Thursday

Tree Worship (2011-2012)


Tree Worship (2011)



(January 6) Tree Worship: 2011-2012. Tree Worship blog (6/1/2011-14/8/2012).
  1. The Great Wall of China (6/1/11)
  2. The Double (28/4-20/9/09-8/1/11)
  3. Tree Worship (20/12/10-12/1/11)
  4. Self / Counterself (3/12/10-13/1/11)
  5. Vastation (1/11/10-15/1/11)
  6. Two Falls (14/4-15/11/09-16/1/11)
  7. Featherston (1-17/1/11)
  8. Dire Straits (18/4-15/11/09-18/1/11)
  9. Featherstone (3-22/1/11)
  10. Legacy (10/4-15/11/09-24/1/11)
  11. Concepts Cross in Mist (7/3/11)
  12. Not everyone can get an 'A' (17/4-15/11/09-5/7/11)
  13. Marooned (6-26/7/11)
  14. Advice on Essay-writing (30/4-20/9/09-29/7/11)
  15. Ghost Stories (7/12/11-1/1/12)
  16. Class Discourse (27/4-15/11/09-2/1/12)
  17. Research Assumptions (3/1/12)
  18. Pity what you can’t change (20/10/11-9/1/12)
  19. Featherston Tales (12-22/1/12)
  20. I can’t even tell (16-17/8/11-22-23/1/12)
  21. Cairo the Victorious (6-13/5/12)
  22. Feb 4. Disappointment (26/4-13-14/5/12)
  23. Trans-Tasman Relations (11-16/5/12)
  24. Life in the Tararuas (26/4-18/5/12)
  25. Coral Burrows (6/10/11-22/5/12)
  26. Delphi (27/4-23/5/12)
  27. Mercator’s Projections (12-13/8/11-1/6/12)
  28. Forest & Demarcation Zone (21/9-6/10/11-6/6/12)
  29. Mercator & Nostradamus (12-13/8/11-9/6/12)
  30. Family Portrait (22/9-11/10/11-13/6/12)
  31. Time-slips (14/8/11-20/6/12)
  32. Never give up (14/7-1/8/11-27/6/12)
  33. End of Term (12/8/12)















I had a dream last night that I was in China: at least, I think it was China. I couldn't speak the language, or read any of the signs, so I guess that's where I was.

I'd arrived in a large city full of fields and strange anthill-like structures with little windows in them. They seemed to be made of clay.

Eventually I'd stumbled into one of them - some kind of monastery, I think it was - and booked a room, or rather an alcove in a corridor full of monks and other polyglot tourists.

Unfortunately, when I went out to explore, I got disorientated and couldn't find my way back. The dream got increasingly nightmarish from this point on. I wandered around, unable to recognize anything that looked in the slightest degree familiar, and even when I finally found a taxi-driver who spoke English, there was no way he could tell me where my room might be. My room and all my luggage - passport and money included, I suppose.

Finally we drove to a little park overlooking the city and tried to make sense of where I might have been, what route I might have taken to get where I'd ended up. Another couple of guys had joined us by then, but didn't seem especially motivated to help.

The dream might have been prompted by that time I got left behind in the toilets on New Year's Eve in Thailand. There was the same sense of mounting panic, of not having any clear coordinates to steer by. The Chinese anthill imagery might have come out of Kafka's Great Wall of China, perhaps, or else one of De Quincey's opium dreams.

The one thing that's certain is the sense of being lost: lost in a self-constructed labyrinth which no-one else can access to help you out of. No matter how obliging my guide was in trying to help me find my way back, it all depended on my fragile memories of just what twists and turns I'd taken in the dark in my first few minutes in the city.




(6/1/11)

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Dante Gabriel Rossetti: How They Met Themselves (1864)


I’m conscious of myself
watching myself
when people tell me things
you’d normally react to
somehow
a tear a frown
a smile

I cannot accept
she writes
this grade
Even in the assignment
there are no markings
A smile
& silence

sitting at the back
not reading
when her turn comes
seldom turning up
& when she does
a smile
& silence

I harden up my act
of teacherly indignation
Or is that back to front?
Polish the carapace
while inside
feeling nothing?
Nothing to be said

Nothing to say


(28/4-20/9/09-8/1/11)

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Charles Alldritt, Tree Worship (1965)

I was reading this post a couple of weeks ago, about a book called Tree Worship, and it gave me the idea for what to call this blog.

Otherwise I wouldn't know what name to give it. Or what it's actually about.

The interesting thing about the book, from my point of view, is that its author claims that it's not really about anything either:
Early critics have suggested that the purpose of the book is not clear. Perhaps there is no purpose. An attempt has been made to avoid bias and prejudice and it is sincerely hoped that it can be similarly read.
I too am trying to avoid "bias and prejudice" in discussing the things I want to lay before you (whoever "you" may be).

The blurb is interesting, too:



TREES, those majestic natural monuments, have in silence watched men and cities rise and fall. They have been adored and have witnessed many peculiar, and sometimes cruel, rites.

FROM THE RUINS of dead civilisations we learn just how much cruelty was the direct result of bigotry, self-righteousness and the apparent inability to examine or question beliefs.

FEAR OF RIDICULE by their fellows and of reprisal by gods and rulers, have made people obedient to many ridiculous precepts. We may pity their credulous acceptance of the dictates of those who presumed to speak for the gods, and this is a reminder that we too could perhaps improve our methods. Though many may remain timid, there will always be those who dare to question the orthodox, and who are inquisitive and adventurous enough to explore.

UNDER THE STONES we raise there may be all sorts of crawling horrors, but there may also be a diamond.
What does all that mean? I understand about the "crawling horrors", and (especially) about the "fear of ridicule" - the moment you raise such questions people start laughing at you, but what exactly is going on between the lines? Why trees, in particular? Why not the whole vegetable kingdom? Nature worship?

Elsewhere he says:
In conclusion it is suggested that, if the reader has any doubt regarding the possible power of trees, perhaps he has never tried the experiment of contemplation in some quiet grove or forest where trees are large and old.
Clearly he himself has had such an experience, which has suggested the collecting of materials on Tree Worship - possibly with no clearer purpose than that. Possibly, again, he decided simply to publish the materials he had without inquiring more deeply into the nature of this mystical, life-changing event - vision, epiphany, vastation, call it what you will - and has instead contented himself with some lukewarm revisionism with regards to Christianity:
It has been affirmed (Botticher) that "the worship of the tree was not only the earliest form of divine ritual, but was the last to disappear before the rise of Christianity."
...
As this goes to press it is interesting to find that last year (1964) the Church of Rome has been pleased to suggest that the "Holy Spirit” is also present "in other faiths." This is a big step away from the bigotry of ancient times but we still need to travel further.
Maybe some of his other books of poetry or "speculative fiction" (there's quite a lot of them) take the argument further. In any case, I'm very grateful to him for giving a focus to my own speculations. I can't ignore the fact that trees have a lot to do with it - an instinctive respect and awe before their complexity and majesty, a gradually growing conviction that what they have to teach us about patience and endurance is precisely what we need to hear ... what I think I did hear that day.


Charles Alldritt (1908-?):
A Partial Bibliography
1965 - Tree Worship: With Incidental Myths and Legends. Auckland: Printed for the Author by Strong and Ready Ltd. [xiv + 122 pp.]

1968 - Four of a kind : Tarantella; What next? Fantastic reality; the Family future.

1968 - Time to consider about time: dimensions, conventions, provocative intentions. Auckland: Apex Calendar Co. [26 pp.]

1969 - The philosophy of a tramp. Auckland: Charles Alldritt Ltd. [24 pp.]

1969 - Riddle of the ring. Auckland, N.Z. [Charles Alldritt Ltd.] [20 pp.]

1969 - Sundry sentiments; sense and nonsense. Auckland: C. Alldritt Ltd. [28 pp.]

1970 - Worlds in mind: Short stories, fantastic fiction. Auckland: The Author. [102 pp.]

1976 - Fifteen essays. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1978 - Grandpa's little verses. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1979 - No holds bard. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1980 - Memento of the fiftieth session of the Auckland Authors Club : Remuera, Auckland, 12 October 1980. Edited by Charles Alldritt. Auckland.

