Lets wreck their precious, their perfect town...

It took him almost two hours to walk the road home. It was three am and only one car had passed, the occupants spewing abuse at his raised thumb. Their trailing "fucking stupid cuuuunt!" left him uneasy the way it hung in the frosty air like a b-grade warning and only added to his apprehension: he was getting closer. 

A nondescript concrete bridge signals the town's boundary and moonlight dances over the waters sloth-like progress beneath it. No need to see the sculptured banks with grass cut just so, the pretty flowers and carefully staked specimen trees; he knows. Cutting through freshly-tilled rose beds he crosses the roundabout to follow the white line up towards ground-zero. Shop lights are tastefully dimmed with the more valuable items removed from temptation. Security cameras watch, waiting. They wink slowly at his passing like beating hearts, the life blood flows. Dropping his bag at the foot of the old Post Office he pauses, confused. It's been relocated to make space for the mall extension and this geographical shift of familiar perspectives is unsettling, weird. 

The place was dead. Just concrete, glass and this seasons crap to tempt the good folk. Thankfully at three am the total absence of people makes it slightly more bearable: it was just space, ripe and ready for the picking. Hunting out a mandarin he sat down on cold concrete steps and slowly, methodically, chucked peel at the roses. It had been a long day. Suddenly: “Hey! It's me!” His challenge goes unanswered, sucked quickly up into a disapproving mist.

No echo. Nothing; well...

Memories, the changes, evolution; coming home was always like this. The familiarity of belonging mixed with the realisation that his absence had not been noticed. The village had marched left-right left-right onwards, shops rising and falling alongside the consumer index, the wrecking ball quickly erasing any mistakes to ensure the veneer was perpetually here and now. 

It's a forward thinking kinda town and while no disrespect is intended, history is something to be neatly catalogued, respectably presented over at the new library in a 'permanent exhibition'.

He spat several seeds onto polished bricks. Back to the fucking future.


This place was my incubator. It made me. Ghosts swirl about. Me, everywhere. I can spin in front of that old Post Office and I'm fucking everywhere. Look, at age five holding my Mum's hand out doing the shopping; then at ten or maybe fifteen, walking biking and skating up and down, this way and that. Every single spot.

This was my home. Was.

Amongst this stampede of time there is one constant, one thing I can always rely upon not to have been upgraded: purpose. My hometown is a dormitory suburb for the middle-class who loath to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi of Hastings. Many would happily admit just that. Right from its colonial conception the moneyed have always drifted towards these hills to stamp their privilege into more physical hierarchies. They planted their English trees in neat rows and from the dry dirt raised their churches, private schools, and vineyards. Hastings; you say it with a sigh. It's for the Māori, the white trash, and it's a broken-arse of a town that just keeps on crawling back for more. There's no need for us to go there.

My hometown had of course been a fantastic place to grow up in. Cliché after cliché. Small enough to know a shit-load of people, but big enough to go somewhere different every weekend. There were heaps of kids in quiet cul-de-sac's to scream around with on skateboards and bikes; we had streams and parks, huts to build and wars to fight. The bookcase was all Enid Blyton and with our pocket money we bought Pink Panther ice blocks and half-cent fizzy lollies from the dairy. It was The Waltons, Happy Days, fish’n’chips every Friday night, Sunday night baths before Spot On and The Walt Disney Show followed by a tea of what ever Mum could be bothered with; something like scrambled eggs on toast, or maybe spaghetti. We had the safe carefree freedom of that era: it didn’t matter what we got up to as long as we were home before dark and washed our feet before hopping into bed. Life was good.

The family home was built for around eight grand. Dad poured the concrete paths himself and planted a collection of hardy trees around the perimeter. All around us were the beginnings of similar family stories, all working hard for their piece of paradise. And it was. We were on the suburban frontier and with over a dozen kids in our street we were an instant gang whooping an hollering through those endless summers.

Yep, life was good; did I mention we had a swimming pool too? Essential.


“Oh Jesus I really really need to piss now!” squirmed Brent as he struggled to his feet. Pounding hard on the front wall of the house truck he hollered against the engines shriek. “Steve! Fucking pull over man!” The truck hit a pothole and they all toppled about shrieking with laughter, hands raised high to keep bottles upright. Brent gave the wall a final smack before swaying back towards the party.

