Trendy But Casual

Final Month

I'm back in New Zealand, making the most of my final month in the Sargeson flat. And by that I mean watching the live puppycam.

Slowly I'm getting over the fear of waking up to discover IT WAS ALL A DREAM and Obama isn't really President-Elect. Today he's checking out his new home. I didn't realize he and Michelle were so very tall. they make George and Laura look like oompa-loompas.

I arrived back in time to vote in the NZ general election, something I was not planning to do until a) my father established it was legal; and b) every Labo.ur voter I know told me it was my moral duty, i.e. things were looking grim. Very grim, as it turned out. In New Zealand we have MM.P, so everyone votes twice - once for a candidate (your member of parl.iament), and once for a party. I'm registered in one of the Maori el.ectorates, Te Tai Tokerau (which I keep calling by its old name, Nor.thern Maori, by mistake). Actually, I'm not sure why West Auckland gets stuck in here and isn't part of Tam.aki Mak.arau, which is greater Auckland. Later, when the results were in, I discovered I voted exactly like the majority of voters in my electorate - for the Mao.ri party candidate, but giving the party vote to Lab.our.

My parents, brother and I went to Flanshaw Road Primary School to vote. Afterwards we were given orange stickers that read "Yes I've voted". My brother declined to wear his. He can still barely walk after running the Auckland marathon a week ago, so maybe he thought a sticker would weigh him down. Then, because it was my father's birthday, we went out for brunch in New Lynn. At Denny's. This was my brother's idea: birthday-havers get a free meal at Denny's, so my brother could take us out and only have to pay for three meals. (This is chapter 246 in how my brother is exactly like my grandfather.) But when we ordered, he discovered that Denny's has abandoned this policy, and he had to fork out for all four breakfasts. Then my mother announced that she'd rather have gone to Mecca in the Viaduct. And then we all ordered the most expensive breakfasts possible. The most expensive Denny's breakfast only costs $12, so my brother was in luck.

While I was away, Albert Park abandoned itself to spring, and everything is green and/or blossoming. Also while I was away: Forbidden Cities reached #4 on the NZ fiction chart. So this means once I'm back in the US I can claim to have an "international bestseller".

Back to work.

Great Day

T. Middy said he would blast "Ode to Joy" through the house (and, in fact, the neighborhood) if Obama won the presidency, so that's exactly what he's doing now. I had to go out on the porch to hear the crackle of fireworks and/or gunfire around the city of New Orleans.

It's only just after 10 PM here: we didn't think there'd be an answer so soon. (When does the Marxism start?)

On TV we're flicking between BBC, MSNBC, NBC, and (for fun) Fox. In Chicago, Oprah and Jesse Jackson are weeping. In Phoenix, John McCain is giving his concession speech. There's a jubilant crowd outside the White House, another in Times Square. Bush has called Obama to congratulate him. The polls on the West Coast only closed less than half an hour ago.

This has been the most anxious day. I kept waking up in the night, driving TM crazy by asking IS IT TIME YET? That is, time to get up and vote. We walked to McMain High School a little after eight AM. There were no long lines. People were cheerful, taking photos.  I took photos, but I haven't had time to download them. In our district we were voting on five different races, and numerous amendments. A sign on the curtained voting booths told us we only had three minuted. There was a giant touch screen, with everything clearly laid out; it was easy to use. We were in and out pretty quickly.

Then there was just the waiting ... 

All the neutral grounds were clogged with signs for various candidates, as ever; people holding signs at intersections urged us to honk if we supported their candidate. Many of the run-offs (like the contest for DA and member of the House of Representatives) were between two Democratic candidates. Orleans Parish is staunchly Democrat, unlike the rest of the state. Talk of red and blue states isn't very accurate: cities like New Orleans are always Democrat, in part because of our large black population.

TM finished work early so we could go a-canvassing together. First we had to go to the HQ on Canal Street, near Jeff Davis; then we were sent to a street in the Seventh Ward to meet with the canvassing coordinators. This is a black neighborhood, an old Creole neighborhood. It was not long after four PM: street parties were already going on. In an empty lot, at a temporary Obama camp, organizers were handing out clipboards and information. We discussed places other canvassers had been sent: New Orleans East, Mid City. But when we said we lived Uptown, they sent us there, to Louisiana Avenue near the river. 