1980 - New Zealand haiku. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1981 - Clone and other fantasies. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1982 - New 80s poems from New Zealand Writers Workshop. / edited and printed by Charles Alldritt. Auckland.

1982 - To view the dawn: Poems. Auckland: C. Alldritt. [32 pp.]

1985 - Hindsights and forethoughts. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1987 - Evening reflections. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.


Odin and his brothers created the first human beings from two logs of wood. One log was ash and the other elm; from the ash they made the first man and called his name Ask, and from the elm they made the first woman and they named her Embla.

Ask & Embla


(20/12/10-12/1/11)

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Aby Warburg: Mnemosyne-Atlas (1924-29)



Annahme des Kunstwerkes als etwas in Richtung
auf den Zuschauer feindlich Bewegtes
– Aby Warburg (27 August, 1890)

[Theory of the work of art as something hostile
moving towards the beholder]



I wish that I were dead
sometimes
It pops into my head
in just those words
I wish that I were dead

Daunting lists of jobs to do
small pettifogging duties
People whose persistence
wears you down
breaking up thought

A hard thing to acknowledge
but someday it will happen
The self that sees
itself
creates a third

but is that me?


(3/12/10-13/1/11)

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Matthew Brady: Henry James Jr. & Henry James Sr. (1854)
In May 1844, while living in Windsor, in England, Henry James [Sr.] was sitting alone one evening at the family dinner table after the meal, gazing at the fire, when he had the defining spiritual experience of his life, which he would come to interpret as a Swedenborgian "vastation," a stage in the process of spiritual regeneration. This experience was an apprehension of, in his own words, "a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause, and only to be accounted for, to my perplexed imagination, by some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room, and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life."

James's "vastation" initiated a spiritual crisis that lasted two years, and was finally resolved through the thorough exploration of the work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the Swedish scientist, religious visionary and teacher, and mystic. James became convinced that, as he put it, "the curse of mankind, that which keeps our manhood so little and so depraved, is its sense of selfhood, and the absurd abominable opinionativeness it engenders." He remained attached to Swedenborg's thought for the rest of life, and never traveled without carrying Swedenborg's works with him.


Here's some of what Swedenborg himself had to say on the subject:

CONCERNING VASTATIONS

There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two angels. Through the evil spirits the man has communication with hell; and through the angels, with heaven. Without communication with both no man can live a moment. Thus every man is in some society of infernals, although he is unaware of it. But their torments are not communicated to him, because he is in a state of preparation for eternal life ... Thus a man who does not live in the good of charity, and does not suffer himself to be led by the Lord, is one of the infernals, and after death also becomes a devil. [AC697]

Besides the hells there are also vastations, concerning which there is much in the Word. For in consequence of actual sins a man takes with him into the other life innumerable evils and falsities, which he accumulates and joins to himself. It is so even with those who have lived uprightly. Before these can be taken up into heaven, their evils and falsities must be dissipated, and this dissipation is called Vastation. There are many kinds of vastations, and longer and shorter periods of vastation. Some are taken up into heaven in a comparatively short time, and some immediately after death. [AC698]

There are many persons who during their life in this world from simplicity and ignorance have imbibed falsities of religious belief, and yet have had a kind of conscience in accordance with the principles of their faith, and have not like others lived in hatred, revenge, and adultery. In the other life these persons cannot be introduced into heavenly societies so long as they remain in these falsities, for they would contaminate them; and they are therefore kept for a time in the lower earth, in order that they may get rid of their false principles. The time that they remain there is longer or shorter according to the nature of the falsity, and the life contracted thereby, and according to the degree in which they have confirmed themselves in their principles. Some suffer there severely, others not severely. These sufferings are what are called Vastations, of which there is frequent mention in the Word. When the period of vastation is completed, they are taken up into heaven ... [AC1106]


Jack Kerouac appears to have suffered some form of vastation during his time as a fire-spotter on Desolation Peak in the summer of 1956. The experience is chronicled in his novel Desolation Angels (1965), with actual extracts from the journal he kept at the time incorporated into his otherwise fictionalised text.


Desolation Peak Lookout


(1/11/10-15/1/11)

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I asked the Doctor
to clean out my ears
with his steel syringe

The sensation was bizarre:
a rush of blood to the head
like the sea breaching a dike

At last, success!
A mighty plug of wax expelled
The inner ear controls your balance, though

As I came out in the light
I put my sole down hard
where there was nothing

except the edge
of a concrete path
The pain was sudden & excruciating

It hurt so much
that my body anaesthetised itself 
but I knew when the bruises

started to form
like a layer of ash between
two strata of muscle

I’d really feel it

• 

Yesterday my father stepped back
from raising the flag on his front stoop
into thin air

He fell onto his back
on the concrete path
& couldn’t get up

None of his strategies worked:
rolling to one side
clutching at the stone wall

for leverage
calling for help
There was no-one there to hear

At last a neighbour came out
& helped him up
They managed to clear enough space

in the books & magazines
& papers on his bed
for him to lie down

He’s back on his feet this morning, though




(14/4-15/11/09-16/1/11)

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"It's just a little thing called - the Constitution! Just a little thing a lot of people died for."
Mr Smith Goes to Washington is - or, rather, used to be - one of my favourite films. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me the other day, when, watching it again for the umpteenth time, I found the quote above, intoned by Jimmy Stewart in the middle of his filibustering attempt to stop the passage of a fellow-senator's crooked land-appropriation bill, had entirely disappeared.

There's a lot of talk about lost causes ("the only kind worth fighting for," as Jefferson Smith murmurs before lapsing into unconsciousness); there's even a section where Smith picks up a copy of the United States Constitution and starts to read it aloud - but no line resembling "it's just a little thing called the Constitution" can be heard from beginning to end of the movie.

And yet I remember it. I can even hear Stewart saying it, in his inimitable bumbling drawl. Where did it go? Are there two versions of the film? Did it disappear on the cutting-room floor, or during the transition from one medium (film) to another (DVD)? I have no explanation to offer. I've had to stop quoting the lines to people as they appear to have no external reference point beyond my own mind ...

Mr Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra (1939)


•


A couple of years ago my (then) girlfriend and I went for a drive north of Wellington, over the Rimutaka ranges and through the small towns beyond. Greytown, Carterton, Masterton ... between them, they contain a lot of antique and second-hand shops. We looked in what seemed like all of them. On the way back, in the late afternoon, we stopped briefly in Featherston.

I knew little of Featherston except the name. Afterwards I realised that it was the site of Shuriken, Vincent O'Sullivan's 1985 play about the infamous Japanese 1943 prison camp massacre, but that didn't even occur to me at the time.

There was a little bookshop on one side of the square, with a sign on the front mentioning opening times, but the door was locked. Peering in through the dusty window, we could dimly make out a huge stack of books on top of a table in the centre of the room. Everything else was bare and deserted. The shop looked not only shut, but as if it had been flooded out, or stripped in preparation for the movers. The sign continued to maintain blithely that it was open for business, though.

Moving on further around the square, we found a combination second-hand / junk shop. There was a light on inside, and the door opened when we pushed on it, but there were no other signs of occupation. Certainly there was no-one at the glass counter in the middle of the room.

Perhaps "warehouse" might be a better description than "shop". The place was vast! It included racks of books, videos, fabrics, plates, furniture - you name it, it was there. We started to wander around and look at things in a desultory manner. It all looked very old and dusty and untouched.

It took some time for us to realise that there was something wrong with it - or at any rate something very odd. It started for me when I glanced at the rack of videotapes. None of them looked particularly pristine, but the point is that all of the titles were entirely unfamiliar to me. Not the genres, mind you: there were plenty of screwball comedies, kung fu movies, self-help tapes. Just not the same ones I'd seen before. Nor did any of the actor's names ring a bell.

Can this really be? I wondered. How could there not be a single familiar film among so many tapes and titles? My curiosity aroused, I began to rummage through the cheap paperbacks and romances. Same thing. They looked familiar enough superficially: slim candy-coloured spines like Mills & Boons, great fat bodice-rippers like Angelique or Wilbur Smith, but not any of those authors or series - just the same sorts of books.

