Cracking Puzzles

As in, ‘what is Ron the Body actually about’.
20 pages of notes later, I’ve got it sorted. Sweet. I am excited. More writing to be done.
Today, ran around at lunchtime playing basketball with bunch of women who are still learning the game. Silly but fun. More on Thursday. Breaking a sweat of any kind is good.
Hayfever sucks. Stupid Northern Hemisphere pollen. Not used to it.
Odd transition thing: as noted, have come to an end of a period of busy stuff, major features of which were some (North) American friends who are now leaving Scotland. Recently emailed friend Jasmine in NZ about how I felt like I was in a tunnel and that soon I’d be out of it and I hoped I’d be able to make contact with some of the cool folk I’d lost touch with over the busy period.
Well, today I went to a farewell party for Nancy. Beforehand I was scribbling Ron stuff at Elephant House, where I crossed paths with George and Tom, two of the people I’d been missing. One door closes, another door opens, that sort of thing…
Looking forward to sleepover at Haunted Derby Gaol. Wooooo.

Chap With Wings

I went to a Doctor Who convention yesterday. ‘Global Conspiracy’ was a one-day affair themed around a story called ‘The Green Death’, just released on DVD. This story lives on in the vague memories of a generation as ‘the one with the giant maggots’.
The guests were writers/producers Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts, guest actor Stewart Bevan, and Nicholas Courtney who played the iconic recurring character the Brigadier. They were all very charismatic raconteurs, thoughtful and driven and absolutely lovely to listen to.
Most compelling was Barry Letts, who was in acting in the 40s and 50s, then moved to directing, then on to production and writing. He knows the business of TV thoroughly, and expressed himself with care and commitment. He was mesmerising. The others were also great fun; the massively enthusiastic Terrance Dicks, the booming luvvie Nick Courtney, and Stewart Bevan, bemused to find himself answering questions about a minor role from thirty years ago.
The discussion ranged much further than Doctor Who, though. A major theme was concern over the current state of British TV and film. There was a charming moment when Barry Letts talked about the great tide of reality TV, and as if on cue the other three panellists shook their heads gravely at the awfulness of it all.
I like Doctor Who. I like what it stands for. I remember mulling over the character and the TV show when I was newly arrived in Britain, flying a kite on Blackheath as it happens, and it all made sense in a way it never quite had from the other side of the world. Scribbled some lines in my notebook that evening, which I’ve dug out for this blog entry:
“The power of the idea – a man who solves problems through good humour and common sense and lateral thinking, who opposes the crushing logic of Voltaire’s bastards… there is a need for this kind of man, now more than ever. This man makes particular sense among the isolating traditions of England. Ultimately, [the heath] is where his stories return to – the common space in an increasingly uncommon world.”

Morgue the Body

Irony dept: finally start working on novel about governing power of body in life. Immediately get just sick enough to not be able to work on it. Stupid body.
Nostalgia dept: Sai Baba doco on BBC2 right now. Todman St regulars may remember the Religion Of Love flyer we had on our wall for so long.
World Wide Morgue dept: i have a livejournal – mr_orgue. Just to comment on other LJs, really. Friend me if you have one, I’ve done a few people so far. I also have a gmail, and I have scored the ‘morgue’ id. Rockin’.
Today dept: sat around reading. George Monbiot’s ‘The Age of Consent’, Don DeLillo’s ‘Underworld’.
Sibling dept: oldmost sister Miriam leaving NZ for the UK in a week. Davie diaspora continues.
Comic dept: Grant Morrison’s ‘Seaguy’ is ‘Astro City’ crossed with ‘Flex Mentallo’. Or something. Joss Whedon’s ‘Astonishing XMen’ is serviceable.

Blimey

“What does it mean to be human?”
So I sat in a cafe and I brought out my notebooks and writing books for Ron the Body, last touched almost a year ago. And I was surprised by how much there is – 40,000 or 50,000 words, whole subplots and sections I’d forgotten, and a lot of it seemed good.
What I had to do was what I needed to do a year ago, what I realised I had to sort out before carrying on – I had to figure out exactly what Ron the Body is about. And check that it is about what I think it’s about.
So I wrote five pages on it, impressions and core ideas, key principles. Key questions. Including the one at the top of this entry. Blimey. So, not avoiding the big questions, then, I guess 🙂
It’s cool. My brain has been Ron-buzzing since.
—
Over on Rafah Kid, Mark has posted a great entry about how the sides talk to each other over Israel and Palestine, including an excellent section about Rachel Corrie and how she has become a rhetorical battleground.
Read it. It is really something special.

Palestine Trip 8: Bumps in the night

Up here. [DEAD LINK – REPRODUCED BELOW] This is the last one. Thanks for reading ’em.

PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 7

Thursday April 15, 2004

THE EMPTY HOUSE
Trouble in the night. Morning, and we drive through houses on the outskirts of Aida refugee camp, Samer leaning out the window to ask directions of kids passing by. Then we park. A Red Cross guy parks behind us. We walk down a driveway and see the house.

Samer was woken in the night by the sound of the detonation, but it still stands. Two storeys. Looks like a nice house.

There are people around, fifty or so. Old men sit smoking and drinking tea on the patio, women cluster talking in the shade of another building nearby, young men stand around frowning. Kids trawl through it all, grinning and playing.

We walk through the house. It still stands but there is nothing inside but rubble. The walls are riddled with cracks and the floor is covered with heavy chunks of wall and furniture. The destruction is complete.

The owner of the house shakes our hands warmly, smiling. Samer translates. His son, it seems, is in prison, suspected or convicted of being an associate of a suicide bomber. That connection was apparently enough for the visit in the night. At 3am the IDF soldiers knocked on the door, gave the family fifteen minutes to get out. Then they went in and set the explosives. Soon after 4am they set them off and the house was ruined. Then the IDF left.

The family had closed their eyes to sleep with a home. By the time dawn came there was nothing left.

The owner smiles at us. ‘You are welcome!’ he says through Samer. ‘I only hate the governments, not the people. The people are welcome. You are welcome.’

He keeps talking as the old men watch and we are given sweet tea to drink. He talks about the destruction of the Twin Towers, how no Jews went to work that day. He uses that obnoxious conspiracy theory to demonstrate what the Palestinians are up against – a ruthless system, willing to sacrifice
innocent lives for political convenience. I can’t challenge him, his home has just been destroyed. And he doesn’t hate Jews. ‘Only the governments.’

THE PASSAGE OUT
The wall and the checkpoints are protective measures, so suicide bombers can’t get into Israel from Palestine. That’s why there’s the searches, and the harrassment, and the detainment, and the intimidation.

Except nearby both there’s a crossing point where the only barrier is a mound of dirt. Dozens of taxis are there, dropping people off, picking people up, waiting for fares. There is constant foot traffic over the
mound, which is only about five feet high and gently sloped. Men and women and children, bearing suitcases and shopping bags.

This isn’t exactly a secret. There’s an IDF watchtower not twenty feet away.

Samer follows us over into Israel to help us load up the van waiting on the other side. I hug him farewell. I really like him, he’s a great guy. I gave him a flag I had in my pack, the Silver Fern, symbol of Kiwi identity.
I like to think there’s a bit of Kiwi culture sitting around Samer’s home or the ATG offices or somewhere. I watch him walk back over the mound to Palestine and disappear out of sight and I feel sad that our time there is over.

But there is still Israel to negotiate. We drop off Sabine and Jean-Guy and Sarah in Jerusalem, and then its just Cal and me on the way to the airport. We have two envelopes stuffed with Palestinian information to send home, and I’ve deleted all the photos on my digital camera. On with the show.

As we approach the airport, the driver – one of the Issa’s army of contacts, who drove us around on Saturday morning with Anjela – tells us that we will be stopped as we approach the airport, and to say we don’t know him, that our hotel in Jerusalem called a driver for us. We get there, five lanes of traffic, each car being checked. When our turn comes the driver waves him over – an Arab face, I guess, being all the justification needed for special treatment. A teenage soldier clambers into the van, his gun swinging, and
he checks our passports and asks us questions: where did we stay? What have we seen in Israel? Where did we go? Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, we say, a trip to Bethlehem for the holy sites. We stayed, of course, in a hotel in Jerusalem. Lies, again. He seems happy enough, and eventually waves us on.

We farewell the driver and find a post office, send off our packages. The woman in the post office takes Cal’s passport details as a matter of routine. No idea why and we didn’t ask.

Then we join the boarding queue. We had been warned to come early – this process can take a long time. A pair of young women are working our queue, and when they come to us they take our passports with a smile. The red stickers from our arrival cause their brows to furrow and one of them scoots off to ask a superior some questions. Then she returns. Cal and I do our best to stay relaxed, but we’ve heard some troubling stories of the departure security.

We get the questions again, in more detail this time – where did we go? Did we visit any private houses? Do we know any people in Israel? For some reason I mention an old friend, who last I heard was in Israel, but that was some years back. Her attention instantly sparks – what was his name? What was his profession? She double checks that she got the name right. Maybe it is just small country syndrome, she’s wondering if she might know the person too. Maybe its some weird test of my truthfulness. She doesn’t
explain.

And then we get waved through to the baggage checking. Cal’s bag goes through the detector fine, mine gets stopped and I have to open it for the security man. He takes out the guidebook, flips through it attentively. Maybe things can be hidden inside thick books? He nods and gives the book back and we press on.

