Coming Through Slaughter

Here’s my Friday.

Was woken up at 7:48 am (yes, it’s going to be one of those turgid stories) by my cellphone – that Baxter has colonised as his personal alarm clock (so don’t ever ring me on it: there’s no point) – looked out the window expecting, after the wild and cold night, at least a flutter of snow. But there’s nothing. Just cold. And the wind.

An Otago Student, a girl from Malaysia, died yesterday when the car she and her friends were in plunged down a steep bank at the head of Lake Wanaka and into the icy waters. My son had a near miss earlier in the week. Driving home to Christchurch from Dunedin, he slid in black ice just past Rakaia and his car spun end on end, hitting the bridge again and again until it was a crumpled cartoon car and even the engine had been chucked clear, against the bridge. I picture the next scene as being a bit like the one in Pulp Fiction when Vincent and Jules look around and down at themselves in surprise when the guy fires a hail of bullets at them point blank. Lok and his friend both got out of the car, not quite believing they were not only not dead but had not even a scratch. They even helped the emergency crew sweep the road clear of car bits.

The Uni students were not so lucky, and while I’m brushing my teeth I’m thinking of that surreal plunge from the road, the shock of water. They must have been on their way to the Gates of the Haast that would drop them on the Coast. It would have been the making of them, had they got there. It’s the wilderness you lock into the back of you and know you’re never allowed to let out. Only by physically going to the Coast can you be this person. They never got to discover this about themselves.


The dog nags to be let outside, and she runs around in the yard. Bounding from one side to the other, her hair flattened in the wind. (She looks a bit like THIS dog.) Exhilarated, she races inside and to the bedroom, leaping onto the bed to share her fun with Baxter because she’s forgotten again that he’s not there. She looks shocked, then surprised, looking around at me to find out what I’ve done with him.
“He’s not there” I say.
She looks back again to where he should have been, sort of doggy shrugs, drops herself into the absence and feigns sleep.


I arrive at work – nearly missing the bus as usual, and today in a break with the usual the driver not only followed the exact bus route as laid out in the bus timetable, but also picked up every passenger waiting at every bus stop instead of driving straight past leaving them to mouth surprise like Dr Who monsters – to find some of the other staff and the painter who’s been painting our offices for so long (since January!) he feels like another staff member looking up at the balcony. Apparently, minutes before I came, there had been paint and fire extinguisher foam still dripping down onto the path after some night time shenanigans but now it’s being efficiently cleaned up.

Girls in the night had gone up to the foyer outside the media offices and had their own foam party – the corridor, the kitchen, and the entrances of all the offices, are wrecked with foam. And the contents of leftover cans of paint. Paint-tracked footprints make a wide circle underneath the balcony, and I wonder if that’s how they found the naughtyperson?


“Who has OUSA offended?” was the question.

One of the 3 girls had been caught, and we thought happily of all the unpaid labour we would be getting out of them as they worked off their night of fun. I hope one of them is a hairdresser.


The last fire extinguisher we had up there was stolen in broad daylight; our painter gave chase, but they were gone. Anyone see a pattern? Or do you need three similar happenings for a pattern to be called?
Cleaners came and, as they hailed from the Harvey Keitel school of cleaning, they had every trace vanquished within hours.


At 10, some of us set off for Hopes Funeral place, a place we seem to visit about twice a year every year to support or to say goodbye to people. Today, we sat two rows behind the bereft family, as our friend was forced to say goodbye far too soon to his life’s fulcrum, she taken unexpectedly only on Tuesday. We tried not to think too hard about mortality and its brevity. On the one hand it’s hard to die when every cell in your body is programmed to fight to live, but on the other hand – it happens in the blink of an eye.


David Bain’s retrial is the subject of most half attempted conversations of people coming into the office. The overwhelming opinion is of confusion – isn’t the largest repository of evidence (the family’s house?) gone? Isn’t it unprovable, one way or the other? And we all feel surreptitious and naughty, as if we’re prying into someone’s private business.


