Redhead Amok in Antarctica
On the Flipside (Once More With Paragraphs!)
Oh just shoot me now, this computer is all funky with the blogging here, I will make it more legible when I hit the Ice. I did have paragraphs for a bit there then the blogosphere sucked it all up & smooshed it into this odd mess.
***Later edit including some of the spacing. I may have recalled the line breaks in error on Tuwhare's poem. Forgive me.****
Hi all, I have arrived safely in NZ, as far south as commercial flights can take me. It is Saturday here. On Monday morning, barring ill will from the weather gods I will fly to Antarctica when the sun is still only 40 minutes above the horizon each 24 hours but hovering bloodily just below the crack of the mountain range and casting powerful light across the land nonetheless. I yearn to see this myself.
Thus far it appears the first of the 4 Winfly flights has made it south safely, unboomeranged. So we are on schedule. I stepped out of the Christchurch airport here along with about 50 other Ice folks, mostly returnees from previous seasons, to be handed 3 days worth of per diem $450 NZ (about $360 US) for the next two nights accommadations and food. And what did I do with it? I rushed right out to a bookstore and bought myself the book I had yearned for since my last sojourn in NZ: Deep River Talk: Collected Poems by Hone Tuwhare (Too'-far-ray), a NZ poet of Maori descent whose poem Rain I first read in a loo in a cafe in Greymouth when I was sheltering from exactly that.
Rain
I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain
If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut
And I should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind
the something special
smell of you
when the sun
cakes the ground
the steady drum-roll
sound you make
when the wind drops
But if I should not
hear smell or feel
or see you
you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain
Hone Tuwhare
The owner of the Greymouth shop had painted this poem on three walls wrapping around the loo, with a second poem less memorable and astonishing on the 4th wall. I was startled to fall madly in love with this poet whilst relieving myself, but stranger things have happened to me in toilets. You may ask me to expound on that in the future, because you know I will.
Tuwhare's poetry reminds me, often, when he is addressing women, of the sensual begging tone of Leonard Cohen's old poetry. Words spoken/written in such a way that if faced with the author aiming them at me, for me, about me, I would fail to raise any substantial defense against a seduction in words.
But I digress.
I am travelling, even if only to get from A to Y, with Z arriving shortly, my ultimate destination. The gate at LAX was abrim with people collected from across the US, all headed for the Ice. Enough so, trickling in at various times from 4 hours before departure to 30 mins, that it was a gathering of old friends playing catch up and gossiping about previous seasons. Many FNGs, but mostly returnees.
I met up with my FNG co-worker, Marisa, in the Housing Dept, and we are going to get a long famously. I'm sure that without much effort at all we shall be able to lower the tone of the entire station with our irreverent banter.
Of our boss, Michael, of the recent appendectomy, we have no more recent news. Will he or won't he make it to the Ice during Winfly? Marisa & I get along so famously so far, if he doesn't make it down, he may not have an easy time integrating into the department. Ok, so he's the boss, but it may take a major effort to gain control over his two wayward and mouthy redheads. I have brought red hair dye for him so that he can be assimilated when he arrives.
I think all of you should wander over to the right of this page and find the name Keith Martin in my links list, for he has a wonderful collection of photos of the nacreous clouds I so look forward to. I look forward to meeting him, as he has been a wonderful correspondent during his winter season.
I am pooped. Really freakin' pooped. Almost drunk with poopedness. I am wandering around Christchurch in the effort to stay awake to a decent hour of the day before I place myself gratefully & lengthily horizontal in a bed and give up the effort. I hope to, through this suffering, adjust my clock to this time zone. I head to the CDC (Clothing Distribution Centre) tomorrow for some HR & Safety crap (oh pardon me, beneficial & informative orientation to help me with my stay on the Ice) and to do the ECW gear scramble.
This time I am so much better off & I fully intend to help those FNGs with me with their choices of clothing. Last year was a nightmare of confusion and conflicting messages of help from people mostly too busy to help me as they chose their own clothing in a state of often competitive semi-clothedness. I will try to lend what I can of my experience to the FNGs in terms of helping them through the process. What is the having of knowledge & experience if not to share & help others in gaining it less painfully than you yourself have?
I hate flying. Or perhaps not the time on the plane, so much as the shuffle drag of self & bags to & fro between terminals. There is no elegant way of moving through an airport, and I wonder how the beautiful people do it in their heels and fine bespoke suits, coiffed, Starbucks-sucking, strides taking them from gate to gate. When I just look so exhausted I want to shave my head and be a monk on the top of some mountain (oooh ooohh can I have Mt Erebus please?) with no material goods whatsoever. I guess it's just more moving, isn't it? Schlepping of shit. Even when that shit is paired down to humidifier, socks, underwear, 2 pairs of jeans, flannel jammies and the essential toiletries. It is still just too much to be responsible for. Is this what I have been reduced too? Making this much effort about THINGS?
Okay, exhaustion talking. But I think next year I will be even lighter. I will live entirely from skua. Remind me, ask me, to explain the semantics of skua, in its many uses. But wait perhaps until I am somewhat more compos mentis and the world has stopped feeling akilter and I am settled under the nacreous clouds of the southern-most continent in the world. For there perhaps I will regain the remainder of my brain function.
posted by: coldwish at 08/19/05 23:02 |
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between 2005