Now we’re up to check-in and passport control and after another twenty minutes of queueing we make it to the departure lounge. We spend the last of our shekels at a concession stand on chocolate and then board. We’re exhausted by it all. The plane is delayed in the air, oncoming winds or something, and arrives in Zurich almost an hour late, shrinking the time we need to make our connection to about fifty minutes. We sprint through the late-night halls of Zurich airport, just make it in time. And then we’re
aboard an Easyjet flight. Familiar territory. Home ground.

Back to a real-seeming world.

FINAL WORDS
It was an amazing experience. I learned far more than I could have hoped and met some wonderful people. Thanks ATG, thanks Olive Tours, thanks Samer and Jo and Mark and Sarah and Johnny and Manar and Mahmoud, and our fellow tourists Jean-Guy and Sabine.

I understand things better now.

Hopefully this account has helped other people understand things better too.

The group: (back) Jean-Guy, Cal, Sabine, Sarah; (front) me, Samer.

Thus endeth the trip. Salaam, Shalom, Peace.

Palestine Trip 7: Tough Situation

Up here.
Only one day still to come.

PREVIOUSLY: PALESTINE TRIP 6

Wednesday April 14 , 2004

Breakfast with Manar and Johnny and little Nicole

BEIT SAHOUR
It was just like driving around a town anywhere in New Zealand, except for the bullet marks, the burned out buildings, the missile holes, and the streets blocked off by rubble to control Palestinian movement.


I can’t emphasise it enough. Its easy to think of places where these sorts of things as happening as special environments, different, where the horrible things that happen are somehow context-appropriate. They aren’t. Imagine how it would feel if there was a wall built across a major street near your home. Imagine a bulldozer pushing rubble into the road outside your house so you need to go the long route to get where you’re going. Imagine the motel nearby all smashed up and burned out. It wouldn’t make sense. Neither does it make sense here.

There’s nothing special about Beit Sahour. There’s nothing special about Palestine. There’s nothing special about the Palestinians. They are just people and chaos is half in the door and its pushing hard.

After breakfast with Johnny and Mannar we meet back at ATG and Samer takes us for another drive. We see more of the signs of chaos. A bypass road being built, at massive expense, flanked by layers of security fences, dividing one village, more in its path. Facts on the ground.

HERODIUM
We drive out to Herodium. This is a hill, the highest for miles. It was made by human hands. Herod built it as a fortress and palace, and the ruins on the top and at its base remain, as do a network of tunnels through its interior. We head out to it, see sheep grazing in the excavated swimming pool at the foot of the hill. The road up goes right past an IDF military base. There are a couple of soldiers in the carpark at the top of the hill, but otherwise this major tourist destination is empty. The soldiers watch us indifferently.

Samer chats briefly to the man in the ticket booth and we go up to the top. Its an impressive ruin, a crater filled with old Roman construction. It is also hot, and we soon duck into the tunnels, out of the sun. We wander through, reading signs explaining the history of this place, particularly its key role in important rebellions in Jewish history.


As we leave, I refill my water bottle at a spout near the soldiers and one of them greets me. They are sitting on a bench with a set of high-powered binoculars mounted before them. “Do you want a look?” he says. I go over and peer through, see villages and settlements for miles in all their flattened detail. “We were in that village yesterday. They were throwing stones. We were shooting.” He says it without any particular emotion, as if it was just the weather. “Rough,” I say, listening with some surprise as the words come out of my mouth, “tough situation.”   He shrugs and doesn’t say more.

This view shows some Palestinian villages seen from the top of Herodion. At the centre of the top is a square of light – that’s a bridge. A bypass road will pass under the bridge – it has already been built up to the bridge. The photo shows the olive groves and village that are in the way of construction and will be annexed and demolished to make way for the road.

Cal stole this shot while a guard in a sniper tower (not visible – that’s a water tower in the photo) watched our van suspiciously. This is the road down from Herodion (the hill is out of shot on the left) and the sign says ‘Welcome to Herodion National Park’. The barricades, barbed wire and sniper tower are an odd accompaniment.

DHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP
Dheisheh is a large refugee camp, also in Bethlehem, like Aida. We stop in for a look around at Jean-Guy and Sabine’s suggestion. Our host is a gregarious guy named Jihad (Samer: “You really should change your name.”) and we get the tour and history. We stop in at the camp nursery, full of swarming sugar-highed under-fives (it was someone’s birthday) and its impossible not to smile. When I lift one of them up to touch the ceiling he just about explodes with laughter. Cal ends up carrying three of them around at once. Its nice to stop in here.

The streets of Dheisheh are incredibly narrow, the memory of the enclosing wall still fresh. “There are no secrets here,” Jihad says. “Everyone hears everything. Every argument, every cry, every time you go to the toilet. Everything.”

Jihad tells us that Dheisheh was visited by the IDF the previous night. They blew up the sewage processing unit. No-one seems to know why.

Dheisheh refugee camp. Jihad, who told us the history of the place and showed us around, is in most of these photos.

