Capture: Spring is Like a Perhaps Hand
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Thought some of you bird-lovers would like this Don Binney quote:
In birdwatching, Binney says he discovered a passage into the landscape and the opportunity to develop a personal relationship with it.
[ source ]
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Jos,
Try this crosseye 3D of a bit our back yard from yesterday when the light was all soft
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Small town humour: from Opotiki on Saturday morning.
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Been cold.
and wet.
But pleasant all the same. -
Rob Stowell, in reply to
set up their own rival racket.
Heh. Bloody raucous things. My feeling is that in paradise the ducks will make a more attractive scrawking honking. And be a little less paranoid than the pair who start up whenever I come in sight, even from miles away.
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Relevant to spring by whatever analogy... Today was good, warm, dry, and a very informal, international wedding celebration in an old Beijing courtyard turned cafe.
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Hebe, in reply to
I wish I could find that more funny. Intellectually I get it; but the humour just doesn't travel to my laughing machine. And that's the core difference between Christchurch people and the rest of New Zealand: we have lost our innocence.
It CAN happen here; to me, to you, to our children, husbands, wives, parents and friends. For you, a devastating earthquake is a concept. For me it's an experience; it killed and injured people I know. People doing everyday things like leaning up against a wall, like driving down a main street.
Your ability to put up the poster as humour -- and I am not making a judgment, merely attempting to communicate the difference in mindsets -- is what has allowed NZ On Air to approve funding for a _drama _ series about the earthquakes and their effect on people. Not employing Christchurch film people and actors who are now desperate for work: I'm really, really, really irate about that.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Hebe, for many of us devastatiing earthquakes are not mere concepts but very real threats we grew up with and continue to live with. And not just through regular school earthquake drills (and even the farce of a tsunami drill we had at Rongotai College), but through the frequent small, medium and quite large but fortunately deep and/or distant quakes that interrupted every aspect of our lives at random. I've experienced every kind of shaking from the short, sharp, split-second jolt forward that leaves you surprised the floor you're standing on is horizontal and not on a 17 degree lean to the long, rolling motion that has you convinced the flimsy-feeling building on whose ground floor you're squatting is about to collapse under the strain to the moderately strong shaking that has already rather jaded Wellingtonian 16- to 17-year olds looking at each other mentally asking "Is this it?" only to get a few seconds relief that ends with the French teacher uttering the only rude word you'll ever hear leave her lips as we all dive.
I absolutely do not mean in any way to diminish your experience, I'm just saying that far from being a mere concept, what you have gone through the last couple of years is precisely what many of us have been mentally preparing ourselves for for as long as we've been big enough to be conscious of such risks and realities, and that consciousness starts really young in many parts of our country. I would venture to suggest that, judging by its location, the people of Opotiki are just as experienced, jaded and conscious of the reality of that constant threat as us Wellingtonians. Black humour, as distasteful as it is to Cantabs right now for perfectly understandable reasons, is one way to deal with that.
I count myself extremely fortunate that:
1: My whanau in Christchurch have gotten through physically unscathed, and;
2: The Big One has yet to hit my hometown (although the longer it takes about coming... ), and;
3: The faultlines near where I live are relatively quiescent.I'm with you in the ire at NZ On Air, albeit from an obviously different perspective and for different reasons.
If you want to talk about earthquakes as a concept, then I could try and track down a British acquaintance of years back who expressed regret at having left Taiwan just days before a huge earthquake that killed many (details elude me right now, and I'm running out of time to google, let's just say late '90s and devastating). I would've dearly loved to have mashed his head into the nearest rock face for such incredibly dense insensitivity, but I bit my tongue and explained as patiently as I could the nature of what he had wished he could've experienced and that I and the Colombian girl he was blethering at had grown up with the ever-present risk of precisely that happening. He had enough smarts to look contrite, but I doubt he actually learned anything.
Hebe and other Christchurch people, I realise this comment may cause offense, but I am trying hard to avoid that. I do not claim to understand what you have been through. I am simply saying that many of us empathise with Christchurch and its people because what you have experienced the last couple of years is what we have been mentally preparing ourselves for our all our lives, and continue to hope we have the good fortune to not have to experience.
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Geoff Lealand, in reply to
My apologies, Hebe. I did not intend to offend. Indeed, I had mixed feelings when I encountered the sign but when you are visiting a new town, with camera at the ready,...
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
is what has allowed NZ On Air to approve funding for a _drama _ series about the earthquakes and their effect on people. Not employing Christchurch film people and actors who are now desperate for work: I’m really, really, really irate about that.
I doubt it's Geoff's ability that has allowed NZ on Air to ignore Cantabrians. It would be helpful to see if /how many Chch film peeps have applied for the same funding for a Drama series before it could be claimed that they were passed over. Also, at present many people are looking for jobs all over NZ. Chch is not alone in this dilemma. Actors will go wherever the work takes them just as producers etc do too. Just as RB went to a story last week. I doubt that was to deny someone because they were from Chch.
I looked at that photo like it may have been a business person's interpretation/dig of the ineffectiveness of their Civil Defense should an earthquake occur. Because I have seen how ineffective they are in Chch for the people and now it's finally emerging how small business are pretty much screwed insurance wise. And yes, the Mother in Law comment was pretty old and tired but not nasty. I guess we do handle the Chch situation differently and see it with a different perspective but maybe that may have been what got the series to be, it's funding?