Most disturbing of all were the records, though. I don't usually make a habit of leafing through boxes of LPs - who has a record player nowadays? - but these record sleeves were weird. There were old New Zealand bands from the 70s sitting on logs around campfires, with titles like "Banjo got my Soul" or "Ti-tree Anthems". I don't know much about pop music, but I felt that I might have noticed some of these shaggy characters if they'd ever been on television back in the day. Not a one of them was familiar to me at all.

It was as if the shop had come out of a completely different space-time continuum - one very close to our own, close enough for the same kinds of drivel to be peddled in bookshops and record shops, but just different enough for there to be a complete discontinuity in specifics. Similar in genus, completely different in type.

At this point I realised we were being watched. There was a man standing behind the glass case of the counter. Where he'd come from is unclear to me to this day. Could he really have walked out from the back, through all those ranks of shelves and aisles, completely unobserved by either of us? I guess he must have, since the only other alternative was that he had simply materialised there. Unless there was a hidden staircase down there behind the shelves of dusty glassware.

He was the stillest man I think I've ever encountered. He hardly seemed to breathe, and I'm not sure that I saw his eyes blink even once during our brief conversation.

"Can I help you?" he said.

"Oh, no, just browsing," I replied. Cathy just stood there, as if transfixed with terror (she told me afterwards that all the cloth samples she'd bought in the shop were ruined somehow when she got them home. They'd looked all right in situ, but when you unrolled or unpicked them, stained or creased beyond the point of repair).

"You're not wanting to close, are you?" I continued.

He didn't move. Or answer. So we kept on poking around. Not for long, though. The creepy vibe of the place had begun to get to both of us. We had visions of being ushered out the back and getting one sight of Bluebeard's bloody chamber before the axes started to descend. Worse, of a stainless steel umbilicus leading up to a waiting space ship ...

Nothing happened, though. Cathy bought her few rolls of fabric: rather more pricey than one might have expected for so sorry a specimen of the genus "Op Shop", but still costing only a few dollars in all. I was tempted to buy a few books or records, but something in me seemed to say no. This was their rightful place, and they should not be taken from it.

We went out into the street, leaving the lighted windows of the shop the sole illumination over Featherston's whole town centre. Nothing had happened, exactly, but it felt as if we'd had a narrow escape.

To this day I've never been back there. I doubt I could retrace my steps even if I wanted to. I seriously question if the shop we entered that day was of this world ...

There are universes all around us, say the Physicists: dark matter and superstrings and instantaneously disappearing-and-materialising quanta. What wonder, then, if from time to time we take a wrong turning in the midst of our seemingly stable world?

Anonymous said...

Naughty! You look at two shops in Featherston! There is more to our town than those two shops - tried looking at the Heritage Museum? (lots about the POW camp there)Fell Loco Museum - only loco of it's type IN THE WORLD...and internationally recognized!!!! Yes, "Scotty" is a bit weird (but no one is perfect!)

March 28, 2011 at 1:37 PM



(1-17/1/11)

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Dire Straits: Money for Nothing (1985)


How many of us
are servicing a debt
instead of piling up
possessions?
Who do they belong to?
Well, the bank
I guess

Every month the rent must
come out
bills expenses petrol
just enough to cover that
Not quite
No margin for
disaster

Doctor’s visits?
Dentists?
What a laugh!
They don’t come into
our computations 
Then the interest rates
go up

Nights
spent calculating
how to live
on nothing
Never spend a dollar
instead
go on a spree

of cafés
bookshops
treats
stupid crap-headed
investments
Life ground
in the straits

between the two


(18/4-15/11/09-18/1/11)

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I was trying to find out some details about the mass killing of Japanese prisoners at the Featherston internment camp in 1943. I've now discovered that this is referred to as the "Featherston incident." What came up instead was a huge amount of information about the (so-called) "Featherstone massacre" of 1893 - exactly fifty years before, in the UK.

Here's some of what I found online:
In 1893 the small pit town of Featherstone was the scene of a tragic confrontation between the local mine owner, supported by troops, and a crowd of ‘locked-out’ miners. Featherstone had two working mines at the time ... Over 1000 men, and their families, depended on the pits for their livelihood.

Although the pits were successful, a downturn in the price of coal caused some mine owners across the country to take drastic action. In July 1893 they decided to stockpile their coal and to ‘lock-out’ their workers.
...
On the 7th September at Ackton Hall there were rumours about coal being loaded onto wagons at the pit and being sent to the owner’s mill in Bradford. The crowd felt this was a betrayal by the pit manager and their mood began to change. Mr Holiday, the pit manager, Mr Jaques, the foreman, and the work gang loading the wagons were confronted, with the result that the work gang fled and some wagons were overturned.
...
By late afternoon 3 officers and 26 men from the 1st Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment arrived at Featherstone and marched to the pit ... While the troops kept out of the way, Holiday and the town’s policeman, Sergeant Sparrow, tried to calm the crowd who wanted the troops to leave and were threatening to force them out if they didn’t go.

The crowd around the pit gates had swelled to several thousand as people from surrounding towns heard that something was happening in Featherstone and came to watch. During the evening the situation became more tense. Eventually the decision was taken to call in a local magistrate, Bernard Hartley JP, who, failing to get the crowd to disperse, read the Riot Act.

Reading the Riot Act was a significant action. Once read people had to disperse within one hour or suffer the consequences (potentially life imprisonment). However, it seems Hartley didn’t wait for a full hour and fearing that the situation was getting out of control ordered the troops to fire warning shots.

After an initial volley, the crowd didn’t move and jeered saying that the troops were firing blanks. This was not true, the troops had the most up-to-date Lee Enfield rifles and were using live ammunition.

The second volley caused injury to 8 people. Two men, James Gibbs (22) and James Duggan (25) were to die of their injuries. Neither man (it seems) had been involved in creating a disturbance, Gibbs had walked across the fields from nearby Loscoe to see what was going on.
...
The inquest on Duggan took place in Wakefield because he had died at Clayton Hospital in the city. The verdict returned was ‘justifiable homicide’. However, Gibbs’ inquest in Featherstone would not return a similar verdict and the jury issued a statement which pointed the finger at the lack of police in the area and Holiday’s over reaction to the situation causing the death of an innocent man.

These different verdicts into the deaths were to create ripples that spread all the way to Parliament. Questions were asked in the Commons and the Home Secretary, H.H. Asquith was forced to set up a Parliamentary Commission.
...
The report was presented to Parliament and a Commons debate followed. Keir Hardie spoke in favour of the miners and a Commons motion called for compensation to be paid to the bereaved families. Although £100 was paid to the families of Gibbs and Duggan, it was done begrudgingly by the Government. Asquith said that the compensation did not imply the Government accepted any responsibility for the deaths.

None of the injured were compensated.

•

The centenary of the ‘massacre’ came at a time when the town (and much of Yorkshire) was still raw from the pit strikes and confrontation with the Thatcher government during the 1980s ... The culmination of the town’s remembrance was a march. Hundreds of people, with pit banners, walked from the North Featherstone cemetery, where the two victims are buried, to the town precinct for the unveiling of a striking sculpture that was movingly dedicated by Arthur Scargill.
...
The plate at the base of the sculpture reads:-
This memorial records the centenary of an incident on September 7 1893 when, following a disturbance in Featherstone, the Riot Act was read and in the ensuing military action troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing James Gibbs and James Arthur Duggan and wounding several others. This was just another chapter in the struggle by miners for better pay and working conditions.

•

Don't you think that's rather interesting? Two people are shot dead, and six others wounded, at a lock-out in Yorkshire, and it's called a "massacre." Forty-eight are shot dead, and sixty-three more wounded, at a prison camp riot in New Zealand, and it's called an "incident" ... (Oh, I was forgetting the one guard killed in the disturbance).

