PO Box 2 Blackball

I lost my eldest brother for a week. I rang him up one evening and he didn’t answer the phone. That was unusual. A few days later I rang and the phone had been disconnected. He’s getting close to eighty, is diabetic and has been sounding unwell. Grader driver, worked on farms, ran the metal crusher for the county council for a number of years, so his body’s had its share of hard work. I like my brother. He’s a man you’d go to war with if you had to go to war – one of the old fashioned trench wars. You’d trust him to watch your back, to not panic.

A couple of years ago his wife of forty years left him, drove off into the sunset, never to be heard of again, so he sold the house and shifted into a unit. Perhaps she’d got sick of everything in this small Hawkes Bay town, tired of watching tellie and staring over the neighbour’s garden. My brother would sometimes drive down to the main road and sit there, watching the traffic wash by. It was a second marriage for both of them. She had a number of children. One was a bit simple and after she got pregnant they’d had to bring up her child. They did a good job. My brother’s a fearless sort of bloke. I remember one of the kids falling foul of the local Mongrel Mob and him going and sorting it out single handed. Fearless and moral, a good union man.

The kids seemed to lead lives like an American movie: mobile, changing partners, having an assortment of kids and the occasionally serious car or motorbike accident, almost trailer park material. Christmas Day was like a railway station, different partners coming to have a couple of hours with their offspring. My brother and his wife had a big collection of photos of these children in their album, sometimes had difficulty remembering names.

Anyway, I rang another brother who lives in the region (our family disintegrated when we were kids and we went every which way but have  met up as adults) and then a nephew and tracked my brother down to a rest home. Seems like the diabetes had created an ulcer, he hadn’t been eating properly, dodgy hips, got bronchitis and the health system had found him a place. I got hold of him. They put me in here, he said. I’m not happy. I think I’ve had enough.

My daughter said it’s sad that he’s ending his life so lonely. She’s right, and when I think of his family (our family), there can be an alienation to the working class life nowadays which is Victorian in its nature. Those country folk were herded into the factory towns, got lost in gin-soaked alleys, old ties were broken, children dosed with laudanum to keep them quiet when their mothers were down mine or in factory, or gone to the colonies. A transitoriness penetrated all facets of life.

Anyway, at least he’ll be fed a balanced diet and taken care of. The rest home staff sounded pleasant enough. They’re often from developing countries, got their own story of traditional ties being broken. I’ll go and see him at Christmas, spend a couple of hours… It’s a wet Sunday and I sit and ponder him saying, I think I’ve had enough.

My brother as a young man

Last night we performed the play in Hokitika. Big vibrant audience keen to be part of a simple prophetic process. What impresses me is the percentage of people saying yes to organic dairying, our own food supply, having our own energy supply, to a hemp industry, to processing raw materials here, to a universal basic income, to welcoming refugees…There’s another world out there in peoples’ heads, waiting to happen.

It’s just a matter of going and confronting the various Mongrel Mobs who go by other names.

Usually at breakfast, after having taken the dog for a run, I flip through the news websites: Scoop, Guardian, Democracy Now, anything interesting on Znet? – but today a flock of tui arrived to feast on the camellia tree and the new willow buds. Flying, flitting, pecking – the camellia flower, it seems, is full of nectar.

I watched the tui instead of scanning the news, and as I did so I relaxed, a world weariness seemed to overwhelm then slip away, as a sort of grief. After all, the birds have been here a long time, little dinosaurs who survived the meteorites. In comparison, the digital world is a fantasy. In comparison, the news is ridiculous.

Everywhere the birds are busy building their nests, the roof is alive with tapping and rustling. They have a single minded purpose: to reproduce.

Last night I wrote a note to the cast of The Measures Taken about the tension in the clown role; the clown, the obedient victim of the system. But there is a dynamic attached to the role, of not always wanting to be obedient, of not always wanting to be the victim. The clown’s nose is the simplest of masks. How obedient are we, as we approach the banana skin?

