Legacy

Micheal Giddens : After Hearing a Bach Fugue (1924-29)

Yesterday when I got up
I couldn’t stand up straight
rolling like a sailor
skin clammy & cold
but managed to admit
the cat
& lead her to her bowl

Food poisoning?
The day before
I’d had a most disreputable pie
– bacon & egg –
from the heater tray
at the café
but would it wait this long?

It wore off gradually
Now, sitting in the dark
eyes closed
trying to “meditate”
(whatever that means)
the image fixed
in front of me

a wall of logos
wires radiating out
from SIGMA 6
& www
the chatter in my head
won’t dissipate
Far from self-centred

I feel upside-down

•

Featherstone

Featherstone Memorial Arch (1993)

I was trying to find out some details about the mass killing of Japanese prisoners at the Featherston internment camp in 1943. I've now discovered that this is referred to as the "Featherston incident." What came up instead was a huge amount of information about the (so-called) "Featherstone massacre" of 1893 - exactly fifty years before, in the UK.

Here's some of what I found online:

In 1893 the small pit town of Featherstone was the scene of a tragic confrontation between the local mine owner, supported by troops, and a crowd of ‘locked-out’ miners. Featherstone had two working mines at the time ... Over 1000 men, and their families, depended on the pits for their livelihood.

Although the pits were successful, a downturn in the price of coal caused some mine owners across the country to take drastic action. In July 1893 they decided to stockpile their coal and to ‘lock-out’ their workers.
...
On the 7th September at Ackton Hall there were rumours about coal being loaded onto wagons at the pit and being sent to the owner’s mill in Bradford. The crowd felt this was a betrayal by the pit manager and their mood began to change. Mr Holiday, the pit manager, Mr Jaques, the foreman, and the work gang loading the wagons were confronted, with the result that the work gang fled and some wagons were overturned.
...
By late afternoon 3 officers and 26 men from the 1st Battalion South Staffordshire Regiment arrived at Featherstone and marched to the pit ... While the troops kept out of the way, Holiday and the town’s policeman, Sergeant Sparrow, tried to calm the crowd who wanted the troops to leave and were threatening to force them out if they didn’t go.

The crowd around the pit gates had swelled to several thousand as people from surrounding towns heard that something was happening in Featherstone and came to watch. During the evening the situation became more tense. Eventually the decision was taken to call in a local magistrate, Bernard Hartley JP, who, failing to get the crowd to disperse, read the Riot Act.

Reading the Riot Act was a significant action. Once read people had to disperse within one hour or suffer the consequences (potentially life imprisonment). However, it seems Hartley didn’t wait for a full hour and fearing that the situation was getting out of control ordered the troops to fire warning shots.

After an initial volley, the crowd didn’t move and jeered saying that the troops were firing blanks. This was not true, the troops had the most up-to-date Lee Enfield rifles and were using live ammunition.

The second volley caused injury to 8 people. Two men, James Gibbs (22) and James Duggan (25) were to die of their injuries. Neither man (it seems) had been involved in creating a disturbance, Gibbs had walked across the fields from nearby Loscoe to see what was going on.
...
The inquest on Duggan took place in Wakefield because he had died at Clayton Hospital in the city. The verdict returned was ‘justifiable homicide’. However, Gibbs’ inquest in Featherstone would not return a similar verdict and the jury issued a statement which pointed the finger at the lack of police in the area and Holiday’s over reaction to the situation causing the death of an innocent man.

These different verdicts into the deaths were to create ripples that spread all the way to Parliament. Questions were asked in the Commons and the Home Secretary, H.H. Asquith was forced to set up a Parliamentary Commission.
...
The report was presented to Parliament and a Commons debate followed. Keir Hardie spoke in favour of the miners and a Commons motion called for compensation to be paid to the bereaved families. Although £100 was paid to the families of Gibbs and Duggan, it was done begrudgingly by the Government. Asquith said that the compensation did not imply the Government accepted any responsibility for the deaths.

None of the injured were compensated.

