Tread softly

Spring in my glorious Auckland has infected me with a strange fever. Poetry fever baby.

My current fave... kinda reflects my mood...

He Wishes
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Mr W.B.Yeats. That last line...? Man.

Remember To Breathe

I'm blue. Emotionally haphazard. There has been a split from a lady that I care about but just isn't the right one at the right time. There has been an explosion in the life of one of my closest friends which has broken her heart. There has been a notice from the property manager that I must vacate by November 13 as the owner of my lovely rented villa wishes to return. There has been work arranged, then cancelled, then arranged again, only to be cancelled once more. Then last night I was halted in my stride by a woman I haven't seen in five years.

Slender, just past shoulder length blond hair and pale skin. Straight posture, determined presence. Loose cotton shirt, blue jeans. Beautiful. The clue to everything a man should love and fear was there, in her stance, in her look, in her first words.

There was pride in her smile as she spoke. Years ago I'd mistaken that pride for arrogance. I won't make that mistake again. I was lost immediately. Floating and lost. Her hand was on my arm as she spoke. Familiar and as exciting as a whispered promise.

Once we were lovers, now we were strangers. So we stood. I looked at her, a stranger, yet so recognisable to me. A voice in my heart said yes, yes, yes. We talk, we talk for almost two hours. I struggle to get words out. I worry, I hope instinct is true and right. My heart has never guided me as well as my head, and heart was well and truely steering the ship last night.

She will look at me in the next week as we sit across from each other, and I'll continue to struggle to define the colour of her eyes. I won't tell her what I want to tell her. The determination I have to not make the same mistakes of five years ago is amost brutal. My heart is moving through deep and silent water.

She is a woman who knows.

She might be... might be... my woman who knows.

Good taste

In the spirit of getting more people to think the way I do, wear clothing the way I do, mangle language the way I do and listen to the same music I do... may I present the latest Kings Of Leon album. Titled Only By The Night, (which is a title I love by the way, evocative and ambiguous at the same time) it is quite simply the best rock and roll album I've heard this year.

Lies

There we are, dining, sitting, drinking, laughter ringing. And yet things are a bit sticky. She has accused me, not to put too fine a point on it, of lying to her.

I said there were lies everywhere. Take the oxtail soup on the menu for instance. I asked her, why, if the tail of an ox was so good had I never knowingly eaten any other part of an ox? The answer of course is that most oxtail soup is actually cowtail soup but that sounds like someting you'd feed to a slightly ill canine, so oxtail soup it is, and that's a lie. Such a good lie that butchers throughout the land fool people with it. And then they laugh the secret laugh of the butcher. I don't know it.

Where would we be without lies? There'd be no television news or songs by Justin Timberlake or pretty much any other pop artist. There'd be no advertisements or any of the other things that make life worth living. I went to Canberra years ago, before it became the cosmopolitan centre of all that is good and hip, back in the good old days where good tastes merry fist slammed down on anything that looked vaguely out of place or interesting. It was all grey concrete and bad beer and women that smelt like crime. But there wasn't an ad to be seen, not a single poster to tell you that if you didn't use this particular deoderant you'd most likely be attacked by wolverines, or if you went to Prague you'd be a better person. There was nothing. What they needed was a sprinkling of lies.

'My simple point,' I said to her, 'is that lying is dangerous and human and creative and necessary for the maintenance of society. Animals can't do it and we can. And there's little joy to be got from truth,' I said. 'I mean truth's one of two things: it's nasty, it's boring or it's false.'

Kindly she didn't point out that was three things, but then she said, 'false truth'? 'What?'

'False truth,' I said, 'is like how-to-become-rich books, or opinion polls or I love you.'
'You do?' she said.

'I do,' I said.

Best Movie Poster. Ever

I've been waiting for Kevin Smith to make a movie that I didn't hate... This might be it. Brilliant one-sheet. Laugh? I almost shat.

Forty love

When I was seven I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a ballboy at Wimbledon. Each year as the tournament approached I waited for my invitation to crouch beside the net. I sensed my greatness at leaping and stretching and gathering. I would please the crowd with demonstrations of individual individuality. People would call my name and raise their hands. Somewhere in the crowd would be a sprightly young lass who would one day become my woman who knows...

