A camera, computer and a compulsion.

So, I got some film back, which has a good 6 months of travels and good times :)  Check, it, out!

Let talk about fear (and the crying)

In my study, hanging from an old plastic coated hook, screwed into the timber ceiling, hangs: a stem, handlebars, and from the bars, is my track wheel set. My study doubles as our spare room, and Grandy (a.k.a. Dad) is a regular lodger.

On 23 September I had minor off at the track.  I felt my rear tubular doing something weird, and so I dropped down out of the paceline and started to concentrate (read: worry).  A slight tick, tick, tick, turned into a genuine whump-whump-whump and very shortly afterwards there was a very loud bang, followed by sounds of breaking carbon, and pain.  I had blown the rear tub and lost the rear of the bike to the lower side of the track, high-sided, and landed on the bike.  It was track burn and bruising, not a lot more, but I broke my bike.  And I haven’t exactly been working hard or fast to get it back together…

Dad: “I see your bike parts are still in the pieces.”
Me: “Yup.”
Dad: “So you haven’t finished putting the bike back together?”
Me: “Nope.”
Dad: “Are you a bit scared?”

Well, now I never.  I hadn’t considered it, but perhaps, just maybe I am.  I certainly don’t like a $500 repair bill, and I was pretty worried I’d take someone down with me…  So perhaps Dad has a point.

But potential subconscious fear of a velodrome is nothing compared to the out and out terror of Wednesday night.

And I’ll get there.

I’m pretty useful in ‘crisis’ situations.  I have a functional knowledge of basic first aid, I am well aware of the bystander effect, and I have had important role models and influences in my life from the emergency services, military, and scary trades and workplaces.  When arriving at the scene of an accident, or seeing a major whoopsie I am programmed to assess the scene/environment, risks, people, and pretty quickly develop a plan and bloody well make sure it’s followed.

I am utterly useless after ‘crises’.  I am a dithering and wandering idiot, giggly or bawling, and probably at major risk to and of myself and people.  As soon as I am no longer ‘in charge’ or even if the crisis has resolved to nothing much…, a power of emotions hit me and I’m done.

So, Wednesday.  In the minute or so it took me to gather the compost pail from the kitchen and walk to the compost bin at the back fence and back, Mlle. F. had deteriorated from happy boddler to (what I reasonably assumed at the time) were full blown shock symptoms: cold extremities, difficulty breathing, elevated heart rate, shaking, unresponsiveness.  (Queue: get shit done Clive).  I immediately had Mme. L. call an ambulance while I checked airways, palpated Mlle. F. and (whilst furiously changing a weapons-grade-nappy) hatched a plan.

The ambulance was here within minutes and Mme. L. disappeared into it with Mlle. F.  The paramedics were in charge, my job was done.

…and the crying.

Well.

I knew I should pack a bag and switch the oven off and tidy the house a little and be ready to follow the ambulance to the emergency department.

But.

I made it as far as Mlle. F.’s bedroom before it hit.  And there I froze, a quivering, shaking, bawling, useless, mess.

I’ve been in motor vehicle accidents, air travel incidents, conflict situations, domestic violence interventions, bike accidents, workplace accidents, I’ve watched people die, I’ve seen a teeny bit of stuff.  More than some people, far less than most, but enough that I thought I would have, by now, experienced fear.

Oh, fuck, no,

There is no fear like that instilled by the ignorance and impuissance of actually not knowing whether your first and only born is …o.k.

So I cried in her bedroom.  I cried on the stairs.  I cried in the kitchen.  I cried down the hall.  I cried and cried and cried.  I managed to switch the oven off, and as soon as I reached out to some friends I realised what I had to do.  Get my shit together!  And get it together I did.  I got a bag for 3 packed.  I got to in the truck and drove in extreme safe mode to hospital.  I parked sensibly and navigated the emergency department, found F. and L., and got to be hands on Dad.  And in the end, when the hospital assured us the “rigors” were relatively common, got the fever under control, after a long night, sent us home - I realised how glad I was to be hospital Dad.

But gosh, golly, goodness me.  Great grief galore.  I don’t really want to ever feel that again.  I’m not a helicopter Dad, nor a cottonwool parent, but… just, be careful Mlle., be careful.