The official NZ History online website has an original take on the event:
It was noted [by "those who defended the actions of the guards that day"] that the Japanese were in no position to complain about one isolated event for many Allied prisoners fared much worse in Japanese POW camps.
...
The Japanese prisoners had been generally well fed and housed and this incident was an exception to the rule.
So let's get this straight. Shooting large numbers of prisoners was "an exception to the rule" - therefore there's no reason to complain about it. Worse things happened in the Japanese camps, so they'd be best just to think of it as payback. How hypocritical for them to complain about unarmed prisoners being shot down in cold blood! They were asking for it, in any case - refusing to work, we're told.

The "unofficial version", as I heard it from my father, was that there was one particular guard who had a grudge against the prisoners (I believe he had a brother who'd been killed by the Japanese - how, I'm not sure). He was also known to be a bit of a sadist, and contrived to set up the whole thing: first encouraging them to strike, then opening up with his rifle when they gathered in a "mutinous assembly."

Who knows? That doesn't sound very much like the official account, but then everybody still seems very reluctant to talk about what really happened there. Even the website I quote from above admits that it was fifty years before the Government confirmed that this "incident" had actually taken place. It all sounds a bit too much like General Dyer's 1919 Amritsar massacre for comfort, really. And you can still find apologists for that - especially among the new breed of "pro-Empire" British historians. ...


Featherston Military Camp (1943)


(3-22/1/11)

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Micheal Giddens : After Hearing a Bach Fugue (1924-29)


Yesterday when I got up
I couldn’t stand up straight
rolling like a sailor
skin clammy & cold
but managed to admit
the cat
& lead her to her bowl

Food poisoning?
The day before
I’d had a most disreputable pie
– bacon & egg –
from the heater tray
at the café
but would it wait this long?

It wore off gradually
Now, sitting in the dark
eyes closed
trying to “meditate”
(whatever that means)
the image fixed
in front of me

a wall of logos
wires radiating out
from SIGMA 6
& www
the chatter in my head
won’t dissipate
Far from self-centred

I feel upside-down


(10/4-15/11/09-24/1/11)

Publications:
  • Legacy. Tree Worship (2011-12).



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Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

A few evenings ago I was driving my rainspattered car home from a party in a thick mist, trying to make out the catseyes in the road, when I got to thinking just how strange it felt to be there, in that provisional, almost intangible space, in such undeniable danger, and yet in such a state of calm.

I was reminded of another evening, a few years ago, when I took an unexpected turn and found myself driving down a street I'd never seen before, though still (apparently) headed for the heart of the city I knew. The street was not entirely unfamiliar - that was the truly disconcerting thing. It was if I'd been along it before, but in another city, on the far side of the world. The shops were shops I'd walked past every day, but not here, not in this hemisphere. It was a very eerie feeling.

Now, in the fog, I began to call to mind a number of such incidents. There was the time in a bookshop, in my teens, when I'd examined two large red-bound hardbacks entitled, respectively, the Poems and the Cantos of a certain Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound - what an odd, old-fashioned name! The books attracted me, though I could make little of their contents. The two titles puzzled me, also: what exactly was the difference between a "poem" and a "canto"? I couldn't afford to buy them, so I had to leave them there.

It's a simple enough memory - one that's still quite tangible to me now, as I write - but one which can never have happened. There are no such volumes. I can't have seen them there. The Cantos, yes: possibly it was a large hardcover edition of the Faber edition that I saw. But the Poems? There's a slim volume called Personae, reprinted as Collected Shorter Poems - but no such pairs of books can be dredged from any bibliography. And yet it was the close match between the two that so struck me at the time.

No matter how hard I try, I can't reconcile the reality and my memory.

"Concepts cross in mist." In Ursula Le Guin's novel The Lathe of Heaven, reality is literally being dreamed into existence all around us by one nondescript individual, George Orr, who has the ability to switch from track to track on the time-space continuum, the universe's garden of forking paths. The only ones aware of what he's doing are some turtle-like aliens from Aldebaran who have, in her book, the ability to stand outside and watch the unfolding strands of this multiverse.

Orr's enemy is the arch-rationalist Dr Haber, who tries to control and channel his abilities into a single line of machine code, with predictably disastrous results.

It's just a novel, yes, but I often wonder how literally Le Guin means us to take it. The world that she describes matches so closely the one I feel I am experiencing - from a distance, through a glass darkly - at such moments of irreconcilable realities, to say nothing of those uncanny moments of déjà vu that we all share.

I feel not further, but closer to reality at such moments - as if there were a clamorous crowd of entities all around us, trying to catch our attention and wake us up to our peril, succeeding only occasionally, at times when the ordinary rules are suspended, in daydreams or deep fog.


Ezra Pound, The Cantos


(7/3/11)

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I like A’s
she tells me
with a tinny smile
becoming the ‘special student’
in the class
the ‘writer’
in a flock of sheep

Ideas for a play
for stories
for an auto-
biography
I never knew my grandmother
my mother
didn’t treat me

like a daughter
but as
one of the people she knew
My father
published a book
at his own expense
then watched it languish

when it could have
saved the world
I’d like to save the world
Me too
I’m not quite sure
how to go about it
though

(esp. on salary)


(17/4-15/11/09-5/7/11)

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Dear Sarah,

I really was intending to come to your party, had psyched myself up for it, steeled my mind for the experience. I had the route all planned, timed to ensure arrival "fashionably late," the labyrinth of streets around your house all sussed out in advance.

And I did actually set out! That was the amazing thing. It was a horrible night, bucketing down with rain, the car all misted up inside and visibility down almost to nothing ...

But then, as I got to the motorway on-ramp, a car which had been crowding me all down the street, screeched up alongside and started to honk its horn. I wound down the window to confront the hoon.

"You don't have any rear lights, mate!" the guy inside shouted across at me.

"Thanks," I sputtered, as the traffic lights turned green.

There was nothing for it but to go on. No u-turns or backing up possible in such a situation!

I tried to go as slowly as possible on the motorway, hugging the left lane, clicking on the interior light so at least I could be seen. The other cars were flashing past, honking and catcalling (or so it seemed - perhaps I was imagining that).

Till finally a turn-off came up on the left, and I was able to get off, park in the nearest service station, take stock of the situation.

What had been a simple party invitation, dreaded more than looked forward to, perhaps, had suddenly morphed into a life-or-death emergency. How was I to get home?

The first traffic cop who saw me would pull me over and impound my car, I felt sure. Was there any way of creeping back which still involved lighted streets and some degree of safety? I had no desire to be rear-ended down some cul-de-sac.

As I write to you, Sarah, I feel myself still there, alone on a concrete forecourt, marooned in an island of light, with the city spread out around me like a storm-tossed sea.

yours


(6-26/7/11)

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“Sometimes the best performance is lost on the wrong audience.”
– Jack Kirby, Mr Miracle


I had a couple of questions
about the essay
I was hoping you’d clarify
I feel I covered
all these points
in the workshop yesterday
for the record, though

How formal does it
have to be?
not very formal
If I'm doing a poem
which isn’t based
on an anthology poem
can I substitute references to other texts?

No
How should I format
those references?
I'm only interested in discussion
of poems from the anthology 
You don't need a reference
for them

My creative process in
coming up with this poem
was honestly not
two pages worth
so what's the minimum length
the essay should exceed?
2 pages

Do I have to include
an introduction
body & conclusion?
Lacking a thesis question
& points to argue
I'm finding this a difficult model
to follow

It just needs to make sense
What time on Friday
is this portfolio due?
when the office closes
I think that should be all for now
I would've asked earlier today
at the tutorial

but I totally forgot


(30/4-20/9/09-29/7/11)

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... And so the old man came stumbling back into the bar ... ‘Engines of war!’ he muttered. ‘Engines of war! I seen ‘em – out in the mist …’

Nobody knew what he meant at the time. They just put it down to the triple whiskies and the heavy fog. You can see just about anything in one of those! But then, many years later, the army was doing manoeuvres around that area, and there they were! Engines of war. Just like the old man had seen behind the pub, all those years ago ...

– You mean tanks? Why didn’t he just say ‘tanks’, then? What’s all this stuff about ‘engines of war.’?

– Well, it’s quite an old story. My father used to tell it. It’s supposed to be set before the First World War, I think – back in my grandfather’s time. I guess that’s why the man wouldn’t have recognised a tank when he saw one.

