procrastination, with illustrations

What do Marx, three-year-old nieces and paeonia moutans have in common?

I sit in an office quite a lot, thinking about history, writing about history, researching history - oh, and facebooking (a concept so crucial to time-wasters that it has become a verb). This year the walls of my little cubicle are MADE of red pin-board type material, and the temptation to cover them with Things is just too great. I am not by a window, so this substitutes as the window out which I gaze when pondering. More will be added, I have no doubt, but for now, here is My Window. (I apologise for the quality of the photo; I took it with my webcam.)

Middle: Karl Marx. His tombstone at Highgate Cemetery, possibly my favourite of the places I visited in London. When I look at this I get a delicious chill running down my spine; it also is kind of relevant to my interest in Soviet history.

Bottom left: "Rendezvous", the famous 1939 political cartoon by David Low. This is an incredibly cool cartoon just on appearances alone, but once you understand a little of the history it simply thrills me, and I love it more and more every time I look at it. Hitler and Stalin, sworn enemies for the entire 1930s, completely scathing about each other - right up until 1939, when suddenly they sign a non-aggression pact, shocking the world, and take over Poland together, like good chums.

To the right: Marc Chagall's stained glass window based on Psalm 150, which is housed in Chichester Cathedral, which I visited in the south of England. I love the concept of modern stained glass, especially when it's sooo pretty, and so expressive of the psalm. In fact, I did a whole blog post on it.

To the right: Paeonia moutan, a postcard I bought at Kew Gardens in London, and then decided to keep, not send, since it was purty.

Bottom right: A postcard sent recently from Bretagne, France, by one of my best friends, who travelled in Europe with me before going to start a job in Bretagne. SUCH a beautiful picture and it reminds me of my friend whom I miss heaps!

Middle left: A famous poster of Lenin, bought as a postcard from Memento Park in Budapest. I particularly like that I can understand the Russian words on it: "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live!"

Above left: A painting I saw at the National Gallery, London: "Christ before the High Priest", by Gerrit van Honthorst. It doesn't translate incredibly well onto postcard-sized card, but the full-sized painting was just amazing; the use of light and dark was so effective; everything about it was expressive, and I LOVED it.

To the right: A photo I took of a sunrise in Dunedin, from the park next door to my sister's house. (I blogged about it here.) I recently bought a colour printer and printed this off and was very pleased with the result. I have to say, this is the picture that distracts me the most because it's sooo pretty.

To the right again: my niece, two and a half at the time, riding a donkey at the local zoo with an over-sized helmet and a huge happy grin on her face.

Middle right: picture by said niece, drawn recently for my birthday. She is only just three, but she wrote my name on the top left corner!! Yup, she's a genius.

who am I?

Now, a title like that can't be encouraging if you're looking for a breezy, lighthearted blog post. Rest assured I'm not going down an existential path here... more a geographic one.

As I said several posts before, I've been craving the mountains. Specifically, New Zealand mountains. I couldn't stop thinking about them while I was away from New Zealand last year; sometimes I felt like being away from things that felt the same way as those mountains made it harder and harder for me to do the ordinary things like breathe... Sounds dramatic when I write it like that! As beautiful as Australia is, and as good a time as I had there, it is just so completely different to this country. I felt oppressed by the heat, by the redness, by the smallness. That doesn't make a lot of sense because Australia is vast and empty whereas New Zealand is small and a lot of Australians feel quite claustrophobic here, apparently. But being in Australia felt, for me, like everything was on a tiny scale, vertically. You could drive for hours without approaching any sort of gradient.

Anyway, this is a tangent. What I mean to say is that I know I am a New Zealander because of this, my love for the land and the seas of New Zealand that make me miss them desperately whenever I'm away for long. At risk of going overboard, I feel a connection to the environment around me. And also to the people - I feel I belong with them and I understand them, even if I don't always get along with them. We are all equal.

I think this is quite recent among New Zealanders. Not that long ago - one or two generations - Pakeha* New Zealanders still talked about Britain as Home, and felt completely out of place in New Zealand. One of my favourite poets, Allen Curnow, wrote in the 1930s a poem that expressed this, ending with the couplet:
"Not I, some child, born in a marvellous year,
Will learn the trick of standing upright here."

