ON LOOP: IVORY ROAD

If Russell Brand, Vampire Weekend and The Kooks were to have a child, I think it would be this guy. If the following King Charles song doesn't make your Monday, I honestly cannot help you.

2013

ELIOT'S HOLLOW MEN

THE HOLLOW MEN

- T.S. ELIOT, 1925

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

A penny for the Old Guy

I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer—

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

___________________________________

I heard this poem over the summer and it instantly felt like someone had dropped a leaden sphere into my gut. Wetness sprang involuntarily to my eye sockets. 

I later decided to read various analyses of the poem on the internet. (Man I love the internet. Thank you, Tim Berners-Lee.) 

There, I found a guy describing this last part of the poem - "Between the emotion and the response, falls the shadow" - like this: 

"it's the moment where one decides to be evil. That decision is such a tiny thing, much like a whimper...".

I can stare out the window pondering that sentiment for a long while.

Is there an internal radar which holds us, always, no matter what pop culture may tell us otherwise, to an ultimate idea of what a good life looks like? Or is that voice eroded - not swiftly - but far, far more subtly: in moments. Via things that we hear. On the radio. In Oscars acceptance speeches. In the mouths of those that we trust. In the mouths of those we distrust. And then ultimately - parrots that we are - in our own. 

The philosopher John Locke said: "We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the colour of our moral character, from those who are around us."

I do not always agree with John Locke. But this time I do.

Does this explain why we don't recognise ourselves from five years ago? All those little moments led to a lot of changes in us. Some good, some bad. Occasionally, over time, even people's eyes change. And all you know is that something has happened. They are not the same.

That nanosecond window of "decision" that the poem speaks of is not involuntary, like crying upon hearing especially haunting prose. It is preceded by making a lot of little calls. We all know with our knowers when we are making them, too. That's the worst part. 

Along my earth-stomping, I have had the extraordinary joy of meeting some of the best of humanity. These people paid in pain for the beautiful people they became afterward. And I have immense respect for the strength of their choices. And I want them to inspire mine.

We need to be more lucid than we are. More aware of the state of flux our characters tend to be in. So that when the shadow falls...

The anchor we've cultivated holds us firm to what we know.

RECENT DAY-MAKERS

I feel happy e.v.e.r.y time I watch this video for Little Numbers by Swiss-German duo, BOY. I shan't admit how many times I've listened to it. It's a lot.

Jason Polan's "THINGS I SAW" Op-art series in the NYT is blimmin' wizard.

Heart pangs; NYC; summer; enough said. 
The Sartorialist strikes again.

Mitik the baby walrus. Stop it. Stop it right now.

And a little more locally - this shadow was cast on my Auckland wall as the sun set recently, while I was in the middle of packing my life into boxes. There's no place like home; it is true. And this was a great one.

ON LOOP: CORRINA, CORRINA

Thank you to my father, for instilling in me a life-long obsession with Bob Dylan. We went to see him live in Auckland together a while ago, and although Bob now sounds more reminiscent of The Cookie Monster than the voice to my childhood soundtrack, I think he's a wonderful specimen of a human.

IN DEFENSE OF SLOTH (AND TREE-GAZING)

My friend sent me a fascinating article recently from the opinion pages of the New York Times. My interest in it was multi-faceted; firstly, the writer wrote about a topic I’ve been meaning to rant about for a long time. Secondly, he espoused my exact thoughts - and much more - so effortlessly that after reading it I banged my head on an obliging hard surface and mumbled in wounded tones to my desk lamp out of mouthfuls of my hair that I would never write again while he was alive, because there was no point.

"He", by the way, is Tim Kreider. His NYT piece was called The 'Busy' Trap. He valiantly unmasked the way most of the modern world finds both validation and respite in responding to every "how are you?" With "OMG, SOOOO BUSY. Work is crazy. I have done so much overtime this week, just got tonnes on."