We were to do a four-by-four block circuit, knocking on doors, handing out information, reminding voters the polls were open until eight PM, and providing phone numbers if people needed to know where to vote or how to report a problem. This took a lot longer than we thought it would. It gets dark early here now, so I was glad to be on this particular mission with TM. A lot of the people we spoke to reminded us to "be safe". Almost everyone who answered the door to us had already voted. Only two people told us they'd voted for McCain; one couple told us they'd voted for Nader, and they were suitably apologetic. Three different households were holding Obama parties tonight, and we got invitations to all of them. One guy even waved us in, so TM was standing in his hallway, shouting "We're from the Obama campaign!" down his hallway. Kids told us their parents had voted. One old white lady waited until we were on the next porch to tell us "I don't like your candidate."

One man came to the door in an Obama "Progress" shirt, and he told us he'd worn it illicitly to the polls today, concealing it under a sweatshirt. A younger guy had a green O'Bama t-shirt on; he said his mother was working on the phone banks. Some people weren't home yet, and when we rang their doorbells, their home-alone dogs went completely mental. On one porch, three crazy kittens ran circles around me. We got a good look inside a number of houses, peering through doors and windows, looking over the shoulders of home-owners. I now envy a number of high ceilings and wrought-iron gates.

It's a mixed neighborhood, rich and not rich at all, black, white, Hispanic. Most of the houses were built in the nineteenth century. Two households were Spanish speakers who could only speak enough English to tell us they couldn't speak English; they looked at our Obama t-shirts, smiled, and shook their heads. In one house, the woman who answered the door told us they were non-citizens. "But we want Obama to win," she said. A European socialist, no doubt.

After two hours, we drove back to the temporary HQ on Annette Street, but it was dark and gated; I called our organizer, Daniella, on her cell phone and she told me we should just keep the clipboards and left-over leaflets.  So we drove to Felipe's to buy margaritas, where I saw one of my former students, and then returned home, dusty and tired. It's a very humid evening. I thought it would be a long night, but I was wrong.

Barack Obama is on stage now in Chicago, about to give his victory speech. Thank god.

Tomorrow

Tomorrow is Election Day, my first as a citizen. We’re going to our polling place, McMain High School, around seven AM. I’m nervous. There are many ways to vote in this country, and they all seem to involve equipment that breaks down. What if there are levers to pull, chads to hang, etc? What if I get confused at the last minute between Ralph Capitelli and Leon Cannizzaro, both of whom are running for DA? Should I vote Yes or No on the second of seventh amendments to the Louisiana constitution: may the state government require two additional days of notice before calling a special legislative session? (Not sure why our state representatives need a further two days’ notice, exactly, given that they already get five days notice, unless maybe they are on a cycling vacationing in El Paso and need time to pedal back.)

A side note: apparently Louisiana is #1 in the nation at coming up with constitutional amendments. Since its most recent iteration, in 1974, we’ve voted in 151 amendments.

Yesterday I got a call from the Obama/Biden local HQ. (We also got a call from Obama himself, but that was pre-recorded.) Can I volunteer some time on Tuesday? Yes I Can. So I’m on the four through seven PM shift, canvassing. T. Middy is worried this means knocking on doors in bad neighborhoods in the dark, being accused of European socialism and illegal alien status, etc, so he might try to finish work early and come with me. I’ll wear my Geauxbama T-shirt.

Meanwhile in New Orleans, life goes on as abnormal. Halloween on Friday brought its usual chaos and silliness. We crossed St Charles Avenue around nine-ish, on the way to the third of our three activities, and thought we’d stumbled on a convention of drunk prostitutes. But no! It was just dozens of students, dressed in skimpy, skin-tight “costumes”, waiting to catch the street car downtown.

Every night after school, the McMain band and majorettes are out in the field, rehearsing for parade season. These rehearsals involve a great deal of drumming, and sporadic marching around in ragged formation. The drumming is so loud it drowns out the TV, but they’re all sounding good, and the brass players seem less like distressed baby elephants this year, and more like actual musicians.

And last night, just as The Amazing Race was ending, our power disappeared: we sat around by candlelight for the next two hours. Ten thousand households lost power, according to today’s paper. The problem? A suicidal raccoon.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.

New Orleans, counting down

I’ve been back in New Orleans for just over a week; this time next week I’ll be in Auckland again. Only a month left on my residency: I’ll miss it terribly. Especially as the Auckland City Council has acted, finally, and is promising to lock Bowen Lane at night.

