in residential areas, only the red stickers are actual physical stickers.

P has been cleaning out the fish pond which was choked with weed. The water level was getting perilously low. So I suggested emptying the rest of the rain water in the barrel into the pond, as it now contains too much silt to use for dishwashing. The fish pond is still low but not quite so much. The tap water, which is still unreliable, is chlorinated and fish don't like that. I've cleaned out the rain barrel so that if it rains again we can collect clean water.

I have just been to get petrol, and a small sized rabbit hutch, so the girls' rabbits can go to a foster home while we go out of town for a break. I managed the rabbit hutch, however I planned to get discount petrol at our usual supermarket, which had re-opened, but now it is closed again - cordoned off with soldiers guarding the cordon, and engineers in the car park.

Earthquake: Day 9

Services are beginning to be restored in some areas. When we hear that, we tend to assume it will be in the north and west. However, I was pleased to find that mail is being delivered again in our area. There doesn't seem to be a week's worth of mail, though. Normally we would receive something every day, so after a week there should be more than one item in the letterbox, surely? I guess there is a really big backlog at a sorting depot somewhere.

We are not so fortunate with the mail for Takahe magazine, whose box lobby is behind the cordon. So we will have to go to the Mail Centre at Orchard Rd, near the airport, to retrieve the mail from there, and anything that arrived in the box between Sunday 20th when it was last cleared, and Tuesday 22nd, may have to wait weeks or even months before we can access it.

The news is suggesting that the CBD may not be open until Christmas.

The buses are also beginning again on some routes. We thought that would be the north and west, but the Orbiter, a wonderful service which does a circular route round the city, via many schools and malls, is also resuming. The route will not be so much an "O" though, as a "C" with one segment of the route inaccessible. Still, it means my eldest daughter who works at the university and doesn't drive will actually be able to get to work when it reopens, so that's a big plus. And perhaps having buses running will help with the congestion on the roads.

At the same time, the cancellations are starting to appear. The Ellerslie Flower Show, of course. Siobhan Harvey was planning a launch of her poetry book at the South Library on 8th March - now cancelled. And I had to point out that MCB, where she planned to deliver some copies to be sold, is in the Science Alive building which is behind some serious safety fencing (though my daughters tell me that someone is being allowed in to retrieve the turtle).

Annie Proulx was to speak on March 17th, I had planned to go but that is cancelled. The Press were planning a mini writers festival in May to replace the September festival cancelled after the earlier quake. It hasn't been announced as cancelled yet, but I'm not hopeful. The university has cancelled their April graduation ceremony. The Canterbury Poets' Collective has postponed their autumn series (at which I was scheduled to be a guest reader) until October. The venue for that one is behind the cordons, too. There just aren't many venues available at the moment, and inviting guest readers to visit the city right now would be a big ask. Many, many locals have also left town.

Even so, today felt remarkably normal. Except that I was really, really tired - but I stuck it out at work, because I felt that if I went home and slept during the day, I'd be even more likely to wake at 4 a.m again tomorrow, and the cycle would start again. Actually, I think work is the best thing even though it's hard to get into it at times, and I am trying not to spend too much time on news websites.

I was trying to figure out an appropriate answer to "how's your house?" or "how's your family?" I tend to say, the house is good, it has some damage but it's still liveable. The family are all safe. And of course, we are lucky - our house is not buried under a ton of rubble, or flooded with muck and silt and listing off its foundations because of ground subsidence. Our family are physically fine. But at any other time, if the chimney fell down, cracks appeared in most of your external and internal walls, the driveway developed several big cracks, and yours was the only house it had happened to, you wouldn't think it was "OK". And if family members moved to sleep on the couch just to be handy to the doors, and avoid being upstairs, you wouldn't think they were OK.

The constant coming and going of helicopters overhead is easing off. First it was the news media, then the engineers checking the stability of hillsides - there is an ongoing nervousness about possible rockfalls - and there is also the group flying in hot food to people in eastern suburbs where the roads are too bad to get in easily on the ground. Helicopters, soldiers manning cordons, rubble in the streets - no wonder people are comparing it to a war zone. At least no one is shooting at us.

It was a windy day, whipping the dust from the rapidly drying silt into fine eddies. Our barrel of rainwater that we were heating to wash dishes has developed a fine film of silt over the surface. So we are now using the tap water, which has to be boiled. It takes a long, long time to fill a large saucepan full as the pressure doesn't look like improving any time soon.

Odd bits of good news, such as the pigeon which was rescued alive from the rubble of the Cathedral tower, after being trapped for nearly a week. Can one hope that there will be similar survival stories to come for one or more of the human casualties?

Here is David Howard's moving elegy for Rhys Brookbanks, a young poet listed as missing in the CTV building.

Earthquake: Day 8

My current car was bought in March. Which means that the registration, insurance and warrant of fitness all fall due at once, at the beginning of March. I had it in my to do list when the earthquake struck, and I really wanted to get it sorted as it is no time to have anything uninsured.

The insurance company office that I usually pay at is behind the cordon, and our local post shop where I would normally pay the registration is closed. So, in my coffee break I tried to ring the insurance company to pay by telephone with my credit card. I rang the freephone number and first got a recorded message saying how busy they were - which I expected - but then instead of being placed in a half hour queue, it switched to a busy signal. Looking in the phone book for the branch numbers didn't achieve any better results - every single one including the ones in the outlying country towns just came up with a busy signal. I tried the internet - took about ten minutes to load the main page of the insurance company, clearly contacting them online wasn't going to work very well either but at least the front page had a list of which branches were open.

So, at lunchtime, (just after observing two minutes silence at 12.51 p.m), thanks to an understanding boss, I headed off on an adventure. The nearest open branch was in Riccarton, it was very busy there but the car park of the big mall was closed with cranes and men in fluorescent jackets obviously conducting an inspection. I managed to find a half a car park - let the car stick out at the end into the no parking area and headed for the insurance office where they were surprisingly unbusy, and paid the bill.

Then on the way back I headed to the nearest open Post Shop and joined the queue which stretched as far as the door and a bit more. Clearly patience was required. However, mission accomplished - the car is now registered. And the warrant of fitness lasts a few more days, so I will put that one off to another day.

All in all my half hour lunch break stretched to about an hour and a half, but I will still be paid.

