Green flowers

Flowers ought not to be green as their job is to stand out from the leaves. But this hydrangea of ours is green. I think it's lovely.

Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Passing Time

Your skin like dawn

Mine like dusk.

One paints the beginning

of a certain end.

The other, the end of 

a sure beginning.

A fool's fish cake

It's not April Fools' for nothing...

I made this fish cake last night, trying for a neat round shape, as one does, but lo! I made a map of Australia instead. What are the odds?

With me, well, they are quite high. Perfect rounds don't come naturally to a person born of crooked-edged stock. And with it being the eve of April Fools' Day too, well, you could practically guarantee something of the sort (I will confess I contrived Tasmania out of cake crumbs - for a bit of fun - much like nature did).

Still, I've never made a fish cake in the shape of Australia, with or without Tasmania, before, and I've made a few fish cakes in my time, let the record show. But this one here (since eaten for an early lunch) could well be the world's first Australia-shaped fish cake. Stranger things have happened

So the question is, what to make of it? Why did I make the world's first Australia-shaped fish cake to be eaten on April Fools' Day?

Well, the answer to that pressing question, I think, is that patriotism is a strange thing, particularly for Australians. For exiled Australians it's even stranger still, and I think could explain the occasional subconscious creation of food in the shape of one's crooked-edged country, by way of saying once an Australian always an Australian, particularly on April Fools' Day, that day that has special significance for all Australians wherever they are.

Otherwise, it might just be a happy coincidence contrived by chance to remind us what a bunch of feckless fools we are, though it really doesn't need to try in my case.

Whatever the case of the Australian fish cake, a happy day to all you fabulous fools out there, especially my country cousins across the ditch! A tasty meal you make (made).

Other people

Live on other streets
walk on other feet
talk like brainy birds
in tongues you cannot speak.

Fly fast to Fallujah
call cold collect
cry for the 10-year-old
raped to death.

Miss other mothers
in other skins try to fit
kiss other lovers
don't know you exist.

Jesus's sister

Jesus's sister is hard to say. It's even harder to imagine that Jesus had a sister and that She, being second-born of the second sex, has been waiting in the clouds all this time while Her big brother took all the credit for being the chosen child and only son of God.

Still, it's true. And her name is Sacha. Sacha is Jesus's sister, though She's not Jewish. Nor is She Christian. Indeed Her second name is not Christ. Christ no.


There were no Christs in Sydney where She was born in 1966, in the hottest month of a hellishly hot year.

She has taken a while to come out as Jesus's sister, She has, and not just because it's hard to say. She wanted to choose Her moment carefully, just as He did. Then finally Easter Sunday 2016 presented itself as the most likely, now-or-never day for Her big earth reveal.

Also, She wasn't sure She was Jesus's sister. She rejected the idea for a long time, approximately fifty earth years and more than two thousand heaven years. Fortunately you don't age in heaven.

Still, it seemed quite a lot of pressure and quite likely a thankless task. She was also, subconsciously, waiting for her brother's star-cross to fade. When it didn't, much, She gave up waiting. It wasn't going to happen without Her, She finally decided.

Indeed she realised finally that her mission on earth was to bring lightness and perspective to the whole cross, resurrection, egg, rabbit drama. To bring fun where He had brought fury and a cross to bear for all eternity. He was never meant to take it that far. He was not even supposed to tell anyone He was the son of God. God knew that would cause trouble. God is essentially a comedian, you see. He much prefers to make fun than fury.

So here She is, Jesus's sister, the daughter of God, dressed as a giant bunny earlier today at the local Domain, looking down on Jesus and his heavy cross, suggesting that He give himself a break and wear more suitable shoes for such heavy work.

Better still, put the thing down for good and join the party; the giant funny bunny can take it from here (nb: the bunny suit makes Jesus's sister look much fatter than she actually she is).

Happy Easter!

 

The glad flag

So a bit of good political news for a change...(see here for media analysis).

The costly pet project of our fern-friendly PM to change our national flag to a recognisable sporting brand, neither Maori nor British, has failed.

What I like best about this failure of John Key's is that he has been hoist by his own petard.