In a detective novel I've been reading, written by New Zealand's Ngaio Marsh in 1943, this is expressed as well, in a suspicion of the natural environment.
The main character is looking at a poster of the English Cotswolds.
"It made Dikon, the New Zealander, ache for England. By shifting his gaze slightly, he saw, framed in the sitting-room window, a landscape aloof from man. Its beauty was perfectly articulate yet utterly remote. Against his will he was moved by it as an unmusical listener may be profoundly disturbed by sound forms that he is unable to comprehend. He had travelled a great deal in his eight years' absence from New Zealand and had seen places famous for their antiquities, but it seemed to him that the landscape he now watched through the Claires' window was of an early age far more remote than any of these. It did not carry the scars of lost civilisation. Rather, it seemed to make nothing of time, for it was still primeval and its only stigmata were those of neolithic age. Dikon, who longed to be in London, recognised in himself an affinity with this indifferent and profound country, and resented its attraction."

Well, Curnow's prediction seems to have come true. I feel able to "stand upright here", sure of myself and my surroundings, with the result that a lot of Ngaio Marsh's book just annoys me, with all of her references to the "terrible New Zealand dialect" and all the people longing for England and all of England's constraints. It's not against my will that I love the New Zealand landscape as my own landscape. There are still issues - it's difficult now to be unaware of the cost to the Maori of European settlement, and I recognise that the Maori have a claim on the land that goes deeper than the European claim. I will never be quite "indigenous".

Here comes the problem. I was talking recently to my supervisor, who is Welsh, who is extremely well-travelled, and who knows I want to see Europe someday. After asking me about my passions, which all turn out to be cultural - music, literature, drama - he said to me, "you know, you are actually a product of Europe. When you get there, you will understand what I mean." And he also said, "when you are in England or in Europe you really have a sense of walking on the bones of your ancestors."

Suddenly I'm aware of this tension. Maybe it was easier to be one of those past New Zealanders who never really settled down here, always looking back "Home", never becoming anything other than British. I am, I think, as much a New Zealander as it's possible to be, and I am part of the landscape now, but I am also drawn to Europe, to where my roots are, to the culture that has influenced me the most. And I'm not quite sure if I'll ever balance this. Maybe, after all, I haven't quite learnt the trick of standing upright here yet. If I'm here, maybe I'm not fulfilling myself in a cultural sense. If I'm away, I'll be longing to come back and be where I belong, physically and geographically.

We are still a young country, obsessed with these questions of nationhood. Maybe we all feel this tension; after all, the places we talk about as our nation's roots are on battlefields far away - Gallipoli, the Somme, North Africa, Crete, Monte Cassino... Who are we? How are we different from Europe, from America, from Australia? (Especially Australia!) Why is it that everyone else seems so secure in their nationhood and we are still confused? If anyone else can tell me exactly how long it will take, that would be great!

* Pakeha = of European descent

got some answers?

Why do I sometimes crave a food that doesn't seem to exist? I walk around the supermarket searching for it and it just isn't there! (That wasn't supposed to be an existential question even though it sounds like it.)

Can the phenomenon of Nazism be adequately explained within the framework of Marxism?

People seem to like the sweets of their own particular countries, and other countries' versions of them never quite live up. Are we, therefore, taught to like chocolate by our upbringings, or is chocolate or saturated fat intrinsincally yummy?

Why are people stupid? Myself included?

Why is it that baby creatures are so much cuter than adult creatures? Of any species?

Is being an academic really a justifiable career?

Why do dictators have moustaches?

Nicos Poulantzas' Fascism and Dictatorship: is his argument really original or is he merely putting his fingers in his ears and insisting that everyone else is wrong?

Should I have a stir fry or pasta for dinner tonight?

Do real skeleton keys, that could open ANY door, actually exist?

Analyse the controversy between 'intentionalist' and 'structuralist' historians over the genesis of the Holocaust. Is it possible, at last, to resolve the main points of the debate?