We had a lot of phone calls at work in the morning as it had come over the radio that the police had evacuated 65 houses in Bowenvale which is where we were. But we didn't really spot any action, we were on the wider flat part of the valley and I suspect the problem was on the hillsides, there have been concerns about a number of hillsides and cliffs which are threatening to crumble and take houses with them. I later heard that Bowenvale Avenue was closed, but when I went to drive home, it wasn't. Unless perhaps they were referring to the top end, further up the valley.

Other than that, just a normal day at work! With running water even, though as it has to be boiled, I took my own drinking water supply, to avoid pressure on the amount available.

This evening P and I went off to our normal supermarket, which I had heard was now open. It's on the edge of the cordoned off area. The street has been reduced to half width with fences around dodgy buildings. And just north of the supermarket is the cordon with soldiers on guard to stop anyone from going through. As it turned out, the supermarket has limited their hours in the meantime and it had closed. They also had a sign up that due to safety considerations no more than 400 people would be allowed in at once. We drove back home, slowly, watching for steps in the railway overbridge, and holes in the road so large that the word "pothole" really doesn't quite fit.

Tuesday Poem: Songs and Dances of Death

Songs and Dances of Death

What they did not know
was that the curious fertility of the soil
came about because they stood
on an ancient battlefield.
Sometimes, they would turn up old bones
and once, a skull. They took it to the priest
for burial and returned to their ploughing.
At night they told the old stories.
If you had asked "Can't you hear
the dead crying out?" they would say
"It's only the wind in the wheat."

*****

All summer I read of these things.
In my garden the weeds grew lank.
It rained often. On the path
I could barely make out a small bundle
of feathers and bones.

*****

In the museum there is a dark blue
velvet cloth. It has covered many at their burials.
As well seek them in the night sky as here,
their trace as faint.

*****

It is because of their deaths that we have come.

*****

This poem is not a sarcophagus.
This poem is not a mausoleum.
This poem is a brown cardboard box
sufficient to bury one dead blackbird
found on my garden path.

**********************************

I had decided not to post a Tuesday Poem this week, and then at the last moment I thought of this poem and changed my mind. Not an earthquake poem, but its mood seemed appropriate. The event is huge, a "brown cardboard box" is all that I feel able to offer. It is another poem that results from my genealogy researches, and was published in our anthology, "The Chook Book" in 2004.

For more Tuesday Poems go to the main Tuesday Poem hub.

A New Sort of Normal

Today I got to go back to work at my other job, almost as if things were normal. That is, if normal includes slowing down to 20 kph to drive through clouds of fine dust rising from the rapidly drying piles of silt. Or coming home at lunchtime to use my own primitive santitation facilities, rather than overload the boss's primitive sanitation facilities (we work from his home).

The good news is that the water came back on at his place in the morning, not very good pressure, but over the course of the day it got better and he even has water on upstairs now - it still has to be boiled, but tomorrow I won't have to rush home at lunchtime. Here, however, the water is still very low pressure and makes little difference to anything much except that we can probably get away with flushing the toilet once a day or so, as long as no surface sewage appears anywhere in the neighbourhood.

And I managed to reschedule my physio appointment that I didn't quite get to last week - the clinic where I was supposed to go is closed, but I was able to visit the same physio at a different clinic in the same group.

The third good thing was that my two younger daughters arrived back from an overnight stay at Rangiora, a country town just to the north of here, with a big bag of freshly washed and dried laundry. So the evening was spent first putting books back on shelves (after I hunted on the floor for all the little lugs that plug into the holes in the uprights to support the bookshelves) and then ironing the freshly washed clothes. Our bookshelves are braced to the wall, but some of the shelves are moveable, and most of those crashed to the floor during the quake along with all the books on them.

Sadly, I heard that our local supermarket, just two blocks from here, is so badly damaged it has to be demolished. All the staff have lost their jobs. I'm hoping the same won't apply to the pharmacy, bank, cafe and Post Shop that are our other local shops, but I'm not very confident.

A couple of links:
firstly, one to show that the locals have a sense of humour

and secondly, the government earthquake appeal site. Apparently the amount of damage is greater than that done by Hurricane Katrina.

Oh, and I was going to mention that the first night we had the power back on, we were watching the news on TV and the presenter commented that the weather had turned cold, and it felt like mid-winter. Clearly she hasn't ever been in Christchurch in mid-winter, because the temperature was close to 20 degrees C (about 68 degrees F, for Americans). Probably an Aucklander!

Earthquake: Day 6

Last night I was reading blogs and news sites and read on my daughter's blog that she had her water back on, and that her cat had put in an appearance (I don't know where cats hide in earthquakes, but they generally take off for at least a day or two). So I was happy for her, and also a little bit jealous. Then I read another blog, from someone in the next suburb over in the other direction, who mentioned very casually getting his water back on, as if it was rather normal, and I started to feel totally pissed off. If there was water on in one direction, and water on in the other direction, what about us? I tried to tell myself I was being irrational, but I went to bed feeling very stressed out, anyway.

When I got up this morning I was feeling more or less over myself. After all, even if there are people in the city better off than us, there are still very many a whole lot worse off. You can't after all be much worse off than being dead. Or having someone you love dead. And then some of those who have lost loved ones have also lost homes and jobs.

D stayed at her house last night because she wanted to be there for her cat, she had been sleeping over each night up till now for some sisterly support. In the morning she headed back on foot, she texted me that she was running late so I went part way to pick her up, we loaded deck chairs into the car and headed off to the South Library where our church and another local church were holding a service outside on the lawn. You can see from the photo that it was a lovely sunny day, and it felt really good to get together. There was a large congregation including quite a few people from other churches, or no church, who just felt the need. And also a large contingent of news media people - D was interviewed beforehand by a television reporter, and I was interviewed afterwards by a radio reporter. But then, they probably interviewed lots of people and picked someone else with something more interesting to say for their shows, rather than my rather dull babbling :) Here's the report on Stuff and in the New Zealand Herald - the latter includes a photo of our service.

And it was great to see that our beautiful library building was green stickered meaning that it has been assessed as safe. It is however, closed till further notice. Presumably it is needed for more urgent purposes in its role as City Council Service Centre.

Then we headed home pausing on the way to take the photo in the previous post.

