Tag: family

Children in hoodies playing on playground platform above slide

Things of 2019

Barns2 Comments

Front Page

Warped view of old buildings and trees through thick glass window

Husband. Father. And now homeowner. There is an account with a hilarious negative balance in my internet banking, an unimaginable amount of money until you break it down into x-hundred a week. This will be a key driver of so many decisions about how to spend my time and money over the next couple of decades. At this very early stage, with the first planks of borer-riddled wood uncovered and the first tree toppled by the wind, I am excited to get stuck in and learn how to do things yourself. I’ll let you know in a year whether I still feel that way.

As the kids get older, sleep gradually becomes a priority once more. I’ve done two years of thinking five hours was enough to get by – two before the night feed, three after. Now they are sleeping through more regularly, which means I am too. It’s too early to say whether this means my memory will be restored to full function. In its place, I have written a brief note in a physical diary every day to mark what happened that day. I look back over it sometimes and read what appear to be words written in someone else’s hand, about someone else’s experiences… then I remember, in vivid flashes, and think how much has changed since then.

I have a new job, one that challenges me in new ways every day. I have put out an email newsletter stuffed with book and movie reviews every month of the year. I have written bits and pieces of other things (but never enough to be satisfied). Overall, I am content, if a little unsure of what exactly I’m meant to be doing here, apart from continuing to be a husband and father, neither of which is a bad purpose in itself. I guess this is normal for a lot of people in their mid-thirties.

Film

Children standing on table in sunny room watching looking to right
Watching MOANA

Looking back over my viewing log on Letterboxd, I saw more new (or newly released to NZ, at least) films in 2019 than I thought I did. The answer is the increasingly up-to-date nature of movie streaming. Which is also the defining story of the decade in movies, but if you are anywhere close to the average viewer, who now most likely watches everything down a 100% legal cable from servers on the other side of the world, you’ll know this already.

Going to the cinema is a different story, which is actually the same story. Six NZ International Film Festival screenings aside, I went to the movies four times in 2019. Gone are the fantastical days of my early 20s when I would go to something every week, usually at the now-demolished Regent on Worcester in Christchurch. I could be indiscriminate in my viewing as there was so little riding on each $8.50 ticket: if this week’s film was rubbish, I’d be back the following week anyway. Now, with marriage and parenting and a house to make over, it’s likely to be months between screenings. I have to choose carefully.

I can’t judge. The streaming revolution has come at exactly the right time for me, syncing perfectly with my need to kill time cradling a small child in a darkened room most nights. I am worried about the future, though. My parents are now able to go to the cinema more or less whenever they like, and they are taking full advantage, which is great. They are now invariably the ones filling me in on the latest releases. Will there be enough picture houses around to serve me when I reach that stage of life, though? How much longer can ‘going to the movies’ hang onto relevance, and how detached can it ever be from the octopoid Disney corporation, who will surely decide the answer to the question?

I wait in hope. But in the event it all crashes down, and those who want to watch anything on the big screen have to go cap in hand to the guardians of the galaxy, I am steadily rebuilding a collection of physical media to keep me – and my family – going. A title can disappear off Netflix or Disney+ at the click of a button. No one can take away my PAPRIKA Blu-Ray.

*

Enough of that. Taking screen size out of the equation, I saw 24 new-to-NZ films in 2019. In the order I saw them, with hasty ranking in brackets:

THE SISTERS BROTHERS (7)
RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET (21)
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (6)
WHERE HANDS TOUCH (19)
HOMECOMING: A FILM BY BEYONCE (16)
DEADWOOD: THE MOVIE (4)
WIDOWS (14)
UP THE MOUNTAIN (2)
MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL (22)
HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING (15)
PONOC SHORT FILMS THEATRE, VOLUME 1 – MODEST HEROES (11)
CHILDREN OF THE SEA (23)
AQUAMAN (24)
THE HATE U GIVE (10)
WEATHERING WITH YOU (20)
EIGHTH GRADE (3)
LEAVE NO TRACE (5)
WHEN THEY SEE US (1)
YARDIE (17)
US (12)
THE IRISHMAN (9)
MADELINE’S MADELINE (13)
MARRIAGE STORY (8)
STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER (18)

*

One more quick word for an unfinished project of 2019, which was to watch 52 films by black directors. I reached 28. I wouldn’t call it a failure, though, because it opened my eyes to many new ways of seeing and thinking, and it showed me how rare it has been throughout film history for a dark-skinned person to be handed the reins. Thankfully, that rarity is becoming less of an issue, both in the multiplexes and the arthouses, not to mention the big streaming platforms.

This one will carry over into 2020, and you can track my progress here. In the meantime, some highlights so far:

TRAINING DAY
I AM NOT A WITCH
BELLE
I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE
THE HATE U GIVE
WHEN THEY SEE US
GET ON THE BUS

Books

Twin girls on woman's lap reading book with teenagers on sofa
Stages. Reading with Auntie Rach

Look, I read and I read and I read, often outside my privilege, black women as often as possible, and I give five stars on Goodreads and waffle about how my mind was broadened and everyone should read this, but I couldn’t actually have a conversation anything like the ones in the books I’m reading. I can tell you yes, I have read that book and it’s brilliant; I can’t explain to you exactly why.

They say it so much better than I could! And anyway, why listen to me? Another beardy white bloke with his reckons. Get some Maya Angelou or some Bernadine Evaristo into you. They are the ones who merit your attention.

I’ve sought purpose in being a promoter of underprivileged voices, but I’m increasingly finding that ground shaky, a cop-out – especially when you look at my corporatist lifestyle and weasel words about giving up meat and fast fashion and Facebook and hopefully volunteering some of my time at some point in the not-too-distant future. I feel that if I’m out here saying anything, it should be something worth hearing. I also feel like my thinking is not refined enough to adequately parse and summarise what I learn from these books.

What I really want is to let their words sit, drift off into my own meandering thoughts, and produce art of my own that can stand up to critique from people who understand identity and privilege better than I do. Tara always says I am one of the dreamers; that is what I do here, read and dream, which does nothing for oppressed people beyond the tiniest signal boost here and there.

The defence might be that putting so many other voices in my head one after the other – especially with books like NEW DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA and GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER, which themselves contain many points of view – makes them hard to assimilate. That no person can become woke in a hurry, and to pretend you are is to perform it. But I never want to let myself off that easily.

So I continue to read, and listen, and kick the can of action another year down the road, expecting myself to one day be useful to people less privileged than myself.

*

For all that pessimistic navel-gazing, I had a great year of reading. Books I loved:

THE 10PM QUESTION by Kate De Goldi (2009)
MAN ALONE by John Mulgan (1939)
INTERPRETER OF MALADIES by Jhumpa Lahiri (1999)
THE BOOK YOU WISH YOUR PARENTS HAD READ by Philippa Perry (2019)
THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
THE RIGHT STUFF by Tom Wolfe (1979)
TRICK MIRROR by Jia Tolentino (2019)
MORIORI: A PEOPLE REDISCOVERED by Michael King (1989)
KID GLOVES by Lucy Knisley (2019)
NEW DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA edited by Margaret Busby (2019) (if I was going to pick one to recommend, this would be it)
THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969)
I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS by Maya Angelou (1969)
TO BE TAUGHT, IF FORTUNATE by Becky Chambers (2019)
GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Bernadine Evaristo (2019)
KINDRED by Octavia E. Butler (1979)

Books I disliked:

HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad (1899)
A MESSAGE TO GARCIA by Elbert Hubbard (1899)
AND THEN THERE WERE NONE by Agatha Christie (1939)
FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC by VC Andrews (1979) ← absolute trash

For the very keen, here’s my reading list for 2020.

Politics

Children in hoodies playing on playground platform above slide
Waiting for a turn: playground diplomacy

People just want the mob who will get things done. It doesn’t matter what things.

The most hated section of society is the group(s) perceived to be sitting on their backsides – for the purposes of my argument, beneficiaries and civil servants – while the rest of us struggle in the real world. Votes therefore follow the politicians who present themselves, however facetiously, as not only just like you but actually capable of changing things. Because things are so bad, right? Surely any change has to be better than this!

That’s why the Conservative Party is going to Get Brexit Done. That’s why Trump is there doing whatever it is he actually does. That’s why, in 2020, the National Party is likely to replace NZ’s “part-time Prime Minister” – a classic slur against working mothers – and “part-time Government”. Whether or not things are actually changing, it’s the image of executive capability that brings votes in.

