Giving thanks

Down here, Thanksgiving isn't a holiday.

Of course it's not, silly; there was no massive campaign to share small-pox infested blankets with the Maori when those law-abiding Brits arrived to monitor from afar their more derelict brethren on the giant landmass to the west.  They didn't have to undertake that kind of deceptive inhumanity, having lugged enough virulent mayhem in their cultural and immunological baggage down to the islands after James Cook made his quick circle of the islands in 1769 to cause a massive reduction in the native population without it.

I'd like to think that the explorers and colonizers who trudged onto land in New Zealand and Australia may have finally come to grips with the karmic tragedy guaranteed by offering comfort in a snake's nest.  But, I'd be deceiving myself.  The colonizers offered a viral schmorgasbord to the inhabitants of these lands just as effectively as they did in the colonies that would become the U.S.  And the diseases were not always those of the body, but also those of the soul.  Or something like that.  Greed, prostitution, corruption probably took as great a toll as the physical exposure to previously unknown illnesses.

Okay, okay, I know.  Thanksgiving celebrates an earlier time; it's a memorial for the heady first days of colonization, when death loomed around the poorly constructed camps like an awkward colleague who isn't sure with which group he'll find his new best friend forever.  He likes the folks who've been around but these new folks are so weak and ill-prepared for the cold.  Surely, they'll hang with him.  Thank goodness for the Native Americans who let the white folks know that Death is kind of a giant nerd and the games he plays are really pretty lame.  Wasn't it nice of them to invite them to the cool kids' table all festively adorned by cornucopias just to make Death feel a little more insecure?  At least until someone tried to have a baby or something.  Poor Death, always left scuffing his heels when people get together in a friendly way.  Then again, ultimately, he always gets his way, doesn't he?

All this to wonder, isn't it amazing that I can hop from one violently claimed land to another, without suffering the violence or indeed even having to account for my forebears crap attitudes?  I'm thankful that time's passage helps heal deep sores, but more than that, I'm grateful for the occasional open smiles and frequent friendly questions about the path I took to join this tiny population on the bottom of the world.  I'm thankful that I'm not asked to leave quickly or ostracized to the point of anxiety to find my own escape route.  Most of all, I'm really, really happy that no one is offering a welcome basket filled with infested blankets.  That's really the best part of being able to live overseas.


Anyhoo, all this to say, isn't it amazing that I can continue to

 

It's Time.

The bridge.  So much easier to cross than time.

Monday mornings are the hardest but not for all the reasons they should be.  I don't have to rush into the office or wonder about the stacks of work I left for myself on Friday.  Mondays aren't hard because I suddenly have to wake up early or because I haven't picked up the dry cleaning.  They used to be the day of labor that popped out the screeching, paper-suckling baby who would grow, mature and die by week's end.  Now, Mondays are no more emblematic of the beginning of some transient, professional journey than my well-worn sheepskin boots are of my readiness to run a marathon.

These days, Monday kicks me in the pants for reasons wholly unrelated to work or stress or voicemail messages.  More than anything else, Monday is more like my caustic grandma who insisted on reminding me of the vast separation between me and the oodles of cousins who beat me to her dilapidated yard by about 8 years.  "You'll never know what it was like to play with them, granddaughter," she said though I usually thought she was gargling.  "They had each other.  And you have no one to play with."  She would put some prunes in a plastic bowl and push them into my chest until the plastic folded over on itself.  "Now, get out there so I can watch my stories."

Nowadays, Monday is nothing more than a reminder that over here, camping so close to the international dateline, I am so far ahead of the rest of the world that I can't really play with it.  While facebook messages and emails remind me that I should be picnicking in a sunny corner of the park, or sipping a beer while playing scrabble on someone's ipad, or wandering mindlessly over sidewalks I've walked a million times before but never on this very Sunday which makes everything different and new, my calendar and solitude require that I suck up the fun and save it for later in the week.  Shit, I can't even stream Monday morning radio to jumpstart the calm stoicism demanded by the five days between the weekend.  The best I can ask from Sunday radio streaming into a Monday morning is Guy Noir and he doesn't tell me how the market is doing in clear terms.  Oh, wait, the market isn't even open.

On the other side of the river, we saw something.

This Monday, I vowed to do my best to integrate with the hubbub of the actual Monday transpiring beyond my ocean view.  I got up and surged into the week, hoping I wouldn't be spotted immediately as an intruder.  Strangely, I found no traffic out there, no groaners and not a whiff of the slightly despondent, Monday frenzy that I remember from my working days.

I came home and remembered my grandma.  I don't think of her often, but today, on this very isolated and distant Monday, I'm sending a shout through the ether to her man-hungry, perfectly coiffed soul.  Nice prep, Grandma.  I am keenly aware of my separation from the other kids.

Highest and Best Use

Oh, woe is this friggin' world.  Not me, just the world.  Not even me in this world.  If it was me in this world that we were talking about, I would write, "Oh, hmm is me."  These days, I'm just wondering how it all keeps spinning.  And since the sun continues to rise over my sleeping eyes every morning around 6, I shouldn't really wonder about the spinning part as much as the other, less important stuff, like financial stability and quality of life.

I read two articles out of the New York Times today and then closed the browser, deciding that none of the other news fit to print was worthy of a read after the messages conveyed in those two timely gems.