A side note: Mme. L. tells me how funny I am in hospitals.  Funny = happy and relaxed.  She notes that the order and normality of it all suits me.  That I understand the order and routine and can ‘operate’ a hospital.  That she sees me settle into a rhythm, knowing what’s normal and good and when to push back and control.  Huh.

I’m hoping that I can add hospital Dad to the list of little things I’ve seen and done and that I can be ever so more useful should I need to again.

An end note: My. Poor. Parents. From losing half a thumb at 18 months old to the four times I needed face and head stitches before 5 y.o., to the 9 fractures across 3 incidences of my right arm, to the pool gate gash…  Dear lord. I hope and pray I’m not being repaid for the terror I caused them.

My Supreme Naivety

My last blog was, perhaps, an exploration of new shoots: whether that be a metaphor informed by the new season of spring, or perhaps just a factual reflection of my new role and obvious ignorance in this ‘digital’ space.  However, this week I’ve been chewing on a feeling of naivety… which may well be the next logical step from infant stupidity in a chain of personal growth.  Maybe a series of blogs? The stupidest one in the room, the most naive man on earth, artless in Hamilton, etc? But it is naivety that gnaws at me today, and here I am.

Yet, lets us skip back to when I was, or where I were.

I remember the time and place where I first learnt of caste systems.  I would have been 25 years old and walking along the footpath on the corner of Grey and Bridge Streets in Hamilton East.  A well read and erudite woman of middle age and permanent presence was speaking with my (then) wife about social issues and used the phrase “caste system”.  I interjected, superior and haughty, “oh yes, you mean class system”.  The well read woman was as delicate as a brain surgeon excising a tumour from a humming bee in her suggestion that the two were, perhaps, similar.  But I nevertheless can’t extirpate the horror in my mind of that moment.  With the benefit of hindsight, even my understanding of a class system was completely misinformed!  I thought it was a useful social metric scale one could apply broad brushed over society: generationally unemployed - lower class; has a job and a house - middle class; has a lot of money - upper class.  I didn’t know caste and I sure didn’t grasp class.

I remember the time I truly saw a caste system in play.  I was interviewing a lovely and dedicated Indian couple, twenty times my own net worth and immeasurably more driven.  And this is important only to inform the caste tale, but not to define them: but they were dark, calloused, worn people who despite their brilliance and vigour wore a life of hard work on their shoulders.  During the interview, an Indian colleague, woman, beautiful and majestic, fair, embodying the characteristics of a lioness walked past the open door my glass walled interview room.  The couple I was interviewing scowled, nearly audibly growled and were for a moment the harried scene of menacing jackals, all for a second.  I was shocked and utterly lost as to the context of their snarl, but carried on my interview.  After I had finished, I found an opportune time to ask the lioness if she knew my interviewees, or if she understood any reason why they would have shown her such vehemence.  She was wonderfully ignorant.  It took a well read and erudite onlooker to interject, and suggest I had just seen caste hatred in play.

As for class… an email I once sent to the author Elizabeth Knox probably best sums that up.  An email I submitted via the ‘contact me’ link on her website, and as such is lost to me for ever.  But her reply (which I reproduce without her permission) “What you had to say about class was quite striking to me” reminds me that I was raging in my missive to her.  I remember I had roared at her about my own class realisation.  I arrived in England in 2010 (28 years old), utterly unaware of its true class system, totally naive.  And I immediately betrayed myself, and over and over again for the next four years as I adopted a belief that it was important and valid, this feudal nonsense.  I bullied up a tenuous link to the middle class, telling clients of my Granny and her Papa the Major.  And then in the same day, just at another meeting, broadly swaggered through my working class credentials, being a boy from a mining town dontchaknow.  I remember reading Ms. Knox’s novel, After Z Hour, and being so monstrously offended by scene in which a well to do gentleman extracts an honest Kiwi from his drawing room, as the Kiwi and his broad language sullied his wife.  That monstrous offence being realisation as to my own betrayal.

