Matterhorn

Oh Matterhorn, I loved you           

Long before you were a bar:
your giant meringues,                 

         clammy sandwiches
                  the secret garden out the back;
rolled-up pancakes filled with cream, 
vanilla slice.

In the morning, your pavement-blackboard read,
Bottomless filter coffee
home-made scones
Mince on Toast.

Every evening as I passed,
heading home 
        through 1980s streets
someone had changed it 
              to "mice".

Monster

Godzilla, according to a recent article in Science Daily, is not scientifically accurate. No surprises there, you might think. But, mischievously, the research behind the article accepts that the monster is, in fact, a ceratosaurid dinosaur: a surviving relic from the Jurassic. The puzzle, the article explains, is not that Godzilla is living alongside us in the modern world. What’s much stranger is that having appeared in Gojira in 1954 at a mere 50 metres tall, Godzilla has challenged scientific theory by reappearing, just 65 years later, in

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 Godzilla: King of the Monsters 2 at a whopping height of nearly 120 metres. A team of concerned researchers from New England’s Dartmouth College has calculated that Godzilla has evolved at 30 times the rate of other organisms on earth – and this despite its body size remaining fairly stable for the prior 150 million years.

With 35 movies on its CV so far, Godzilla has been growing up in public, and film fans have certainly remarked on its fluctuating size before. But, it seems no one had previously thought to look at Godzilla’s growth through a scientific lens. Fans and film critics alike have explained away Godzilla’s rapid increase in stature as simply a reaction to buildings becoming taller: just a visual filmic device. Our Dartmouth researchers though, having established with the scientific principles of evolutionary theory that normal evolution is not at play, then switch to a cultural lens. Godzilla’s first appearance, they say, was a manifestation of human anxiety, post-World War II. Fear of nuclear annihilation, and of environmental destruction. The original monster, after all, emerged from the sea when its habitat was destroyed by a nuclear bomb. And according to film historians, the texture of the original Godzilla suit was designed to look, not like a dinosaur, but like the scars of Hiroshima survivors.

In fact, despite decades of subsequent kitschy remakes and pop-culture references, the original 1954 Gojira was a protest against American H-bomb testing in the Marshall Islands,

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tests which followed the horrific A-bomb drops on Japan during the war. Scenes of the destruction Godzilla has wrought on Tokyo, at the beginning of Gojira's trailer, are a stark analogy of the devastation of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Film producer David Kalat has described Gojira as a “contemporary folk myth for the nuclear age”.

No surprise then, that the Dartmouth researchers find a correlation between the annual military spending of the USA and the body size of Godzilla, between the first movie and the latest. Based on this, Godzilla is described as “the embodiment of our collective anxiety”, and by ‘our’ you’d have to assume they mean America’s. The article's lack of attention to Godzilla’s origins in Japan’s anti-American outrage is striking. 

Some might find the researchers’ thesis trivial, or silly, and certainly from a scientific perspective there is little knowledge to be gained by trying to impose an evolutionary theory onto an imaginary creature. But, from a cultural perspective, what the authors describe as the “sudden strong and selective pressure on body size” that has caused the massive growth of the Godzilla monster puts our precarious environmental situation – and our fear of it – in the spotlight. For 65 years, we’ve been telling the story of this gigantic and unpredictable monster, which threatens human life and crushes human civilisation. Where did it come from? We made it, the story goes, by damaging the environment, and we will need all our human cleverness to survive it – in some stories finally killing it with a weapon so dangerous that it too puts the whole world at risk. 

What do audiences absorb from movies like this, in terms of inspiration, reassurance, or catharsis? It’s impossible to say. But Godzilla, surprisingly persistent, keeps coming back from the dead in movie after movie: the monster created by our reckless disregard for the environment that we live in. You can kill the monster, as the fans say, but it just won’t go away.

Rats with wings

It was grey outside my window, typical concrete canyon. The ledge that ran around this side of the building was under shelter, and the air con units that perched there sat coated in a cement of guano from the pigeons who roosted in the beams. It was pretty disgusting.

Judith had been at this desk before me, and she hated those pigeons. Rats with wings, she said, it’s a health hazard. Over the years the property manager had regularly got the pest control guys in, to – well I didn’t like to ask.

I wasn’t very fond of city pigeons myself. Scavengey, red-eyed, with feathers the colour of a petrol puddle on the road. Compared to the beautiful and wacky birds that were here in Aotearoa before humans were? Drab.

But then one morning I noticed the nest. A couple of iceblock sticks, a twistie tie, a bread tag and some weedy little twigs.  Glued together with…was that pigeon poo? Judith confirmed,  r

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olling her eyes. A day later there was an egg in it, and a pair of pigeons keeping it warm. And suddenly I was hooked. My own personal pigeon soap opera was playing out, on the other side of the window behind my desk.