It’s decidedly autumnal in NOLA, though no doubt it’s still much warmer than in other parts of the country. (In Iowa City, this was the week the Farmers’ Market closed until April.) Here it’s mild and sunny, almost chilly in the shade and at nights – not exactly mists and mellow fruitfulness, but better than wet-hot, as it’s been for months. Some of the big houses on State and St. Charles have insanely elaborate Halloween decorations: I’ll try and take some photos tomorrow, though many of them are lit to look their sinister best at night.

Halloween is a big deal here, and tends to go on all weekend. We have two party invitations for Friday night. As usual, we’ve left costume decisions until the last minute. One year in Iowa we dressed as Dead Currencies and Dead Languages; our second year there we decided to be less conceptual, and T. Middy went out dressed as Harry Potter, complete with lightning scar and messed-up glasses. At the Eastside Hy-Vee supermarket, where we were purchasing our usual vats of Yellow Tail, he was accosted by some drunk students: “Harry Potter, all right!” I was an Iowa cheerleader that night. I still have the little skirt, with IOWA in yellow letters across the back, but I think the pom-poms drowned in the flood.

This year I’m opting for semi-conceptual, and dressing as the Spectre of Marxism. Apparently, during my absence from the US, it has been revealed that Obama is not only a Muslim and an Arab who was really born in Kenya, not Hawaii; he’s also planning to impose collective ownership and other evil Marxist ways on us. (Oh, and he’s also the Anti-Christ.)

TM is digging out his dreadlocks wig and some selections from his vast wardrobe of All Blacks gear, and going as Tama Umaga, the AB’s former captain. That way, he says, his costume can be literal AND figurative. Because, according to one of our neighbors, who stopped by when Tom was attaching an Obama/Biden sticker to our car, if That One is elected, it will be a scary time. Not because Obama is black, he explained, but because he, the neighbor, is white. I can’t remember his logic exactly, maybe because he didn’t have any, but basically he thinks that when black people are in charge, item one on the list is taking revenge big-time on white people. Presumably by imposing Marxism, Islam, Tyler Perry movies, etc.

This neighbor is young, by the way, but not a Tulane student.

I’ve been swallowed up in too much Tulane business while I’ve been back, and I’m looking forward to getting back to my own work in Auckland. But first there’s the African Writers’ Symposium on Saturday, and the Sarah Lockwood/Billy Mohl wedding extravaganza, and the election. Early voting closed last night in Louisiana, and Sarah spent hours yesterday waiting in line to vote. Thousands of people here have already cast their votes. Louisiana is likely to stay Republican – because McCain is perceived as more sympathetic to squirrel hunters or the overweight or something – but there are other things at stake this election, i.e. the Senate and the House of Representatives. And, you know, the future of the world, but we’re driving ourselves crazy enough with anxiety as it is.

Sobering Sights II

Here in Auckland, it's another fine spring morning - lilies on the bank in Albert Park, wisteria blooming outside the High Court. Students are walking along Prince Street, on their way to nine AM lectures. It's Monday morning, but I can hear more bird noise than traffic noise.

In Missouri, home state of T. Middy, some people are putting up billboards like this one in West Plains.

[Photo by Melissa McEntire / West Plains Daily Quill]

This disgusts me. Like the YouTube video of a woman at a McCain rally in Minnesota, saying she wouldn't vote for Osama because he's an Arab. (McCain corrected her, but afterwards when she was interviewed, she insisted that she had proof of his Arabness.) Like the video of a man in Pennsylvania lining up to see Palin speak: he was carrying a Curious George the Monkey toy, dressed in a paper Obama hat. He said the monkey's name was Lil Hussein. Later, because the camera was still on him, he seemed to grow uncomfortable. He removed the Obama hat, and gave the monkey to a nearby child.

(During our long drives along the eastern side of Missouri, we pass a billboard that just reads JE.SUS. I've often wondered what the hysterical, outraged reaction would be if someone paid for a billboard reading, say, ALL.AH, or maybe "Je.sus loved the Mid.dle Ea.st," with an illustration of him in "terr.orist" clothes. The right to free speech might not be quite as popular. One of our friends in Iowa had done the same drive many times, and explained to us the meaning of the billboard: he says it comes about the time you're thinking, Je.sus, I've been driving forever and I'm still in Missouri?)

