Last days

It's been a rough month. Ming slept all day on the verandah seats, curled or crouched on the old folded sheet I'd arranged as a nest for him; something more comfortable than the vinyl upholstery. He kept half-standing, turning slowly and settling down, constantly searching for a better position. I put a bowl of biscuits and another of water near him; he ate a few biscuits and lapped a little water then curled up again.

I sat next to him several times during the day when the sun broke through. I sipped tea and tried to understand what it meant to sit next to Ming during what might be the last hours of his life, what it would mean to sit there in the days that followed, looking at the world, the lambs lying on green grass, white clouds in a blue sky, plum blossoms profuse on the tree next to the dog kennels, tui fighting in the poplars, a korimako calling from the Grevillea next door — looking at the world and knowing Ming was no longer part of it. Yeah, sure, he'll still be here, re-entering it in a different form, as diffuse processes, as memory — but all that wise, enlightened bullshit can't compensate for his actual absence, the joy of hearing rustling in the kitchen and finding him with his head shoved in the rubbish, trying to hook out some morsel; can't compensate for the yowls of protest when I took his dead rat from him (in case it had a sublethal dose of poison); can't compensate for his selective deafness when told off. We know the world mostly through our senses — even our ability to imagine arises from what we've learned from our senses — and the loss of something, or someone, we can see and hear and touch is bearable only insofar as we can rationalise the loss. For those we love, this seems impossible. I have no idea how we manage it.

I sit next to him in the Spring sun, sipping tea and gazing out over the paddock, sensing his slow breathing. A kahu circles, calling. It's been a rough month, and it's a long way from over. Every time I blink the world seems to go slightly blurry. 

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Photo: Ming in better times

Update (12 September 2010): Ming has not been seen since early last week. The conclusion is inevitable.

Photos and original text © 2010 Pete McGregor

Being a bird

Outside in the dim light of another grey, damp dawn, the tui sings — or calls. What's the difference between singing and calling? As I wonder about this, the korimako calls — and that seems the appropriate word for the scolding, the slightly harsh "yak yak yak yak" which I assume (perhaps wrongly) is an alarm call. But I also hear a riroriro singing, and that, too, seems the unassailably correct word — melodious, easy on the ear, with a complex, definite structure in which each note seems to follow naturally from its predecessor.

This, of course, is a human interpretation, but what does a bird hear when it hears another of its own species singing (or calling)? What if the singer and the listener belong to different species; what does the riroriro hear when it hears the tui's astonishingly complex vocalisation (there, I've found another term, one that subsumes singing and calling — a dry, scientific, apparently objective term, but a useful one)? The best we can do to answer these questions is to use a combination of science and long, engaged observation to help us imagine the answers, recognising as we do that we can never truly know, that we can never hear like any bird even if our ears could capture precisely the same range of frequencies. Much of the time we guess wrong when we try to understand what one of our own species hears — a song, for example, or a sound in the night. I hear boring, toneless, puerile, repetitive chanting; you hear complex, clever, rhythmic insight into the modern condition. You hear unexplained footsteps; I hear the house releasing the heat of the day. Sometimes, admittedly, we claim to hear the same thing or, by some comment or gesture, suggest it, but always the inescapable truth remains: we are trapped inside ourselves.

I look up. The clouds in the west have turned pastel orange with a faint hint of mauve in the grey; blackbirds hop about the paddock and sparrows cheep (that, at least, is accurate — it's neither song nor call, and "vocalisation" tells us nothing about the quality of a sparrow's cheep). As I gaze outside, a kahu sails past, a long, low, even glide right across the window-framed view.

What is it like to be a kahu, a hawk on the morning wind?

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Photos:
1.Tauhou; silvereye or waxeye (Zosterops lateralis).
2. Kereru (New Zealand pigeon; Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae).

Photos and original text © 2009 Pete McGregor

Kahu (hawk)

By the north end of the Raumai bridge a kahu turns, banking towards the poplars and the coppicing willows. The sun lights up its outspread wings and the fan of its tail; against the shadow of the trees the wings and tail seem to glow as if illuminated from within their own feathers. Then the vision's gone. The memory contains no movement; the memory of the moment remains fixed like Zeno's arrow, like an emblem — or an omen, auguring the fate of the wild.

