Questions

Kia ora Koutou,

Do we have to continue to celebrate Guy Fawkes? It’s a bizarre idea isn’t it? Teaching kids to celebrate the grisly day someone was burned to death because…?

Do we really have to frighten animals with all the banging, shouting, plus the garish lights of fireworks?
Do we have to put up with someone lighting fireworks every night after the fifth? Because they always do. Someone who waits till kids are asleep and then starts lighting bangers? Isn’t it enough that in many places in the world kids try to sleep through actual gunfire?

Maybe we could find something else to celebrate, something more inspiring? Maybe even celebrate the work of Rescue Teams in the mountains or bush perhaps? Maybe a Thank you to Nurses Day? Celebrate some action that enhances human life? Not an occasion when someone was killed for public enjoyment. Can you imagine laughing and cheering while watching someone burn to death in a fire? Maybe those who spend money on fireworks could give it to a charity that feeds kids who’ve been forced to run from their homes because of terrorist attacks?

Sometimes we inherit these celebrations and carry them on without much thought as to what we’re actually celebrating. Guy Fawkes planned to blow up the Houses of Parliament — he was caught and burned alive while people watched, sang, cheered. Other people this century have blown up buildings, killed, injured people peacefully going about their business — are we celebrating that? Do we light fireworks and sing songs and cheer to celebrate those who initiated 9/11? Of course not.

So why do we celebrate and burn fireworks in 2022 because someone was burned to death in 1605?
Maybe someone can enlighten me?

Renée

The other side of the hill

There’s a fair bit of talk about getting old, usually in tones of horror and fear. It seemed to be called the ‘other side of the hill’ and I assumed this meant the not so good side eg the slow downhill slide into the dark. As you probably all know, I thought I would die at 42 like my mother — or at the latest, 50, because that’s round about the age most of my grandmothers, aunts, cousins etc, died — and by the way, I refuse to say ‘passed on’ because they didn’t pass anywhere, they stopped doing anything, they died.

I don’t have any religious beliefs, so while it might be nice to think my dead whanau were smiling at me and sending me race tips or saying that tomorrow I’m going to win Lotto, Rose, my mother, is the only one whose words still sit in my brain — there are no voices from outer space at all. And what Rose says are only echoes of things she said in the past which pop into my head at various times and in various circumstances.

No-one told me what getting old would mean. Oh there was plenty of advice from much younger people, exercise, walk, eat this or don’t eat that, sit and contemplate but its very easy to advise 70, 80, 90 year-olds from the lofty heights of 40. No-one said it would be fun some days and not so amusing on others. No-one said you might not be able to walk as far as you do now, no-one said that the medical profession had a ‘one decision/attitude/approach’ when it comes to patients who are old and definitely no-one said there’s a chance you’ll retain your brain and still be able to work so if you’re lucky enough to do that, you have to realise doctors tend to dismiss it as not worthy of consideration and besides even if true, it couldn’t possibly compare with a day’s work by someone younger. There’s a mindset which dictates what everyone does at certain ages. Generally speaking I suppose they’re right, but there are exceptions and just because you’re a certain age and your body’s creaky, doesn’t mean you’ve lost your mind. When I was diagnosed with macular degeneration no doctor or specialist gave me any advice on how I might cope when I began losing my sight — no telephone numbers I might ring for advice, nothing. Naturally they charged like wounded Rhino.

I can only hope that when these doctors and eye specialists and front of house people are old they get someone just like themselves to deal with their ailments.

Old age is not like you pass from one room into another so you’re suddenly in the Old Persons’ Room. Growing old is sometimes slow, sometimes fast. It has its annoying side because you become invisible but your sense of humour doesn’t fade and you can always come home and write out a description of the event, get it out of your system, have a laugh, play some Sarah Vaughan or Willie Nelson, maybe Pixie Williams singing Blue Smoke.