In the afternoon I decided to do some cleaning up, I am taking this rather slowly. However I decided it was time to get on with it, and to trust that not everything put back on shelves would end up on the floor again. So I borrowed the neighbour's vacuum cleaner (since ours seems to have died in the quake) and cleaned all the potting mix off the upstairs hall floor, put the cacti outside, since there is no chance they will be watered inside at the moment, put the bookshelf back in its proper place against the wall and put all the books back. The hall looks even tidier than normal. I tidied and vacuumed the bedroom as well before returning the cleaner - and figured that the reason why my wardrobe door wouldn't open wasn't that the door frame had warped, as some of our doors have, but because something was stuck behind it - so I have rectified that problem, and now I can get at my clothes properly.

Only somewhere around half a dozen rooms to go (not counting the offsprings' bedrooms, which are their own problem).

I feel a bit lazy and guilty about the pace of my cleaning up when I read of the huge efforts that people like Helen are having to put in to clean silt up from their properties.

My boss contacted me and confirmed that I could go back to work tomorrow if I wish, however he will give me extra time at lunchtime to come home, as he has no water either. I guess he feels that if one has to use makeshift toilet arrangements, it should be in one's own home. So we will see how it goes. I'm sure I'll feel better with something useful to do. His daughter who normally works for an accounting firm in the CBD (on the sixteenth floor of her building - it must have been terrifying) is also going to help out.

Actually, we do seem to have some water now. There is water coming out of the downstairs taps, slowly, but nothing in the upstairs bathroom, the pressure must be too low. I'm beginning to think it's not going to be a matter of either "water" or "no water". Several neighbours have discovered broken water pipes on their lawns or in their gardens, and I suspect as each of many, many breaks are found and fixed, the water will increase in pressure, a little at a time.

There's also a rumour that we are going to get a Portaloo in our street tomorrow. This could be a good thing or a bad thing - it may well mean that we are in for a long wait to get the sewage properly fixed.

Thematic Photographic: Letters

This one is for Carmi's Thematic Photographic. Anything with letters in it, is what he asked for this week. I was tidying up some stacks of old newspapers (a couple of weeks old) after tuesday's quake and kept seeing articles on the recovery of Christchurch from the September quake. And then on Friday I passed this sign on the way home, the road was busy at that point, but I had to go back and take a photo as it was so ironic. The sign was erected after the September quake to let people know that despite the presence of damaged buildings, many shops were back to normal operation.

The second photo is taken from the other side of the sign. The pile of rubble was a historic stone church. The presence of the bulldozer indicates that this is what is described as "cleaning up". After the first quake, it was hoped to repair many of the historic buildings, now many of them are beyond repair and are coming down for safety. From here north, the streets are again closed off, the business owners who were just starting to get their livelihoods back again have no income.

Rebuilding Christchurch, One Sandcastle at at Time

When an earthquake occurs where the soil is sandy, the shaking compresses the ground and forces ground water mixed with sand and silt up through the surface layers of soil, this is called liquefaction. It results in vast areas of sand and silt on people's properties, which is being dug out and dumped on roadsides for later collection by council trucks.

Our street is not too bad, this is the next street over from us. My daughter decided that all this sand was just crying out to be made into sandcastles:

They won't last long, even if they have to wait a bit before the trucks get round this way, the aftershocks will take care of them. But for a while, every car that passed held a person with a smile on their face, as they saw what she had been up to.

Earthquake: Day 5

The last couple of days I have managed to get to work, I have two jobs, one is suspended till next Monday at least but my usual Wednesday and Friday job is very near the airport and I went there yesterday, and again this morning because I had some serious catching up to do (both for earthquake and non-earthquake related reasons).

I was a bit concerned about possible congestion on the roads, however it wasn't much of a problem. I couldn't take my usual route which goes through the cordoned-off area, instead I headed first west then north to avoid the central city. The first crush of traffic - people trying to get home - and the second crush - people trying to leave, or buy essential supplies and petrol - seemed to have settled down. And I found a different world out there - the further I got to the north-west, and away from the south-east, the more normal things looked. There was some damage - the occasional wall that had fallen down, even one or two chimneys - but basically, I saw very little difference from before. I had expected the newly painted walls at work to have cracks in them, but in fact everything seemed totally undamaged.

Yesterday morning, I felt very muddle-brained and inattentive, but by the afternoon I was beginning to calm down and feeling the benefits of focussing on the work rather than recent events. What's more, no shakes! When I arrived home, I was greeted by a large (4.4) shake just after I walked in the door. There were about six more in the next couple of hours. I asked "has it been like this all day here?" and was told yes, they had been feeling small shakes all day. It's about fifteen kilometres from my home to my work, and the difference it makes is amazing. Clearly, most of the aftershocks are centred close to Tueday's original shake, nearer to this side of town.

On the other side of town - the work side - shops are open as normal. Here, there is very little open. Presumably, even if undamaged, not being able to provide toilet facilities for your staff is a big problem for a business. I bought one or two items the first day. We haven't needed to panic buy, due to my husband's habit of stockpiling emergency supplies - now proven to be very worthwhile. This morning, with power back on, there was even a loaf of fresh bread baking in the breadmaker.

This morning I went back to work very early, the nature of the work means that other staff are there very early on a Saturday, and I don't have an office key, so I headed off to do a few catch-up hours about six a.m. when I knew the office would be open. My eldest daughter* couldn't sleep, and had some shopping she wanted to do, so she came along with me. While I worked, she wrote on her laptop, napped, and filled up water bottles. Over there, they have flushing toilets, and running water that, I am assured, comes from a different well from the city supply, and doesn't need to be boiled.

After I finished we headed towards home, stopping off for supplies on the way - pet food, fresh fruit and vegetables, and hardware supplies. In the hardware store it was quite clear what items were the best sellers - tarpaulins, ropes, water containers. I heard someone ask for hand sanitiser, but she was told they had sold out. D was looking for an electric kettle to replace one that had broken in the quake, she couldn't find one. So we went to another store - they didn't have any for sale, but did have one out the back that "we aren't using" - and gave it to her for nothing. We bought buckets, torches that charge by hand winding and therefore don't need batteries, and will also charge a cell phone - we hope not to need these, but they were quite cheap and it seemed a good idea to add them to the emergency kit. D bought dust masks which I hadn't thought of - but given the amount of sand and silt on the roads that is rapidly drying out, I think it was an excellent idea - we expect to be walking and biking quite a bit in the next few weeks, and it is going to get very dusty out there.

Among the fresh fruit I bought were some surprisingly cheap oranges - surprising that is until I noticed they were all a rather odd shape, slightly flattened - rather as if something heavy had fallen on them!

