As Long as the Red Earth Rolls

 

Jun 8,  2020

Day 79

Today I rested.

Early morning clouds hid the moon again and so the chance to duplicate May’s full moon photograph is gone. “Another time, Highlander”, growls the Kurgon somewhere in the back of my mind.

No quail this morning. Temperature is down into ‘see your breath territory’. Back to sleep for a while. Wake to beauty. Breakfast in bed. Sun streams through the bedroom window.

Valerie and I walked in the midday sun through our compound, seeing areas that need work and noting where a brush stroke here or there would add to the canvas. She inspected the neat double stacked row of foundation posts in the tiny hollow just off the drive and I showed her how I’ll be able to pull them one by one down through a gap in the trees to the worksite. A Tui sang crazily above us and we walked to the top of the drive and up the road for a while. The sun was bright and the sky a turquoise backdrop to the green ridges that frame our land. Back at the entrance to our drive I showed her where I want to build a cantilevered gate that will slide out of the forest on silent bearings when we want to keep the world at bay. We walked hand in hand down the drive cataloging the damage to the ponga done by the drought. We lost at least ten of the tall fern trees along each side, not to mention what has happened throughout the forest. I will harvest the trunks and use them somewhere along the line, honouring their life as best I can.

After lunch I cleaned dead ponga branches from the grove and removed spider webs from the interior walls of the entrance porch. The ease with which they can be seen is probably the only drawback of having black walls. I used a small paint brush and found it worked pretty well, but as I brushed I imagined of a battery powered rotary tool with a bottle brush on the business end…  And added it to the list.

Around mid afternoon Valerie checked the numbers and told me, “Zero new cases and you’ll be glad to know that the one person who’s been holding out has recovered…”  I let that news sink in as I reached for my computer to see for myself. Sure enough, today’s numbers tell the tale…

Zero New cases. One Recovered case. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases and probable cases plus deaths is 100%. Zero active cases.

WHISKEY. OSCAR. WHISKEY.

Bloody marvellous and while not a laurel to rest on, it is a milestone a long time coming and one to be proud of and thankful for. I think I’ll have a beer and raise a toast to us.

 

 

So… Where do we go from here? The country is going to Alert Level 1 for the second time in history. What that means for us is that all businesses will be open with only minor restrictions. Gatherings can be held without regard to size. Social distancing will still be encouraged and the wearing of masks may be mandated on public transport and in certain other situations. Anyone coming into the country will be quarantined for a minimum of fourteen days while authorities examine options  and begin to sort out how to re-open the country to travellers from disease free nations. There will be many more details to iron out, some anticipated and others wholly unanticipated. It’s the nature of the beast.

 

 

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern wisely made it very clear in her announcement today that there will be more cases, but that what we have learned thus far will help us to find, diagnose, track and eliminate any new cases that show up.

 

 

We are in a good place and things are only going to get better.

 

 

All of which has me thinking that my subtitle, Diary of a Pandemic, is no longer appropriate, nor accurate. Especially since it looks as though, for the semi-foreseeable future, any dying I do won’t be because of Covid-19. That being said, I’m still glad I decided to write about it all. At the outset of lockdown the odds were good that it was going to be a serious Charlie Foxtrot and there was no way of telling how it would all work out. http://acronymsandslang.com/definition/7720898/CHARLIE+FOXTROT-meaning.html

 

I’ve learned a great deal in the past three months, not the least of which is that…

 

 

Nevertheless, I have no illusions that it’s over. The fears that started me writing what was, in many ways, my death bed testimonial still exist. They are founded on long years of experience and the events of the first half of 2020 have only strengthened them.

 

 

The Pandemic is still on in the rest of the world. Covid-19 is probably out there for good now, unless smarter folks than I can find a way to put it back in the bottle it was let out of. New Zealand will have to bend like a reed as the storm continues to rage elsewhere.

