It’s Tuesday, but the city feels like Monday – quiet, recovering from Labour Weekend. Sunny, warm, somewhat nonchalant as a day. Not much doing.
My first conversation is with a bookseller. I had heard her talking with a previous customer about spending the weekend in her garden, getting it ready to plant. I suggested she could come and do ours too, but she wasn’t biting that. We chatted then about the best time to plant tomatoes. I am a fan of putting them in pots I said. Then I can control pretty much everything about how they grow. In fact I have one on my deck in flower already, I said. She thought she might need permission from her spouse to do that, but thought it was worth a try next year. Conversation 1 – tomato growing techniques.
Further along the road I’m surprised to see my old mate Tom, a streetie whose company I enjoy. I sat on the pavement beside him; we got chatting. Haven’t seen you for a while, I said. I’ve missed you. Tom smiles. No I’ve been away at a tangi. We talk about that for a moment – where was it – local. How come it was two weeks long? Then the story becomes different. It was my son, he says. He committed suicide. And then the often-said words – Your kids aren’t supposed to die before their parents. We talked about his philosophy of life and death, the second such conversation I’ve had with a streetie lately. There’s a fatalism present in the way Tom accepts an inevitable outcome from a life of drugs, and alcohol. Acceptance that with the best will in the world you can’t live someone else’s life for them, even your son’s. We share a time of sacred silence on the street while people walk past us averting their eyes. Then we conclude the sacrament with coffee and a lasagne roll from the convenience store.
And I leave him as I head further inland, to the Square. Where there’s no conversation to be had today. Everyone is immersed in their cell phones as cameras, pointing at the ruined cathedral. Without knowing the recent decisions. I wonder if they care, or whether the ruins are actually more poignantly useful to the city as an attraction.
I move on again. West this time to the Art Gallery where I have come to talk with an American artist Kiel Johnson (http://kieljohnson.com/) who is creating a room full of art that people made in the Gallery during the weekend. I talked with him briefly amid the chaos on Sunday, but today is a time with no one else there. We talk about the creative meditative state that art brings as it is being created. And the way art and spirituality are so interlinked. His workshop, he tells me, feels like a church. We chat for as long as I can without intruding on Kiel, and I move on.
To the Art Gallery shop where I run into Andrew, another friend I have made this year. We chat about the Gallery, and the buzz of the weekend activity, and how much he loves working in that environment. He tells me he left his dream job to do it. Turns out the dream job came with snags for him, and he felt he wanted something else. It’s one of those bittersweet conversations. I recognise something of myself in his words, the mark of a good conversation for me. We have become easy with each other in the shop over time.
Like the woman in the wee coffee place I often go to. She knows what I drink, and last week as she brings it to me says she’d like to talk about her father, and his difficulties with beginning retirement. And I recognise myself again!
And so it goes …
streets 