I’ve been writing poetry for the first time in a long, long while. Here is one of the recent products.
The Pines
Like a valley of pine,
Your skin is an
acidic monoculture.
Nothing will grow there,
but you.
You’re tall and upright,
no undergrowth, just
an uneasy bed of needles.
There is no rest in
your shadow.
When I look up, I
can’t see the sky
for your black branches.
I should feel safe,
but I don’t.
I have a tattoo design (a half sleeve one) of a kokako (NZ bellbird) in a flax bush, with the words "He aha te mea nui o te Ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata" (What is the most important thing in the world? It is people, it is people, it is people). I would definitely get it permanently, and am, in fact, planning to get it started soon.
I work with adolescents. I know that alien life exists.
Going through a real phase of listening to this band. I love the complicated emotions of the lyrics, the way they tell stories and evoke feelings instead of telling me something empty. I love the laid back, but not pared back, music. Also, Greta Salpeter is smokin' hot and who can resist that talent?
I would probably make a few investments first – all that boring stuff like ensuring financial security and suchlike. But the first thing I would enjoy doing? Packing everything into storage, save my loaded backpack and my hiking shoes, and taking off for adventure.
I have had a plan for this for so long, wandering the world and seeing all the things I've only read (and dreamed) about. At times, it has gotten absurdly detailed, with itineraries, even; bus and train timetables mined for information about connections and paths, lonely planet and websites trawled for images and information. I have even read up about food to eat and restaurants to visit.
My minions assure me that my movie would have to be surreal, ostentatiously intellectual, subversively dissident and full of sex, drugs and rock n' roll. Obviously, my movie would kick arse.
A lost generation, a damned generation, a generation with nothing to lose and everything to forget.
This novel is what I read for remembering bleakness. Despite the life, the vivacity, the blazing sun, this is a story of fruitless struggle and futility.
Read this to feel a time of change, but not of optimism.
One of the things I find most interesting about the Internet and living an online life is the way I can control and shape identity, largely free from the constraints of real life. That doesn't mean, for example, that I pretend to be rich and glamourous under my pseudonymous self (or a 55yo overweight truck driver from the Bible Belt, for that matter). What it does mean is that I control my identity online.
Sometimes, like here, I use my real name and images that approximate my real self. I talk about my job or my writing or the state of my desk (exciting, exciting and cluttered, respectively). But sometimes, I use other online identities that don't intersect with people that know me as a teacher, writer, or person incapable of cleaning. I like that. The people I meet that way don't need to know about my struggles with an appropriate resolution for my next novel idea, or about my frustrations with exam supervision – though some of have become friends with whom I share my real life.
I think that privacy and identity are two intertwined concepts when it comes to living part of your life in online spaces. I need to be in control of both my privacy and my identity – and isn't that a new way of looking at things? I like my 21st century responsibilities. And my 21st century opportunities.
To answer the original question… I like my name. It's interesting and unusual, and it has a certain old-fashioned charm that is mildly incongruous with my actual self. If I was to change my name, I would almost certainly choose something in Maori, something that roots me in my identity in this time, and in this place, in the real world.
I often wake up with a jumble of images in my mind, accompanied by the shadow or hangover of emotions strong enough to affect my entire day. Sometimes these tangled scenes, snatches of dialogue and words, stay with me. They sink into my subconscious and come out hours or days later as ideas for stories.
My novel idea came from a dream combined with a random writing prompt from a comm. I loved it – or most of it – for the entirety of the 60,000 words.
My laptop is made of awesome. Awesome, I tell you