The intertidal zone

… and every other day,    

Polly’s 14 today. That makes her a Gemini: a nosy parker passing comment on every passerby; curious, optimistic, in perpetual motion. To her three pups was a capable, diligent mother, but melancholy. The hour the last one left home, she sprang back into her favoured role as my convivial, companionable dogsbody. Today she frolicked up […]

Drawing is calming … the chafe of nib on paper … the silent object appearing in its untroubled imperfection. I hope you’ll try it. A fine-nibbed pen helps – giving the picture an air of simplicity and confidence that may or may not originate in the drawer. I use water-colour pencils: colour in, then add […]

I had fun in town yesterday. I trotted from shop to shop with a list, buying beautiful things for a friend, with her money. Too easy. I needed only a couple of items myself, chief of which was The Knife. The old Knife had snapped (cutting cheese, the culprit insisted). I was tempted by colourful […]

I’m still a little in awe of this sunfish Dad and I found washed up on a North Canterbury beach last week. I’d spent a warm month north of Auckland and was making my way home, visiting parents en route. We enjoyed the usual lingering meals, cuppas, walks on the beach and a game of […]

Poking around up at the local village today I had one of those shopping-glamour fits. You know the one, when just for a few seconds you feel you might be entitled to a gorgeous dress, long smooth legs, a beauty clinic face, shoes to die for, a crystal-and-candles restaurant dinner with a mysterious Someone, after […]

In the first few days up here I couldn’t keep my hands off the greenery — had to test out the strange varieties of leaf form, seed pod, fruit and flower. But the grass left my hands red and itching; the pod I broke open released a dozen glass-like hairs into fingers, wrists, even through […]

I’m not writing much these days, although I’m always at the keyboard. I edge hesitantly and rarely along fiction’s overgrown pathways. The novel I’m two-thirds through seems to have lost it relevance, and nothing else is clamouring for attention. However my own past assertion keeps me questioning the silence: the assertion that when I spin […]

Steep, dusty, fur-wrapped stairs; a Burmese girl roaring about on a motorbike; jack-hammering wood-milling machines — the stuff of dreams. Yes, Freud, I know. Half an hour back and forth in the pool down the road, and five minutes blissed out against the second best jet in the spa pool. Porridge with raisins and dates, […]

Venus hangs fat and gold. The old ring-barked sycamore gleams white under a pale blue sky. Leaves fidget in the first breeze. I sit on a cushion and light a candle in the window where a fine-limbed spider makes delicate purchase, trying to climb the glass. The tree, the spider and the star are reassuring, […]

We were hoeing into a lovely mess of eggs and tomato on toast just before one o’clock last Tuesday, when the tin shed we’d been holidaying in suddenly leaped east, west, east again, and made a long shuddering, swinging sigh. Perched on a stool beside the fire, I set my plate on the table and […]

Touched by Vespersparrow’s reflection on lacrimae rerum (the tears at the heart of things), the posting itself a wondrous lachrymal urn, I thought of a passage from Island where a few more are shed. “Soon afterwards Mrs Pearson announced that there would be no more deaths from diphtheria – and there were not. In the […]

As I transfer this image from the camera onto  iPhoto, from iPhoto to the desktop, from the desktop to this blog, I wonder what I might have to say that could possibly gild the lily. It puts me in mind of the effort I’ve expended this year on the enterprise called Rosa Mira Books. And […]

I’m weary and short of words, but praise be for Muriel Rukeyser. . . THIS PLACE IN THE WAYS Having come to this place I set out once again on the dark and marvelous way from where I began: belief in the love of the world, woman, spirit, and man. Having failed in all things […]

(Make it Friday, okay? That’s the day before Saturday.) ‘Please come on Monday The day after Sunday And mind that you start with Something to part with; A fire shall be ready Glowing and steady To receive it and burn it And never return it. Books that are silly, Clothes outworn and chilly, Hats, umbrellas […]

Most people I know have had a turbulent year. And then Christmas was suddenly upon us. Plenty have decided to flag it altogether: no cards, no gifts, no relatives, no fuss. I let it slide to a certain point and then suddenly I want: carols and oratorios, the scent of pine needles, tinselly evenings full […]

Getting away is always worth it. I don’t know how I forget to, caught month after month in the loop of routine. Mt Peel was waiting just a few hours up the road and a friend joined me for the day walk, no, tramp, for which we were glad we’d chosen boots over gymshoes — […]

Perhaps I’ve spent too long on the same project, too many hours in my own head, had too many weeks of routine. I didn’t know how susceptible I was. Last night at the Dudley Benson concert I almost drowned. Inundated by wonder. After the opening performance by Cat Ruka with a metronome, a chair, heavy […]

There were a lot of sticking plasters in the pool this morning. My new togs aren’t as comfy as the old ones but it was a good swim. I came home and read a woman’s story of how she tried as a child to kill herself.  The cat curled up in the dog’s basket. I […]

Aaah, there’s nothing like a lovely object. I’ve spent so much of this year tinkering with words and ideas on screen, in order to create a book that I’ll never hold in  my hands* — and I accept that this is how it is for now. Anyway, it was delicious to go and buy 12 […]

Zac, 10 months, takes the world by mouth. Visiting the other day, he was unfazed by brass on the tongue as he alternately licked and tinkled, one bell in each hand. The lilac’s just coming out, reminding me of the poem I wrote some years ago. Canterbury On this day of gifts my mother’s familiar […]

Daughter closing up her bags. Five-year visa. Heart-squeeze. Life is painful and wonderful.

Calafate, Patagonia. You might not be able to discern the pink bird in left midfield. A flamingo: I was stalking it across the wastes. Elena followed loyally until she stepped in up to her ankle. She mightn’t want to come to NZ, she said, if this was the kind of thing we did there. Nevertheless […]