Chapter Three: Spirits Bay
Chapter Three: Spirits Bay
Rest In Peace?
Like Herman Melville’s Ishmael, it became a matter of concernment to Beau and me where we were to sleep on our first night in the Far Far North for we had, besides ourselves, two dogs and two cats. And not just any dogs and cats. These were the four we had visited every day for the last thirty days of their quarantine in Auckland. MAF, the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, had decided that Sophie and Deva and Poggio and Kanji were henceforth to be considered Kiwi animals and they were released to our care.
They got their citizenship before we did.
Miss Sophia Alexandra Maxie Von Mitzvah La Joie came to us ten years prior by way of the Newport Freeway. Where I found her during rush hour on a Thursday evening in winter. She had been hit by two cars and her little life and big spirit had been narrowly saved by two teenage boys who, in order to save the Princess from being squashed, blocked those thousands of frenzied rush-hour Rushers, blocked them down to one lane, in spite of being reviled and honked at and flipped off by the uncomprehending Freeway Terrorists who kill upwards of 43,000 Americans every year — aka American citizens on their way to and fro, fighting for the American Way, making a good-clean-but-more-stressed-out-than-somewhat living that is. After four days in terrier hospital, Sophia’s strong little Terrier-Chihuahua-Something-self ended up with Beau and me.
Miss Devananda Puccini is a genuine pure-bred Great Dalmatio-Labra-Hound. Shepherd. Or Something. Who was abandoned in the Whitewater Rest Area on the #10 Freeway in the desert near Palm Springs, California. She is black with a white tip on her tail, a white Dalmatian-spotted vest and a white collar of fur that goes right around her black neck. No one has ever seen a dog like this. She was abandoned with a note, “Somebody find this Dog a home.” As there was no way for her out of the Rest Stop Area except onto the Freeway, Beau and Sophie and I decided to find the beautiful, malnourished but curiously happy pup a good home. Until she climbed up into Beau’s lap, all sixty pounds of her, licked him on his beautiful sucker-for-love face —hey, he took me in years ago— and said, I distinctly heard this, I am home. And she was.
Poggio, also known as Itty Bitty Shitty Kitty, is a Puer Aeternus, an Eternal Boy of a Himalayan Cat, all full of catitude and testosterone (as Ken Wilber, the Einstein of Consciousness, says, testosterone serves two purposes and two purposes only: kill it or fuck it. Poggio is the living proof of Mr. Wilber’s astute observation). You get the picture. Although the only killing and fucking Poggio has ever done has been to a small gray toy mouse and a fluffy white stuffed pussycat with a nametag reading “Yomiko.” These two activities take place every night when we sit down at the table to have our evening repast. Poggio kills the mouse and then, toy mouse in mouth, makes love to Yomiko, whether we have guests or not. He has been doing this for years in spite of having been, um, “fixed” at a most tender age. There is nothing we can do about it. If we hide the toys, we cannot proceed with our meal. So we have given up and given in to Poggio. I.B.S. Kitty. Our friend Marie says she thinks Poggio was a Doberman Pinscher in another lifetime. Or a Pit Bull. Our friend George says Poggio has a rich fantasy life. His wife Lola says Poggio is now a verb: To Poggio — having it your way.
Kanji, named for the highest pass Beau and I crossed some years ago on our first trek through the Himalayas. Kanji Pass, Kanji-La — 18,000 feet above and far away from the diamonds on the sea. Kanji, like Poggio, is also a Himalayan cat by breed. Neat naming trick, eh? Unlike our dogs, both Poggio and Kanji are Pure Bred. To be fair to the dogs, I guess I should also say, unlike Beau and unlike Yours Truly, Kanji and Poggio are Pure Bred. Kanji is 18 years old and blind. We have had him since he was seven weeks old and I would hold him in the palm of my hand. Kanji was weaned too soon. He thinks I am his mama. I think I am his mama. He has the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen in anyone on this earth. But they can no longer see. No one can believe it at first, because his eyes are so ethereally beautiful.