•

The centenary of the ‘massacre’ came at a time when the town (and much of Yorkshire) was still raw from the pit strikes and confrontation with the Thatcher government during the 1980s ... The culmination of the town’s remembrance was a march. Hundreds of people, with pit banners, walked from the North Featherstone cemetery, where the two victims are buried, to the town precinct for the unveiling of a striking sculpture that was movingly dedicated by Arthur Scargill.
...
The plate at the base of the sculpture reads:-

This memorial records the centenary of an incident on September 7 1893 when, following a disturbance in Featherstone, the Riot Act was read and in the ensuing military action troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing James Gibbs and James Arthur Duggan and wounding several others. This was just another chapter in the struggle by miners for better pay and working conditions.

- The Featherstone Massacre

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Don't you think that's rather interesting? Two people are shot dead, and six others wounded, at a lock-out in Yorkshire, and it's called a "massacre." Forty-eight are shot dead, and sixty-three more wounded, at a prison camp riot in New Zealand, and it's called an "incident" ... (Oh, I was forgetting the one guard killed in the disturbance).

The official NZ History online website has an original take on the event:

It was noted [by "those who defended the actions of the guards that day"] that the Japanese were in no position to complain about one isolated event for many Allied prisoners fared much worse in Japanese POW camps.
...
The Japanese prisoners had been generally well fed and housed and this incident was an exception to the rule.

So let's get this straight. Shooting large numbers of prisoners was "an exception to the rule" - therefore there's no reason to complain about it. Worse things happened in the Japanese camps, so they'd be best just to think of it as payback. How hypocritical for them to complain about unarmed prisoners being shot down in cold blood! They were asking for it, in any case - refusing to work, we're told.

The "unofficial version", as I heard it from my father, was that there was one particular guard who had a grudge against the prisoners (I believe he had a brother who'd been killed by the Japanese - how, I'm not sure). He was also known to be a bit of a sadist, and contrived to set up the whole thing: first encouraging them to strike, then opening up with his rifle when they gathered in a "mutinous assembly."

Who knows? That doesn't sound very much like the official account, but then everybody still seems very reluctant to talk about what really happened there. Even the website I quote from above admits that it was fifty years before the Government confirmed that this "incident" had actually taken place. It all sounds a bit too much like General Dyer's 1919 Amritsar massacre for comfort, really. And you can still find apologists for that - especially among the new breed of "pro-Empire" British historians. ...

Featherston Military Camp (1943)

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Dire Straits

Dire Straits: Money for Nothing (1985)

How many of us
are servicing a debt
instead of piling up
possessions?
Who do they belong to?
Well, the bank
I guess

Every month the rent must
come out
bills expenses petrol
just enough to cover that
Not quite
No margin for
disaster

Doctor’s visits?
Dentists?
What a laugh!
They don’t come into
our computations
Then the interest rates
go up

Nights
spent calculating
how to live
on nothing
Never spend a dollar
instead
go on a spree

of cafés
bookshops
treats
stupid crap-headed
investments
Life ground
in the straits

between the two

•

Featherston

"It's just a little thing called the Constitution ..."

"It's just a little thing called - the Constitution! Just a little thing a lot of people died for."

Mr Smith Goes to Washington is - or, rather, used to be - one of my favourite films. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me the other day, when, watching it again for the umpteenth time, I found the quote above, intoned by Jimmy Stewart in the middle of his filibustering attempt to stop the passage of a fellow-senator's crooked land-appropriation bill, had entirely disappeared.

There's a lot of talk about lost causes ("the only kind worth fighting for," as Jefferson Smith murmurs before lapsing into unconsciousness); there's even a section where Smith picks up a copy of the United States Constitution and starts to read it aloud - but no line resembling "it's just a little thing called the Constitution" can be heard from beginning to end of the movie.

And yet I remember it. I can even hear Stewart saying it, in his inimitable bumbling drawl. Where did it go? Are there two versions of the film? Did it disappear on the cutting-room floor, or during the transition from one medium (film) to another (DVD)? I have no explanation to offer. I've had to stop quoting the lines to people as they appear to have no external reference point beyond my own mind ...