So why this dive into caste, and class?  Because I feel as though, that to have reached the age I did without any understanding of either, exposes my naivety quite wonderfully.  And why now? Well, that’s a little harder to explain.  Maybe if we leap back to the top of this page, where I hint at my new work environment…  Maybe that helps.  Yesterday I found myself in deep conversation, massively out of my depth, with a wonderfully animated and mentally thrilling colleague.  The sort of conversation where I am spending so much energy remember key terms, things I want to google as soon as they’ve left, subconsciously rueing that I really don’t know what existentialism means, no matter how many times I’ve read the term in my well e-thumbed iPhone Oxford Dictionaries app… The sort of conversation where I’m just holding onto to fragments of my dandelion mind, mirroring the other parties body language and nodding lots… The sort of conversation where I feel soo naive, …and there we have it.  That was the trigger.  Sirjana, Simone de Beauvoir, existentialism, Zen, Hinduism, and my own clanging fear of not letting on that she was in a conversation with herself and a marionette moving only on strings of interview training.

But that can’t just be it.  Sometimes I have those meetings and conversations three times a day.  There must be more.

Yes.  Today, sublime coffee, and barn-cum-real-food aesthetic at Walton St Cafe, Te Awamutu.  I found myself uttering the words: “I was so wonderfully naive” in context of my own personal development as framed by my companion’s drive to positively impact childrens’ lives.  There’s another arrow to the quiver of what pushed me to write.

And then tonight, 33 “GOD” by Bon Iver on near constant loop on my stereo, with Talk Show Host by Radiohead played alongside as I feel they’re related… And me imploring Mme. L. to agree.  These two songs coercing me into a brainspace which says TYPE.  Yet, they’re also more, savage reminders that I was only musically aware so late in my life.  Music sage Peter Paphides tweets about his tweenage daughter making links and leaps through deep music realisation, say the development of The Beatles and different pressings of the same record.  New Zealand treasure and utter well of sincerity, John Campbell interviewed about what he’s listening to, talks of his own teenage daughter addressing the lyrics, depth and meaning of Anderson Paak… Yet I remember the time I blithely blustered: “oh I love all of Bon Iver’s records” afore an aghast record shop assistant.  She was left stumbling five ways over how to tell me there (at that time) was only one release.  Bon Iver - the quantum of my musical naivety measured.

So it is that I am here, train of thought typing and spouting my records of naivety to the world.  But yet, it is that here I am.  I am one so effected by my external environment, the grown man unable to talk to elderly people for fear of crying at them.  Ignoring my own utterly cherished Grandmother because it would involve running the gauntlet of other old people to make it to her room in her new rest home (ed: yikes, massive guilt reflection and deep exposition of self alert).  Here I am.  Unable to do much more than scroll up and down the Guardian’s international news page, certainly not able to pause or read more than a headline and byline… for if Alan Kurdi, or Omran Daqneesh, sear my eyes and wrench my mind again I’ll almost not make it out of bed.  Here I am… so effected by the world that I disengage from most of it and find my naivety, sublime.  In as much as it allows me a sort of protection from the opposite of ignorance.

At the top of the post is a photo of me, in my favourite t-shirt, head tilted to one side, my infant daughter adopting the same position, mirroring my body language, as I expound in energetic terms, some great realisation of life…  Or maybe just starting vapidly into her face, as I find myself doing rather a lot of the time.  Here at the top of this post, is this photo.  I find myself at a cross roads of decision.  To allow Mlle. F. the sublime wonderfulness that is the ignorance of caste, class, sexism, war, ills, evils and wrongs.  Or to help her become aware of these things, so that they might not enrage her or embarrass her, later, as my own silliness has in this life?  I’m hoping she’ll choose her own path, I did, it wasn’t for lack of brilliance and influence in my life that I became the lovely daft and slapstick puppy of a man I am.  I willingly eschewed the advice of mentors.  I’ve knowingly dumbfounded well intentioned teachers, preachers, parents and friends.  I just need to make peace with that.

The Last Time I Found Hamilton City Interesting

Circa two years ago.  This is spring light from 2014 - and I can’t tell you what happened to the two years between this photo, and the 15 frames I snapped walking to/fro a client appointment this week.  But I was genuinely shocked that I found Hamilton City so beautiful this week.  It’s almost an old trope of this blog that every spring I extract myself from some seasonal funk, and I wheel out something like: “wow, where have I been, isn’t it so pretty, why didn’t I take any photos all winter”.  But this is different!  I promise.

It’s thunderingly disingenuous of me to drivel: “I can’t tell you what happened”.  I fucking well can: Job, job, wife, house, baby, matriculated varsity, job…  Even as I type this I am reviled at the laziness of suggesting that maybe job may have had something to do with a general dulling of senses and watering of creativity.  But, I’d be equally repulsed if I didn’t have the courage to acknowledge I have made middling to average decisions around previous iterations of job.  So, lets stop playing footsies here and call it what it is.  I think that current job is good for me.

