Teen Angst to 60 Year Old Satisfaction (Almost)

Recently a 3 year old boy was in the news because no-one turned up for his party however socail media came to the rescue, https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/wellbeing/parenting/133203054/familys-plea-after-nobody-shows-at-3yearolds-birthday-brings-community-to-beach. Birthdays for me that I am cognisant of in my teens were les than humdrum, more boredome. It doesn’t help when your birthday is in the summer school holidays. Nor does it help when you are considered a geek and someone who was not invited to parties, certainly not someone whose party you went to. Growing up in a Shit Town didn’t help, Morrinsville where Rugby was sport, alcohol was entertainment and romance was a fumble in a car at Piako Beach, (a road gravel depot which flooded when it rained). I am not going to go on about provincial New Zealand because it is what it is, nothing much cahnges, to be different in Provincial New Zealand is still like hanging a target on your back. I digress however.

I decided when I was going to turn 15 that I would have a birthday party and invited people. I was naive in that I thought if you invited people they would come however unless you were “popular” then only friends would come and friends were in rather short supply for me. I had one person turn up and one person rang and apologised they couldn’t come. The fact that I remember it is evidence that it was a source of some hurt.

This year I turned 60 and invited people, a lot came,friends family, relatives it was great. A good time had by all.Interesting that sometimes a party is not defined by who came, rather who didn’t come. It is hard to change ones mindset and focus on the event and celebrate the good times. It requires a mindset change. It should remind us to cultivate those relationships that are important to us, celebrate having friends and familiy who are important to us and to above all else be grateful.

My learning this week is to be intentional and relational and reach out to those who are important to you, those who are lonely, those who are different.

If you get an unexpected call from the blue from me and have read this blog well it is upto you to define our relationship and where you fit into my description because as sure as David Seymour is an unctious prick, I won’t be telling you that you are different.

Paul

Factum est quod Factum est (what’s done is done)

2017 is finishing, for me, not in a whiz bang fireworks way but with a kind of sad exhausted whimper. I look back over my year, bugger all written, a messy kind of separation, surgery, health challenges, village idiots and foil hat wearers ad nauseam. 

My Son Josh

I am a blessed man, I have a number of young people in my life, some of them are my sons and daughters by birth, others related by blood, others are people that have come into my life,

John Campbell gone, a tragedy, travesty or a wake up call?

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Well the axe has fallen, like a slow rolling locomotive, John Campbell and his supporters have been put out of their misery.  Now I have to say I like John Campbell and supported his programme.  I have enjoyed seeing various politicians, shysters, crooks, and generally mean people squirm under the intense scrutiny of the Campbell Live team.  I will be eternally grateful that I don’t have to pass by the honey traps that the dead sea secret mud sellers set in the shopping malls.  There is no doubt that John Campbell has done a power of good.

It is a moot point whether Campbell has paid the price for pricking the consciences of the powerful, it is what it is. TV3 is a private enterprise and entitled to make decisions, as of course we as consumers are. I will make a point of not buying anything advertised in the replacement show of Campbell Live.  Here is the nub for me, the thing I find obscene, distressing and sickening. On Facebook someone lamented who would highlight child poverty, who will keep politicians and bad people accountable, I read this and was enraged, we have abrogated our responsibilities to the suited crusader, Mr John Campbell esquire.

Let me explain, I am an agent of social change, I attempt to hold people accountable, call out loudly when I see things that alarm me, challenge injustice when I see it.  I have written before how it is tiring defending yourself and dealing with your own injustices let alone others https://kiwipaulspoetry.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/this-frog-is-tired-of-being-boiled/.  However when we rely on a highly paid high profile, journalist to be our social conscience then we are in trouble.  I have lamented how people just don’t care about issues, I guess I am not completely correct but what we have seen with the slow death of John Campbell is a clear definition of where the problem lies.

It is no secret that the National Party celebrate the loss of the Campbell Live show, the question has to be asked why.  Is it possible that they realised that our society’s defence against the epidemic arising from the economic policies of neo-liberal politics had come to John Campbell? That the electorate did not care about the excesses of neo-liberalism, the causalities of our “free market” economy was abundantly clear in the results of the election.  Campbell was a thorn in their sides.  Well I see that as a moral failure.

Any reasonable person who has a simple grasp of the reality we live in should be able to see that people are living at the margins of society, that vulnerable people are being hurt, hopes dreams and normality is destroyed as a growing number of people are being excluded from participating in society.  The answer from political parties as a whole is inadequate.  Labour wants to in fight about the politics of funding transgender surgeries and National throws 25.00 at families and crows about how generous it is.  Enough to make me vomit. The Greens are written off as looney lefties, New Zealand first is more concerned about a bit more tar seal in Northland, Peter Dunne well if he was ever the answer the question was exceedingly stupid and The Maori Party have become as irrelevant as the ACT (the association of charlatans and tax avoiders).