...Do you think, in times past, people responded to that question differently? I mean how often does the cultural paradigm shift to the point where the correct response to that question completely changes? What would Jane Austen’s characters, for example, have responded to "how are you today?" with? I’m fairly sure it wasn’t “ARGHH, SOOO busy.” When did this become remotely normal, or cool, or just what voluntarily tumbles out of our mouths? 

Now, this is not to invalidate the legitimate concerns a lot of my comrades have around the fact that, clocked overtime considered, their workplace is quite possibly a cult, intent on stealing their lives while they are sleeping. (*Not that they have time for sleeping anymore anyway, because they are at work, but metaphorically, you understand.) No, it is rather a red flag to those of us who with our free time, as Kreider put it, hedge their inner emptiness with the buffer of busyness; of becoming inherently worthy from the feeling of being put-upon, sought-after, time-poor.

Someone once told me:
"You are as busy as you want to be." I think this is true, and this year, after roaming everything from West-coast mountains to West Village streets for four months and staring intently into my soul, I realized that it was time to slowww the goshdarn heck down. Embrace thy inner sloth. Because, I mean, it had gotten to the point where I had convinced myself that I was too busy to read books. Which frankly I know now to be a large heap of finely desiccated coconut. Evidenced by the fact that this week when I was home sick with the flu I managed to read two books in three days, through bleary eyes and hourly naps. I'm as busy as I want to be.

We are as busy as we want to be.

The image of the tree above is photographic evidence of possibly the first time this year I stopped to take in my surroundings. That evening, I had just gotten off a long flight to my favourite city, (three guesses) and was meandering down Jane Street back to my hotel. And I saw this tree. And I stopped, and I stared, and I took photos. Which I later Instagrammed, because I'm part of my ridiculous generation who believes that if it didn't make it to social media, it didn't happen. I wasn't thinking about Instagram in that moment, though. My arms just kind of flopped to my sides, and I gazed up at that tree for a socially awkward amount of time, and I breathed very deeply, the kind of deeply where it actually starts to hurt your ribcage a little bit. And I realised with such sadness how scarcely I'd taken stock of little glimpses of perfection like that of late. And it sparked in me an obsession with fauna-gazing that has been hard to kick ever since. 

I'm better for it.

Here is a poem that should make you think about busyness, and trees, and other things: 

(*I even foraged through the deep recesses of the interweb for the above tiny-res picture of the author's original manuscript from 1914, because I'm dedicated to you like that.)

LEISURE

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this is if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare. 

- W.H. Davies

ODE TO TRIBLY

I am on a plane to Minneapolis, and it has struck me how truly awful I am at gardening. This probably stems (sorrie) from my struggle to remember everyday things, facts or tasks if they are not directly relevant to people. Hello directions! Hello inner workings of binary fission! Hello html code! 

I am told by Myers and Briggs that this is consistent of everyone with my personality type, and thus shouldn’t be too awful a thing to concede, because we have other good things going on that people who remember how to get to their own houses and water their potted plants simply don’t.

I used to work for a magazine. This basically meant that at 10am each morning and to my absolute joy various bizarre things would land on my desk. I have always had a borderline unhealthy fascination with the mail. I remember that when I was seven instead of playing with barbies I would force whichever friend was over to join me in stringing up fake communication networks across my room consisting of paper cups and twine, and we would send enveloped notes to each other down the twine. There was also an invisible ink phase involving large quantities of lemon juice. (Yes, in retrospect my parents should've been faintly alarmed by all of this.)

Anyway so one day at mail time the latest brainchild of a PR maven to wind up on my lime green workspace happened to be a glittery potplant. Why was it glittery? How did the glitter get there? Whatever its intention, it clearly didn’t get the message across in a memorable way, because the point is that I can’t remember what the plant was meant to be drawing my attention to at all. Frankly it was far less exciting to me than the survival kit promoting some Man vs. Wild-esque new series that I'd received earlier had been. This had far less emergency blankets and dehydrated rations involved. Nonetheless, because the plant was glittery, I took it home. “What is that?” asked my flatmate, bemused by my apparent conversion from inked to green fingers. “It’s a potplant I got sent at work today.” “Why is it glittery?” “Certain things can’t be explained, Renée.”