So, current job, huh?  Well, Mme. L. has had to much mollify me after mortifying me with her monstrous mirth at my innocent and stupid observation that: “I am the dumbest person in the room” whenever I am near new colleagues.  Between giggles she gasped: “I wondered when you’d figure that out”.  It’s good for me.  A misplaced and undeserved ego that stopped any learning needed to wither and die. So now I find myself raging that Ms. Marketing 22 y.o. doesn’t understand her own brilliance.  I am aware I am a temporary affliction that Mr. Savant 23 y.o. has to temper, humour and help.  Myself? I am Mr. 34 years spent and …what can I possibly offer these kids…?  i’ll just hold on and learn.

I’ll also appreciate the benefits of an expanding and tested brain: I see old scenes in new ways.

Where, Have, I, Been?

Not blogging, I can tell you that.  I’ve been studying, and hanging on Instagram.  But I do have half-a-dozen exposed films in the fridge door shelf that need to e addressed… *deep breaths*

I’m In Love and Pining and Mad as All Hell and Other Collected Thoughts Which Have Been Recondite To My Consciousness

I have 3 hours across the Tasman Sea heading 278°, at Mach 0.89 and 36,000 feet ASL to compile some thoughts. I have this time as I allowed myself to be worried into running for the gate instead of buying a book… Rookie flier. So I intend to put this time to good use (better use would be sleeping).

Love: I was shouting out lyrics in the car on the way up to the airport this morning, if you were in the car at 04:14 you’d’ve been treated to the sight of a 34 year old man crying as he sang “I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form “Come in,” she said, “I’ll give you shelter from the storm”. I have twined that lyric and Mme. L. Inextricably. And I am oft given reason to pause and consider that I turned up on Mme. L.’s doorstep, suitcase in hand and she invited me in, careless to norms. So it is through Bob that I feel my love this morning.

Pining: She’s been abroad for the week with Mlle. F. and I miss them both. Nay, miss is a nothing term. I am a preternaturally shambolic mess, my heart leaps at the sight of toddlers with a fringe pony tail and every noise uttered by my empty house is the wee poppet stirring. The weather is changeable, but southerly systems are starting to sink their chill across the land and the bed is cold and harsh when I venture a foot or hand across the void. I am glad to see them both in a few more hours.

Cross: (which I much prefer to mad) There is a malicious and small part of me what wants to see the UK tear itself apart and utterly economically destroy itself, by leaving the EU. Sometimes I think it deserves nothing more.., and with the benefit of time and mature reflection I am glad our own shaky isles move away from the colonial feel. But I remember the good people If those great isles I have met and loved and I wish them hope. Then Nigel Farage appears standing in front of some anti-refugee billboard/truck sign propaganda which is terrifyingly identical to Nazi films and I am genuinely furious and worried about the rise of fascism, world over. David Cameron is an insipid piece of shit who’s been too weak to stop his country machinating itself apart, and his head needs to roll. Nary a weaker man has wielded such a pathetic power. Across the Atlantic the other party of that ‘special relationship’ looks set to elect a demagogue of pure evil and deceit. Trump is as bad as anything ever before him and I’ve actually been lulled into a false sense of complacency by his comedy, his head needs to roll. We’re (as a western hemisphere) on the verge of some proper genocidal shit and I am rather cross about it. Maybe my own utter impotence in making any change fuels my ire evermore so.

Summarise Surmises: And I apologise to myself for the flippant flop from political rage to trivial epherma, but these thoughts have been rattling loose for too long now and it’d behove me to bring them out.

Coffee as a metaphor for growth: I read a caffeine periodical recently, and an opinion piece on the differences and indeed approach to mass market consumer espresso, or boutique single origin filter, Got. Me. Thinking. Mass espresso = a bunch of bad beans roasted to within a degree of obliteration, giving you uniformly bitter and recognisable Costa, Starbucks, et alia, coffee. Single origin filter = uniquely one plantation’s best beans, roasted delicately to release a whole spectrum of flavour utterly different to any other brew. The article went on to caution that when first experiencing a delicate single origin and sweet brew of, say, blackcurrant, citrus and vanilla notes, you’ll probably find it quite unappetising. That is until your palate learns to adjust to the flavours other than bitter toffee chocolate coffee. I’m sure there’s a metaphor there, probably even a pithy epithet about “all that’s good”… Nevertheless, I find the impact of my recent discovery and love of good coffee, and the people and places it takes me, to be rewarding and enlightening.