No man is an island, as Mr. Donne so eloquently said, and that statement applies to islands as well. So we will watch and wait, hope and dream, love and laugh. And I will remember to be grateful for the miracles that I am privileged to see every moment I’m alive, and to thank those of you who have stood by me as I added a few more planks to my raft. It is all I can do. I hope it is enough.

 

 

I hope each and every one of you find your way to the happiness you deserve. Breathe deep and know that no matter what happens to you or yours, this is not the end…

 

 

If the time comes when anyone wants to know more and I’m not around to ask, let it be said that…

 

 

And that he wished for all to…

 

 

 

 

Rome Wasn’t Burnt in a Day

May 18,  2020

Day 58

 

 

In seventeen days it will be the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre.  Remember it while you can. Fifty years from now all records of the June Fourth Incident will have been purged, deleted, or otherwise erased from every institution, library, government archive or online cloud data storage centre. Your children’s children will be speaking to their parents about the great opportunities afforded to them if they are accepted for admission in universities across China. Permission to emigrate to Mars will be among these privileges as well as selection for retirement living on the moon. If you would like to know what it felt like to be alive as the glory that was Rome fell, keep your eyes open. Look around you. It is happening everywhere, all the time now. You can stop it in its tracks with a little determination and some sacrifice.

But that toaster is on sale now. Your call.

 

 

Whitianga was back to its old self today, save for new social distancing methods built into checkout areas and one way traffic in and out of larger stores. Everything was open again pretty much like two months ago. I checked with my new optometrist’s receptionist about whether the doctor would be wearing a mask for my examination tomorrow and we discussed common sense and courtesy and responsibility while I filled out a patient information sheet. Came up with a mnemonic to remember her name (Romeoed what Juliette) and then headed over to New World to help Valerie with the grocery shopping. From there I went to PlaceMakers and loaded up the roof rack with a sheet of form ply, some 2×3’s and 1×2’s. Got some bricks for a path to the new forest porch steps, two boxes of screws and some more silicone roof and gutter sealant. The fun never stops….

Oh, wait… It did stop for six weeks or so, didn’t it? But we did a good job of corralling those infected with the virus and the result is still reflected in today’s numbers.

Zero New cases. Zero Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to confirmed and probable cases is still 95.5%.

But wait, there’s more… Can you see it?

 

 

7 Zeroes on the board for the first time since we began watching these figures. Lucky number seven. Good to see, great to think about and let’s hope that soon we get to the big Zero we’ve all been waiting for.

 

 

 

 

The Sphinx in Moonlight

 

Live well and love. Time is gaining on you.

 

 

Our What?

May 3,  2020

Day 43

2 New cases. 3 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is 85%. Two Zeroes on the board.

Two weeks from now will be the time to watch for new cases numbers to rise as the ‘freedom’ of Level 3 facilitates a higher level of transmission. Until then we’re living on Level 4’s dime.

 

Toady it rained off and on as I worked my way through parts of several projects in the workshop. I made more progress on the ‘grouting’, did another load of laundry and cleaned off the old workbench. This allowed me to move all the parts and pieces of the ‘in progress’ from various horizontal surfaces to the newly swept wide open table top that has been the ‘go to’ workbench in the shipping container for four years. Returning to the space after a lunch of homemade tomato soup and hot roll and butter I discovered there is a small leak from somewhere behind the washing machine. Add another project to the list. Will tackle that on first thing tomorrow as the plumbing needs to be bullet proof. Still and all, there was slow progress on a number of fronts and I am happy.

During lunch Valerie read to me an entry from a fascinating blog she discovered (the author had ‘liked’ one of her posts and she visited his blog as a courtesy and found an intriguing and thoroughly well researched site that I am sharing here.

BEWARE THE WAR IS GETTING UGLIER

I have yet to read any of his work, but on the strength of what I listened to and what Valerie has related to me of some of his earlier posts, I think you may find yourself surprised and also more ‘in the picture’ as to where the west stands with regard to China, and vice versa.

