E noho ra, Aotearoa

.

I have never been to Cape Reinga, the northwesternmost point at the top of New Zealand. Maori legends say it is the last departure point for spirits on their homeward journey to Hawaiiki, and the home of an ancient pohutukawa tree that aids the spirits in their exit from this world.

I have loved this story since the first time I heard it. It goes like this:

And now the spirit is on his last journey, northwards along the coastline towards the farthest point of all the land, on his way to join the ancestors in distant Hawaiki. At the stream called Kauaeparaoa he comes ashore, shivering. Not far to go now: first across this narrow neck of land to Spirits Bay, then round the clifftops to Te Reinga, the leaping place of ghosts.

At last, the mist around Te Reinga parts and he sees it: the sacred pohutukawa called Akakitereinga. He must clamber down its roots until he stands on that ledge down there. As the ocean swirls around the ledge, it sweeps across those big fronds of seaweed. And there is the hole! Sadly, the spirit dives in. The seaweed sways back to cover him, and he disappears.

At Manawatawi the spirit resurfaces. For one last time he looks back — back to Te Reinga, back to the land, back to the loved ones he has left behind. Then he turns northwards, and is gone. *

Goodbye, New Zealand.  It is time for me to go.

*from The Cross-Leased Chardonnay Cellphone Paradise

 

July 4

This was the first year that I didn’t do anything for the 4th of July. I wasn’t expecting to notice the omission — I’ve never been a patriotic person, and even if I was, what’s there to be proud of these days anyway? The country I live in now has a kickass female Prime Minister, universal health care, generous state-mandated parental (not maternity! parental) leave, strong policies on protecting the environment, and a commitment to compensating its fucked-over first peoples. And that’s just the beginning — really, I should give some serious thought to staying in New Zealand.

But I can’t. The reason has been percolating through the more unconscious parts of my mind for a while now. Reasons, I should say; obviously, there are many. But one reason — more important than I ever imagined it would be, and one that became abundantly clear Wednesday — is that I am an American, and I miss home.

Before you start rolling your eyes (How obvious! And cheesy! The US is a global laughingstock, and Ruth is crazy. I’ll email her to be sure she knows that.), hear me out. (Also, please don’t send me any emails. Clearly, I know.) Thinking about what an “American” is without resorting to stereotypes is suprisingly difficult, even for, um, Americans. There’s the global caricature of the dude with Yosemite Sam mudflaps, a gunrack, and the “These Colors Don’t Bleed” T-shirt. There’s the American Family (TM), two kids, one dog, five TVs, living in a decent suburb 45 minutes from a major city, which the breadwinners commute to separately in their his n’hers SUVs. And there’s the Idealized American, the one politicians on the campaign trail try to convince us we all are, the concerned-yet-hopeful American who believes in justice, fairness, equal opportunity, affordable prescription drugs for seniors, peace in the Middle East, and Homeland Security.

If someone had asked me to describe myself in three words a year ago, “American” would not have been one of them. Maybe it would have cracked the top 20. But I’m going to lay another dazzling revelation on you: living abroad is one of the quickest and most startling ways to find out how American you really are. Now, not a day passes in which I don’t think of my nationality, and not just because I have to tell people two or three times daily. I’m reminded every time I realize that I’m the loudest person in a bar. Every time I wish that someone would just be honest instead of polite. Every time I eat a really crappy sandwich. Every time I have yet another completely superficial conversation with a person I’ve known for a while. Every time I take out the trash (not rubbish) or use the bathroom (not the loo). Every time I catch myself thinking that success is a function of hard work and talent.

One of the assigned readings for my senior comprehensive exercise in college was an essay hypothesizing the difference between English and American literature. Basically, the author argued that while English literature typically explores the protagonist reaching fulfillment through successful integration into society (all of Jane Austen, Fielding, Dickens, etc.) , American literature is characterized by the protagonist shunning society and pursuing a life outside its boundaries, or conversely, being fundamentally unable to live within them (Huck Finn, The House of Mirth, The Catcher in the Rye, The Scarlet Letter). No doubt I’m remembering some of this imperfectly. But I like to think this essayist is mostly right, in real life as well as in literature, because there’s some satisfying irony (or is it poetic justice?) in being so American that I had to leave.