Mr Smith Goes to Washington, dir. Frank Capra (1939)


•

A couple of years ago my (then) girlfriend and I went for a drive north of Wellington, over the Rimutaka ranges and through the small towns beyond. Greytown, Carterton, Masterton ... between them, they contain a lot of antique and second-hand shops. We looked in what seemed like all of them. On the way back, in the late afternoon, we stopped briefly in Featherston.

I knew little of Featherston except the name. Afterwards I realised that it was the site of Shuriken, Vincent O'Sullivan's 1985 play about the infamous Japanese 1943 prison camp massacre, but that didn't even occur to me at the time.

There was a little bookshop on one side of the square, with a sign on the front mentioning opening times, but the door was locked. Peering in through the dusty window, we could dimly make out a huge stack of books on top of a table in the centre of the room. Everything else was bare and deserted. The shop looked not only shut, but as if it had been flooded out, or stripped in preparation for the movers. The sign continued to maintain blithely that it was open for business, though.

Moving on further around the square, we found a combination second-hand / junk shop. There was a light on inside, and the door opened when we pushed on it, but there were no other signs of occupation. Certainly there was no-one at the glass counter in the middle of the room.

Perhaps "warehouse" might be a better description than "shop". The place was vast! It included racks of books, videos, fabrics, plates, furniture - you name it, it was there. We started to wander around and look at things in a desultory manner. It all looked very old and dusty and untouched.

It took some time for us to realise that there was something wrong with it - or at any rate something very odd. It started for me when I glanced at the rack of videotapes. None of them looked particularly pristine, but the point is that all of the titles were entirely unfamiliar to me. Not the genres, mind you: there were plenty of screwball comedies, kung fu movies, self-help tapes. Just not the same ones I'd seen before. Nor did any of the actor's names ring a bell.

Can this really be? I wondered. How could there not be a single familiar film among so many tapes and titles? My curiosity aroused, I began to rummage through the cheap paperbacks and romances. Same thing. They looked familiar enough superficially: slim candy-coloured spines like Mills & Boons, great fat bodice-rippers like Angelique or Wilbur Smith, but not any of those authors or series - just the same sorts of books.

Most disturbing of all were the records, though. I don't usually make a habit of leafing through boxes of LPs - who has a record player nowadays? - but these record sleeves were weird. There were old New Zealand bands from the 70s sitting on logs around campfires, with titles like "Banjo got my Soul" or "Ti-tree Anthems". I don't know much about pop music, but I felt that I might have noticed some of these shaggy characters if they'd ever been on television back in the day. Not a one of them was familiar to me at all.

It was as if the shop had come out of a completely different space-time continuum - one very close to our own, close enough for the same kinds of drivel to be peddled in bookshops and record shops, but just different enough for there to be a complete discontinuity in specifics. Similar in genus, completely different in type.

At this point I realised we were being watched. There was a man standing behind the glass case of the counter. Where he'd come from is unclear to me to this day. Could he really have walked out from the back, through all those ranks of shelves and aisles, completely unobserved by either of us? I guess he must have, since the only other alternative was that he had simply materialised there. Unless there was a hidden staircase down there behind the shelves of dusty glassware.

He was the stillest man I think I've ever encountered. He hardly seemed to breathe, and I'm not sure that I saw his eyes blink even once during our brief conversation.

"Can I help you?" he said.

"Oh, no, just browsing," I replied. Cathy just stood there, as if transfixed with terror (she told me afterwards that all the cloth samples she'd bought in the shop were ruined somehow when she got them home. They'd looked all right in situ, but when you unrolled or unpicked them, stained or creased beyond the point of repair).

"You're not wanting to close, are you?" I continued.

He didn't move. Or answer. So we kept on poking around. Not for long, though. The creepy vibe of the place had begun to get to both of us. We had visions of being ushered out the back and getting one sight of Bluebeard's bloody chamber before the axes started to descend. Worse, of a stainless steel umbilicus leading up to a waiting space ship ...

