lol I slept through church but I went to morning tea afterwards

walked in and it was unusually crowded, warm with people, and smelt of rich wine

some were holding their glasses off the horizontal

I went to your house afterwards with all of the choir

I like your street, it is all along the top of a ridge

you can see the entire runway, it is miles away

and I could have seen to the south island

were it not so fantastically misty

there was fresh snow on the kaikouras last weekend you say

we collect on the cold deck to drink tea and

exclaim over your mugs

they are all different

and watch the aeroplanes from so far away.

(you know you put your hand out the car window

and tip it up and down to get lift

that is the lift the aeroplanes use

if you go fast enough the air feels like liquid

and then you can swim through it.)

We could all watch them all day.

You all wish it was sunny and blue but I love the cloud like this

there is more ambient light

and it is so silver.

It makes the sea glow and it gives the gables depth

and the white houses look like pieces of sky resting on the buffs

like so many windowed butterflies

the boats in your painting are in trouble.

Conversations on which trees are spooky

(macrocarpa and native bush)

but british trees are reassuring

of course.

and on art and leaving the pencil lines there, like da vinci

I didnt understand most of what she said

like about the energy being in the line.

Though most of you had your childen a good few decades ago, we also had a conversation about zombies

and about french cinema.

The almond birthday cake with cream and with blood oranges marinaded in champagne were amazing.

I like your window seat

the books stacked against its window

the shelves of strange faraway things

(your husband had collected them years ago

had travelled much)

there is a turntable in your piano room which is still turning

for it has got to the centre of the record

but has not stopped.

Your vegetable garden is rampant

the carrots are about to take over the world

and we know it is silverbeet only by the brilliant crimson stalk

if I was a plant in your garden, I would be happy.

i saw the open sea today

a flat blue horizon between two buffets of land

for an instant (i was driving on the motorway back from the hutt)

yesterday there was a short wizzened bescarfed babushka waiting outside the doctors for it to open, with me, in the spitting rain. she was agitated about trying to get an appointment, and unleashed torrents of russian on me though she knew i didnt understand. (i think she just needed to get it off her chest).

the nurse was like 'what else would you like a blood test for?' and i was like THE ENTIRE PERIODIC TABLE. but they only have magnesium and iron.

it took me owers to return home because i dallied in the gardens photographing the flours and other pretty things.

*   *    *   *

yesterday i got to clean the skeleton.

i got to get a student to carry it back across the playground for me. he enjoyed the attention. i told the staring gurls that he was taking it to the ball.

I probably shouldnt have.