 

Flight of the Conchords

Recently, a friend sent me a link to Terry Gross’s Fresh Air interview with Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords. Now normally, screwball musical comedy isn’t my cup of tea, but I can already see myself Netflixing this from my five-bedroom Outer Mission share in a few months’ time. The way they say “teen” for “ten” and “bean” for “been” will give me the sniffles, as well as the love of kebabs and the term “mate.”

Related: nostalgia = longing for what never was (John Banville, heavily and badly paraphrased)
Further: an excellent interview with Clement and McKenzie.

 

Time on your side that will never end /

I have a problem.

The problem, succinctly stated, is that I am not cool. Among other things, I am continually about 3-5-? years late in “discovering” new music, and so by the time I’ve figured out I really like an artist/album/band, there’s no fresh audience I can share my enthusiasm with. I often think about starting a club, a club for fellow nerds where we could talk about groups like Mogwai, My Morning Jacket, Sebadoh, and Spoon without fear of (well-deserved?) ridicule from the general eye-rolling public. The club would be called Big In ‘04 or something like that. But for now, all I have is this blog . . . so let me present you with my newest obsession, “Oh My God” by the Kaiser Chiefs. In keeping with the general theme here, this video is really not cool. So I suggest that you minimize the screen and just listen to the song, which is.

 

Still Chugging. . .

Yesterday I happened upon a pile of ephemera from my last “real” job, including a stack of pictures, concert tickets, etc. that used to be displayed in my cubicle. Talk about jolting! I feel so removed from my old job and the lifestyle it engendered; think about stumbling upon your high school locker complete w/historically accurate contents and you’ll get an idea of the feeling I’m talking about. The best bit o’ flair was this Lulu Eightball cartoon, which used to be taped in a place of honor on my filing cabinet.

(c) Emily Flake

Read more Lulu Eightball here.

 

Continued Coverage of 1 Year In Blogging

Much like the only child that celebrates not just a birthday, but a birthday week and a birthday month (Guess what’s in six weeks!), I’m still commemorating one year of NY/NZ. Today, some items of note related to one year of online diary-keeping:

1. My (conservative Christian) father recently found my blog. As luck would have it, this discovery almost perfectly coincided with my first and only use of the term “hate f*ck” on this site. Yay for making my parents proud! As I’ve been distant geographically and otherwise from my folks for about eight years now, my father’s outing as a NY/NZ reader was more troubling for me than, I think, for other participants in this tired online rite-of-passage. Regardless, welcome, Dad, to a corner of my head you probably aren’t too familiar with. I think you’ll find it more profane, opinionated, and ill-tempered than the parts of me you know well, but I hope you will accept–even like — it nonetheless.

2. A meme — I have been waiting for ONE YEAR (Guess what’s in six weeks?) for someone to tag me with a meme, since like most bloggers, I need little no excuse to natter away about myself. Alas, I’m still waiting. Perhaps this is because SOME PEOPLE think memes are only marginally less annoying and junior high-esque than chain letters. Anyway, junior high wasn’t all bad (OK, it totally was) but I took matters into my own hands and created my own meme, with which I am tagging Cordelia and Clinton, despite his stated problem with “being told what to do”.

The name of my meme is the Oprah-friendly Things I Know By Heart.