Again, no shakes that side of town, but we have felt plenty of small ones since we got back home.

According to the paper, around 800 Portaloos (portable toilets) have been distributed to areas of greatest priority. I'm not sure what that means - either you have water and sewage connected or you don't, so I can't help wondering what the criteria are. The only ones I have seen are at some council flats, which seems fair enough as there are a large number of elderly there, and no gardens to dig a hole in. My daughter's friend suggested that if there was raw sewage coming to the surface, those areas would be higher priority, which made sense to me. The problem is supply. In the September quake, all streets with no sewage received Portaloos within a few days - if not one per household, at least one for every few houses. Many of these areas still have them nearly six months later as their sewage is yet to be repaired - and is probably now a good deal worse. But now half the city is without water and sewage, and there are no more to be had in New Zealand, so 900 are being flown in from the United States. So, thanks to my American readers for sending us your toilets!

I'm not a person who is comfortable not knowing what is going on, I'd really like to know if we can expect to receive at least one for our street, and when. Supposedly there are a hundred teams going out from house to house checking on residents' needs and safety, including in our suburb, but we haven't seen anyone yet - the task is huge.

Today I decided to clean up a bit - in the upstairs hallway the bookshelf came down, and with it a large number of cactus plants in pots. I had picked up the bookshelf and put the first couple of rows of books back to make a clear path down the hall, but the other two rows were still on the floor, along with a lot of potting mix. So, I switched on the vacuum cleaner, it went for a moment or two, then stopped. It seems something happened to it when it fell over in the quake. My husband has taken it apart and cleaned it and fixed up a couple of things, whether it is working or not I will find out when he puts it back together again. Otherwise there are plenty of good neighbours who will lend me one, I'm sure.

*I have three adult daughters, and two sons. Mostly randomly referred to here as "my daughter" or "my son", since it doesn't usually matter which is which for the purposes of describing what it's like here. Two daughters and a son currently live at home, eldest daughter has her own house a few kilometres away (also damaged), but has been spending quite a bit of time here, and the other son is in a student flat near the university, and has power and water, and no damage at all.

Earthquake Update

It wasn't long after I got back from my friend's place last night that the power came back on here. The feeling of joy was indescribable. Everyone in the house rushed for their computers to contact all those who had sent messages asking if we were safe. Also, it was just in time to save the contents of our very large deep freeze from having to be thrown away - or cooked on a massive neighbourhood barbeque.

Above you see the chimney mentioned in yesterday's post. As you can imagine it took quite a bit of effort to move it aside enough to get the EQC inspector's little red car out of the driveway. Yesterday, my husband also moved his out, it was a delicate operation and it is now parked on the street side of the chimney. My own car wasn't trapped because I wasn't at home when the earthquake happened. I was at work about three kilometres away, still on the most damaged side of town but a little further from the epicentre. When the quake started, file boxes started falling in front of me, all the drawers fell out of a filing cabinet behind me and the whole thing fell forward, and I ducked down under the desk. I have to say, I must be getting old, my reactions are not all that fast, and if I'd been under a falling brick wall, as some were, I don't think there's much chance I'd have got out of the way in time.

My rather shaken boss told us, "That's it for today. Go home". I was actually a bit reluctant, we were getting big aftershocks and I wondered if it was safe. I phoned home and got no answer, and figured everyone must be outside. So I started driving, things didn't look too bad although there were some cracks in the road, then all of a sudden the car took a bit of a swerve and a small tree fell of a bank on the opposite side of the road. The car straightened up and I kept on, till I reached an area not too far from home where there was a lot of flooding and silt across the road. Even though cars were driving through, slowly, I decided to go another way, but I encountered another very flooded and silty area. I was a bit worried as I knew that areas bordering rivers tend to suffer more damage and I had to drive along beside the river - so decided to leave my car and walk a couple of blocks home, through a back lane, avoiding the riverside. I had to take my shoes and socks off and wade. My already strained Achilles tendon did not appreciate that at all...

That's when I saw the chimney in the driveway, and yes, everyone was outside and very reluctant to go back in due to continuing aftershocks. It was several hours before we braved it much, although we did duck in and out very quickly a few times to retrieve items - such as my iPod, to listen to the radio (unfortunately the battery didn't last very long). And to answer the phone, which was my sister-in-law ringing from the North Island. So I told her we were safe and that I wasn't staying in there to talk for long. We did eventually go back in a few hours later, and the house does seem to be OK i.e. not in danger of falling on top of us, although there is significant new cracking.

I also went back to get my car, having spoken to a few neighbours about the best route, and was able to drive it the rest of the way without too much trouble. I took my camera when I went to fetch it and took a few photos, and also later walked up and down the river a bit, not too far because of my sore tendon, and took a few more.

Here is one of the streets I had to wade across to get home:

This is the local volunteer library, it had been fenced off since the September 4 quake as it had a crack in the wall, which has now fallen down.

The nearby road bridge with a large hump in it. During a quake, riverbanks tend to move inwards towards the river - apparently the two sides of the river moved inwards here, compressing the bridge and forcing it upwards. Road workers have since flattened this hump. Traffic was moving very slowly, bumper to bumper, as people tried to get home. My daughter who had been given a lift from the university, stopped at our place. She decided to stay a bit longer and let the driver continue alone, although she was going in the same direction. About ten minutes later, D set off walking, and it was only another ten minutes or so before she passed the Good Samaritan in the car.

In general, biking and walking were by far the best ways to get around in the first couple of days (and I discovered that though my biking skills are rather rusty, it didn't hurt my strained Achilles, so I will probably be doing more biking for a while).

There are of course far more dramatic photos around than mine. But I don't have either the time or inclination to go round taking photos of the worst damage - these are people's lives and homes, and it is my beautiful city that is so badly damaged. And of course, there are cordons around the whole of the central business district.

For more, visit Jim Tucker's photostream (Presumably he has some sort of credentials that allowed him in the area with the worst damage).

My daughter also has Flickr photos (Not as dramatic as Jim's, but still interesting). She also has a couple of new blog posts at her Dreamwidth blog. (Link is to the whole blog, not the individual post, so you can scroll down and read them all).

Here is the technical stuff at Geonet, the New Zealand earthquake information website.

There is so much more I could say, I will stop here for now...

