the great ocean road, December 30

we set out early with coffee no music the speakers dismantled weeks ago
from the back seat she says ‘take the western ring road’ we bypass the city
the bridge to the west and begin the long straight road to Geelong
cut across flat brown fields petrol stations industrial satellite towns
close to the city the traffic slows we pull up behind surf boards and bicycles
attached like Christmas decorations to giant four wheel drives
pass the church and its steeples veer to the left and out to the coast
here it unwinds from my passenger seat like a sand coloured ribbon
the water impossibly blue the lighthouse long stretches of coast and scrub
through to Lorne pulsing with people and sun block we stop for lunch
walk the length of the pier young kids daring jumping twisting off the side
turn back past surfers by the side of the road I sleep and wake later
on the Westgate bridge my shirt stuck to the seat the seat to my back
my back to the road

Amanda Surrey, published in Overland, Issue 199, Winter 2010

Haruki Murakami and the Strange Path to Buddhism

When people ask me what inspired my Buddhist practice I always answer Haruki Murakami (村上 春樹) and my friend Jack.  Jack bought me Murakami’s novel Sputnik Sweetheart for Christmas back in 2003, a bold move in those days when I refused to read living novelists, and particularly ones I had never heard of before.  But despite my misgivings I read the book, a story with a central character who disappears, Murakami stubbornly refuses to explain why.  From that first novel I proceeded to read everything Murakami had published, which even then, eleven years ago, was a sizeable enough collection.

As much as I love Murakami’s stories it’s his nonfiction which has had the most profound effect on me and led me to practice Buddhism. The book that reeled me in was Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, an account of the Buddhist cult Aum Shinrikyo’s sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995. Murakami interviewed the victims and families of the attack, and published a year later in Japan under the title, The Place that was Promise, interviews with members of the cult. It was in the cult members descriptions of Buddhism, of what had drawn them to practice, that I found something which resonated in me. Perhaps I was as alienated and out of step with society myself (I was), but the feeling in me turned inwards, not back out at the world as Aum so fatally projected. It took Murakami nearly twenty years to explore in fiction the dark world of cults and their leaders, fatally unquestioned, in IQ84.

After reading Underground I began browsing the religious section in my local bookstore and picked up Buddhism Without Beliefs, by Stephen Batchelor, a book which made Buddhism accessible to western sceptics, and, even better was a short and snappy read. I was so enamoured with this book I bought it for many of my friends and my own copy is now long gone having lent it out so many times. Batchelor’s book confirmed what I’d already picked up in Murakami’s interviews in Underground, that Buddhism was a simple and practical way to approach life’s problems – by training your mind.

We are a long way from the 1960’s hippy import of Buddhism to the West, large corporations now take Buddhist concepts like mindfulness and meditation, and package them up in seminars to create a new breed of enlightened employee. As worthy as this may be, it detaches itself from a fundamental Buddhist tenant which ultimately seeks liberation from samsara (suffering) for the benefit of all living beings – rather than just for yourself, or for your business.

Nearly eleven years after reading my first Murakami novel I recently embarked on an intensive Buddhist study programme. I still struggle with the concepts and my commitment to lead a life dedicated to Buddhist practice. It feels like, and it is, a long path from here to enlightenment. As for Murakami, his latest book has just been published, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage and I'm still deciding whether to use the stickers which came with the first edition to customise this treasured book.

panda & eros (zine)

 

Coming out [again]

I was 19 when I told my sister, one late drunk night, that I was in love with my best friend and had been for 2 years.  I held that secret tight for such a long time that one of the very last to know, when it just didn't matter any longer, was actually my best friend.  Holding those feelings inside for so long damaged me, it threw me into an emotional paralysis that defined the next 28 years of my living, and along the way nurtured some very bad habits.  The inner world I carried so protectively became heavier with each year passing, as I struggled to live in two very separate spaces – 1 private, the other public.  Reconciling the two has been a life long struggle, and although I am not a famous person (twitter followers: 128), I understand something of the battle to hold a private and a public self in one, juggling the two incoherently, dropping balls and ricocheting into tabloid headlines - I 'drank too much, said too much, and there's nowhere to go - but down.' (The Smiths – Disappointed).