Two novels/plays/poems you know by heart: “The Second Coming” (Yeats) and “In an Artist’s Studio” (Christina Rossetti)
Two films/television shows you can quote from extensively: the only two movies I own, Annie Hall and The Big Lebowski
Two songs to which you know every word: “Turn It On” (Sleater-Kinney) and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” (Dylan). Committed to memory simultaneously under circumstances which are probably easily guessed. The version of “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” that plays in my mental jukebox is always, always the live Before the Flood version.
Two dishes you can make without a recipe: I am a very recipe-reliant cook, but I can improvise lasagna and rice pudding if pressed.
Two cities you can navigate without a map: Manhattan, NY and Decatur, IL

What do you know by heart? Tell me in the comments.
Cordelia
Clinton

 

I Actually Was a Cornflake Girl

I distinctly remember being 15, holding a copy of Different Class in one hand and Little Earthquakes in the other, and shoving Different Class back on the rack behind the ROCK-P tag at the local used record store. Given the clientele of this particular retailer, I think they should have ditched the alphabetical/genre classification system and instead just divided the store into two categories: Records That Will Remain In Your Parents’ Basement Until the Second Coming and Please, Buy This Instead. The former half of the store even could have been decorated to resemble a basement, complete with rusty exercise bike and exposed ventilation ducts, and there could even be some cautionary examples of the doodled-over notebook covers devoted listeners of Tori/Ani/et al. are prone to create realistically shoved beneath the records. Excellent idea, no?

Because of some warp in the space-time continuum, the clerks at this store were way, way less supercilious than the average used records store cashier; thus, there were no checks whatsoever on the early teenage penchant for maudlin, melodramatic, and angsty music. Some 14 year-old is probably purchasing the complete oeuvre of Evanescence there now, with nary a disapproving glance to stop them.

And so it transpired that upon moving abroad, I left a lot of Alice In Chains and Tori Amos in my parents’ basement and just recently found Different Class at the library, filed under ROCK-P and scuffed and scratched just like in the record store 10 years ago. I think I needed the interim to hear Jarvis Cocker sing
She doesn’t have to work but she doesn’t want to stay in bed/
‘cos it’s changed from something comfortable to something else instead

and think, exactly.

 

Moving: Just An Activity

Here’s the scoop, guys: moving sucks. SUX. There are the awkward goodbyes, only slightly less painful than the heartfelt goodbyes. There is the moment when all of one’s earthly possessions are in a heap on the floor, and one feels both annoyed at the mess and bitter that it doesn’t consist of higher-quality goods. There is the trudging up and down from multi-floor walk-ups. And then, there is that box.

I have carried this box with me in and out of each of my various residences over the past 7 years, and there have been at least 9 different apartments/rooms/whatevs so that’s saying something. Maybe you have one too. For me, it used to be a shoe box but now it’s swollen to a copier paper box size, and it contains virtually all the cards, letters, or notes in human handwriting given to me in my adult life. Oh, and clippings from magazines. More on those later. But anyways, each time I move, I always tell myself that I will Go Through the Box. I will Sort the Wheat from the Chaff. And what happens instead is that I end up mooning through relics of the person I was several years ago, feeling alternately wistful and disgusted, and wondering what the statute of limitations is on birthday cards from Grandma ( I have devised a complex system that takes into account the whether it’s just signed or signed with a personal message, whether or not the birthday was a “milestone” birthday, etc. . .) KidDing. Obviously it all gets shoved back in the box, because who can throw away something from Grandma?

It’s not just Grandma guilt that keeps me looking through that box; it’s being reintroduced to my past self. I’ve been reading Joan Didion over the last few days, and she obviously makes this case much more compellingly than I do, but I respectfully submit that even before reading “On Keeping A Notebook” I recognized the advisability of “keep [ing] on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.” The difference between me and Joan is that she turned this impulse into an oeuvre of technically sophisticated and emotionally compelling creative nonfiction, and I have this box of crap.

The person I used to be:

–got a lot of birthday cards that say things like “Have a great blacked-out birthday!” or “Party on, dude!” (I think ironically)

–tore out a shocking number of pages from beauty magazines under the impression she would someday buy the products touted therein. This although I rarely wear makeup or have the disposable income to devote to staying on top of beauty “trends.” But boy, am I ever glad today that I have info on the hot lipgloss from Fall 2005 at my fingertips! Also, I can wholeheartedly recommend ROC Retinol Actif Pur Night Treatment, although I give the pass to C.O. Bigelow’s Honey Almond Scrub (irritating) and Calgon Ahh Spa! Ocean Oasis Daily Body Scrub (claims to eliminate rough elbows; does not).

