A Peaceful New Year My Friends!

Here in New Zealand 2008 is already 9 hours old. For me New Years Eve has been a deeply reflective time. I found myself wanting to reach into solitude and pray rather than join the revellers. Not just for the will to change personal habits and break patterns and stop eating so many Danish pastries! My prayers are for every person on this planet. That each one of us might find a measure of inner peace for it seems to me that world peace can only arise from hearts that are truly at peace. And then, what good is a world at peace if the planet that is home to every last one of us is tortured and scarred by our thoughtlessness? I pray that, above all, each of us will act in small and positive ways in our everyday lives to reverse the march of global warming. Bless you all.

To This!

Sometimes nothing else will soothe my soul but making fresh berry jam. And then of course this labour of love must be artfully partnered and mindfully consumed. Here is my very last baking for 2007; saffron infused scones. I adapted an old family recipe given me by my mother (and which has found its way via word of mouth the length and breadth of Dunedin!) by infusing the water called for in the recipe with saffron before preparing the dough. The scones blush with a pleasing saffron hue but on tasting I decided they needed something! Enter my freshly made strawberry jam and a blob of marscapone cheese. Ahh the delight! In my more poetic moments I am inclined to say that saffron is the flavour of eternity but on an average day I am more likely to explain that as the flavour of tobacco, hay bales and dark bitter tasting honey.

This combination of ingredients is a playful and exhilarating farewell to 2007. Rather like lying back in a field of hay eating just picked strawberries dipped in a bucket of fresh cream you hauled there from the milking shed! Well yes perhaps it is a tad decadent but is this not New Years Eve!!!! (Well right now it is where I live)

From this ...

Oh the unadulterated joy of fresh strawberries!

The Measure of Distance

The true measure of how far apart my love and I are is to be found in the fact that for me out here in New Zealand Christmas Day is all but over. For her it has not even begun.

I am writing this post at 11pm on Christmas Day. Families and friends all over this country have come together and long since taken their leave from each other in various states of exhaustion. Wrapping paper lies in piles in every corner of the land, some folded neatly for reuse and some scrunched into balls and stuffed in rubbish bins. With luck the presents this wrapping concealed are continuing to evoke delight in the hearts of those they were intended for. The roast lamb and organic ham and fresh peas and new potatoes and luscious dark gravy that graced our Christmas table have now assumed the role of leftovers. There are of course the inevitable symptoms of over-indulgence and the discussions about dealing sensibly with yuletide debt have already begun in our media.

All this and the great love of my life has not yet awoken to begin her day of Christmas festivities!

A Thousand Roses In A Storm

Even the presence of a single rose is vaguely disarming. But the presence of thousands of roses is like a drug that stills the ceaseless motion in my mind. Thoughts are no match for this thick honey sweet air that, by some peculiar chance, seems to hint at the nearness of my love. Now I am a thousand times disarmed! How does one preserve such a place as this? Yesterday the winds and rain were wild and so I walked far out of my way to pass through my rose garden, for fear of her safety. But I should not have worried for a thousand roses in a storm are every bit as beautiful as they are in times of peace. Perhaps more so. Now they spin and swirl wildly and droop to lie heavy upon the dark moist soil. Now the air is thicker still with the scent of love and the ground slippery underfoot with the silken paste of rosepetals and rainwater. Now, all about me here, there is character and resolve as well as delicate beauty!

A Mockery Of Distance

Sometimes in the dawn I find you there with me, softly like the thin curtain of daylight that brushes against the sleeping body of the night. And in these times you and I make a mockery of distance. In these times there is no ocean , continent, international border or decree that can stand between us. For you have come to me. And I to you. And it is we alone who triumph.

My Two Worlds

Last weekend I flew to my parents home in the North Island of New Zealand and spent some time here on this secluded beach. The sandhills are strewn with masses of oddly formal little flowers that seem to have been carved from bars of soap. When the tide is just right and the moon looking kindly upon you one can wriggle one's toes in the wet sand at the water's edge and find shellfish we call pipis hiding just below the surface. These delicacies are delicious when cooked in a bucket of boiling water over a fire on the beach. (Though now and then one of these shellfish will take its revenge by filling your mouth unexpectedly with sand!) The island just offshore is a nature reserve where rare and endangered birds are offered protection and sanctuary.