Normal Service Will be Resumed as Soon as Possible

Just to let people know that we are safe, the earthquake was centred about half way between our house and the port of Lyttelton so we are in one of the worse off suburbs.
The EQC (government earthquake insurance) assessor was at our house inspecting for damage from the previous quakes. He was on the roof, gave our chimney a shove and pronounced it sound, and was halfway down the ladder when the whole city started to shake and the previously sound chimney sliced neatly off and landed in our driveway behind his car, stopping him from getting out.
That was quite convenient since he and his assistant were able to cover the hole in the roof and make it weathertight before they went. (They did manage to move the chimney enough to get the car out).
For the first day we were getting aftershocks every 1-3 minutes. Quite stressful. They are still very frequent. My brain feels quite fuzzy at the moment so don't expect anything very literary in this post.
Our suburb has quite a lot of damage to roads and bridges. There is silt everywhere from liquefaction. Our house has quite a lot of new cracks but we think it is not in immediate danger of falling down. We have no power, water or sewage. I have just heard on the news that water supply is back to 50% of the city, I don't know if that includes us. Earlier I heard that there was no water in 80% of the city and no power in about 40% of the city.
We have enough emergency supplies of water at the moment and half a barrel full of rainwater - we hastily pushed the barrel under a piece of broken spouting the first night when it started to rain. We have a gas barbeque and gas cook top. We have an old style phone that still works - the modern cordless phones don't work when the power is off.

I am at a friend's house where she has power, typing this on her laptop. I have photos on my camera but won't try to upload them at the moment. My own computer slid to the floor, so I'm not sure if it is working or not - I won't find out till the power comes back on. No word on when that will be.

Because search and rescue was a priority this time, other things like getting power, water etc and checking how people were doing were a bit lower down the list but it looks as if they are getting on to it now.

I haven't tried to go very far, there is a lot of traffic congestion with many roads closed. Tomorrow I may try to get to work, I normally work near the airport on Wednesday and Friday, it will be a big detour to get there on the other side of town but things are relatively normal there and they have showers. I never thought I would appreciate that quite so much.

My daughter has hiked to a friend's place where they have water, power and sewage, she was going to write a post for me, so if you are reading this D, you can still add that link to your blog for more information.

Computers and Writing Routines

We have painters and carpet layers at work this week (that is, at my Wednesday and Friday job - I have a different job on the other days). On Wednesday when I arrived everything was being packed into boxes, and to add to the chaos, my computer had refused to start and was off site for repairs. So I gathered a few files and took them home, where I was able to do some work by logging on to the new computer database which is hosted at the head office in another city. Today I arrived at work with a car boot full of files, to find that our main room had been emptied out, and staff were perched in any odd corner they could find. I tried to find a corner for myself, but there was nowhere left. My computer is the server for some of our databases, and it needed to be close enough to the others so they could stay plugged in. An hour or two in a small room that was going to be taken over by the painters by noon was all I could manage. So I did the essentials, gathered up more files and headed home again.

Even though the database looks exactly the same, it feels strange working on my computer at home. It set me thinking about the importance of place in routine. When I am at work I focus on work, I get absorbed in what I am doing and the time often goes quite quickly. On my home computer it seemed different. I was more inclined to check my personal e-mails, take a few minutes here and there to look at websites, get up and walk around and so on. I did work longer into the evening though, which made up for all the mini-breaks.

Still, it seems that the work computer triggers work thoughts, and the home computer triggers thoughts of surfing the internet, checking e-mail, and playing sudoku. Poetry is another matter. I've been trying to set up a regular poetry writing routine but I don't have a particular poetry writing place. I remember a questionnaire put out by the now inactive site Readwritepoem, and one of the questions on it was "what's the strangest place you ahve ever written a poem?" When it comes down to it, all my poems are written in the same place - in my head. I might start off by free writing, but most of the work seems to get done while I am driving or walking or gardening. When I get to pen and paper, or the computer, I am setting it down, rather than actually writing. That's all very well, but what do I do if nothing comes? I can't help feeling that there is something I could be doing to prompt poems to show up in my head more regularly, but I'm not yet sure what it is.

So, what about you? How do you write, and where?

Tuesday Poem: Roses, by Sue Wootton

Roses

St Valentine's Day has been and has gone,
another year without roses. We both know
that no bouquet could cut it, nor any bunch
of gathered roadside weeds tied with a bow.
A dozen long-stemmed lilies splashed with blood,
our mingled A! and O! My love, such wounds.
The heart is a deep mine, riddled with shafts.
Down we fall, lost and cold in catacombs,
blind, choking, stricken faces stiff as masks.
In the dark the cage waits with its winch. Come,
I give you roses: ten dozen blood-stained words,
garden-grown, imperfect. The little bird
in its cage within a cage is singing for its life.
Up! Up! Ring the bell! Clang the bars! Husband. Wife.

****

I fell in love with Sue Wootton's poem "Roses" when I first came across it in the Christchurch Press as the weekend poem. It was later included in her collection Magnetic South. A number of Sue's poems use the sonnet, or other traditional forms. Writing in form can so easily seem sing song, when we are used to poetry that sounds more conversational. We no longer accept the twisting of word order to fit the form, so that it seems to me that a good poem in form is much harder to achieve than it was a century or so ago. And yet, I love it when it is well done, as it is here.

Sue says of this poem: "the sonnet Roses is composed of 'ten dozen blood-stained words' Arguably an imperfect count (as the poem admits) - you have to count the title and each separate part of the three hypenated words."

It seemed a perfect poem for the day after Valentine's Day - as long as you are not too sentimental!

Tuesday Poem

One of my own poems this week.
Over ten years ago, I decided to make a year long project of researching and writing up my family history. I didn't know then how much I would find, and that I would still be researching ten years later. (The writing up part is yet to come).

It was inevitable that something of that research would filter into my poems from time to time. Today's poem is purely fictitious, but it does draw on what I now know of my Scottish families, and of others like them, for background.

Many Scottish families followed a very specific naming pattern. The most common variant is that the eldest son is named for his father's father, second son for his mother's father, third son for his father, and subsequent sons for other relatives such as uncles, or occasionally for an important figure such as the parish minister. With daughter's, the eldest was named for the mother's mother, second for the father's mother, and so on.

With high infant mortality, if a child died young, the name was very often used again, to ensure it was carried on. Unlike today, a name was less a sign of individuality than of belonging - and one might well find many cousins, all bearing exactly the same name.

