The Checks - Candyman Shimmer (official music video)

have been obsessed with this Checks tune for a good while now!! Love love love it.

An Empty Room

Ramblings from last year ....
I am home again, again. It feels different every time. Outside tonight it is darkening. I have in front of me a glass of red wine, some blood red tulips sit on my desk. An old painting of some quietly pink orchids sits behind them. In the living room plays Dadawa, world music at it's best, at it's most soul opening. Sadly, it makes me want to take acid.

Here I am, sitting in another room, in another house, on another part of the earth. It doesn't really matter where the room is, I always feel as equally at home and not at home, as familiar and as alien.

My friend Mike wrote a poem about a lone person standing in a room which is empty. I imagine that the room is made of wood, wooden floors and walls painted white, without any decorations at all. Like Jackson Pollock's house on Long Island. But this one, the one in Mike's poem as imagined by me, looks over the ocean. Sits up on a hill and I imagine the lone person, whose face I never see because their back is always turned to me, looks out an open window to the ocean. And I imagine this person, this way, forever, in this empty room.

I think it says something about me, about the way I think. I can feel the wind coming into the house off of the ocean far below, a cold wind that channels in and touches all the empty places of the house. Moves the hair of the person standing at the window, who never moves. It's probably me, but it looks like Mike from where I am standing. I told Mike about this, and he said something which I hadn't pictured in my version of the poem. He said something about the room being furnished over time, with the things that you bring into your own life. I had imagined it coming from more of a zen point of view, as in not needing anything and in the essential truth of aloneness.

What he said gave me faith, because I think that the way I pictured his room, is the way that I picture myself. Alone. Eternally unmoving, unchanging, the wind making sure of it.

So, now that I am home again, I struggle to furnish the room of my life. I think about what I could possibly decorate it with, and nothing seems to feel right.

Masters of Creative Writing

I received the best possible news I could've hoped for late November just been. I've been writing, mainly poetry, since I was about 8 years old. It's always been something I've just kind of 'done', it's always come naturally for me and has been a great emotional aid in my life, especially during tumultuous times.

At the age of about 17 I became aware that one of New Zealand's most eminent poets, Bill Manhire (at that time his profile was still building toward the colossal form it takes on the New Zealand literary landscape presently) had created and was running a creative writing program at Victoria University in Wellington. Since then the mana of the course has grown and grown.

It's been something that I have often dreamed of as a kind of ultimate goal. It was a dream that sat somewhere on the outskirts of what I really thought I was capable of achieving, somewhere on a shelf along with traveling to the moon to look back at the earth and owning my own home in New Zealand, i.e; totally unattainable.

But what do you know, isn't life funny? I applied, and I got in! Dumbstruck, flabbergasted, discombobulated and rapturous don't even begin to describe what I felt when I opened my gmail account and saw the subject line from the IIML, "We are pleased to offer you a place in our program....". Talk about dreams do come true.

I think one of the biggest lessons I've learned from the whole experience, which is maybe not so much a lesson as an insight, is that I really do doubt myself and my talents. I am not saying I am superbly talented, but I do tend to undervalue myself. As soon as I had overcome the fully body shakes and desire to vomit upon reading my acceptance e-mail, I got to thinking and here's what I thought, "Well, If I got in, it can't be that hard to get into after all." My inner critic coming out in full force just to remind me that no matter what happens, I'm not that great. Thanks me.

So anyway, me, myself and I had a bit of a korero and I put ol' critic back in her place, which is outside in the swamp at night with all the outside lights off. I'm really proud to have gotten in, and I feel extremely lucky and thankful that I am someone who has a life where such a luxury is even possible. To spend so much on a year of post-grad study, to be able to afford it, to have a whole year to focus on nothing but something creative. I realise that not many have such an opportunity.

Thanks life.

One of the coolest things about the MACREW is the the IIML (International Institute of Modern Letters) is located in Glen Schaeffer House, a building which hangs on the edge of Mt. Victoria like an eagle's nest on a rocky outcrop of the Grand Canyon. The room in which we will hold our sessions is a huge glass cube looking out over the whole of Wellington Central and the harbour. Oh the bliss!!

In love with Choi Jeong Hwa

Watching the Auckland Art Gallery come into being has been a magical thing. As the months passed those who work in Central City were witness to the birth of this truly superb space which will surely become and remain a true part of the evolving heart of Auckland.

Not only is it visually stunning, it's also a feat of architecture; a space that offers scintillating newness, a space which is alive as it's various structures and levels interact with one another and a courageous design which seems to fly in the face of speculation that New Zealanders tend to doubt themselves in those crucial moments when bravery matters the most. It's a building which to me reflects how modern Aucklanders feel about themselves and their rapidly changing physical, social, cultural and emotional landscape. And if we take the gallery as a symbol of those things, the feelings must be good.

But the true Pièce de résistance of Toi o Tāmaki are Korean artist Choi Jeong Hwa's two works; Flower Chandelier and Red. To have chosen two such playful and joyous sculptures says something of the team working at the gallery. They blow me away each and every day as I stroll my way to work, red especially. Complete adoration and thanks to the amazing team who've created such an incredible gallery, and to Mr. Hwa whose work inspires me to keep creating.

Korea fighting!