I drive on, the image of the bird burning. How can a moment contain such power?

On the Napier Road another kahu drops from the sky towards the road. I brake and veer. The bird hovers over a small, crushed body, blood and feathers on the tarmac; the kahu realises it's too late to pluck the morsel from the road and beats its wings, rising to safety in the sky. Another vision, another moment; again, the movement hardly there — the pale bird, long legs stretching downwards, head looking down, body suspended from upraised wings. Another emblem or omen, like an angel — not the pretty, insipid angel of catechisms but the powerful, dangerous angel of mythology.

Of all the common birds here, kahu might be the most difficult to photograph. Sometimes one of these big birds will watch the car drive past a few metres away, the effort of releasing the body of a possum or hare and rising into the sky not warranted. But if the car slows, even at a distance, the kahu flees. On foot, a hundred metres is far too close for a kahu. I don't have the patience to wait interminably in a hide near a dead possum, and I don't have the kind of lens that would allow a satisfactory photo of a kahu in flight — even in the refuge of the sky, they're unapproachable. I'll keep trying, but perhaps my continual failure's no bad thing. I have some sympathy for Geoff Dyer's belief that "the world will exist only as long as some part of it remains unphotographed".

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Notes:
1.Kahu (pronounced, roughly, KAA hoo) are a common sight in most rural areas of Aotearoa, particularly near roads, where they take advantage of the abundant road kills. Most people simply call them hawks; the official common name is Australasian harrier; the scientific name is Circus approximans.

2. The closing quotation is on p. 327 of Geoff Dyer’s Anglo-English Attitudes. London, Abacus. (1999). 372 pp.

Photos:
1.Kahu over the edge of my terrace, last year's big slip below.
2. About as good as I've managed so far. Cropped and processed to the limits.

Photos and original text © 2009 Pete McGregor

Pity the rich

Luxury, says Paul Theroux, is the enemy of observation [1]. The statement has the quality of aphorism — a thing said well has the ring of truth. But how true is it?

Unquestionably, luxury insulates the traveller, isolates her, cocoons her in comfort, and in doing so reduces access to the real world. The traveller in luxury might see the grim, hard world, but from a distance; he might hear it but only in small doses before he retreats to the refuge of quiet, plush hotel rooms and the interiors of gently throbbing tourist coaches with their views of the harsh and glaring world outside softened by tinted windows. The traveller in luxury must make a deliberate effort to eat the food of the masses rather than the treats of the elite; obnoxious smells and physical discomfort must surely be easier to bear when the sufferer knows they're only temporary and largely elective.

Still, luxury—at least anything short of an obscene amount— can't completely isolate a traveller from the actuality of the world through which she glides. Even a tiny exposure to that world must be enough to convey its reality to anyone prepared and willing to notice and imagine. Through the tinted windows of his air-conditioned coach a traveller looks out at evil, festering drains and mountains of rubbish; sees a woman washing a toddler in a basin of filthy water; sees a man squatting next to a wall, his hand over his face as he empties his bowels; sees others sleeping on the urine-stained footpath, each corpse-like and covered only by a thin, grimy blanket; the traveller sees these things, remembers the sounds and smells as he walked from his hotel to the bus and he must surely imagine what it must be like to live day after day like that, watching the big buses cruise by.

Perhaps, however, the traveller used to luxury finds these acts of observation and imagination too uncomfortable, too disturbing. Perhaps guilt suppresses thought—you are privileged, these observations say, and privilege is generally an accusation; the traveller, unable to deny her observations, turns away from their implications. Better not to think.

To be fair, Theroux's argument actually focuses on how luxury itself distracts: how the pleasures of comfort turn us away from paying attention to what's outside our luxurious cocoon. Perhaps he has a point, but he misses another: that luxury is relative and our capacity to become used to it is huge. A night in a vermin-infested hotel room on a hard bed would be luxury to one of the pavement-sleepers but a nightmare to a Remuera socialite [2], and after several weeks of buffet dining, the novelty of tropical fruits and croissants for breakfast can begin to wear thin (I imagine — not having experienced it myself). When we've become accustomed to these luxuries they no longer seem so luxurious: they become day to day life. Then, perhaps, our attention returns to the wider world.