Here is a Zen poem for you from Lu K’uan Yu, from Ch’an and Zen Teaching
—Beau and I think it is about Kanji—
To the beloved company of the stars, the moon, and the sun;
To ocean, air, and the silence of space;
To jungle, glacier, and desert, soft earth, clear water…
To night rain upon the roof and the wide leaves,
grass in the wind,
tumult of sparrows in a bush,
and eyes which give light to the day.
Five hours north of Auckland, 106 kilometers after the last traffic light — we got a green go-ahead and took this as an auspicious omen! Green light ahead, new life ahead, no stopping now — we arrived at Doubtless Bay. You could be right in thinking that the above poem is not only about Kanji but also about beautiful New Zealand.
We stopped at the longest beach on Doubtless Bay, Tokerau Beach (Tokerau simply means “North”), ten or twelve miles of empty curving sand, broad and ever-so-gently disappearing into the Sea, the Moananui, Big Sea, the Ocean — remember our friend, Kate Moananui Spencer, well and truly named. We let Sophie and Deva out onto the sand and they went berserk after their 30 days of concrete-hut and cyclone-fence imprisonment in Auckland quarantine. Ran in circles around us until we laughed and laughed until we cried. We even let Kanji out of his condo-cage. First he peed in the sand, then he took a few steps, sniffed the sea breeze and raised his unseeing eyes which give light to the day. And I could see it on his face —
“Yes, I see, I see. Even I, I see why we have come all this way. All this long way. For so much beauty, unspoiled, so empty and natural, peaceful and… lovely. Love. Lovely. I thank you God for most this amazing day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes (I who have died am alive again today, and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birthday of life and love and wings: and of the gay great happening illimitably earth) how should tasting touching hearing seeing breathing any — lifted from the no of all nothing — feline merely being doubt unimaginable You? Now the ears of my ears awake and the nose of my nose sniffs and the paws of my paws are firmly planted on New Zealand and now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Clearly, Kanji was channeling e e cummings
Sir Poggio, however, was channeling something else, his I.B.S.K. self, howling to raise brother-murdering Cain’s own wicked pet cat. We didn’t dare let him out with all his kill-it-or-fuck-it testosterone but herded ourselves back into the car and headed along Tokerau Beach, right up the flat hard sand (you can do that in New Zealand, drive on the sand because the beaches are so empty) to the little town of Whatuwhiwhi where we were to spend some time with some new Kiwi friends, until we could buy a little bungalow somewhere nearby, a little house to make a life in while we built our dream house on our farm near Taipa Township ten miles across the Bay.
Six months! This is New Zealand! You can build your house in six months!
Everybody told us this. Well.
So anyway, we arrived in Whatuwhiwhi. Now I might mention here that the “wh” in Maori words and place names —and almost every place in New Zealand outside the bigger cities has a Maori name— is not pronounced like a “w” but like an “f.” Hence the town is named Fat-a-fi-fi and not What-a-wee-wee! We would never move, even temporarily, to a place named the latter. Who would?
Perhaps I should explain that although the Maori place names all sound alike —even to the Maori, it seems. I mean, there is Kerikeri and Karikari and Katikati and Kihikihi and Mangonui and Maunganui and Mangere and Whangarei. Well, you get the idea. Even though the Maori place names make it difficult to know where you are, they are a great improvement over the English place names. For example, Auckland and Wellington are named for Brits who never ever set foot in these Blessèd Isles —George Eden, 1st Earl Auckland in England, served as the Governor-General of India from 1836-1842, and he was Best Friends Forever with the first Governor of New Zealand, Captain William Hobson, who named his new capital in his new colony after his BFF. What kind of deep relationship they had, I couldn’t really say. But—
And there is Kings Wharf and Princes Wharf and Queens Wharf and Queenstown and Queen St. and Queen Charlotte Track and Victoria Park and Albert Park and—
And there is a large hole in a rock at sea in the “Bay of Islands” —so named because the Bay has numerous Islands in it, get it?— and this hole in the rock is famously called “The Hole in the Rock.” Then there is the big lovely rock poking its head about thirty or forty feet out of Doubtless Bay —in 1769 Captain Cook sailed right by this Bay and said “That is Doubtless a Bay”— and this rock sticking up out of Doubtless Bay is named “The Rock.” Pakeha Kiwis and their forbears seem to have a pedestrian knack for stating the obvious and so it is a good thing that most places have retained their Maori designations. If you take the time to learn a little Maori, most of the names have some significance or poetic justification and often have a melodiousness that is lacking in names like “The Rock,” for example.