Hard Water, Soft Rock

Five years since the minister called the banns
on three successive Sundays. There being
no objections, they were duly married.
Today in the same church, she names her daughter Agnes.

Twice before she has done this.
The first time it was famine, the second it was fever
that carried the child off. Scarce time
to have the bairn baptised, before
they're paying for the mortcloth.
She names her daughter Agnes,
because it was her mother's name.

Spring struggles with winter. Ice still sheets
the edges of the Bannock Burn. snow lies
unmelted in the kirkyard, in the shadows
cast by two small mounds. She prays
there will not be another.

She names her daughter Agnes,
because it was her mother's name,
and her mother's mother's mother before her
and because all families continue forever,
looking backwards.

*******

"Hard Water, Soft Rock" was published in The Chook Book, my poetry group's first collection which came out in 2004 and is now out of print (though I may be able to find one or two if anyone desperately wants one).

Our second collection, Flap: the Chook Book 2 is now available at Fishpond, and at the Madras Cafe Bookshop.

Poetry and Disaster

One of my more uncharitable thoughts not too long after our 7.1 earthquake last September was "Maybe I should stay away from open mic poetry readings for a while, there are going to be so many bad earthquake poems around".

Which is why I found this week's feature article at Poetry Daily especially interesting. In it Katie Ford writes about the duty of the poet, with reference to New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. This is the line that drew me in:

A reader recoils at the thought of large, painful subjects being written about poorly. I felt very validated on reading that line

I was intrigued to read further and discover this:
Perhaps, then, poets should not set before themselves the task of writing "about" anything in particular. Our task is blind, we find our way by feel—a sensation that can grow confident and nimble in the absence of full sightedness.

The whole article had me thinking - or rather, extended the thinking I had already begun - about the way I write. Usually, I start with an idea and try and make the words fit. I'm becoming more interested in starting with an interesting line, and exploring where it takes me. I haven't come to any conclusions yet. I do think that starting with an idea can work, but not always. That could be why I have so many failed poems! A proportion work, and many more don't quite make the grade.

Click the link if you want to read the whole article, the daily poems are archived on the site for a year, but I'm not sure how long the feature articles stay available, so it would be best to try sooner rather than later.

Thematic Photographic: Singles

I haven't done one of these for a while, since in January I was observing in words rather than pictures.

This photo was taken in late January - I was in the city and noticed this bauble that had seemingly fallen out of the window of an upper storey apartment, and landed unnoticed in the shrubbery. It seemed very appropriate for Carmi's theme this week - singles.

Things that are Bugging Me

1) Tiny urls.
I was browsing a magazine in a waiting room, and came across an article with a web link in it. But instead of putting in a long but memorable url - say www.myfabulousbookstore/latestbooks/poetry (that's just an example I made up, don't try to find it) they thought it would be helpful to put in a short link instead. Something full of letters and numbers say tinyurl.2xc4jm72 (another totally made up example).
Sometimes, a tinyurl can be helpful in finding a particular page in a very large website. In examples like the one above, the longer url is actually way easier to remember.

2) NZ Post
This is bugging me rather more seriously than no 1 above. It's part of the continuing saga of attempting to get Flap: The Chook Book 2 listed at Fishpond. (Which is a fantastic New Zealand online bookstore with great customer service).
First I had to get it listed at Neilsen's book database. The listing was relatively easy to submit - a simple online process - but was supposed to take about two weeks and in fact took two months. Once accomplished, I needed to send my books to Fishpond as consignment stock, since we are not distributing it through any of the big distributors. They advise that tracked post is the best. So, I paid extra for packing, sent off my parcel, and checked Fishpond every so often to see if it was listed as in stock. After a while it occurred to me that maybe I should check the tracking number (this can be done online).

What it said was : "your item has been picked up and is en route to a New Zealand Post depot".
Two weeks to get from the Post Shop to the depot seemed a little ridiculous.
So - back to the Post Shop, who gave me a claim form to fill out. Then I saw that there was a toll free customer service number, so I rang them. They informed me that as it was sent to a customer who gets a lot of mail sent out in a large mail bag each day, I should check with them first. The reason is - since they get a lot of mail, it is not always scanned in when it is delivered.

So why charge extra for tracking, if it is not going to be tracked?

Furthermore, since the nature of the parcel makes it business mail, there is a deadline for claims for nondelivery of 14 days - in other words, if I leave it 14 days to make an enquiry, I can't claim compensation. But I can't lodge a claim now and then check, I still have to enquire first - and may not get a reply till after the weekend - which puts me over the 14 day deadline.

So - I now have my fingers crossed that the parcel has actually been received, and is in the queue for a website update. Otherwise I will have to start the whole process of sending the books again. Without any compensation for the missing books. Not good customer service, in my opinion. (Apparently if it was a private parcel, I would have three months to lodge a claim. It's not as if we are making any real profit out of this).

Now - having got that off my chest, I will return to writing something more rewarding, such as poetry ...

Tuesday Poem: View, by Christina Stachurski

My writing group, the Poetry Chooks, has been meeting since 1999. We had a slightly larger group to start with, but there are a core group of four who are still meeting now. These friends have been an amazing source of inspiration and support in my poetry writing efforts over all those years. This week I've chosen a poem by Christina Stachurski, one of the "chooks".

Spending all January trying to make one observation of detail each day, for A River of Stones, put me in mind of this poem by Christina. It comes not from our recent collection, Flap, but from our earlier book, The Chook Book. It is my favourite of Christina's from this collection. Although seemingly simple, it has always lingered with me.

View

From the gate
of the Selwyn St
cemetery
the lines
of lives once
chisel sharp
have lost their edge

Blue daisies drift
among the loving
pink of roses,
dark yews brood

We take a photograph -
you, me, Esther, Greg -
capturing this light
now

More poetry at the Tuesday Poem hub site

A River of Stones: January 31

I followed a trail of small stones through January, and I have run out of stones. Today, I only had time to gather breadcrumbs. And at the end of the trail of breadcrumbs, I found these two fine creatures, swimming on the river near my home.

(By the time I stopped the car and got out my camera, they had come up on the bank. Probably hoping to be fed).

So, no carefully polished words today. Perhaps the geese gobbled the breadcrumbs up?

