When we see a great person on the world stage, and are lucky enough to with joy be able say something like, “I knew him! I knew that guy!”, what we are really saying is “My life effected their life, I am part of this”.

Remorse, that you are not up there being great too, inevitably follows.

 

Something worse happens also, and it may sound arrogant in the extreme, but I feel regretful that my life has never effected so many great lives. I have never given back greatness, to true greatness. I feel without a voice, without a witness to my life because of it. 

Between Avenues A and B

 

Christie Orr 2189 W. Bowler St. Chicago, Illinois 60612., were the words written below Mayor Daley’s signature as I stood eyeing the security personal near the dugout. With my legs ‘at ease’, and my right arm crossed over my chest I sang; ‘Oh say can you see, by the dawns early light’, the necessary action and embodied expression of the stirring solidarity I felt towards the cohorts on the diamond around me. In that moment it was the only truthful thing to do, but it felt disloyal: my right arm, though vital and contextually justified, felt like a lie.

As a ‘legal alien’ living in America, for fear of arrest, I tended not to get involved in any sort of activism. However, the medical district were proposing to build what would likely be yet another redundant facility on the site where one of the last remaining playing fields the Near West little league had, stood. I’m no Chicagoan, but having twice accepted Bobbie Muzikowski’s offers to come out there, Chicago’s inner city kids represent some aspect of myself that belonged if not to them, than at least with them. Thus, I would have easily done much more than sign a petition and join a demonstration if it meant saving their field. But was it about them, or about my need to play savior? Was I another patronizing Florence Nightingale, romanticizing the plights of othered peoples and ‘glamorizing’ their struggles in a way that justified my taking action on their behalf—where I might not have for those at home—an injustice I find abhorrent. I’m sure I would care as much if this was Otara and not Chicago. Though its hard to ignore that I identified with these kids in a way that’s surprising, given that, superficially at least, we are so different. Arm crossed over chest or not, something that seemed valid appeared to be going on, a process that involved the fundamentals of my identity, which were more fluid and contradictory than stable and cohesive. Internally and externally, as a living metaphor for the things of old, two identities collided, each trying to occupy the same land.

As a kid I was sporty, a daydreamer, and lousy at academics. At an age when I was protected from understanding that last clause, and how it would come to inform my identity by being added to what I already knew about myself, and, while I was still unable to read the words and terms of nationhood, I was none the less extremely patriotic. This patriotism wasn’t something that was nurtured in me: from about age three I would get up on the weekends, and before the cartoons started watch the montage of New Zealand vistas set to the backdrop of our national anthem and another song—the name of which I’ve never been able to figure out. Following that, at about 5:30am, it was my custom to stand on my top bunk, the doors and windows to my room spread wide, and sing as loud as my lungs would allow these two songs. “New Zealand, Ranga Tu Tu Ru, it’s a part of me that no one else can know!”, I would yell-sing, my fist waving foot stomping pride and joy never lacking in enthusiasm. It must have been a spectacle, what with my bowl haircut and Wombles pajamas. What I never got until I was much older was why mum would come in her nighty and angrily slam my door closed. 

Like all kids, my sister and I stole each other’s toys. And, no sooner had I learnt the phrase ‘possession is nine tenths of the law’ than I enthusiastically set about putting it into practice. This had mixed results, and may partly explain why I spent so many hours up the branches of the weeping willow that lazed, spread out over our back lawn. On the rare occasion Tiffiny climbed the willow when I was already there, it never occurred to me to use my new favourite phrase: even as a child nature seemed to have a sacredness that put it beyond the reach of human ideas of entitlement; its sanctity preserving it as ‘out of bounds’ in terms of my own jurisdiction. Sure, I protected my dreamy experience within the willow’s arms, and Tiff instinctually knew that her older sister authority carried no weight whilst there, but I never felt like I owned the tree, even though I was there first, nor did Tiff, and thus a peaceful kind of truce existed there.

