Essay – Corpus

Are we there yet? On the exercise of patience

7 September 2020 4 Comments

Sue Wootton

Patience (n.): the calm endurance of pain of any provocation; perseverance; forbearance; quiet and self-possessed waiting for something.”

Year of the houseplant: this variegated minima recently sold for NZ$8,150. (Photo: Trade me/ hurley88)

Okay, that’s nice, but are we there yet?

Patience is a virtue, so the saying goes, but I disagree. Yes, it’s possible to have the patience of a saint, but it’s also possible to have the patience of the devil. Many crimes and abuses have been committed by people patient enough to wait, preparing all the while to strike. Aggressors against others are often very, very patient. For the victims of those aggressive or oppressive acts there is more wisdom than virtue in ensuring your survival by keeping your head below the parapet and biding your time. Patience is a strategy, a behaviour, a matter of judgement, of choice-in-circumstance. Just as courage is called out only in the existence of fear, patience comes into existence in the presence of, and in response to, impatience. It requires the exercise of personal restraint and impulse control in the service of a greater end goal, and it may feel entirely counter-intuitive in the moment. I hesitate to disagree with my trusty Collins Dictionary, but it may not feel anything like “calm endurance” or “quiet and self-possessed waiting.” Yes, the patient person waits, but it’s an active state involving paying attention, reflecting, planning. Patience isn’t a thing. It’s a capacity, an attitude. It’s an ongoing recallibration of approach rather than a one-size-fits-all solution. It’s a work in progress, a practice, an art.

Yes, yes, so you say, but are we there yet?

Beat

8 June 2020 1 Comment

A. W.

According to Wikipedia, a beat is the moment in a scene at which increasing dramatic tension produces a noticeable change in the consciousness of one or more characters. An event, a decision, a pivot.

Beat.

Someone suggested Big Little Lies as a good lockdown watch. I remembered to breathe and then remembered turning the page to the first tellings of domestic abuse in that book when I read it years ago. It made me shake and cry. I didn’t see it coming. I’d bought in completely to the perfect smiling family, because it must be so, because look at the pictures on their wall.

Beat.

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On not being Ashley

27 April 2020 26 Comments

Lucy O’Hagan

It’s 5 April, 2020. The country is in lockdown. Waiting. The pandemic hasn’t quite reached our shores but I feel a need to rise to the occasion, offer my services at the front line instead of faffing around as I have been, writing a book about being a doctor while doing little of it, and teaching others how to do it while wondering if I still have that sharpness in me, that quick pattern recognition, that diagnostic edge, that confidence that I know what I don’t know, drug doses at my fingertips, that glorious feeling that I can do all of this and simultaneously manage the unexpected, the macabre, the lost and the uncertain.

I had imagined myself as a pandemic doctor giving unction to the dying in virus-infested houses, but in reality I have spent the week doing telephone consultations at my kitchen table in my socks.

I want to be heroic, as doctors are meant to be, but actually I’m terrified at the idea of exposing myself to a lethal viral load while tending to those coughing and hoiking and drooling. Me, with no mask and no drugs. I have read the grueling stories of doctors in Italy and New York. But this is New Zealand and already some good keen bloke is in his shed making plastic face shields with his 3D printer and attaching these to small helmets and delivering them free to doctors around the country. I have one and I feel safer.

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A smile is a gift

2 September 2019 Leave a Comment

Angela Pope

Edentulous. I came across this word recently when I was reading about teeth. I’d never heard it before and I said it out loud, playing around with the sound of it, wondering how hard it might be to say it if I were edentulous or “lacking teeth”. My nan was edentulous. She kept her dentures in a glass on the bedside table next to the teasmade. (I don’t know which she did first in the morning, put in her teeth or have a cup of tea.)

I remember, as a five-year-old, realising that one day I would be old, and all my teeth would fall out. My face would look strange if I didn’t put my dentures in, just like nanny’s. And I would complain a lot about not being able to eat toffees.

Almost five decades later, I’m at the dentist. It’s my third appointment in three months and I’m starting treatment for my second crown. As a five-year-old, I might have been excited at the prospect of having gold in my mouth. As a fifty-something, I’ve been preoccupied with the cost. That’s why I’ve been reading books with titles like Kiss Your Dentist Goodbye.¹

“Have some sunnies.” The dental nurse hands me a pair of sunglasses before fastening a blue paper bib around my neck. I lay back in the chair and take the long ride down.

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Feminism on the high seas

5 August 2019 1 Comment

Nicola Wilson-Jones

As I contemplate returning to competitive surfing, apprehension comes to the surface. I expect to wait all day, only to be told at dusk that female divisions will surf the following day and perhaps not until the day after that. I expect to compete with little support while male members of the clan are sought out and cheered on. I expect to read newspaper reports that make little mention of female divisions in surfing. And I expect to be judged always by men because there are still very few women on the judging panels of surfing competitions.

As part of the 2017 International Women’s Day celebrations at the Sydney Opera House, Geena Davis shared her extensive research about the representation of women and lack of female characters in a presentation called ‘The power of our media: How film and TV can help us achieve gender parity’. Davis implored creators to “add women on screen, behind the scenes as policy makers. Include women.”

Likewise in the world of sports. In surfing, though it may appear that women are present, the question needs to be asked: Are event organisers bringing a conscious practice to their craft in support of gender equality?

A car crash in Cambodia (Part 2)

3 December 2018 4 Comments

Marnie Walters

In 2012, New Zealander Marnie Walters was working in Cambodia managing communications for the Cambodian Children’s Trust. Returning to Battambang City after visiting isolated families in Prey Veng province, her vehicle was involved in a terrible accident. This is the second part of her story about what happened. It continues from Part One, which you can read here.

Glowing in the centre of the scene, the two crushed cars illuminated each other with their headlights, but the surrounding countryside was vast and dark. There were no flashing lights of salvation, no emergency services to call. I examined my phone again and could now make some sense of it. I must have made over fifty calls sitting there, first to New Zealand, then to nearby Battambang, but it was late and for so, so long, nobody answered. When one of our social workers finally picked up, my tongue turned heavy and clumsy in my mouth.

“Bub-bub-bub-bub-bub-” I burbled. “Bub-bub-bub.”

As hard as I tried, I could not convert thoughts into recognisable sounds. I had to hang up. Eventually, I managed to send a text to my friend Erin, a message that I would take back if I could. We had a horrible car crash. People are dead. Please call me. After reading that text, Erin rushed to find help and nearly came off her motorbike in panic.