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 30

A snail has left
his running stitch of silver thread
in long looping trails
on my path.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 29

Reflections rearrange the world
a bookcase in the trees
a window in the sky

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 28

Motorway construction site -
dust blows off the steep banks
long grass at the foot,
the white umbels of Queen Anne's Lace
dancing in the wind.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 27

Almost dark.
Shining white daisies
tumble down the riverbank
towards their reflections -
waiting for the moon.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 26

Outside my window
a reversing truck beeps
a duck quacks
who needs an alarm clock?

For A River of Stones

...The first sounds I heard as I woke this morning.

A River of Stones: January 25

The pied shag is perched
on a tangle of driftwood
in the river
his wings outstretched
like my high school teachers
flapping down the corridors
in their long black gowns.

for A River of Stones

The bird known as a shag in New Zealand is known in many other countries as a cormorant. Because they have no oil in their feathers, they spend a lot of time with their wings stretched out to dry in the sun. (What they do on wet days, I'm not quite sure). We see them often by the river near our house.
I don't think teachers wear their academic gowns much these days, but when I was at high school, they were worn not only at assemblies but also in the class room. My mother, who was a teacher, said that it was a very good protection against chalk dust. Of course, these days, with whiteboards and whiteboard markers, that is probably not a consideration.

Tuesday Poem: Patterns by Amy Lowell

A few years back I was talking about the various things I have been interested and involved in over the years, and I was asked about their diversity. They included maths, science, quilt making, and poetry - and more recently, genealogy. I wasn't able to give an intelligent answer immediately, but then it came to me that what they have in common is patterns. I belive that it is a love of patterns that is one of my strongest reasons for an interest in all these varied areas.

Amy Lowell's poem "Patterns" intrigued me for that reason - it draws in at least two of my interests, textiles and poetry - but it also looks at the darker side of patterns. This poem is found in my old standby, the Collins Albatross Book of Verse, which was first published in 1933. My edition is dated 1960.

Patterns

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walk down the patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
With my powdered hair and jewelled fan,
I too am a rare
Pattern. As I wander down
The garden paths.

My dress is richly figured,
And the train
Makes a pink and silver stain
On the gravel, and the thrift
Of the borders.
Just a plate of current fashion,
Tripping by in high-heeled, ribboned shoes.
Not a softness anywhere about me,
Only whalebone and brocade.
And I sink on a seat in the shade
Of a lime tree. For my passion
Wars against the stiff brocade.
The daffodils and squills
Flutter in the breeze
As they please.
And I weep;
For the lime-tree is in blossom
And one small flower has dropped upon my bosom.

And the plashing of waterdrops
In the marble fountain
Comes down the garden-paths.
The dripping never stops.
Underneath my stiffened gown
Is the softness of a woman bathing in a marble basin,
A basin in the midst of hedges grown
So thick, she cannot see her lover hiding,
But she guesses he is near,
And the sliding of the water
Seems the stroking of a dear
Hand upon her.
What is Summer in a fine brocaded gown!
I should like to see it lying in a heap upon the ground.
All the pink and silver crumpled up on the ground.

I would be the pink and silver as I ran along the paths,
And he would stumble after,
Bewildered by my laughter.
I should see the sun flashing from his sword-hilt and the buckles on his shoes.
I would choose
To lead him in a maze along the patterned paths,
A bright and laughing maze for my heavy-booted lover,
Till he caught me in the shade,
And the buttons of his waistcoat bruised my body as he clasped me,
Aching, melting, unafraid.
With the shadows of the leaves and the sundrops,
And the plopping of the waterdrops,
All about us in the open afternoon --
I am very like to swoon
With the weight of this brocade,
For the sun sifts through the shade.

Underneath the fallen blossom
In my bosom,
Is a letter I have hid.
It was brought to me this morning by a rider from the Duke.
"Madam, we regret to inform you that Lord Hartwell
Died in action Thursday se'nnight."
As I read it in the white, morning sunlight,
The letters squirmed like snakes.
"Any answer, Madam," said my footman.
"No," I told him.
"See that the messenger takes some refreshment.
No, no answer."
And I walked into the garden,
Up and down the patterned paths,
In my stiff, correct brocade.
The blue and yellow flowers stood up proudly in the sun,
Each one.
I stood upright too,
Held rigid to the pattern
By the stiffness of my gown.
Up and down I walked,
Up and down.

In a month he would have been my husband.
In a month, here, underneath this lime,
We would have broke the pattern;
He for me, and I for him,
He as Colonel, I as Lady,
On this shady seat.
He had a whim
That sunlight carried blessing.
And I answered, "It shall be as you have said."
Now he is dead.

In Summer and in Winter I shall walk
Up and down
The patterned garden-paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
The squills and daffodils
Will give place to pillared roses, and to asters, and to snow.
I shall go
Up and down,
In my gown.
Gorgeously arrayed,
Boned and stayed.
And the softness of my body will be guarded from embrace
By each button, hook, and lace.
For the man who should loose me is dead,
Fighting with the Duke in Flanders,
In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?

Amy Lowell 1874-1925

for Tuesday Poem

A River of Stones: January 24

A cat sits on the railing
and glares down
at the empty birdbath


For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 23

Acrobats -
above the stage
a butterfly flits and twirls


For A River of Stones

The buskers are in town.
Every January, for just over a week, Christchurch hosts the World Buskers Festival. Unfortunately, since I work during the day, I can't catch the acts during the week - they take place mostly between 11 am and 5 pm. (There are night time performances too, but they are more formalised - stage shows indoors - I like the atmosphere of the street acts). And as I don't work in the city, that rules out lunchtime viewing, too. But I did take half an hour or so between weekend chores to catch a bit of the fun. I haven't checked up on my photos yet, will do so tomorrow.

A River of Stones: January 22

A lit room
Windows at opposite ends
Reflections of reflections

For A River of Stones

A Giveaway

Juliet at Craftygreenpoet posted an offer on her blog - leave a comment and she would send a handmade gift to the first five who commented.

The only catch is that you have to pass the offer on. And I, rashly perhaps, signed up.

So, for the first five commenters here, I am offering a handmade gift, sometime in 2011. You do of course have to agree to the same condition - make the same offer on your own blog. (I need a bit of time to make them!) I have a pdf book of small quilting projects on my computer, and I'm itching to try some of them out. Who's up for it?

