nutmeg.gen.nz

on alphabet city

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 15:51:15 +1200

i knew of alphabet city from the elliot smith song: there’s a name you keep repeating, you got nothing better to do. i know what you are, i just don’t mind.

later, planning to visit new york, i read about the avenues east of the village that were named with letters, and realised that it was a physical place, full of vegan icecream parlours and mythology.

the discovery wasn’t half as surprising as stepping into a yellow cab at jfk, watching brooklyn slip past the window and realising that new york was a real city that i could actually visit, that i had actually found myself in. all these stories, all this borrowed memory, all those movie sets. new york was real.

maybe you know the rest of the story. there was this girl, see.

we watched the city light up from her park slope rooftop. the statue of liberty. a million little lights. the next morning, a soy flat white made by an australian café on the next block cleared my jetlag. we rode bikes to coney island & drank cocktails at the algonquin & walked the high line & became part of the art at moma. new york miracles, & falling in love was as inevitable as it was startling.

& there was this city. new york felt instantly like home, and how do you come home from that?

well, one way is to bring some of it with you. long story, short: she drinks her flat whites here, now, and this month we opened alphabet city, a printshop and gallery on the edge of auckland’s central city.

it’s a different kind of alphabet city, it’s spinning different kinds of miracles, but i can’t wait to see what grows.

gender as a dance

Sun, 13 Jun 2010 23:25:14 +1200

i keep returning to this: the flirtation of it, the interplay, the command & strength & gentleness.

things i love about melbourne, a short list

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 00:00:00 +1300

the big, gridded streets and their little twins, and the capillary lanes between.
the trams, the trains, the cute girls on bikes.
the quiet places & the rush.
the millions of vegan options. tiramisu at the other end of lygon street, penne napoli in a secret back alley, tofu and broccollini delivered room service to the eleventh floor.
the shops full of beautiful things. picking a few to own.
the stories people share. the way that talking about the weather is a minor storyteller’s art.
the hunt for the best coffee in town. j says pellegrini’s, r says brother baba budan, c says 5 in centre place. everyone agrees that bonsoy is the best soy milk, the best coffee places boast of it on their menu.
the vertical shape of laneways, and the things people have painted on their walls, or suspended above them, or otherwise installed.
the friends and friendly people. sticky zine shop. professional meetings that are bracketed with hugs.
the streets of fitzroy, especially gertrude.

a ten-word story

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 18:00:00 +1300

i’m a window, so transparent, and you are the sun.

at the quilt show quilt ladies gossiped and admired and...

Sat, 24 May 2008 00:00:00 +1200

at the quilt show

quilt ladies gossiped and admired and explained techniques to interested family members. overhearing, i learned terminology and tricks. the hexagon pattern i have been interested in is grandmother’s garden. the book i’m making, though not quite a quilt, is hand-pieced.

standing in front of a distinctively-patterned modern quilt patched together with new and expensive-looking fabric, the quilt lady behind me turned to her companion,

‘oh, ANOTHER one of those.’ she said, ‘they’re popular this year. everyone must have bought the same book.’

on washing old books

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +1200

looking at a room full of medieval manuscripts, i stopped to watch a video about the restoration process. the manuscript was cracked and grubby, its binding falling apart. they unbound it, washed the pages, stitched it back together in the traditional way.

an older australian (i’m guessing retired printer) was watching with his wife. “they’re lucky it was vellum,” he said, of cleaning the pages, “if it had’ve been paper, they’d’ve been buggered.”

dream cities

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +1300

i dreamed of wandering the inner city in search of breakfast. i ran into t, who had returned from melbourne for a while. he was raving about the city, it was exactly what he’d needed it to be. i asked him how he would rate melbourne, out of five.

he said, six and a half.

live without dead time

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +1300

so says the label inside my new black spot sneakers, which i love despite my cynicism about consumerism as activism. i needed new walking shoes, these are comfortable and i felt okay about buying them. they’re hemp and vegan and union-made in portugal, and the profits went to SAFE. i like that they have a big white blotchy circle of paint on them (or, a “hand-drawn symbol of defiance against corporate cool” if you prefer to buy the anti-capitalism).

i took them out for a bike ride this evening, through the domain where bagpipers were practising next to the rotunda, past the museum, through slow winding roads where car drivers were as impatient as the worst rush hour commuters. i’m finding my bike legs again, and finding my surly attitude.

the shoes held up well & i’m already eyeing up the other style, to tell the materialist truth.

of commuting by foot

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +1300

& then last night i saw bicycle polo! an improbable throng of cyclists clustered around a ball, kicking & batting it in one of two directions and chasing it with pedals.

the path i cut divided the polo field from a rugby game made of a big group of friends. the evening air was warm and light.

the thing about living near work is that i don’t get home earlier. with the tower so close, i work later & leave when i’m ready for dinner. it will take a while for this to balance.