When I am in America I am constantly astonished at the variety of small animals which share our woodland home with us. In New Zealand, above all else, it is the bird song I notice. Here we have no squirrels or groundhogs or wild turkey or bears or chipmunks or skunks. No bambi on the deck just beyond my window and no otters or beavers in the lake across the road. During my childhood here in New Zealand I found these creatures only on the pages of my story books and for a time suspected they were merely a figment of Walt Disney's colourful imagination!

From Helen To Helen

I was so grateful for your kind enquiry as to how the great love of my life is faring following her car accident. Her whiplash injuries are taking some time to heal but she is a strong woman and, in terms of character, a force to be reckoned with and I know it will take more than a bout of whiplash to bring her down. Sadly though while she was recuperating with family our little house in the woods was broken into and the place ransacked and burgled. Even from ten thousand miles away I feel grossly violated. It saddens me that I cannot be there with her to take care of her injuries and to bless our home and reaffirm it as a place of peace and love.

This Quality of Sheer Magnificence

(Photo By Helen)

Worrying News From Afar

I have just heard via email that the great love of my life has been involved in a car accident. She has minor injuries and concussion but thankfully it seems she is otherwise ok. When I spoke to her on the phone she sounded so vulnerable and it was obvious she is in a lot of pain. I am walking around in circles unable to settle. This sense of helplessness is cruel beyond words.

The Cheesecake Incident

For those of us here Downunder who love an American today was Thanksgiving. And soon tomorrow will be too! In the eight years I have known the great love of my life I have spent only one Thanksgiving with her. One. (And for that matter one Christmas also) When yet another solo Thanksgiving rolls around I invariably revisit that day I spent with her and in particular I love to revisit the cheesecake incident. Here below is my journal note from Thanksgiving 2005.

"It was Thanksgiving here this last Thursday. This being the very first I have ever experienced I diligently plotted and planned for days. I scoured the net for tips and, two days before, disappeared into the kitchen posting "Do Not Disturb" signs all over. Nothing about the recipes I was tackling made too much sense to me. There were seemingly discordant flavour combinations and vegetables with odd names and unexpected flesh colour. And there were sacred old family recipes which I rapidly learnt one must never ever ever tamper with! My whispered protestation about how the stuffing recipe seemed "just a little bland" and my private fears about its texture went unnoticed. The most this novice from Downunder managed to get away with was to slip a lttle pumpkin in the cheesecake!

Ahh and what a cheesecake it was!!! Mouthwatering though I do admit it caused a few anxious moments. When it came out of the oven it looked superb but the settling process was alarming. I suppose the sight of the two of us nervously huddled over that cheesecake watching it slowly crack wide open must have been rather amusing. Cheesecakes, I discovered that night, do not respond well to pleading. Or begging. Or shrieks of horror.

In the end I filled the enormous crack with roughly grated chocolate and I do not believe anyone was any the wiser. Since this was the first cheesecake I have ever made, and of course my first ever Thanksgiving, I was hanging out for compliments and our friends from New York and Chicago did not let me down. Both assured me it was delicious. Since neither of these good people are burdened by English sensibilities and since I would expect them to both know their cheesecakes (better than a novice from Downunder) I felt I could depend on their honesty! "

Hot Tea and Cool Jazz

The Oamaru Victorian fete was held last weekend and thankfully my friends urged me to go with them. The era has always conjured up images of fusty and overstuffed rooms in museums which for me hold no hint of life or passion. But on Sunday the period came to life for me and reconnected me firmly with my roots, so much so that next year I plan to join others at this weekend of heritage festivities in full period costume! The fete was set in a once derelict warehousing area that has been restored to provide the perfect Dickensian street setting for this event. The day buzzed with an irrepressible energy which I must confess I became totally caught up in. My reaction to the pipe smoking contest was a great surprise to me. For a while watching the row of men sitting quietly smoking pipes at a long table felt a little like watching paint dry but somewhere along the way I managed to forget myself and the era of sensory overload in which I live and actually found myself excited by this slow paced and simple old time event! (By the way this contest was won by a woman in it's first year. Perhaps one day the great love of my life will be here in New Zealand to enter it. I do adore the smell of her pipe tobacco!)