Tennis flares every year for me. It's like migrating bird. Into the sunlight it swoops, exotic and flighty, and then it buggers off. This however is not the buggering off time. This is the time of raquets and nets and putting my glasses to one side and flailing gracefully. Running from side to side, panting, wearing pants that are aerodynamic, sweat pouring, falling over. All of these make tennis tennis. Summer is coming.

(cheers to Tane for the pic of our summer holiday)

A Block Party

My love of music knows few boundaries. In making music tv for the past few years I've worked with folk musicians, hip hoppers, rockers, rappers, soulers and everything in between. It's not a cliche or a cop out when I say I like a little bit o'everything.

So when I say that my favourite music at the moment is coming fron a doco that I've had in my DVD library (yeah, I'm a massive geek) for the past 3 years, you best believe I mean it. YOU BEST BELIEVE! (that's my threatening tone...) If you haven't seen the film Dave Chapelles' Block Party, I suggest you do. It will raise the hairs on your soul. Well, it does to me.

Wedding Teeth

I have a broken mouth. Not because of gingernuts or my penchant for foul language, but because I broke a tooth a year or so ago on a nacho. That tooth was weak and it had to go. It has not had any impact on my life. I'm funny lookin, with or without tooth... but I'm fun to be around and have many new and old friends, some who have been pashed, some who have not.

My parents called tonight and said they'd pay for the tooth to be fixed. I love my folks. They are a complete triumph of love. Everything that bullies love and truth into hatred and discord they've fought against, and they're still hopelessly lost without each other after 35 years. They are my ideal of love. If I'm lucky enough to meet my woman who knows, she will most likely get on with my Mum and Dad.

Despite my admiration and love for them they have a fascination with my broken tooth.

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that next year as my younger brother gets married I have to stand up and give a spectacular speech as his best man. I believe that they are worried about my appearance. That annoys me.

I can stand in front of people. I can speak in front of people. These things I have never had a problem with. But, to appease my darling parents, I will fix the tooth.

However I will not wear pants during the ceremony.

Procrastination, Lederhosen and Thought

I know four bits of German. The first three of them, in what seems to be the right order, are faster, tank, and eleven beers please. I learned them from war comics.

My fourth bit of German is the very useful word Zeitgeist. It literally means the ghost of the future. Less literally it means the spirit of the age. But though I do like the word Zeitgeist, I don't like it's present manifestation. For I am out of tune with the Zeitgeist.

The Zeitgeist requires us to be driven people. Efficient. Productive. Refridgerated. We are required to be lured by the football of success towards the goals that we may or may not have set for ourselves somewhere on the playing field of life.

If the Zeitgeist required me to talk nonsense with people I love, drink enormous amounts of wine, smoke as many delicious Marlboro (sp. thank you Selma) Lights as I can humanly handle, waste time in ever more creative ways... actually, that brings me to a quote I read a while back. It was a rather impressive dude called Philip Larkin who observed that it matters bugger all what you do with time for 'however you use it, it goes'.

I love nothing better than to paddle in the shallows of thought. This blog should be evidence enough of that. The world is various, and to waste time is simply to float in its variety.

Eleven beers please.

(this post is your fault, K Banazi)

Nuts

There comes a time when a body craves something more substantial than aspirins. And it was just this time last Sunday that I read an article about baking biscuits.

Grandmothers bake biscuits. I don't. I don't even have a tin to fill.

But the article featured a recipe for gingernuts. I love gingernuts. Bite into a dry one and it's even money which will break first, a tooth or the biscuit. Dunk a gingernut in coffee though and it becomes something that can raise a a holler. I read the recipe. I salivated and decided I would bake.

Having gone through the pantry for ingredients, I rang a woman who knows. She told me that no, I couldn't really do without eggs or ginger. Nor could I substitute noodles for flour or beer for golden syrup.

I had to have baking soda too apparently, but she reassured me that even if I never baked another biscuit my baking soda would not go to waste. I could clean the bath with it.

She clearly does not read this blog. The woman who knows doesn't know my bath. Anything that can clean my bath has no business being in a biscuit. It would be more at home on a warhead.