And there’s technology. A huge boon. You can keep reading books on an iPad, change to audio when it becomes impossible to read the words, get a voiced unseen assistant on the computer but its perfectly okay to just use a computer for online banking and emails. Those of us who use it every day for other things do not think you should be a whizz on the computers. A computer is a wonderful aid when you’re old but how much someone uses it is dictated by their need or by the pleasure they get from it. If you have a computer you use only for emails to children or grandchildren that’s your choice and no–one else’s business.

Sometimes eating becomes a problem. I mean sometimes I lose interest in food. I don’t stop eating but I have no interest in what I eat, I’m eating because I know I have to. I get various gut upsets, I get irritable but so do lots of people both young and old. I like listening to music, to various podcasts, most of all I like reading and alas that is going to go sooner than later.

Old age is inevitable for most of us. There is no one right way for dealing with it, no clear pathway to walk but hey, Spring still comes and you can still plant tomatoes (or ask/pay someone else to do it for you), you can still look at a line of washing flapping in the breeze on this sunny morning and think yes, it made my shoulder gyp when I hung it out but it still makes me smile and then you come inside, stick on East Coast Moon, listen to Maisy Rika while you make coffee.

So — and I speak for myself only — old age seems to be different for everyone and each one of us walks our particular pathway alone but whether we’re physically disabled, nearly blind or deaf as a post without hearing aids, and if we’re lucky enough to retain our brains, we can choose how we do it. We can sing (albeit only in the privacy of our own home) in between sipping the coffee or we can drink it in gloomy silence.

I vote for singing.

Renée

Sister

I think of the morning we came home from school
You did not understand, school lasted till three.
I was more scared of Mum than the teacher but I came home with you.
You were only five, I thought, forgetting I had been five two years ago and had stayed when I wanted to go because I would get the strap.
My heart was beating like that tap dance I made you do
at the concerts I organised at the river when you giggled
and couldn’t stop and wet your pants in front of everyone
seven kids and a dog.
I did not feel very loving then.
And then and then - you are dead, my sister, my sister is dead -
I want to run through the streets crying.
Last week your daughter and I remembered, ‘Thirty years,’
she said, ‘I can’t believe it. Thirty years.’
‘Yesterday,’ I said, ‘yesterday. We can run through the streets together -
‘although,’ I added, ‘I’ll have to take my stick…’
I think of all those words, the tellings, the books, the dancing, the day I threw your teddy bear, Edward B Jones, up on the roof…
How could I have done that?
The slow awakenings - the realisation - this is forever
these ongoing lessons -
how hard it is to love, how vulnerable we make ourselves.
Easy targets - we run and sing and dance towards these lessons
and as we stumble, recover, keep walking, one foot in front of the other,
falling, smiling, failing, crying, laughing, hugging, falling again
that forever mixed-up lesson - how easy, how hard, oh how bloody hard
it is to love.

Renée

If there was somewhere to be safe

Kia ora Koutou,

in 2006 I was a student in a Whitireia poetry class taught by Lynn Davidson. Sarah Delahunty, another playwright, also attended. We both agreed that playwrights (or anyone wanting to write good dialogue), could gain a lot from studying and writing poems.

I was remembering that year and its benefits, recalling that Lynne decreed that we had to write a poem a week and bring it to the weekly class and there were many such days when some frantic writing and rewriting would be done, lines crossed and recrossed while eating a hurriedly made piece of toast and marmite or peanut butter before, with one last scribble and the certainty that this was probably the worst poem ever written (was it even a poem?) I walked out the door and along Courtenay Place to that classroom on the second floor.

I remembered Sarah’s poem, written for one such class and which I always loved because the theme is universal and it seemed appropriate for this present time (or any time perhaps?) so I asked her for permission to publish it on the Busk and she said yes, so here it is… many thanks Sarah.

Renée

If there was somewhere to be safe

If there was somewhere to be safe
I would have found it long ago
made up my fire and crouched there

My head would bow down
thank gods for mercy
ask only to remain beyond their furies.