Anyhow just my 150 odd words of opinion. -
Regarding earthquake discussion, we all see things from differing points of view. As a Cantab by birth, and mercifully absent from Christchurch's earthquakes, I can see both sides of the equation. The earthquake survivor response is reminiscent of my own everyday reaction to the sound of squealing car tyres and seeing bad and dangerous driving, silly television advertisement which show this, and so on, it's physical and visceral. Why? When I was young I was nearly killed in a car accident. It just upsets me and I can't help that. I'm sure that earthquake survivor distress is similar. Having said that, we all cope with these things in our own ways. Kia kaha, Hebe and other Christchurch people.
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Hebe, in reply to
I am not offended at all Geoff, Chris, and Sofie; I'm trying to communicate (not well obviously) how I can't be flippant any more about the awfulness I see on the news every day. I have stopped watching the BBC/CNN newscasts : I feel every frame. I see a mother in fear for her children and it's in my bones; I know that powerlessness of people in floods/cyclones/ earthquakes/wars. I don't wish these insights on anyone; they are only obtainable by experience.
The TVe series, though, is so wrong; for so many reasons.
On a slightly different note: I was passing the Odeon this morning and snapped a couple of pics for you -- it didn't seem right to put them in the more cheerful film thread, so they are in Two Tales of the City. I saw "This is New Zealand" there in about 1971 when I was at primary school, sitting around about where those mashed seats are. And Zulu left me equally awestruck with its epic vastness somewhere around the same time.
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Sofie Bribiesca, in reply to
Having said that, we all cope with these things in our own ways. Kia kaha, Hebe and other Christchurch people.
This… helps.
Not important to anyone (including me) but I was born in Chch, I have experienced the LA earthquake, and I have died aproximately 3 times that I know of. I don’t wish to diminish anyone’s angst but I no longer( and never thought) have faith that the right issues are being put first for Cantabrians. Weirdly my family down there seem fine but they still have a warm house.It’s the ones still using portaloos that come to my mind first.
ETA Maybe if others did have those experiences, we could teach the world to sing. -
Leigh Russell, in reply to
I have experienced the LA earthquake, and I have died approximately 3 times that I know of.
Hello Sofie, my word, you have very solid 'survivor' credentials!!! It never ceases to amaze me how much of this sort of thing comes out of the woodwork when these subjects are under discussion. All power to you!
I'm finding what's going on in Christchurch and Canterbury in the way of supposed solutions vastly alarming. Focusing on nature is one antidote that works well for me, hence my contributions to this thread.
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Islander, in reply to
And Zulu left me equally awestruck with its epic vastness somewhere around the same time.
That film made such an inpression on me! Especially the Zulu impis. Especially
their song acknowledgement to fellow warriors...which is a slight but happy distraction from both the Odeon and the surrounding conversation. Suffice it to say that the West Coast isnt reknowned for geological stability, and that, after living here for 42 years and having experienced a range (and large number) of quakes, I am aware of the very real
hazards - which include tsunami... It is a permanant awareness, never truly absent, no matter how happy the occaision, or pleasant the day- -
Hebe, in reply to
It is a permanant awareness, never truly absent
Yup. My sense of being certainty, of knowing there are immutable things in life, has gone. I know now in every cell that anything can change; it's as if the Port Hills up and walked off. I haven't led a sheltered or unadventurous life, but a fundamental innocence remained, and it isn't part of me now.
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
it’s as if the Port Hills up and walked off.
Oh, those Port Hills! I think they must be part of the psyche of those of us who were born there. Many years ago I had a dream of standing at the Estuary end of Linwood Avenue and looking across the water to the Port Hills which were dwarfed by two immense golden figures, one male and the other female, who stood presiding over and 'rooted in' them, rather like trees. Perhaps they shifted a little in their watch.
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
Sofie, I just love your Manuka / Kanuka flowers!!! My own attempts to photograph the charming flowers of these shrubs have been a complete flop!
And, ah yes, sing away! :-) My own recognition of impermanence, although terrifying at times, is to make the very most of every day, and to enjoy the Earth as much as possible. Long may She thrive, although if She does it will be no thanks to the human species.
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Sacha, in reply to
I feel every frame
I was thinking yesterday that you all have some understanding of war zones that I do not.
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Islander, in reply to
Oh, those Port Hills! I think they must be part of the psyche of those of us who were born there
I was born & brought up in North Beach but never saw the Port Hills until I was 6...
or realised what lightbulbs were, come to that.
Exrtreme short-sightedness makes for a life of fascinating discoveries, especially as a kid- -
Leigh Russell, in reply to
I was born & brought up in North Beach but never saw the Port Hills until I was 6…
Hello Islander, how interesting! Born in their presence none the less! I'm sure that landscapes affect us deeply. They have me anyway. I get very emotional about the Port Hills. The spot from which the above photograph was taken is one that I walked over all my Primary School years...
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I did my young years at school in Hornby and I did a recky to my grandmother in my later years in Linwood Ave. It was as if my Uncle had planted her in the back garden for her last weeks.Plants are a big part of my life now. The life, the death ,the rejuvenation of new spring flowers is enough to satisfy my belief that we all live on in poignant ways.
We lost a really good friend last week but the arrival of cigars in the post today (thank you precious :)) made me think of him yet again (over the past 7 days) as one who will be remembered for generations to come. So here is a piece of Spring for Graham who has flown. RIP. -
JacksonP, in reply to
So here is a piece of Spring for Graham who has flown. RIP.
Lovely Sofie, and sorry for your loss. You in town next week? I feel it might be sit around outside with a beer and pizza weather soon.
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Leigh Russell, in reply to
The life, the death ,the rejuvenation of new spring flowers is enough to satisfy my belief that we all live on in poignant ways. We lost a really good friend last week
Yes. And I too am sorry for your loss. Hugs from me….
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From a flight over South Canterbury on Friday
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