– Oh. Okay. Fair enough. Well, anyway, my story was told me by a guy I’d never met before – or since, for that matter – one evening in Edinburgh when I was studying over there. I was having dinner with a group of friends, one of whom had invited her new boyfriend over for the first time. He was a medical student (as was she), so when the conversation got round to ghosts and ghost stories, we expected them both to be pretty sceptical.

That proved not to be the case, though. After we’d trotted out all the old chestnuts (‘Now we’re locked in for the night’ – after the old lady has checked all the doors and windows of her bedroom in the strange house), he said he’d once played a game with a group of fellow students where they’d tried to hypnotise each other.

‘What happened?’ we asked.

‘Well, one of the others had been trained in how to do it, and she put us under, one by one, and asked us questions about ourselves.’

‘You mean, questions about the future? That kind of thing?’

‘Yeah. About where we were then and what we were going to be doing in six months time.’

‘And did they come true? The things you said?’

‘Well, that’s just the thing, they did – more or less, anyway.’

‘That’s not much of a story,’ said Martin, the loudest and most vociferous of us.

‘Except for one girl,’ he continued. ‘She said she couldn’t see anything at all. Everything was blank, she said. Then she just went quiet.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, six months later, that girl was dead.’

‘You mean, she saw her own death?’

‘I don’t know what she saw. All I know is, she said she couldn’t see anything at all – whereas the rest of us saw all sorts of things ...’

I don’t know. Obviously he could have been having us on. None of us really knew him, not even Carol, the girl who’d brought him along that night (she stopped going out with him shortly afterwards. Perhaps she was a bit creeped out by what he’d said). He seemed pretty sincere – kind of a straight-up guy, actually. Afterwards we thought he’d maybe told us the story because he didn’t know any of us. It sounded to me as if it had been preying on his mind. Anyway, that was the end of that storytelling session – I’ve never forgotten what he told us that night, though.


(7/12/11-1/1/12)

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Jacques-Louis David: The Death of Socrates (1787)


The unexamined life
is not worth living
said Socrates

Who was Socrates?
Does anybody know?
Not quite

Near enough
A Greek philosopher
400 BC or so

& Socrates said
that he was tapped
to search for truth

because he knew
that he knew nothing
but was interested

in everything
Does anyone
know anything?

That’s the point, I guess
What am I trying to say?
What are we here for?

To score you
a better-paying job?
hand on the art of

bullshitting?
teach you to 
“think critically”?

I suppose that’s it
– not that it’s teachable –
to encourage you

to think it through
for yourselves
’coz we all know how much

that skill is in demand
in the outside world
Yeah!


(27/4-15/11/09-2/1/12)

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Some twenty years ago I reached a crossroads in my life (though, like most such events, the fact seems more apparent in retrospect than it was at the time).

I’d recently moved to the lower North Island to take up a position at the college there. At the end of the first year, though, my employers felt able only to offer me halftime work for the upcoming semester.

On a trip up north to my alma mater, I mentioned this fact to one of my old professors, who promptly offered me a fulltime job at the university there instead. My immediate impulse was to make the move, shaking the dust of the less grateful of the two institutions off my feet.

The decision wasn’t solely mine to make. I was married, had responsibilities … It hadn’t been easy for my French-speaking wife to get a job in our new town, and I wasn’t sure how she’d react to the idea of resigning again so soon (even though – somewhat paradoxically – she was being employed to teach NZ studies, of all things …)

In the end we stayed. “And that has made all the difference.”

It contributed, I’m sure, to the eventual demise of our relationship, a few years later. The place was just too small, too far from metropolitan pleasures and stimuli to interest her longterm. She started to hanker for Europe, and while I shared her frustration at the geographical and social bounds surrounding us, they didn’t chafe me quite so badly.

A certain timorousness can overcome one when one enters the Academic life: a conviction that another such job will be hard to find, a reluctance to go back out into the marketplace to hawk one’s wares …

I procrastinated, temporised, bargained – and, as a result, lost her for good.

I understand how unusual an opening this may seem for this account of my Academic research over the past five years, but I don’t know how else to account for the precise nature of the investigations I’ve been conducting during this period into a virtually unquantifiable what might have been … Much of the material here falls into my field of specialisation: literature of the Early Modern era (approx. 16-17th century), but I’ve also strayed into local history, abnormal psychology and parapsychology.

Let me explain further:


(3/1/12)

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“I’m CEO, bitch”
– The Social Network


How can one defuse
such personalities?

The girl with a grating voice
in your morning language class

The Machiavel manager
whose own thwarted career

as writer & researcher
has choked & foundered here

Deception is one way
Listen to what they say

with feigned sincerity
Perhaps you’ll start to see

admire what you despise
open – or shut? – your eyes


(20/10/11-9/1/12)

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Children terrorise Featherston
NZ Newswire January 12, 2012, 8:52 am


Child thugs, some as young as six years old, are being accused of vandalism, arson and trying to extort money from elderly residents in the Wairarapa town of Featherston.

One 86-year-old returned serviceman said he was too scared to go out at night because he would be a good target on his mobility scooter.

"I live alone and I can't even go out for a beer of a night - it's too dangerous going home. They've just got control of the place," he told APNZ.

Featherston fire chief Colin McKenna said children as young as six had been seen wandering the streets until 2am and he had seen children trying to extort money from people.

Sergeant Kevin Basher said that about six months ago a core of three or four troublemakers, with up to 15 others, began causing trouble.

They had been lighting fires, stealing, damaging property and abusing people.

Police, CYF and South Wairarapa Safer Community Council were trying to resolve the problem, but it came back to parental control, he said.

"We're taking a holistic approach, looking at the families and into such things as whether these kids are getting three meals a day, have a bed to sleep in with clean sheets."
•
Featherston residents reassured after spate of crimes
Newstalk ZB January 12, 2012, 1:52 pm


Police are assuring Featherston residents they're doing all they can to control a group of youths who've been causing problems in the Wairarapa town.

A group of children is being blamed for a spate of crimes over the past six months, including vandalism, petty theft and lighting fires.

Some are as young as six-years-old.

Masterton Senior Sergeant Warwick Burr says the problems stem from a large family in Featherston, and police are working with CYF to get the children some help.

"While we acknowledge that there is a problem, it's not a case where a whole community is being terrorised by a small group of juveniles that the police and other organisations cannot do something about."

Senior Sergeant Burr says the teenage ringleaders have been attracting others to the group.


Tony Reid: Featherston (2008)


(12-22/1/12)

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what colours
  these are
in the dark

everyone knows
  that he’s a
patriot

you guys
  go too far
sometimes

anything
  can happen
any time

she’s fine
  she’s
fine

let it go
  can’t you see
you’re on safe

ground?


(16-17/8/11-22-23/1/12)

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[Egyptian troops battle protestors]


"Going to see the pyramids was never supposed to be like this!

"I’d booked the hotel months in advance, the boat-trip on the Nile (“pretty basic,” they told me – make sure you bring your own toilet paper). Things looked a little tense when I arrived – lots of guards with guns – but then don’t you expect those things in a Middle-Eastern airport?

"It wasn’t till five minutes into my ‘stroll around the town’ that I began to realise what was really going on. It wasn’t so much that I got lost as that I got swept up – in the excitement, the crowd pressure. They all seemed to be flowing in one direction –– as I learned later, to Tahir Square, the City Centre. They were chanting. There were women in full burqa, men with long white beards. Then the bricks started to fly!

"After that came the water cannon, the tear gas and the bullets – in that order. We couldn’t even run for cover – there was such a pressure of people. “Peaceful, Peaceful!” the crowd was chanting. Fat hope of anyone hearing that! They were dropping like flies. I saw a man get his head stove in by a brick, women and children screaming!

"I got off with a soaking and some red and stingy eyes, though – surprise, surprise! – there were no flights out the next day, and no way of getting a refund on the river trip. I ended up cowering inside my hotel room for a week, watching CNN, and trying to live on peanuts and bottled water.

"The next time the fellaheen decide to march downtown to defy Pharaoh, I think I’ll plan on being on the other side of the TV screen!"


