Edging Blades in a Plague-Struck Fortress
Uncertainty Quilt II
Selected questions from my journal, 2019 - 2021. Feel free to answer.
The banana box containing my journal archive was buried deep inside Box Mountain.1 I penetrated the spare room & in a game of manual reverse-Tetris unmade one fortress wall, unstacked the cumbersome book-heavy boxes, & retrieved the journal box from the bottom of the pile. I broke the packing-tape seal with the anticipation of an auto-archaeologist.2 By some trick of nostalgia I had been conceptualising my journals as troves of bite-sized wisdom-gems. I had forgotten that looking at old journals is extremely cringe-inducing. With the benefit of hindsight, you want to yell at your past self to stop fucking around!— to not be such an idiot!— to kick that particular dickhead to the kerb! As a rule of thumb, the longer ago, the stupider and more boring past-self was.3 I found that I didn’t want to venture too far back into the excruciating past. Also, I didn’t want to unpack the entire box just to get to the bits I wanted. The journals at the top of one stack were dated 2019, & that seemed an interesting time to choose: the end of the old world, the beginning of the new.
The journal volume I chose to begin with opens in July 2019. I got caught up in the momentum of the process & ended up transcribing four or five volumes-worth of questions, finishing in May of 2021— a span of just under two years, a phase of unprecedented world-upheaval. Reading the first of these questions, written in the latter half of 2019, it’s as if I can see the backwards-ripples-through-time of the dropped stone to come— the Pandemic; or, looked at another way, the questions seem like premonitions. I found the Pandemic personally galvanising, as I’ve written before. However, during lockdown itself I wrote very little. It’s hard to say why. Maybe I couldn’t make sense; maybe I didn’t have enough solitude; maybe life was too interesting; maybe I need to be out & about to write.
Journals are necessarily a very partial record, but the butterflies pinned are so evocative nonetheless. I like the whimsy & specificity of these questions. I also like the polyvocality. I love to record what other people say, & I always try to note it down faithfully, word for word.
These fragments of the record illuminate a set of concerns in flux. I seem to change creative streams roughly once a decade. I see this period of time as the winding-up of drawingself & the ascendancy of public Wizardself / writingself. It is also interesting to note that I have since answered many of these questions in my Substack (as linked). (Which obsessions remain alive over time?) These questions seem a seedbed for what I’m doing now.
In 2019 I was writing in Parker Quink blue. I had switched to blue from black on Waiheke in 2015— my pen ran dry & blue was all I could get. I then faithfully stuck with blue for four more years. (In its favour, Quink is easy to get, available from any old stationery shop.) In August 2019 I switched to the ink I still use now, Noodlers Gruene Cactus. So you have to imagine the questions starting blue & ending green.
Every stroke— ooh— did I ruin it?4
“What should I do for my birthday?”5
The way it feels— it feels like kissing is maybe OK?
(And maybe that’s why I prefer these realms? All that book-loving?)
“What have you done with your hair?”6
“Wasn’t I good, wasn’t I well-behaved?”
Maybe this is that dark wood Dante talks about, maybe this is my particular version of something fairly universal, or maybe it’s true?
But maybe it can only work for me in these convoluted ways?
But maybe it’s broken?
Can they be knit again?
Why weep ye by the tide, lady, why weep ye by the tide?7
(How long since I held a little baby?)
Strength crossing the Hanged Man— the fortitude to endure not knowing? Overcoming passivity through discipline?
The moment I remember, the long extended Happy Birthday in the dark, the candle app on someone’s phone, which is crack-up in itself, like what is it for? Propping your phone on an altar or on the bedside table to make love by?
And the deeper questions arose, as always— why can’t it be like this all the time? Like seriously why can’t we have it always?
They’re all so deadly earnest— they can’t stop lecturing & hectoring— & it’s so fucking boring— what happened to things being funny?
20.8.2019 (not long after my 40th birthday): I switch from blue ink to green, for Spring.
Mad Michael in the pub, “What does masculinity mean to you?”8
“I was looking at the tunnel house & thinking ‘Maybe she could be happy growing little plants?”
So what happens when two lone wolves form a little pack, a little pact?
And thinking in the shower— will this be my five-year Wizardversary?
The bee smoker?
I’m gambling he’ll find something better, but what if that comes with a wife?
It’s like, it feels to me like— if not me, who?
Do you want another? He gets me drunker & the drunker you get the more magical it seems that you are in a pub, where you can just ask, & the sweet barman pours you another— or even better he asks are you OK? Another?
What’s in between? What’s the mystery in between?
Can what is broken be made whole? Can what is whole be preserved? Or does time always take it?
Kev, talking about some folksong: “What about— where are the pretty little small birds though?”