The tui have gone. The sky clouds. It will shortly rain. A distant dog barks. I’ll leave the news alone this morning. I’m sure it won’t miss me. I wonder briefly about that old Descartian puzzle: if there’s no one to witness the tree falling, has it happened? Well, the tui exist without our words or our watchfulness.

It’s spring, time to reproduce.

An old colleague, John Anderson, was buried in Kiribati on Saturday, on the island where he had lived with his Kiribati partner, for the last two decades, an island which is one of the symbols of sea level rise, the inhabitants of which are preparing for relocation. John worked in the community video unit.  I caught a glimpse of him in a documentary about the Kiribati presentation at the Copenhagan Climate Talks.

He arrived in Wellington in the early seventies, from the Hawkes Bay perhaps? He was a primary school teacher, and already had a family. He joined Amamus for ’51, our play about the Watersiders Lockout. He was a young man with a lot of energy, a need for expression – something like that. He could play the ordinary Kiwi bloke very well. He and his wife Gael, came to Poland when we took the play to the festival in Wroclaw; a life changing event.

He joined television after that, but we kept working together on plays. He was a brilliant Caliban in The Tempest, a very good Doctor in A Doll’s House. In the UK or the States he could have earned a living as a character actor.

He came to Samoa as Assistant Director on Sons for the Return Home and began a strong relationship with the Pacific. Experiencing village life, experiencing community, had a big impact on us settler lads who were brought up in the last days of modernism. We needed to translate that to Aotearoa, finally comprehend the tiriti and biculturalism. John joined us for the last time for Te Tutakitanga I Te Puna, as the missionary, Thomas Kendall. The play toured marae, another life changing experience.

Thereafter he did his own community video projects with his partner, Alison. He made a fine doco about the Polish children war refugees in New Zealand – in Wroclaw we had been invited to dinner by one of them who had returned to Poland. And then he headed back to the Pacific.

I recently watched Landfall on NZOnScreen, not having seen it for many years. It was my attempt at an Ingmar Bergman type film; exploring the deeper social and spiritual patterns and tensions of a society. It was a bit laboured, a bit pretentious, but did dig beneath the surface of settler culture, examining the needs and desires of the fraught individual. It revealed each of the four actors with some clarity. John was one of the quartet, playing a man with too much energy.

Rest In Peace, Brother. Thank you. Relax and watch the waves roll in.

Jonathan Dennis and John Anderson in Gallipoli

Funny week. Tired of the US: Trump, Clinton, cops shooting Afro-Americans, tired of the Empire and its influence and the space it takes up. As the Cuban ambassador said to me on Mayday, the States is politically mad but it has the largest military and its cultural influence is pervasive. And this is a nation that can’t even manage to get a health service together.

Writing this book on environmentalism and the Coast I sometimes gulp at the local malevolence historically: from kicking the Maori out of Mawhera, to the anti-Chinese nastiness, to the Buller red-neck stuff in the 1980s – demolishing peace activist Owen Wilke’s house, to the burning of the Buller Unemployed Workers Centre, to the saga of trying to mill the beech forest.

Then there’s the problem of associating these wider movements with specific people. Caroline had a knee replacement operation, along with a couple of men, so the recovery room was full of pain and humanity. The old bloke who lives alone with a generator for power, worried about his cats and his freezer full of meat. He’s had a bout of cancer but was phlegmatic about it. We’ve all got it, he said. It’s like rust. Sometimes things go rusty. Lovely bloke. Hard to reconcile with the history.

This morning I managed an early bike ride to Roa: misty, moist, warmish, the birds busy with nest building. A relief to pedal and listen to the whispering of the land. On the way back a couple of Maori girls were walking along the road in gumboots and pyjamas. Kia ora.

The new play comes up for performance in a couple of weeks. A nervous time, getting the bits and pieces in place. There are a couple of songs in it that are relevant to the above: When man first arrived on these shores/ A thousand years ago/He showed the need for patience/ For some things are very slow. The crossing of the alps takes time/Old men sit in the sun/Polishing pounamu takes time/ Beauty is only patiently won.

