One gay day in July (2011)

Walter Quan's delightful rainbow sushi candles! divine!

Sometimes it’s nice not to be a cancer patient. Some days it’s great not to be on chemo. To have some energy, to go out! To do just what I want, just what I like. Go where I want, eat what I want, see who I like. My motto these days, go late, come home early.

The day started a little oddly with me making a hole in the wall during a sharp turn of my chairiot in the hallway. Then my prayer beads bracelet broke as I was trying to get off the bus on Commercial. The bus driver and passengers helped me pick them up and I stowed them safely away in my bag. Uncharacteristically for me I refused to consider either of these misfortunes as omens of anything. The sun was finally shining and I was determined to have a good day.

Soon I was licking a pina colada popsicle at the Dyke March Concert. I saw, U, and V. C and J, L, B, C. I had a great time catching up with everyone in the sun amongst the rainbow festivities. Enjoying the music and the inimitable Morgan Brayton as the ever present effervescent MC. Eating a Sweet Cherubim’s tofu rice samosa I wended my way past blooming flower gardens back to Commercial drive. Where I bumped into M and N. I called out to Y from my poetry class and we walked down Commercial drive and took the bus in to town, chatting animatedly about writing all the way.

I got off at Oppenheimer Park and went to the centre of all things Japanese, the Powell St Festival craft market where hundreds of people were enjoying the day. Browsing amongst the tents, I was taken by the variety and quality of the wares. I wanted to buy everything! Settling for a range of beautiful cards, layers of fabric, paper, pressed flowers, burgundy and pink. One with the word ‘laugh’ written in gold in the centre of a ring of tiny blossoms. A blue and gold fridge magnet with the symbol for ‘dream’ on it. Some copies of Ricepaper literary journal, always a good read. A small green pottery bowl for A, and the best from W from BC Arts Council who has managed to combine 3 of my favourite things, sushi, art and rainbow pride. In the exquisitely subversive gay pride colored centres rolled beeswax candle sushi. Divine! He was cheerfully crocheting a purple eggplant at the time I dropped by! So fun!

After another short bus ride, I rolled up Seymour St to where my friends G and D, are staying while their flooded apartment is repaired. Bearing a gift of a blue and gold fridge magnet with the symbol for ‘friend’. D and I had a refreshing swim in the outdoor seawater pool with a vista of the city skylines, me mostly just floating, relaxing. D gives me a lemon meringue from today’s farmers market, to take home and share with A, so sweet and thoughtful. She’s off at a gathering dancing the light fantastic with Lucie Blue Tremblay.

To my final festival of the day on my way home at Canada Place, next to the seabus, with a view of the breathtaking blue on the horizon Northshore Mountains across the inlet. The Public Dreams Society Illuminaires lantern festival. Cute to see the children in their fairy costumes carrying homemade lanterns. Alas my camera ran out of batteries at the pool so no more photos of things and people seen and heard. ( But here is some one else's photos ( : ) Like the giant heron lantern to be carried by several people. Meandering amongst the crowds munching a Sweet Cherubim’s aptly named chocolate bliss ball. Saw J from A’s choir running past, late, with green glitter lipstick and a drum, and D and D stopped to chat. Grooving with the festive mood I had my photo taken at a booth with dressup clothes, in an decorated ‘alladins’ type hat. Time to head home. All on accessible public transit. Grateful ( ;

Perhaps today reminded me of a summer’s day in early February in NZ. When we would go me, and A, and J and J, to The Big Gay Out, in Point Chevalier park, and bump into people we knew. Later we would pile into a car with my manual collapsible wheelchair and J’s walker and go to the Chinese New Year Lantern Festival that always seemed to be on the same day. J’s daughter, J, would be so good about pushing my wheelchair, and we would find good food to eat, and wander in wonder amongst the lanterns hanging in the trees. The young, the old, and the crip, the queer, like the strange little family that we are, and have the best day ever.

PACIFIC CURLS

PACIFIC CURLS are fantastic! Wonderful musicians! They are Kim Halliday (Rotuman/NZ Scottish), Sarah Beattie (Scottish) and Ora Barlow (Te Whanau-a-Apanui/English). This trio has been together for 6 years, and play a seamless blend of Maori, Pasifik, Celtic music and instruments.

I saw/heard them in the summer and started a blog and then life ran away with me but here I am back in the blogosphere.

thumb piano

 So heres the thing, I grew up around pacific cultures and sounz, but have no claim to it culturally myself, am of Scottish ancestry, but was not raised in that culture, just in this bland english way.  Fiddle player Sarah hails from Aberdeenshire, as do some of my rellies, my great-grandma for instance.

This blend of music and cultures, YES! I never felt more complete, at home, so far from 'home'. Pacific beatz and harmonies with celtic fiddle. Who knew!?

Ora definitely leads, keeps it all together, the show moving along with her great song introductions, humour, audience participation, vocals, beat box and range of traditional instruments she plays from Nguru (nose flute) to the whirring spin of a Purerehua.

I loved all their songs, but can't get the final offering of their concert Kalimba Trance out of my head. Based around Kim Halliday's exquisite Kalimba (thumb piano) playing, which I heard like a ring of tiny bells being played in a mesmerizing circular rhythm (think didgeridoo circular breathing).  It made me want to get out my humble thumb piano (see photo) and play it after it sitting idle for years! Kim's exquisite thumb piano and ukele of a pink/blonde wood look like they may have been handcrafted just for her by the same detailed instrument maker. I once played mine for hours under a full moon on new years eve sitting at the top of a HUGE macrocarpa tree to an audience of equally large cockroaches. Yes I believe that is fizzy drink can decorations on my Trade Aid thumb piano, inventive use of recycling eh?

I was so enthused I ended up buying both their CD's, their 2008 Pacifi Celta, and their most recent Te Kore. 

