Drunk on Power

I had to attend a court hearing with someone the other day. I have not been in a court of law in say, twenty something years. I walked in and was immediately approached by the police officer on duty, and she said ‘take those off your head’ and I looked at her dumb struck.

‘What on earth is on my head that is so offensive?'

‘Your eye glasses, take them off now!'

Okay, I thought to myself and folded my reading glasses and stuck them looped into the front of my shirt so that I could locate them again. I did not understand why my eye-glasses offended her, but I thought, okay, we’ll let it slide.

I sat down with my backpack full of books, pens and writing pad as I am in the middle of writing two papers for the end of term, the end of term is now and it is starting to stress me a bit, so I thought well, in case this takes some time I will use it to my benefit and work on my papers.

I was right, it took three hours and a bit. But, as I pulled my pens out of my back pack and set my books and papers beside me, the police officer swooped down on me again.

‘You can’t write in a court of law,’ she shouted at me.

I said nothing and put the pens into my back pack and sat there for a few minutes thinking about this. So, you cannot write, perhaps it is so you won’t write down sensitive information. Okay, it’s a privacy issue, fair enough. Even though I had no intention of writing down what I heard, but simply what I was studying about. I felt I had figured out the pens, but I still felt perplexed about the eye-glasses on top of my head. Okay, I think I will just read then, perhaps she won’t mind if my eye-glasses are on my face as I can see lots of other people with them on.

I managed half a paragraph of Bruno Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory and suddenly I have the same police officer in my face again...

‘You can’t read in a court of law’, she shouted at me, because obviously by now, I am looking dumber than most of the other folk all staring at me with shocked faces.

‘What pray tell might I do in a court of law’? I asked indignantly.

‘You can sit there and that’s all.’

‘Well, no wonder the world is full of illiterate criminals,’ I bellowed.

And, with that she left me alone as I threw my eye glasses back onto the top of my head and challenged her to arrest me for having four eyes ill equipped to read or write with!

This is a sad state of affairs when the world is more concerned about a fifty-five year old graduate student trying to write her Master’s theses when simply accompanying someone to court for moral support. I should have expected it though, I was a support person for someone convicted of stealing her own stuff, and that didn’t seem to matter to the legal system either...all I saw that day was an institution that has turned into nothing but a revenue generating facility drunk on power.

I remember thinking as I left...I will WRITE ABOUT THIS!

How My Garden Grows this Spring 2011 in Christchurch, New Zealand

There is a pot in my garden that reflects how radically hysterical I can feel on some days...

And then, you can open my secret garden gate and behold my neighbour's wysteria...

Or walk on out upon a trail of petals...

But, I suggest you come back in from time to time and help watch my garden grow as it appears to be a good show this season...

I have decided to use this space as an ongoing diary for the many fruits and vegetables (and nuts, of all kind!) that my husband Clark, and my daughter Kasey and I are all committed to growing for pleasure, consumption and just to watch sometimes...and, for my family and folks back home...here is a little message that never sleeps...from me to 'y'all'....

WATCH THIS SPACE from time to time...it will GROW....Love, K

FIRST GARDEN STORY: HOW MY POPPIES GROW

What if the noise you make is the last thing someone else ever hears?
Will it bring comfort, or simply make them glad it is the last chance someone has to perform upon their world?

Criticisms and over-revved engines are proliferating this world, this world we all share for however long one gets to. Sometimes, it feels too long, sometimes not long enough, but always that depends a lot on what you HEAR...

I struggle to quiet the noise of my world, living on a corner in Christchurch wherein everything has sped up since the beginning of earthquakes. A lot of traffic has been diverted to the street I live on surrounding my garden and since Christchurch was always a city wherein the birds could be heard, they are still there, but mostly muffled by over-revved engines and discouraging words.

I cannot say those last two words without hearing the song “Home on the Range” in my head, so automatically I dream of living somewhere else where the ‘deer and the antelope play’, but I take my past ‘plug-ins’ and beat them back with my hard earned education and what do I have left...

“Silence is Golden” begins to play in my head!

And, the remonstrations of my past perfect parents, “If you don’t have something nice to say, say nothing at all”...but then, who would get to talk these days?! Or, so it appears, but I say...

Take a walk in your garden and find new ways to phrase the things that make you feel negatively. Bloom a language that will make life less difficult for the hearer, water the words that will bring more growth, pluck the words that threaten the opposite by simply not using them anymore...if those things go unsaid, they seem to disappear....

And, if not, and you recognize that these things still need to be discussed, THEN, try pure description rather than critique of any kind...
For today, every time you go to criticize another person or thing, STOP AND ASK YOURSELF:

How can I describe this person or situation without criticizing at all?

It’s a new game I am playing with myself, and the few times I have managed to truly pull it off, I could actually see the poppy growing taller...of course, there will always be poppies that need some propping up...be a friend, give them a kind of descriptive place to reside, rather than a criticism and see what blooms inside your garden, the one on the busy street with all the revved up engines...

I think it more than a little ironic that my red poppy is propped up by the recycling bin...


Wed 26 Oct 2011

I would be remiss if I did not share some photos from my extended garden of Hagley Park in Christchurch, New Zealand. We have more to talk about than just earthquakes...

Though it was a grey day, and few people out, the flowers were, like most survivors of human and non-human manipulations...extraordinary!

GROW ON...CHRISTCHURCH!!! There's nothing more to say...