That egg was never alone, constantly attended by its devoted parents. I didn’t know enough about pigeons to tell them apart, but it didn’t seem to matter. One pigeon would sit patiently on egg-warming duties while the other stopped by to feed it, on and off throughout the day – and then at some point they would swap. I became obsessed. What if their egg didn’t hatch? There were older, abandoned nests around the ledge with orphaned eggs still in them. Had their parents been pest-controlled, never to return? Killed in traffic? There were other pigeons flapping about as well, squabbling over territory, perching briefly on the bird-spikes before reeling across the ledge. It wouldn’t have taken much to knock that nest right off. But morning after morning, as I sat down at my desk, there it was.

Then one day my pigeon friend seemed curiously restless. It stared back at me with a beady red side-eye, and as it lifted a wing I saw – gross.  What was that? A greasy looking, yellowish chick had hatched; its feathers like an old man’s comb-over, sparse and wiry over the waxy skin. I’d never seen a pigeon ‘squab’ before, and as I watched it feebly blinking and nodding, I realised I’d never even seen a pigeon in the street that looked at all like a youngster. I started to pay more attention to the city pigeons then, out and about, and wonder about them.

Because in some ways they are like rats (with wings). They live alongside us, recycling our

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rubbish. They live on abandoned kebabs, leftover chips, sandwich crusts. They’ve adapted to the environments we’ve built for ourselves, making use of buildings’ high ledges, and windowsills, and roofs. Power lines, and city trees, and statues. And, they make a terrible mess. 

But some say that pigeons should not just be seen as inconvenient pests. Rather, they’re an urban keystone species, a sort of canary-in-the-coalmine for city environments. More research on pigeons (beyond how best to keep their numbers down) could tell us a lot about the conditions we ourselves are living in.They’re in every city of the world, so they’re an ideal subject for studying regional differences and changes in environmental conditions: pollution levels, disease, and climate change. Pigeons could also help us understand, and maybe even predict, changes to biodiversity across different geographical areas. 

What’s more, as a wild urban species, pigeons can be a link between people and nature, encouraging a conservation mindset. It might seem like a small thing, but urban birds, along with trees and greenspace, can help take the edge off the built environment, and improve our mental health.

So why are we so quick to dismiss pigeons, and call them rats with wings? Maybe looking at them is too much like looking in a mirror. We made this dirty city, full of rubbish and disease, and we accept it as normal. We may keep our individual, domestic environments clean, but our quality of life is underpinned by the daily production of tonnes of excess food, leftover scraps, and stinking waste. We live, like the pigeons, in our own shit.

Time passed, and the property manager rang to ask what state the ledge was in. Was it time to get the pest control company in and organise a clean-up? The chick had started to look a lot more pigeon-ish now, tottering about and flapping its wings. It eyed me quizzically through the glass. Doesn’t look too bad here actually, I said. How about I call you back in a few weeks?

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Ko wai koe?

 

Under the water I see my feet so clearly. This is not like swimming in the sea, where rough waves topple you and you stumble, blind, afraid of standing on a crab. I’m four years old and we’re on holiday at Lake Tāupo. Later I will learn to float, and become familiar with the call, “Don’t go out of your depth!” from my mother, relaxing back on the shore. But for now I’m toddling around knee-deep, trying to hold handfuls of water, underwater, and wondering at the

way it escapes my clutches. Afterwards, back in the boat, we rock across the surface of the lake, fishing. Little waves pass, each one identical, confusing my notions of past and present. How deep is it here, I ask uncomfortably, imagining an endless cold, blank darkness under our little boat. Oh, about 50 fathoms, my father replies. 50 whats? “Full fathom five,” quotes my mother, “full fathom five, my father lies, his bones are coral made, those are pearls that were his eyes.” I burst into tears, imagining my granddad lying on the bottom of the lake, all alone. Mum explains that actually he’s safe and sound in Karori Cemetery. It’s just a story. There are bones in the lake, for sure. But they are not our bones.

Crisis averted?

Finally we’ll get some action, I’m so relieved. It seems like there aren’t many people in this world who can really get things done, and despite all the whinging and bickering about the state of the planet, environmental damage and disruptions to natural cycles, nothing was being done at any level that would really make a difference. 

Sure we can recycle, sure we can choose not to keep buying throwaway fashion, sure we can limit our use of the tumble dryer and take the bus instead of the car. But how much does it matter, how much difference can we really make as a collective? It’s just not enough. We need the governments of the world to take decisive action. We need the powerful and the rich to step up and effect meaningful change that can really make a difference. 

We’ve seen this coming for decades. We’ve known the consequences of climate disruption, agricultural intensification and industrial pollution. We’ve had the knowledge and the ability to arrest the damage and prevent catastrophe. But we haven’t had the will, where it matters. Now, finally, now we have the missing piece, the game changer, the trigger that will force the elite into action. The extinction of the truffle.

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This pig will need a new job.

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Or not.

The Facts

Do you know what’s in your food? Most of us think we have a fair idea. But today I’d like to tell you what I know – because I’ve been researching the facts.