You can hear some of their music online at their Pacific Curls sonicbids page where you can also keep a track of their touring dates. Go see them if they come to a place near you - you'll be glad you did!

Strong Medicine - West meets East meets North meets South

Medicine and spirit has been up a lot lately. I'm gonna go with that. During a film festival, I saw the films Buffy Sainte-Marie: A Multimedia Life, and The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island.

Buffy Sainte-Marie (1941- ) is an awe inspiring artist and activist who travels the world performing, and working on her Cradle Board Teaching Project which links indigenous teens across communities, provides School Curriculum on First Nations and much more. I really like her innovative  digital art work, 'painting with light'.  Her multiple streams of creativity, and standing up for what she believes in. Learning more about her long trail blazing career as a singer and songwriter since the 1960's was just wonderful. She has worked so hard for close to five decades, and endured her music being 'blacklisted' and suppressed due to her stand on First Nations rights and many other issues.

I was struck by many things in these two movies, but what stays with me is near the end Buffy Sainte-Marie says in the film something to the effect, 'if you carry the medicine, if you are a medicine carrier, but the illness is not epidemic yet, you have to carry the medicine for a really long time'. It made me reflect on the long history of many diverse communities for justice, healing, and wellness.

Buffy Sainte-Marie who was born in Saskatchewan, Canada of the Cree Nation, lives some of the year, when she is not traveling for work, in Hawaii. She talked about the need for a place of retreat, and quiet, in order to be able to do all she does as a performer and teacher. Similarly Hanne Sorensen (1960 - ) originally from Denmark who is one of 6 people featured in the film The Rainbow Warriors of Waiheke Island, talks about needing to retreat after years working as a welder and technician aboard Greenpeace ships on environmental issues. The Greenpeace ship the Rainbow Warrior - named after a Cree prophecy of the ecological disaster that would befall the human race if nature was not respected, was to lead a protest against underwater nuclear bomb tests at Mururoa, in 1985. For decades the peoples of the pacific have been made so sick by radiation poisoning, which still effects people today, including genetically. The Rainbow Warrior had just come from Rongelap, (Marshall Islands), where the indigenous people had asked for help to relocate to another island, their homeland had become so uninhabitable. The ship was bombed by members of the French military in a covert operation in Auckland harbour, it sank taking the life of Fernando Pereira. Many of the crew now live on nearby Waiheke Island. Aotearoa has been a nuclear-free zone by practice since 1984, and by law since 1987.

I understand that need to retreat, to reflect, to rejuvenate.  Both these places - Hawaii, and Waiheke Island, where these two women live, I have been to, and returned to for exactly these reasons - healing, review, renewal. Places which in and of themselves are healing, they have such powerful energy.

I watched a video of African-American writer Alice Walker (1944 - ) and Buddhist nun Pema Chodron (1936 - ) Pema Chodron and Alice Walker in Conversation (1999).

Alice Walker's third novel The Color Purple is one of my favourites. It talked about things I knew: violence; relationships with women; and things I had not been subjected to: racism. It meant so much to me, when the movie based on the book came out, a friend took the poster from the movie theatre and gave it to me, it hung on my wall for years. Alice Walker was awarded the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (the first African American woman writer to receive it) and the American Book Award for The Color Purple

Pema Chodron is a European-American Buddhist nun, director of Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada.  Pema Chodron and Alice Walker  talked amongst other things about making toxic things in to medicine - more like emotional, or mental or spiritual suffering. Not to seek suffering, or be martyrish about it, but to accept that there will be good times, and there will be hard times. To use the hard times, to make use of them, to learn about ourselves, and others, a way to understand this as a social activist -  our shared experiences of sufffering. To make the hard, the toxic be a teacher to us.


Or as the Dalai Lama puts it:  'Acceptance of suffering does not mean we should not do everything in our power to solve a problem whenever it can be solved. However, acceptance of the suffering that we are already undergoing helps us not to make it worse with the additional burden of mental and emotional suffering. For example, there is not much we can do about old age. Far better to accept our condition than to fret about it.'

A Two-Spirit friend who was participating as one of forty Aboriginal ceremonial spiritual elders and leaders in the third annual Downtown Eastside Smudge Ceremony invited me and a friend to come. Which was a humbling and amazing experience -  it is open to all, four hundred people came, many First Nations people traveling from near and far. It is held in a hard place, a dangerous place for women, especially Aboriginal women, where colonization meets the street. Where poverty, displacement, violence, addiction and prostitution live. A place where people live, and look out for one another. A place where Aboriginal villages once were. A place of hurt. The ceremony of healing from violence towards women,  was initiated by Darla Laughlin in 2007, after she had a vision in which she saw a huge abalone (paua) shell from which the smoke of sage was filling the street. Bringing together people of all races from the four sacred directions of the medicine wheel. Red races from the West, Black races from the South, Yellow races from the east, White races from the North. This year the smudge ceremony was on the 'Summer Solstice: Honouring Women as Sacred Life Giver. Prayers for Mother Earth and all Female Energy. Keeping our Seven Generations.'
 

Powerful medicine, after three hours one of the most painful places on earth felt as clear, neutral, energized, pure as a temple. I have recently been taught the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Making your heart  a place of light, through which you breath in others suffering, breathing out joy, peace, happiness. I do not find it easy, I am still learning how not to take in, on that suffering, not to be overwhelmed by the suffering of all living beings.  Being a bit of an energy empath, I frequently shudder, on the bus, on the street, in traffic, when people and places of hurt, negative energy reaches and envelopes me as I pass by. I try to have compassion. To remember that sometimes, angry, aggressive, violent people, are just like barking dogs - scared. Yes I try to protect myself, with light. There are reasons I live in the mountains, and meditate on buses.  In the ceremonial space of so much concentrated energy, with so many people standing in spirit with their sacred medicine bundles, and constantly renewed by the smoke of the smudge, it was much more possible. The breathing in of suffering, transforming it, the breathing out of joy. It was a profound way to spend the summer solstice. 