As for who can actually bring about lasting positive change in society, I wish I knew. But I’m sure there are some great books written by other people on the subject.

(I also wrote this bit of commentary after the March 15 terror attacks.)

Sport

Selfie with bearded man and young boy
Hanging out with nephew Lyo during CWC ’19

As I write this, my beloved Liverpool are the best football team on Earth. Not just the Champions League holders and Premier League leaders, but probably capable of winning the World Cup if they were dropped into it. It’s an amazing and unfamiliar feeling, almost unsatisfying after so many years of not quite being up at that level, but then I watch another inch-perfect cross-field pass by Trent Alexander-Arnold and just revel in the moment.

The rugby, I barely noticed. Watched NZ lose the World Cup semi-final to a much better team. About time we went through that as a nation again.

The cricket. Oh, God, the cricket. I apologise if you thought I was done with hyperbole, but the World Cup final was the greatest game of sport I’ve ever seen: tense all the way, with several genuinely jaw-dropping moments of skill and luck. I say all this even though my team lost – except they didn’t! I won’t try and explain any of this, but this video may give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uw5QzbDCbI

*

Late in 2019, Shed 1 started recording videos of our lunchtime five-a-side indoor football matches and uploading them to the Glory League website. Privacy implications aside, I’ve found it fascinating to review my own performances back and assess what I am doing well or not well. It’s a relief to learn the kind of footballer I actually am – basically, a lumbering giant with decent technique and passing range and absolutely no hope of outpacing anyone – isn’t that different from the kind of footballer I thought I was.

Travel

Young children laughing in back of car
On the road again

We pulled into a large bay at the side of the road on a blazing hot February day in the Bay of Plenty, I think to make sure Nora was buckled in properly. When we set off again, I drove to the left of a large pile of gravel, thinking our Nissan Teana would pass just as easily over the stones on either side. I was wrong.

With the gravel mountain immediately to my right, I heard the undercarriage crunch angrily into stones that were much deeper than I’d anticipated. To my left, Tara knotted her brow in worry. I thought we’d get through if I pressed a little harder on the accelerator. I was wrong.

A louder crunch, a lurch up and to the left, and spinning wheels when I put my foot down. We were stuck. I had marooned my wife, my one-year-old kids, and myself in a hot car miles from anywhere. Panicking and swearing, I leapt out and examined the extent of our submergence. The right rear wheel was slightly off the ground, while the right front wheel was concealed to about a quarter of the way up the tyre. I began scrabbling desperately at the hot, dusty stones, giving myself blisters that would remain red with blood for days and making no discernible impact on the heap in which the car was entombed.

You won’t be surprised to learn my further attempts to drive us out of our predicament only lodged us deeper into it.

As I walked around and around the car, head in hands, still swearing, a van-load of leather-skinned East Coast types pulled over and bounded to our aid. “You guys need a push?” “Bloody hell, it isn’t coming out of there.” “Come on, here we go.” And they just heaved the Teana backwards out of its prison, back to solid(ish) ground. Then they buggered off, waving away my almost tearful thanks. “Drive to the right, eh? This way. To the right. Yep, that’s it. See ya later.”

I choose this story to tell from our Big Family Holiday in Taupō, Ohiwa, and Rotorua, which contained many highs and lows, because it illustrates the precariousness and blind luck of successful travel with young kids. Will they nap when they’re supposed to? (Sometimes.) Will road works bugger the whole schedule? (Always.) Will we get any sleep? (Rarely.) Will we, their hopeful parents, make good decisions that benefit the whole family? (In this case, no.) On the road, you are always ten seconds from disaster or glory. There were some calm hours reading under a tree in the sun, thank goodness, but the bits I remember most are the moments of triumph and chaos, moments that cut through all the noise in your head. I guess that’s parenting in general, too.

Music / Podcasts

It was tempting to choose Blanck Mass’s ‘Wings of Hate’ as my track of 2019, which brings to mind a fiery phoenix soaring high, turning everything we love to ash in its wake. Like the evil guy winning at the end of a horror film. Instead, I give you the mysterious and magical ‘Movies’ by Weyes Blood:

I love movies, too, and the way this song gives language and melody to the way I love them was impossible to resist. I felt seen. I’m going to see her perform it live in 2020 and the anticipation is such that disappointment is assured.

Other new music I enjoyed in 2019:

Edwyn Collins – Badbea
Jenny Lewis – On the Line
Sturgill Simpson – Sound & Fury

That’s not including a dozen or so new releases I listened to once or twice, might have enjoyed or barely noticed, then never listened to again. There were new ones from Angel Olsen and Bedouine, for example, and Charly Bliss, who so captivated me a couple of years ago, and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, back with the pretty spoken word sadness, and Solange, breaking more new ground. I didn’t let these records sit with me.

I don’t know why, but it probably has something to do with my most played songs of 2019 including Teddy Bears’ Picnic by Anne Murray and Baby Shark by Pinkfong. “One more Baby Shark! One more Baby Shark!”

It might also have something to do with my obsessive listening to podcasts. These are the ones I kept up with, religiously, until I got a job that doesn’t really allow for five hours of headphones in each day:

Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
Chat 10 Looks 3
David Tennant Does a Podcast With…
Football Weekly
Fresh Air
Papercuts
RNZ: Fair Play
RNZ: Mediawatch
RNZ: Morning Report
RNZ: Saturday Morning
Still Processing
THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST
The Bugle
The Empire Film Podcast
The Guardian Books Podcast
The Trap Door
Two Pros in a Pod

*

In lieu of a 2019 Spotify playlist, I’ve made a 2010s Spotify playlist. Each track on it has, at the very least, a moment that makes me stop whatever conversation I’m in so I can listen to it properly. As always, I’d like to think there’s something on there for everyone, but especially for people who like long and repetitive electronica.

Tech

If I’m at a loose end, I open Facebook or Twitter and scroll for a while. Both of these sites continue to tweak their designs in ways I find less and less appealing, and to remove features I like and replace them with ones I hate. They contain glorious nuggets: a heartwarming video of a friend rolling on the floor with their new child, a dog playing Jenga. As media, they chip away at their own worth in favour of an algorithm-centric model aimed at keeping your fucking eyeballs on their page. All the good stuff, all the actual content, is contributed by users for free.

I have to stop this. Tara catches up on popular culture and popular tweets by reading Buzzfeed lists, and I’m finding it increasingly hard to argue for sticking with social networks that not only refresh away the thing I was looking at but also promote anger and division. So I’m going to spend more time reading ebooks, reading articles in Pocket, and writing my own rubbish. Not cold turkey; no, that never works. A new suite of phone-based habits to balance the scales a bit. A lifestyle change.

Also, I got an electric drill for Christmas. I’m going to drill some holes in my new house. There’s some tech with real-world implications.

People

Mother and young daughters smile at camera with father looking into frame from above
The family unit in 2019

I can almost understand why that tech guru on the Fresh Air podcast decided to set up 24/7 surveillance inside his home to ensure no moment of his child’s life would go unrecorded. This is excessive, obviously, and bordering on sociopathic, but I look at my own kids each day and think how much I want to remember about who they are and what they do at this moment in time. Right now as I write this, Tara just said, “I wish we could go back, just for one day,” as she puts together a 2020 calendar from our thousands of photographs from the past twelve months. “Now they’re gone, and they became something new, and we’ll never see them again, except in these pictures.”

The truth is fuzzier than that. Nora and June are developing at an incredible rate, especially their language, but they retain recognisable flashes of their former selves: an eyebrow twitch first seen at a month old, for example, or the tiny bruises that have always just appeared on their shins without any indication of how they got there. If you ask me how they are, I usually explain how well they’re sleeping at the moment because that’s the only aspect of their lives I track with any accuracy. The rest is lost in a haze of unique moments and those several thousand photos, so many as to almost render them useless — almost. But then I go back and trawl through a few to find suitable images to include in this post and a thousand of those moments drift back into focus, filling my brain with sense memories and an emotional high that eventually overwhelms me once more. And back I go to my books and movies to wind down.

Tara remains my partner in the ceaselessly taxing and rewarding endeavour of raising these children. “Nothing confronts you with who you really are more than parenting,” she once said, or something along those lines. This year, I have often been reminded of how close to the surface my anger sits, just waiting for a loose thread to catch on an open drawer so it can explode and dominate everything. Together, we try to support each other through the bad moments and amplify the good ones. Our bleary-eyed, late-night show-and-tell sessions of recent photos on our phones is a joy whenever we remember to do it.