Luxury may indeed be the enemy of observation, but luxury is also its own enemy. The danger is that, instead of allowing its novelty to dissipate, we try to hold on to it by seeking even more of it; we make it a goal — and one increasingly difficult to attain. Perhaps, ironically, the way to enjoy it more is not to seek it but to turn away from it and enter the harsh, all too common world in which luxuries, even if accessible only to those with a little wealth, are never far away (after months of bucket baths, a proper hot shower seems impossibly sumptuous — and that I can confirm). But to what kind of opulence can the habitual dweller in luxury turn?

Theroux goes on to explain how the rich — the acolytes of luxury — not only never listen but constantly complain about the cost of everything: "... indeed, the rich usually complained about being poor," he says [3]. Maybe he's right, but not in the sense he apparently intends. Maybe the rich really are poor; cut off from the real world and struggling to achieve ever greater levels of luxury which become increasingly hard to attain, maybe they shouldn't be envied, but pitied?

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Notes:
1.p. 17 in Theroux, P. (2008). Ghost Train to the Eastern Star. London, Penguin. 485 pp.
2. Remuera is an Auckland suburb populated largely by many of New Zealand's wealthiest people.
3. But if luxury is the enemy of observation and Theroux observed the rich in their natural habitat (i.e. luxury), to what extent can we trust his observations, given he was also in it at the time?

Photos:
1.The Phool Mahal, the Palace of Flowers. One of the many opulent rooms in the Mehrangarh, the great fort and palace complex, at Jodhpur.

2. Stairway in the Mehrangarh.

Photos and original text © 2009 Pete McGregor

Conversations with the past

Clare, way up in Arctic Bay, has tagged several bloggers with the invitation to respond to a set of five questions. One of the bloggers he tagged is me, and here I respond to just one of his questions: "What person in history would you most like to have a conversation with?".

That got me thinking. In fact, it got me thinking in the wee hours of the morning a week ago; after waking and finding it difficult to get back to sleep, I tried to distract myself from my worries and restlessness by thinking about that question. I'd expected it to be one of the easier topics; however, I found it harder than I'd imagined. Partly, the difficulty arose because my knowledge of history isn't great and the possibilities seem innumerable — I suspect whomever I chose, I'd quickly think of someone more appropriate[1]. Partly, the difficulty also arises in my natural inclination to choose someone I admire, and I can think of no historical figure I admire unreservedly. Add to those reasons the likelihood that many of those with whom I chose to have a conversation would either think at a level far beyond my capabilities (David Hume, for example) or respond so gnomically (Lao Tzu and many more) that I'd understand nothing, and the difficulty of choosing seems insurmountable[2].

Moreover, many of the candidates are people about whom I know too little. Herodotus, for example, has been identified as the kind of person who'd make an ideal travelling companion[3]; fine — he sounds fascinating, entertaining and accessible — but some of his claims seem bizarre and outrageous. Without reading his work and without knowing more about the basis of his claims — to what extent they might be credible — I wouldn't know how far I could trust his stories. Moreover (and here again my very limited knowledge leaves me on shaky ground), I know little about the extent to which he discussed ideas rather than described events, places and customs, and in any discussion with an historical figure I'd prefer to listen to and question ideas rather than being simply entertained by stories that might or might not be largely true and might or might not be designed to convey some larger idea.


Conversely, others seem too fixed on ideas, or at least on evangelising particular ideas rather than exploring them. Gandhi, for example: while I have great respect for his advocacy of non-violent protest, his compassion and his commitment to live in the manner he evangelised, I remain unconvinced about his interest in exploring ideas other than those he fought for. Again, I might be unfair: my perceptions might be inaccurate because of my limited knowledge and because most of what's written about him focuses on the ideas for which he's most famous. But I have serious misgivings about some aspects of his treatment of women. Perhaps, however, these are actually compelling reasons for conversing with him: to attempt to understand his beliefs sufficiently to understand how he could hold some that seem to me to be harmful to others.