After in the park, we ate wonderful vegetarian South-Asian Indian food. Amidst the First Nations drumming and dancing, I thought of friends in Aotearoa, in the winter, celebrating Matariki, the new year.


Later that week, an Aussie musician friend from down the line, I wished I could see more often, was in town and turned up unexpectedly next to me in my mediation class to surprise me! No not in a vision, like in reality! Let us sit together and envision a better world for all.

With gratitude Namaste.

Para Graphia Mark III

It’s all about context eh? It was only today seeing Para written in a sentence with other Maori words, I remembered Para is also a Maori word, or often prefix. I know that it’s not only about context, it’s also about who is writing, or seeing, or speaking, or understanding a word. That Para, separated from Graphia, as in Paragraphia, is a word not only in English/Latin, but also Maori, and possibly other languages such as Spanish. I set out to find what Para could mean. Relying on the always reliable, extensive Ngata Dictionary, Maori to English, and English to Maori. (http://www.learningmedia.co.nz/ngata/)

Which revealed 260 results for Para. So out of respect for the fact letters, sounds syllables live within many languages; in this space devoted to words, meanings and writers, included below are some of the beautiful possibilities in Maori. Which resonate with this writing, and whose trail led me back to another language I had been thinking about after returning to spend time at the Out from Under exhibition, Braille:

For those who may not know, Aotearoa is officially a trilingual country. The official languages, are indigenous Maori (since 1987 - of which in reality there are many distinct languages and dialects), NZ Sign Language (since 2006). English which is a de facto Official Language by use since colonization in 1800’s, but not actually by law.  Unfortunately the reality of access to, use, and teaching in all three languages is a whole other struggle. English being far more favoured by officialdom, and both Maori and NZ Sign Language having been repressed historically. That is, in practice, and legislated against, and people punished for using them. I believe the only other country in which Sign Language is an official language so far is Uganda.

Hori Mahue Ngata (1919 – 1989) eldest grandson of Sir Apirana Ngata MP (1874 –1950), was a kaumatua of Ngati Porou, with tribal connections to Ngai Tamanuhiri, Rongomaiwahine, and Te Aitanga a Mahaki. Interpreter, University lecturer, scholar, he, and his whanau (family), friends, and colleagues spent decades creating the dictionary of over 14,500 entries. From the 1960’s on, until it’s publication in 1993, four years after his sudden death in 1989. Leaving us all with a great taonga (treasure) of which I am in awe. (My apologies I can’t work out how to put the macrons over the long vowels on this computer – but I am on the trail of finding and configuring software which will correct this).

"kopara: female bellbird (listen to her sing http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/small-forest-birds/4/1).

haparangi: to bellow; taipara(tia): bombard; parapara: bent. He mahi parapara te korero purakau ki a Witi Ihimaera. Witi Ihimaera has a natural bent for story-telling. (this is even more apt considering he is gay writer = bent!). para: body. He nui nga para kai roto i te wai. There are foreign bodies in the water.

ukupara - smudge; pake parapara: black cape. Ko nga muka harakeke i totohua ki ro paru mo nga ra torutoru, i whatua mo te pake parapara. Flax fibres steeped in mud for several days were used to weave the black cape.

parapara: acumen, faculty, ingenuity, instinct/ive, resource, remains. paraketu(tia): probe

para kore: pure. tio para: mud oyster.

parari: gully; parara: roar. Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka. The roar of the wind in the ravine. paparahi: trail; para: spirit."

H.M. Ngata Dictionary 1993

Which brought me back to Mae Brown, first Deaf-Blind person to receive a degree, at Toronto University in Canada in 1972. Working away on her Braille typewriter, with her lectures spelt into the palm of her hand, as part of her work she created a Braille encyclopedia. She is featured in the Out from Under exhibit under ‘Trailblazing’. The text of the online Plain Language Audio Tour of this section concludes:  http://www.ofu.ryerson.ca/exhibits/trailblazing.html

“Long before she earned her university degree she wrote an article comparing her life to a deep dark canyon. She imagined that her only way out of the canyon was by making a difficult climb. She wanted to leave way marks behind her so that other people could find the path she had taken”

when I lie down
tired worn out
others will stand
young, fresh
on the stairs
which I have built
they will climb
and on the work
which I have done
they will mount
at my clumsy work
they will laugh
and when the stones roll
they will curse me
but they will climb
and on my stairs
and they will mount
and on my work”

Mae Brown (1935 – 1973)

I like to think of Mae Brown working at her studies in the late 1960’s; whilst on the other side of the world H.M. Ngata is beginning his dictionary, starting with the legal terms used in his level III Maori Language Class at Auckland University. Trail blazing, doing something worth doing which no one has done before.

The roar of the wind in the ravine
roar
gully
trail
spirit

Te parara a te hau i roto i te koaka
parara
parari
paparahi
para

Or, it wasn’t until I stood alone in the dark canyon of the wings about to go on a stage, with the book my friend had given me, in which I had pasted my stories. I noticed for the first time, some months before she had written ‘Shine on you crazy diamond’. (Yes Ups to Pink Floyd!) She had put those words there, perhaps knowing, I would later need them. I took courage from those words. Blaze on my friends, blaze on.

k.d. lang eh

Yes I watched the opening of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games on TV. For the record I wish governments would spend as much money and energy on addressing First Nations sovereignty; homelessness, poverty, services to women, children, elders, disabled, refugees; the arts etc as they do on sports events like this.....k.d. lang singing Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah near the end kinda got to me. Wow, such power in her voice, she put her heart and soul in to that! (Even tho up until that moment I wasn't really a fan of this song, I mean the dude can write, but his songs can tend towards dirges and sometimes 1970's style misogyny). Okay I cried during the First Nations part, with so many dancers from so many nations gathered together in one place. Bagpipes make me cry sometimes too, and I tried not to cry, during a fantastic performance by Turanga Ararau and local First Nations last week, I went to on the eve of Waitangi Day, as I hummed quietly the familiar tunes. It's part spirit, part collective memory, part some grief of energy around previously oppressed cultures, part some personal history of my own. Like when people play 10 guitars. Theme song of 1970's parties, rural and urban.....I actually thought this was a local song up until quite recently, there were so many localized versions sung; me being oblivious to Engelbert Humperdink.