“Be a good half-hour before we get to Picton,” says his mate Casper with a sly grin. With a final draining swig he offers Brent his empty bottle. “So here ya go mate, hope you can still shoot straight!”


To a drum-roll of “concentrate, concentrate!” Brent stretches on tiptoe at the tiny kitchen bench, jeans around his knees and the bottle in the sink. The truck makes another rattling lurch and a dribble runs down the cupboard door to cries of disgust from those gathered about.

“Steve knows what you're doing in his sink man!'' laughs Bones. “Better not pass out tonight mate or you'll cop it...”

Brent turns, his grin wide and happy, a steaming bottle raised in triumph. A boisterous bottles raised chant of “drink! drink!” degenerates once more into hysterics as he turns back to the sink and empties the bottle into it.

“Jeez why'd you even bother eh?” said Casper wiping tears from his eyes. “Compulsory scull for the weakest bladder,” he challenged.

Brent drinks deep, points an unsteady finger at Casper, “you'll be next matey, you fucking wait.” 

It was a cool farewell party, five good friends and shitloads of beer; way better than a 'see ya' at the bus station by miles.

"Shit you'd better hope it's a smooth sailing on that ferry Casp' or you'll be hanging over the rail puking your ring out most of the way,” said Bones.

“I'm sweet,” replied Casper...


***

“Nah man I'm totally sweet, trust me,” he protested to the two crew members who had stopped his careful sway up the ferry ramp. 'I just want a couch and the North Island,” he continued hurriedly. “Not the bar, no trouble, I'm sweet as.”

“I'm sorry sir but it's an issue of safety and on a night crossing the risk is even higher of accidentally falling over board so we just...”

“That's right buddy, you're a fucking hazard ok?” interrupted a harsh voice directly behind him. Two cops. Fucken' A.

“Being looking for you,” continues the uglier one of the pair. “Picked up some of your friends in town so figured we may as well get all of you Nelson scum in one go eh? Your bag?” He picks up Casper's pack without waiting for a reply and rummages through it, pulling out a bottle of wine. “We'd better take this eh?”

“It's unopened and I'm over eighteen...” he protests.
“Fucking shut up.”

It wasn't quite the reunion he imagined, not quite so soon at least, but there they were in the back of a truck lurching along with no where to take a piss. Except for Ruby; you can't mix gender in a paddy wagon so she had the privilege of riding up front with the boys in blue. She was upside down, wedged onto the floor with a shiny black boot resting on her head.

The return journey is always faster, but this time it just couldn’t be quick enough.



Memories are usually always kind; it’s a coping strategy. Like all those crap photos that you gradually biff out over the years to leave a blurred periphery that omits the boring shit, the endless repeats and the friends who are no longer friends. And so the question must be asked: what was home really like?

It was white. That lily 'we-don't-work-the-fields' privileged white. We were racist, middle-class snobs and it was perfectly acceptable of course; we knew no better. When you're a kid the world just is; and upbringing is upbringing. We would see Māori down at the bus stop (we didn’t catch the bus though, just drove blissfully past), but that was about as close as it got. None of 'them' lived in our neighbourhood. For our crass generalisations we relied upon the court page in the paper to supply the evidence: booze-fueled violence, drugs, burglaries and other assorted crap. As we progressed through the school system the brown faces in the class photos dropped away like flies. Systematic. I can’t remember a single name. By the seventh form the cleansing was complete. We were preparing for university, a world before us to conquer; ‘they’ were staying put with the processing factories and orchards providing the only ladders they would be climbing.

How they could stomach living here – alongside us - I've no idea.

No regrets though. I mean how can there be? Sure it's easy to walk into this town today and judge; I mean, shit it's a blight, an anachronism, a fucking colonial time warp still throwing the whitewash about lest any inferior genes try wiggling beyond their proper place in life, but hell it probably wasn’t that different form a lot of small New Zealand towns in the 70’s. And 80's; probably the fucking 90's as well. It's how it was.

So when did the bubble go pop? Maybe it was when cousin Wayne gave me a battered old Sex Pistols tape at thirteen. It could have been discovering the NME at the local bookshop with its uncensored rock'n'roll opinions. The earnest young couple who knocked on our door one evening and left a pile of animal rights literature to read changed me irrevocably. It could have been when after much nagging Mum bought me the Clash album for my fifteenth birthday. Sitting in the lounge with headphones clamped tight: "White people go to school where they teach you how to be thick; and everybody's doing just what they're told to, cos nobody wants to go to jail! White riot I wanna riot; white riot..."