We are also still learning how to communicate with each other in a way that makes both of our lives easier and richer, as I feel good communication in a long-term relationship should. Yes, we still have ridiculous arguments about who should do the night wakeup (“me!” “no, me!”). But I believe we are always getting better at being married, and I think we share a deep satisfaction in each other’s successes, however small.

And around this unit, a small community swirls. We remain lucky to have weekly visits from the kids’ grandmothers and the constant knowledge that a dozen or so family members in the region are there to help us when we need them. But we also had visits from family in Auckland and Dunedin, people we can’t get to easily. And there are the friends who made a point of keeping in contact as we go down the parenting rabbit hole. This time often feels lonely but actually, we and our children are surrounded by people who care.

In 2020, we will extend our household to include Tara’s parents, a huge change in all of our lives. We will drive each other mad with our foibles, and our love. The world is on fire and we gain nothing by marking off our own patches, damn the rest. We must all pull together now.

Things of 2018

Barns9 Comments

Front Page

Kapiti Island on a cloudy day over the Tasman SeaThe great rearrangement of 2017 is now firmly established. I am married with two kids, and my life revolves almost entirely around those facts, except for a long window every weekday during which I sit in an office and earn money. I watch in fascination as my now one-year-old children develop, especially when I look at photos from a month or more prior; you don’t see how they’ve grown until the evidence of their past limitations is in front of you.

What else can I tell you? I am a little less lazy but ache a lot more. I would like to own a home but am very happy in my current rental, which provides three bedrooms and a sunny, leafy backyard. I have a good, stable job. My short-term memory is suddenly appalling, a casualty of sleep deprivation. And I still have a need to write, but I’m less interested in writing about myself than ever. Now here are 3500 words all about me.

Health

Writers and podcasters have contributed a lot of morbid fodder to my resting state of mind this year. This is no doubt partly a function of getting a bit older, and of having kids, and of having a minor brush with my own mortality in 2017, but there’s certainly never been so much public discussion of The End in my lifetime. The main influencers into my brain have been Cariad Lloyd’s podcast Griefcast and Leigh Sales’ book Any Ordinary Day, but I feel like death is highlighted in plenty of other places, too. There’s also the spectre of climate change, too big and scary for me to sit and contemplate, a large-scale existential threat galloping over the horizon and into plain view.

Tara and I often joke about who will die first. The basic meaning is ‘I’m dying first because I don’t want to have to be the one to go on alone’. It isn’t really a joke, we both mean it. I am starting to think it’s a bit flippant, though, when so many people press on after the untimely death of someone they love, and when so many people would give anything to live a little bit longer. In December, I learned that a Twitter friend in their thirties had died, and wrote about how the broader availability of grief is a strange side effect of this age of conceded privacy. We have so much more information at our fingertips now, from details of the latest mass shooting to an online acquaintance’s taste in romance novels. It means that death and dying, like everything else, is that much more immediate in our lives, and that much more likely to appear on our radar.

But don’t worry! There are no signs of impending doom in this house. Even during these, ‘the tired years’, as my father-in-law put it, we are all healthy and mostly happy. Although I have often had to substitute calories and caffeine for sleep. The way I see it, that’s just part of the deal, something to iron out when I get a minute to breathe.

Music

I tended to return to old favourites in 2018, often long and repetitive electronic tracks (five hours’ sleep a night will have that effect). And to my good fortune, three of my most favourite favourites brought out new music during a two-week bonanza in September:

Aphex Twin — Collapse EP (good)
The Field — Infinite Moment (very good)
Orbital — Monsters Exist (not so good)

At this point, I can confidently call The Field (aka Axel Willner) my favourite musician. He’s so reliable. Every new release satisfies for many listens; I tend to have my initial favourites, then enjoy more and more of the album until I don’t really see any dead wood. It was a pity the new Orbital — after a long hiatus — only sparked intermittently, but I think they had their time in the 90s, and what a time that was. As for Aphex Twin, he’s still a genius who makes music no one else could even imagine.

There were a few other new records I found in 2018:

Sarah Blasko — Depth of Field — Blasko’s gone all out for hits here and nailed a few. I even heard one in the supermarket the other day. Very catchy tunes in her familiar soulful, whispery voice
Jonny Greenwood — Phantom Thread Original Soundtrack — just love this, listened on repeat for a good while, grand and romantic
Robyn — Honey — glittery, perfect pop with great lyrics and earworm melodies. Tracks seven and eight threaten to sabotage the whole thing but the rest of it is so damn good
Leon Vynehall — Nothing Is Still — what a discovery! The shimmery Brooklyn Bridge on the cover looks at first glance like trees parting in a forest, and that’s kind of what the music is like, shifting textures and moods from track to track. My favourite album of the year
Marlon Williams — Make Way For Love — he’s got ‘it’

I’ve chucked a track from each of these records into a ‘Barns Picks 2018’ playlist on Spotify. Bit less variety than previous years, so hopefully your tastes overlap exactly with mine.

https://open.spotify.com/embed/user/1230979649/playlist/3AfEtddCUjsh10w37msHSH

Politics

At this point in the devolution of our political discourse, is it more effective to debate with calm reason or to loudly insist your opponent fuck off? We all know by now that arguing politics (or just about anything, especially on the internet) only leaves both sides more entrenched than before, so surely it’s better, when faced with abhorrent racism, misogyny, homophobia, or greed, to drop a few choice insults and leave the situation?

I haven’t had the opportunity to test this choice in real life. People tend not to confront each other on the street, at least on the streets I walk. I spent a sizeable chunk of 2018 thinking about it, though, especially after recently seeing this unpleasant video, which takes only 23 seconds to summarise where we’re at.

I’ll describe so you don’t have to watch it. The scene is, I think, Palmerston North — it isn’t clear in 240p. A group of women cross the street holding placards and chanting slogans. They are protesting the then-National Government’s sale of government-owned assets. The man holding the camera forcefully tells them to “go back to the commune” and insults one in particular for her appearance. He says all this in much fewer words than I’ve used here. His tone is jocular, mocking; you can almost hear the smile on his face. He is relishing the opportunity to get stuck into such contemptible people.

Notice how the man’s response has nothing to do with what the group is protesting. Their argument does not interest him for a second. He has already dismissed it and moved straight to ad hominem attack. Almost all of the comments under the video on YouTube are positive, calling him a legend and wishing they had the presence of mind to be so profoundly and articulately rude to strangers.  The acquaintance of mine who shared the video on Facebook captioned it, simply, ‘classic’.

“This might be a dangerous time for politeness,” writes Rachel Cusk in her essay The Age of Rudeness. She gives a few examples of situations in which rude or overbearing behaviour is confronted, sometimes rudely, sometimes politely. Her sort-of conclusion is that politeness at least acts as a compass in navigating the world, allowing you to respond consistently to toxic acts and to let them bounce harmlessly away as you continue living your life. If someone is as rude to me as the man in the video, though, or as rude as the man I saw the other day yelling abuse at a fellow Coastlands Mall patron for their poor parking, I’d feel within my rights to take back some of the space they’d snatched with a few angry words of my own.

What does all this have to do with politics exactly? Well, we can tut at other Western democracies as they spiral into ugly, unstable, evidence-denying shitshows and say ‘it couldn’t happen here’. But it could.

Sport

Grandparent, mother, and babies playing soccer in the park

I finally got back into indoor football this year, joining a work team and playing at lunchtime every couple of weeks. Things learned during these fortnightly escapades:

  • I am not in my twenties any more and cannot expect my limbs to consistently execute skills as instructed by my brain
  • I am fortunate to maintain decent natural fitness despite limited concerted exercise and regular potato chip consumption
  • It’s more fun to lose alongside teammates who pass the ball than to win alongside teammates who don’t
  • There is always that one guy who takes it a little bit too seriously, even though it is mixed five-a-side and we are all on our lunch breaks

I lacked confidence to begin with, and struggled to trust my body to win one-on-ones or dribble past opponents — and with good reason. As the matches have totted up, though, I’ve reached a point where I think I’m a half-decent player. I commit at least one clanger per game, for sure, but all of us do.

A more pressing concern now is the broken lock on the shower door at work. No one else uses that shower, so I’m not at great risk of having to frantically hide behind my towel, but I do hope the building manager returns from annual leave soon and sorts it out.