If there was somewhere to be safe
you would be there with me
the air between us warm with breath

Our eyes would flicker at each other
through the firelight, our whispers
would be wilder than the wind

If there was somewhere to be safe and be with you
I would have found it long before tonight.

Sarah Delahunty


				
					

Up to here…

Kia ora Koutou,

I have had enough. The wall to wall coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s death/funeral arrangements/ the queues/ whoever’s standing beside the coffin/ flowers/enough… enough.

The frenzy of reporting every detail, the seeking out of anyone old who has any memories, real or not, or anyone young for that matter, tributes to the Queen’s stamina, work-load, manners, smile, okay, I get that. She was a very nice hard-working woman. I get that, okay? I have had the good fortune to know a lot of very nice hardworking women and their stamina, fortitude, energy and smiles, match the Queen’s, but the world did not stop for them even when they were alive. We might have sung Bread and Roses at their tangi, their death might have (or might not) been reported by the media but even if there had been a reference to their death and life of service, by the next day the rest of the world had quickly moved on. And in any case, I know they would not have wanted a huge expensive celebration of their life or death, I know they would rather have the causes they marched for become reality – women treated as equal, mothers, fathers, children, the Rainbow community, all warm, well fed and housed and everyone, female, male, young, old, able to walk around at night without fear.

I wonder how many kids around the world have died of malnutrition this week? How many whose life could have been made easier by a teensy little bit of the money, now flung around because everyone wants to see, hear, contribute to the general drawn out process. The money being poured out while people in pain wait for operations and hundreds fly to be at the funeral or to be seen at the funeral could have paid for a huge number of those.

And then (as a kind of excessive one-finger salute) we have the auction of paintings held by, you guessed it, a bank. Speculation about high-priced offers have been confirmed/surpassed and I wonder if any of those buyers who purchased those canvases gave a thought to how many families could have been warmly dressed, lived in warm houses, fed well, for that much money – or half of it. The plight of the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised, is very muted at those warm air-conditioned, expensive wine and food auctions.

Wouldn’t it have been great if even half the money expended on the pomp and ceremony of Queen Elizabeth’s funeral been spent on warm housing for those who desperately need it. Wouldn’t it have been great if, for once, priorities had been given to those who (it is said over and over) Queen Elizabeth II, served.

Renée

The Queen has died… long live the King

Kia ora koutou,

The Queen has died… long live the King.

The realisation of the great cycle of time becomes more apparent at these moments. Vague memories wash back like breaking waves on a shore, they recede, more memories wash up.

I went to Mclean Park in Napier, my second baby in my arms, to see the Queen. She was just a blue smudge in the distance surrounded by black suits and soldiers. I tried but failed to feel excited and never made the attempt again. Like everyone else I loved Diana and watched and watched the televised moments of her death and funeral. I think the marriage was doomed to fail and for that I blame the Royal Minders not the Royals. I regard the Royals as puppets who move this way or that way, go there or here, do this or that, all dictated by their faceless Minders. Occasionally some humanity or personal preference or mistake will happen but all is eventually subjected and shushed by the Minders. And if anyone pays, its the Royal public figure not their faceless Minders.

There are times when I think the pomp and ceremony of Royal tours are too expensive and take money from more deserving projects and that the Royals could easily pay for them out of their loose change but there are parts of the population who would totally disagree with me and that’s democracy.

So, as far as systems go I think, given the example of USA, its leaders, its racism, disunity, lack of social security, Aotearoa is possibly better off as part of a commonwealth than as a separate republic. I say this as one who is not a royalist and as one who knows this country has pockets, even areas, of racism too and I can only be thankful that its starting to be called out.

I know we have large pockets of poverty and lack of housing and we can’t kid ourselves that that will change very fast either under a commonwealth system or a republican system but at least in Aotearoa we know that huge changes in social security can happen, that they happened once, and although the system has faltered and sometimes failed because of bureaucratic barriers or particular government’s indifference in the past, we can, given the will, see it happen again.

Renée