(6-13/5/12)

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The North Pole (1909)



For nine days they struggled
sometimes hungry    sometimes fed
often they were thirsty
always thirsty

In the harshness of the winds
they sought the sun
his stars had been favourable
his ponderings jerked off into dreams

My throat was bleeding from over-smoking
amongst hummocks of ice
that looked like tombstones to me
I hope we don’t sink during the night

The uncivilised brain is confused
by the civilised
his guns and rifles were to them
a sore temptation

under a drift of snow



[after Violet Clifton, The Book of Talbot (1933)]


(26/4-13-14/5/12)

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“Kye-wye, are you? Spotted you from the accent.
Yeah, we get a lot of youse fellas over here … Ya last
name’s not Thomson, I hope? No relation to that
mongrel in the Parliament? You musta heard about
heem? Nah? The one’s who’s been screwing all those
sheilas and charging it to the union? Union of ratbags
and scroungers, eef you ask me? Whatsa matter? Cat
got your tongue? I tell ya, you Kye-wyes have got a
cheek coming over here, getting elected to Canberra,
then rorting the system for all it’s worth! You’re not
one of them? I bet you’re not! But that’s what all of
youse say, isn’t it? Innocent as little lambs till you’re
caught with your hand in the till? Whassa matter?
Don’t youse have any sheilas worth screwing in New
Zealand? Not that our P.M.’s much chop in that
department – leathery old bitch she is … Perhaps
that’s how young Craig got round her in the first place
– administering some comfort in the bedroom
department, was it? Getting out here? Ya miles from
anywhere mate! If it’s a brothel ya looking for, my
cousin runs one down in the Cross. Nah? Well, fuck
ya then .. Ta very much. I’ll keep the change.”


(11-16/5/12)

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    The colder weather is bringing the beasts down from
the heights. I heard both wolves and the mountain lion as I
crossed to my cabin last night.

I am still here, helping in the kitchen, driving cattle, and
riding four or five times a day.

•

You would be amused if you could see our cabin just now.
There are nine men in the room and three women.

                                                For want of
seats most of the men are lying on the floor; all are smoking,
and the blithe young French Canadian who plays so
beautifully and catches about fifty speckled trout for each
meal, is playing the harmonica with a pipe in his mouth.

•

All the hilarity of the house has returned with Evans.

                         He claps people on the back,
shouts at them, will do anything for them, and makes
perpetual breeze.

                  A little case of
suspicious appearance was smuggled into the cabin from the
wagon, and heightens the hilarity a little, I fear.

•

                                  Evans flatters me by
saying that I am “as much use as a man;” more than one
of our party, I hope, who always avoided the “ugly” cows.



[after Isabella Bird, A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains (1879)]


(26/4-18/5/12)

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Coral Burrows (1997-2003)


6-year-old Coral Burrows went missing at around 9am, Tuesday 9th September 2003. She was found ten days later in a bush area a few miles from her home. Her stepfather, Steven Williams, was arrested and charged with her murder - he'd beaten her to death in his car while driving her to school.

I didn't particularly follow this case at the time, though I remember the interviews with the distraught family, including Coral's father, before the shock arrest of her step-father for the murder.

I must have been thinking about it quite a lot, though, as it's started to appear in my dreams. Last night, for instance, I dreamed that I was watching TV when a documentary about the case came on. It was the usual sort of thing: some wiseacre psychologist "explaining" the whole thing in terms of upbringing and family influences. Talk about rushing in where angels fear to tread! Clearly for this guy there were no mysteries in heaven above or earth below.

Then came the thing that makes me sure it was a dream. They'd done some interviews with relatives, friends of the family, and so on, but then it came time to talk to the local cop. I don't know if he quite understood that he was being filmed, that all this was on the record, but he just started skiting away as if to some buddies in the pub.

From time to time, he said, someone would move into Featherston who thought that he could sell dope there, or commit petty crime, or do any of the other things he'd been used to doing where he came from. Such people usually 'took the hint' after a while and moved on of their own accord. Except for Steven Williams. He just stayed. It was almost as if he liked it.

I suddenly had this vision of how you "hint" to someone that it's time to move on: the drive-bys, the anonymous threats, the cold shoulder in the shops - a lovely vision of a community united against the stranger. It's not that I doubt that it's so, it's just that I still can't quite believe that any policeman would admit that that's how things are done, that the law's insufficient sometimes, that one needs to rely on a bit of vigilantism, a bit of mob mentality.

Maybe I'm wrong, though, maybe it wasn't a dream. Certainly the psychologist kept bleating on, unperturbed by the implications of what had been said. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I suddenly felt the chill of those grim dark fields, the distance between houses, the ease with which anything can be done, anything hidden in surroundings like those.

But you have to want to - that's the point. No matter how cruelly you've been brought up, no matter how much of a hairtrigger temper you've got, you have to be ready to go through with it - to hide the body, even take part in the search, keep on lying to everyone else in the family until it comes out.

I don't think there's any doubt that Williams did it. But then who knows? There's still something like a blip, a kind of timewarp, between heading off for school and the discovery of the body more than a week later.

What really happened during that short drive? What was said to set him off? That's if anything at all was said ... Perhaps he just cracked. But then what causes a man to break like that when others continue to stand upright, to go about their business? Drugs? No doubt that's part of it. In my dream there was something blacker there, something more like a mindstorm, a sense of horror that grew and grew and grew ...


19th September 2003 – Coral’s body recovered and stepfather charged

As police cordoned off a 30 to 40 metres square area in bush near Lake Onoke (Ferry), Coral’s family learnt of the death of the six year old and the arrest of Steven Roger Williams (Coral’s step-father).

The police waited until daylight to begin their search of the area. Coral’s body was discovered at 9.15am and recovered early in the afternoon. A preliminary post mortem was started and is expected to be complete later in the weekend. Meantime the police and forensic expects will remain at the discovery site to conduct a “thorough and meticulous examination of the scene”.

29 year old Steven Roger Williams appeared in Masterton District Court charged with the murder of his stepdaughter. Coral’s family stood quietly during the hearing but others outside hurled abuse and food as Williams left. He will be held on remand until October 17.

The family came out to make a public plea for time and space to mourn their daughter’s death. In a statement issued through the police, parents Jeanna, Ron and extended family want to thank the police, volunteers and public for the support given in the search for Coral. “Our plea to all New Zealander is to treasure your children and help keep safe”

Steven Williams


(6/10/11-22/5/12)

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"still busy accumulating influences"
- Lawrence Durrell




Aesthetically there is nothing much to see

                                except itself

a place of rich transgressions, tears

                                & insanity

It is built on two enigmas

                                neither decipherable

a sort of mute challenge

•


                                For once the sea

seems diminished

                                a light wheezy creaking

like a man rowing across water

                                Apollo killed the Dragon

& left the corpse

                                of the gigantic dead beast to rot

•

The atmosphere is so pure

                                one hears the stroke of his great wings

all other considerations seem confused

                                Once again the historians

begin to stammer

                                Is not truth two-sided?

While one is uneasy

•

                                it is not with a sense of fear

so much as a sense of premonition

                                One has sudden moments of panic

What is here, one feels

                                is intact in its purity

The long winding roads leading away

                                coil like the sacred serpent

                towards the centre of the earth



[after Lawrence Durrell, Spirit of Place. Ed. Alan G. Thomas (1969)]


(27/4-23/5/12)

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  • Delphi. Tree Worship (2011-12).



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Gerard Mercator (1512-1594)


I’ve been reading a book about Gerard Mercator, “The Man who Mapped the Planet.” Quite a lot in it interested me, but a few things in particular.

First of all, there was the fact that he never travelled beyond a little square of territory in and around Benelux (Belgium – Netherlands – Luxembourg). That was the backdrop for all of his epoch-making attempts to map earth and the heavens.

Then there was his imprisonment for heresy in 1544, at the age of 32, in the castle of Rupelmonde.

Finally, there was the (alleged) nervous breakdown he suffered after trying to survey Lorraine some twenty years later, in 1564.