Nothing happened, though. Cathy bought her few rolls of fabric: rather more pricey than one might have expected for so sorry a specimen of the genus "Op Shop", but still costing only a few dollars in all. I was tempted to buy a few books or records, but something in me seemed to say no. This was their rightful place, and they should not be taken from it.

We went out into the street, leaving the lighted windows of the shop the sole illumination over Featherston's whole town centre. Nothing had happened, exactly, but it felt as if we'd had a narrow escape.

To this day I've never been back there. I doubt I could retrace my steps even if I wanted to. I seriously question if the shop we entered that day was of this world ...

There are universes all around us, say the Physicists: dark matter and superstrings and instantaneously disappearing-and-materialising quanta. What wonder, then, if from time to time we take a wrong turning in the midst of our seemingly stable world?

"Featherston incident" plaque

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Two Falls

Vertigo

I asked the Doctor
to clean out my ears
with his steel syringe

The sensation was bizarre:
a rush of blood to the head
like the sea breaching a dike

At last, success!
A mighty plug of wax expelled
The inner ear controls your balance, though

As I came out into the light
I put my sole down hard
where there was nothing

except the edge
of a concrete path
The pain was sudden & excruciating

It hurt so much
that my body anaesthetised itself
but I knew when the bruises

started to form
like a layer of ash between
two strata of muscle

I’d really feel it

•

Yesterday my father stepped back
from raising the flag on his front stoop
into thin air

He fell on his back
on the concrete path
& couldn’t get up

None of his strategies worked:
rolling to one side
clutching at the stone wall

for leverage
calling for help
There was no-one there to hear

At last a neighbour came out
& helped him up
They managed to clear enough space

in the books & magazines
& papers on his bed
for him to lie down

He’s back on his feet this morning, though

Falling Leaves

•

Vastation

Matthew Brady: Henry James Jr. & Henry James Sr. (1854)

In May 1844, while living in Windsor, in England, Henry James [Sr.] was sitting alone one evening at the family dinner table after the meal, gazing at the fire, when he had the defining spiritual experience of his life, which he would come to interpret as a Swedenborgian "vastation," a stage in the process of spiritual regeneration. This experience was an apprehension of, in his own words, "a perfectly insane and abject terror, without ostensible cause, and only to be accounted for, to my perplexed imagination, by some damned shape squatting invisible to me within the precincts of the room, and raying out from his fetid personality influences fatal to life."

James's "vastation" initiated a spiritual crisis that lasted two years, and was finally resolved through the thorough exploration of the work of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), the Swedish scientist, religious visionary and teacher, and mystic. James became convinced that, as he put it, "the curse of mankind, that which keeps our manhood so little and so depraved, is its sense of selfhood, and the absurd abominable opinionativeness it engenders." He remained attached to Swedenborg's thought for the rest of life, and never traveled without carrying Swedenborg's works with him.

– Wikipedia

Here's some of what Swedenborg himself had to say on the subject:

CONCERNING VASTATIONS

There are with every man at least two evil spirits and two angels. Through the evil spirits the man has communication with hell; and through the angels, with heaven. Without communication with both no man can live a moment. Thus every man is in some society of infernals, although he is unaware of it. But their torments are not communicated to him, because he is in a state of preparation for eternal life ... Thus a man who does not live in the good of charity, and does not suffer himself to be led by the Lord, is one of the infernals, and after death also becomes a devil. [AC697]

Besides the hells there are also vastations, concerning which there is much in the Word. For in consequence of actual sins a man takes with him into the other life innumerable evils and falsities, which he accumulates and joins to himself. It is so even with those who have lived uprightly. Before these can be taken up into heaven, their evils and falsities must be dissipated, and this dissipation is called Vastation. There are many kinds of vastations, and longer and shorter periods of vastation. Some are taken up into heaven in a comparatively short time, and some immediately after death. [AC698]