Film

According to my Letterboxd log, I watched 91 films in 2018. My most watched actor was Edward James Olmos (probably because I saw both BLADE RUNNER films in November). My most watched director was Brad Bird (that’ll be TOMORROWLAND and INCREDIBLES 2). So I must have hopped around a fair bit.

It was my most prolific film-watching year since university days. The reason for this is the night feed. If I’m not sleeping, but the light has to be low, and I know I’m going to be up for at least an hour, what am I going to do? Simple: watch movies.

Because I love a project, and ways to whittle down the unmanageable gargantuan morass of films available to watch, I jumped the #52filmsbywomen bandwagon this year and cracked #55filmsbywomen in the end. Some things I learned:

  • It is not hard to find interesting films made by people who aren’t sex offenders, bullies, or otherwise problematic in their actions
  • Plenty of first-time female directors made mediocre films but weren’t given another chance easily, unlike their male counterparts
  • Women seem to me to have a broader appreciation of the breadth of human experience, possibly from empathy conditioned over millennia, and tend to present more complex characters as a result
  • Seeking out female directors led me to take more notice of who the writers, producers, and directors of photography were

And here are some standouts from the exercise:

  • THE HOUSE IS BLACK (1963) dir. Forough Farrokhzad
  • WANDA (1970) dir. Barbara Loden
  • A QUESTION OF SILENCE (1982) dir. Marleen Gorris
  • AN ANGEL AT MY TABLE (1990) dir. Jane Campion
  • POINT BREAK (1991) dir. Kathryn Bigelow
  • BANANA IN A NUTSHELL (2005) dir. Roseanne Liang
  • WHIP IT (2009) dir. Drew Barrymore
  • FISH TANK (2009) dir. Andrea Arnold
  • MEEK’S CUTOFF (2010) dir. Kelly Reichardt
  • WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (2011) dir. Lynne Ramsay
  • ARTHUR CHRISTMAS (2011) dir. Sarah Smith
  • ENOUGH SAID (2013) dir. Nicole Holofcener
  • 52 TUESDAYS (2013) dir. Sophie Hyde
  • ZERO MOTIVATION (2014) dir. Talya Lavie
  • THE RIDER (2017) dir. Chloe Zhao

Next up, I was going to do 52 films by ‘people of colour’ but that category is so general in a global cinematic context as to be worthless. Instead, I’ll try for 52 films by black directors — the definition of ‘black’ cinema is tricky but African and African-American movies will be good places to start.

Tech

Tech.jpgThanks largely to the beneficence of family, 2018 saw me get a new phone, two TVs, and a Blu-ray player. Of these, the Blu-ray player is both the most exciting and the least used. We just don’t get time to watch many movies. But it has been fun starting yet another collection of physical media about to lapse into obsolescence. How, in the all-digital age, will we display the books and movies that mean something to us? It’s so interesting to walk into someone’s house and cast an eye over their bookshelf and their DVDs, and these displays are such effective shorthand for saying ‘this is who I am’. Are we going to lose that, too, along with the bookstores and video shops?

As for the phone, I didn’t need a new one, but the old one was getting a bit old. It is nice to have a chosen app open as soon as I press the icon, or register a keypad press in real time. Of more concern now, though, is how we are going to raise our children to have a positive and active relationship with screen-based technology. It hasn’t been difficult to leave the phone in my pocket and focus on the kids once I get home from work, but as they get older and more aware of the myriad capabilities of these revolutionary devices, it would be nice for them to see them as objects of freedom and not limitation, and an augmentation to the physical world around them rather than a replacement for it. Keeping the kids away from such devices forever is not going to help with that.

The more pertinent issue may be that my attitude to technology is itself already becoming obsolete, so pushing that stance on my kids could be more damaging than I ever intend it to be. Many schools already demand most kids work on laptops or tablets; the future world of work is likely to require high-level computing facility, including the ability to code. I will do my best to pay attention to my growing kids and keep an open mind as technology advances (and hopefully doesn’t eat us all).

Books

Father with twins readingMy wife was shocked when I told her that if I had to choose between books and movies, forsaking the other for the rest of my days, I’d choose books.

“What! But you’re Barns! You’re the movie guy!”

Yes, that has been true for a long time. And I think I still understand movies better than books. But where movies are more fundamentally concrete — you can’t imagine different images or sounds than those presented on the screen — there is infinite possibility in a book: a world to disappear into, a character to examine closely, a story to carry you along, all projected in the cinema of the mind. Books are magic, books are philosophy, books are time travel. I’ll never be able to read everything I want to, even if I were to devote all my film-watching time to books. I find this thought comforting.

In 2018 I continued my reading programme, begun the previous year, of reading almost exclusively works written in years ending in the same numeral as the current one. That meant a master reading list of books from 1918, 1928, 1938, etc., all the way up to 2018, on which I tried to include a half-decent variety of voices.

My goal was to polish off 52 books — one a week. I managed 78. Pretty pleased with that, especially considering 51 were novels or non-fiction. You can view the entire list of 78 here.

Some highlights from my 2018 reading mission:

‘The Rehearsal‘ by Eleanor Catton (2008)
‘In Watermelon Sugar‘ by Richard Brautigan (1968)
‘A Wizard of Earthsea‘ by Ursula K. Le Guin (1968)
‘Rebecca‘ by Daphne du Maurier (1938)
‘Things Fall Apart‘ by Chinua Achebe (1958)
‘Dreamers: How Young Indians are Changing the World‘ by Snigdha Poonam (2018)
‘The Player of Games‘ by Iain M. Banks (1988)
‘The Fifth Child‘ by Doris Lessing (1988)
‘The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids‘ by Alexandra Lange (2018)
‘Plumb‘ by Maurice Gee (1978)
‘Never Anyone But You‘ by Rupert Thomson (2018)
‘Unaccustomed Earth‘ by Jhumpa Lahiri (2008)
‘Normal People‘ by Sally Rooney (2018)
‘Headlands: New Stories of Anxiety‘ edited by Naomi Arnold (2018)

And some disappointments:

‘Young Adolf‘ by Beryl Bainbridge (1978)
‘Finn Family Moomintroll‘ by Tove Jansson (1948)
‘Running Wild‘ by J. G. Ballard (1988)
‘The Public Image‘ by Muriel Spark (1968)
‘The Book of Laughter and Forgetting‘ by Milan Kundera (1978)
‘Snap‘ by Belinda Bauer (2018)
‘Everything Under‘ by Daisy Johnson (2018)
‘The Alchemist‘ by Paulo Coelho (1988)

The ‘year ending in x’ rule is working well for me so far, so I’ve got a heaving 2019 reading list to keep me occupied. Happy reading to all the other readers out there, and put some recommendations in the comments — I’ve got plenty more lists to fill.

Travel

IMG_20181019_185423487Much of our 2018 was spent at home, wedded to routine. For most of the year, the closest we came to travel were two housesitting stints at my brother’s place in Wellington — more a transplantation of the routine than leaving it behind, but still exciting, especially our visits to Khandallah pool in summer, sun-dappled and frothy with kids.

In October, we undertook our biggest expedition with kids yet: a long weekend away in Taranaki to introduce them to Tara’s relatives. Granny — Tara’s mum — joined us to share the load. We anticipated carsickness, restless anger, wariness of so many unfamiliar faces, and no sleep at all; it turned out that a little less sleep than usual was the worst of our problems. They were equally tolerant of long rear-facing journeys and fussing relatives. The great Taranaki Maunga, which is to be made a legal personality, loomed watchfully over us, drawing our fascination whenever it appeared. “Wow! You can see Taranaki from the bathroom window!”

But don’t forget to appreciate the wonders where you live. When you come northbound over the hill at Pukerua Bay, either by car or on the train, and you round the final corner below the village’s pōhutukawa canopy, Kāpiti Island hoves into view — dark and magnificent in the Tasman Sea, its zigzag skyline dominating the vista. Depending on the weather, you might only see parts of it, or not see it at all. If we had had a Hokusai, I could imagine him painting thirty-six views of Kāpiti.

People

Family selfieI couldn’t count the number of people who told me that raising kids gets easier. True, the first couple of weeks of constant floundering through sleep-deprived fog were as intense as anything I’ve experienced. Once you have the basics of bottle sterilisation and nappy changing down, though, it’s just a stream of simple tasks. Relentless, but uncomplicated. Things have only gotten more complex — and, to my mind, much more challenging — as they’ve gotten older. The highs are higher and the lows lower. And still 10+ years before they become teenagers. It really is a rollercoaster!