I named it Tribly. A fact which now also remains inexplicable to me. I watered that thing carefully, for a time. So novel! A plant! To think, I am sustaining life! And I don’t even have to take it for walks, or buy it food! Then the novelty wore off, at a rate directly proportionate to which the glitter did. Tribly began to display disturbing changes in texture and give the Leaning Tower of Pisa a run for its money; covering the counter with disintegrating, vaguely shimmery debris in its pleas for attention.

“Tribly’s dying.” I said dejectedly one day to no one in particular. “That’s because you forgot to water it again.” One of my cohabitants pointed out. “I feel like this bodes badly for any future attempts at motherhood. Or holding down a relationship. What were Sandra Bullock’s rules in 28 Days for recovering drug addicts? I think they weren’t allowed to date until they had successfully kept a plant alive, and then a small house pet. I haven’t even made it to HOUSE PET!”

I was depressed about it for a while, mostly because of my inherent fear of failure.  Then I remembered that both motherhood and relationships involved other people, and so hopefully that would all be fine. Then I flew to Australia for a month, and if ill-fated Tribly had not resembled a wizened desert cactus pre-walkabout, then good lord, he certainly did upon my return.

“I think it’s time to throw Tribly away.” My flatmate whispered, with a consoling pat on my back as if to soften the blow. “It’s ok.” said I, bravely. “I got the new iPhone while I was in Sydney. I have Siri now. Far less risk of dehydrating her than Tribly. If anything, I think she’s supposed to look after me, or something. That’s my kind of postmodern house pet."

Maybe potted plants aren't for some people. My plan is to go and find these people and join their foliage-free cult imminently.

It's going to be really nice.

ON LOOP: LIONS AND WITCHES

This song by Sydney indie kids Tigertown has become a bit of a happy place; I don't even know how it happened. 
I think maybe they are Narnia fans too - but that's sheer speculation at this point.

CARPE DIEM

Today was a crying-at-my-desk, heavy boots kind of day. 

I spent a whirlwind, amazing 72 hours in Portland, Oregon two weeks ago. I made new friends, including Brett. Brett was probably one of the funniest guys I've ever met. Which I concede is a major call. But as he workshopped in real time - en masse and circa bonfire - various text messages he was sending to a girl he had just met with us for three hysterical hours, he not only validated my suspicion that boys are as prone to over-analysis as girls are, but elicited the realisation that I was in the presence of comedic greatness. After the dinner/bonfire, the above photoshoot took place. Below right features me losing it immediately after Brett attempted to photobomb us. He is pictured fourth from the left.

Late this afternoon I was slapped by the news that Brett died yesterday. While on the very church camp he had mentioned eagerly anticipating as we demolished a very high stack of $5 nachos a fortnight ago. He drowned while attempting to rescue one of the kids who had slipped and fallen into the falls they were visiting. 

...Surely not? 

Surely one operating with such a high-functioning level of joie de vivre dying at the age of 26 violates every unwritten law of the universe? Humans aren't meant to die at 26. Not in real life. I mean, he was planning to come to New Zealand for a fortnight in February with a couple of others, and had liked one of my facebook photos only two days ago. It's unthinkable. 

I'm going to ignore the tears pooling on my keyboard as I get this down. I'm not part of Brett's immediate community. I'm a foreign correspondent, who knew him for a matter of days. I'm not able to be there and grieve with others who knew him, and swap stories about bantering Mulan quotes a few margaritas in, or his pride in his ability to take the perfect "girl" shot ("it's all about the downwards angle..."). So I'm doing the most comforting thing I can think to do... I'm writing it down.