In New Zealand it can be argued that Maori have more legitimate rights regarding much of New Zealand’s land than New Zealanders of purely European decent. I’m slightly sympathetic to that argument, though I’m not totally clear as to why. To me it seems like colonization is not as much a matter of resources but experience: a person’s rights to their own autonomous experience, culture and identity is what’s at stake. Perhaps, rather than issues regarding land, the colonization of the mind and soul, of culture and identity is the deepest offence of colonization. Experience, though, is hard to separate from material things such as land, and maybe that is why I am sympathetic to the above proposition regarding New Zealanders and land ‘rights’. As a descendant of the colonizers of New Zealand, this places me in an awkward position. If I give up my land, and with it my makeshift, borrowed, or hybridized cultural identity to whose land and identity should I, could I, reasonably cling?

The meaning of my Hebrew name, יעל (Yael), is usually described as ‘a beautiful and gracious mountain goat’. יעל was also the name of the heroine of Shoftim (Judges IV) who rammed a tent peg into the temple of the sleeping captain of the Canaanite enemy.

Aroma Café in Soho is open 24 hours and frequented by students who are ‘pulling all-nighters’, many of whom are Jewish. Aviv, whom I met there, initially referred to himself as Jewish, but after explaining how hard life would be for him if he returned to Israel, given that he did not serve in the army at eighteen, he now describes himself to me as Israeli. I was surprised, explaining that many  New Zealanders might be more likely to connect the term ‘Israeli’ with conflict rather than with the avoidance of it. Moreover, I had to admit that growing up I had often failed to relate the terms ‘Israeli’ and ‘Jewish’ with each other. Though they see it as a promise fulfilled, Israel does not wholly belong to the Jewish people, and they have a history of being expelled from it. Yiddish, for example, which is spoken mainly in Eastern Europe, is the only language in the world not to have a specific land associated with it.

Despite feeling an affinity with the Jewish culture, I am, amongst other things, Scottish, French, Danish, and English. As such, I have a hard time excepting that the privileges of, in particular English citizenry, which it could be argued are technically as much mine as they are the Queens, should remain by law so estranged from me. Other than the fact that we pay taxes to the Crown, there’s doesn’t seem to be much common about the Commonwealth. That said, I’m not about to ask her Majesty for a plot of my own in York. Although, surely some hospitality beyond the much loved O.E. could be afforded by her to the culturally displaced. If not the rights and protections of English citizenry, then surely were I to find a decent beach in say Brighton and Hove, would it be too much to ask for the right to live and bathe there as long as my as my life and togs hold out?

Perhaps I could be accused of conflating the rights of European-New Zealanders with those of Maori-New Zealanders.  Although, while perhaps not to the same extent, surely the cultural experience of European-New Zealanders and their access to a sense of cultural identity was also compromised by the colonizing of this good land. Issues regarding resources are concerning primarily as they implicate our relationship with and experience of a place: even as the historical second comer I would like to preserve the right to dig up Tuatua’s with my feet from time to time.

Growing up I was most commonly told that ‘Pakeha’ meant ‘grey ghost’, and it never occurred to me to be offended by that, but regardless of meaning, ‘Pakeha’ is still someone else’s name for me, not my name for myself. That an unanimous decision be reached by European-New Zealanders as to what to call ourselves is unlikely to ocur and not even part of common public discourse is telling, negatively defined, we are the absence of culture, fractured units without cohesion we see ourselves as mongrels and leave it at that. It’s likely that upon arriving here, colonisers made up their own names for Maori, and sadly, due in part to ignorance, those names may well have been far more offensive than the worst interpretations of the term ‘Pakeha’. (Such acts are inherent to the colonisation of the mind as much as to culture per se). However, if I’m part of the dominant group in New Zealand’s society, the yardstick by which other cultures have had to comply, why cant I make out my own peoples voice? What land calls me its own, and to whom do I belong?

Eulalie, my first landlady in New York, was a slim Jamaican woman of eighty-nine, who lived on the bottom floor of our Harlem brownstone with her older brother Edward—who is known as Junior. On my first day there, Eulalie told me that Junior and her were the last living relatives each other had: that when Junior passed she would be completely alone. Every couple of days I would fetch two gallons of drinking water for them, and a couple of times a day I would make sure Junior was propped up in his bed because Eulalie was much too frail to do either. Despite being bedridden Junior was spirited and his white teeth shone with all the strength of a twenty-one year old Sammy Davis. He was a charmer, and I’m told a suave dancer. “I’m doing mighty fine my dear, how you doing?”, he’d wink when I greeted him, and moments  later, from the next room, Eulalie would explain to me about his pain, and that he was dying. One morning when I came downstairs to visit him, I found Junior’s bed empty. Its sheets were white and clean, tightly tucked over its mattress, as though none had ever laid on them, and during the long hot days that lead up to the funeral I began to feel guilty for feeling that part of my story had died also.