The hardest part of all has been the maintenance of my marriage, and our mental health. Both recede into the background very quickly when you’re faced with two needy infants and only two pairs of hands. It’s lucky, then, that I’m married to Tara, in whom I have a firm ally dedicated to preserving what we have and improving what we lack. We are in it together, sometimes in battle with one another — usually over stupid shit like who’s less tired and therefore better placed to do the night feed (and not the way you’d expect; we are always fighting to keep the other person in bed) — and taking brief moments where we can to actually look at each other.

Maybe this is where it gets easier. Maybe we’ll get some time back for us, in increments, over many years. In the meantime, the blessing of young kids is their immediacy, how they force you to deal with what’s in front of you and not some imagined future catastrophe (not that this stops the terrible daymares descending in idle moments). And then, when they’re finally in bed, we talk to each other about the day and prepare to do it all again tomorrow, together.

(Together! Man. Who am I kidding? Tara is the one who is home with the kids. She does by far the hardest job; I come home and pitch in for a few hours before bedtime. I do wish we could switch places for a while. She’s so good, though, so conscientious in crafting the best possible childhood for our kids. I can only admire her work.)

We’ve had plenty of support along the way, but especially from Nana (my mum) and Granny (Tara’s mum), who have given up a day each week to come up the coast and help. The best indicator of how successful this has been is in the kids’ excitement whenever they show up, and the tears when they leave. They bloody love them. Our first year as parents wouldn’t have been nearly as fun and coherent without them.

What next? Another bum change. Another night feed. Another train commute. Adelante, as one of our hosts in Spain used to say whenever there was a moment of silence. Forward.

Things of 2017

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A lot changed for me in 2017. I got married. I got my driver’s licence. I moved out of Wellington. I became a father. I had a brush with mortality. Each of these big changes begat dozens more smaller changes, and from the outside, it might seem my life has been upended and rewritten.

My inner life, however, is largely the same. I still like to read, write, and watch movies, albeit with less tolerance for violence and misery. I still dwell on things a bit more than I’d like. Bottle feeds at five a.m. are part of my life now, and the logistics of keeping the roof over our family – going to work, power bills, rubbish collections etc. – fall largely to me, but the piles of books on the floor and incomplete manuscripts on the computer (and dearth of new blog posts) show I am still fundamentally quite lazy.

Still, nothing ever stays exactly the same in your mind. I’m not sure if it was having kids, or just getting older, but I am quicker to anger than ever before. I have become far less tolerant and forgiving of unpleasant behaviour, and I’ve started to speak up more against it. I even began to relish the opportunity to tap into my ire, mostly on other motorists. Actually, this new tendency to anger may be solely attributable to my spending a lot of time – several days if you add it all up – behind the wheel of a car. But, with politics and #metoo and the intersection between them, there was plenty to get angry about in 2017.

It never lasts, though. The worst of times, like the best, are always passing away. The constant shrinking and expanding of life abides.

Health

superficial spreading melanoma stage 1a breslow skin cancerAt the back end of 2016, two months before the wedding, I told Tara a mole on my left ankle had become itchy. Increasingly catastrophic discussion of maladies and death followed, at the end of which she set out an ultimatum: there would be no marriage unless I got a mole map before the wedding date. I’d meant to get one for years, but here at last was an effective motivator.

The session began with a quick brief on what the melanographer was looking for: asymmetry, jagged margins, six millimetres or more in diameter, different colours. “Down to your underwear and we’ll get started,” she said. It wasn’t that uncomfortable; I’m a lot less worried about other people seeing my body than I was at 16, when surgeons at Greenlane carved five ugly lumps out of my body and left unsightly scars behind, or at 19, when a consultant and six student doctors poked and prodded at me on a bed in Christchurch Hospital. On both of those occasions, the surgery and the skin check, it was all just a precaution. I assumed this time would be the same.

‘Possible melanoma’, said the words on the report, referring to a lesion on my inner left forearm. Tara used to call it my yin-yang mole because it had a dark part curled around a light part. We were both rather fond of it. Left unchecked, it could have killed me. Out it came: first in a tight excision, then with a 5mm margin, just to make sure it hadn’t spread deeper or wider. (The mole on my ankle — the one that sparked all this — was fine, unremarkable.)

I have a ten-centimetre scar where the yin-yang mole was, much bigger and more obtrusive than the original lesion. The skin around it is numb or hypersensitive depending on how it’s touched. I feel like a fraud even using the ‘c’ word, given how minimally it had invaded my body and how easily it was treated, but I did have cancer. It sat right there on my arm on hot summer days. Please, keep an eye on your skin, and get it checked if you are in any doubt.

**

All that was nothing compared to my wife’s pregnancy. She carried two babies (and two placentas and a whole lot of amniotic fluid and double her usual blood volume, a good 15-20 kilograms) for 38 weeks, suffered nausea throughout (don’t believe anyone who says it always stops at 14 weeks), lost all her fitness, and ultimately endured major surgery to bring them into the world. She assimilated knowledge of the many possible disasters that might befall her and the children along the way, and she managed these risks with regular adjustments to her behaviour and routine, even if it meant giving up something she loved.

It’s the most impressive physical feat I’ve ever observed up close. And then came the trials of breastfeeding and sleep deprivation, which she is bearing mostly with aplomb. I am in awe of her and her incredible body — forever changed, still recovering, but incredible above all.

Music

This year, I made an effort to hear a good amount of new music. I have this subscription to Spotify, which gives me access to more music than I could ever possibly listen to, and which includes virtually all new releases, even obscure ones. Keeping up with the latest has never been easier.

So, here’s a playlist of some of the best music I came across in 2017. A real mixture. You should be able to find at least one thing on here that you’ll like.

Particular favourites included:

Bedouine – ethereal, Americana-tinged folk by a Syrian-born Armenian; an effortless listen
Blanck Mass – an old favourite, new album World Eater was billed as harsh and abrasive (and this being Blanck Mass, it often is), but it is less of a punch to the face than his previous record and contains many thrilling, spine-tingling moments of beauty
Charly Bliss – Pixies-esque, harsh-edged, incredibly addictive punk-pop that is rougher than the bubblegum bounce its vocals might initially suggest
Grizzly Bear – a five-year wait since the last album, and was it worth it? Well, they’re as tight as ever, but such perfection can feel cold at first; it took me a while to warm to this and once I did, it wouldn’t get out of my head
H. Hawkline – perhaps my album of the year, certainly my favourite discovery of 2017, catchy guitar pop in a crystal-clear Welsh accent, all sounds trimmed clean
Kendrick Lamar – finally listened to this guy and he is outstanding, a percussive and lyrically complex rap artist, in his element as a strong black voice in a year of necessary protest
Public Service Broadcasting – Every Valley, a concept piece about coal mining in Wales, is their best record yet
Slowdive – shoegaze is back with a dreamy new masterpiece from some old hands, I tended to restart this immediately after it finished

But if I had to pick one song, it would be ‘Big Enough’ by Kirin J. Callinan, featuring Alex Cameron, Molly Lewis, and Jimmy Barnes. Silly, earnest, and ridiculously catchy, with Barnesy delivering a best-ever scream, it’s like they made it just for me.

Finally, I got to see one of my favourite bands live this year, and that was Pixies. My expectations were not high; it’s a long time since their peak, Kim Deal isn’t part of the band any more, and their new songs are fine but have none of the thrill or menace of their old songs. But then they wandered out onto the stage and fired up with Gouge Away, one of my favourites, and blazed through a 30-song set with barely a five-second pause between each song. I was carried away.

Politics

Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, stripesA lot happened in politics this year. We got a new government in New Zealand. Donald Trump became president of the United States. Both of these events were dramatic and surprising reversals of the status quo – perhaps not a complete upending of it, but the landscape is undoubtedly changed. And it was all many of us could talk about.

Me, I was personally struck by a couple of political things in 2017. First, during the interregnum, Green Party MP Julie Anne Genter went on Morning Report and explained she was not a party delegate so would not have a vote at the Greens’ conference to determine their approach to coalition negotiations. Genter is a prominent public face of the party; she’s been in Parliament since 2011, is third on the Greens list, speaks for the party on transport and women’s issues (among other portfolios), and has been touted as a potential future co-leader. She comes from a strong professional background in transportation planning. And yet, when the Greens meet behind closed doors, 180-odd delegates unknown to the public have a vote but she does not. This disenfranchisement of MPs within the party might be commonplace across the political spectrum, but that would only make a strange thing even stranger.