And the song of aroha: What is underneath/aroha/a succulent fruit/sweet to the taste/and structured around the seed/to be eaten and expelled/so life can continue/do not let love/and play be cauterized/by misery.

We’re trying to set a new culture for the Coast. Perhaps an arrogance, but the Zapatista have just held a cultural festival. They wrote in the programme: “If the machine imposes a perverse logic in which every tragedy numbs rather than enrages, perhaps it could be the Arts that remind humanity that people not only kill and destroy, impose and dominate, humiliate and doom to oblivion, but can also create, liberate, and remember.”

          A Zapatista shows a mural depicting the movement. | Photo: teleSUR / Road to Resistance

When local body politics first began on the Coast, the working miners were reluctant to seek office. They were too busy seeking their fortune, or surviving and complaining. Instead, the shopkeepers stepped up. Similar in most areas I would say. The situation has continued. Generally, it is the local capitalist who is on council. Perhaps a lawyer. The occasional farmer. Seldom a teacher or a nurse. Never a blue collar worker.

A capitalist class interest therefore runs things. They form something like a local ruling class in collaboration with an imperialist capitalist class as represented by the multinationals. It’s a continuation of the indirect rule methodology of the British in nineteenth century Africa and India.

A local ruler should be generous, and the local capitalist will have some reserves behind them, with which they can assist struggling elements of the community: a marquee for a gala day, gifts for a raffle, a truck for transportation… and there will be extended family connections, membership of the Lions or Rotary…

The multinationals, via the state, have restricted and put strong legislative boundaries around the activities of their local collaborators, who are often torn in their representation. They might wish to procure goods and services from local suppliers (who will also be their mates) in order to provide local employment. rather than source these things from China; or not want the degradation of a local landscape by some outside corporation – especially if locals are up in arms. Once again, this was true of the nineteenth century – local chiefs could be disobedient and cause trouble. They had to be kept on a tight rein and replaced if troublesome.

For the libertarian socialists of the 19^th century, the state was, by its very nature, colonising, and they wanted to get rid of it. In their view the region was the natural boundary within which decisions should be made. This would allow a true democracy based on the face to face dialogue. The Swiss canton structure was derived from this viewpoint. Education, justice, health, energy, environment, transport… are controlled regionally. There are ‘national standards’, human rights both nationally and internationally, and national defence and border controls. As a framework it would reflect the iwi structure so treaty issues would be played out locally in a logical manner. And there would need to be regional adjustments in terms of wealth and resource transfers.

It would certainly make local body elections a more vital affair. If you added a strong participatory democracy element to the structure, with local debate on budgetary formation, you could well have something resembling democracy.

But that’s all wishful thinking. The shopkeepers, business owners and farmers will front up, middle-aged men, well-meaning on the whole. There will be the odd squabble between them as they struggle within the tight boundaries set by trade agreements, the threat of corporate prosecution, a national governance focused on key urban areas, and their own class interest.

Of course, none of the above will ever be discussed or made articulate.  But at least the sun has been shining for several frosty days. The snow-clad alps beam in the early morning, the chooks peck more happily, and the birds are getting ready for spring. There’s firewood on the beach and on the floor of the forest. One can’t complain.

It has rained an awful lot. The chook run is an unpleasant smelling swamp; the gravel-eating monster has risen from the depths so that it is becoming tenuous to get the car from garage to street; leather articles go mouldy, but at least the roof is holding out. In the past, a week of violent weather would be followed by a trinity of beautiful days, but this time, divine justice is absent – the squalls keep blowing in and it can feel as if the planet has had enough of us. The Middle East is so hot you can fry an egg on the footpath. The forest fires in California have a new psychotic energy. There is a phenomenon where people still at home experience home-sickness because their home is becoming uninhabitable.

But this morning there is a brief respite which tempts me into the bush, to climb the hill and take the track to the old mine site, to savour the intimacy and intricacy of the land, to see where bushes have fallen and new trees are growing with a virgin colour which sparkles. Mud and grace.