 

 

In the illustration above the west is represented by the guy and China is the girl. (I mention this only because it can be looked at either way.) It is my contention that the west must work hard to reverse this. In order to stave off disaster and economic, if not actual, subjugation, we must create a world in which the west is the one asking, “What relationship?” Failure to do so will condemn our children and our children’s children to a future so bleak that I balk at even trying to imagine it.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mercedes-benz-china-gaffe/mercedes-benz-apologizes-to-chinese-for-quoting-dalai-lama-idUSKBN1FQ1FJ

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/03/21/china-says-dalai-lama-reincarnation-must-comply-chinese-laws/

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/when-china-rules-the-world

 

This is the reality we face and the peril we ignore. It isn’t coming, it’s already here.

 

 

 

I keep saying that I won’t be around to see the worst and Valerie smiles and says, “unless you are reborn into it.” So I’m going to do what I can, where I am, with what I have…to change the future. (Which, at present, isn’t what it used to be.) Wish me luck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Unknown Future

April 27, 2020

Day 35

Today is New Zealand’s last day (fingers crossed) at Alert level 4. Total lockdown has been strange, weird, scary, sobering and somehow exhilarating. As I said at the start of this blog, “Nothing concentrates the mind like a sentence of death”. Events in this country thus far have me feeling hopeful, but I am mindful of the nature of the beast and thus will continue to act as though I am still in lockdown and keep on searching the chaff for the wheat.

Robert Heinlein is one of my all time favourite authors. If you haven’t read any of his works, now would be a good time to start.  In The Notebooks of Lazarus Long he says, “What are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history”–what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future, facts are your single clue.”

Thirty-five days into the new normal and there is not much buzz about a cure or even a high percentage treatment and if there is they’re saying it will be later rather than sooner. On the status board of most of the institutions and governments working in that direction is a sign that says, “Don’t hold your breath”. As of this date, as I write, you can wear a mask or a full face respirator, shop at dawn and swim in a vat of hand sanitiser when you’re done, but, young or old, rich or poor, covidiot or pragmatic prepper, whether or not you’re going to catch it and whether or not you’re going to survive unscathed is still a numbers game.

Today’s are as follows.

Minus 1 New cases today. 38 Recovered cases. Ratio of recovered cases to active cases is 80%.

20% to go…

 

 

 

The Sleeper Wakes

100 words to greet the dawn for old time’s sake and my friends at Friday Fictioneers based on a photo below by Jan Wayne Fields.

(Copyright Jan Wayne Fields)

I rise at dawn and stand by the temple bell to give thanks and greet the morning. Gold paints the forest ridges that rise to the mist shrouded summit of Totokoroa. Calls of bell birds ring across the valley. A breeze ruffles the fabric of the tent. I strike the bell softly. It’s deep, resonant note sounds, and joins the music of the day’s beginning.

I make tea and return to bed. The smoky fragrance of Lapsang Souchong causes a figure sleeping there to stir. I whisper in her ear.

“The sun is on the mountain.”

And she smiles.

 

“….’Twas all Astonishment”

100 words for Friday Fictioneers based on the photo prompt below. And for you…

 

 (Copyright Janet Webb)

“I’m afraid,” cried Samahe as saffron and rose limned the eastern sky.

“Not even time itself will stand in the way of my return,” I whispered into my wife’s thick raven hair.

How the gods must have laughed.

At daybreak I left on the Silk Road, safeguarding a caravan of Lapis-Lazuli bound for distant Seres, far beyond the Taklamakan Desert.

A month out of Samarkand, bandits fell upon us. Carrion crows stripped my bones.

 

I will keep my promise.

 

For eight-hundred years and many lifetimes I have searched for my love.

When I find her I will never leave.