How is it possible that his life so impressed upon mine in a few short days that I am grief-stricken on the other side of the world? Well that's just the thing with friends, whether new or old. Today's news prompted such a depth of response that it has caused me to question how it is that we gauge others' ability to affect us. The human heart is a tricksy little valve if ever there was one. We are wired to bounce off one another. And after four months' traveling, and myriad conversations with strangers, some of whom became friends, I can attest that it only takes one day, one chance encounter, or one conversation to quite literally change your life, and even its trajectory. 

After our wee photoshoot as above, we stumbled upon a very drunk man, or rather, both literally and figuratively, he stumbled upon us. He then proceeded to rant about #YOLO (or "You Only Live Once" for you rock-dwellers, and which I'm assured is just "carpe diem for idiots") and upon leaving, said Happy Drunkard threw his hands up at me, Brett and friends and said "I LOVE YOUR LIVES!". We then spent the rest of the week laughing and hashtagging YOLO wherever we went. Because we are post-post-ironic like that.

Had we known what lay ahead, I'm sure we would've been less casual about it. If anything, that phrase will now simply haunt me for a really long time. I suppose because it is true. Painfully true.

Someone's premature death always serves as a plea to the rest of us to use our breath of a time here well. What would the world look like if there were 6.8 billion of me running around? Would it be a good place? I'd like to think it would be more utopia than dystopia. Then some days I'm not so sure. Am I simply highlighting the darkness, or seeking to diminish it? Could I even be contributing to it? Are my words, my creativity, my conversations, adding to the darkness and hopelessness? Or am I somehow contributing a different voice?

There's nothing like an abrupt reminder of your own mortality to spark a philosophical stocktake of your entire existence. Maybe we should ask ourselves hard questions more often. Maybe encountering Brett and his insane zest for life, and truth, was a gift I was incredibly lucky to receive.

Maybe we only live once. 

And maybe we'll be held to account for how we do it.

TRAVEL DIARIES: SF // LA VIA SLEEPY HOLLOW

Greetings from my current encampment in Korea Town, Los Angeles. Bizarrely, (and I suppose because California borders Mexico) I am awoken every day by the dulcet tones of a mariachi band, gaily trumpeting their mexican goodness between, by my findings, 7:57am and 9:38am. I will really miss the mariachi band. I do not know from whence they come, (nor why, the name of my neighbourhood considered) but they're sort of like Vampire Weekend; a band that is impossible to listen to without feeling happier. Between the mariachi band and the fact that the Starbucks a block away decided to have Frappuccino Happy Hour every day this week from 3-5pm, I am positively jubilant. Oh, America!

I ticked something off my bucket list this month: The Great Californian Roadtrip. After five days exploring San Francisco, (Melbourne's grittier cousin who is part Mexican)I jumped into my friend's character-laden blue vee-dub (complete with additional "safety features" including a non-opening boot)and made the trek back to Los Angeles, via Yosemite National Park. I had no concept of Yosemite or what it would entail, but one of my friends had monikered it "every rock climber's DREAM", and so I figured that even if I wouldn't climb any rocks myself, I could point and laugh at those who did, and observe the park's exemplary waterfalls. Which is basically how I wound up being the only hiker in the wider Yosemite region wearing Keds.

Here's the thing, though: I hate horror movies. More than any other person you know that hates horror movies. You can therefore imagine my sheer panic when upon entering the park the first thing we pass is a sign over a secluded hill stating "SLEEPY HOLLOW". "You mean, as in, the movie?? The horror movie?" I whispered to my friend, which by mid sentence had somehow become decidedly more shrill. "Umm yeah, I guess. Tonnes of stuff gets filmed here." Oh! Wizard! I am spending the next few nights in literally a scene from my nightmares, with added bears for effect. THEIRONY. Oh, I didn't mention the bears? That's funny, neither had my friend. Until it was too late to back out. Much to his disappointment and my mother's relief, the bears went unencountered, but the rattle snake warnings managed to keep us on our toes even when the horizon seemed safe.