It made me think about the power of k.d. lang standing there in her white suit butchness for all the parts of the world which could watch knowing some part of who and what she is. This Metis, lesbian, butch woman, singing a song to another woman. It inspired me to carry on with my own tiny spoken word performance when the opportunity arises. There is a power in your own truth which others not only appreciate, but need.



Like a disabled artist I met out at a Uni talk about Cancer and being Queer. I was chatting with after, asked me 'was that you I went to see perform at such and such a venue'? Yep it probably was. We have no idea sometimes the positive effect of what we do has on others. We often don't find out until years later, if even at all. Being a big boned gal from southern alberta, apparently k.d. lang performed Turn me round at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics too. I did love that song, big boned gal from southern alberta that year, it made me feel like I fit in my body as I danced around the kitchen.

I did really love her Constant Craving song from her Ingenue album, and could play it over, and over and over again in the early 1990's! Although I always thought of it as being about chocolate! I'm joking! And I thought the line 'Maybe a great magnet/pulls all souls towards truth' was 'Maybe a great Minatour' huh? I always imagined some big Taniwha.



So as per Dame Edna's dubious advice below, I am embracing my inner Canadian, no not the Olympic pride kind. The be true to yourself, k.d. lang kind. I do love when she sings how she commits, to the song, to the note, to whatever she's wearing. That's it, just commit.





I saw the delightful k.d. lang in concert in Aotearoa a few years back for my birthday, fantastic! With a couple of my dear, apparently straight grrl workmates who were swooning in the aisles! There was leaning over the balcony, taking breathtaking photos, and breathless whispering! But y'know k.d. is awesome it's hard not to swoon! Ah good times good times ( : I often seem to see people perform outa their country, whichever one I'm not in. Like I saw The Topp Twins live in Canada in 1998, and Alix Dobkin, and Joan Baez in Aotearoa around 2000. Stumbled upon my all time favs Aussie grrl band FRUIT in Canada around 2006.



At the Turanga Ararau performance at We Yah Hani Nah Coastal First Nations Dance Festival we got seated near the front, on the side with the bear totem, which made me happy, the side, the place for twins. ( : Reminded me how ten days before I met Miss A, I dressed up in a bear costume I made out of my grandma's black coat and tried to win a free trip to visit Canada. The energy of that, of committing to that. Once when I was first in Canada, things were going real badly housing and relationships wise for a bit, and I knew no one, and I was staying in this place with no phone and no internet. I felt so lonesome, just before I fell asleep, I thought of a black bear, I'd met two by then already. I fell asleep with it's warm pungent fur and breath on my neck. The next day, a bear walked up the stairs past my door. It truly did, I called, and bear came and gave me strength to go on. I been wondering if twins will come to the next generation, and then a relative did talk to me about that this week, the possible genetic inheritance of that happening.

Hey and synchronistic I was walking through a mall thursday and I heard playing 'How Bizzare' Sistah Seena says 'funky'!!

Okay enough with the youtube mix tape session, I need to get Mixpod like the stylee Miss Brian। Nice music e hoa! Still craving some k.d? Miss Brian rightly points out in her comment below k.d. lang does indeed have a new compilation just out Recollection.

SUNDAY DRIVE

Don't ask me how, I got to thinking about the Sunday Drive, maybe coz it is Sunday, or maybe it's the crocuses poking through the dirt, or the pee-paw sound of a bird heralding spring, the overcast day. Although hitherto unto now I had completely forgotten about the existence or possibility of the Sunday Drive for a large number of years.

From memory a Sunday Drive require 6 things:
1. A Vehicle any kind will do, truck, car, motorbike.
2. A Driver.
3. Passengers.
4. A Road.
5. Money for gas; and maybe an ice cream.
६. An indeterminate amount of time.

I don't have all that fond memories of the family Sunday Drives, owing to the fact I was the youngest and the smallest, and my siblings were prone to poking me, as siblings are, which made me squeal, I still do can't help it! Which meant when we had the little domed car I had to sit in the front on a board wedged between the parents in their bucket seats, with my three siblings in the backseat. When we had the station wagon I sat in the boot/trunk part, not all that comfortable, nor allowed by law today, but at least no one poked me and could be quite sunny with windows on three sides ( : Either way the Sunday Drive involved staring dreamily out the window at all that passed by in the countryside. The Sunday Drive like theatre does require audience participation, in this case passengers, although the 'performance' itself is mainly the Driving.

Mostly there was no purpose to the Sunday Drive, that was the whole point, you didn't know where you were going. You meandered, the original the journey is the destination experience, route choices were made on impulse. Although secretly you all hoped the Sunday Drive would stop at your favourite ice cream store, and in reality the Driver often did have a plan in mind, they just didn't reveal it. That was part of the deal as they pulled up to the much often visited repast stop of old. You all exclaimed in mock surprise, and excitedly raced in to eyeball every single flavour of ice cream in the open cardboard boxes under the glass refrigerated cabinet, and had the same one you always had. Cherry chocolate, bubblegum or hokey pokey.

I think the Sunday Drive happened more in the winter and spring. In the winter as an antidote to cabin fever and distraction from the rain, which did make the windows kind of misty what with all those people breathing in there. You might stop at some remote part of the road and be let out like puppies to run around on the beach for a few minutes wildly you hair steaming in the wind until you face and fingers were freezing. In the spring you drove by lambs, new grass, daffodils, foals. In the summer if you were near one, you went straight to the nearest waterhole, or beach. Less of a Sunday Drive, and more of an Outing. The only meandering involved picking up more friends to cram in the car.