I read this one first: Kindness of a Stranger Still Resonates.  In the midst of the Great Depression, an era so precisely named that no one wants to try it on again despite its possible fit, a Jewish refugee from Romania who'd made a small personal fortune in clothing decided to share a bit of it to those less fortunate.  He placed an ad in the local paper offering cash help in terrible times in exchange for brief letters describing the need.  People wrote about their inability to provide food or clothing for their families.  He made about 150 anonymous gifts in response to the letters he received, most for as little as $5.  He promised that no one would ever know about his generosity, confirming that he would hold the names of everyone who wrote to him in confidence until "the very end."

The other article was At Legal Fringe, Empty Houses Go To the Needy.  It highlights the forward thinking move of a born-again Christian dude in Florida who found an old law permitting adverse possession of unclaimed real property and decided to pursue it to the benefit of homeless families in North Lauderdale.  He's now being charged with fraud for accepting rent on properties he doesn't own and is facing up to 15 years in prison.  The rent he charged was well below market rate and often involved maintenance to the abandoned and deteriorating houses in lieu of dollars.  He thought it made sense to get folks into the properties and made sure to send letters to each of the banks and owners of record of the 20 properties he claimed, notifying them of his intentions.  He only got one response.  The authorities wish to remind us that his acts, while possibly honorable, also constitute trespassing.  The Floridian Robin Hood makes no claim to perfect charity.  He simply wanted to find an honest way to make a living while he helped some people out.  He even told his tenants that he didn't own the properties and contacted them when he was arrested to advise that they stop paying any rent to him.

Somewhere, in the gulf of time separating these two stories, the narrow, ruddy path of self-sufficiency and personal honor has been lost to the overgrowth of large, powerful, moneyed interests.  Adverse possession is one of the few, fine property law concepts I remember well from law school (with my sincere apologies to Professor J. Doobie aka Dobey aka Dobris).  It's a process that allows ownership of unused, unattended property to be placed into the hands of someone who has committed to tending the land in the manner of an owner, in the absence of the true owner.  Call it squatters' rights.

The concept made perfect sense to me in law school (although not in the precise terms that would have allowed me to answer Dobey's persistent queries on the subject).   If the true owner ain't around to claim the place, and someone moves on in to make a house a home, then then after a period of years, the new guy should win the prize-- ownership!  To accumulate points toward the prize over the years, the new guy would have been paying taxes, utilities, mowing the lawn, placing a hand-carved, rustic wooden mailbox he bought at the fair with his name engraved on the side.  Everyone knew he was there, enjoyed his monthly potlucks and good neighbor plates of Christmas cookies.   The new guy put the house to its highest and best use, which ultimately, I think, is the point of property law.  Thus, he can keep it.

These days, we get someone looking to put some houses to use, and to put some people who need houses into a decent situation, and he's looking at prison time.  The worst part is that the folks who moved into the houses understood the situation but found it highly preferable to waiting on reluctant social service workers or stagnant public housing wait lists for their shelter.  Instead, they moved in, cleaned up and made friends with their new neighbors.

So, if the banks and the true owners didn't respond to our heroic Christian dude's letters, and the neighbors are happy to see the nuisance house on the block spruced up, who's complaining about the dude's plan of action?  It seems to me that the authorities could have adopted the same promise of the Romanian refugee who saw how he could offer a helping hand: no one needs to know until the very end.

Blah Blah Bloviation.

Check out Exodus 7:20, yo.

Though I tried, I couldn't close my ears to the U.S. election results.  The pundits and media have called it a "red tide" which, surprisingly but absurdly, is apt.  A red tide has swept the nation.  Does no one know that a red tide was one of the first plagues of Egypt and described in Exodus as "waters... turned to blood"?  Prepare your antibiotics.  Unless, of course, you don't have health insurance.  In that case, maybe get a snorkel and wash frequently?

This morning, Hillary Clinton arrived in Wellington.  Her large plane sits on the runway across the bay from our house, dwarfing the 737s clustered around the nearby terminal.  I can see the American flag on its tall tail from where I sit.  (No, I can't see Russia.)  I read that the new Green Party mayor of Wellington rode her bike (in her trusty high visibility vest) to the airport at 5 this morning to meet her.  How sweet and impressive given the pics I've seen of Mayor Wade-Brown in her fitted cream dress greeting Hillary (in a pressed brown pantsuit, of course).  I applaud Hillary for scheduling a quick stay in friendly New Zealand in the days following the Republican trouncing at home.  Her New Zealand colleagues are sure to pose loads of leading questions about the apparent under-education of the teabaggers to which Hillary can respond with exasperated affirmations.  "No shit," I hope she replies.  And, "what the fuck, can I get a visa?"

These days, I'm procrastinating with zeal.  Instead of working through a climactic couple of chapters that have been exhaustively outlined and considered, I'm writing quaint little essays about my protagonist's disinterest in her mother's new dog and long paragraphs about the squeak of wheelchair wheels on linoleum.  I've decided to accept these diversionary tactics as antidotes to doubt, fear, confusion and maybe a little reluctance to see my plot climb over the ramp toward a resolution.

Who cares, though, right?  With a red tide approaching, it's probably best to scramble toward higher ground.  Oh wait, we already did that.  Thank goodness.

There's good news, I suppose.  Two neo-Nazis lost their bid for random municipal seats in Southern California.  Also, masturbators all over Delaware, secure in their self-love, voted to keep Christine O'Donnell out of the Senate.  Phew.

Congratulations, America, for eschewing facts once again in favor of fear.  As always, the limited education of my country people astounds.  Go team.