Did my entire ancestry exist just to produce me? :)

self-advertisement

I am applying for a history scholarship that would pay this year's fees if I won it. I don't have high hopes but I guess it's not a completely ridiculous idea either. Anyway, I have to collect two references from past lecturers to attach to my application. One reference - no problem. My current supervisor, who has been my lecturer for almost every class I've been in for the last couple of years, is very happy to write one. For the second, though: I had another lecturer over summer school, but that lasted only six weeks, I doubt she'd remember me, and I'm not even sure she works at my uni anymore. My current NZ history lecturer has just had a minor heart attack - so no way am I going to ask him to do anything for me.

So - I move on to my past English lecturers and eventually ask the one I think will be most likely to remember me. He does, luckily, and he's written a fantastic reference for me and sent it to me today. My supervisor will be able to write me quite a detailed one so the application is all sorted now. Great. But it got me thinking:

I really hate how we have to do this, to exist in society, to succeed, to get a job. This particular situation is hardly a big deal, but I still find it incredibly embarrassing to ask people to write down all the good things about me, and even more so to actually read them myself. What would have been worse - having to write my own letter explaining why I deserve to win. I just can't handle that! Same as job interviews. It just seems wholly wrong to explain why I'm fantastic and how I have so much to offer when actually to be honest there are probably way more people more capable than me. Which is part of the reason I've been put off applying for Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade graduate positions at the end of the month - strenuous selection process and about four to five hundred applicants for about 25 jobs.

Is this wrong? Am I not ambitious or competitive enough? Actually, I know I'm competitive; it's just that the competition had better be based on my actual abilities and not just what I say about them. I am constitutionally unable to exaggerate my own qualities or even to do them justice. I feel vulgar, a fraud, if I even try, and I go all red and start stuttering. If someone even pays me a compliment, I accept it in a very offhand way as if it doesn't matter that much, even though it'll keep a secret smile on my face for the next six months, and I say something bad about myself to balance it out - because it's embarrassing to agree that there's anything good about me.

So, who has some advice for me? Or some sympathy because it's exactly the same for you?

Otherwise, uni is going great. I am still feeling thoroughly overwhelmed but now it's in an excited way. I have finally sorted out my research topic and this is it: Visitors to Stalin's Russia, and why they came away disillusioned or with illusions intact. I'm not sure if that announcement will create worldwide excitement but I am so motivated now! Classes are fun, and I'm getting on so well with all the other honours students. Postgrad is so much better than undergrad.

Also - EXCITING NEWS!!! - the Singalong Sound of Music is coming back to Christchurch!!! I am so thrilled. This time I have to dress up as something really fun and organise a big group of us.

perfection

I have just turned the television off. There was a documentary, called "Under the Knife", with Louis Theroux. Basically he spent a few weeks in Beverly Hills visiting a few plastic surgeons and following a few of their patients. For me, the worst part was the 50 year old male who looked like a sunburnt mannequin with moobs, or perhaps the woman who wanted her breasts to look just that little bit more symmetrical where they already looked like bulbous plastic balloons - actually the worst was a cute girl with a nice body who went under the knife quite radically and was so happy when her ex agreed that yes, she did look more beautiful and he'd quite like to get back with her. Each and every patient this reporter spoke with talked about the inner change their outer change brought, and how much happier and more confident they were.

Over the last year I'm sure I've put on weight. Not heaps, luckily. But since I broke my heel, I have been restricted from all normal exercise, and have been feeling just a bit worse than usual about it. I've been trying to cut out less healthy food while I can't do much exercise - but here's some advice: if you must have that sort of injury which restricts you from exercise, try not to do it just before Christmas. So basically Allie has been a little bit depressed about body image recently.

It feels strange then, that after seeing these "perfect" specimens of humanity onscreen, I suddenly feel like this weight has been lifted off my shoulders. These people, with all their imperfections observed, identified, marked on with a Sharpie, and treated - these people look abnormal, even bizarre, or at best unnatural. They have lost their natural contour, their identifying features. They are still unhappy with themselves; although they say they're not, they still think they just need a bit of a touch-up in future. Right now (I'm sure it won't last but I want to document this) I feel almost delirious with joy that I am a very, very normal person, that I have a lot of external imperfections, and that I am aware of the person inside me who is independent of what people see. And that I don't live in Beverly Hills.

why i think little boys are cool

Over the last week I've noticed three incidents in which little boys were involved in some sort of subterfuge which struck me as rather funny.