I would be wrong if I did not mention here a place near Hawke’s Bay, here in the North Island. It is named thus: TaumatawhakatangihangakoauauoTamateahaumaitawhitiurehaeaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu.
That’s Maori for “The hill of the nose- flute playing by Tamatea — who was blown hither from afar, had a slit penis, grazed his knees climbing mountains, fell on the earth, and encircled the land — to his beloved.
See what I mean? Poetic. Unfortunately, most of the local citizens down there in Hawke’s Bay are lazy and just call it Taumata.
Norm and Dionne welcomed the animals and us and showed us to our temporary quarters. They were heading for five weeks of vacation overseas —from New Zealand, everything is overseas, even Oz is 1500 miles of water away— and invited us to relax in their guest rooms while they were away.
Now, What-a-wee-wee, I mean Fat-a-fi-fi, is a little town on the farthest side of the ten-mile wide Doubtless Bay, about 18 miles out on the Karikari Peninsula and has a population of a couple hundred people. Downtown Whatuwhiwhi consists of a small grocery store with two gas pumps and a diesel pump. And there is a small primary school. The town is surrounded by glorious empty beaches on all sides, great fishing where the giant snapper practically jump into your boat, where the scallops wash ashore and ask politely to be picked up, and the mussels cling to the rocks just begging please to be harvested.
Norm is a local real estate agent of sorts — his grandkids all call him “Normal” — and has done about 72 different occupations to earn his living during his 72 years in this world. He is now also a grower of olive trees. He introduced the growing of olives to the Far North and now produces an award-winning olive oil — Los Angeles awards! Normal came downstairs with a handful of old rusty keys and a self-rolled cigarette in his mouth. He started trying the keys one by one in the lock to our exterior door. We were curious and watched him for a few minutes until he came to the last key.
He said in a very slow Kiwi drawl, “None of these keys work I don’t know what they’re for hope you Boys don’t mind staying here for five weeks without a key we know Americans are security conscious but I guess we just don’t have a key to this house I’m sure we did at one time.” He smoothed the nicotine-colored few hairs on his nearly bald head, threw the rusty, useless keys into some bushes outside the door and stepped out to roll himself another cigarette.
Beau and I looked at each other. Beau mouthed the words, “Not normal.”
Now remember that Norm and Dionne were preparing to go overseas for five weeks and if we hadn’t arrived on the scene, their empty and unlocked house would have just sat there empty, unless someone showed up and, finding the place Norm and Dionne-less, had decided to make a cup of tea or something in case Norm and Dionne showed up anytime soon.
Well, we thought maybe we had just stumbled into Mayberry around about 1960 or so. Except this Mayberry has no policeman, no Barney Fife, no jail. There is a voluntary fire department. And a school and grocery store, as I have mentioned, a store that is about a hundred years old, and gas pumps that should be antiques by now.
