It's Day -1 til lock down. I was working from home. Well, that will get boring quick. I work from home now. My friend H's brother is a builder and had to lay off 30 of his staff, some of them parents with young kids. We had a meeting with the kids and Joe's mum and Joe's brother. We sat a way apart in her amazing garden which is in the late summer flush, deep pinks and greens. Joe's brother works as a DoC ranger in mountain huts where a lot of tourists come through. We talked about risks and shopping and waving to each other and how she might stay in her car and talk to us up the driveway. We talked about we would try and get DVDs to her so she's not spending four weeks watching reruns. Joe's studio is in a shed behind her house, but he won't come into the house any more. They'll keep apart. We'll do her shopping. The kids will ring her.
Alex begged until we said yes to her watching Stranger Things. She's on the edge of it being okay age wise. So the rest of us are rewatching it, we ration it, two episodes a week, Tuesday and Thursday after dinner. In tonight's episode Will is hanging out with his friend Mike describing the terror of a shadow monster occupying his brain, but all I can think is, you're in peril, you're standing too close, you're not meant to be in each other's houses, this is a lock down. Maggie said she was reading a book which had two characters shaking hands and she was like What? This is wrong. What are you doing? The village is very quiet but the village is always quiet and now I can't tell if it's different. 40 new infections, 4 cases of community transmission, and when I came home from my walk one rabbit on the road directly in front of my house.
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36 new cases in one day. Two of them now being considered community infection. At 1.45 pm Jacinda announced we were in level three of the alert effective immediately and in 48 hours would move to level four. So the country is going into full lock down, with a two days to prepare. To get our things in order.
We thought the kids would be exhausted after their walk yesterday but instead that, or something else, kept them up all night, sleepless, so they were sleeping all morning and didn't go to school today, and now there's no more school. That was it. Easter holidays have been brought forward to start on Monday. Alex has a named work packet to pick up tomorrow from school at an appointed time according to her surname from the Elephant shelters at school. Maggie's school will be sending out learn from home information. The Women's Centre staff have gone home. I have a big work virtual meeting postponed from tomorrow to the next day, which is good. It's too distracting, we need to prepare, we need to take stock. I think about the wording of that. What's in stock, what's in the house, how are we going to do this? We have a local very active Facebook and through that 30 or so clusters have been set up in the village, so each section of a street has a group to check in with, to stay in touch with the people not on Facebook, to organise errands, to do deliveries. To help. A few members of our cluster met outside just now, staying well distant of each other, we'll write up a paper questionnaire trying to find out how people in our cluster like to communicate, sharing key messages and seeing if anybody needs anything. I love our village, which has a gazillion kind things going on at any one time. I am trying to walk every day. Today I walked by the local stream and saw a big cluster of eels. Besides one large, sudden movement that caused a splash, the eels were still or moved slowly. It was very calming. For work, I recently talked to a lot of people about growing forests, and the thing that kept coming back to me, the thing more than one person told me was that forestry operates on a different time frame. These men had thought about it, and I think talked among themselves about it. It was something foresters know and they needed me to know it too. If I was to understand even the most basic things about forestry I needed to understand that. Forests take 25 or 30 years to grow, It's not a 24 hour cycle of light and dark, or a yearly crop, or a 36 month compound interest investment. Foresters think in divisions of a quarter of a century. We have to slow down to understand the trees. Time moves at different speeds, yeah? Those parties that last a lifetime, where everything possible happens. In 35 seconds a mountain collapses spilling over its own slopes only to be washed up as sand dunes that people build homes on. A child's sadness that lasts a century. A butterfly's industrious 12 day lifetime. A tree splitting through earth and thundering through to the canopy. A storm that broods and breeds, destroys everything around it and then dies all in 90 minutes. And the eels, who looked to me like they were in slow motion, are acrobats flying through their own dimension, slipping over each other, pulled by smells and sensations in the dusk water. I watched them move in and out of shadows and the glistening perfect reflection of my world. Dark, light, dark. I was close enough to see their little faces. So many things closing. Today (by which I mean yesterday, Sunday, but I haven't gone to bed yet) all the Kāpiti Coast District Council pools and libraries and other services were closed until further notice. And little things I hear about like the local train museum. My sister's portrait group. I'm on the board of the local women's centre and we made the call to close the non-essential services. There are already women who may be socially isolated and vulnerable using the service, I wonder what this time will be like for them. The volunteers are figuring out ways to keep the community alive. We're keeping the Refuge service open as long as we can. We're all meant to stay at home but there's nagging question, what if home isn't safe? More and more cancellations, they're thinking of not having the Olympics.