Lunch. It was delicious.

NEXT: PALESTINE TRIP 8

That How Many Dudes Song

it is being piped into my head right now.
It echoes in there.
Cool.
—
I feel like I’ve just come up for air. The last couple months have been hard work. Good work, but hard, and I was starting to feel I was drowning not waving. But now I pop into the open and fill up on O2 and its true that I’m better for it, stronger and more complete. There’s no such thing as time wasted for a writer, just a few less pages produced in the final tally.
Apart from making contact with a few welcome visitors from far afield, Justin Raffan and Avril Barker among them, I’ve been finishing up some roleplaying game commitments and generally discharging old promises. The end of the road was Friday night, taking part in ‘The Vault, a tournament one-off run by Nancy. The nicest thing for me, apart from getting to game with some people I haven’t had the chance to before (e.g.), was seeing it resonate with the tournament one-off I ran nine or so months ago.
This was Amnesia, by the redoubtable Matt Cowens. Amnesia and The Vault begin in basically identical circumstances. They are entirely different things, of course, but it was nice for me to see the start and the end of an intense period of fantastic gaming should complement each other so nicely.
There are many and obvious reasons why tournament games start with “you wake up and you remember nothing”. I think there’s life in that old saw yet.
This particular scenario was of a more experimental bent than most tourny games I’ve seen. I didn’t find an absolute success – it was laden with too many red herrings and not enough solid hooks for either plot development or character interaction – but it deserves recognition for being a good, challenging idea executed well. Anyway, in play most of these things didn’t matter – Nancy as GM and her Deadly Viper Squad of elite roleplaying talent were able to paper over any gaps in the scenario and make the damn thing hum.
It were cool.
—
Three new people came along to ORC this Saturday. Blimey. I have long ago lost track of our total numbers ever taking part, but I’d guess it in the forties, even fifties. About half of those have stick around long term. Which is just great.
The whole damn thing has been quite the success. Two weeks we have our anniversary. Hmm. I guess that means I still haven’t done everything I need to do: one anniversary to plan. And still gotta write up two final Palestine-trip instalments.
But then, lord have mercy, I will start writing Ron the Body.
—
Also: the Fringe Fest booklet is out. There goes August.

My Neck Is Made Of Rubber

I remember when I was 17 attending a dance for 13-14 year-olds as a supervisor type. This involved some intense supervisory-type head-throwing-around. I can’t remember the song, but it was something appropriate for black jeans and signs of the devil. I remember the next day, my neck muscles had the strength and characteristics of a bundle of overcooked egg noodles, and I thought to myself: “I am getting too old for this.”
So, last night, at a club. Still too old for this, apparently.
The night out was with the wonderful crew for the Providence Summer game I’ve raved about occasionally, plus my Caroline of course. It was a nice evening of dinner and dancing and fine, fine drunken conversation.
Today, I am resting my neck and not moving around much. It is a treat to do nothing. The week has been mad. Got in the door from Switzy at 11pm on Tuesday, in bed at midnight, Weds out the door at 8am, back at home at 1am and straight to bed, Thurs out at 8am, back home at 9pm this time so had a few hours before sleep, then out the door at 8am on Fri and not home until 4am Sat morning, then up at 10.30 and out the door at 12, back home for a couple hours in the early eve then out again and not home finally until almost 3am. No wonder I’m not getting any bloody writing done.
Its a really beautiful day though.

Challenging Definitions

Over on Rafah Kid, Mark links to this article about the death of Rachel Corrie. In the comments, the usual debate is raging. (I say “debate” in the spirit of being extremely generous to some of the contributors.)
Reading it reminds me of one major problem in dealing with these issues. In this case, the spark is me noticing that some of the pro-occupation posters tend to make absolute statements about who the Palestinians are, namely that they are a people who overwhelmingly want to wipe out Israel and kill as many innocent Israelis as they need to in order to make that happen.
These people have defined the Palestinians as evil.
—
A few blog entries back I had a comment from someone called Hannah. She’s in high school in the States, and says, quoting my Palestine premises post:
[me] * Shared humanity tells us that the majority of people on both sides are
prepared to compromise for peace, and seek to minimise suffering for those on
the opposing side.
[Hannah] I’ve tried to say this before … but they just pull out the “60% support
terrorism and dont want peace” statistic … how should I defend myself in this
situation?
—
Again, the Palestinians are being defined as evil.
I replied to Hannah recently, but I don’t know how much sense I made and I didn’t keep a copy so I can’t check. Anyway, I thought it might be good to throw this one open to any and all who might be reading:
How can you talk about being pro-Palestinian when your opponents are defining the Palestinians as evil?
Or to flip it around,
How can those who define Palestinians as evil be made to question this definition?
Please respond. I’ll email Hannah to tell her we’re talking about this here.