This video is of people on their way into a McCain rally in Pennsylvania, trading abuse with protesting "commie faggots" and "European socialists" across the street. It's interesting to note how many people suggest moving to Rus.sia as an alternative for Obama supporters. Don't they know how un-socialist Russ.ia is these days? Haven't they heard that Moscow is the most expensive city in the world? Personally, I miss the old days. You know, the days of segregation and McCarthyism, when Moscow was cheap and the US was rich, and That One wasn't around to cause the global financial crisis.

Sobering Sights

Some of my fellow Americans.

Sick, but Book Still Launching, bro'Town Still in Production, etc

I am sick. This is the third time since Christmas that I’ve had a major cold of the lingering variety, and it’s very annoying. Perhaps it’s all the airplane time that’s to blame , because each illness has shaped itself around flights to somewhere or other. Or maybe I’m just at a low ebb these days.

Anyway, the show goes on, etc: tomorrow (Wednesday, October 8^th, at 6 PM) there’s a book launch for Forbidden Cities, my new story collection. It’s at Unity Books on High Street in downtown Auckland, if anyone local reading this would like to swing by. Steve Braunias is going to say a few words. There will be wine.

No thanks to Glengarry, by the way, who will rent glasses to non-corporate customers only if you spend over a thousand dollars on wine. Luckily, Liquor King is not so particular. They’ll take anyone’s money.

Deadlines and maladies have made me neglect the blog over the last week. I finished the draft MS of a novel, and this week I’m closing up shop on the anthology I’ve been editing for Penguin since … I think Bush/Gore, maybe?

The first publicity is trickling in for my story collection. People e-mail to tell me they’ve seen a number of reviews, that all reviews are glowing, etc. I’ve only seen one review, and I was distracted by my fab photograph. This weekend, a big interview (with a slightly less-fab photo) appeared in the Sunday Star-Times. The first line compared my voice to a drag queen underwater. Apparently this was because the interview tape was mangled in some way.

My nephew read the article first. (I was staying at my sister’s place, to avoid Saturday-night noise in Albert Park.) He said, re the interview: “It’s fine. You’re just saying the things you say.” This worried me. The things I say are often not sensible. Then he said, re the interviewer: “Don’t worry – she’s not very judgmental.” Then he pointed out that in the photo I was wearing my gray cotton cardigan from Express, the one I wear all the time here. (I was, in fact, wearing it again that day.) Then my father rang to tell me I was in the paper. He said: My favorite line was the first line.

That is, the one about me sounding like a drag queen.

Late last week I did a radio interview with Lynn Freeman that will be broadcast on Radio New Zealand this Sunday, October 12^th. My voice was quite husky with illness by then, so no doubt I will sound like a drag queen on the radio as well.

Recently I also made a brief appearance on the TV3 news. They were not celebrating the publication of Forbidden Cities: they were running an item on tainted milk in China. Earlier that day, a reporter was talking to the camera outside the Fonterra building, which is just down Princes Street from the Sargeson flat. I was late getting to Pilates: I had to run down to Customs Street to get the bus up to the Three Lamps. I realized at the time that I was ruining the shot, but I figured they’d just tape it again.

They did NOT tape it again, so I materialized on TV3 that night, thudding past the reporter. I was able to see that the back of my hair looks rubbish, and that I was wearing, yet again, the Express cotton cardigan. I won’t be wearing it at the book launch tomorrow. (And I’m getting a hair cut.)

Recent celebrity sightings: Paul Holmes, who is a world-famous-in-New-Zealand celeb newscaster, gorging on mussels at Elliott Stables on a Saturday morning before heading off to an in-store for his Paul Holmes Olive Oil at Smith & Caughey’s … Neil Finn, of Split Enz and Crowded House, with his wife, ahead of me in the queue at the Britomart Foodtown … and Oscar Kightley, who I met at the Firehorse Films studios last week; he gave me a signed DVD (Sione’s Wedding) and we reminisced about the old days at Rutherford High School, having established that we had no friends in common, and that even people there when I was there had no recollection of me whatsoever.

Thanks to producer Elizabeth Mitchell, by the way, for inviting me to the studio so I could see all the animators at work on the fifth series of bro’Town, for letting me scoff the sole Melting Moment biscuit, and for indulging me in an in-depth discussion of my favorite character, Dad.