1) At the supermarket I noticed a little boy pacing around the confectionary bins, looking rather like a cat pacing around a caged bird or rodent. You could almost see him drooling. Finally, just as I pointed him out to John, my brother-in-law, he looked back and forth a few times, opened a lid and grabbed some lollies, and then sprinted off to the other end of the supermarket where he must have pocketed or eaten his booty in some shady corner.

2) Today at the beach I saw three little boys swinging on a sign that had been pushed into the sand labelled 'swim between the flags'. Of course it fell over. They made several attempts to push it back up, but were way too short to do so. The obvious step to take was therefore to bury the sign in sand so that no one could see what they had done!

3) We went up to the "hills" on Monday (I used apostrophes because what Australians call hills are actually mounds) and after a long walk we ended up at this beautiful old pub with big gardens and live music. We were sitting near a family of small boys, one of which was very attentive to Ruby (my baby niece) and kept telling her things like "I've got gel in my hair!" or "I'm just going to look at the birds, but I'll be back soon, OK?" At one point I looked over to see one of them, aged probably about four, sneaking behind a fencepost and taking a hefty swig of his dad's beer.

My conclusion: Little boys are cool. I'm not sure if this is morally sound, but it was definitely interesting to watch the logic of small males and wonder if perhaps we adults have passed on from that stage of subterfuge or if we just manage to conceal it better? And besides that moral consideration - it was just pretty funny.

Edit: Today my sister's friend and kids came over and two-year-old Thomas* was making "ice cream" in the garden out of leaves and sticks, and handing out different flavours to the adults. Thomas gave me a leaf and left in a blaze of completely unintelligible noise, so the next time he came inside I asked him in that aren't-you-cute voice that I hated when I was a kid, "What have I got, Thomas?"

He looked at me disgustedly. "A leaf."

I have learnt my lesson and will never patronise a kid again.

* This is the bit where I say 'not his real name'.

naming

This is a horse called Ziggy. If I had a horse I would call it Penelope and if I had a dog I would call it Horatio. I suppose I'd have to check the gender first. The best thing about animals is you don't have to worry how they'll be teased at school or anything. If you called your dog John and your cat Anne, to be safe, you'd come across a bit boring. [Disclaimer: if either of your pets are called John and/or Anne, accept my unreserved apologies.]

I found it a bit unnerving a while back when I stayed with a friend who had a lovely big German Shepherd. When I got there, she started shouting, "Down, Allie!" Yup. Turns out the dog was called Allie too. It took a while to get used to that. Oh well, at least it wasn't a chihuahua or something.

Because I like naming things and I'm not particularly eager to have children yet, perhaps I should get a pet. Or better yet, pets. I do like the idea of a nice cuddly warm tabby cat, or a well behaved dog I could take walking and scare bad men away with. Unfortunately, every single pet I've had that was mainly my property to look after has died before their time. It makes me feel a little unloved. Waffles the rabbit and G-nu the guinea pig died when I was about 11, and although G-nu's death was natural, Waffles's was probably my fault for letting him get an infection. I still feel very bad about that. Dwiana the gecko became my sole charge when my elder sister got sick of her, and I fed her the wrong leaves, and she died. In my last year of school I decided to buy fish, and I saved up for ages and got a little aquarium and all the gear and two little goldfish which I named Flotsam and Jetsam. Flotsam died from unknown causes, and then Jetsam died when he/she got a fungus and his/her tail fell off, about three weeks after I bought them. All this leads me to conclude that I am not an animal person.

the dish

Some more photos from Christmas.

Who has heard of the Jetlag Travel Guides? I'm not exactly sure how global they are - if you have never heard of them, they are parodies of the Lonely Planet-style travel book, written by three Australian guys, about made-up countries. I have the Molvania and San Sombrero guides - here is an example of the type of thing:

Despite being one of the smallest countries in Europe, the Republic of Molvania has much to offer the discerning tourist. Panoramic scenery, magnificent neoclassical architecture and centuries of devotion to fine culture are, admittedly, all in short supply. ... Molvania, the world's number one producer of beetroot and the birthplace of whooping cough, is a country steeped in history and everywhere here the past is beautifully preserved, such as in towns like Gyorik where you'll find one of the oldest nuclear reactors still operating in the world.

