environment

Having finished well enough the repair and upgrade of the old Jack’s Mill School near Moana and now beginning the operation of a School for Social Change in Te Wai Pounamu on the site, we have a remaining substantial problem: what to do with three large exotic trees that were planted some time ago, quite possibly as acts of commemoration, trees which have not been managed and which now shade the buildings. In the event of a hurricane type event they might fall and destroy the heritage infrastructure and meanwhile they discard large amounts of tree litter that block guttering, rubbish the lawn and occasionally branches fall which would be dangerous to anyone walking underneath.

As we struggle with this problem, the trees, for me, begin to be symbolic. They are exotic plantation trees planted individually in a domestic setting so it was a dumb thing to do (that is lacking in foresight). In their native setting the discipline of the collective plantation would have kept them from overspreading and protected them in a wind event. In the temperate and wet West Coast climate they have grown quickly and hugely.

Given that this is a heritage site and because momentarily, on a sunny day, they can be attractive and impressive, some think they are part of the heritage and should therefore be retained.

DOC who own the site but who have devolved the management to the community, dither, have no money for maintenance, but intermittently pay for a conversation report in order to cover their arses.

The community doesn’t have any money for the task and cutting down trees is not sexy for funders.

I have consulted local tree fellers but generally they cut down trees in paddocks for firewood and after expressing confidence in their ability to deal with these trees in a straightforward manner, they have second thoughts and wander away. As well, they generally don’t have the range of insurance cover necessary. A Christchurch arborist who could dismantle the trees in the city manner, needs $30,000 to do so.

To provide amusement DOC reports that there’s a person, presumably hunting around for a thesis topic or a consultant touting for work, who wants to apply for funding to write a heritage landscape report on the site, which, if completed would mystify the situation further and generally piss off the community, for she would be getting paid and the community involved are volunteers. And where does she come from and who is she? We’ve got a core group running the workshop programme, we’ve got the local school involved in resurrecting the landscape and the community, more generally, are having a dialogue with these lefties who now run the site and who have done a good job so far and apart from their dodgy politics, seem okay as people. The local hapu are beginning to use the place as well and now toot on their way home and recently invited me to attend a wananga on traditional embalming during which I offered my ageing body as a stand in corpse. And finally, both sides of the Gloriavale saga have popped in. So, what’s with this consultant?

It’s not hard to see this whole situation as a parable for the wider world where the problem of coloniarity (a word which embodies both the act of colonisation, past and present, but also the mindset that goes with it and the wider resonances) – is here symbolised by the overbearing trees.

A preview performance of our stories at Red Books went well. Performing is always healing, as is the coherence of a story formed and perfected. For a moment the dross falls away and clarity is achieved. The contradictions and ironies become the sinews of reality. For a moment.

Only one mask wearer, who in a situation of presence was absent. And that is one function of the mask, to protect oneself against the presence of the other and to protect the other against one’s own presence, to become effectively, as absent as possible. That is the rationality for the burqa, to protect the woman against serial male desire and to protect the woman from reciprocating. Presence and desire are then privatised to the patriarch’s bedroom.

A contrary function of the mask is to allow freedom of the libido, as in the carnival. For the Zapatista the mask protects the ‘we’ from the state gaze. And one of the ironies of any mandatory mask wearing will be to sabotage CCTV and facial recognition systems.

Meanwhile, the Greenland ice cap has melted. The canary is dead with barely a mention in the media.

Back to the despair of trying to forge different relationships in the real world. There’s a bulk food store for sale in Greymouth, the perfect venture for Te Puawai Co-op to facilitate an Invercargill style venture (www.thepantry.co.nz) where such a facility is run by a collective which involves people with a disability. Despite Provincial Growth Funds, mayoral job funds, Development West Coast, employment schemes, wage subsidies, various NGOs advocating for the disabled, there is no effective interest. If we did get something off the ground a saboteur would appear, a system centred buyer. For the sake of some minimal capital nothing transformative will happen outside the sphere of art.

The Greenland ice cap has melted. The canary is dead.

A sign outside a café: Now that you have learned to wash your hands children, we will learn to put our chairs under our desks neatly. Jacinda has become over exposed. There’s a visceral rebellion welling up which could seriously fragment the political landscape.

A commentator has described the current world as no longer capitalist, but neo feudal, with kings and queens, an aristocracy, a gentry, guilds of skilled workers, and at the bottom serfs no longer tied to land but tied to pracarity: a cheap rental if you’re lucky, or a cheap car, a shopping trolley, a sleeping bag, a cell phone if you’re unlucky… Within this the search for transformative relationship is hugely difficult: how to create the autonomous zone, the commune, how to link up effectively while respecting diversity? There are promising signs that the new age impulse is becoming politicised, past the privilege of food choice, life style block and mouse-click environmentalism, leading to the seeking of relations of solidarity not within or against but outside the feudal system.

Signs and signals.

I suddenly remember our production of Oedipus in the late seventies, couched as an environmental statement, something which I didn’t quite understand at the time; but now it’s obvious: the cursed baby (Western civilisation) saved by a shepherd’s sympathy (think Christ), grows up amongst strangers, loses his temper and kills a man at the crossroads (colonisation), solves the riddle (science), marries his mother in order to become king (the industrial revolution), the plague descends and in trying to find a solution he discovers his own culpability; the solution is to blind himself and go into the wilderness.

The Greenland ice cap has melted. The canary is dead.