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- Breathing Light - Issue #2 Drawing Up the Ladder
Breathing Light - Issue #2 Drawing Up the Ladder
Drawing Up The Ladder Of the Past Section
In Te Ao Pākehā, the European World, when you meet someone for the first time, the second question you usually get asked is: “what do you do?”
As if your career defines you. For many it does, I suppose.
However, the response also has a darker and more subtle motive. It is a social ranking mechanism, which enables people to rank each other. Thus, to say you are a plumber in a room full of lawyers positions you relative to them. Until your drains block or the pipes in your home start leaking. Then who is the more necessary and valuable?
For Māori, however, it is more likely that the second question will be: “where are you from?” You are being invited to describe yourself in terms of your tribe and your ancestors. More importa
Kia ora e te whaanau:
Wow! My deepest thanks.
Some of you wrote back in response to my last newsletter, people I hadn't talked to in a long time.
Arohamai. I am sorry. I hadn't looked through my subscriber list for some time and I had forgotten who was there. And I realised that you had been following my blog for more than fifteen years! I would like to send a big mihi to you for your support and friendship in all that time. Some of you have been friends for more than 3 decades. I am blessed and deeply grateful to each and every one of you. Ngaa mihi ki a koutou.
Back when I started, I had a belief that more was more. So I would write 3 000 word posts. One day, one of you wrote to me ( I could feel the frustration) that it would be great if I supplied it as a .pdf, so you could chew through it at leisure!
I got the point and halved the word count. Then halved it again.
I have been in love with the short form. and writing tightly and semi-poetically certainly seems more of a challenge. Thank you, BB.
It is my aim to get one of these out each week, probably on a Friday morning. Please keep me in touch with what works, what does not and what I can do better.
Pulling up the Ladder of the Past
What do an empty container have to do with anything?
For me, quite a lot.
Maybe I am unusual. Maybe I am not. As I have written, it seems that we journey in spirals throughout our lives, amassing experience and...stuff. And it mounds up in the dusty corners of our lives. I wonder how many of us feel piled (!) upon by the stuff in our lives, to the point where it becomes unmanageable.
At some point, we have to deal with the past.
So it has been for me lately.
When I moved south to Fiordland in 2018, exactly 3 years ago after another three years in Rawene, I believed this would be my settling place. But, instead, it turned out I was completing my whakapapa journey, following my ancestry back across the millennia. So I quarter third-filled this container with all the stuff that had followed me around for 12 years on the road.
I found out that my first European ancestor, Nick Young, arrived with Captain Cook on HMS Endeavour. I found my original Maaori tupuna accompanied Kupe down from Hawaiiki aboard te waka Matawhaorua. And then I found an older thread which brought me down to (Te Rua O Te Moko) Fiordland and a reacquaintance with an older Waitaha ancestry.
After seven years, I wrote my pepeha, a Maaori way of declaring my connection to tupuna and place. Then, finally, I was able to say who I am. You can read it here.
Two weeks ago, I returned to Te Tai Tokerau, feeling my ancestors calling me back. I had two days to myself and wondered what I would do with it.
Then I knew.
I had always thought I would return north, gather up the stuff which had followed me in my fifteen years of travelling and moving about, that I would bring it back south. Then I realised I would not. It was time to pull up the ladder of the past, to let go of the symbols of my previous journey(s).
I threw stuff away; I donated to St. Johns; I gave stuff away; I gave more stuff away; I gave even more stuff away; I threw decades of journals in the pit at the dump. I only kept taonga like my great-great-grandfather's Master Mariner's Almanack.
After two days, I closed the container doors, handed in the key and walked away.
How curious. Covid-19 has upended our comfortable world, a world that will never return. I am meeting people who are also pulling up the ladder of the past, getting rid of possessions-as-millstones, and/or downsizing.
Footnote: I returned home last Sunday to an eviction phone call from my landlord. He wants his house back, so it would appear that I will be doing the same thing here in the next seven weeks...
Young Guns on Twitter
I am nearing the twilight of my career as a photographer and artist. My book Raahui is essentially a wrap-up of my journey as an artist and photographer.
Until now I have approached Twitter with scepticism and a wary eye. It is Opinion Central. However, a lovely thing has begun to happen. Large numbers of young (Gen Y and Z) photographers have begun to decamp from Instagram and share on Twitter. And stunning work it is too. Damn these folks are good! And incredibly passionate about their work.
They make me feel young again.
If you are on Twitter, their work is definitely worth checking out!
Waiata moo Raatapu Sunday Poem
Dragonfly Love Song
I have watched in dewjawed wonder
as
dragonflies
with glitterblue diamondjewel eyes
reflecting the shimmerwarm summerlight,
hovered in finely-strung hummingbird air
rich with fertile vibration,
have seen them
dodge around hard-edged glowblack shadows
and metronome driptock raindrops,
then sundart and windweave and blinkflicker
along the outercurve rim of Time,
present, past, future all layered
in gleaming arrays of glassine, veined wings
with multiple mingling heartbeats.
As they hovered over dreaming flowers
with sunbrushed faces turned upwards to drink the sun.
Superfootnote
I really love hearing from you. Please get in touch if you would like, or drop me an E-line.
And lastly, if you know anyone who would like to receive this, please forward it on.
Be warned: it will only encourage me to keep doing this..
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