The first place I lived in New York was Apt 2A, 528 East 13^th St, between avenue’s A and B. It was Renee’s, the daughter of a family friends apartment, and I stayed there two weeks while she was away in London. When asked by an Irish friend of ours at a gig in Central Park what makes someone ‘a New Yorker’, I replied “that they come from somewhere else—unless that place is Nebraska or Florida—in which case they’re not New Yorker’s, just pains in the ass”. Us New Yorkers laughed with a knowing grunt, while the Irishman just looked bemused. Wait, you’re not a New Yorker, you might say. I’m not an American, I’m a Kiwi, but not a New Yorker? Renee was almost a New Yorker, she lived there as long, if not longer than I, but remained for the most part a Kiwi living in New York. I put this down to the scope and intensity of her interaction with the city, rather than birth rights or the duration of her stay. Some live in New York twenty years without becoming New Yorkers, others are New Yorkers after only a few months. Some of us, the lucky ones like myself, may have always been New Yorkers, but are only now ‘coming out’.

So I’m part New Yorker, so what? But that’s not the end of the story, not by a long shot, because it’s a part of my identity that has a lot less purchase now that I am back in New Zealand. About three months after I returned here I was invited to what I was told was a “Natives Party”. And, after forgiving the hosts for the horrid example of the trinketization of culture that such a party theme provokes, I decided to attend, and so began the business of imagining what kind of a native I was. I imagined Albert Park around the time of the Chinese New Year, with instead of a Lantern Festival, a ‘European New Zealanders’ festival taking place. I pictured people gaily celebrating their heritage and traditions—like the lantern folk do currently—but had difficulty imagining what such a festival in practice might look like. What would the food stalls sell? What about arts and crafts? Who would come? And why? How, if at all, would spin-doctors spin the story in the media? In the end it was just too hard, I didn’t have a kilt, a statue of Hans Christian Anderson, a beret, or time to whip up some ‘bangers and mash’. I was low on time and costume resources and the party was at a flat that I didn’t care too much about being invited back to, so I dug around in my mum’s garage and ended up going in my old St Cuths uniform, as a “Native of Remuera”. Had this been the States none would have cared, but apparently these people didn’t much care for my outfit and consequently some rather uppity comments were added to photos of me on Facebook.

‘Game Theory’ proposes a set of rules for resolving various situations and conflicts. In a ‘zero-sum’ game a win for one team represents a loss of the same amount for the other. In an increasingly multicultural world, people cannot afford to play zero-sum games: so long as each person’s experience is respected, both sisters can enjoy the willow tree. So too for identity, a win for the New Yorker in me does not necessitate a loss for my Kiwi identity. It does not follow, however, that I am merely the sum of these parts. Different identities, like cultures, rub up against each other, but rather than cancelling each other out, like iron sharpens iron, their conflict holds us accountable to resolve apparent untruths or contradictions that point to aspects of our identity which no longer ring true. Such processes refine us, tunning how we understand and relate to the world. My identity is not place specific. The world changes, I change, and few things remain concrete. We may grow together, or apart, but to remain truthful we must have the humility and insight to perpetually adjust.

 