(Photo By Helen)

Gratitude

Being a left-brainer the great love of my life likes to make lists. Long weighty pragmatic serious work-related lists of the kind that lead to deep frown lines on the forehead. Now and then one of her lists is accompanied by hoots of laughter. Those kinds of lists are usually very long also and begin with the words "Helen's To Do List". Then there are the lists she likes the least. The feelings lists. The latter, though written by her, are generally elicited by me. (No surprise there) I always marvel though at the ease with which she produces these and how lengthy they are!

My lists are almost always feelings lists and uppermost amongst those is my "gratitude list". Some entries on that list change day to day but some, such as friendship, are always there. It is impossible for me to imagine living here alone in New Zealand without the support of friends. Because of them there are the free range hens eggs, the freshly picked rhubarb and the delicious roast lamb with homemade mint sauce on a Sunday night. The long walks on the wild Otago beaches discussing Norman Mailer and the various joys and perils of flying. There are the scrabble games and the walks on the shores of the breathtaking Central Otago lakes. The full-bodied wine and the vibrant conversation shared at dusk amidst world-renowned South Island scenery, barely a stone's throw from Lord of the Rings country. My friends are good to me. They are people of substance and well deserving of their place on my gratitude list!

My Prayer

I will not ever view the marginalisation of same-sex love to the fringes of our society as a reflection on the calibre or worthiness of my love. It is indicative rather of a fear that exists somewhere else outside of me and outside of my relationship. I forgive those who, in suffering this degree of fear, attempt to visit it upon me. I give myself full permission to celebrate my love no matter how others may view it or pass judgement upon it or write laws that discriminate against it. I pray for eventual enlightenment in the hearts and minds of those people.

For As Long As It Takes

Living in this long distance bi-national relationship could very easily see us wishing large chunks of our lives away. There is no doubt that the times we spend together are lived to the fullest since we barely leave each others' sides for a minute but what of the long periods of time we are forced to spend apart? I know many people will view this lifestyle as one of deprivation but I do my best to view it differently. There are days of course when the pain closes in on me but on a good day there IS joy to be found in this unconventional lifestyle. It is all a matter of how one views it.
The challenge I set myself when I am alone here is to seek out the face of my love in the world around me. I may find her in an unfolding flower or the laughter of a stranger. She may be there in the faint aroma of tobacco in my pumpkin & paprika relish, or in the windfalls that lie beneath my neighbour's apple tree. It is more than mere association and not just that these things act as memory prompts, though they do of course. There is something about a love as expansive and deep as this that enables it to redefine itself and still survive.
I doubt that the makers of discriminatory laws will ever grasp this fact. That true love will not cower. Nor will it lash out in anger. It will simply endure. For as long as it takes.

Thoughts & Love From Afar

My American partner's immediate family, who include amongst their numbers conservative fundamentalist Christians, have embraced us both as a same-sex couple with warmth and love.

Tonight my thoughts and love are with one member of that family who is facing a very serious health challenge. I long to return to America to stand beside my partner as she struggles to come to terms with this situation. I dare not fly back so soon after leaving because I could well be turned away at the border; a situation that would see me banned from re-entry for some years.

Over the years I have learnt that I must find a resting place for the complex emotions I feel when I reluctantly leave my American partner in New York. Sometimes that place is a piece of writing and sometimes it is visual, as in this scrapbook page I created in 2003. Activities such as this enable me to move past the grief I feel and reconnect with my joy for the duration of our time apart.

Unrequited Desire

I hope you will not dispute, dear reader, that I AM making an earnest effort to settle back into my solitary life here in New Zealand. I have unpacked my suitcase finally, albeit a few too many weeks after my departure from New York, and I have arranged my day-to-day life so that I see her photographs and wear her clothes and smell her Cartier and hear her voice on the phone at least once a day. I have hauled out the "big book of us" which keeps getting bigger by the year and begun to add the most recent installment "Summer of 2007". I listen often to "Beauty & the Beast" and the various other music, romantic and otherwise, which she recorded for me on my iPod. Yes I truly am trying!