Oscar (as I call him) told me that my TVNZ newsboy crush Simon Dallow had tried to bond with him at some big media awards thing, pulling out his “I grew up on Royal View Road in Te Atatu South" credentials. “But he went to St Peter’s,” Oscar said, and we agreed that this changed everything. Sorry, Simon. You could have been head boy at Rutherford! Or, at least, one of the tallest boys.

When I’m not trying to get books finished, or fancying myself consumptive in the manner of K. Mansfield, I’m watching the ninja cat or the one owned by another Simon.

Talking

Tonight I'm taking part in a panel at the Auckland City Library: it's a New Zealand Book Month event, called "Does Fiction Matter?" Other participants are Iain Sharp and Gordon McLauchlan, so two things are certain: we'll all have a lot of say, and I'll be wearing the most make-up. It starts at 7 PM on Level 2 of the library, but the free wine, courtesy of Glengarry's, will start flowing at 6:30 PM. This is a ploy by the library, I think, to get the panelists there on time.

I've just heard that I'm supposed to make some sort of prepared statement rather than just "discuss", so I'm now in panic mode.

Over at Bookman Beattie's blog, there's a short interview with me about the new book. I am fascinating. Really.

Memory Loss

For the second morning running, I heard bagpipes … but now the mystery is solved. Yesterday and today were graduation days. People in academic dress were all over Albert Park, getting their photos taken, brandishing bouquets, or wearing garlands (including one very tasty-looking one made from mini chocolate bars). The bagpipers were there to lead them down Bowen Lane and along Queen Street to the Town Hall.  I walked in the same parade in May, 1985. My fringe was dyed pink to match the BA hood. After the degree ceremony, John Reynolds took my picture in Myers Park, and then my brother and I went to the big Monet exhibition at the City Gallery. I don’t remember the bagpipes but then, I forget so much these days.

Like John McCain, perhaps, forgetting that he thought the fundamentals of the economy were fine JUST LAST WEEK.

This election season in the US has been quite strange, but now it’s surreal. McCain wants to suspend the campaign. He wants to cancel the first debate. He suggests it could take place when the VP debate was scheduled, thus sparing Palin from having to come up with cogent answers to demanding questions. Palin is made to look almost as foolish and unprepared as she truly is by … Katie Couric, of all people. Paulson is trying to rush through his emergency save-the-banks package – because apparently, he wasn’t aware the economy was tanking until a few days ago – in a way that’s eerily reminiscent of the ramming-through of the so-called Patriot Act.

The sky is falling down, apparently. McCain and Palin are actually achieving the unthinkable: making GWB look intelligent and vaguely presidential. Meanwhile, the Ol’ Devil has just given a post-Katrina-like speech, in which he talks about the terrible problem that really wasn’t anything to do with his administration’s incompetence – oh no! not at all – and how something drastic needs to be done to fix it, and how he’s on top of it all; but then he has to leave town (or, in this case, office) and it’s someone else’s problem.

I know I don’t usually talk about anything political on this blog, but please: if anyone American is reading this, and you haven’t yet registered to vote … register now. This election is too important. The economy is imploding, the war is still going on and on, and the McCain and Palin ticket is … what to say here? Shall I start with unfit? Or cynical? Or incompetent? Or desperate?  

By the way, I like what Wanda Sykes has to say about people who don’t vote.

What a strange, strange couple of days.

Publishing

This is my new book. It's coming out quite soon. If I was on the ball about these things (anything), I'd know when. This morning I have my first interview about it, with a journalist for a national paper. I'm so out of the habit of being the interviewee: asking questions seems a lot easier.

 

The cover image relates to a paragraph in "Like a Mexican," the story that opens the collection.

"You’ve been to Spain; you’ve seen men like Carlos before. You walked past them each evening in the streets of Seville, where they stood around outside bars with big windows and tiled floors, expensive jackets flung over their arms, laughing and drinking and smoking. They were sturdy and well-fed. They seemed to know the order of things in life, the way things were done. They weren’t like English men, who stood outside pubs, pint glasses balanced on window sills, or crammed themselves into aluminum café chairs on a wind-blown pavement, shouting over the roars of passing buses." 

My publicist at Penguin just e-mailed me with the release date: September 29, next Monday. I wonder when the queues will start to form?

Here in the Sargeson flat I have the windows open. Somewhere on campus, bagpipes are playing. The birds are going nuts. I'm going to walk to the interview, which will take place at the Alleluya Cafe in St Kevin's Arcade, on Karangahape Road. Hopefully during the walk I'll gather my thoughts.