Building and breaking bikes: I am putting together a preposterous beater, and absolute mash of 5 rubbish tip bikes, I have an idea that I will ride it about Cambridge with Mlle. F. perched on the back rack. The process of simple (I mean the simplest!) mechanical tasks has felt inordinately rusty to me. However, is it the surely atavistic hark of man to engage his hands and mind in making that I feel such comfort within? I am developing and insatiable whim to buy a CNC router and begin making things. The beater is nearly on the road, just some tyres and we’ll be rolling. Perhaps that, maybe, will be just enough.

Leaping into the void: I am poised to do just that. I have in my 34 years made a number of minor changes to my lifestyle, habits and enterprises, but I am dangling toes into an unfathomed void of change and it makes me nervous. Excited and charged, but nervous.

Photography: The First Officer was kind enough to take me Leica IIIf into the cabin and snap a shot of sunrise out the starboard window, what a gesture.

(respite of cold - CHS)

Community

The utterly wonderful Amy Taylor wrote perfectly about it here.
The indomitably inimitable Kathryn Phillips expounded powerfully on the theme here.
I encourage you in the strongest terms to go and read those, and save yourself time, skip my missive.

I will however, regardless of my respect of those authors and their work, add my own endorsement to this eclectic and authentic group of people united by this small town and the cycling at its core.  I have something to say about Community.

Over the last month I have been given many reasons to stop, marvel and be utterly grateful for the support that spontaneously occurs amongst the good people of this place.  Part for proof, and part for posterity I will list some:

Yesterday I spent an hour in 8ºc rain (in summer kit) after I snapped a chain, and in a poorly judged miscommunication with my wife, I waved off the group and any help.  It was a miserable 6km I had schlepped in sodden socks before the divine Russell van Hyer arrived at Warp 9 in the family’s school run Odyssey, heater blasting, thick warm coat wrapped around me I was delivered home with best wishes.  I shudder at the inconvenience that put upon his day.  Yet, he would not hear of it.

Today I spent a very needed hour out in the wind with Amy (of above) - in fact wearing her $320 tights she insisted I take… Not enough that I wear her clothes, moreover she spent her afternoon coaching and counselling me.  I am forever flummoxed at her and her wife’s generosity, aplomb and care.  The best Aunties going.

Last weekend, after Kathryn’s (too, of above) merry band of hill repeaters had settled for 1,000m of climbing before 8am, Mme. L., Mlle. F., and I, all found ourselves at breakfast with them.  Without any conscious agreement or even a request, they scoffed their breakfast swiftly so that hands would quickly be free to entertain Mlle. F., giving Mme. L. and I time to eat our own orders.  I looked up from my eggs to see a cyclist I had met only that morning (Renee) and Adele (I quote: “I’ve never really held a baby”) making a magical pair of feeding and caring for my daughter.

Actually, I honestly wonder if I have a community daughter, as it is.  There are constantly half a dozen offers to babysit open and Mlle. F. is always happy and excited to see all of the community folk.

My appreciation of this group and the care it fosters is deep and of numerous examples.  I could go on, and on, and on with heartfelt expressions of thanks and love for the people around me and their acts of generosity… I really should.  It’s not all cycling, my elderly neighbour’s son delivers me home kill farm meat when he visits in his archetypal sheep and beef block Hilux, I attempt to trade preserves and jams.  Sometimes it’s just the infectious cackle of someone who could, in the circumstances, choose not to laugh.  Really.

Whether it be within the supermarket, amongst the banter of the not very local bikeshop we frequent, at my own kitchen table, on the flanks Te Miro or Maungakawa, or heading in opposite directions in distinctive cars linked only by a wave, there is a palpable and powerful sense of belonging, welcome and care extended amongst this group of us, united by this town and our bikes.

Amy feels settled in it.  Kathryn appreciates the support it gives her.  I am filled to my gills in gratitude for the sense of belonging it offers me - and the tangible, practical and emotional support that provides.  Community - go make one.