BUT there are the inevitable hiccups. One is shown above. This is my new car. The great love of my life bought it for me yesterday. There is only one problem. It is ten thousand miles away! Now not only do I have to hunger endlessly for that elusive tactile connection with her. Now I must hunger for same with this sexy little wagon! The jury is out, currently, on how long I will be able to endure this unrequited dual desire!

The power of an unbroken circle

It occurred to me today that, over the last several years of living in this predominantly long distance bi-national relationship, we must have learned many things. That she and I are still so devoted to each other and that we wear identical gold rings indicates that yes, that has to be the case. Just today, during our phone call, she mentioned the comment a friend of ours made to her when she showed signs of buckling under the strain of a crisis that has befallen her family ~ "Remember that ring on your finger". There have been many many times when a glance at that beautiful ring is enough to repel the onset of emptiness and summon forth the courage to carry on in the face of this discriminatory situation. Most couples who are committed to each other wear a ring but ours must encircle not only our fingers but the entire globe!

This Sweet Aloneness

(Written to accompany the link "My New Zealand Home")
There are times when the city of Dunedin and its surrounding landscape seems such an appropriate place to feel lonely. No matter where I am or who I walk amongst here there is always the nearness of that breathtaking landscape where slender fingers of rock clutch desperately at the receding tide. Was this place not formed in the very image of my loneliness itself!

As I walk the streets of this New Zealand city I am aware that here and there on high an aging clock face gazes down at me, reminding me that time will not wait too long for me to mourn. Its chimes break wide open my memories of time with her in New York and demand that now I must be where I am. BE WHERE I AM. Here. Now! And when the clocktowers are not mocking my futile attempts at resisting this place I abruptly find myself in, and the chimes not shattering daydreams, then perhaps it is the faintest strain of a lone piper somewhere in the distance that reminds me that this state of aloneness is not without its blessed life-giving sweetness.

Longing

My dearest Magnolia. Your loveliness is undisputed but I simply cannot fathom your presence. It is not you whom I wish to find lying here before me. Just a short while ago the powerful Lady Winter promised me a calling in my house in the faraway American woods. Oh I hope she will understand why I could not wait long enough for her coming.

Please Forgive Me ...

my elongated silence. To be sure, the air here in New Zealand chatters irrepressibly with the voices of springtime and has barely noticed I do not speak.

Tomorrow I Must Leave

(Please note: this post was written some weeks ago but not published then as I could not bear to be here amongst my writings)

Summer in upstate New York with the great love of my life has been a scrumptious tactile time marked by brief thoughts of activism and far longer periods of boundless and irrepressible joy. Oh yes it was a tactile time, when ALL of one's senses could explore the depths and heights of love. A time when nature and culinary delights (and even my written words) have retreated into the shadows and given me full rein to concentrate on the light in her eyes and the touch of her breath on my skin in the early morning. For a brief time I have been free to marvel at the form and warmth of her hands and the strength of her shoulders in motion. Aloneness, my ever-present companion in New Zealand, knew it must step back and remain in the shadows for a while. But it was always there. That soft drumbeat of solitude. That place that we both knew from bitter experience that we must keep burning quietly in the far reaches of our individual souls. For early autumn has begun to string the coloured lanterns from the trees. Today Nature is preparing my farewell party. Tomorrow I must leave America.

Of Butterflies and Buses

At one level I do not see too much difference between waiting for one’s basic human rights to be granted and waiting for a bus. Both are made up of everyday moments which are no less precious for the fact that they must be lived in a state of limbo. Of course thankfully people are not required to wait for a bus for eight years (the length of time my American same-sex partner and I have been waiting for the right to live together in America as a bi-national couple) and if they were most of course would simply walk away from the bus stop and seek other means of transport to their destination. Or perhaps another destination.
There might be some however who, knowing only this bus could take them where they wanted to go, would defiantly stay the course and perhaps to begin with they would march in circles around the bus-stop waving banners that protested loudly their right to ride that particular bus to that particular place. Maybe some would stand upon the seat in the bus-stop and loudly address passers by , urging them to see the injustice they were facing.
In time these defiant ones, having stayed at the bus stop secure in the knowledge that one day their bus would come, might find that they were becoming very tired from walking in circles carrying flags and banners for years and that their voices were hoarse from crying out for their rights to a public who seemed barely to notice. Around that time they might begin to notice the intense colour of the blades of grass that pushed their way up from between cracks in the pavement. They may catch sight of the grace with which a butterfly alighted upon the bus-stop railing. They may notice that such seemingly irrelevant everyday moments were beginning to sustain and strengthen their resolve to hold on. The focus from that moment on might shift to ensuring that when their bus finally arrived (as they knew it would) they were not enraged, embittered or worn down by the struggle but so vital and beautiful of soul that they could truly relish and give thanks for, that long awaited ride!