Second, I know a few people who refused to vote in this election because they did not feel any of the parties represented their interests. I’ve often defended those who don’t vote because I think it’s undemocratic to compel people to turn out at the polling booth, and I still believe this, but it has started to frustrate me. If you don’t vote because you want bigger change than any of the options on offer, and you aren’t standing for election yourself, how are you going to explain that to those in poverty? To their children? To mine? For all the talk you often hear about NZ politics being mild and samey compared to polarised places like the USA, there are tangible policy differences between parties (and independent candidates) on critical elements of our society: health and education, for example. Do these differences not matter to you? Is the long-term crusade worth some short-term pain?

Sport

I was largely inactive this year, apart from the odd game of beach cricket and a few runs. My appreciation of sport has turned back to the screen: football highlights every Sunday morning, and if there’s cricket happening, it’s on by default, especially if it’s night and Tara thinks she might struggle to get to sleep. “Is there any cricket on?” And if there isn’t, she sometimes asks me to tell her cricket stories, like a spoken word lullaby. “Tell me about Bradman.”

Fortunately, she doesn’t only find cricket soporific. Just the other day, she was disappointed there was no Super Smash on for us to watch together while we fed the kids. So, after four years together, my enthusiasm for cricket appears to have taken root in her.

The next thing is to grow my daughters into White Ferns. To live vicariously through the achievements of my children. To go full Sports Dad. I’m sure that’ll go down well.

Film

I didn’t see many new films in 2017, but I did watch on in thrilled, appalled shock as a succession of sacred relics was picked off for their transgressions. First, Harvey Weinstein’s victims; then Kevin Spacey, Dustin Hoffman, Bryan Singer, and more. It was a familiar story, usually ignored, but this time it stuck. It had everyone — every man, at least — trawling their memory for instances of assault or harassment. I hope it means things are never the same again. (See also: my post on whether you can separate the art from the artist.)

Okay, but what new films did I see? Just these ones, with order of preference in brackets. (Connect with me on Letterboxd to follow my film-watching in real time.)

SILENCE (1)
BEYOND THE KNOWN WORLD (7)
GET OUT (2)
LOGAN (8)
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (5)
THE FATE OF THE FURIOUS (9)
GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY: VOL. 2 (6)
WONDER WOMAN (4)
MOTHER! (3)

Tech

2018TechWith every year that passes, I get further behind the tech curve, safe in my Luddite haven. There are four computers in our house but the newest is from 2012. There are two smartphones, both cheap and a couple of years out of date. There is one television and its projection is via cathode ray tube. There are two cars in the driveway: one from 2000, the other from 1991. Still, I sit on Facebook and Twitter a lot more than I’d like to.

Tangentially related: I have finally come to understand that Silicon Valley innovations, and those of startup culture generally, are not necessarily good for society. Sitting on Facebook and Twitter is the obvious one, especially Facebook, with its unholy quest to capture as much of the global population’s attention as it can. If Uber (a company that will never have me as a customer, for the awfully unimaginative name as much as the dodgy business practices and toxic work culture) reaches its goal of a fleet of ultra-safe, self-driving cars, the roads will become a funnel for capital to Uber shareholders, and they will have the power to shut them down any time they like. So, for that matter, will hackers. Such ideas are presented as a logical next step for our species, an evolution; we all need to pay attention and speak out, with words and dollars, when we see that it isn’t as simple as that.

Books

2018BooksThis year, I undertook a new project: prioritise reading books from years ending in 7. I put together a master reading list of books from 1917, 1927, 1937 etc., aiming for a variety of voices (i.e. female, people of colour) in there, and hoped the jumping around in time wouldn’t be too taxing on my rather comfortable reading mind.

I managed 45 books in the end, most from this project. You can browse them here (and please, add me as a friend on Goodreads if you haven’t already!). The highlights:

‘Summer’ by Edith Wharton (1917)
‘Oil!’ by Upton Sinclair (1927)
‘Trout Fishing in America’ by Richard Brautigan (1967)
‘Consider Phlebas’ by Iain M. Banks (1987)
‘Underworld’ by Don DeLillo (1997)
‘Then We Came To The End’ by Joshua Ferris (2007)
‘Rants in the Dark’ by Emily Writes (2017)
‘The Whole Intimate Mess’ by Holly Walker (2017)
‘The New Animals’ by Pip Adam (2017)

And a few major disappointments:

‘Death on the Nile’ by Agatha Christie (1937)
‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac (1957)
‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1967)
‘Tuesdays with Morrie’ by Mitch Albom (1997)

The same project will go for 2018, and 2019, and so on until I get bored of it. It’s the best time travel we’ve got.

Travel

2018TravelOn the fourth day of our honeymoon, Tara and I hired a two-person sailboat and tacked out to the middle of Muri Lagoon. Neither of us had ever sailed before. “It’s not that hard,” said the incredibly laconic, shirtless man who had drawn some basic diagrams in the sand and sent us on our way.

That first leg was tense. If we weren’t shouting half-baked instructions at each other, we were crouching in uncertain silence. Then we came to the buoy we had pointed ourselves at, and I announced I would try to manoeuvre us around it, so I gently leant on the tiller.

In no time at all, we were whipped around in the breeze, picking up pace as we turned. I panicked and strained to pull the rudder back to a more neutral position. The boat started to list, Tara screamed, and we plunged into the water.

I thought Tara might be freaked out by this, but instead, she roared with laughter. I was confused and distracted for a moment, then I started laughing too. We righted the boat, hauled ourselves up into it, and headed back in the other direction — with Tara at the tiller this time. “My turn! I want a go!”

We must have capsized another six or seven times in the next two hours as we hurtled back and forth across the lagoon. Every time, Tara’s amusement would ring out across the water, drawing stares from sunbathers on the beach. We got terrifically sunburnt and drank a litre of saltwater each, and there was the food and the snorkelling and the cheery hospitality, but that mad sailing experiment was the most fun we had on our holiday.

People

I was a family of one for many years, intermittently linking with brothers and parents but still very much a loner. And then Tara came along and became my family.

Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, beard and outdoor

We were married in February on a day that drove us mad in the planning but is increasingly golden in our memories. Friends and family came and smiled with us in the sun, and if we don’t get to see them much now, at least we got to see them that day. It helps that Meeko & Redge captured such perfect images for us: romantic but not idealised, formal but not constrained. Their photos show our best selves, loving and joyous and a bit messy.

Soon after – thank you, Rarotonga – we found out our family was growing inside Tara’s belly. Soon after that, at the 12-week scan, two blobs on the monitor indicated we would be a family of four. Just like that! And so 2017 became, more than anything, the year of pregnancy: bearing it, managing it, supporting it.

Nora and June were born in November. Because they are my babies, and I therefore see them for several hours a day, observing their subtle developments and interacting with them more and more, they are the most interesting babies in the history of the universe. Their enormous eyes, deep blue and alive, stare out at me (or at least the wall behind me) for several hours a day. Their limbs flail about haphazardly when I plonk them on the change table, or under the play gym, or in the bouncer by the window. The work of caring for them is long and repetitive, but never boring: their continuous development and discovery forces us into the moment.

Image may contain: 1 person, smiling, baby and hat

My dad told me in the lead-up that once they’re out, everything changes. He was right, but not in the way I expected. In Lost In Translation, Bill Murray’s character says at the moment of your child’s birth, “your life as you know it is gone, never to return”. Instead, I feel a great expansion of possibility for all four of us. Easy for me to say as the dad who goes off to work each day and gets barely ten per cent of the social pressure of parenthood, right? But Tara is in the most meaningful ways the same Tara, just like I am the same Barns – valuing the same ideals, preoccupied with the same thoughts, distracted by the same distractions – but with bigger, fuller hearts (and perpetual bags under our eyes). The thought of what lies ahead has never been so exciting.

“the blog has given me a reason and the freedom to enjoy writing again”

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Jill Haszard is the author of Just Bung It In, a blog about being a mum, wife and PhD student. She is also my sister-in-law, married to my DJ brother, and mother to my nephew and one of my nieces. After spending a few years in Sydney in the early part of the 00s, she and her family decided NZ was the place they wanted to be and started making a life in Dunedin; her posts reflect the various aspects of family life in NZ’s deep south – school, work, holidays, the neighbourhood, renovating, househunting etc.