Lest you think it is Pure Paradise, however, I should state that Whatuwhiwhi is actually a little seedy. Well, ok, a lot seedy. It has been poor and isolated for a long time, like forever. But if you drive through the “town,” a little further out on the peninsula, there is a world-class golf course with a lodge and villas, all surrounded by about 3000 acres of Black Angus farms and hundreds of acres of vineyards, the furthest north in New Zealand. The odd thing is that almost no one ever eats there, plays golf there, or stays in the lodge. We have never figured this out since the beach in front of the property stretches for long empty miles and is one of the most beautiful in the world and the entire outlook is world-class incomparable. All the locals say the place is owned by an American billionaire who doesn’t know what he is doing. I don’t know. I don’t want to get embroiled in a quarrel with a billionaire. Beau and I are well enough off, having worked very hard for a long American time, having gotten out of the Bush stock market just in the nick of time, and having been a little bit smart and a lot of very lucky on real estate in California — but we can’t afford any fight with a litigious American Billionaire. And yet I do admit that the Resort is a strange place. A Ghost Town Resort outside a ratty little town in a sub-tropical paradise. There are a lot of things in the Far North that are inexplicable to locals and newcomers and outsiders alike.
Now an even more inexplicable thing in Whatuwhiwhi occurred about a week after Norm and Dionne left their northern paradise for their vacation in Idaho. Of all places. Dionne said she always wanted to see the Home of Famous Potatoes. She didn’t smile and I assumed she was being drily humorous in a Far North Kiwi sort of way. But she still didn’t even hint at a smile and so I simply said I didn’t blame her.
We were all snuggled in our double bed. By all, I mean Beau and me of course, and Sophie and Kanji and Poggio of course — because each of them is just little. I also mean Elton John. Dionne’s black dog. And Cher. Her black cat—there is also a human Elton John and a human Cher, but I don’t have to tell you they were not the ones snuggling in our bed.
Elton John and Cher had taken to slipping downstairs every night to join us around dinner time and then would stay on through the evening, lazing around with our four animals and getting as much attention and affection from us as our four would allow. Elton and Cher evidently decided that sleeping on the bed looked like fun and so joined us every night after we all got settled in, or squeezed in I should say, the little double bed. You can understand why we always slept in a California King at home. Even without Elton and Cher it could be crowded.
And I have to add that Elton and Cher were always better behaved than their human namesakes, though the latter seem to have settled down quite a bit in their later years.
Big Deva was on her Dog Bed on the floor because she is Big. And she never would consent to sleep in such a crowded bed, I am sure. She enjoys her repose far too much.
I looked at the entire gang and thought of my elder big-haired big sister who lives away, away, away down south in Dixie with her husband and four dogs and five cats and snuggles in with them all every night. Along with her Big Hair. Her email address is manypaws@
I won’t give you the whole address — She would kill me.
I had not slept well since we arrived in Whatuwhiwhi, sleeping space being at a premium and I must admit that every night I was endlessly turning over in my mind plans for the house we wanted to build, strange arguments the architect and builder had been having, where we were going to move to when Norm and Dionne returned, building costs which seemed already to be escalating even though we didn’t even have any plans yet for goodness sake. And so on.
I don’t know how else to put this. It was a dark and stormy night. If you look at the map of New Zealand, you will notice that the country is quite small, like Sophie, and that it sits alone in the vast ocean, between the South South Pacific and the Tasman Sea, which are really both just part of the most disturbed ocean, the biggest ocean on the face of God’s good but all to often often overly-exuberant earth.
“But New Zealand is small and the peninsula north of Auckland is tiny, just look at it,” Beau was always saying before we finally relocated. “In some places up there, just six miles separate the Pacific Ocean from the Tasman Sea, it’s that narrow. It must be really windy and stormy up there but nobody ever talks about it. It’s got to be wild weather, it’s like being in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. Must be windy.”
Wild, windy, stormy weather we were not seeking in our idea of Paradise. We were seeking Perfection in Paradise.
“Don’t worry. If it were so wild, we’d read about it or someone would say something or we would have experienced it,” I said.
In our seven scouting trips to NZ, in all seasons, the weather had been spectacular. It rained on us exactly one full day and as we lived in Southern California we always said we would prefer more rain. This was like someone you are dating being on their best behavior. The full picture only reveals itself in time.
Anyway, we had always said we wanted more rain than Southern California offered. Be careful what you wish for; it will surely be yours.