Yeah, perhaps that was it.



“I'm sure if you haven't been charged with anything you don't have to give fingerprints or a photo,”Casper wondered aloud as another blackened finger was roughly squashed onto a form.

"Shut up or I will.”

“Do you think you can you let me out early so I can get back up for the morning ferry?” he continued hopefully. The cop said nothing, kept writing, ticking boxes. “Please?”

“Take him down to six!” His finger pointed down the hall.

“Can I take out my contact lens before...”

The cells in Blenheim are like any other; cold, uncomfortable, and painted in a putrid but psychologically sobering colour. From cell four directly opposite a tired raspy voice hollers abuse at the walls like a stuck record. Threats and insults bounce between cells, some call for help, others insisting that everybody shut the fuck up cos they really do needed to talk to the pigs right now. Oh it’s a fun night out in Blenheim he thought to himself as he lay under a single blanket trying to sleep. Five fucking stars.

“Oi! wake up; you still wanna catch that ferry eh?”

“Fuck!” Uncurling quickly from a foetal huddle, he sat up, yawned. “Yeah I do, can I go now?” Belt, laces, wallet, bag and the door. It's still dark.

“Oh man it's raining,” he cries out in dismay.

“Ferry leaves in seven hours so you'd better get walking.” The door slams heavy behind him.

“Wankers”.





Peter Pan said that to die would be an awfully big adventure, but I'd like to think that my bridge-burning departure was as good as. It’s quite a luxurious privilege to be able to reject your family, to loath everything they stand for and just drift, sniffing out sweet forbidden hedonism and take it too far. To say I was chasing dreams is stretching it a bit really; I was escaping, sulking, avoiding, disappointing - it depends on who's telling the story. Personally I think it was more opportunity than reason, a "lets just go" with no forwarding address and only a phone call once a blue moon to let the folks know I was still alive. And while I’d blame it partly on teenage selfishness, I’d also call to task our me-me culture that thinks nothing of leaving parents with an empty nest and no support. It's what we do. On one hand it's almost a sign of success if your kids bugger off, but when they don't come back, what does that mean? That Pakeha culture is the antithesis of community?

This is an important point.

I remember going to a mates twenty-first up in Cannons Creek where not only was I the only whitey in the garage (she was from Tokelau), but also the only one not related to her – and get this, they all lived within walking distance. Shit (I still laugh today at the impossibility of what I'm about to propose), imagine having the old lady live round the corner; just popping over…like every bleeden' day. God, Coronation Street horror or what.

They aren’t bad people, my family; just um, not like me. Racist in their cultural isolation for sure, and horribly snobbish at times, but not nasty like some. Sure Mum had voted ACT, but (I hope) it was more out of naivety than a genuine loathing of the poor. She was on the dole herself at the time - not that she'd tell anybody.

So there you have it then, all my excuses. Home was just a stage and it was over, done. I’d had enough of the flowers always being in bloom: pass the molotov and get ready to run.



It took him all morning to hitch back to Picton and it was total shit. After a few hours attempting to sleep under Blenheim's main bridge he had dragged his sorry arse across to the motor camp and dunked his head into a basin of hot water. There was nothing in the kitchen to flog, not even a cold sausage. 

“Hey there,” called the driver through the open window. “I've passed you a few times already and was starting to feel sorry for you.” Casper tried to smile. “Catching the ferry right? Hop in then.”

Back at the terminal it was the same woman at the check-in counter as yesterday: and her cherry “oh you’re back for another try,” seriously strained his smile. Sorry, no refund on yesterday’s missed passage cos one of his no-good mates could have used it, eh? What a cunt.



It was years before I realised that my mother and grandmother both threw a heap of salt into the porridge to get it tasting so fine. It took an accident; that's how I learnt to cook. The preparation of food is a vital skill that some how I missed out on and I like to think rather symbolic of a generation that just didn't pay any attention to what Mum and Dad were prattling on about. Life in the kitchen, listening to the old stories, making the old food: nah. I eat sushi, nasi goreng and drink better coffee than the Italians. My sweet old Nana had never touched a computer (nor tried sushi), she wrote with a beautiful flowing script on small lined sheets of scented blue paper. She went to church every day and ate shit loads of porridge and mince. She was a darling and I totally adored her, but she sure made me shake my head at times as well.