Why so few women?
Now I've touched on the subject of women, I'll admit something that disturbs me: in this consideration of historical figures, I can identify only one woman who might rank highly on the list of candidates: Rachel Carson. Arguably she founded the modern "environmental" movement, but equally important for me is her great knowledge and feeling for the coastal and marine environment, coupled with an outstanding ability to convey that knowledge and feeling through her writing. Just what she was like to hold a conversation with, I don't know, but I'm unable to think of any other woman to include in the shortlist. Of course, I can think of a great many women with whom I'd like to hold a conversation— enough to see me talking and listening for the rest of my life — but the list of people with whom I'd most like a discussion is a different matter altogether.

So why are women so scarce in the shortlist? Surely I must have overlooked someone, or perhaps many? Some who spring to mind immediately count themselves out just as immediately. Ayn Rand, for example, whose Atlas Shrugged so often figures prominently in lists of supposedly great books: not only do her views differ so radically from mine that we'd have no common ground on which to discuss, well, anything at all, but she was so convinced of her own genius[4] that discussion would be out of the question — I'd be reduced to the role of mere listener, if she even deigned to converse with anyone so little like a genius as me. I, on the other hand, would rather have a conversation with the much more open-minded Genghis Khan.Seriously: for all his cruelty and propensity for genocide, he did foster not only a remarkable degree of tolerance for some aspects of other cultures (for religions, it bordered on true pluralism), but in his society women reputedly enjoyed an historically uncommon degree of influence and importance[5].

But back to the absence of women from my list. Most count themselves out because their interests or influence have been largely political (for example, Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc (whose belief that the voices she alone heard were her god speaking directly to her would have counted against a worthwhile conversation), or too focused on the pragmatic (Marie Curie, for example), while those motivated by religious beliefs (Mother Teresa's the outstanding example) leave me uninterested. Personally, I find nothing enlightening in appeals to arbitrary supernatural entities — any system of belief that can explain anything ("It's a miracle/mystery/the will of [insert name of preferred deity]") explains nothing — and deeds motivated by belief in unimaginable rewards after the death of the body or by love of some deity seem less worthy to me than those motivated by sheer compassion for others. This does not mean I'm anti-religion; it means only that I, personally, lack the faith necessary to find value in religious beliefs. However, others do have that faith, and to the extent their beliefs help those people live better, more fulfilled lives without harming others (which includes respecting the rights of others to hold different beliefs), that's fine with me. In fact, the only substantial interest I have in religious beliefs is in trying to understand how others can hold them[6].

I suspect my male-dominated short list arises from two reasons: first, my poor and selective knowledge of history; second, until recently, history has been documented almost exclusively by men, and this, along with the way women have been largely subordinate to, and too often subjugated by, men, has led to a predominantly androcentric view of historical events. For the first reason, I can ask for enlightenment (which women would make your shortlist?); for the second, I can do nothing other than encourage and support research by women and in particular, by women about women in history.

Another approach
But maybe I'm approaching this from the wrong angle. Maybe, instead of casting about trying to think of people I'd like to talk with, I should be asking what I'd be seeking from these hypothetical conversations. What kind of person could offer wonderful conversation; what characteristics would this person have?

Several things spring immediately to mind. Insight and its close relative, wisdom, seem paramount: without those, any conversation can be no more than enjoyable or entertaining. Conversely, humour has an important and generally overlooked role because it so greatly helps build a sense of connection between people — well, between those who have a sense of it, as I trust I do. Perhaps that's another reason for disqualifying Ayn Rand, along with Nietzsche — but Rand and Nietzsche also disqualify themselves on the basis of their apparent complete lack of another crucial characteristic: empathy. I think specifically of Rand's and Nietzsche's absence of empathy for other human beings, at least all but the tiny proportion of humanity they admired: the ubermensch for Nietzsche; Nietzsche for Rand. More generally, but just as crucially, I consider empathy for the non-human world[7] to be a highly desirable characteristic of anyone with whom I'd like to hold a conversation that goes beyond the merely academic.


