New Zealand Trip: Part Three

01.01.07

At midnight I was on the deck in the rain, in my pyjamas, with cheese on toast and a cup of tea. It was spectacular.

This year will shift me sharply out of my comfort zone.

Today we’re heading for Rotorua (the tourist trap that smells like fart). When going bush, it’s hard not to piss on your shoes.

NZ landscape is sensual and open.


02.01.07

They wrote the voices inside my head.
Tobi Dante wrote the voices inside my head. This artist is amazing. See it with me: black paint on white canvas. A young boy’s face, eyes filled with innocence & awe, tilted slightly upwards. Look closely – he is made of words, of the voices that fill his head.

We are staying with friends in Papatoa. They have a cockatoo who says, “Hullo,” all the time. My room is set up for their grandchild. I’m writing at a little yellow plastic table that says, “HAPPY.” I’ve found crayons and colouring books. I shouldn’t snoop. But now I may draw.

“We didn’t evolve from Monkeys; we’re from Napier!” – my dad while drinking. Lawl.

Dr Seuss’s ABC: BIG H, little h. Hungry horse. Hay. Hen in a hat. Hooray! Hooray!


03.01.07

We are staying on Queen Street in Auckland. So many cobwebs crowd the window that they hang in thick strands like braids. In the bathrooms, the window glass is textured to give privacy – low, sharp mountain ranges that sparkle brilliantly at night when light shines upon them.

This house belongs to my Aunt’s mother-in-law. She is in her 80s, but maintains this early 1900s building. Originally, it was two separate houses, each with space for a shop downstairs. The owner has cut a door between the two, so now it is a 6-bedroom house, mirrored on either side – two little kitchens, two long sitting-rooms, two tall, lanky stairwells.

The house is curious in that it retains a 30s/40s depression-era feel, in its fawns & browns & pinks, in the wooden furniture & leather chairs, but it also features many kitsch 70s additions. The owner collects, so there’s ageless objet d’art displayed proudly throughout. Books, old & new, are stacked on shelves and on the floor in a nook beneath one of the staircases.

In my room, the carpet is a sort of a thin mustard-yellow shagpile I recognise from my grandparent’s on Meanee Road as a child. In this room, as in others, wallpaper adorns a feature wall, while others are more plainly painted. There’s a fantastic dark-wooded writing desk with little antique vased & pots atop it, and a very 70s pale set of drawers with round concave gold handles. There’s a faded blue painting of an aeroplane. The vaguely striped wallpaper appears to have been affected by damp and I find the resulting stains unnerving. The room is, at the very most, two metres by two metres, and there’s a window above the door. The lightshade is quite 40s – 70s, patterned with tassels. Tudor ceiling. Out the window, I can see into the green garden. Red bougainvillea seeps like raspberry juice over trellis and trees. There’s one of those white lace cast-iron table & chairs sets I like so much.

I do not recognise Auckland. But I love this house.