five things seen in the domain on the way to and/or from work

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +1300

a giant fake christmas tree surrounded by giant hollow gift boxes.
a woman pausing in the middle of jogging to contemplate the ground. her breathing was heavy and controlled, and seemed almost spiritual. i got closer and realised she was gazing meditatively at a cellphone, her thumb carefully pressing digital words into its screen.
half a bird, with torn edges.
rob, full of ideas for making blockprints from old wallpaper.
hundred of schoolboys in cricket whites, sports teams of all codes, a sinister jogger.

at the other end of the island

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +1300

finding home, of a very temporary kind, in the world headquarters of the verb, walking familiar paths and talking to friendly people. i’m mostly enacting quite small and quiet verbs (watching, listening, contemplating), but also: writing & photographing, smalltalking, eating delicious things, presenting about accessibility and technology, discussing creative commons with prominent digital types, worrying & trying not to worry.

it’s a good distance away from regular home - far enough to look back with detached perspective, close enough that it’s a short flight to return. back in my hometown, the family has grown by one, the wind is likely warmer & lovely people are living in all kinds of ways.

apt-get update & so i’m shifted: living in a geometric ...

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +1300

apt-get update

& so i’m shifted: living in a geometric tower and feeling like a city princess.

the upstairs hexagon contains one and a half bedrooms: a full-human-sized one perfectly designed for napping in the afternoon sun; a littler one that will do for a library (or a writing room, my father insists, i should do something instead of just reading what other people have written. he’s right). downstairs, the lounge opens onto a tiny brick courtyard that could entertain three or four (six, says g, if they liked each other). my life fits comfortably into this space.

in london everything is more expensive

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +1300

a grey and hunched older woman stopped me outside the abbey and pressed a sprig of greenery into my hands. she said, god bless you, you will be lucky in love and lucky in life. the 28th of november will be a lucky day for you. could you give a little money to help the poor?

i fingered the coins in my pocket, pulled out one that was too small and thin to be a pound and held it out to her. she held my hand, the one containing the coin, said i would have a beautiful life and asked where i was from, and could i give any paper money to help the poor? i said i didn’t have any paper money. this probably wasn’t true, but it seemed equally unlikely that any donation would help the poor.

she spluttered, five pence!, tore the leaves out of my hand (leaving the coin) and walked off.

the poetry of GSM networks

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +1300

in the hong kong airport terminal, i switched on my cellphone while i waited in line to be allowed to pass through the country.

SEARCHING, said the screen. it searched for a few minutes. the meter showing the network signal strength filled and emptied, and the phone kept searching.

and then it found a network: NEW WORLD.

things seen lately that i have not photographed and put on flickr

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +1200

a list:

boy on the train with a (real) baby possum on his head.
an explosion of spring colour in the wintergarden (carefully contained and arranged in rows; a quiet explosion).
beverages following this cosmopolitan: sangiovese at gina’s, lemonlime&vodka at family, soy flat white at the wine cellar.
several pairs of brand-new men’s socks, with original packaging, piled in a phone booth.
queen street’s new nikau palms, transplanted into a construction zone. surprisingly striking.

expect delays

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 00:00:00 +1200

the train home last night was late because someone had left a wheelbarrow full of rocks on the track.

“sometimes these things just happen,” said the conductor, incredulous and unconvincing.

on origin & return monday, a new moon and the anniversary of...

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +1200

on origin & return

monday, a new moon and the anniversary of my birth; last night was the beginning of everything.

are human beings the only living things to say goodbye?

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +1200

well imagine. you’re a poet.

- kim hill to james- brown- the- new- zealand- poet, upon his not knowing details of international literary drama.

the interview had lots of funny moments (mp3: without the music, but try to track down the ivor cutler song if you can) & convinced me to buy his most recent collection of poetry, the year of the bicycle.

writing of the book coincided with my own year of bicycling to work, and probably for that reason i’d expected this book to have bicycle commuter poems within (descriptions of the book reference j.b.’s own bike commute). there are none, but there are mountain biking poems, and quite a few of the poems without bicycles in them at all have the sense of evaluating a life from the distance and perspective that bicycling gives. & there are things like this:

As violins are singing trees, a bicycle
is an orchestra of the body.

from 1. Body and Bike.

i’ve read the book only once through, but bits of it have stuck in my head & i’m eager to read it again. a more official-style recommendation: this book was a poetry finalist in the recent montanas.

see also: the year of the mountain and other poems by james brown on the NZETC site, his nz book month blog, & buy the year of the bicycle from fishpond.

on movement

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +1200

packing to move house again, i came across a notebook from a couple of house moves ago. this was dated 2 november 2004:

I said, ‘I have these little bruises all over my body from moving.’

She gave me a horrified look.

‘Moving house, moving offices. The corners of my new filing cabinet are the worst.’

‘Oh!’ She thought I’d meant moving my limbs, moving my body, ‘I thought you had some kind of condition.’

My body is bumped and scratched, scaly from stress, red from spring sun.

it’s nearly another spring. my life is in boxes, and my body is covered in little bruises.