You can't go on reading for large periods of time or it all just becomes too much but in my opinion they are works of genius. :) So...

...when I saw the movie pictured above today (The Dish, of 2000), I was delighted to hear it was written by the same three men!

Great movie, too. It's about the satellite dish in a small Australian town that somehow, in 1969, ends up being the main dish that is used for the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, which, of course, carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldwin. This dish was the one and only medium through which the whole world saw the moon landing on TV. Very funny in many ways but it was also at times quite moving - all in all, a fantastic film. It really made me feel how big a deal the moon landing was, and it was nice seeing Australian people in something that was such a huge thing (although I made several snarky comments about Australians in my last post, Kiwis and Aussies actually get on pretty well when we're not competing - we're quite like each other).

Anyway, it got me thinking... Although there is something undeniably cool about sending rockets into space, I've often felt in the past that maybe all this money spent on NASA and such projects is a waste of humanity's resources and could be better spent elsewhere - like on the abject poverty of the Third World, for one thing. Part of me still feels that way.

But at the same time, it's suddenly struck me that the role of art is like the role of science in this way - one could argue that writing novels and performing music and painting pictures and such is a disgusting waste of money. Books use up forests all over the world, they produce no tangible results ie food, shelter or clothing, the money people spend on movies or music could probably feed the whole African continent (okay, so that's a massive guess but the point is, I think, clear), etc etc... but something in me rebels at this kind of thinking. It's the same way I feel when people scoff at the BA I'm studying for instead of "useful" degrees like Engineering or Medicine. I have to admit that space exploration probably does have a few more tangible benefits for humanity than art does - but at the same time, there is something about human progress that thrills us. And there is something in us that doesn't want to give up pointless things like books for the sake of humanity. I don't think this is coming out very clearly. I just wonder if sometimes we shoot down human progress for its own sake a little too much. I personally often voice my opinions about what a waste of time and money sport can be.

To sum up my whole post in one sentence: Despite knowing all the reasons why we shouldn't bother with certain types of progress, there is something about humans making it to a next step, where no one has been before, that always excites us. I don't think this is a bad thing. (Okay, so it was two sentences.)

it's a scandal

The airport has changed its voice thingy when you drive in! (see two posts back, thing-that-makes-me-happy #22) I am unhappy. Now, instead of going "WELCOME!!!!" it says "Welcome." Now, on the assumption that anyone who reads this blog will visit me in New Zealand someday, I will never be able to share the joy with you. How sad.

I have been to the airport twice today. I got up early in the morning to pick up Dad, whose flight was arriving at 8am. Got there, waited two hours - no sign of Dad. Started to imagine he'd been arrested, kidnapped, or had collapsed somewhere with a life-threatening illness. Got some nice airport men to help me but they didn't know where he was. Went home wondering if I was mad and had got the wrong day/flight/time. Nope, I was right - but Dad's first flight, to Auckland, was late and by the time he rung me, I'd already left the house. He arrived at 1.05pm.

All the same, the first trip wasn't a complete waste. Whenever I wait at the international arrivals section, I always think of the opening scene of Love Actually where a Hugh Grant voiceover talks about how his depression is always cured by going to the Arrivals gate at Heathrow. (That is, unless his father fails to turn up.) I like watching the people who arrive, or the people who wait. I guess the sort of person they're waiting for; age, sex, relationship to them.

There was one grandfather waiting for his daughter and her family. When they finally came out of Customs, her three little boys went running at him shouting "Grandad, Grandad, Grandad!" and giving him big hugs. Very cute. Next minute: "Can you take out your teeth?"

Another little baby boy arrived with his dad to see his grandfather. He had obviously just started to walk confidently, and was swaggering/swaying all over the place with a huge proud grin on his face. He kept walking past me and looking at me mischievously because he knew I couldn't not smile. I think airports must be heaven to kids of that age - all those flat carpets and big empty spaces.

There was a whole group of people waiting for someone and I was trying to guess who it would be. It was tricky because the people were all of different ages and not all related. Finally a young mum and dad walked out holding three tiny babies - imagine travelling with triplets who were under a month old! Brave, brave people. They should be applauded.