Her words and photographs are obviously very meaningful to me as a close family member, but my enjoyment of them is not merely obligatory. I feel her writing style has just the right amount of detail and is very easy to get lost in – not to mention some charming experiments with the structure of her posts. Seeing my niece and nephew grow through her blog is an important part of my life, and it’s also fascinating and informative to learn more about her PhD study in nutrition.

Like most of my interviewees, Jill is a very busy person, but still found time to answer my questions. I suppose that busy people are much better at getting things done!

***

Why did you start blogging?

To connect with friends and family that live far away. To share photos of my children with those that I want to be a part of their lives.

Have you ever kept a personal journal? If so, do you see Just Bung It In as an extension of that journal?

I have kept journals in the past but I think the blog is quite different because it has that immediate audience. However, I do see my blog as a diary of sorts. It is a record of bits of my life and I really enjoy reading over past blogs and looking at the photos, as I would a photo album or a scrapbook.

What is your first memory of writing creatively?

When I was 5 years old I wrote a story that was at least a whole page long. I drew a picture to go with it and I felt that I had written this epic masterpiece. Mum sent it into the local newspaper and they printed it – I was so proud but it was a reality check to see my story printed in only two lines…. I guess my hand-writing was quite large when I was 5.

I’ve always enjoyed writing to some extent. What I’ve lacked is the confidence that I’m any good at it and I eventually came to the conclusion that it will never be a great skill of mine. However, the blog has given me a reason and the freedom to enjoy writing again.

Describe something that is beautiful to you.

There are only two things in this world that actually make my tummy flip with their beauty: my children. Sorry to be such a cliché Mum!

My daughter’s smattering of freckles; my son’s brown eyes; their knees; their necks; their skin; their lips; all the little parts that amaze me. When they are busy and lost in their own little worlds I don’t want to take my eyes off them because they are absolutely stunning to me and perfect in that moment. Nothing in this beautiful world even comes close to the beauty that I see in my kids.

You maintain a posting frequency of about once or twice a week, despite being very busy. Do you set specific time aside in your weekly routine to write, or is it whenever you get a chance?

If I go for longer than a week without posting a blog Mum rings me up and complains. I write for my Mum!

I do prioritise blogging because it is something that is important to me. I also know that if I left it three weeks, or more, it would become this massive task to catch up and I don’t have the time to do that. So even if it is just a small story, a thought or a stack of photos, I keep it chugging along so that things don’t get away from me. I don’t put too much pressure on myself to make it perfect, I just do it (hence ‘That’ll do’) and that works for me. Usually a Saturday night offers itself to blogging.

Has your blog helped you in other areas of your life?

Interesting question. I’m going to say yes to that one because it helps to form my ideas and thoughts more. When I’m mulling over something I want it to develop and mature a bit before it becomes a blog topic. Also, having a blog about my life helps me to see the good side of things. It helps me to see myself as worthwhile. Oh, and I can’t forget that the regular writing will probably have been a good thing when I come to write my thesis – eek!

Do you feel that you have complete control over ‘Just Bung It In’, that it has a life of its own and evolves on its own, or somewhere in-between?

I feel I have total control over it. It’s my life story really and I pick what goes in there!

Is there a post on your blog that you are most proud of?

No I don’t think so. The blog posts that I enjoy rereading the most are the ones with pictures of holidays and the little stories of things that my kids and husband do. In the end, this blog is for me.

Name two countries: one you’d like to visit, and one you’d like to visit again.

At this time in my life I have no pressing urge to travel the world. I love New Zealand. My dream holiday is the one that we take every Summer: camping on a classic NZ beach with friends and family. If I won Lotto I wouldn’t change the destination, I would only buy a bigger tent and a flasher beach lounger.

Ask me this question in 10 years and it may be a different answer!

Do you believe in God?

I believe that every individual has their own reality so God does exist for some. I don’t deny the existence of God for others. However, my reality does not have a God. I believe in nature and the wonder of the world. I believe that there is more. But I don’t believe in a God.

***

This interview is part of Inside the Bloggers Studio, an ongoing project of short interviews with bloggers I read and admire.  (Apologies to James Lipton.)  To view the archive, click here.

“Inaie the blogger is the one who cannot keep her mouth shut, and she tells on all other Inaies”

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At Yosemite, California

Inaie Ramalho is the author of Inaie – out and about, a blog about her life and travels as a serial expat. Her homeland is Brazil but she has lived in Australia, New Zealand and the UAE, and is currently based in Bahrain with her husband and two daughters. She writes mostly about her and her family’s travels and lives, with plenty of accompanying photos, but also about all the people close to her in her life.

‘Out and about’ is certainly true, then, but one realises that she has her eyes wide open with curiosity as she goes from place to place, person to person, experience to experience. Her writing is typically open-hearted and direct – she has little use for self-censorship – but a sense of what really matters to her shines through, as well as a desire to learn and understand more about herself and the world around her.

I discovered her blog after she left a comment on mine, and was immediately intrigued by the fact that she double-blogs in English and in Portuguese (which she clarifies further below). Having looked into her archives and found them at times hilarious, at other times moving, I asked if she would answer a few questions, and she responded in record time. All photos used with permission.

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Why did you start blogging?

When I left Brazil I started writing  emails with “my stories” to friends back home. They were emails with my feelings, my discoveries and a bit about everything. A way to stay connected. 10 years later, I was still sending the same emails, but my “receivers” list was much larger and incorporated friends from all countries where I lived. I was writing my emails twice. In English and in Portuguese.
If I were tired, fed up, or just had nothing to say and did not write frequently enough, these friends would send me angry emails, complaining about my absence.
Because of it, I made a point of writing regularly, but Yahoo was blocking my account every other day, calling me a “spammer”. Every time I was blocked I felt so p’off, I would promise I would start blogging. But then Yahoo would unblock me, and I would forget all about it.
I also had several friends asking me to start blogging. BLOG! BLOG! BLOG! they would say…
Recently I met a FAB lady who is a professional blogger, she translates blogs from several languages, she does a pretty serious job with this blogging business. When she told me I should blog, I thought: Well, maybe I should. ‘A’ is someone who knows what she is doing… she has not been my friend for long and has no reason to say things just to please me.
I started the blog, thanked her for “making me do it” and received furious emails from all those friends who have been saying the same thing for ages, with no result.

Bridge near San Simeon, California

Do you keep a journal? If so, what relationship do your blog and your journal have with each other?

Nah. No journal. My mother used to break the lockers to read my teenager journals. Initially I would make up these horrible stories, about unthinkable things, just to terrify her. After a while I just lost interest. If I could not be true to my journal because my darling mother would read it, what was the point? I never went back to journal writing, unfortunately. Today, my revenge is to write things she would not want to know in an open forum – and I know she still reads it.

What is your first memory of writing creatively?

I always enjoyed writing, I remember being 8 or 9, and spending hours making up stories… As I grew up, I realized real stories are far more fun!

Describe something that is beautiful to you.

This is going to sound so tacky, but my girls’ smiles are the most amazing sight. When they look at me and smile, the whole world changes colors, all sounds seem far more clear and beautiful. It is just amazing!

I have pictures of them on my phone; when things get rough, I just look at them and smile too.

Ramalho girls in Santa Barbara

You blog in both English and Portuguese. Do you try to convey the same feeling in both languages, or do you attempt to express yourself with the difference nuances of meaning to which each language lends itself?

You are mistaken. My blog is both in BAD Portuguese and Pidgin English, as I explain in the first line of the blog, but your question has its merit. Initially, my idea was to write in one language and then translate to the other – but as I started doing it, I found it just impossible. I write one story, then when I tell the other one, I remember different facts, I use other visuals; I just write all over again instead of just translating it. Sometimes the texts are completely different, although they talk about the same thing and they are both true.

Have your experiences living and travelling in various different countries changed your belief system(s)?

They sure have. This lifestyle taught me to be more tolerant with the world and see people under a different light. I used to think WE were right (whoever we were) and THEY were wrong. Now I don’t believe in us and them. People are just submitted to different stimuli, grow up under different circumstances and form their values based on these experiences.
People behave different because they see things different. In most cases, there is no right or wrong, in my opinion.
All this traveling made me want to travel more, want to know more, to learn more… life is a fascinating journey!

On the road in California

In your Blogger profile, you mention ‘several Inaies living together under one identity’. Would you say the ‘blogger Inaie’ is distinct from the others, or more an attempt at representing all of them?