My sister was not only not shocked by my revelation, she was also largely disinterested, ‘Is that all?’ were her exact words - she was spending many of her nights out in Auckland’s infamous Alfie’s Nightclub, a safe haven for gay boys and their friends.  Since that night I have been telling friends, family, acquaintances, boyfriends (sorry) and sundry strangers about my unrequited love(s), and by association my sexual preference.  Passing on this piece of information has generally been done with fierce heart palpations, a pale face, compressed speech and wild unfocused eyes, so that my friends’ response to ‘I have something I have to tell you’ is huge relief that I’m ‘only’ gay and not facing cancer or seconds away from cardiac arrest.

It would be funny.  If it it wasn't.  I've been coming out for 28 years, and, after all this time, its still as difficult as it was and sometimes just as shocking as the day I realised how I felt about my best friend.  A couple of weeks ago I took my partner to a work function and effectively outed myself to my work colleagues who didn't know (a) I had a partner, (b) she was a woman and therefore by deduction that (c), I must be gay.  My close friends at work knew but I certainly avoided going into detail about my weekends, my internet dating escapades, standing in the kitchen where others might overhear.  Six months ago I popped a framed photo of my partner on my desk at work, she, in stark contrast to me, after 28 years in hetrosexual relationships came out with what I can only describe as a bang.  She told pretty much everyone she knew in the space of 3 months.  I was alarmed at the speed of this coming out and cautioned her, quite a few times, to slow down. But I looked at my own life and felt inadequate in comparison - no area more so than at work. In an era that embraces diversity, mandates it even in certain sectors, I realised looking at my friends who are very much out and proud in every aspect of their lives, that I was letting them, letting all of us down.  So, with nervousness, much trepidation, wishing I  had never accepted the invite to drinks, thinking up excuses to explain non attendance at the last minute, I took my partner to 'the ball', and, had a great time (after a few steadying champagnes).  The next day one of my work colleagues said to me, 'You play your cards close to your chest!'

Coming out is an inside out operation, ultimately it hurts ourselves more than the people we resist the telling.

Love and Rockets - A Fan Writes

It was sometime in 1991 that I discovered Love and Rockets.  My boyfriend and I were house sitting a friend's flat, Donna Death, and her boyfriend owned a large collection of comic books.  I had always thought the guy was a bit of a geek, the wire baskets which housed his extensive comic book collection, sorted by title, sub sorted by date, each issue lovingly protected in a plastic sleeve, only reinforced this impression.  Back then the notion of adult/alternative comics was not well understood, if at all.  New Zealand was miles away from New York with Art Spiegelman and his Maus, from trans atlantic Neil Gaiman and his DC drawn and published The Sandman, and, from the bros Hernandez in Oxnard, California with their West Coast punk heckles rising (@xaimeh: if you were really hardcore, you'd have thrown a full bottle) and their Love and #$%^&** Rockets.

[Vivian]

When I delved into his comic book collection I began with Love and Rockets, Issue 1, 1981, the year Jaimie and his brothers Gilbert and Mario self published their first issue.  The early Mechanics stories of Jaime hooked me in, first page.  The clean lines, the cool chicks (like legions of fans I fell in love with Maggie and Hopey), and the brilliant stories too.  These guys could write, they understood, and still do, not just how to draw a story, but how to tell it, to make you listen and want more.  They are as good to my mind as the great story tellers, writers like Mansfield and Poe, Poe especially.  There is a darkness that plays out on so many of their best pages, the black ink allowed to spill out in a way that's impossible in (plain) text.

[Isabel Ruebens]

Meanwhile my boyfriend had started to despair, I was spending hours in bed, or curled up on the sofa reading comics and nothing would cajole me out of the happy reading zone I found myself in.  It took time to recall that my love of comics was formed early in the 1970's with Tintin and Charlie Brown and the gang.  I'm currently reading my way through the Fantagraphics (who also publish Love and Rockets) republished The Complete Peanuts of Charles M. Schulz.  And all these years later having to wait, impatiently, for the next issue of Love and Rockets reminds me just how lucky I was to find this treasury of comics and to read issue after issue in their original format.  I guess my friend's (x)boyfriend was more punk than geek - in retrospect.