It’s not a golden rule or anything, but if you take a look around the world I’d say that most revolutions are born out of families and communities strong with blood and history. The chapatti, falafel, beans, taro and fish are each prepared just as their grandparent’s grandparents had done before them. Revolutions are born on streets from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez tale; after one hundred years in the same house, sleeping in the room your Grandmother was born in, heritage and destiny becomes one. This is home.

I'm jealous, I'm sad and I wish things had being different. Nana didn't do email.

These aren’t communities where power can just rape, maim and destroy with impunity. This is Viet Cong territory; Zapatista, Sioux, Irish, Aboriginal, Māori, and they remember everything.

Coronation Street would fight the power, but how about Shortland Street? Your street? My street?



After the old man spat at him while he dragged his kit bag through the Wellington railway station Casper stopped at a shop window to check out why. His jeans hadn’t been washed in over a year, partly cos he was scared they’d fall apart; they being the combined remains of several older trou held together by patches and random stitching. They were stiff and shiny, their filthy blackness contrasting quite nicely with his bare feet which, despite the hot Nelson summers, spent most of their time ensconced in heavy army boots. He could smell himself without trying too hard.

Across his chest charged a riot cop with his tear gas gun raised to fire. ‘Conflict’ was stamped across the top. Nice. The t-shirt was white; well it used to be.

His face? Thankfully he couldn’t really make it out; take a guess eh? Desperately in need of sleep, pale, spotty and unshaven, his mohawk looked like road kill. Yum yum, who’s a pretty boy then eh? He winked at himself. “Welcome to fashion central,” he whispered across to his reflection. All around teemed worker drones with power suits, spit shine shoes and a hypnotic glaze. Success had never looked so attractive.
“Whoops, sorry; excuse me, excuse me...”

Another lip is curled, more awkward side shuffles as the beautiful people hastened to navigate around his meandering search for the bus stop and a way out of this shit hole they called home.



Three generations ago my ancestors cut and ran from their respective motherlands: blame poverty, hunger and the fucking British. The colonialist's had perfected the art of crushing a people: land seizure, work slavery, ban the indigenous language and encourage 'voluntary' migration. Bye bye Ireland.

It's equally tragic that so many refugees adopt the same tactics when themselves in a position of power. Fucking humans eh? Forgetting history, repeating history. Anyway, there's to be no more bouncing bonny wee babes on Grandma's knee imbibing the old ways, it's bye bye whakapapa.

Southland's gold fields were the first stop, then Hokitika, Takaka, Titahi Bay, Wellington, and Hawkes Bay. Creeping along; Sam, James, Elizabeth, Tim and the gang tend not to stick around for long, chasing the new, the work, escaping the old, the failed, and – luckily for me - dropping sprogs as they went. It must get into the blood this transiency. I mean I barely paused, let alone looked back. Community, is there such a thing nowadays? Strangers pause and huddle close for the sake of commerce, but are ultimately alone, adrift and never looking back. We can make excuses; call it 'individualism', 'keeping to ourselves', 'getting ahead' or the more honest 'getting rich', but the deconstruction of the family and local communities into isolated carbon-copy consumer units is very clever and very deliberate. Now we follow/submit/reinforce such values almost instinctively. It's called divide and rule - and they've won.

Remember that party out in Cannons Creek where everybody shared a common forefather as well as a common future? That’s where revolutions are born. And they’d only been here for ten years. Christ, we are so fucked. It sounds pathetic when you say "revolution" on your own, a whisper in the dark, like you know that it's just not going to happen.



Casper sat with his back resting against the granite soldier, could feel the etched names of the town's glorious dead as he shifted to get comfortable. 

“Hey you lot, I’m back from the front line. It’s home sweet home for this lost son,” he spoke uneasily to the ghosts swirling around him, could feel their pull, beckoning him back. Always back. How he longs to scream, rattle all that unused fine china but no, no martyrdom tonight. He hums an old song instead, “I’ve had seventeen years of hell and I just can’t take any more.” Sweeter memories. He smiles. A mate’s band used to do a version of it and they’d all leap drunkenly about exorcising their youth. 

In front of him the six main roads fan out like spokes into distant mist. Every road held memories: school, the chip shop, church, the Tuki Tuki River and the beautiful beaches beyond. Paper runs, missions to the tip with Dad, or over to Napier. The Scout hall which is next door to his old kindy, all the long bike rides to nowhere. And the road home.

