Endings and Beginnings

Photos back to front.

I go to The Orchard Part 2, a Matariki event, showcasing young performers on Friday night to see my mate Marcus Vanilau. It's gentle, soothing and beautiful. The young people are talented and blow the audience away. Talking to Mark afterwards, one is his daughter, so good at piano and vocals. Again the audience is small but it doesn't bother those on stage. I move the car and join my colleagues for food and a night solving puzzles, two teams competing. Ours has an Antarctic theme and we're in there for over an hour trying to step through the clues. Harder than I thought.

Saturday, Kahu's Shirley team win their rugby. They're playing like a team and no-one gets hurt. A Kapa Haka gig on Sunday to mark the appearance of Matariki and the coldest, darkest time of the year. It's getting close to the end of term as well. We're all tired and students are rostered home as we deal with too many staff absences and too few relievers to cover. I am asked to stand down from a health and safety course. I finish my fourth set of junior reports, form teacher comments. The feeling of freedom is immense, the last two weeks have been like climbing Mount Everest. 

Bertie finishes pruning the plumb tree which leaves a mountain of sticks, twigs and branches to chop and fit in College Ave's green bins. A few night sessions worth. I see a Matariki performance tailored for deaf people which starts with ten minutes silence. Takes me till the end of the performance to work out the non-hearing focus. And another with 3 women, one of whom is Nicole, my friend the talented cellest. Such a deep reverberating resonance. 

Nearly there. I'm tired. Earlier nights than usual while I recover from Covid.

Matariki, Māori New Year

Another busy week writing reports till they are almost done. I can get my life back. But I've got a sore left arm, increasing rsi, and a sore left knee which I'm blaming on Spin classes but it could be arthritis  and the end of my knees till I get surgery. In the current health climate that could be years. 

I take the plunge pruning the plum tree which I haven't touched since I moved in, 2002. Well apart from the branch which got taken off when the fence was rebuilt. Last summer its branches were creaking and drooping over the garden. I buy a saw and pay Bertie to get up the ladder. There's only one moment where he swings like a monkey but all's well that ends well. We end up having three go's to finish but it looks a lot better. 

On Sunday the garage bench gets a bottom coat of Metallex. Any animal living or breathing in there after that must be able to withstand chemicals of atomic strength. Judith and Karen pop in and I give them chocolate...which I have to shush them discussing loudly as the neighbours are within hearing. 

It's our first national Matariki holiday and Lionel's birthday. So Friday is a sleep in. Thanks Te Ao Maori. And thanks the Arts Centre for the glorious Matariki events which not many people turned up to.

What is Matariki?

Matariki is the Māori name for the cluster of stars also known as the Pleiades. It rises in midwinter and for many Māori, it heralds the start of a new year. Iwi across New Zealand understand and celebrate Matariki in different ways and at different times.

Matariki is an abbreviation of ‘Ngā Mata o te Ariki Tāwhirimātea (‘The eyes of the god Tāwhirimātea’) and refers to a large cluster of stars, known in European tradition as the Pleiades. According to Māori tradition, the god of the wind, Tāwhirimātea, was so angry when his siblings separated their parents, Ranginui the sky father and Papatūānuku the earth mother, that he tore out his eyes and threw them into the heavens.

The cycle of life and death

Traditionally, Matariki was a time to acknowledge the dead and to release their spirits to become stars. It was also a time to reflect, to be thankful to the gods for the harvest, to feast and to share the bounty of the harvest with family and friends.

Matariki revived

Matariki, or Māori New Year, celebrations were once popular, but had largely stopped by the 1940s. In the 2000s, they were revived. Now, thousands of people take part in events to honour the beginning of the Māori New Year, and in whānau celebrations to remember those who have died and to plan for the year ahead. From 2022, a public holiday marking Matariki will be held on a Friday in June or July each year.

 

Into The Swing of It

 I start to chase up and mark student paragraphs from their reseach. It's taken all term and some have done no write ups. Work on the computer gets lost in the computer- many kids have trouble processing on screens. They read and stop. What their brains do with the information is a mystery. And writing can stop some in their tracks. I have spend the week looking over what some have done, my form class who are bright have got on reasonable well, but I haven't had time to teach them the skill of paragraph writing. There will be long term effects of absences, both student and teacher, as skills are not being taught or learned. We have kept them busy. The positive is that they have been able to come to school when well. In comparison to the northern hemisphere where schools were closed for most of the 2021/2022 school year. I start to think with dismay of writing junior reports. It's like climbing a mountain. I take a deep breath and start.

The weekend is spent with electric remediation, Hudson is a wizard, running round taking Kahu to rugby and watching in the wintry gloom in skeletal Burwood Park, the bones of the trees visible without their raiment of leaves. Scoff has a party, I buy the perfect garage bench from a young woman who purchased it to start a shop during the earthquakes in 2011. I give her $500, she paid $600 ten years ago but it's steeped in character. And Bertie sees the borer holes when we get it home. Totally went over my head...old, borer so I brace myself with Metellex. Douse it in chemicals.

The work week is long afternoons marking and writing reports. I miss the deadline as I knew I would and don't usually, but don't care. It's a slog and I want to do a proper job. So I plough on at a small, shitty computer in my classroom. I feel the load shift from my head to my body. Computers and people are not suited.