The Sunday Drive may have been be combined with contemporary hunting and gathering activities, such as going to a pick berries, wild blackberries, cultivated strawberries by the bucketful, more in your stomach than in the pot. That apple orchard by the black stump on the back way to such-and-such, where they sold apples by the wooden box load, in Miss A's childhood; or in plastic bags as tall as an 8 year old in my time. On the way home you might stop at the flower or tomato stand the one you had scoped out as the best on the way up. Take your produce, put the coins in the honesty box, to this day you can still do this in places like the Sunshine Coast.

My Nana took me on plenty of Sunday Drives of the hunting and gathering variety when she came to visit and we were living in the city by then. I returned the favour when I went back to visit her in her 80's. Driving the hour and a half down to see her, and believe me she was ready and waiting (a little too anxiously) at the gate of the old folks home in her finest peacock hued clothes to go out for the Sunday Drive. We went to the Brian Boru pub for fish'n'chips and pavlova, once operated by relatives of Miss A. We drove up the coast to a picnic bench by the ocean on a curve in the road. That may have been the last time I was a regular practitioner of the Sunday Drive, which does really require you to have a car. We did it a bit up the Coast, maybe drive past the house with the arched wall, see if the eagles are out on the rock, look at the colored lights on every ones house in the winter time....

Since my parents, and my grandparents indulged in the Sunday Drive, it's apparent they were well off enough have cars, and some free time. The Sunday Drive is most often done with people you live with, all inmates of a house pile in, including pets. But some one could call you up and say I'm going for a Drive, wanna come? You will say yes, although you have no idea where they plan to go, and maybe neither do they. Sunday driving as an adult with the family can be dangerous, members are prone to reminisce about stories which have become the stuff of family legend. Tales which you now realize have gaping holes in them you could drive a tractor through. Which, when you question the mythologer on, you discover truths you would really rather not know.

Perversely, when you are actually on your way somewhere, an Outing, or emergency, to say a Fair that closes in less than a hour, the hospital, a funeral, a sports meet, and you meet people crawling along the road on a Sunday Drive, you will be infuriated. You will honk your horn, and pound on the steering wheel, gesticulate wildly out the window, yell "come on!" at the top of your lungs until the 4 or more people in the car in front of you finally pull over to the side or you will foolishly gashilit and pass them in the no passing zone at top speed, yelling with some contempt out the window "Sunday Driver!" get off the road!

Fortunately our neighbor Miss D, 80-something, has just dropped by to say hi after I took over some vegetable soup yesterday, and to pass on a spare blood pressure reader for Miss A. Miss D, was able to fill me in on the custom on Sunday Driving on the prairies. Yes indeed, her dad, a farmer, was a proponent of the Sunday Drive, to see how the other farms, his neighbors crops were doing. The Sunday Drive may not have involved ice cream it was 14 miles to the nearest store. When she lived in Vancouver's Westend, she and her husband went on Sunday Drives, out to the forest at UBC, the farmland in Surrey etc.

She thinks the demise of the Sunday Drive, is Television, why she herself has just been watching the women's curling; and paradoxically there being too many cars on the road. I'm not sure where it went. Do people still do it?

I just asked Miss A where she would like to go for her imaginary Sunday Drive. She would like to go to Ponds store at the Mairangi Bay of her childhood, for an ice cream. I would like to go, up north to Trounson Kauri Park, where I heard and saw the beautiful grey/blue rare and endangered Kokako, whose intriguing voice you can hear here, maybe have a swim in the pool in the river there. More of an Outing I guess, but the road is pretty long and winding.

So we are looking for a Sunday Driver, the ideal candidate would be affable, but not verbose. But have you noticed most affable people can talk the leg of an iron pot? While taciturn people can tend to sullenness? Steady on the road, can get hold of a car, able to concentrate on the job at hand while remarking every 6 miles or so, "the lambs are a good weight this time of year"; or "I once saw a hawk on the road here". Fond of ice cream.

FEELING NOSTALGIC

Brian's an unusual name for a girl, doesn't like the weather lately, which as it pounds on the roof made me think of the late poet Hone Tuwhare and Rain.

Reading the NZ Herald online, R.I.P. Pacific Island music pioneer Pauly Fuemana, innovator behind that classic debut single How Bizarre. Which lead me to think of the late Maori/Jewish/Celtic music pioneer, and later Like Minds Like Mine mental health educator; Mahinaarangi Tocker, whose music formed the soundtrack of the 1980's for me. Which lead me to this soulful version of Po Karekare Ana by Deborah Wai Kapohe who I just discovered right now. She seems to be furthering the honourable tradition of wonderful women musicians who also happen to be lawyers, along with Moana Maniapoto Jackson, Judy Small, and Anne Feeney.

Like I said, feeling all nostalgic for them Black Sand Shores.......

RENEE – you can’t really explain humour

You can't really explain humour. It is different in different locations, even if you are all (allegedly) speaking the same language. I have just finished re-reading Renee's (1929- ) book of comic writing Yin and Tonic (1998). Makes me laugh so hard! She has urban and small town NZ down to a T. Whether it be her frustration and successes in having some female garden gnomes made because previously all garden gnomes were male which she found ridiculous! Her priceless satirical gardening, cooking, ironing or pet care tips; taking the piss out of the media, dealing to heterosexism, ageism and sexism; or reminiscing about the good old days of political protest, womens groups, and writers parties. She has it going on!