Dusk coming, the feeling of night approaching, the old feeling of expansive joy when you think, Can I be here?
What is life for, if not for this?
What makes some people compelling to read— deeply, enduringly compelling? What’s that word-magic that fishes up life deeper than words?
“I’m sorry, was there a please or thank you with that?”9
It’s shocking, truly shocking, men, & a girlchild, what will it do to her? Who can carry such burdens on such young shoulders?10
The Dead rising, & isn’t that what Josh got? Those two cards?
Well didn’t she know you well enough by the time she married you?
How can he know how to be a Dad?
Suddenly paper bags are everywhere, & why couldn’t we have had them all along?
The joy of which made me bleed, or was it the other way round?
I was thinking about the guy who walked through dressed as the Grim Reaper— how Bruce asked him did he have a riddle for us?
“Oh, are you new to Reaping, then?” said Mahalski somewhat rudely.
“What about a joke then?” I said.
“The ‘friendly’ tuatara? It’s not a very emotional animal at all, I imagine?”
“See? Wabi-sabi.”
Philippa has a habit of— if you say something she thinks isn’t even a problem— staring through her glasses like an owl— & just being like So? So what?
Suddenly, we’re singing, & why’s that?
(Remember the mighty abundance when the dole came through?)
How dare you think about making money from your art?
Being in the hinge— the last of the innocents— what’s that like?
(When I asked Thomas “Were you born in 1979?” —somehow I just suddenly recognised him as my exact contemporary.)But all in all, the feeling was, ‘Where is everyone? Where’s the magic?’
It’s a karmic feeling— like my work, my words; out they go, & what will return?
I look at his perfect young face & think, how can he be married?
Crooked trees— new places, brand new places give a surreal feeling— like am I here? Is this real?
“You know I’ve been in heartbreak hell eh?”
“Is there hope?”
“Do you Aunties want to come & listen to this?” said Tom.
“Are you coming to England too?” says Eliza. “Just prostitute your art— that’s what I do.”
(What’s my personal sign atm?)
But I woke suddenly with a start not long after, full adrenaline— did I forget to draw? House shaking11 & because I was pre-adrenalised I was scared, heart kicking off again, & I thought ‘Really? The first night me & Kev are on opposite sides of town?’
When I was in the supermarket yesterday evening a few things I wanted weren’t on the shelf, & I thought, what’ll it be like when this happens for real?12
How deluded do you have to be to think it’s all business as usual, to make a baby?
But it’s these quirks? Inadequacies? Built-in structures in the human mind, that will drive us into doom.
What’s it going to do to humans, how close am I to the cliff-edge?
How about instead of business cards I get a stamp made, of the little apple?
I remember when I was being the ghost & I asked the Deadies to help me I wasn’t scared— so maybe my ancestors would help?13
Baby, do you understand me now?14
Newmade boys everywhere in the streets these days, soft teenage beards coming in, slim jeans, hips, not knowing how to create the illusion, or not caring?
“You’re Eliza’s friend, aren’t you?”15
When was the last time I held a baby? When was the last time I put a baby to sleep?16
Do you have a question? Ask a Wizard17
And I’m to write for two hours, three? Two: I’m Louise’s art piece.18
Worried about his Dad, he went to find him & heard an animal moaning, “What have you done to me? What have you given me?”
Good talk to T., but I talk to T. & it seems so clear, it’s the same old problem, where does self end & other begin?
Where does one draw the line?
“You say I’m broken, but have you ever been settled? Wake up happy, all day happy, go to bed happy?”
“Blanket Man! Remember the old Blanket Man?”
When was the last time you cooked for your Mum?
Enlivened, like walking the path of presence & thinking well, how far does it go? How awake is it possible to be?
7.3.2020: first mention of Covid. That seems quite late on in the piece— I remember I had been aware of it as a looming presence since late January. I guess I didn’t want to write about it. I wrote The big news is coronavirus— which, like, in itself, flu is worse. What did I know, what did I know…
I asked R. Do you have a diagnosis?
Schizophrenia, he said.
Are you medicated?
No.How much of relationship is purely mammalian, the need for a warm body to hold?
(Did I even write about how I got into First Dog on the Moon, & he drew a picture of me & my friends singing as five dogs howling, in the GUARDIAN for goodness sake?)
(Better to settle for numbness?)
And as always I think, can’t it always be like this? Can’t we just have Folk Fest all the time? Can’t work be play?19
And did you see the orangutans?
(“Are we going to drink from the same bottle?” said Rosie in the kitchen. “That’s so… TABOO.”)
I remembered how I’ve been craving for more space, chafing at the smallness of my room— but when there are two empty rooms, I don’t inhabit them— force of habit, territory?
Do I dare after a decade to think of ‘our’ house?