The Great Love Of My Life & Me

Gay Pride New York City 2001

Freedom

Following September 11th 2001 I frequently heard the comment from prominent Americans "They (the perpetrators of this horror) want to hurt us because we are free!"

Freedom is relative of course and many in the world might rightly consider my American partner free. But when I turn to wave to her one last time at the airport as I reluctantly leave America and I see her tear-stained face nothing will convince me that she is free!

Love is All I Know in New York City

Below is an excerpt from my journal recorded in the days that followed 9-11-2001

"There is no place to hide from this pain. From here in New Zealand I watch televised images of New Yorkers pleading for news of lost loved ones. How is it possible to respond to such horror? I search desperately for something to hold firm to and find it there in a sea of tiny flickering candles resting in hands cupped in gentle repose. How else can any of us hope to repel this unseen enemy than with the greatest weapon of all. Love.

Love is all I know in New York city.

Just weeks before horror ripped through this vibrant city I flew home to New Zealand from New York. As I left this city of tall slender spires that beamed with a burnished pride before the morning sunlight the ache of separation forced on us as a same-sex couple by American immigration law weighted me down into my seat and enveloped my heart in a fog of grief. A year earlier I had met for the first time the handsome and eccentric New Yorker who was to change the shape of my future irrevocably. This woman swept me up into an unchoreographed dance that traversed the depths and heights of New York city, acquainting me intimately with a face of this metropolis that tourists never see. And with romance New York style!

We had snowball fights late at night as we stepped out to buy coffee icecream, our delighted laughter echoing through the streets and drawing knowing smiles of approval from onlookers. New Yorkers, it seemed to me, love a lover. We embraced freely on pavements rendered silent by a delicate flurry of snowflakes that melted as they settled on the warmth of our lips. She presented me proudly with a huge bouquet of fresh (if somewhat bedraggled!) flowers which she had found atop the piles of garbage that lined the city streets that night and proclaimed “Don’t say I never give you flowers!!!“ We ate black bean ice cream at 3am as we drove from Chinatown to the caverns of Wall Street and she proudly introduced me to her old stamping ground ... the area that now lies in smouldering ruins. We walked the pavements of this metropolis as if they were our playground. We made it ours as New York has, through the decades, implored all lovers to do.

Months later, when eventually we emerged from the chrysalis that is new love, we began to become aware of an immoveable wall that existed beween us; American immigration law. Together again briefly in summer we defiantly held aloft the flags of our dual nations as we marched 65 blocks through Manhattan in the Gay Pride march, beneath the bright yellow banner imprinted with the words "Stop deporting our partners!".

Today I sit here alone in New Zealand, the phone in my hand. Far away in New York city she sleeps with her phone next to her on the pillow. The only comfort I am free to offer her is to listen to the sounds of her sleeping. I am prevented from returning to her by that immoveable wall and like all New Yorkers she is now locked in a daily battle against fear. The threat of further terrorist attacks looms ever larger. But behind that battle which she shares with so many others is a battle which she fights alone. A battle for that most basic of human rights; the right to stand beside the one you love at a time of immense collective grief. I am reduced to watching CNN from ten thousand miles away, desperately hoping for even the briefest glimpse of her face amongst the crowds.