Other topics, apart from the fire-extinguisher-storm upstairs, and the unfortunate student, are our confusion about Kiwisaver. Our boss told us of his attempts to get information from the IRD. Having not received any info in the mail as might be expected, he rang a helpline which directed him to another number to ring if you wanted further info packs about the Kiwisaver scheme. But, he was told, you cannot request additional packs if you don’t actually have any original packs for them to be additional to. Some of us were supposed to go to a Kiwisaver seminar this afternoon, but I begged off, promising to read up on the thing on the internet.

US Exchange students returning home have been bringing in their barely used textbooks stipulating they want them to be given only to students who can’t otherwise afford them. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s their GOVERNMENT not them. US students rock.


Mandy, one of our receptionistas, came to say goodbye for the third time as she is heading overseas.
“You’ll be back again to say goodbye tomorrow” I say, forgetting today was Friday.


I’d spent Wednesday afternoon looking for a Matariki calendar to give her as a farewell present. When I rang around bookshops before setting out, all but one said they had them in stock. When I got to said bookshops, the girls behind counters didn’t know what I was on about. It was only in the bookshop where the person who’d answered my call said they didn’t have them in stock that I found one. I also popped into the greatest bookshop in the country for fiction and bought Michael Ondaatje’s new novel Divisadero. On the shelf, in looking for the book, I found Coming Through Slaughter, Ondaatje’s fictional life of Buddy Bolden. I realised I had read this book before. While In the Skin of a Lion is my all time favourite book, Coming Through Slaughter is the Other Book, the Coast book that sticks inside you that you can’t let out unless you are in the right place. And then I remembered that I used to own the book and I don’t think I do any more. I wonder what happened to it? How can such a loved book disappear unnoticed? Or was it a book I never actually owned, but carried inside me only?


Divisadero, so far, seems to be an amalgam of the style of both books. I bought it in hardcover. I’ve never bought a new book in hardcover before. I also, in case you’re a bookish person (if so, why aren’t you reading one now?) bought Ian McEwen's Enduring Love after seeing the movie, with Rhys Ifans in it, and reading the first chapter in a writing course a few years ago. It’s the best first chapter I’ve ever read. Let me see if it exists online anywhere for you. Hey! It does! These people agree with me, calling it the most satisfying first chapter ever.


In the afternoon (yes, longsuffering one, it’s still Friday) a reminder popped up on Outlook “synopsis due for Stimulus in 2 days (two days overdue)”. The theme for the issue is travel and identity. I start off (it’s a quiet afternoon at work) by googling “travel and identity”. Among the many hits from Turkey and the United States about travel and identity (you can guess the sorts of things), I found a webpage devoted to the question “if you came back in time, how could you prove to yourself who you are?” Suggestions mostly were around the use of a password that only you in the present and you in the future would know.

I followed the nodes on the page and, before you know it, I was straying off to gun control in the US, how to know if you are a candidate for time travel, top 100 movie lists and many other nerdy things. I followed the trail until I started bumping up against a wall of solid geek too many times, and gave it up. Good site to lose a couple of hours of your life, though.

For the Stimulus synopsis, I made a list to follow up that says:
- Consider the situation of Ahmed Zaoui
- Twain in NZ
- West coast gothic
- Auge on travel and identity
- Traveller/ tourist
- Travel: holiday or work?
- Traveller/ refuge seeker

I think I’ve run out of time to proceed any further. Have a look at the online anthro/lifestyle magazine though, it’s not bad. More lifestyle than academic.
Okay, we’re on the home straight of Fiona’s Friday. Freaky.

The work day ended with some pondering about who should replace Mandy as the new Awesome Receptionist with Many Magic Powers, and we decided to sleep on it for the weekend. (We’ve been sleeping on it since Tuesday so far.)

At the supermarket, I saw some friends who offered me a lift home. They used to live here up the hill, but they’ve now moved to another part of town so they were particularly kind. We got home, I let the frantic dog out of the bathroom where she must have locked herself (she opens doors) not long after I left this morning, I made them coffee, and by the time they left, less than an hour later, fat flakes of snow were slamming against the windows in a harsh wind. At last.

If you lasted all this way, you’re a bloody hero and I salute you. No, if you've read previous postings, I haven't done any more on that novel thing, but I am working on two short stories and written an article.