the tyranny of objects

The Maaori like many indigenous people around the world believe that everything contains mauri which can roughly be translated as life-force. This includes not only what western eyes might accept as living things such as animals and trees, not to mention humans, but also rocks, mountains and water. The reasoning is elegant, since everything has been created, the creator or creative impulse must have brought each thing, animal, vegetable or mineral into existence. This fact of existence is represented by the life force.

For proof of this I hold up the following examples. You know how when you need something urgently and you know where you put it three weeks ago, and you carefully remembered where you put it. At the time of crisis you go to that position, congratulating yourself in managing to remember this precise location, and lo and behold sad item is not there, missing. Awol. Vanished, transubstantiated, whatever you want to call it. Days later, crisis averted by some other craft means, and you find yourself in that exact spot, that location you were so certain about a week before, and there unwanted, unneeded is the object of your search. It was there all along you cry to yourself, you must have been blind, a momentary, object specific blindness confounding to the doctors and never been the subject of serious medical study.

Alternatively though it is proof of the flickering light of existence secreted somewhere in all objects. It is this life force, this mauri if you will that allow things to disappear precisely when their existence is necessary, and their location is crucial. I think it is the object’s revenge. We English speakers at least have denied rocks, books, wallets and socks a subjectivity for so long they have sought retribution, and this disappearing act is the most beautiful, subtle and insidious response to our rejection.

By the way, I hear offering a prayer to St Anthony of Padua works pretty well for retrieval of lost things too.

how to get behind in traffic

In other musings, (yes spend time musing was number nine on my list) I have been thinking back on past experiences in taxis. As a distinct social group, and I believe they are, I have always admired the taxi driver. I like the spicy and scented accents of English, the political diatribes the smell of dangling car fresheners. I liked the man that gave me a free ride because we lived in the same street in another city, and I like faking an interest in football. But the last two taxi rides have stressed me out completely. Is there are secret society, an unmentionable brotherhood between the taxis and the traffic planners. I now know that between the taxi rank and my friends’ fancy pad in a very inner city suburb there are 9 sets of traffic lights. I am not an obsessive counter by nature, pattern finder yes, of things numerical no, but oh oh oh how we stopped at every red light between go to whoa. In fact there were a lot more whoas and not much in the way of goes.

To be fair, the taxi driver apologetically listened to my sighs and mutterings under breath, and did not appear to be slowing down for the reds on purpose. In fact we borderline ran one, probably out of sympathy for the whining passenger in the back. Maybe he wanted rid of me.

I had to be let out a good kilometre from my destination mostly from the stress, I thought I was going to snap, though how exactly this performance would turn out I had no idea, but also because I had run out of ready cash. the first five minutes (3 sets of lights) saw me move forward two city blocks, in a quite small but perfectly formed city) and drained me by five bucks. Great another 5 kilometers to go and the wallet is feeling rather under prepared. So I eject myself prematurely from the caband storm up the hill to my friends’ house. Of course there is a hill here, though I do exaggerate it is a gentle gradient, which I stride up furiously, with a stress induced case of Tourette’s. This part of town used to be well known for its crazed wanderers, escapees from ward 11 at the nearby hospital, maybe it was ward 17, 11 might be maternity, not much success escapee-ing from there, but since the gentrification of the neighbourhood, the crazies have been shipped back to the centre of town, and have been reconceptualised as buskers. I am sure though I stirred a few fond memories of the true locals, with the spitting, the cussing, and mumbling, as i lurchd up the street carrying two bottles of wine. So yes, I guess, the taxis and the traffic planners conspired to transform into local colour.

how to get behind in life

If i was the kind of person to make a to do list, I know exactly what it would look like. I would be sure to include reward items. 3. Now, L you can have that second cup of coffee. 8. You got through difficult items 6 and 7, well done, L, why not check your emails in a leisurely fashion. And being the kind of person I am, knowing how much pleasure I would get from crossing things off the list, I off course would do these little jobs first.

People say that procrastinators like yours truly are perfectionists at heart. I personally cannot ascribe to this theory. If I check my emails I don’t do so scrupulously, and I may, always to be honest, spill a little bit of coffee down the side, and do not fret, if I leave a half a mouthful at the bottom of the cup, no siree. Not a perfectionist at all.

ludovic times three

I saw a shout out for my friend's band on the tv last night. Proud as punch I was. He has the same name as me, see. There used to be three of us. Now there are two. The first one to go was the really supser sucessful one. Everybody loved L1. He got the girls, his art/cartoon career went huge. He moves to the States. He kills himself.

L2 the musical L is the one that you would have been the obvious one to worry about. L2 seems fragile tough in his rocker way. He is the sweetest fuck up you might ever meet. Once a pub he thought I was getting hassled and I swear he would have beaten up every soul in the place. He treats his friend's girlfriends with so much more respect than they ever do. L2 I love you so, but I worry about you, your false starts and your fresh starts, and you're brand new hope like a new guitar, the truths you can't admit and let slide. I know you like looking over the edge and you say you'll never jump, but sometimes, sometimes people just slip.

And then there's me, L3.

the art of minglology

I really have to learn how to mingle. Minglology experts please advise!
I know, I know there are books entitled 'what to say after saying hello' and how to win friends and influence people' but I think what I need is a little tip in how to choose the person your are going to say hello to, win the friendship thereof and/or influence them, because the actual small talk I'm okay at most of the time, though skills may have rusted in the social drought I have been experiencing.

Anyway this art do last night was kinda odd. The only people apart from one of the artists, a friend of mine anyway, I even recognised were these artkids up from Wellington. They drink at the bars I used to drink at before I was dragged up here to the Manawatu, and one of them, a woman I have seen around for a hundred years and I will probably wake up in the middle of the night one of these days and say her name out loud and then think who the hell is that... said hello. But I don't think I have ever talked to her in Wellington apart from making her a flat white now and then. So it would have felt odd to talk to her here since I never talked to her there, and it would have just been a list of who do you know kind of questions.

Needless to say I really only talked to the artist and the colleagues from work who turned up. Which is okay I guess but these are the only people I ever talk to. So minglologists out there please help.

My life as a tree kangaroo

Went out on the town last night. Took something to read. I am so out of practice I felt quite wazzed after two beers, not in a stumbly way but I began to feel incredibly sentimental towards everything the strangers dotted around me ... the pub was quiet, I didn't even mind the bland Celtic mumblings piped all round.

It didn't wear off quickly either. I ended up watching the telly's endless and banal documentaries, and felt quite sentimental towards the tree kangaroo of Papua New Guinea, who it appears has only just started adapting to their new arboreal home. Believe me it look like they moved in to the trees say about two weeks ago. Very wobbly, some would say rickety on the branches. Apparently the baby tree kangaroos, the joeys have to hang with Mum for 2 years to get the hang of treelife.

This may explain the feelings of unease I have in the company of strangers. Perhaps my particular forebears only came down from the trees as long ago as the kangaroos went up'em. Perhaps they traded places. I would like to think that my rickety social skills are merely a throwback, a nod to my desire to hang in the trees, though not particularly with Mum.

a little tea, a little chat

I have just come out as a blogger! I had another blog on a different site, but it just came up at a research discussion group that I had exprimented with the form. I guess I am hightailing it away, covering my tracks as it were. I talk to these people every day and so I don't want them entering into my private conversations (with myself). Not that I am not seeking communication, small talk big talk any talk. I am living in a city that nobody could be fond of, and haven't really made any friends here yet. Its one of those towns where public clocks made a big comeback in the fifties and nobody has wound them since then both figuratively and literally.
men still stand outside dress shops while their wives browse the racks.