Melodramatic animal warnings aside; Yosemite has to be one of the most impressive places I've ever seen. There are few places I've experienced where your only reasonable response is to stand still in your surroundings in silence and awe, humbled by perspective. The mountains were imposing in their grandeur, the waterfalls lived up to the hype, and they weren't kidding about that clean mountain air, either. There was also a local diner with blue booths and bottomless coffee refills. I was extremely animated on the way home. (Props, Buck Meadows.) 

Arrived back in the city of angels just in time for Cinco de Mayo,(how many Mexican references can YOU fit in a blog post?) which basically translated to an excuse for every aspect of your meal to contain tequila. (If you have not tried tequila chocolate ice cream, it is a good time, let me tell you.)

Celebratory shenanigans are now ahead, with the wedding bells chiming for a close friend's LA nuptials this week, and a happy kiwi invasion ahead of the fact.

Until then, though, you can find me in what is disturbingly becoming my natural habitat: The Cereal Aisle, in a trance-like state. S0 many options. SO little nutritional value. SO going to attempt all of them before I get home.

TRAVEL DIARIES: NYC

This cannot end well. I thought to myself, staring at the near-vertical stretch of stairs awaiting me and my 30 kilo suitcase. The awfulness of my impending task was such that I could do little but laugh aloud. This was New York, after all, and with the odd maniacal cackle I was simply joining the ranks of the rest of the city's colourful characters. My laughter continued to echo through the SoHo stairwell as I lugged that thing up flight by painful flight; somehow breaking into hysterics seemed to provide ample distraction from my rapidly forming left bicep. With Miley Cyrus' "It's the Climb" resounding faintly in the recesses of my mind, I reached my apartment. It's embarrassing how long it took for my breathing patterns to resume normalcy. NYC - apparently not so big on elevators.

"Everything in this city is hard!" I had whined - saturated and lost - to a friend the day before from under our umbrella as we played hopscotch over puddles in torrential rain. For the record, I had swiftly slapped myself about the face straight after that childish episode, guiltily remembering all of the times I had daydreamed from my desk of trawling just one such Manhattan street for an afternoon. I went to see Newsies on Broadway this week, (EPIC!) and a line from the first scene summed it up for me: "New York life is great; as long as you've got a big door at the end of the day to shut it out." Introverts; unite.

This city is insane. It's dizzying. I absorb more sounds and experiences in a single day here than I would in a week elsewhere. To get from A to B can be a logistical nightmare reminiscent of Catherine Zeta Jones' bodysuit mission in that scene from Entrapment. Just when you think you're a hotshot local who can discern her L train from her F train, "THE F TRAIN IS UNDERGOING CONSTRUCTION ON WEEKENDS", rendering you disorientated all over again and seriously late for brunch. (twitter.com/firstworldpains.) Thus, I blew my whole data cap in my first six days with various attempts at clocking the subway. (See previous parentheses.)

Sadistically, all of this only adds to the fact that NYC is like crack to me. It renders each day comparable to a diluted game of Survivor. (Or The Hunger Games, depending on whether the wait for your table is going to be 60 minutes or 90 today.) The adrenalin from being so overstimulated is addictive. Adding further weight to the crack comparison, on my first week here I averaged four hours' sleep a night and wasn't even tired, so I'm going to assume this simile is valid. Who has time for tired when there are 70 blocks to be trekked, leather skirts for $17 to be purchased, "socially diverse" locals to be encountered and old haunts of 1960s beat poets to, like, totes nonchalantly journal in? 

It's a joke how much I love this town. I'm vacillating over whether to admit that on my first night back here, a brief stroll around the West Village even had had me tearing up a little bit. A smidgen, if you will. Whatever, it was probably just my eyeballs adjusting to the air. Or relief at surviving my stopover in Texas.

I'm off to San Francisco soon, to fulfill my childhood dreams of riding trams around town with the cast of Full House. But I'll probably accidentally leave a piece of myself behind here all over again. Which, I suppose, just creates a great excuse to come back and claim it.