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 An apple – looks nice enough. Fresh. Natural. And our ancestors have been eating the fruits of the trees for 200,000 years – it must be good. But what do we really know about how this apple is produced? We know it grew on a tree – but how did the tree grow? It grew in the soil. In the dirt. Fertilised by faecal matter and the remains of dead animals. That’s disgusting.  Out in the open air, exposed to the elements, crawled over by insects and pooed on by birds, absorbing all the pollutants that wind and rain can bring. And it doesn’t stop there – how many pairs of hands has this apple been through before I chose it in the shop? From the fruitpicker, to the sorter, the packer, the truck driver, through all the shop staff to the check-out operator. All those pairs of hands – all those sneezing, coughing, hoiking hands. It really is disgusting.

By contrast, a packet of Twisties. 

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Produced in a sterile environment, from highly processed ingredients – some of them completely synthetic. Untouched by human hands, completely controlled and regulated, and hermetically sealed in the bag. It doesn’t matter what happens to these in transit – they’re protected. And they’ll stay fresh in here til the use by date. That apple – give it a week and it will be looking pretty sad. Who knows how long it’s been since it was picked? 

Would you really want your children to eat that? 

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But it’s not just about our own health and wellbeing, is it.

It’s about the health of the planet. Because we’ve just about pushed things as far as they can go. The ecological footprint of our wasteful food production methods is enormous. In fact, it’s been estimated that at the current rates of consumption we'll soon need ten planets to sustain our habits. Ten planets. That’s ten planets worth of apple orchards. Ten planets worth of sheep and beef farms. Ten planets of apartment blocks, leafy suburbs and shanty towns. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Imagine yourself living in a 50-storey tower block, in a nice little flat…knowing that just downstairs on the ground floor was your means of food production. A clean, regulated, efficient food factory, supplying your building. We would cut down on our use of resources, we would cut down our use of fossil fuels. Solar powered plant and no need for freight. The food’s not going anywhere, just straight upstairs to you. No more grocery shopping! And what’s more, the waste energy from the plant – the heat – would light and heat your home.  We could preserve our wilderness areas like this. By making our urban areas more dense, we would use our available land more efficiently. We could decommission all the farmland, and put it to a much more practical use, building more and more of these tower blocks – like vertical villages. It would be a Utopia.

Obviously not everyone would be content with the vegetarianism that this change of lifestyle implies. And research into synthesising meat from stem cells is still in its infancy – it’s early days. If you feel you need to have animal protein in your diet, I ask you to consider this. In March last year there were 10,260 people in prison in this country. 10,260 prisoners. They all need feeding. They all need housing – the real estate for our prisons is considerable. This is land that could be put to much better use. 58% of those prisoners were convicted of a violent crime: assault, rape, murder. That’s nearly 6,000 people. Do they have human rights? Some say human rights are a privilege that they forfeited, when they chose to behave in such an antisocial way. Such an inhuman way. 

I say we eat them. 

More protein for you – more resources for society at large. Will there be a drop in violent crime? Possibly. Will there be an increase in vegetarianism? It wouldn’t be at all surprising. Are either of these bad things? 

It’s a win-win situation. 

A no-brainer.

It’s the future.

To conclude, let me ask you a question. What kind of future do you want, for your children, for your children’s children? For (environmental conditions permitting) your children’s children’s children? Do you want a bright, clean, modernised future, regulated and consistent? Or a world mired in the past: shambolic and unpredictable, with its roots in dirt and decay? 

 You choose.

Everything in moderation

Kate Moss. “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” – that’s what she said. I’d grown up with girls can do anything, the personal is political, and Fat is a Feminist Issue, so I was a bit shocked. And it seemed to set the tone for the decade to follow, all primping and posing and pretending you disliked other people more than you disliked yourself. 

I suppose she was subversive in her own way, projecting a different kind of sultry on the magazine covers that was often more about bad attitude than femmey sexual signalling. But still, she was just another packaged product, sulking and pouting and making a living from her surface; banking on the male gaze.

So worth it
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I suppose it could be she's one of those people without a sense of smell, who can't taste their food at all. Rather than someone so mired in concern about her physical acceptability, so absorbed by her presentation of herself to the outside world, that it's become preferable for her not to actually feed herself. 


But either way, I feel sad for Kate Moss. So I wrote her a poem.

Things that taste as good as skinny feels

Baked potatoes,

Fresh baked bread, 

with real butter

melting

Whittaker’s almond gold.

Peanut butter, cheese on toast, garlic mushrooms

Carrot cake,

nutmeg cake,

chocolate cake,

basically, cake.

That thing your mother used to make on the weekends,

a really good, fresh, still-warm croissant

The first feijoa of winter,

Pumpkin soup, salt

and vinegar

chips

Roast kumara, pikelets, a ripe apricot

the last beer of summer,

doughnuts.