 

 

“Into this life of cruel wonder sent,
Without a word to tell us what it meant,
Sent back again without a reason why –
Birth, life, and death – ’twas all astonishment.”
― Richard Le Gallienne, رباعيات خيام

God of All Things

100 words for Friday Fictioneers a group of writers from around the world who meet at a virtual restaurant every week and choose one story from column A and two from column B. The head cook and bottle washer is Rochelle Wisoff-Fields and the stories are inspired by the photo prompt below from Marie Gail Stratford.

My story is a requiem for two goats, dear friends of a dear friend, mauled to death by a pack of wild dogs on a recent moonlit night. The link to the picture is obscure, but has its roots in the Japanese superstition about not placing chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice.

 

No luck today in my search.

In a shaded grove of tangled bamboo, iridescent Tui’s fill the air with mournful song. A shaft of sunlight bathes a low mound.

Khalil Gibran said, “Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation”.

I don’t blame the dogs. They are man’s best friend in daytime, but at night and in a pack they answer only to the moon.

I do blame the owners and pray we never meet.

In fresh turned earth I stand two lighted joss sticks, one for Brad, now at peace, and one for Calvin, still missing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Nerve (II)

100 words for Friday Fictioneers. (A reposting this week as per Rochelle Wisoff-Field’s suggestion. Coincidentally, I will be on the road for two weeks, so her idea could not have come at a better time.)

When I first posted this story (The Nerve) it was woefully overlong at 147 words because I had yet to master the fine art of slicing, dicing and killing my darlings. For this post I decided to try to pare it down to 100 words. The result, again based again on a fine picture by Mary Shipman, can be read below. For those of you with time on your hands, you might want to check out the original and compare it to this one just to see what got blown away. Or not. I’ll never know. (I’ll try to comment on your stories when I can this week and next, but expect me only if you see me. Mahalo.)

Should I get taken to the Land of Oz on my travels and not be able to find my way back, please know I meant every word I ever said.

I love all of you.

 

Aloha, D.

 

 

Copyright Mary Shipman

 

The funnel cloud writhed, sinuous and silent above rich farmland.

“If you’re going to stay up there, say hello to the Wizard for me,” screamed my wife from the cellar. A shrew and a control freak, she had long ago become oil to my water.

“Courage,” I heard Bert Lahr intone.

A thunderous roar filled the air as the tip touched down across the street and blew the Baum’s house to splinters.

Time to fly.

My last thought before darkness descended was that the witch was finally going to have to get some new wallpaper for the living room.

 

 

In this Life

100 words for the rest of my life.

Based on love, prompted by the photo below from Erin Leary, as a weekly submission for Friday Fictioneers. We are like birds hidden in the tree branches, singing to each other, singing to ourselves….singing because we must. Rochelle Wisoff-Fields keeps poachers at bay and waters the lawn, but doesn’t get paid enough.

Thanks, friend. It’s a peaceful place. Come and sing with us.

 

Copyright Erin Leary

 

He wrote to say he would arrive at the beginning of summer. She named the time and place.

He had been moving in her orbit all of his lives. She had been waiting for years.

Between the great tree where her children played many years ago and the old basalt steps that led down into the park, she let the walls of her reserve fall, then stepped over them into his arms.

He held her and let the light of a new world illuminate him. The fog was lifting, warmed by the heat of memories. She relaxed into his love.

 

 

The Journey

Eighteen minutes until Christmas in Hawaii and eighteen minutes until it’s over in New Zealand. A day apart yet separated by only an hour in the real world. All part of the long now on our journey.

The path can seem lonely at times and yet solitude is one of the great joys in my life. While on Stewart Island at the southern end of New Zealand I sat on a bench along the trail not far from the site of the picture below and listened for a long time to birdsong echoing through the rain forest canopy. I walked empty beaches and thought about the great gyre of life. Cormorant skeletons and millions of shells and a leopard seal skull gave mute testimony to the ephemeral nature of existence.

Doors open. Doors close. Life changes form.

I’m grateful for the fellowship and support of everyone reading this.  It is lovely walking with you.

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or, if you prefer, Serenity.

Mahalo nui loa.

Aloha,

Doug