He will have to walk past the old family stomping grounds on his way to the current homestead. It was always hard passing by and knowing that it was gone; that Dad was gone. Good that it was night, he could stick to the shadows, burrow into his hoody as he plodded the last of this journey out into the hills beyond.

He had only just swung his bag onto his shoulder when the cops arrived, so eager for action that they were half out of the car before it had even stopped.

Fucken hell.



So I just don’t know. Our love of shopping and rugby seems to be all that hold Pākehā together. That's not enough; not enough for me, certainly not enough for revolution. Any notion of collective resistance only really exists inside the meetings of 'activists'; in a cold room with the curtains drawn tight, the young and over educated call for agenda items and try to be finished by nine. For the briefest of moments we all dance to the same song and through our bourgeois haze we glimpse possibilities, potentials and what just could be. But then it all goes; or rather we all go. To a warmer town, to do our masters at uni, Europe, the death grip of suburbia or just to something less serious than the daily grind of token resistance. On and on we go. Further and further away from home.

So, revolution, I just don’t know any more. And that’s it basically.



“Hey motherfucker what’s happening?” Puffed up, circling, checking him out. “What’s up eh? Pretty late to be out eh? Gotcha good gears on eh? What’s in the bag? Where you heading at this hour eh?”

“Um, home; just having a rest.” Passive resignation; play it safe out here all alone; wait for it to be over. One of the cops up ends his bag and shakes it until the contents have all spilled out onto the road. The other one uses his boot to spread it about. The wrapping paper around his Mum's present is torn.

“So you're from Nelson eh? Should have known with bare feet eh?” they both laugh heartily. “So where are ya ounces then?” They quick fire more questions, not wanting or expecting answers: “any ID then mate? Is this ya wallet? Thanks, I’ll have that.” They count his money and look at everything inside; his old drivers licence says that he lives only five minutes away, which he desperately hopes is his trump card. That slows them up.

“Where did you get this eh? Being visiting a few of the local houses have ya? Gotta stash somewhere eh? Pack ya shit away buddy and we’ll go for a drive eh?”

“No...”

Casper's bag gets chucked into the boot of the cop car; he's shown the rear door.

“We’ll just do a check to see if everything’s square ok? Whip into town to the station and get it all sorted right.” They suddenly lose the aggression, play nice cop as they drive at high speed back down the road he’d just spent two hours walking along. “So ya heading home to see the folks eh?” says the driver without turning. “Right once we get this all sorted we’ll let you get back on your way ok?”



Yeah-well guys, I just don’t know about it anymore. Maybe I’ll just keep right on going, back down that road. Away from this; just away, anywhere. Again; Christ.

See I’d just about convinced myself that it wasn’t about how they’d paved the streets or built these cutesy historic buildings, that no matter how many chain stores spring up, the true local spirit always lives on. But maybe that's the problem, the truth. Am I kidding myself to expect anything more from this town than to freak out and call the cops when a scruffy kid arrives at a funny hour? It's still New Zealand here, the historic clock at the roundabout stopped long ago and I really struggle to image this place becoming part of Aotearoa. Embracing Aotearoa. There's no wharemoi with a spare mattress for the weary visitor, the community 'kitchen' is locked up tight and the sign on the door says '24 Hour Security' as in fuck off; but no matter, I hate microwaved food.

I live in fear of once again becoming a New Zealander, of no longer being angry, just content to be on the couch eating lollies. Watching Shortland Street; being Shortland Street. Going back in more ways than a trip up the country. Fuck that.

Histories, herstories; the love and laughter of my family are only bound together with emergency phone calls, the occasional shared Christmas, sweet love letters, and sure that's something, but it doesn't make a home, not for me anyway. And a revolution needs a home.

I can now understand the tangata whenua who stick it out in my hometown; how the word 'my' is meaningless, insulting. How they patiently wait, wait. I applaud them, respect them. But I can't wait any longer. Despite this willingness to once again walk away it's not what I want. It's not easy. It's not easy knowing that I come from nowhere; that I have no homeland. But I do know that I was born of love and carry this, this thinnest of strands, in my heart, in my dreams.

Whenua, whakapapa, whanau. Home.

I ache to plant my feet, my soul. To feed and to nourish so I/you/we root deep and strong. The question remains though, can Pākehā commit? For revolutions sake, can we commit?