Inaie the blogger is the one who cannot keep her mouth shut, and she tells on all other Inaies. She is the gossiper. She would get in trouble, but would not lose the opportunity to tell her story. With my life story, I do live many different realities in one. I am an only child, but I live far, far away from my parents. I love my dad desperately, but I have not seen him in four years. If you ask how I would feel if I did not see my children for a year, I would say it would just not happen. I could not survive without them. Both of them. I am Brazilian, but I am not your “regular” Brazilian. I am a workaholic who is in a huge crisis because I just found out there is life beyond the office desk (but don’t give me an office desk, I will get stuck in it), I am all for equality and sometimes catch myself being so totalitarian. I am a walking contradiction. I have always been told I am different, but no one ever managed to explain “different” how – and it haunts me. I would really like to know who I am. Sometimes I have no idea what I want or how to get it…

Michael, a friend of mine, once gave this close definition about me:

‘I want it all – and I want it now…’

That sounds pretty real.

Is there a post on your blog that you are most proud of?

To be honest, my blog is a window into my soul. It is not supposed to be pretty, fun or anything specifically. It is just meant to be a piece of me, to tell my story, my thoughts, my feelings. And to register my journey… I am not afraid to show my ugly sides. I have plenty of them. I guess I am proud of having my blog, and I am sooo grateful (and surprised) people actually read it.

Sunset in San Simeon

Name two countries: one you’d like to visit, and one you’d like to visit again.

I would love to visit Iran. And Morocco. And India. I also would like to visit Oman and see sea turtles. Mexico too. I would like to go to Turkey and fly over Capadoccia. Ireland is in my list of countries to visit, so are Vietnam and Lebanon… oh, sorry – you said ONE! But there are so many other places I would like to experience…

A country I would revisit? To be honest, I am not ito revisiting places. Given the opportunity, I will always choose the one I have not been to. In saying that, I would like to take my teenage girls to Egypt and to Jordan, to share the beauty of these places with them, especially because we are so close and these destinations are so magic…
I would not consider going to these places again if it were not to show them to Anita and Lia.

Do you believe in God?

I sure do. I just feel very sad for all the atrocities men do in name of Him. I am sure it pisses him off too.

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This interview is part of Inside the Bloggers Studio, an ongoing project of short interviews with bloggers I read and admire.  (Apologies to James Lipton.)  To view the archive, click here.

NOW THAT YOU’RE GONE IT HIT US

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I’m having to get this out slowly over a long period of time, as computers in India’s cyber cafes aren’t quite as cooperative as one might hope. Here’s what happened around the 24th of August.

On Friday (the 23rd) I said goodbye to my landlords Tetsuko and Kotaro, the sweetest folks one could hope for. The other housemate cooked an incredible Mexican dinner and T & K gave me a Japanese-style bandana, which was a wonderful gesture. A wise person said that once you’ve gotten past the surface of Japanese people and spent enough time with them, they will do anything for you, like they’re investing something emotional in you that they so rarely do.

I was to see this on an even greater level the next day. Mika, fellow teacher mentioned a couple of posts earlier, had said she would come to the airport to see me off, so I thought we’d have lunch or something and then say our sad goodbyes… instead, the whole family turned up – Mika & her husband, Koji, her mother, sister and sister’s 4 kids (2 of which I taught). At this point I understood what people mean when they say ‘my Japanese family’, because really, I felt completely accepted as if I had the same blood.

As if that wasn’t enough, the kids handed me a stack of 6 envelopes and inside each was a letter from a student in the class with a special message for me. “Do your best in India and please come back to teach us again.” “Enjoy eating curry!” “Please write to me and tell me about India.” There were drawings, too, and some more photographs from the party, plus an incredible moving card from Mika. After I went off through security and out of sight, I thought about what had just happened and the cards that were now wedged in my bursting laptop bag, and shed a few tears in the immigration queue. I couldn’t have dreamed of a better send-off, a better final memory of a country I’d come to believe I no longer wanted to function in. I’ve still got my shit to say about Japan and I think it’s valid, but every moment of the experience was worth it just for those last minutes in the country.

One last remarkable thing was to happen. I had intended to call someone just before getting on the plane, and was literally striding towards a payphone and reaching for my wallet when my phone rang for the last time. It was her; she’d had no idea when my plane was leaving, nor obviously did she know that I was, at that moment, about to pick up the phone myself. An extraordinary coincidence. More than a coincidence. I stepped onto the plane confident that Japan had been good for me, I’d been good for Japan and that the universe was aligning especially for me.

I’m now in Bangalore, it’s been kind of an odyssey to get here, worth it for every moment. That’ll be the next post…

ALL YOUR MEMORIES ARE AS PRECIOUS AS GOLD

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In February of this year, I was visiting my friends Mika & Koji in Chiba, which is about an hour and a half away east of Tokyo. The traditional Japanese way is for the family unit to remain very tight throughout the lifespan; it’s common for newly married couples to live with one set of parents for a good while, and for their respective families to spend a lot of time together as a unit. So, when I visit them, I also visit their parents, siblings, nieces, nephews and in-laws. It’s always a delight. They’re all such open, honest, loving people.

I was thinking to myself, why don’t I come here more often? Mika telepathically understood this, and suggested we start an informal English class for her two school-age nieces and their friends. Great idea, I said. The class would be held every Friday, but I would only teach every second week because it would be a bit expensive paying my costs all the time. And so it was, from March up until last Friday when we held our final class & party.

Now, the job I worked in until June was fine, but it was for a big corporation and that makes it harder to connect with students. I met a lot of really wonderful people there, and did forge some pretty good connections, but apart from rare cases I was always the ‘Teacher’ and they were always the ‘student’. These pre-defined roles were hard to get around for both them and I, so we didn’t put as much effort into actually genuinely caring as we could’ve. (Be warned, mashed , mushy bananas ahead.)

This Friday class (or classes, as we had two groups of six children), however, has been the highlight of my fortnight for just this reason. The kids were all brilliant (and impossibly cute), I was ‘Barnaby-sensei’ but as much their mate as their teacher, and Mika was a wonderful person to teach with and just generally be around. When it came to that farewell deal last week, I was really sad that it was ending. These kids, these people, really meant something to me and I would miss them. Still, it was rowdy fun like it always is – plenty of laughter and a good amount of craziness.

Most of their parents had turned up to see how I’d indoctrinated their precious little ones. Each one of the children stood up and did their little self-presentation, something they’d studied for pretty hard by the sounds, and they all nailed it as though it was second nature. Mika said they’d struggled the week before. Not this time. I couldn’t stop grinning, they did so well. Then we set up a table with food and drinks – typically unhealthy kids’ party fare, That’ll do would probably keel over at the sight of it – and Mika’s sister came over to us and gave us both a bag, saying ‘arigatou’.

We’d been doing it for our own pleasure (and, let’s be honest, a bit of money in my case), but gifts? Well, thank you, OK. Inside were the items I will treasure for my entire life: a t-shirt with all the kids’ hands stretched out into a circle, and a huge card with a photo of each class and a handwritten message from each child (in Japanese). “Thank you for teaching me English.” “It was a lot of fun.” “Please come to Japan and teach us again.” “You’re always cheerful.” I sat there for about five minutes looking at the pictures and their messages, and had a quiet moment of reflection: if this is where your life has led you, this point here, this feeling, then you are doing something right and everything has been worth it. This soon-to-end time in Japan (more on that soon) has been challenging in many ways, and I’ve done my fair share of bitching about the place to friends and family and basically anyone who’ll listen, but even if there was nothing else to be pleased about – which there is in spades – I’d have this, and it would all be worthwhile.

Then I realized I was being rude not talking to anyone, and played some games with the kids who had long since finished stuffing their faces with crisps and were tearing about like… well, like kids. One girl from the younger class came running up to me, hugged my legs tightly, looked up at me with a huge smile on her face and said, “Daisuki!” (“I love you.”) Usually I’d laugh such declarations of affection from children as either attention-seeking or just being playful, but at the age she was, I could see she was pure in the moment and genuinely meant it. There’s a wonderful lack of pretence about Japanese children up to the age of about 8 or 9, before they’re aware of themselves and how badly they need to be exactly the same as everybody else their age, immediately. They just do and say what they feel. Needless to say, I was touched.

When it was all over, I went and had sushi with the family, and played loads with M & K’s nephew who was too young to join the class. At the end of the day I made the long(ish) trip home, tired and very happy. Mika sent me a text saying she thought we’d had a good experience. I sent her back a slightly overdone essay about it being my best memory of Japan and a group of people I’ll never forget. Not unlike this, I suppose.

Thank you, everybody.