I have been talking and talking about Coronavirus. I went walking with S. the other night, she works in a public hospital outpatients ward. She is neither a nurse nor a doctor, but they are on standby for the moment when Outpatients gets shut down and converted to ICU, at which point they will get emergency training on how to help treat people. They are anticipating 50% of health workers will get the virus and often health workers get it badl, so possibly the viral load is worse There is not the right equipment, and there is not enough equipment. A strange frightening waiting game for her. So much more real for her than me. I tried to talk about other things as I thought some reprieve from the worry might be good for S. and for me, but all paths led back to it, everything related to it. S. told me a doctor in her ward came back from overseas and ignored the 14 day self-isolation rule and turned up at work. He was sent home. A man who had possible contact with a case turned up for his regular health check, even though he was meant to be in self-isolation, he was sent home too. I talk to my friend Catharyn in California, who tells me she's not the home schooling type. She is home schooling. They can only go out for groceries or to the chemist or to go for walks outside. She lives near trails that are usually empty but are crowded now with everyone bored and walking, it's hard to self-isolate when everyone is there too, self-isolating. Trump is having temper tantrums at reporters. He was in grand denial about the virus for 2 months before he became an expert on it and is touting solutions with no science attached to them. Yesterday was the day Jacinda did a speech that made some people cry. She's quite compassionate. She talks about kindness. She announced the introduction of a 4 tier alert level for Coronavirus,. We're at level 2. Now the debates rage on social media about whether that's the right level. We're good at absorbing bureaucracy here. The arguments go on as if there has always been a four level alert system for this virus we hardly knew about a month ago. There are petitions and accusations, there are declarations and expert opinions. We reckon. We reckon. We reckon. One of my sister's friend has a colleagues who is infected, so her friend is self-isolating. It's getting closer you know. The first time someone I know, has been in close contact with someone infected. That sister, her husband and son are all at home now. Their son didn't want to be at school because of the virus and they were okay with that. We're all at home now, the message she sent said. My other sister is working from home too. I'm working from home. My mother is well and truly in the vulnerable population lot who have been advised to stay at home. They haven't shut the schools yet. The 14 cases yesterday got recalculated to 13, another 14 confirmed cases today. There are no cases in Kāpiti we know about. No word on if there is community infection. I thought community infection meant it was passed from one person who hadn't been overseas to another person but it's not. There was a clarification in today's Ministry of Health press release saying it means they can not trace where the infection came from. I can see now, it is a wilder thing, and when it happens they know they haven't got it contained. It's when they can stop drawing the diagram which says A gave it to B who gave it to C,D,E,F,G therefore we need to contact H to Z. They won't know who to contact. Community infection is when it's gone rogue. We went walking the Escarpment Track with one of Alex's friend's family today. We were two families of four, and there again, it was all we talked about really. Not far into the track, under the trees, were 12 gigantic sheep lying down. The way their bodies splayed under them it looked like they were nesting, sitting on giant eggs. Unshorn and somehow unwordly with all their wool. A different sort of creature, wild now, eating the native plants. The Council's been in touch with the farmer but nothing has been done. You get the feeling they're out there now for good, trampling the new growth, getting bigger. The Escarpment track is a steep track that soars above the coastal railway line and road, so high you feel like you teeter there above the ocean. Today the ocean had five distinct wide stripes, closest to the shore -brown, then green, darker green, dark blue and a sort of hazy purple rim at the horizon. We went up and down the dirt tracks and the steep steep steps talking about the virus, about how it might spread and when, and why aren't the schools closing. and what it felt like when the borders shut, and how people are flouting the rules. What it might mean for the economy and for jobs, for our jobs. And has the horse bolted, or is it bolting now? And did NZ move fast enough. And what's coming. And wh how on earth can we concentrate on anything else. It was very windy at the top of the Escarpment track and the kids made sort of parachutes of their nylon jackets, folding them up in a certain way so the wind blew the fabric taut, out from their bodies and they grinned, leaning fully into the wind, letting the wind buffet them, letting the wind hold them up. First any gatherings of over 500 were prohibited, then indoor gatherings of 100 or more. Arts and sports events are cancelled or postponed even our little tennis clubs singles competition which was meant to happen today. The creative sector is reeling with already sporadic income drying up. I have a job outside the industry and probably lose money from my writing, so I'm not affected economically but my friends are. There's an Australian I lost my gig website where people are tracking how much money they've lost. There's a NZ Facebook group for the creative sector too, people are panicking, but offering stuff too. I'll give free mentoring, read my online book for free, have something, will this help? Will this? Schools are still open unless there's a case when the school will close down to track.
