1. Most cats are smarter than most Americans because most cats like Vegemite.

2. Mothers are always right. Getting orthopedic surgery on a body part on the same day as your partner will make for a really funny (and drugged out) 48 hours. Then the drugs will wear off, whereupon you will discover the futility and pain of trying to have sex with each other and wish you’d listened to both your mothers when they told you that you were completely crazy for scheduling surgery on the same day.

3. Drinking Smooth Move™ tea when you don’t really need to is not a good idea. Drinking two cups is a disaster of leviathan proportions.

4. After witnessing someone throw something wasteful on the ground, particularly a cigarette, it is really fun to chase them down the street and politely say “Excuse me? Excuse me? You dropped something back there.” The offending litterbugs are invariably worried about their iPhone/keys/wallet for about 5 panic-fueled seconds, then really irate/apologetic/apoplectic/embarrassed/amused/abusive. It’s just as much fun to try and guess their reaction beforehand.

5. When handing out your resume at job interviews it helps to have the right phone number included. It’s best to check as soon as you write the resume, and not after an entire year.

6. Sometimes the most counter-intuitive things are the best for us.

7. Crutches suck. There is a reason humans have two legs instead of four.

8. I don’t know what I believe in anymore. Am I an atheist? An agnostic? A Buddhist? A tree-hugging, dice-rolling, naturist?

9. Buying chocolate eclairs earlier in the day in preparation for visitors who will arrive much later is not a wise move. There will be no eclairs. None. And you will want to throw up on your guests. Try not to.

10. Not being able to see Sarah Silverman’s inspired TED talk in which she tries to destabilize the PC world by mentioning the word “retard” over and over again is going to piss me off for quite a while. The fact that TED are not putting it online makes me want to revoke my membership but has resulted in a few good emails to their ‘technical issues’ email address inquiring about “the Sarah problem”.

That’s all. What about you? Anything good?

“Tis not the amount of stress one copes with, but the grace with which one handles it, that is the measure of a persons strength.”

I said that!

“Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you even know you’re falling.”

I said that too!

I’m wicked fucking smart sometimes, but it’s a crying shame that I’m terrible at following my own advice.

I need a t-shirt made up with “I’m a hypocrite” on the front and “No I’m not” on the back.

In the last year I’ve felt some stress. I’ve been ripped off and lied to, manipulated and used. I’ve been broke and scared and confused and felt horribly violated. I’ve also felt loved and creative and proud and hopeful– but those are completely irrelevant and much too happy feelings at this point in the story. It’s the throbbing muck and boiling gore that we’re wallowing in here today, not fluffy bunny tails and creme caramel niceties. Today we focus on…. the shit.

Yay.

Lately I’ve been feeling stressed. Over the past few months my life somehow evolved, despite many truly beautiful things happening to me, into a threatening, malevolent entity, fangs bared, hairy arms extended, flailing and reaching for my throat.

The daunting experience of moving to a strange city with no emotional backup and no circle of friends made me feel small and frightened. Limited finances and a seemingly enormous set of insurmountable barriers made my soul shrink and my bravery vanish. Everything seemed so damn big, except for me, who became tiny and useless.

As a consequence I became vulnerable. Actually that’s a complete understatement. As a consequence I became PATHETIC. My coping mechanisms shut down and I turned into a needy, codependent, emotionally autistic, simpering twit. I turned into these things because, for the first time in ages, I could. Why? Because I had someone there to pick up my slack.

I had a lover to help carry my weight.

I had a boyfriend with broad shoulders.

I had a man to fall back on.

I tried to turn my Love into my Sherpa.

Sir Edmund Hillary would be appalled. So would Tenzing Norgay.

Actually Tenzing might think it was kinky in a twisted Nepalese way.

But I digress. What is it about people that makes us lean on each other when we are more than capable of leaning on ourselves?

Laziness? Luxury? Madness?

Whatever it is, it’s got to stop. The people we love the most should never get the worst of us. The people who love us the most deserve the sweetest sides and most gentle touches.

Receiving love is not an excuse to get weak, but a reason to feel stronger.

Why does this shit always seem easier in retrospect? Is Apple going to design us an iCrystalBall soon?

Personally I feel that a therapist, tender and passionate sex, lots of forgiveness, patience, talking, time and space can conquer anything if the love is great enough and the desire shared. But that’s just me. Not many people are as stupidly romantic and emotionally autistic as I am. Some people are more practical.

Me? Not so much.

I tend to think that practicalities can be taught and learned, but that love cannot. To me love is the foundation of everything, practicalities are just a layer to keep the soft stuff from oozing out and staining the sheets.

It turns out that, while my lover had broad enough shoulders, he didn’t have the inclination to use them, and the weight of my load caused him to leave me on the mountain to carry my own shit. It was a good call on his behalf. That much weight isn’t good for anyone, and it wasn’t his job to carry it. In the end I decided to leave it all at base camp and carry on climbing with nothing but some extra oxygen, a warm pair of socks and this fucking flag thing that I aim to stick in the ground when I get to the top.

Climbing is fun. This mountain is huge and daunting but I’m determined. It’s sad that I have to keep climbing alone, for now…

… because, man, this view deserves to be shared.

Death.

It’s a curious thing.

I don’t mean to sound macabre but I’m feeling a bit philosophical and whimsical.