Three characteristics remain: curiosity (a person without curiosity must be either exceedingly dull or insufferably cocksure); awareness, meaning the ability and inclination to notice things; and, finally but certainly not least, the ability to articulate ideas and emotions. That ability to say what's needed can be interpreted broadly; absolute clarity isn't always a virtue and often, it seems to me, fails miserably where true poetry succeeds magnificently. While the more opaque and difficult poems generally fail to move me, I do find it hard to accept that "Yes, but what does it mean?" can be any sort of meaningful or important response to a poem. The attempt to explain a poem, or, for that matter, any work of art, too often drains the life from it. It's like asking about the meaning of a great haiku: the haiku itself says what needs to be said — would Bashô be as great, or even remembered, if he'd set down explanations of what he felt when he heard a frog plop into that old pond[8]? So, when I say "the ability to articulate", I mean also the ability to choose the appropriate form of language, which may sometimes be none at all — the silence that invites one to reflect on what's just been said.

So where do these six characteristics — insight, humour, empathy, curiosity, awareness and the ability to articulate — leave me in my choice of historical figure with whom to have a conversation? I can only go on what little I know, which I suspect will often be wildly off the mark, and I'm willing to accept the absence of some of those qualifying characteristics in return for an abundance of others — for example, given the acuity of his insights into human nature, I'd love to know why Nietzsche thought compassion a vice and apparently lacked it completely[9]. Moreover, I suspect humour doesn't attract much attention from historians, who seem much more taken with power and influence, so my list of contenders contains few I'd even guess had a sense of humour.

The shortlist
The shortlist, therefore, is short indeed, but before I disclose a final choice I'll make two points. First, we probably learn more by trying to understand those whose values are anathema to us than we do from those whose values we already share; however, because I'd strongly prefer to enjoy the conversation, I've included only one person whose attitudes include many I can't stand: Nietzsche, for the reason I mentioned in the previous paragraph. Second, I'm excluding Zhuangzi because Dave has already bailed him up and is getting drunk with him. Man, I'd love to be in on that conversation.

The remainder: Herodotus, despite my reservations about his predilection for exaggeration and (possibly) invention; Hanshan, for his empathy and his superb ability to articulate the essence of the kind of life I love; Bashô, for his compassion and remarkable ability to notice not just the natural but the human world; Lao Tzu, although I fear his gnomic pronouncements would make for a difficult conversation comprising far more reflective (and possibly mystified) silence than animated discussion; and, finally, the person I'd most like to have a conversation with because of his intense interest in the natural world and his delight and participation in the human, his curiosity about almost everything, his ability to think and to articulate those thoughts, his friends, including Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell, and as far as I know, pretty much all the desirable characteristics I've mentioned: Ed Ricketts, the man who "...would listen to any kind of nonsense and turn it into a kind of wisdom. His mind had no horizon and his sympathy had no warp"[10].

...

This is my response to just one of Clare's five questions. By ignoring the other four (possibly temporarily) I suppose I'm flouting the rules of 'memes', but I've never been keen on rules. Moreover, I'm supposed to tag five other bloggers to follow up Clare's questions but instead I'll just leave it as an open invitation. The questions are all well worth contemplating and I'd love to read your responses to any of them. If you do accept the invitation, please let me know.

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Notes:

1.I vaguely recall Salman Rushdie saying something similar — "As soon as I say something, I want to disagree with myself" — or words to that effect, but I can't track down the quotation. Perhaps my memory has attributed the quotation incorrectly. The closest I've found so far is Jane Campion's assertion, "...as soon as I say something I think I can stick with, I realize the opposite is true" (Verhoeven, D. (2008). Jane Campion. Routledge. 288 pp. ISBN 0415262755.) Moreover, even as I edited the draft of this post, I found myself discovering other historical figures I'd prefer over my initial choices.
2. For the purposes of this hypothetical conversation I'll assume language is no barrier.

3. Justin Marozzi, (January 2010). Travels with the Father of History.
4. Corey Robin (May 2010). Garbage and Gravitas.
5. Genghis Khan's religious pluralism is well documented (see, e.g., John Man's excellent biography, Genghis Khan: Life, Death and Resurrection); however, despite being widespread, the claim about the role of women is hard to verify — most examples I've found provide no citations and may simply be repeating each other. The most plausible I've found so far is Prof. Morris Rossabi's lecture on Women of the Mongol Court, transcribed by Heidi Roupp (retrieved 25 June 2010).
6. I suspect some of those people are similarly interested in why people like me can't believe what seems unquestionable to them.
7. One can argue whether it's possible or not to empathise with the non-living world, but that's a matter for another discussion.
8. Basho's frog pond haiku is probably the most famous of them all; unfortunately, most of the English translations seem awkward, wordy, or in other ways simply unable to convey the immediacy and depth of that moment.
9. I have my suspicions, but that also is another matter.
10. John Steinbeck, quoted in a 2003 NPR article. Also well worth reading is an article by Ricketts' most recent biographer, Eric Eno Tamm.