Mercator had left Louvain on business in early March, trying to resolve some property matters to do with his recently deceased uncle’s estate. This was interpreted as an attempt at escape from the accusations levelled against him by the Catholic hierarchy, and thus (in its turn) became one of the principal accusations against him.

The prison he was kept in was – by sheer coincidence – the same castle that had dominated the village he grew up in. He was kept there for more than half a year, and came out with crippled health, having lost virtually all he owned in the world through legal fees and (semi-legal) bribes.

He was lucky to escape with his life, actually. Two of the women accused at the same time, Antoinia van Roesmaele and Katelijn Metsys, were buried alive to die by slow suffocation, two of the men were burned at the stake; others were beheaded or banished. Only Mercator got away with a warning.



Lorraine (France)


The second break in his life is more mysterious. His latest biographer, Nicholas Crane, can’t really explain why he chose to go so far afield, on so stressful an errand, so late in life. Nor can he offer any real information on why the map of Lorraine he compiled was never published:

At some point that summer, probably in the deep south, something terrible happened. Perhaps father and son were beaten or robbed by a band of thugs, or perhaps it was the plague that ravished some of Lorraine's border areas in 1564 ... Mercator, an unwilling traveller by nature, may have found the fears and discomforts of the road too much to bear. Whatever the cause, the curse of Guise finally struck, and Mercator cracked.
- Crane, Nicholas. Mercator: The Man Who Mapped the Planet. 2002. A Phoenix Book (London: Orion Books Ltd., 2003): 211.

The "curse of Guise" referred to above was the fatal unpopularity of the House of Guise, Dukes of Lorraine (Mercator's employers), in those parts of their domains whose inhabitants still remembered the brutal, wholesale massacres of Anabaptists and Calvinists which had been carried out there a few decades before.

'This journey through Lorraine,' recalled [his first biographer, Walter] Ghim, 'gravely imperilled his life and so weakened him that he came very near to a serious breakdown and mental derangement as a result of his terrifying experiences.'
- Crane: 212.

Dare one venture, some kind of terrifying vastation, long before the term had even been coined? One reason his surveying work was never finished was, Crane suggests, that "such a detailed, accurate map was ... a 'map for war, useful to an enemy, who with a compass and quadrant could lead an army through the whole country'." [212]

This was, after all, the countryside of Joan of Arc:

Jeanne la bonne Lorraine
qu’Anglois brulèrent à Rouen

[Joan, the good maid of Lorraine
whom the English burnt at Rouen]

as Villon puts it in his "Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis" [Ballad of the Ladies of Past Times]:

Où sont elles, où, vierge souvraine?
Mais où sont les neiges d’antan?
Where are they, where, sovereign Virgin? / Where are the snows of years past?

This year marks the 500th anniversary of Mercator's birth. The event has been celebrated with conferences and celebrations all over the world, but particularly in the low countries which he called home.

All his great works date from the period after his "dark night of the soul" in Rupelmonde Castle. The overarching conception of the Atlas itself, however, can be dated to the years after his "serious breakdown and [near] mental derangement" in the forests of northern France.



(12-13/8/11-1/6/12)

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Doris Frohnapfel: "Forest and demarcation zone
in the border area of Saariselkä (FIN)" (2003)


pine-trees on a hill
shadowing further lines

of trees
snow on the ground

the branches
fence

open plan
big enough squares

to let out mice
small birds

but not let in
the larger predators

saplings grow
despite the weather

some have fallen down


(21/9-6/10/11-6/6/12)

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Michel de Nostredame (1503-1566)
[painted by his son César (c.1614)


These two men, near contemporaries, survivors of the turbulent religious and intellectual climate of the sixteenth century, have left behind very different reputations to posterity.

One has been hailed as a representative Renaissance humanist, a pioneering mathematician and geographer.

The other has been pilloried as a mountebank, a conjurer, masking his lack of meaning in incomprehensible macaronics and meaningless quatrains.



Nostradamus: Centuries (1568)

Timeline:

Nostradamus


1503 – (14 December): Michel de Nostredame is born in St. Remy-de-Provence, in Southern France.

1512 – (5 March) Gerard Kremer is born in Rupelmonde, in the county of Flanders.


1522-25 – Nostradamus studies medicine at the university in Montpellier.

1529 – Nostradamus begins doctoral studies in medicine at Montpellier Medical School.

1530-32 – Kremer studies Arts at the university of Louvain.


1531 – Nostradamus is invited to Agen by philosopher Julius-Cesar Scaliger, and works there as a healer.

1534 – Nostradamus marries and has two children.

1536 – Kremer (now ‘Mercator’ [Latin for merchant]) collaborates with Gemma Frisius and Gaspard Van der Heyden on a terrestrial globe.


1537 – Nostradamus's wife and children die of the plague. His wife's family sues him for the return of her dowry and his friendship with Scaliger sours.

1537 – Mercator collaborates with Gemma Frisius and Gaspard Van der Heyden on a celestial globe.

1537 – Mercator’s first sole publication: a wall-map of the Holy Land.


1538 – After being charged with heresy for an inadvertent remark he made about a church statue, Nostradamus leaves the region rather than stand trial before the Inquisition at Toulouse. He reportedly travels around Italy and other parts of France for a number of years.

1538 – Mercator publishes his first, heart-shaped, world map.

1541 – Mercator publishes his important and influential Manual of italic lettering

1541 – Mercator completes his own terrestrial globe.


1544 – Nostradamus studies plague treatments with physician Louis Serre in Marseilles. Around this time, major flooding in southern France leads to another serious plague outbreak in the following years.

1544 – Mercator is imprisoned for heresy in the Castle of Rupelmonde.


1546 – Nostradamus treats plague victims in Aix, then goes to Salon to battle another outbreak.

1547 – Nostradamus marries Anne Ponsarde and settles in Salon, where the couple have six children.

1547 – (June) Mercator meets a nineteen-year-old university student from England, soon to become a close friend – John Dee.


1550 – Nostradamus publishes his first almanac, which contains a general prediction for each month of the year. The almanac is a success and new versions appear annually until Nostradamus' death.

1551 – Mercator publishes a celestial globe.


1552 – Nostradamus finishes a book about cosmetics and fruit preservatives which proves very popular when published three years later.

1554 – Mercator’s publishes a wall-map of Europe.


1555 – The first installment (centuries 1 through 3 and part of 4) of Nostradamus' most ambitious project, Les Prophéties, is published.

1556 – Nostradamus is (allegedly) called to Paris for a consultation with the French queen Catherine de Medici on her husband King Henri II’s health.

1557 – The second installment (the remainder of Century 4 along with centuries 5, 6 and 7) of the Prophéties is published.

1558 – Centuries 8, 9 and 10 of the Prophéties are (allegedly) published in an limited edition. No copies of this book are extant today, however, which leads some to doubt it ever appeared.

1559 – King Henry II killed in a jousting accident. Nostradamus' supporters believe the monarch's death was predicted in Century 1, Quatrain 35.

1564 – Mercator’s publishes a wall-map of the British Isles.


1564 – Queen Catherine de Medici (allegedly) visits Nostradamus in Salon.

1564 – Mercator suffers a severe mental and physical breakdown during his surveying journey around the Duchy of Lorraine.


1566 – (July 2) Nostradamus dies at home in Salon at age 62.

1568 – Publication of the omnibus edition of the Prophéties (omitting only the last fifty-eight quatrains of the seventh "Century"): the basis of all subsequent editions of his prophecies.

1569 – Mercator completes his Chronicle of World History

1569 – Mercator’s wall-map of the world is the first to use his new projection.

1578-84 – Mercator publishes his corrected edition of Ptolemy’s Geography, both maps and text.

1585 – Mercator publishes the first set of 51 modern maps for his projected cosmography: the Atlas.

1589 – Mercator publishes the second set of 22 modern maps for his Atlas.

1592 – Mercator completes his Harmonization of the Gospels.

1594 – (2 December) Mercator dies at Duisburg, Duchy of Cleves, in Germany.

1595 – Mercator’s third set of 29 modern maps is accompanied by the publication, by his son and grandsons, of 107 maps, with Mercator’s own Treatise on Creation, as the complete Atlas.