I think my favourite story is: New Zealand's greatest pastime

'No it's not rugby, racing or beer. It's not sex, going out to restaurants, or reading books. It's not going to the theatre, opera, or ballet, It's not even bowls.
This pastime is indulged in by people of either sex, with people of their own or the other sex,and takes place both in the privacy of their own home and/or on the streets. It is enjoyed by people of any age. It is not a special feature of any culture, a plank of any political party or religious group. It is not confined to a certain class or income bracket, or whether you have or have not had children, a mammogram or cervical smear, or been tested for AIDS.It doesn't matter if you do it in the latest Porsche or in a rusty old Ford Falcon stationwagon. Policemen do it, drug dealers do it. Politicians do it, so do poets. Women do it, men do it, kids do it. Even animals have been known to do it. Hands up anyone who has moved house in the last five years.'

I believe I worked out once I have moved 60 times in my 4 decades and then some!

Or maybe it's her hilarious take on the invisibility of women over sixty in: To tell or not to tell, that is the answer

'You are party, from the next booth, to the discussion between two cheerful-looking men. One of them becomes aware that you would possibly overhear. You smile as though you have recently been discharged in to the community.'The old girl okay' the friend asks? 'Can you count to 100 backwards?' asks the first one. You nod and let a dribble of flat white run down your chin. They shrug and go back to discussing whether it should be a car accident or a drive by. You wait until they've gone, and then you attempt to solve the moral dilemma: should you tell someone? And if so what will you say?'

But then again theres What to do when I tell you I have breast cancer...

'Do not tell me about your auntie who died recently of breast cancer. Or I might tell of the sudden death by strangulation of someone who told someone who had a breast cancer that their auntie had recently died of a breast cancer.
Remember a lump is a lump is a lump, so do not ask me how big the lump is.'

Or the classic Touring:

'Then they turn to you and say, 'How would you like to be introduced?'
As the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, Queen Salote. Winner of Dominatrix of the Year Award. How about something about the books and plays I've written? Ugh, Ugh.
For some reason they expect you to be a good sport. Haven't they heard, that writers are never good sports? If they were good sports they wouldn't be writers, they'd be flight attendants.
And you'll eat all the asparagus rolls, won't you, because asparagus rolls give the writer indigestion.
Book signings. If you're very lucky one person might turn up for the book signing, and if you talk in a lively animated fashion they might stay round for two hours so it doesn't look as if no one loves you. Or maybe they'll just think you've gone off your medication, and run like hell.'

Part of her bio from the NZ Book Council/Te Kaunihera Pukapuka o Aotearoa reads: 'Renée, feminist dramatist and fiction writer, was born in Napier, of Ngati Kahungunu and Irish-English-Scots ancestry.She left school and started work at the age of 12; has worked in woollen mills, a printing factory, a grocery-dairy, and as a feature writer and reviewer; and completed a BA at the University of Auckland in 1979.

Renée has described herself as a ‘lesbian feminist with socialist working-class ideals’ and most of her writing is a direct expression of that conviction. She has been involved with community theatre, the Broadsheet Collective, PEN, radio shows, programme organisation for the Globe Theatre in Dunedin, and with script writing for TV. She started writing for the stage at the age of 50.'

See it's never too late to write! Renee has written 14 plays, 8 novels, short stories and poetry; a textbook Lets Write Plays (1998) and taught creative writing. For sure I saw her drama performed at the Dunedin Women's Festival (1989?) at Otago University. I think probably it was Born to Clean, and also maybe Secrets, and/or Setting the table. It was unforgettable, I can still picture the character in her floral pinny franticly cleaning, setting the table, and washing her hands over and over again. It was about sexual abuse, real, and unnerving, I felt quite sick after, yep it was that good! I am pretty sure I saw her perform with the legendary Hens Teeth womens theatre/comedy troupe in Wellington in the 1980's sometime, and man were they funny! Mostly I have been aware of her wry and status quo busting novels like Willy Nilly (1990), Daisy and Lilly (1993), and Does This Make Sense to You? (1995). Her work was some of the first local writing published by a lesbian with lesbian characters, along with Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, Tahuri : Short Stories. (1989)

CREATIVE WRITING 101 – writers born or formed?

In 1997 I wrote I wanted to perfect the art of writing humorous absurd tragedies about important things where nothing really happened! I think that is still a good aim, and I may be well on my way towards it.

I took a creative writing class that year, in response to my short story submitted for grading, the tutor exhorted me to publish, and wrote amongst other things that my writing had clarity and vividness, was powerful and moving, containing a dark intelligence. I am not immune to such flattery, but me and my creative collaborators of the time, T and, A, did have a lot of fun with it, spending some time debating if we should have an art competition amongst ourselves to see who could create the best image of what my dark intelligence might look like! In the end we didn't, but included above are two images of me drawn around that time by minimalist extraordinaire T, during a session in which we each drew portraits of each other in a set number of lines, in this case 5, and 7. Which illustrates what I might have looked like at the time my dark intelligence may have been in evidence! Yes I still have these things, in journals full of: writing, cards for exhibitions, tickets to movies and plays, photos, leaves, feathers, drawings - mine and others.

Before email, when living at a distance we perfected a way of sharing our writing via the telephone answering service for free. Each of us had voice mail with the same telephone company, which had only one access number for the whole country. We recorded our stories in a series of 3 minute messages on our own voice mail. Then T and A, would call up the system, enter my voice mail number and passcode and listen to the story of the day or week. I could do the same with them, erasing the messages as we went, and leaving messages in response to the stories for instant feedback.

A good 12 years earlier, I was 18, in my first year at university living on campus in the halls of residence, in small wooden room on the second floor, cluttered with posters on the wall, a purple plastic cup and saucer upside down on the ceiling impersonating a light fixture, it was the 1980's so there was some lime green and pink chiffon which were in vogue thanks to Cyndi Lauper. During a one week break from classes, I took all this down from the walls, and put up 7 of my photos of nature, one for each day of the week, along with literary quotes relating to the images under each photo. I had not quite exited christianity at this point so I believe the quotes were from the bible, the poetic parts, song of solomon, pslams, proverbs perhaps, lay me down in cool water etc.