Neither of us knows when I will be able to return to her. The likelihood of America’s borders now becoming even more difficult to penetrate looms ever larger, even for those such as myself, who come bearing only love. Yet we are aware too that we have much to be thankful for. Ours is but one story and New York is today the city of thousands of stories of lovers cruelly torn apart. As a couple who abandoned themselves to the love story that is New York city we cry for that scarred cityscape where our own joyful laughter will forever linger. And we cry desperately for those couples whose separation will span not just months, as ours does, but fully into eternity. "

Katherine

“The mind I love must have wild places, a tangled orchard where dark damsons drop in the heavy grass, an overgrown little wood, the chance of a snake or two, a pool that nobody's fathomed the depth of, and paths threaded with flowers planted by the mind.”

Katherine Mansfield

Hors D'Oeuvres and Human Rights

Recently the great love of my life and I had the good fortune to be together to witness an historic event. We watched Melissa Etheridge and others in discussion on Logo with leading Democratic presidential candidates on the subject of LGBT rights in America, and in particular gay marriage. The painful and seemingly hopeless struggle to be together faced by same sex bi-national couples (such as ourselves) was mentioned at least once; the upshot of that unprecedented public acknowledgement of our long and lonely struggle brought about large salty tears which added a splash of seasoning to my thinly sliced sourdough bread topped with Vermont goat cheese, smoked salmon and dill. Not that salt was needed of course but what would an historic little banquet be, I ask you, without the odd tear or two in the hors d’oeuvres.
If I may meander in my thoughts at this point; the great love of my life and I are not asking America for the right to marry. We simply ask for the right to be together long enough to watch one season roll fully on through another. Long enough to attend to much needed repairs in our little house in the woods and, for that matter, in our hearts where they have become worn down by too long spent apart. Oh and how we would love to attain the right to watch each other grow old. Freely and without fear of being torn asunder.
Now where was I? Ah yes , my hors d’oeuvres and a relative newcomer to the kitchen of my soul; dill! While I love the liquorice-like hit offered up by the crunchy dill stems (here the large and much loved black aniseed balls of my childhood!) I am enamoured with the featherlike leaves; the ones that seem as suited to tickling one’s skin as they are to eating! The journey of this herb across my palate begins as a burst of clean green grass and thence follows splashes of anise that fall like summer rain, awakening and animating all in their presence. Oh how dill makes salmon dance and far be it for me to understand this glorious mystery! But it is fitting, in my opinion, for little hors d’oeuvres and all that embellish them to dance upon the palate at such an historic televised event. Should we not all join in the dill and salmon dance wherever and whenever human rights are championed?!

Swathes of Wild Lilies

winding pathways to my door.

I am here!

Oh the joy of rediscovery!

Wild raspberries just beyond my kitchen window. Swathes of wild lilies winding pathways to my door. The wildflower seeds I scattered three years ago in bloom here and there and though sparse and bedraggled providing the first glimpse I have ever had of the fruits of my past labour. It has always been my dream to create a woodland garden here for the great love of my life but this will not be achieved without considerable handwringing, not least because I am here in America so rarely! Long distance love is one thing but long distance gardening quite another!

And in my kitchen? Omaha steaks gifted to me by my love. I adore American beef. It tastes vastly different (and dare I say superior?!) to New Zealand beef. In New Zealand our cattle graze outdoors all year round on lush green pasture. But the grain-fed cattle seem to me to produce a beef that is far more complex and satisfying in flavour. When I first arrive I love the wild days and nights of rediscovery - ferreting through my cupboards for all that I left behind all those long long months ago. Dark brown Canadian Lake wild rice. Quaker Oats. Organic brown rice pasta. Popcorn grown by the Amish communities of upstate New York. I am told by Americans who eat in my home here that my cooking is "restaurant quality". Anyone in New Zealand who knows me will know that I simply cook in the style common to all my New Zealand friends. In New Zealand my cooking is seen as everyday and rather average.

Rush On By

People do rush about so! Perhaps the sensation of excessive speed is to be expected when one drives a car but even when I walk others rush past me on foot!! I am perplexed by all this hurrying. It doesnt seem to me that the world is a better place for it. Of course things will speed up even more for me soon when I arrive in New York! "Leisurely dining here in this city" I commented once to my American friends "is eating walking along the street rather than running!" When I fly back into New Zealand from America it seems as if someone has slowed the pace of the world down several notches. But even here there seems undue haste. Still, I tell myself, this works in my favour as I never have to jostle for position in my botanical gardens to watch a droplet of dew swell from the tip of a leaf and cut a path through the smokey autumn air as it falls to the silent earth. No. There at such events I am always alone.