What does Jay Griffiths think— what does Hilary Mantel think— what would Ursula Le Guin think?
What day is it, what month, what year?
I keep thinking of a cargo cult, a reverse cargo cult? Though the metaphor doesn’t stand up to scrutiny, I don’t think?20
Suddenly everything’s turned to shit— am I dense?
Witch in the house, Wizard in the streets?
“Working on your Theory of Hereditary Wickedness?”
Writing Full Moon Tarot post yesterday I got the risk feeling— the feeling of exposure, putting myself on the line— politics & magic, are they separate?
Who gets to say what, when?
So what’s worth saying? And to whom?
What must I remember?
Was it this easy all along? Or wasn’t the fruit ripe yet?
Scars are Wizardly, right?
Even parents trying to do this now, attachment parenting within the nuclear family, run themselves entirely ragged, unable to do anything else because no one else is there— so how can a modern baby have any chance of the correct sense of self, as welcome, right in the world?
Yesterday Elise was talking about glamour magic & I was thinking ‘Why would you make that trouble for yourself?’
14.8.2020, my 41st birthday: after ten years, I stop daily drawing.
Without myth, how can we survive?
But why not drop a line to
?21Are words my new material?
“If there’s nothing there [to make the mandala on the beach] we’ll fucken— we’ll fucken forage it, OK?? I keep secateurs in the car at all times.”
Is that a better story than I lay down like a lamb, & took the surgeon’s mark?
Arlo: “Is it going to be Idiocracy, or Back to the Future III?”
I said “It’s Kev’s birthday today— it’s his birthday right now— can you guess how old he is?”
“Do you want to play fairies?”
What’s your power source?
“What is my book going to be about?”
Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?22
(Is that blood still there— is the stain still there?)
If I had been there, would I have felt something wrong, would I have seen the person coming?
Winter is coming, how will we survive?
Can you just… not rain so I can wear my hat? For one second?
“Indomitable?”
“Maybe a sharpening business?”
Is music medicine?
Are you an ocean person, or a mountain person?
What is your power source?
Is the glass already broken?
Is Time more like an accordion, or a pair of trousers?
Which is more important, WHAT or HOW?
What happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object?(One of the very first things she said when she heard I’m a Wizard— “Can you tell me what’s going to happen, what I’m meant to do?”)23
Oh— you want me to get this person to heal your friend?
How about a symbolic fire-lighting ceremony?
When Adam delved & Eve span, who was then the gentleman?24
Should I become the Wizard of Wellington?
A VERY GERIATRIC SCENE— FISH BURGER AFTER?25
Then I thought, you know, is a hedge wizard like a hedge priest? What sermons am I preaching?
Would you hew me to the heartwood, cutter?26
Last night in Tarot group K. asked “Have I been stupid, do I have the virus?”
Who makes smooth the stony mountain?
Who elucidates the lives of the moon?
Who proclaims where the sun will rest?
Who leads the waves like cattle from the ocean?
On whom do those waves smile?
What troop, what god edges blades in a plague-struck fortress?27What is mine that is ancient?
“Excuse me, are you the Wizard Amanda Palmer was talking about?”28
Thinking about the Dead… What would they like, to aid me? Food, drink? Remembrance? Visits?
“No rabbits?”
“Have you tried holding your umbilical?”
It had shat everywhere, or bled, & knocked things over, & “Is it an omen?” said Rosie.
What next? More Tarot decks, another oracle? A history degree?
‘What are you learning now that you never knew before?’
‘Anyone else want to go back to Level Four?’
‘Is burning down cell towers a reverse cargo cult?’
‘Really feeling the dystopia. How are you?’29
“Guitar is for heathens. Are you a heathen, Dad?”
“Am I cursed?”
Kev at the Rogue: “Where are all the builders & plumbers?”30
Shadowbanned?
What does it feel like, to be in Wizard mode?
A man asked me straight out— “Are you a witch?”
He said “Wizardress?”Are you from the far North?
No, but what’s your real name?
“Does everyone have their toads? OK— now LICK YOUR TOAD!”
What kind of food? Messed up about food? How does it feel to go hungry?
Why does everything end the same way? Can’t we compromise?
Kev: “Is a random number generator in the hands of the Gods?”
“I wonder if Henry wants to be my son, & come shooting & fishing with me?”
Shell, or sparkly plastic?
Can it cry? Will it get stronger, or weaken?
How did you get to the roof, the 100th floor?
Lean into it, make it my matter?
He told me about the implant in his brain, “Did they take something out? Or did they put something in?”
Me: “Do you think people had good sex in the olden days?”
What do the stones think?
Do I need a subject, or do I just start?
I can make a miscellany, right?
How to harness the feeling of singing under the open sky, with just the two of us, & bring it inside & up onto the stage?