Measuring 100 grams of butter on the bathroom scales proved to be inconclusive, but all great cooks are innovators. On the 16th of March 1985 I took 6 wickets for forty-two against the lesser talents of Saint Kents Intermediate school, and was presented with the ball. Like my piano, that ball has travelled everywhere with me.

A cricket ball weighs five and a half ounces (according to my 1976 Wisdon Cricket World Almanac). I googled furiously and discovered I needed two thirds of a cricket ball of butter, one and a half cricket balls of sugar and one and three quarters of flour.

After that it was simply a matter of placing the cricket ball in a bowl in one hand and the ingredients in a bowl in the other and seeing which way I leaned.

Then I moved on to creaming the butter and sugar. Little known baking fact... Creaming ingredients is a very effective method of bending forks.

After many minutes of flying ingredients around the kitchen all that was left was to put the lovies in the oven and watch my ginger balls become ginger nuts.

And they did. I laughed. I called the woman who knows. She was out. I bit. I broke a tooth. I went to the dentist.

Total cost of baking... One thousand four hundred dollars. Good bikkies though.

Creamy Ears

A friend has knocked on the door about 15 minutes ago and dropped a little music on me. If you're a fan of soulful, tender, funky, little bit o' hip-hopness, flat out groovy music I need to point you in the direction of This Was Supposed To Be The Future by The Nextmen.

Collaborations with 2 of my favourite vocalists in Alice Russell from the UK and Dallas from here in Aotearoa, along with many other standouts along the way.

Buy it. Download it. Send a crack team of ninjas to steal it for you. Get it. Summer is here baby.

Dancing With Destiny

Picture me if you will. Sunday night. Stars looking down upon me. Music playing. Vodka dripping on my shoes. I am the very picture of suave. My eyes have that half closed Lawrence-of-Arabia look which creeps upon me late and secretly. In one hand I clutch a fresh vodka tonic, in the other a half smoked Marlboro Light. In my mouth there is also a half smoked Marlboro Light. Another half smoked Marlboro Light appears to be in the ashtray to my left. Around the room women visibly struggle to resist my allure. It says a lot for the women at this bar that they have so far succeeded. But as the evening wears on I can see them struggling, like dolphins caught in a net.

One woman has approached. 'You've got vodka on your shoes,' she said. Words can mask the strongest feelings. When you're as in tune with the female psyche as I am you see beyond the mere words.

'I know,' I relied, and winked at her. She understood, gave a little nervous snort that people nearby may have mistaken for disgust, and melted back into the crowd.

Barely 3 hours had flown by after that encounter when out came Destiny. Destiny wore a frock. She wore a frock made of the purest silk. Little silken holes gave glimpses of flesh that would have sent a weaker man to his knees. She was a woman who knows. 'Destiny,' I whispered.

'You're drunk,' said Destiny.

I've seen it so often. The way women conceal their desire behind abuse. I merely smiled my knowing smile and swayed to my own special internal rhythm. I would let Destiny take her course. She removed the fourteen cigarettes from my smoulderingness and with a voice that could melt Everest said 'Lets dance.'

I allowed myself to be led to the dancefloor, pausing only to trip over a potted plant. Space cleared immediately on the dancefloor, due mainly to awe at my prowess.

I dance for keeps. I may have drawn Destiny's blood. Words were unnecessary. Nevertheless, as I lurched on the spot, Destiny would murmur to me, 'Ow,' she'd say.

Somehow when the music stopped playing Destiny and I were separated. But it didn't mater. We had formed a bond that could not be broken. Thirst and exhaustion took me first to the bar and then to a table outside where I lit another refreshing, delicious Marlboro Light. I may have fallen asleep at some point.

If there is a moral to this tale it is in the ending. I awoke. Destiny had departed. So I pashed a girl named Clair.

Nerd

I've been reading poetry today. In the spirit of full disclosure I should add that I've also been drinking beer and watching the US Open, but all the while I've been reading poetry.
William Blake to be exact.

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.


He gets my panties in a bunch. In a really good way.

Action Man and Barbie do Auckland

This is what happens when people leave dolls lying around my house.