Consider the similarities:
  • Both were inspired to start on their major works after a period of personal crisis: the death of Nostradamus’s entire family from plague in 1537-38, when he was in his early thirties; Mercator’s nervous breakdown in 1564, in his early fifties.
  • Both were accused of heresy : Nostradamus in 1538 (aged 34); Mercator in 1544 (aged 32).
  • Both made their principal discoveries – Nostradamus’ prophetic quatrains, Mercator’s geographical projection – around the age of 50.
  • Both their masterpieces were published in three instalments (Nostradamus’ Prophecies in 1555, 1557 and 1558; Mercator’s Atlas in 1585, 1589 and 1595), and were left incomplete at their authors’ deaths.


Though one, Mercator, lived in largely Protestant Northern Europe, the other, Nostradamus, in largely Catholic Southern France, they both tried to live peaceful harmonious lives in the midst of the political and religious chaos of sixteenth-century Europe.

Mercator may be regarded by us as a scientist, Nostradamus as an occultist, but in reality both of these terms belong to a later era. Nostradamus would have seen himself as a doctor and a healer, Mercator as a cartographer of the heavens as well as the earth, of past eras as well as the present.

The mere fact that Mercator retained his close friendship with the English scholar (and Magus) John Dee throughout his life is proof of a more elastic sense of the boundaries between the seen and the unseen worlds than we may be capable of comprehending today.



Mercator: Atlas (1623)


(12-13/8/11-9/6/12)

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17 people

6 in the front row
7 in the second row
4 in the back row

7 ties – 1 bowtie
corsages in 3 pockets
suits best frocks

staring out at the camera
with thick-rimmed glasses
beehive hairdos

prosperous
not comfortable
chairs grate on concrete

at the edge of the lawn


(22/9-11/10/11-13/6/12)

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Jenny Randles' book Time Storms: The Amazing Evidence of Time Warps, Space Rifts and Time Travel (London: Piatkus, 2001) includes, on its back cover blurb, the following set of enticements:
In this well-researched and authoritative book you will discover:
  • Why scientists believe time travel will soon be possible
  • How a time machine would actually work
  • The truth about experiments already carried out to develop a time machine
  • First-hand reports of people who were transported hours or days across time and space
  • Whether UFOs may in fact be time travellers visiting us from our own future
As she remarks on p.66: "Forget the silly media hype - consider only the verifiable facts." So what are those facts?

  1. Q: Do scientists believe time travel will soon be possible?
    A: No, they don't. What she's referring to is just that tired old business about travelling faster than the speed of light through wormholes in space - about as "scientific" as Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ...

  2. Q: Could a time machine actually work?
    A: Insofar as one can ever be sure of anything, one can feel fairly sure about this: No, it couldn't.

  3. Q: What is the truth about experiments already carried out to develop a time machine?
    A: There haven't been any worthy of the name. All that stuff about the (so-called) "Philadelphia experiment" has roughly the same credibility as film footage of alien autopsies ...

  4. Q: Are there first-hand reports of people who were transported hours or days across time and space?
    A: Here's where the story gets a bit interesting. There really are such stories, and some of them are indeed exceedingly strange ...

  5. Q: Might UFOs in fact be time travellers visiting us from our own future?
    A: There's little reason to suppose so. By the same token, since we don't what - if anything - they are, there's no real way of ruling it out categorically.

I don't suppose the subject would really interest me all that much if it weren't for that time in Featherston - not the experience in the old curiosity shop (weird thought that undoubtedly was), but the stuff that happened after that.

It's not that I'm really sure anymore just what it was I saw that night, but it didn't seem to be of this earth. The one that I used to live in, at any rate. It's not that I don't want to write down what I saw, but it's hard to find the words - any words - for it ...

I suppose that the easiest thing is just to suppose that I'm cracked in the head: like the hero of that Nigel Cox novel Skylark Lounge, the one who sees UFOs and ends up burying himself in the side of a mountain on the volcanic plateau. If only it were that simple.

Hint, hint, hint ... Why not just come out with it and say that I saw myself. I saw myself but it wasn't me. And I didn't really like what I saw that much, either. And nor did Cathy (she was with me, too, which is the main reason that I can't just write it off as an hallucination) ...

(14/8/11-20/6/12)

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                    when you
get home after an undisclosed
absence abroad (say seven days)
to find your life in
chaos wife in hospital note
in red ink left on
the coffee table explanations given
gratis by your father who
can’t hear the doorbell nor
is he aware of any
of the names of any
of the main protagonists it’s
a rainy night and nothing
for it but to drive
to the hospital (wherever that
might be) and fight for
parking in the truncated parking
zone – crowded out by their
new building – make your way
to the curtained alcove hone
in on the source of
disturbance see her hear her
voice breathe deeply understand the
cat’s hysterical reaction but transcend
it hug her tell her
about the presents you’ve brought
back for her leave her
behind eventually having been seen
(not moved) by the doctors
then go home
            to sleep


(14/7-1/8/11-27/6/12)

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It was the end of another stressful teaching semester, and we’d been drinking for most of the afternoon. It started at the staff party, with scones and fingerfood and glasses of wine. After that we all – students and staff alike – drove on to a local pub for dinner.

Dinner turned into a bar snacks and more wine, and by the time we rolled on out of there, I must have drunk at least eight glasses – albeit over a period of six hours or so. My colleague Charlotte was even worse off. She lived some distance away, and didn’t feel she could drive home.

I said that I’d give her a lift back – she said it would be easy enough to make her way to the pub carpark next day to collect her car.

Up till then I’d actually been planning to call myself a taxi. Charlotte lived in the opposite direction from me, though, and the distance was quite considerable. The rest of the group had dissipated by then. I didn’t really want to drive, but there didn’t seem any other obvious solution. Not until I was actually behind the wheel of my car, that is.

The moment I turned out of the parking area I knew I was in trouble. A police car was lurking outside, and I heard the siren start up behind me before I’d even had a chance to accelerate up the long hill leading out of town.

The cop was matter-of-fact enough. I, on the other hand, started to gabble out excuses the moment I rolled my window down. “I know that I shouldn’t be driving, but I’m just giving my friend here a lift home.”

Charlotte didn’t help matters much by leaning over and slurring out something about how I was doing her a favour because she wasn’t fit to drive home herself. So much for cool, calm and collected.

All in all, we must have looked a pretty disreputable pair. His main concern, however, was to make me blow into his device as quickly as possible, before the fumes of alcohol could clear.

I didn’t doubt for a moment that the result would be a fail. Had up for drunk driving! I could see my driver’s licence confiscated, my job flying away, shame and disgrace brought down on the family name …

“That’s a youth fail, sir,” he pronounced sepulchrally, with a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger frown.

“A youth fail? What do you mean? I’m not a youth.” I was in my mid-thirties at the time.

“No, sir. But if you had been under age, that would have been a fail. And you said yourself that you shouldn’t be driving.”

“So I’m not over the limit?” I could hardly believe it. We had been drinking all afternoon. And I still felt pretty sozzled, to tell the truth.

“No, sir.”

“So I can go?”

“Yes, sir. But I think, once you’ve driven your friend home, that you shouldn’t drive any more tonight. You did say yourself you shouldn’t be driving …”

“Oh yes. I’ll do that.” I would have agreed to anything at that point. I couldn’t believe I’d got away with it, that he was actually going to let us go. “Thank you, officer. I’ll be very careful.”

I took my time about starting up. He didn’t seem to be following us, but I drove extra slowly anyway ( I guess that’s how you can spot a drunk – the exaggerated care with which they inch their way along the road).

Charlotte was most repentant at having got me into this; I, incredulous at my narrow escape. It brought home to me both what a foolish risk I’d run, and how liberal the blood-alcohol allowance really was …

Her husband was away for the weekend, she said. I’d be welcome to stay if I didn’t feel like driving back.

It sounded like a good idea at the time, but as she showed me into the tidy guest room, cold straight bed lying lonely there, I began to wonder if there was any more to it. Was that all this long strange evening had been for? …

Next day we drove back in the pouring rain to collect her car. As soon as I saw she had it started okay, I was off out of there like a bat out of hell.

(12/8/12)

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