So, it was a dark and stormy night. The Karikari Peninsula was flooded on the low-lying Inland Road, the only way on and off the narrow peninsula. So we were stranded, cut off from the rest of the world — most of which was thousands and thousands of miles over the sea anyway. Eighteen kilometers out on the hilly peninsula point, the rain was still falling. I don’t want to continue with the clichés so I won’t say it was raining buckets. Anyway, that would be grossly inaccurate. It was raining bathtubs. Bathtubs of water were endlessly pouring over the entire Far North of New Zealand. Everyone told us not to worry, this was a hundred-year storm. A few people even went so far as to declare that New Zealand had not seen this much rain in 500 years. Seeing as how the British had only been here even as a small force since the early 1800’s, I wondered what meteorological service they were consulting but I held my peace.
And the wind. The only way to experience wind like this is to sit in a small boat in the middle of the ocean during a violent storm. Which is what Beau had surmised and which in a way is just what we were doing. Sitting in the little boat called New Zealand, sitting out in the middle of the conversely-named Pacific Ocean during a violent storm. I mean, from Whatuwhiwhi on the East Coast of New Zealand you can see the giant sand dunes at Ahipara on the West Coast of New Zealand. How many times have we heard this one from a Kiwi receptionist? “Sorry he’s not in the office right now. He’s out on the West Coast this morning but should be back in half an hour.”
The storms sweep over the vast oceans and pay no mind to the Land of the Wrong White Crowd or their Maori counterparts, especially this narrow northernmost part that finally just disappears not too far north of us, up at the tip of Spirits Bay and Cape Reinga where the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea clash together with ferocity and where the spirits of deceased Maori jump off and dive under the waves for the afterlife. Perhaps also to get out of the storms that sweep over the Pacific and Tasman Seas.
Rain, wind, worries, and no room in the bed so I got out of the Noah’s Ark of a bed and went into the adjoining room to look through the shelves of books that Norm and Dionne had there.
“Help yourselves if you find anything,” she had said. “Over the years people take books and leave books so who knows what’s there. But you might find something interesting. Or funny or stupid or God only knows what.”
Maybe something about the Land of Famous Potato Heads or Senator Larry Craig and his wide Gay stance, pardner, I ruminated.
I turned on the light and started looking through the titles. Most of the books, well ok, all of the books, were very old and kind of musty and I have never seen a more incongruous mixture of tatty old books in such a small space. Finally one caught my eye.
The Mists Over Lancashire by William Whitaker. The old and ragged paperback cover —United Kingdom 45p Australia $1.00 New Zealand $1.25— showed a faint picture, all faded blue and green and grey, of a long hill against an evening sky, climbing gradually from the left and then abruptly falling to the flatlands on the right side of the perspective. In the foreground were somber looking meadows and gloomy looking bare trees, a sparse and wintry setting.
I took the book back to the bedroom. Big Ms Devananda Puccini had joined the others in bed, staking out the warm spot I had left behind. She was snoring her big gentle-dog snore and her eyes and legs were twitching, running in dog dreams. I didn’t have the heart to disturb the menagerie, and Beau was sleeping contentedly with all the others, sleeping right through the howling wind and lashing rain. I went over to a worn easy chair, well, it had once been easy perhaps, switched on a small dim lamp, pulled a quilt over me and settled down to read. I opened to the first page.
In December 1575 died Dr. Aaron Allbright, Master of St. John’s College and Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. He died while visiting the South of France not far from the village of—
End of Chapter 3
Wait for the next chapter on SUBSTACK or buy the book via Amazon here
Aaron Allbright’s novel in five parts will be published on Substack.
Soon:
In a Desert or a City
BOOK I
‘PRINCE CARTIER’ or HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE BEING GAY WITH MY SAUDI PRINCE AND TO START WORRYING
BOOK II
MONSIEUR LE PRINCE, PARIS
BOOK III
THE MYSTERIES OF PARIS
BOOK IV
TYROMANCY AND LUCIFER
BOOK V
WHY WAIT FOR THE LIGHT?