I was right into her performance, afterwards I went up & asked her “Who are you & where did you come from?”
Don’t you know another Wizard when you see one, lady?
Helena told the joke “What were the hillbilly’s last words?”31
It’s Father’s Day & everybody’s wounded, Cohen sings32— but does a person have to pull their guts out & lay them on the table for others to scry?
(My reluctance to write memoir, cause I’m embarrassed of my life— is this the root of it? Is this what I don’t want to write on & therefore probably should?)
Is the wall a crumbling drystone, a razor-wire & guard-tower fortification, or is it just a dip in the ground now? Is it a projection of light that the cunning psychopomp can slip between the atoms of, does it have a human sacrifice at its foot?
Scott: “Want a chip?”
The tomb of the Past! Beware the mummy’s curse!
Early on in my journalling ‘career’ I realised (whilst reading back over past pages) that reading about interior angst was very boring; whereas reading about events & conversations— stories about stuff that happened, with specific detail— was very interesting. Since then I’ve tried to skew my journals towards record-keeping. Internal processing still occurs in there, but I try not to indulge in too much self-pity or self-justification. (Also, wallowing can have the undesirable effect of entrenching negative stories. It’s a kind of self-enabling, in the addict sense. Processing good; wallowing / self-propaganda bad.)
A question I asked an astrologer / tarot reader— I was about to turn 40. She said spend time with someone you hold in high regard, no strings attached.
When Kev’s ex used to cut his hair, his friends said she had made him look like ‘the village idiot’
In the South Island, a crazy MGTOW-espousing German baits me in the pub. I remember the word gynocentric— he deployed it more than once— & his pompous air of pretend-amusement, like your feeble little female brain couldn’t possibly encompass the innate superiority of my sophisticated argument. The ten other people at the table (mostly men) watched our exchange in silence, except his adoring female acolyte, who backed him up.
I also recorded a follow-up question— me to her— “What do you think about that, what he just said?”
”No, you don’t get it,” she said, “There’s a whole theory behind it—”
I said “You know he hates us, right?”
Another quote I remember from the conversation: “You can’t educate a woman— you can’t teach a dog to fly.”
Red mist; I wanted to kill him. And the way nobody said anything… I was so adrenalised that afterwards my body was shaking for hours. Again, I see this now as an omen of things to come.
A patronising Boomer in the cafe. I had asked him politely (but evidently not politely enough for his liking) if he could stand up so I could realign the seat cushions— I was sitting on bare wood.
Greta Thunberg
i.e. an earthquake
14.12.2019— just post-Brexit. But see what I mean? PREMONITION
Playing a ghost in a show set in a literal graveyard, I called upon the Dead to aid me & they did. That led me to a performance anxiety hack that really works: summon your ancestors & ask them to help
Paul Sartin (of blessed memory), at Auckland Folk Fest
Keen observers will notice that this question is a repeat of question 12. Probably I need to hold more babies— baby-whispering is one of my under-utilised skillsets. Hopefully I’m old enough now to hold babies in peace, without people saying dumb shit about my conspicuous lack of personal babies.
Writing this, I suddenly remember which baby this was: Zinnia. It was high Midsummer & our skin formed a sweat-bond where it touched.
What it said on my sign advertising Tarot readings
Live-writing in a shipping container for Performance Arcade
Again, a repeat— of question 15
Re. the pulling down of cell towers by conspiracy theorists
I wrote him a letter
Lockdown soundtrack… At the end David Byrne says “Thank you! Does anybody have any questions?”
This was Amanda Palmer, the time we met randomly in Moon Bar. This question is interesting in light of what was later revealed
Hedge priest John Ball in 1381, preaching to the rebels at Blackheath during the so-called Peasant’s Revolt. The implication of the verse is that class is anti-Biblical
Pretty sure this was a note for someone else to read, written in capitals for legibility
From Achainí Amairgin / The Song of Amergin (translated by Paddy Bushe). Shared with me by
She tweeted about meeting me
136 - 139 are questions posted on the Platform of the Damned during lockdown
Me: “I think you’re the sole representative of the working class, tbh.”
"Hey y’all, watch this!”
Middle-period cynical Cohen is the best Cohen
phew, this time "When was the last time you cooked for your mum?" punched me square in the heart. we've had a polite-but-distant relationship since my dad died (even more polite and distant than when he was alive) because there was a big fight with her and me and my brother about how the fuck to manage being a family without him, and i wonder when she'll ever let me cook for her again.
interested to hear about what kind of sermons you preach, if you've found an answer to that one.
Always more Tarot decks! And what you should do for your next birthday… or at least the next birthday when the United States isn’t a total shitshow… is come to New York and allow yourself to be feted.