I dragged the single bed in to the middle of the room on a diagonal, and put the desk and chair beside it, I put everything else away in the capacious built-in wooden wardrobe. I bought a hard covered journal with blank unlined crisp pages. Out the window I could hear performances of Shakespeare's A midsummers nights dream, being staged in the open-air by the university drama club. I am not a fan of Shakespeare, but it did make for a nice backdrop. For one week I wrote in to the book, the poems I had written since I was 15, from the loose leaf pages they were recorded on. Now that I would not return to my family's home, and it was safe to do so, where previously such poems had been hidden in a plastic bag in a box, on shelf, deep in the wardrobe. My mother concerned perhaps by my unexplained absence, upon driving up to visit one day looked nervously around my room, and asked if i had become a nun. No not disciple, disciplined. Which brings me to the present day, 27 years and 15 or so journals of writing later. Five of these journals are already deposited with an Archive, and the rest will be one day too, but like Janet Frame, no one gets to read them until I am long gone!

I have a high school English teacher to thank for my earliest literary encouragement. Mrs D, where are you? I had the pleasure of being in her class for two years, she really did love writing. I was one of few who actually enjoyed being left with creative writing assignments, on rainy days, when she had to leave the classroom. While my classmates gossiped, ate, threw things, I moved my desk to face the wall at the back of the class, far as I could get from the hub bub, and wrote. Whatever came into my mind, it was such a relief, creative expression, the release from strictly structured lessons. My work was always met by Mrs D with useful pointers, encouraging comments and humorous retorts to my sometimes satirical writing about the class.

She was amused by my audacity and gave me credit for originality at least on a set assignment in small groups to read part of a Shakespeare play, it may have been Macbeth. I rewrote the lines in the language, accent, slang of the present day I heard on television sitcoms. Each character in a different voice, Cockney, African American, Jewish, New York Italian, stereotyped renderings I know, and talked my group in to performing it thus, Shakespeare updated. We also had to study Aeschylus' Agamemnon, which was a bit to close to home and caused me to have a small nervous breakdown.

I wrote studious book reviews about the life of Ghandi and such like. It may have been Mrs D who was instrumental in having eight of my poems published (anonymously) in the school magazine in my final year. I will always be grateful for her literary nurturing, and recognition of possibilities, that writing had it's own value.

JANET FRAME - crazy? autistic? brilliant!

I have started keeping a dream journal. In the middle of an intriguing dream I was having about experimenting with making small sculpted letters of the alphabet out of leaves, plants, paint, yellow, red, green etc. Which spelled LGBTQI, and were to be held up by people scattered throughout the seats of an outdoor stadium. My mate from Brians an unusual name for a girl blog appears in my dream rather randomly and says "Don't you think if there is a Janet Frame award it should go to a crazy person".

What!? Which has got me thinking about the wonderful Janet Frame (28 August 1924 - 29 January 2004). One of Aotearoa/New Zealand's most famous authors. In her lifetime she published a book of poetry, a children's book, eleven novels, four short story collections, and three volumes of autobiography, which have been translated into many languages. Since her death, a novel, a book of poetry, and a collection of short stories have been published.

Janet Frame, as a child suffered the loss of two of her sisters by drowning ten years apart, grew up in poverty, infused in storytelling, spent 12 years in and out of psychiatric hospitals, narrowly avoided a frontal lobotomy in 1951, when the doctor had a change of mind after her first book of short stories, The lagoon and other stories won a literary award.

I think to myself well there probably is a Janet Frame Award, Google will provide the answer! Yep, since 2005 The Janet Frame Literary Trust Award, has been granted to 4 authors to write fiction or poetry, and to 2 Authors Advocacy Organizations. The 2008 recipient, poet Rhian Gallagher (1961- ) who moved to London in 1987, returned to Aotearoa in 2003, and as it turns out happens to be a lesbian.

After completing her first novel in 1956, Owls do cry, Janet Frame moved to London, not returning to Aotearoa for 7 years. When she was in the looney bin in Aotearoa in the 1940's her writing plans and aspirations were noted as symptoms of her mental illness, perhaps 'delusions of grandeur'. In her novel Towards another summer, written in 1963 and published posthumously in 2007, the main character Grace Cleave, expatriate novelist living in London, is holidaying in the north of England. Her host asks why she has abandoned her homeland: 'Don't you ever want to go back?''I was a certified lunatic in New Zealand. Go back? I was advised to sell hats for my salvation.'

Two previously unpublished stories she wrote were published in the New Yorker in 2008. Janet Frame did submit them for publication in 1954 to Charles Brasch of Landfall magazine, but he returned them to her with a note saying the stories were 'too painful to publish', which begs the question, too painful for who? A night at the Opera, portrays the screening of a movie in the looney bin and 'Gorse is not people reflects Frame’s determination to view reality from alternative perspectives, in this case that of a dwarf celebrating her 21st birthday. The story also makes disturbing use of Frame’s still fresh memories of life as a resident at Seacliff mental hospital.' (The Arts Fuse 2008)

Janet Frame published 3 volumes of autobiography, To The Is-Land (1982) about her childhood, An Angel at My Table (1984) about her years as a student and in a psychiatric hospital, The Envoy from Mirror City (1985)about her travels and life as a writer. All three came out as a collected Autobiography in 1989, and were made in to a dramatic film An Angel at My Table in 1990 by Jane Campion.