Right-wingers are invariably conservative creatures, most of them being rich white men who want to hold on to the system that made them rich. Key is a quintessential right-winger in this respect. The only change conservative men like him can envisage is to the marketing of things, which generally means the trivial and largely cynical re-branding of the same thing to look like a different thing in order to con people into spending more money. This is what Key's fern flag was to be, a costly attempt to re-brand New Zealand to con people into thinking real change had actually happened.

Populist conservative politicians like Key might support more substantial changes like marriage equality because it would be bad marketing not to -- as his people no doubt tell him -- but they could never initiate such a substantial and progressive reform themselves. They wouldn't think of it, they couldn't be bothered, because it's not about money, and then they wouldn't dare.

But real changes needed to challenge the deep, getting deeper, social, racial and economic divisions between people in societies like ours, these rich white conservative men (and some women) not only won't implement, but invariably exist to reinforce, as the Key government has systematically demonstrated.

His first move in government was to abolish healthy foods in schools, a recently introduced Labour party initiative to combat childhood obesity and other poor-health issues that are far more prevalent in lower decile schools than upper decile schools. His second was to increase the national flat tax on all goods and services while drastically reducing the income taxes paid by the wealthy.

But back to the flag...

The only socially progressive reason for NZ to change its flag is to recognise the indigenous Maori as the first people of this land and thereby distinguish our nation from other British colonies. To this end I think this Maori take on the Union Jack is promising, with the Union cross cleverly spelling out 'NZ'. And with a bit of colour tweaking to incorporate some British blue, more cross-cultural red, and a little less black, could suggest a viable alternative to the current flag.

But for now it's enough good news that John Key is taught the vital lesson that a country is not a business, or a sports team, to be re-branded on a personal whim, as if the past and its peoples never happened and we're all one big fern-friendly family now. We're not. But we might be, given time and consistent and sustained real change.



   



 

The Bond Con

The media made a big deal of 'the oldest ever "Bond girl"' in the latest Bond film, Spectre as evidenced by this title given to an article in The Mirror on how this freak of cinematic nature manages to look sexy at such a mighty age.

This would be all very well and good if it were true, even though it remains deeply condescending given that the woman in question, Monica Belluci, is clearly still sexier than most women (not to mention men) on screen, and only three years older than Craig.

But the bigger problem is that she's barely the Bond girl, or 'woman' as some media manage to call her, doing their best to acknowledge her maturity without wishing to insult her, or the film, directly. She's the Bond bit on the side, more like, only appearing in the first quarter of the film, as if to get her at her youngest - or least old, rather. After that she is replaced poignantly, and clumsily, for the remaining three-quarters of the film, by an actual girl, an actress more than twenty years her junior and as young as they could get away with without her relationship with the 48-year-old Craig coming across as creepy.

Somehow this makes the fuss over Belluci's inclusion in the film all the more patronising to women, while likely a cynical gesture by directer Sam Mendes to increase female interest and media buzz in the film, clearly aimed at teenage boys and men.

Indeed this is the issue of the moment in Hollywood, the ongoing targeting of big-money films to young males and the lack of leading parts for 'older' (over 30) women in those films as a result, because boys - and men of any age - it seems, want to watch boys and men, and - more briefly and preferably without their clothes on - very young women. At least that's what Hollywood believe and argue box-office sales prove true.

Men and boys (directors, producers, writers and viewers alike) are, most of them, sex snobs. We know this. But to what extent do we make them this way, that's what we don't quite know or want to know.

Personally I think we are deeply complicit in male sex snobbery, with Hollywood et al in the film industry, the most complicit of all. The latest Bond film proves this in trying, cynically and condescendingly, to amend this blatant snobbery and failing almost entirely, exposing instead its desperate depths and time-worn resistance to change.

Sally Field in the latest TIME has a strong opinion on this issue, based on her many years of film and TV sexism experience. She knows what she's talking about, as most Sallys do.

Indeed sex snobbery has long testicles (oops, Freudian slip. I meant to say tentacles). And the longest of all of these testicles (oops) reaches into real life relationships between men and women and eventually tears them apart, because any boy/man who has been raised to prefer the company of men will struggle to sustain a healthy relationship with a woman over 30, indeed with a woman full stop, not a girl.