If it’s possible to feel whimsical about things of such a heavy nature.

I’ve had a fair bit of death in my life, and as time passes I’m able to look back on some of it and even giggle.

Of course, most of the time there isn’t very much that’s funny about death at all. Unless you’re reading the Darwin Awards.

Most of the time death is a vicious, sad, horrible and frighteningly inevitable part of life. which means, that on the odd occasion when something is funny about death, I have to seize it and run like a cheetah for all I’m worth.

Laughing in the face of fear is often the only weapon we have to combat it.

Sometimes I wonder if I have a sensitivity chip missing, or if I’m trying to protect myself with humor.

And I think, no, perhaps I’m just a little more twisted than even I give myself credit for.

And I think it’s genetic.

Throughout my life, and his, my old man would joke about how he wanted to be preserved upon his death, a death that occurred in a most untimely fashion a few short years ago in 2001.

He wanted to be stuffed.

Naked.

With an erection.

And used as a coat rack.

I could probably end this story right here but unfortunately there’s much, much more.

Obviously we, his devastated survivors, failed to comply with his wishes. Nor did we bother honoring his alternative desire, cremation, either. I’m not sure why we ended up burying him, but in retrospect I figure that once he was dead we thought he kind of gave up the right to having any involvement in the decision making process.

“Screw him!” We probably thought. “If he’s going to bugger off and die then he doesn’t bloody deserve to get cremated!” or something along those lines.

Revenge of the Living.

And so he’s buried in a beautiful little cemetery in a forest, surrounded by old gold miners and towering trees, with a bottle of Scottish malt and about seventeen joints to keep him occupied.

Seventeen is not nearly enough.

When my father died I needed to say goodbye in my own way.

I spent time with his body and held his cold hands. I stroked his beard and cried a lot. I spoke to him in whispers and wails. I begged and pleaded and asked him questions he’d never have answered in life, let alone death.

And then I painted his nails.

Silver glitter, if you must know.

For old times sake.

It was an overdue apology for asking him to refrain from decorating himself in this manner when I was small.

At the funeral I gave everybody a jar of gold stars to throw down upon him in lieu of Aotearoa’s cold and wintry earth.

We sent him off in a shower of golden rain from above. It was beautiful. And a bit kitsch. And I think he’d have hated it. But that wasn’t his prerogative either anymore, was it?

Dad left behind many a legacy, the least of which was a collection of plastic yogurt pots containing the cremated remains of our family pets.

All of them.

Three dogs and countless cats.

That’s right.

My dead pets are still lurking on a shelf in south central New Zealand.

Waiting for me.

When he was alive my Dad always wanted to find a good use for them, something artistic, something natural. He’d been mulling over the idea of breaking out the old kiln and firing up some pots so he could use the ashes to make glazes, but I was mortified at this suggestion and used my only-daughter routine to shut it down.

And so they sit there still.

And I have no idea what to do about it at all.

My somewhat lackadaisical attitude towards death comes from both sides of my family.

Several Christmases ago I was appalled to open a gift in front of my entire family and discover it was a beautifully wrapped box containing the ashes of my recently deceased companion of twenty years, Baby, my cat who had died while I was overseas traveling.

“Gee. Thanks Mum.” NOT.

For some reason every single family member had also decided to give me a token to memorialize her- a photo, a card, a bit of her hair.

It was quite possibly the most inappropriate and awful Christmas of my life, and I behaved accordingly. It sucked. The intentions were pure, the reaction… nyeh.

Baby’s around here somewhere too.

And I have no bloody idea what to do with her either.

When my grandmother Ainslee died several years ago her funeral service and it’s rather earnest, morose vibe was ruined completely when my cousin Guy took matters into his own hands with regards to the coffin.

As the pallbearers were sliding Ainslee’s boxed remains onto the rollers that gently glide coffins into waiting hearses, young Guy put his hands on the end of the box, yelled “Bye bye Nana!” and gave an almighty shove.

There was quite a racket.

It wasn’t pretty.

Guy proudly smacked his hands together, as if to clean them, and looked mighty pleased with himself. It was a job well done.

It’s hard to get back to concentrated mourning after a scene like that.

I think about death a lot, I guess.

For a few years I was depressed and wanted very much to die.
But not anymore.
Now I’m glad to be alive, and thankful.
But I still think about it and what it means and where we go and if I even care.
I don’t have any answers, and I barely have questions, but I do know this- it’s something I want to experience without fear.
I’d like to be cognizant through my own death, to accept it, to be at peace.

But I suppose that’s a lot to ask for.

I’d also like to be remembered with humor and honesty, much as my old man was at his wake.

“Jeez the old bugger was a bloody bastard.” Someone muttered into his tenth pint of beer. The very same someone who’d traveled halfway across the world to be present at that funny, forlorn little service in a pine forest in the middle of nowhere.

I smiled and sipped my own beer, nodding my head in agreement. It was true. He was a bloody bastard sometimes. But he was a bloody funny, honest, human, loving bastard too, and he was mine.

Here’s to you daddy. I’m awfully sorry about the damn coat rack not panning out for you, but the neighbors would’ve had a fit, and honestly? I’d’ve had to have kept a blanket over your head to preserve my own sanity.

See you on the other side, and save a joint for me, if you can bear it?

Z

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