Photos:
1. Bishnoi man, near Jodhpur, Rajasthan.
2. Textile worker, near Bhuj, Gujarat.
3. Anne-Marie at Flounder Bay, Aotearoa.

4. Tide pools between Driftwood Cove and the Cove of Giants, near Flounder Bay.
5. Jono outside Phil's Biv, Darran Mts, Aotearoa.

 

Photos and original text © 2009 Pete McGregor

Midwinter

Heavy rain on a dark Sunday morning; the sheep standing with ears drooped in the front paddock; mist in the valley. Ming finally abandons his attempts to investigate the rubbish in favour of curling up on the bed. The rain gets heavier. I imagine this weather in a gorge on Cold Mountain, the sound of rain on the leaves and canes of the bamboo with the roar of the gorge as a background, Hanshan stooped in the entrance of his cave, smiling as he peers out. A crow flying off, black against the grey mist, off to some place only crows know on Cold Mountain, some place in the unknowable mist high on the mountainside where no one goes. Hanshan shakes his head, still smiling, goes inside and pours tea. He watches the steam curling up, becoming the mist. What more could I need, he thinks and takes a noisy slurp.

I pour another cup of oolong. A pen, a notebook for writing, rain on the roof, a cat on the bed. What more could I need?

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Photos and original text © 2009 Pete McGregor

The climber

On the edge of the town the high stone buildings, grey with age, with small, high, grimy windows, begin to change, to transform into the cliffs that ring the plain. A small figure climbs on those cliffs — a man, climbing with no rope, alone in the dull afternoon light. He slides a hand into a long crack that runs almost the full the height of the cliff; he twists slightly and lowers his free hand, shaking his arm for a few moments. He pauses, looks upwards, then resumes climbing, jamming one hand above the other alternately into the crack, placing his feet deliberately, precisely, until he arrives at a great slab projecting horizontally above his head like a roof.

He locks his left hand hard into the crack and leans back and outwards, reaches wide with his right arm and feels for a hold over the lip. Another pause. He drops his head and waits several seconds, stretched out with arms wide. Then he looks up and releases his left hand from the crack.

His feet leave the rock; his body swings out over forty metres of empty space. Forty metres of nothing; forty metres of the long fall into oblivion. He swings from a single wiry arm, out towards the point at which his hand must surely slip from its hold. He draws his legs up to slow the swing and begins to pull himself up on one arm; he reaches up with his free hand and grasps another hold.

The sight makes you feel nauseous. You see him from a great distance, a tiny form hanging over the void, a speck of muscle, bone and blood on that great hard face, hanging there on the edge of life. You see him as if you were a bird hovering a metre from his left shoulder; you hear his hard breathing, you see the thin tough muscles in his arms move as he swings. The ground seems immensely far below; it seems like a memory, the recollection of safety too long ago.

You feel nauseous, sick with the fear that arises from imagination. You feel exhilarated, knowing his freedom, his utter independence and self-reliance, his complete focus like a meditation, the feel of movement like a dance. You hold these polarised emotions in your heart as you begin to walk across the plain towards the cliffs. You walk through desiccated grass, over flat stones like the remains of an ancient plaza; you walk in an arid wind that sends small eddies of dust scampering over the plain. As you walk, the edge of the plain grows outwards so you never draw closer to the cliffs — they recede continuously, like the horizon, as you walk. The climber still hangs there on that edge, always about to make his next move.

You realise you are walking towards yourself.

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Photos:
1. John Palmer completes the difficult (V7) boulder problem Chris & Cosy at the Baring Head Rock Hop in 2008.
2. Ivan Vostinar marks up problems at the 2008 Rock Hop.

Photos and original text © 2010 Pete McGregor