There are many persons who during their life in this world from simplicity and ignorance have imbibed falsities of religious belief, and yet have had a kind of conscience in accordance with the principles of their faith, and have not like others lived in hatred, revenge, and adultery. In the other life these persons cannot be introduced into heavenly societies so long as they remain in these falsities, for they would contaminate them; and they are therefore kept for a time in the lower earth, in order that they may get rid of their false principles. The time that they remain there is longer or shorter according to the nature of the falsity, and the life contracted thereby, and according to the degree in which they have confirmed themselves in their principles. Some suffer there severely, others not severely. These sufferings are what are called Vastations, of which there is frequent mention in the Word. When the period of vastation is completed, they are taken up into heaven ... [AC1106]

– The Science of Correspondences

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac appears to have suffered some form of vastation during his time as a fire-spotter on Desolation Peak in the summer of 1956. The experience is chronicled in his novel Desolation Angels (1965), with actual extracts from the journal he kept at the time incorporated into his otherwise fictionalised text.

Desolation Peak Lookout

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Self / Counterself

Aby Warburg: Mnemosyne-Atlas (1924-29)


Annahme des Kunstwerkes als etwas in Richtung
auf den Zuschauer feindlich Bewegtes
– Aby Warburg (27 August, 1890)

[Theory of the work of art as something hostile
moving towards the beholder]

I wish that I were dead
sometimes
It pops into my head
in just those words
I wish that I were dead

Daunting lists of jobs to do
small pettifogging duties
People whose persistence
wears you down
break up the thought

A hard thing to acknowledge
but someday it will happen
The self that sees
itself
creates a third

but is that me?

•

Tree Worship

Charles Alldritt, Tree Worship (1965)

I was reading this post a couple of weeks ago, about a book called Tree Worship, and it gave me the idea for what to call this blog.

Otherwise I wouldn't know what name to give it. Or what it's actually about.

The interesting thing about the book, from my point of view, is that its author claims that it's not really about anything either:

Early critics have suggested that the purpose of the book is not clear. Perhaps there is no purpose. An attempt has been made to avoid bias and prejudice and it is sincerely hoped that it can be similarly read.

I too am trying to avoid "bias and prejudice" in discussing the things I want to lay before you (whoever "you" may be).

The blurb is interesting, too:

TREES, those majestic natural monuments, have in silence watched men and cities rise and fall. They have been adored and have witnessed many peculiar, and sometimes cruel, rites.

FROM THE RUINS of dead civilisations we learn just how much cruelty was the direct result of bigotry, self-righteousness and the apparent inability to examine or question beliefs.

FEAR OF RIDICULE by their fellows and of reprisal by gods and rulers, have made people obedient to many ridiculous precepts. We may pity their credulous acceptance of the dictates of those who presumed to speak for the gods, and this is a reminder that we too could perhaps improve our methods. Though many may remain timid, there will always be those who dare to question the orthodox, and who are inquisitive and adventurous enough to explore.

UNDER THE STONES we raise there may be all sorts of crawling horrors, but there may also be a diamond.

What does all that mean? I understand about the "crawling horrors", and (especially) about the "fear of ridicule" - the moment you raise such questions people start laughing at you, but what exactly is going on between the lines? Why trees, in particular? Why not the whole vegetable kingdom? Nature worship?

Elsewhere he says:

In conclusion it is suggested that, if the reader has any doubt regarding the possible power of trees, perhaps he has never tried the experiment of contemplation in some quiet grove or forest where trees are large and old.

Clearly he himself has had such an experience, which has suggested the collecting of materials on Tree Worship - possibly with no clearer purpose than that. Possibly, again, he decided simply to publish the materials he had without inquiring more deeply into the nature of this mystical, life-changing event - vision, epiphany, vastation, call it what you will - and has instead contented himself with some lukewarm revisionism with regards to Christianity:

It has been affirmed (Botticher) that "the worship of the tree was not only the earliest form of divine ritual, but was the last to disappear before the rise of Christianity."
...
As this goes to press it is interesting to find that last year (1964) the Church of Rome has been pleased to suggest that the "Holy Spirit” is also present "in other faiths." This is a big step away from the bigotry of ancient times but we still need to travel further.

Maybe some of his other books of poetry or "speculative fiction" (there's quite a lot of them) take the argument further. In any case, I'm very grateful to him for giving a focus to my own speculations. I can't ignore the fact that trees have a lot to do with it - an instinctive respect and awe before their complexity and majesty, a gradually growing conviction that what they have to teach us about patience and endurance is precisely what we need to hear ... what I think I did hear that day.