The Blender

I love going to “Crate and Barrel” all those shiny pots, leather armchairs and throws. It’s glorious. Its “Martha Stuart” wonderment, made accessible to anyone, with a trifling swipe of a card. The older I get, the more I like Martha Stuart, and the more consideration I give things like “throws”. Even though I am not quite sure what the purpose of a “throw” is exactly, I had a lengthy discussion about them with my friend Jen one day earlier this year as we meandered through Mount Eden Village’s charming boutique gift shops. Within Mount Eden Village’s lush sample of “the goodlife,” as we pawed the picture frames, and slathered body lotion, we decided throws were about as purposeful as pashminas. And like their friend the pashmina, as useful, when a jumper is what is really needed. However pathetic it might seem to have decided this, it in no way negated their inevitable necessity.
When I was a kid, I liked to play house. Recently, in a more practical part of Mount Eden, I helped my Dad shop for a flat screen TV. Dad is someone you always bond with over acquiring stuff. I would call it shopping, if not for the fact that it is somewhat more insidious than shopping when dad’s involved. We were meant to be having a catch up over coffee, but instead were “browsing” at, and as it turns out acquiring, a TV. My little fourteeninch TV. looks modest by comparison and had I not been returning to New York, I may have been tempted to “upgrade it,” though I could never throw it out as it’s precious and was a gift from my mum. For reasons like this, some know me as a hoarder, and the last time I left for overseas a friend helped me throw a shameful ten rubbish bags of stuff out. One mans trash is another mans treasure. They were memories to me, but not important enough to keep.
I also own a blender that I am dearly fond of. It too was a present from mum. It is white with a measuring cup and a clear grey lid that helps prevent berries, yoghurt, and juice from spraying the already stained walls of my small home. Mum always gave too much. She gave whatever she could of herself and even what she could not. All the thoughtful things she’s given me (like blenders) and kind things she’s done endure in my heart well past the words “thanks mum, I love you so much” linger on my tongue. Mum looks after me when I am sick, has spent endless hours running errands, getting treats and packing and unpacking my endless boxes of things. Boxes that contain things, that all demand individual categories in their own right, making grouping them to pack into boxes a daunting task. Mum is a patient respecter of my impractical sentimentality, and its no coincidence that much of the substance of it sits in her garage. The sum of my life, blender included, piled up in messy rows of bulging brown boxes. Some boxes contain items that are as yet unused—like the duvet cover I got on my twentyfirst birthday—that I hope is not discolored by now, kept for when I got married, it sits waiting. Like romantic’s wait for love, or for anything that could gives their uselessness some meaning.
When my new roommate Tina moved in, I (obviously) had to explain about the blender. Not that I assumed that she had never cared for one before, or that she was irresponsible with other people’s property, but I just needed to make sure. I called her to the kitchen for the tutorial where I explained basic safety concerns and features that would insure the life of the product. I walked her through a step by step of how to take apart all the parts, clean them, and reinstall them. I showed Tina all these things, taking care to see that she payed special attention to the sharpness of its blades. I explained that it isn’t good for you to throw harder nuts in the blender as these could possibly damage the blades, but that semifrozen berries are permissible. Part way through showing her how to properly care for its cord, Tina started to seem fidgety, shifting her weight from side to side, as if a little impatient. I am not sure for what she was impatient, but at any rate I cut the tutorial short, which left me feeling a little uneasy, though I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
Because of all the moving around I have done of late, I started to compare my blender to other smaller more compact models with ostentatious and arrogant names like “The Juice Tiger,” or the “Magic Bullet,” and apart from their inferiority I realized that there was no point in my purchasing another blender. The thought is ridiculous. That is to say that assuming there could be one better, even then, for the constraints set by airports, I could not take it on the plane with me. It makes me sad when I think of all the resources I have left behind. I feel a little cheated, gypped, circumstances fool.
I have returned to New York now. Beautiful Mount Eden village and “Time Out Bookstore” where I loved to work, along with all my things, are all behind me once again. New York is the same as it was for the most part. People still say “You’re welcome” when I say thank you—which they don’t do at home, and the same people still push and shove me on the subway. I like New York, and am making friends, but something somewhat intangible is always missing. I am lonely, and it’s a different kind of loneliness than you know in your homeland: I feel swept along by the current of people without my feet ever touching the shore. It’s odd to admit, but I actually miss my blender, and my kettle, and the many other things of my life up to now that are wrapped in layers of the sports and business sections of the New Zealand Herald. Crammed rudely into boxes like things that are forgotten they make my mum’s garage look like “Steptoe and Sons.” When I get sad and lonely like this, you might think going into “Crate and Barrel” would cheer me up, but it doesn’t. It makes me worse. On those days I feel a volatile repugnance for “Crate and Barrel,” and all homeware stores. On days like today I notice their large overly lit showrooms whose hanging shiny pots seem now to mock me as I walk quickly past. The truth is I don’t want a “Crate and Barrel” blender. I don’t want your blender. I don’t want anybody else’s stupid new shiny blender. Ever. I want my blender, and it hurts me to think of it.