–saved the following mash note , which was from my longtime college boyfriend and accompanied my 22nd birthday gift, itself since forgotten:

Alright,

So I tried wrapping them + that didn’t work. So here it is. I hope your ass has not swelled too much. All gifts have receipt, because I was drunk + stoned when they were purchased. Its all downhill from here hot stuff, so enjoy it. Happy Birthday.
–[redacted]

Yeah, moving sucks.

 

As Always, Email If You’re Interested

Barbes was, I believe (my memory has grown hazy of late), the first place I went out in New York. I went there to hear Nell Freudenberger read from her debut collection of stories, which I had recently checked out from the Kingsbridge branch of the New York Public Library and in which I (with a great deal of pride) had found a typo. Oh, boy, I was going to be such a good book editor!

It was cold-cold-cold that night, cold enough to make me remember the Minnesota I had just left a little too well, and the train ride from my apartment at the far north end of the 1/9 was a good hour and a half. I was so broke that I didn’t get a drink at the reading — I just sat down in the tiny back room and tried really hard to look like I belonged there.

I was ridiculously proud of myself that night. I had left my apartment (cue the Avenue Q song). I had taken the subway. I had Done Something, and I had done it Without Drinking. All of which were pretty significant milestones at that point.

Now that I have another milestone coming up, it seems only suitable to include Barbes in Unique New York Activity Fridays, and it just so happens that there’s an interesting-looking event going on there this weekend. You can check it out on their website, or just read what I’ve pasted below. And now that I’m no longer worried about doing something Without Drinking, perhaps a trip here or here afterwards?

*********************************************
Friday, March 3
8:00-10:00 PM
376 9th St. (corner of 6th Ave.)Park Slope, Brooklyn
718.965.9177
2006’s first African Acoustic show at Barbes in Brooklyn features Malian griot guitarist and singer par excellence, Abdoulaye Diabate. We’ll be doing an intimate set of mostly Malian songs. Those who have caught Abdoulaye in the past don’t need me to tell you that he is among the greatest African singers living in the U.S. Performing in this stripped-down setting really gives one a chance to appreciate his awesome talent.

 

Quick And Sleazy

In the small town that abutted the even-smaller town where I grew up, there was a gas station called Quick N’ Easy — or it may have even been Quik N’ EZ (shudder). For reasons that became obvious upon entering the minimart, or even just wandering in the general area, locals always referred to it as Quick and Sleazy. There were corn nuggets. There was beef jerky — several varieties. There were pork rinds. There were Nascar beer can holders made of foam, perfectly sized to fit in the cup holder located on the dash of your F-150, which you may have tricked out with some Yosemite Sam mudflaps. There were bumper stickers offering driving advice. There were pressurized cheese products. The counter attendant was one of a rotating crew of obese women in their mid-twenties sporting oversized Dallas Cowboys jerseys and thick eyeliner, and you couldn’t pay for your gas without overhearing one of the other patrons talk about what he shot last weekend (not in golf, dear readers) and how his sister had turned into such a slut since she started doing crystal.

I said Goodbye To All That when I moved to New York. Yet I still feel a twinge of homesickness when I recall the flourescent charms of the Quik N’ EZ. When I think back on New York, though, I don’t want to feel homesick at the memory of the NYC equivalent of a Quik N’EZ (which I guess would be a bodega on Grand where a freelance woodworker is talking about how his roommate has turned into such a slut since she was on Cobrasnake). That’s why I’m starting Friday Nights With Ruth. Join me each week on this special night as I engage in a distinctly New York activity and make Memories to Last a Lifetime. So far I have come up with

A. Indian food in Flushing
B. Free Night at the Guggenheim
C. East Village Bar Crawl
D. West Village Bar Crawl
E. Fifth Avenue (Park Slope) Bar Crawl

I sense a theme developing here. . . . . anyway, suggestions are welcome in the form of a Comment! Friday Nights with Ruth will start tomorrow, and overzealous capitalizing will end immediately. Email if you’re interested.