Late One Night

It was my intention to tell the pictorial story here of how I steamed New Zealand greenlipped mussels in white wine and saffron. But regrettably I became caught up in the fervour of the moment and before I knew it one dozen mussels were all gone and there I was ~ alone and reeling from the succulent pleasure of it all!

Thank You

Photo By Helen
Today I said a long lingering farewell to my botanical gardens. Without this place I would hardly have been able to bear this prolonged period of exile from the great love of my life.

Flawless

To begin with just knowing you were there in my fruit bowl was pleasure enough. There was no need of touch. For days I wanted nothing more than your heady orange presence. There was always going to be that moment though when I would reach for you.

And so it was. Finally. And in the eating, you were so many things. But most of all, you were willing. It was as if you wanted to hasten your own emptiness. You melted easily onto my teaspoon. I remember you creamy yet like a finely grained custard with mellow tropical overtones. Less than sweet with a faint tropical fragrance. Your touch on my palate was so light as to feel almost a tease. I can barely tell where discovering you came to an end and being forever devoted to you began. It matters little. All you need know is that, as flawless persimmons go, you were my first.

Orange Coloured Memories

Autumn in New Zealand is always a whirlwind time for me. There are a flurry of celebrations and photo ops that I must attend in my botanical gardens. But now winter is upon us and in the ensuing silence it is only my memories that are orange. One such memory is of a single perfectly ripe persimmon which I consumed just a few weeks ago. I posted the evidence here on my blog. The glistening persimmon shell. That I did not comment on this at the time and that I barely had time to post the photo indicates what a whirlwind time that was. One breathless orange celebration after another. I try always to pen a note of appreciation after such events but this persimmon was overlooked somehow.

And persimmons, being the sort of fruit they are, do not care for being overlooked. And so I am busy right now. Writing my belated thank you note to that empty persimmon shell.

Frozen Fog

Winter is only just upon us here in New Zealand and already I have cabin fever. Not the kind that I have experienced during past winters in New York when I was snug inside my little cabin in the woods with the great love of my life. No. That's a different kind of fever. The kind I have today makes even cinnamon chasers grumpy! The guest list is long and growing longer. It began as frost and ice. Then came sleet, hail, snow flurries, snow, blizzards. And then a newcomer to my winter guest list here in New Zealand. Freezing fog. Freezing fog? To the uninitiated (as I was barely five minutes ago) this is a phenomenon seemingly associated with the nearness of bodies of water such as rivers or lakes. Well that may be but to me frozen fog sounds more like a summer desert I might lick from the back of a spoon whilst reclining in the adirondack chair I painted so carefully last year. The chair that sits waiting patiently for me on the deck of my cabin in the American woods. The chair that went through a whole winter without me and might even have a dragonfly or two sitting on it as I write this, and a hummingbird hovering overhead. Waiting. Waiting.

Condiments for the Lonely Heart

I seem to have developed a fetish for condiment making. I get like this when I have spent too long away from the great love of my life. I begin to make things. Edible things. In my fridge are jars of chutney. Lots and lots of jars of chutney. Date chutney. Spicy apple and walnut chutney. Pumpkin and smoked paprika chutney. Apricot and orange chutney. Each sets itself apart from the next by the company it keeps. My apricot chutney likes to share the platter with plump English sausages. The pumpkin chutney has designs on my popped open pita breads and some fresh rocket! The spicy apple and walnut chutney is content in the company of a good English cheddar and a New Zealand Chardonnay. And the date chutney? Well actually that is a great worry to me. My wayward child so to speak. One day I might know more about the company it prefers to keep. But for now I simply worry.

Persimmoned!

You take my breath away

Sunrise Thursday 31st May 2007.

The Writer

Mostly I live on the east coast of New Zealand, not too far, in fact, from the opening moments of each new day. And sometimes, though not nearly often enough, I spend time with the great love of my life in a house in the woods, somewhere on the east coast of America