Yesterday, 11 more confirmed cases and Te Papa, Auckland university, Auckland libraries, the National Library, possibly Auckland schools all closed yesterday. So many things cancelled and postponed. The local train service has slashed their fares by half, and tickets won't be clipped so they're asking people to be hones. Victoria University in Wellington is offering free courses to anyone affected next term. The lights are going out. Not literally, but those little humming institutions and industries are slowing or stopping. Last one in the building turn out the lights. I just switched to the RNZ site and 14 new cases confirmed today, and for the first time they say they can't rule out community transmission. Our PM, Jacinda Ardern, is giving an announcement in a few minutes about the next steps. At 11.15pm I put on my boots and the coat I wore playing Prospera, brown and voluminous. I needed it tonight. I wanted to mark the night somehow, the oceans getting bigger and New Zealand getting smaller and further away. Our little canoe, all the way out. There was no one around. The neighbour's light was on though, and a sprinkler I think. She is a keen gardener and our taste in old frocks cross over, love of a very particular kind of geometry and colour. She bought us baking when we moved here, she has bushes on her verge that spell out kia ora. Two cats were out. Sleek, low, dark things that ran from corners and crossed my path. I headed for the beach, which is what you do here. I walked up the rise by the school and heard the roaring ocean. I took the quiet road between the park and the Memorial Hall, and still, not a single car, just me and the cats and the too bright street lights. It was very dark which makes you notice everything more. The sea lit up by the lights, so you get those lines of iridescent waves. The blinking red light of the public toilet in the park, the big wooden storm water drains, the park benches and the letter boxes. The Milky Way really looked like a Way tonight, arched over us in a line from our house to the sea. It feels like a beginning, and we're already remembering it. No-one has died in New Zealand, and no-one I know has died overseas. It's interesting It won't be later, we said, but it's kind of interesting right now. There's a short video of Italian film makers talking to themselves 10 days ago, warning themselves. The virus started in China, and then hit Iran and Europe and America and the whole world, and while numbers in China have gone down now, Italy has no intensive care beds left and people have already died because there were not enough ventilators. Are dying. By yesterday, 2978 people had died in Italy. From The Guardian 20 March 2020 From RNZ 12.54am 20 March 2020 The first confirmed case of Coronavirus in New Zealand was on Saturday 29th of February. On Wednesday 4th March, there was a second case, 5th March was the third case, 6th of March was the fourth case. 7th March was my father's birthday. Sunday the 8th March was the fifth case. Then the sixth case on Saturday the 14th March. Cases, 7 and 8 on the 15th of March, also a year since a man took a gun and turned on his video streaming app, entered two mosques in Christchurch and calmly opened fire. On 16th of March, my friend's family goes into self-isolation, not because of being immune compromised or exposure or a recent overseas trip, but because it feels like the safest thing to do. Four more cases on the 17th March, one of them in Dunedin. It was Saint Patrick's Day and Dunedin university students ignored all the advice and partied in the streets. So that was twelve cases. The day before yesterday, eight more, yesterday another eight. 28 cases, all people recently overseas.