But as I traverse the ridge I think how senseless it would be to have my phone out searching for Pokemon. Unlikely that Google would find this particular spot anyway. Probably unlikely to find Pokemon in Kiribati or Gaza. Some places are safe.

I read an essay which talked of the digital penetration of our physical world that is occurring – different from the creating of a digital world which we then watch. This is digital aspects physically invading the everyday. As with all of these tech developments, the military has been the catalyst – perfect training to digitally place the enemy in a real landscape. It is a phenomenon controlled by monopolies: Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft. Monopolies are the main characteristic of the digital world. Forget about competition. If something new pops up it will be bought. Silicon Valley start ups are largely a con, associated with outlandish developments like Bangladeshi click farms: the poor and sinking are paid a pittance to spend all day clicking on websites which can then display the number of visits they’ve received in order to attract investors.

I prefer rain and mud to that madness.

Not a great gift to our kids though: a real world that is becoming toxic penetrated by toxic digital colonisers controlled by monopolies.

But this morning there’s snow on the Paparoa, the weka seem happy enough, I can go and get a trailer load of gravel for the drive and the hens can be let out.

Roll on the revolution.

There are fundamental patterns that once embedded in a society, remain enormously difficult to change. In the US, racism and gun violence seem almost genetic. The counter-culture, now morphed into the Occupy, Environmental and Black Lives Matter movements simply bounce off this hard kernel of toxicity.

Neo-liberalism has embedded a clichéd notion of freedom which leads to an almost feudal, unashamed elite – the Tony Blair’s of the world who become untouchable, continuing to wield power and to make money because of the networks they have built while in political office. It leads to the unseemly back stabbing currently being played out in the UK with all the subtlety of a Renaissance court.

On the Coast, the hard knot of settler puritanism continues to exist. James K. Baxter captured the phenomenon perfectly in his 1960 poem, Ballad of Calvary Street. “On Calvary Street are trellises/Where bright as blood the roses bloom/And gnomes like pagan fetishes/Hang their hats on an empty tomb…” Baxter described the awful relationship between the elderly couple that time and puritanism have wrought: “…wisdom, age and mothercraft/Have rubbed it home that men like dirt.” A daughter and son in law pay a Sunday afternoon visit and “Discuss the virtues of insurance.” After they’ve gone “…the two old fools are left” for whom “Habit, habit dogs them dumb…” and “Yin and Yang won’t ever meet/In Calvary Street, in Calvary Street.”

It’s a great poem and despite the frivolities brought by postmodernism and globalisation, that hard kernel of misery continues. Greymouth is not a pretty place. It has its virtues – a predominantly working class culture can seem like a virtue – but if it is to compete on the visitor market, it needs to change. A couple of years ago, the Council held a series of sector discussions to generate ideas.  Brighten up the CBD was a high priority. A council officer held a well-organised community consultation, with people voting on a range of options. A town square proposal received wide approval, for good reason. Every place needs a central place to meet, sit, talk, hold gatherings, to start and finish marches and protests, a place to dance, sing and celebrate. The Council drew up plans and found the money – $1.7 million – for a partial roof is necessary. The Mawhera Corporation donated the land. All good.

Except the gnomes have reacted. First of all some shopkeepers started to moan. Why wasn’t the money being spent on their footpaths? A couple of ex councillors began to rant. What an idea, to spend money on frivolity (a place to relax, sing and dance etc…) when there are pot holes to fix and drains to sluice.  A petition is circulating, sure to attract the generally grumpy from Calvary Street. This hard knot of puritanism which has made sure the town lacks aesthetic appeal in the past will try and preserve ‘the empty tomb’, like the Americans will try to hold onto their guns and their racism, like the elite will try and keep control in the name of freedom.

But as I write the above I am equally aware of the opposite. We are midway through rehearsals of our next play, which explores a new culture for the Coast. As usual, I am flabbergasted by the generosity of the people who have joined the project, contributing their time, skills and energy to the play, often having to move outside a comfort zone to explore a new idea or form. It’s a different street altogether. At the moment it can only exist as ‘play’. Hopefully, one day it will be able to exist in real life.