Charles Alldritt (1908-?):
A Partial Bibliography

1965 - Tree Worship: With Incidental Myths and Legends. Auckland: Printed for the Author by Strong and Ready Ltd. [xiv + 122 pp.]

1968 - Four of a kind : Tarantella; What next? Fantastic reality; the Family future.

1968 - Time to consider about time: dimensions, conventions, provocative intentions. Auckland: Apex Calendar Co. [26 pp.]

1969 - The philosophy of a tramp. Auckland: Charles Alldritt Ltd. [24 pp.]

1969 - Riddle of the ring. Auckland, N.Z. [Charles Alldritt Ltd.] [20 pp.]

1969 - Sundry sentiments; sense and nonsense. Auckland: C. Alldritt Ltd. [28 pp.]

1970 - Worlds in mind: Short stories, fantastic fiction. Auckland: The Author. [102 pp.]

1976 - Fifteen essays. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1978 - Grandpa's little verses. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1979 - No holds bard. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1980 - Memento of the fiftieth session of the Auckland Authors Club : Remuera, Auckland, 12 October 1980. Edited by Charles Alldritt. Auckland.

1980 - New Zealand haiku. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1981 - Clone and other fantasies. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1982 - New 80s poems from New Zealand Writers Workshop. / edited and printed by Charles Alldritt. Auckland.

1982 - To view the dawn: Poems. Auckland: C. Alldritt. [32 pp.]

1985 - Hindsights and forethoughts. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

1987 - Evening reflections. Auckland: Charles Alldritt.

Odin and his brothers created the first human beings from two logs of wood. One log was ash and the other elm; from the ash they made the first man and called his name Ask, and from the elm they made the first woman and they named her Embla.

Ask & Embla

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The Double

Dante Gabriel Rossetti: How They Met Themselves (1864)

I’m conscious of myself
watching myself
when people tell me things
you’d normally react to
somehow
a tear a frown
a smile

I cannot accept
she writes
this grade
Even in the assignment
there are no markings
A smile
& silence

sitting at the back
not reading
when her turn comes
seldom turning up
& when she does
a smile
& silence

I harden up my act
of teacherly indignation
Or is that back to front?
Polish the carapace
while inside
feeling nothing?
Nothing to be said

Nothing to say

•

The Great Wall of China

Steve Webel: The great wall of China

I had a dream last night that I was in China: at least, I think it was China. I couldn't speak the language, or read any of the signs, so I guess that's where I was.

I'd arrived in a large city full of fields and strange anthill-like structures with little windows in them. They seemed to be made of clay.

Eventually I'd stumbled into one of them - some kind of monastery, I think it was - and booked a room, or rather an alcove in a corridor full of monks and other polyglot tourists.

Unfortunately, when I went out to explore, I got disorientated and couldn't find my way back. The dream got increasingly nightmarish from this point on. I wandered around, unable to recognize anything that looked in the slightest degree familiar, and even when I finally found a taxi-driver who spoke English, there was no way he could tell me where my room might be. My room and all my luggage - passport and money included, I suppose.

Finally we drove to a little park overlooking the city and tried to make sense of where I might have been, what route I might have taken to get where I'd ended up. Another couple of guys had joined us by then, but didn't seem especially motivated to help.

The dream might have been prompted by that time I got left behind in the toilets on New Year's Eve in Thailand. There was the same sense of mounting panic, of not having any clear coordinates to steer by. The Chinese anthill imagery might have come out of Kafka's Great Wall of China, perhaps, or else one of De Quincey's opium dreams.

The one thing that's certain is the sense of being lost: lost in a self-constructed labyrinth which no-one else can access to help you out of. No matter how obliging my guide was in trying to help me find my way back, it all depended on my fragile memories of just what twists and turns I'd taken in the dark in my first few minutes in the city.

Frances Wilson: Guilty Thing: The Life and Times of Thomas de Quincey

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