No-one but New Zealand citizens or residents or their dependents or partners allowed in the country now. I don't think my Dad would have liked it. He was one for community. He thought a lot about countries and how they sat easily or uneasily in this world, with their neighbours, in their oceans. You could watch him think, worry something out, and see the countries move just under his skin like watching cramp climb someone's leg. I walked home up Ocean Road, and saw again how the trees moved in the wind and the strange shadows of grid and leaves, something to do with the manufacture of the light. My coat billowed satisfactorily behind me. One year ago exactly, we had a poetry reading to launch The Ski Flier with a lot (a lot a lot) of help from my family and friends. My sister Natasha played her violin, my parents were proud and loving, my other siblings supportive, my partner Joe and his twin brother Sam did the 1950s afternoon tea style catering. The egg sandwiches were discussed for some months after. Joe's mother provided much practical support. Victoria University Press, where books and book launches are very much business as usual, still manged to make me feel that my book was special and important. Katie Julian knitted the arm warmers. Many other friends from Paekākāriki and Wellington jumped in and did things as and when required. Airini Beautrais and Helen Heath read wonderful poems. Airini launched her book Flow: Whanganui River Poems just a month after The Ski Flier and we went on tour. And on Thursday last week Helen launched Are Friends Electric. Are Friends Electric is a wonderful exploration of the boundaries between life and technology on one hand and between grief and desire on the other. Another really key player in my launch and life is Helen Lehndorf. Helen is the author of a collection of poetry The Comforter and a journalling guide Write to the Centre. Helen and my lives weave back through politics as deeply as it weaves back through writing. She was one of those people I am very grateful I met at a time where we were confronting our own sense of the awfulness of the world, and, because we shared deeply serious things and moments of great worry, I was and am with her, able to experience the kind of deep laughter I can share only with those I really trust. When I asked Helen Lehndorf to launch my book, she said yes immediately, but in her usual self effacing way, asked aren't there other other more important, better people to do it? No, I said you're my best. (Oh I remembered slightly wrong). I've never published Helen's launch speech before. The first anniversary seems a good time to do it. You witness a lot of Helen in here, her generosity and her willingness to see and celebrate the good that she sees. You also get to experience her wonderful writing style: clear and funny and true. Helen Lehndorf's speech at The Ski Flier Launch - 17 June 2018 I’m lucky enough to have been friends with Maria for twenty-mumble years now…and we have always shared a devotion to both reading and writing. Maria commented on Facebook recently that with publication of this new book and our collective previous books, she was so delighted for the young us, the Helen and Maria in our early twenties, for whom writing and publishing books was a strong hope, a wild hunger…something which felt like it might involve magic and holding our mouths in a certain way, crossing fingers and praying and sacrificing small animals to ever actually happen. Well, we got there, and I’m equally delighted, and proud of this incredible woman and her phenomenal writing. I read a blog post once in which Maria had written about her voice - how hers is a loud voice, an ‘outside’ voice, a strident voice… I hadn’t ever thought about her voice either negatively or positively before that. To me, her voice is just my beautiful friend Maria’s voice: as distinctive, direct and unique as her personality…and an integral part of who she is. But I do think the directness and clarity of her literal voice extends to her writing voice, always, and to The Ski Flier, in particular. I love this book. The poems are so strong and yet tender. Wide-ranging in subject matter, yet cohesive in style. The poems reveal a bit of Maria’s brilliant mind - they skilfully ask questions, tease at answers and engage the senses…all at once. In ‘The Ski Flier’ Maria has both the macro view, the icicle through the close-up lens, and the panorama, down the mountain slope and out to the horizon. Her existential riffing is masterful, her wit pokes and pleases, the artistry of her imagery so unique and enlivening…just like a day out in the snow is enlivening. In the book she casts a wary, but compassionate eye towards her youngest daughter, their personalities at times out of sync. She integrates what it means to be in mid-life: ‘Remember when everything didn’t remind you of everything else?’ she asks. She explores many mountains, both real and metaphorical. The poem ‘In which I attain unimaginable greatness’ could almost read as a kind of manifesto for Maria’s desire in life. She is a person, a writer passionate about justice, about empowering others and pointing out all that is askew in the world’s values and priorities. In this beautiful poem, she imagines herself as a kind of omnipotent super-being, a magical version of herself and her longings, who can actually fix the problems she sees with such clarity…she solves problems ranging from the Auckland housing crisis to global warming and smaller, more human problems too: ‘I clean the fucking fridge…’ says the super-being…’Here is a perfect cup of tea’…’I absolve all mothers of their worries curled in them like worms…’ The list of ills the super-being will fix is long, it goes for four pages, the pace is swift and energising…but to make it clear she has not even scratched the surface of the injustice she sees, that there is much to come…the poem ends, with a determined chin: ‘This is how I begin. This is my first day.’ Reading this poem achieves what excellent political poetry should achieve: I read it and I feel seen, I feel understood, I feel part of a larger whole, I feel heartened, I feel motivated. After reading this poem, justice seems possible, and the heartbreaks of the world feel deeply acknowledged. Maria, this poem is nothing short of a triumph. I needed this book, I’m so grateful it exists. You need this book. New Zealand needs this book. The world needs this book. It’s can be a challenging road to hoe, choosing poetry…the marginal book art which for most of the populace is reached for only during times of heart break or heart swell…I’m so glad you have kept your faith in poetry all these years, Maria. Your work just gets stronger and stronger. ‘This life is overwhelming. What is there to live for?’ she asks in the poem ‘The forgotten Mountain…’ Hills, homes, mountains, daughters, friends, snorkelling, and fresh bread and intense conversations with beloved friends…in the Ski Flier, Maria answers her own question…a lot, so so much! Congratulations, Maria, on the launch of this beautiful book…your fifth baby! (If we count your human babies and your book babies.) May this new offering have a long and vibrant life, finding its way into the hands of those who need it and will love it…and hopefully, into a few mountain huts, too. Buy The Ski Flier Clothes Based on Covers of Poetry Books Written by Maria McMillan So I stopped blogging my travelling, didn't I. Sorry my three intrepid readers. I will catch you up later. But today we drove once more (perhaps our final time) up the road from our house in La Masure through Col du Saint-Bernard, across the border to Italy. In the first town over the border we got stuck in traffic because what looked like the local school was moving a herd of cows down the main road. So we stopped for lunch. Then we drove on and turned into Courmayeur and then took two gondolas up Mont Blanc or Monte Bianco. Here are the photos ranging from bored children waiting for the gondola to start. Then the half-way point where there was a kids playground including an excellent raft on a rope thing, and climbing walls, and on to the next gondola and up to the very top which was flipping spectacular. It went to 3488 or something meters. The peak of Mont Blanc is another 1400 meters above that but it looked so close. In the photos of two peaks, it is the snowy one on the left. I have of course, never in my life been so high except in an aeroplane. It was achingly beautiful and I loved it. I think this is why I have lost my travel blogging mojo before it went very far. We did stuff, we saw it, it was good or not. This was.
These might not be true but as far as I can tell:
We went up to Tignes today, which is 2400 meters above sea level. We caught a gondola type ski lift this time which took us up to 2700 meters. All around us mountains which were 2000 meters above that. It had rained in the morning and the clouds were still there and we didn't see all the peaks. We saw marmots! We took lots of photos of marmots in the mountain rocks. Marmots look just like mountain rocks. You can't see the marmots in the photos of marmots we took, you can only see rocks. Later we went to a swimming pool in the village. It had excellent views and a tog spinner to dry your togs.
The best shirt
(from Tree Space, Victoria University Press, 2014) The best shirt I ever owned was polyester, green and cream stripes, with a wide collar. Green trees on the cream stripes, cream trees on the green. The best shirt I ever owned I found in a one-day basement market in Brixton, the clothes piled on trestle tables like food. It was a whole pound and I thought about it for quite a few minutes holding it to the light that streamed down onto us, holding the cuffs to my wrists, fearful of extravagance, until some interesting young man said, that’s a good shirt, I’ll buy it if you don’t, and I realised then that I would wrestle to the ground anyone who tried to claim the best shirt I’d ever own. I see from photos I wore it with Cath and Bec and everyone the night before Lady Di died, the night Fi and I decided to go to Switzerland, but later changed our minds and went to Italy. I wore it there too, in the piazza of Siena with a green crocheted beret and imagined the applause of horses. I’m the kind of person who has to think my way to emotions and figures out later the joy of all the right things arriving at the right time. Because I’m always losing and finding things, I never grieve about them, never dream it is the last loss, like I never think this is the last time it will mean something and all the next times will be full only of yearning. I don’t know the last time I wore the shirt. Perhaps I forgot and gave it away. I know how the fabric stretched across my chest and one of the cuffs had lost a button and I was in the city but something of rotting logs and small brilliant fungi hung about. |
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