In which Christchurch makes an artform of the temporary

[zeborah]

Posting here because Blogger won't let me comment where it should be. Full history:

• How A Relationship Brought Me Halfway Around The World And Back Again - a tale of culture shock using the February earthquake as a punchline


• To New York, From Christchurch, With Love. - Karen Healey responds angrily


• If I didn't have my writing, Christchurch would have broken me - AJ Fitzwater picks up the thread, with particular reference to the arts and culture in Christchurch

"They started bringing that joy back mere weeks, maybe days after the quakes."

My sister and I made sandcastles out of the liquefaction the morning after February. We'd barely slept after a night of three quakes a minute (the bloody Port Hills kept reflecting them back on us) and the world had brought us sand, so. It made a few neighbours smile: well worth the time.

One thing I was thinking the other day — walking past the chalkboard on Colombo and (Tuam?) and an empty block which is mostly carpark except for the footprint of one shop taped off, with "No parking" sprayed in pink on the aggregate, and signposted "GapFiller coming soon" — is that Christchurch is making an artform of the temporary. Sandcastles, and yarnbombs, and Easter bunnies made from milk bottles atop road cones. We might have four seasons in a day and we sure don't have a clue what the roadworks are going to do tomorrow morning, but we also never know where a GapFiller might pop up next.

There's a tremendous beauty in that. And a pain underneath it that for me makes the beauty all the sharper. And this beauty is everywhere in Christchurch these days, like and in the wildflowers blooming in the piles of rubble.

Comments

[karenhealey]

Those GapFillers, and the beflowered road cones (thank you, SVA) and the Pallet Pavilion and the wall art, oh so much wall art. Christchurch is beautiful.

[zeborah]

Oh yes to the wall art. And the poetry wall, and the poetry posters and the "It's all right" posters. (I've printed out "When Was Your Last Moment of Wonder?" for my fridge because it reminds me of a book I read when I was yay high. Though the guy pruning his shrub is about a dozen health and safety hazards rolled into one.) And the Rotary Club's tyres filled with petunias, and the book fridge, and random moa ornaments on a random empty lot, and and and!

[(Anonymous)]

All cities are temporary (except maybe Pompeii). Sometimes it shows more.

[(Anonymous)]

Er, Mary Anne in Kentucky, thumbtyping.

[green_knight]

Oh, the (wo)manpain. So she was depressed, unable to get a job, stuck in a place where she didn't know anyone and quite probably without the means of getting to know many people (because she relied on her boyfriend for transport and the best times to meet new folks were also the rare time she got to spend with her boyfriend). Yeah, sucks. But the adult response to that is not 'oh woe was me, [new city] is horrible' but 'I was depressed and could see no way forward. That sucked.'

And she's homesick for the little things she never thought she'd miss - the food that every supermarket has, the assumptions she shares with people at home and doesn't in another country. I get that. In Japan, I often had fried chicken for breakfast, because that was the most sensible street food I could find, and I was ok with that - travel in 'exotic' [sorry] country, everything is different here. But when I moved to Britain from Germany, semi-skimmed milk had a different fat percentage and every morning my breakfast cereal [from the same international company to exactly the same formula] tasted just ever so slightly different, and drove home that I wasn't in Kansas, Toto. Making friends when you don't know how this making friends thing works in your new place. (When I first came to Britain, everybody seemed to be meeting in pubs. I don't drink, so while the beginnings of evenings where fine, the endings were not.)

But what got to me most was the hypocrisy of saying 'everybody employs their best friends' and then saying 'my friend got me a job in a literary agency'. So it's ok when *you* get a job out of it, but not ok when others do?

This is an infuriating article, and I'm not even living in Christchurch.

[zeborah]

But what got to me most was the hypocrisy of saying 'everybody employs their best friends' and then saying 'my friend got me a job in a literary agency'. So it's ok when *you* get a job out of it, but not ok when others do?

Haha, I didn't even notice that part. Because yeah, it's natural for people to employ people they know rather than someone who they're going to have to fill out a pile of visa paperwork for.

But in general, yeah, I'd have a huge amount more sympathy for her (because culture shock sucks and it's worst when you don't expect it) if she displayed the slightest bit of self-awareness about... anything.