A River of Stones: January 21

Outside my office window
a composition in circles and lines
Grey and black cars angle parked
A row of rear wheels
Rain falling vertically
onto the asphalt.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 20

The Christmas tree is bare
Red and gold baubles packed in boxes
A mug of candy canes on the table

For A River of Stones

****

I was feeling particularly like slacking off today after being rudely woken at 6 am by a strong aftershock, which went on for some time. It was our fifth strongest since September 4th. And then we had about eight or nine more during the morning, one of them quite jolting.

I grew up in Wellington where mild shakes from time to time were normal. Apart from the six o'clock one, none of the others would have bothered me, coming singly. But when they go on and on, they do get rather tiresome to say the least.

When it came to it though, noticing one small detail each day seems to have become a habit. Perhaps even one that I will continue after the month is finished. It would be a shame to miss a day, having made3 it this far through the month.

A River of Stones: January 19

The joggers circle the park in twos
like the animals lining up
to enter the Ark

For A River of Stones

Tuesday Poem: Young Woman Marries the Farmer's Son, by Marisa Capetta

young woman marries the farmer's son

your first voice is the moon
suspended in billows
of red dam water

courtship brushes silent
black beetles from the hem
of my white cotton skirt

kiss me in summer hay paddocks
in a fox scented dawn,
on gravel roads along
barbed wire fences

white silk organza is stained
by glass bees our vows
are door frames in eroded mud
walls unroofed by a siege

of bougainvillea our vows are carved
in the flesh of small windfall apricots
and fit whole in our mouths

© Marisa Capetta 2010

Marisa Capetta is a Christchurch jewellery designer and poet. She was born in Rome and has lived in the USA and New Zealand.

Marisa read this poem towards the end of last year at one of the gapfiller events. Gapfiller is an organisation aiming to make creative use of the many blank spaces in our city where earthquake damaged buildings have been demolished. I was happy to read recently that they have received some City Council funding, so that they will be able to have more events.

I was captivated by Marisa's mysterious and lush use of language in this poem.

For Tuesday Poem.

A River of Stones: January 18

The only things bouncing
on the trampoline
are raindrops.
They skitter sideways,
silver on the black surface.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 17

My green waste is fragrant
with the smell of rosemary prunings
and bruised plums.

For A River of Stones

(And I can still smell the rosemary on my hands, even after washing - lovely!)

A River of Stones: January 16

Ripe plums scattered on the grass
A cat picks her way across,
stops to fix me with her steady gaze.


For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 15

He wraps the sparrow in a cloth
to keep it still
snips the netting carefully
from its foot
proves big hands
can be both strong
and gentle.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 14

In Cashel St a girl is selling cherries
from a table on the pavement.
Three men in fluorescent vests
stand and point at a broken parapet.
A family passes by a row of closed shops:
"This is what it will be like in Brisbane"
the mother says.

For A River of Stones

I was surprised this morning to discover that a number of shops in town are still closed, not from the September 4 earthquake but from the Boxing Day aftershock. These shops look quite modern from street level, but stand back and gaze up - they are actually old brick and masonry buildings, and the cracks are showing.
It was a beautiful sunny day. In Brisbane, besides closed shops, there will be water and mud. If I was given the choice between the earthquake we had here, and the massive flooding they are having in Queensland (rain since November 30th, I gather), I think I would take the earthquake.

A River of Stones: January 13

A sparrow hovers for a second
in a blur of wings
stationary above the water carafe.

For A River of Stones

I had a very intense day learning new computer systems at work, but over my lunch break, spent at a nearby cafe and garden centre with outdoor tables, I had an opportunity to watch the local bird life on the lookout for crumbs.

A River of Stones: January 12

The two stacks of shipping pallets
grow a little taller each day.
They lean into each other
like lovers.


For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 11

Two plump pigeons sit
on the parapet of a red brick building
surveying the traffic
like two opera going ladies
sitting in the best box seats.

For A River of Stones - a project to post one "small stone", a moment of careful observation, each day during January.

I am having a very busy week at work, so this will also have to serve as my post for Tuesday Poem. Is it a poem? Maybe, maybe not.

Over at the main Tuesday Poem site, Mary McCallum has written about Harvey McQueen who died on Christmas Day, and posted his poem Reading Janet Frame. It's worth a visit, for Harvey's gentle thoughtful poem, and for the other Tuesday poets, listed in the side bar there.

A River of Stones: January 10

Buttons spread out
like pebbles on a beach -
searching for matching sets

For A River of Stones

(I was going to take a photo to go with this one, but I didn't get around to it. I bought a big bag of buttons very cheaply, taking a chance on finding enough the same for the shirt I'm making, instead of buying the more expensive carded buttons).

A River of Stones: January 9

A metal tree bearing strange fruit: a pile of bright hats on the tip of each branch.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 8

The exoskeleton of a small bronze beetle gleams among the breadcrumbs on my kitchen bench.


For A River of Stones

(It was a grass grub beetle. It probably laid its eggs, so that the larvae could chew up the roots of my lawn, before it flew inside through the open back door and died there. If I don't think about that though, it was very beautiful.)

A River of Stones: January 7

Performing in my garden this morning - a Swan Lake of white tutued mushrooms in corps de ballet clusters.

(I'm not sure how to spell tutued. I guess that's what happens when you try to make a verb out of a word that really isn't)

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 6

He passes by on the footpath, hair a crest of spikes, like the stalks in the flowerbed behind him.

******

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 5

Signs hang on the safety fence
in front of quake damaged buildings
- "Chemist Open"
- "Footpath Closed"

******

I was struck by the slightly contradictory nature of these two particular signs today.

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 4

Their footprints crossed paths in the sand, but they never met.

For A River of Stones

I went to the beach this morning. Of all the possible observations to contribute for my "small stone" today, this one seemed most appropriate, in view of the news of the death of one of my Tuesday Poem colleagues, Harvey McQueen. I haven't been participating in Tuesday Poem very long, but through it, I came across Harvey's blog, full of thoughtful, considered posts. I will miss them.

Harvey's wife Anne has written the last post on his blog, Stoatspring. And there is a short tribute on the Tuesday Poem hub, to be followed by a longer one tomorrow.

A River of Stones: January 3

A petal drops -
reveals a dead bee
in the heart of the dying flower


For A River of Stones

A River of Stones : January 2

The lines between the paving stones make a jigsaw of my shadow.

*******

For A River of Stones

A River of Stones: January 1

The last of the Christmas cherries lie shrivelled in the bottom of the bowl.

******

For an explanation of "a river of stones", go here