The only politicians who care are soon shut up by their political masters because the voters only want to hear good news, they don’t want to have to be the ones who tell us that we need to either pay more tax or grow the cake.  Perhaps we need to make sure that the multinationals who profit so much from the free market and flexible labour laws pay their share, perhaps we need to make sure that those who profit tax free from property do so no longer and perhaps we also need to say enough… demand that our Government does what is should and eliminate poverty and its close cousin of abuse in New Zealand.

Rest in Peace Campbell Live, but it is time we stood up as we should.

Paul

Testing times…

I have had some integrity challenges lately.  One of them was when I was in my local supermarket the other day, I was buying some sliced ham

Living in a garage doesn’t make you a car….

Back slider, out of fellowship, un-redeemed, not in fellowship, just a few of the words that are often bandied about in the church. 

Sunday Afternoon at Kmart, Defcon 1 in Ten Seconds

I could hear the shouting, not far from me a little to my left, a domestic I thought.  No surprise really considering my location, right in the middle of Kmart’s new shop in Hamilton.  Where else would it happen?

Reflections, (Internalising a complicated situation)!

This week has been one of challenge, in your face screaming at you kind of challenge and subtle internal challenge.  Sometimes I think the in your face is easy to deal with as you can just make a plan and walk away, however internalising or reflecting is a little more complicated.

The ramblings of a (good?) man!

I wrote in my post Caution, content may offend about my reluctance and discomfort about being at a local bar.  A friend of mine suggested we go to a couple of alternatives, I turned them down,  

Auckland Part 1

I remember the sense of wonder that I used to feel as I crested the divide that marked the entry into the wonderland that I knew as Auckland.  Auckland was a place of magic, I remember a  song from Calamity Jane, “they’ve got shacks up to seven stories” springs to mind.  The magic started for me with the big wide roads that then led onto the motorway.  This winding piece of black that wound its way closer and closer to what for me was just the most amazing place, downtown! One place in particular.

We moved from the booming metropolis of Gisborne, somewhere around 1970, in Gisborne we did have one lift, ( I was terrified of lifts but that’s another story)and a magical vacuum tube system (A Lamson tube system to be precise)in a department store, The Melbourne Cash Department Store.  The store was devastated by fire, I can still remember to this day the smell of the wool that had been burnt http://tinyurl.com/pe9v5eo.  Downtown Gisborne seemed so huge, I had visited another big city, Christchurch but apart from memories of Tinytown I think in Christchurch or Lyttleton and a Magic shop in an arcade in Christchurch perhaps a function of my age.

Hamilton had DIC department store and a sprawling Farmers but two stories was as big as it got, Auckland however, well Auckland had neon lights, a cowboy, no less, twirling his magic rope,and drawing on a cigarette, that was exciting enough to an 8 or nine year old from small town New Zealand but wait there’s more.  Auckland had a Farmers store, it was this amazing cornucopia of everything that you could imagine a household needed, it had escalators, escalators, my lord, I could not believe it, freedom to travel up at speed without the terrifying, Tardis like lift.  This sprawling mini metropolis was an explosion of sights and sounds.  Its crowning glory was however the tea rooms, “Harbour View Tearooms” with attendant magical playground  and Hector the Sulphur crested Cockatoo.  Farmers and Auckland were synonymous to me, no visit was complete without a ride on the Farmers Free Bus and a trip to the top of the world.

The magic lasted till my early teens and then I started to notice some of the things in Auckland that were not so magical.  The first of these were the Iron Giants, the power pylons that I saw.  These pylons followed the Motorway but in places they were in peoples back yard, I asked my dad about it and he said that’s Otara, it wasn’t till later till my political awakenings that I understood what exactly that meant.  I remember thinking to myself I never wanted to live near one of those monstrosities, I knew nothing of EMF, links to Leukaemia, interference with TV  and Radio signals, I just thought they were ugly, sinister, things.  Grey sentinels, guarding just what I didn’t know, they were dark, scary portents of doom to me.  The other overwhelming negative experience was experiencing the brown fields of Mangere, a brand new suburb of houses and overwhelming nothingness, I was 15 at the time and had read about suburban neurosis and after a week in Mangere thought I understood just a little of the despair that the women of Mangere may have felt trapped in their homes without cars or public transport and vast tracts of red brown sticky clay.

These memories came back to me as I travelled through East Tamaki today, driving past the artefacts of civilisation, huge chimneys, huge pylons and greyness, as I reflected (hmm does curse equal reflection) on the traffic and my conflicted relationship with Auckland.  My relationship with Auckland reflects my life at the moment, I have an ongoing every workday relationship with Auckland at the moment,  I love the vibrancy, cultural diversity and opportunity that Auckland has to offer, I don’t like, actually I despise the vast disparities that I see in Auckland, the broken people and the so called elite.  They are all there.   Auckland is where the jobs are but not where I live… to be continued