Like many people I read her autobiographical books in 1985. They were gripping, written in a way like no other, and to me chilling. Her writing was so important to so many of us, including close friends who had been incarcerated in psychiatric institutions, often as a result of being lesbian, or the effects of family abuse. Through her writing we knew you could survive: grinding poverty, unbearable loss and grief, torturous mistreatment, soul destroying ignorance, and misunderstanding. That somehow the will, the creative impulse does prevail. That not compromising your own creative vision was possible. That making your own way, on your own terms, was a viable option. Her books left a lasting impression on me, of what my country did to those considered a little different, it's writers and artists. For many years I kept my writing to myself, difference is defined by others and so that I could not keep to myself. I followed the example of those who had gone before me in finding an antidote to the strictures of the society they find themselves in, and left the country (some 15 years later). Like painters Margaret Stoddart, Frances Hodgkins, writers Katherine Mansfield, Witi Ihimaera, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, musicians Kiri Te Kanawa, Gareth Farr. Some for a few years, some for good, to survive, to follow creative, employment or academic opportunities.

When Janet Frame died in 2004 I happened to be in Aotearoa on Waiheke Island. I bought the Listener with the 4 page tribute by C. K Stead. Janet Frame wrote in a truly unique way, eschewing literary conventions to be true to her own inner monologue, and that of her characters. Said to possess a 'dangerous intelligence', her books won many literary awards, making her the subject of some professional jealousy. Despite her at time autobiographical writing, she guarded her privacy, wanting to lead an already life, far more interested in writing than succumbing to the cult of personality which surrounded her. I also bought at this time the more conventional weighty tome (nearly 600 pages) of a biography she had collaborated on with Michael King, Wrestling with the angel, (2000) with it's photos and dates and letters and references. We mourned the passing of a great soul. I returned home to my small collection of her books, the only collection I have of anyones work. I was fond of picking up old hardback copies of her work I came across in secondhand bookstores. Scented gardens for the blind, Faces in the water, The Edge of the alphabet....

Perhaps my friend appearing in my dream was to tell me, Janet's contemporary, close friend, and fellow poet, J.C. Sturm had just died (1927 - 2009). Jacquie Sturm whose poetry I also have thanks to my friend N (she of the write a poem a day discipline), who often sent me a book by a NZ woman poet for my birthday these past years in exile. J.C. Sturm was the wife of 'preeminent NZ poet' James K. Baxter, who I am not much of a fan of. This opinion did not improve when I discovered although she submitted poetry to a literary magazine he edited for several years he never published a single one! He went off to 'find himself' leaving her a solo parent. Had her collection of short stories The House of the Talking Cat : Stories been published when they were ready in 1966, instead of in 1983, they would have been the first collection by a Maori person, man or woman, instead this honor went to Witi Ihimaera with his novel Whanau in 1977. She was one of the first Maori women to get a university degree, in 1949.

Through the reach of the web I stumbled upon a debate raging since 2007 about whether Janet Frame was autistic. New Zealand doctor and rehabilitation researcher working in Australia, Sarah Abrahamson proposed that Janet Frame had high-functioning autism (HFA), in an article in the NZ Medical Journal October 12 2007. She based this on her reading of Janet Frame's writing, particularly the posthumously published novel, Towards another summer. Which portrays a weekend in which Grace Cleave, stays with a family she does not know well, and the painfulness of this and other social interactions for her, the divide between her inner life and outer world. There is the point of view that her artistic gift does not need to be pathologized with a diagnosis, or alternately that she can posthumously act as a positive role model for autism.

It has been suggested that her biographer Michael King and she herself did not find the autism label such a foreign idea. But as someone who fought for years to escape the the label of crazy and schizophrenia - she was later determined by doctors to not have schizophrenia, to have never had schizophrenia, but she was likely affected by post traumatic stress; she may have been reluctant to take on any label. She was leery of the 'mad-genius' mythology which surrounded her and her work. If the label of autism would have fit with her during her lifetime; or now that she has passed, we will never know.

David Cohen, journalist, father of an autistic son and author of a book about autism, A Perfect World, in an article in the NZ Listener, Autistic Licence seemed to be hedging his bets. Yet on his website about autism, humans.org.nz in a a discussion from 2007 he seems pretty convinced she was.

Pamela Gordon, niece of Janet Frame, appointed by Janet as her Literary Executor, and representative of The Trustees of the Janet Frame Literary Trust; and who has a daughter who is autistic, is adamant that Janet Frame was not autistic. This has resulted in much debate, some of it ill-willed, as evident by a January 5 2010 entry on Pamela's blog about Janet's work entitled Janet on the planet: Poison Pen letters. The entry has since been removed from the blog, but the title is visible if you Google search it.

What I was able to glean by a quick scan of the entry before it was removed, was that there are those affected by autism who are angry at the denial of Janet's possible autism. But also that Literary Executor, Pamela Gordon receives an inordinate amount of correspondence on this and other matters, personally attacking her for how she deals with her aunt's legacy. This is both to be expected given the attachment of so many to the mythology surrounding Janet Frame; as well as being completely unreasonable.

It reminds me that art historians and the media have brought us such startling revelations (not) in the past few years just by looking at the painting of Mona Lisa, that she is a) pregnant b)flushed from recent sexual activity, and most recently c) her lips reveal she was suffering from high cholesterol. A then partner of mine, upon viewing the painting of the Mona Lisa in person excitedly informed me some years ago, that I have the exact same hands as Mona Lisa. So I do know, what we see, can be, in the mind or eye of the beholder

Towards another summer, Janet Frame's novel published in 2007, based on a weekend spent with a journalist in England, and his wife, a fellow New Zealander. Widely considered to be about homesickness, Grace Cleave becomes a migratory bird. It is, but for a romanticized version of the country of origin she had left behind, as she left it and remembered it. She knew this, it is there in the damp woolly portrayal of her compatriots relative's room.

In 2008 I read from cover to cover her book of poetry published posthumously. The Goose Bath also titled Storms Will Tell: Selected Poems (2006) and then passed it on to my art collaborator of 20 years T, at a bus station, as is our wont.

Towards another summer rests on my bookshelf along with her other novels. For now Janet's biography Wrestling with the angel sleeps peacefully under my pillow.