Into the future

My e-book memoir, The Colour of Food, published by Awa Press, is being launched this Sunday by Lois Daish, but it's already available online (see below). It feels very odd to be putting out a new book which Harvey will never read, even though a goodly portion of it is about living with him. If he had lived, of course, it would be a very different book.
     As it happens, I am reading Julian Barnes' Levels of Life, which is about the sudden death of his wife (they too had been together for 30 years). She was "the heart of my life and the life of my heart". His account of his experience after she died rings so true for me.
      It's available in print, but I'm reading it on my iPad. Like many readers now, I move between print and e-books, though I still tend to depend on conventional print reviews (often read online), as well as friends' recommendations, to decide what to look for. I think it will be that way for a long time.
       So now I hope lots of people will discover my book, and when they do, tell other people about it - especially, of course, online. Reviewing it for Amazon, etc is a huge help too (I am brazenly assuming you will like it). Here's how to get it:

For Kindle, you can find it on Amazon here. Or else go to Amazon and put this in the search box:

B00D0UTIT6

For Kobo, you can find it here. Or else go to Unity Books Online, find their ebook section and search for Anne Else.

And here's how it begins:

To start with
I’m three, and I’m sitting in the sun on the grass beside the narrow strip of garden in our long skinny backyard. Before Mum sees me I reach out for a handful of rich dark soil and fill my mouth with its crunchy, crumbly, satisfying warmth.Now I’m four, watching Mum as she cuts a neat square plug out of an apple. She hides sugar in the hole for me to find and puts back the plug, the cut-lines invisible in the green skin. 

Speaking quietly

In the supermarket today, I was once again being shouted at by someone trying to tell me what to buy. A shop assistant was filling up the bin of oranges, so I (very unfairly) told him how much I disliked being hectored by this disembodied voice while I was shopping. He said, with great feeling, that he hated it too - and I immediately realised that it's so much worse for the people who work there, they have to put up with it for hours.
        I hate being shouted at in writing even more. Fortunately there seems to be a wealth of quietly spoken, deeply considered writing on offer. I'm now reading The Burgess Boys, the new novel by Elizabeth Strout (the author of Olive Kitteridge). It concerns a family of two boys and a girl who grew up in Shirley Falls, Maine. Only the girl, Susan, has stayed there; Jim and Bob have both moved to New York. A peculiarly contemporary crisis with Susan's son, involving the town's new Somali community, brings them back one autumn:

"In Shirley Falls the days were short now, the sun never climbing very high in the sky, and when a blanket of clouds sat over the small city it seemed as though twilight began as soon as people finished their lunch, and when darkness came it was a full darkness. Most of the people who lived there had lived there all their lives, and they were used to the darkness this time of year, but that did not mean they  liked it. It was spoken of when neighbours met in grocery stores, or on the steps of the post office, often with an added phrase of what was felt about the holiday season to come; some liked the holidays, many did not. Fuel prices were high, and holidays cost money."

The whole book is perfectly balanced, and all the more moving for its calm, quiet, comprehending voice.

May Day: moving on

Well, just after - I meant to write this on 1 May, but have been languishing in bed with a pesky cold. I've decided that from now on I'll move the focus a little for this blog, so that it's mainly about reading and writing, two pursuits that were central to Harvey's life, as they are to mine. So it's fitting that this post centres on a wonderful children's book, A Great Cake by Tina Matthews.

I heard Tina talking about it to Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon. Apart from the fact that it sounded such fun, what caught my attention and made me go  to Unity Books and buy it next day was the name of the little boy: Harvey. It's the first New Zealand picture book I'd heard of which features that name.

Both the words and the pictures are by Tina, and she's come up with the most realistic family I ever saw in a kid's book - piles of washing, authentically messy kitchen and living room - as well as an enviably patient and creative mother. I'll be posting it soon to Taylor and Ryan, with a line inside that they won't understand yet, but their mother will appreciate: "From your great-auntie Anne, in memory of your great-uncle Harvey, who loved books."

The end of summer

I put the heater on today, the first time for weeks. Only a few sprinkles of rain, though the four days' quiet steady drizzle a while ago helped a lot. I've been keeping the important plants - lemon tree, rhubarb, geraniums - alive with water from a bucket in the shower, the clothes dryer (it cleverly collects the water), cleanish kitchen water, and the earthquake bottles in the garage (all well past their use-by date, but not being refilled till the drought's over, so no earthquakes before then, please!)
          The long gap since I wrote here last shows partly how busy I've been, especially with my food memoir, but also how far I've come over the last two and a quarter years. I still sometimes catch myself far away from the present, thinking about Harvey, but not nearly as often or for as long as I used to. For the first time, I feel as if I once again have my own life and am getting on with it. Most of the time, anyway. More book news soon. For now, I hope your Easter was as absorbing and pleasant as mine was, thanks to my work and my friends. And some very good hot cross buns and chocolate.

Home again home again jiggety jig

Safely back from Guangzhou, where the weather was astonishing - 27C the day I arrived, a couple of colder days and hovering around 22+ the rest of the time. It was great for us and for all the people who get their one decent holiday at this Spring Festival, but it certainly felt like global warming. It's such as enormous roaring city (at least 9 million people), and I did find it quite tiring, though the chaps did their very best to look after me. We went to a lot of lovely peaceful parks - and the food was great (more on Something Else to Eat soon). Now I'm flat out dealing with my memoir's edited manuscript, I need to get through at least  a chapter a day, and each one takes me 4-5 hours. A week should do it...meanwhile, some cheerful Chinese photos for you: a quiet corner of old Guangzhou that looked and felt like Paris; umbrellas made of recycled drink bottles; and the boy with the fish on his head who signifies wealth for the New Year..

China time

On Waitangi Day I fly off to China to visit my son, who teaches English there, while an American friend looks after the house. So unless I can master the intricacies of posting from afar, there'll be a gap until I get back. Here's one of the wondrous Terracotta Warriors from last year, with a marvellous hair-do:

We're not going to travel around this year, we'll just stay in Guangzhou in his new apartment and he can show me his neighbourhood. It's such an enormous city, every time I go he has something he's recently discovered to show me. He's an artist and art history buff, and this is his year, the Year of the Snake. John F. Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn were snakes too. It's said to be "an opportune year for change, growth, and transformation on many levels. You'll start a new fortunate 12-year life cycle. The energy of this Snake year matches your steady, wise, and unhurried pace."

Poetry in motion

As I mentioned on my Facebook page, I recently had an email about one of Harvey's poems from Ruth Arnison, of Poems in the Waiting Room. It's an arts in health charity, based in Dunedin.
     "Our aim is to provide a free source of well-chosen poetry for patients waiting for medical appointments, rest home residents waiting for meals, outings or appointments, hospice patients and their families and prison inmates. The poetry cards, A4 sized three-fold cards, feature between eight and ten poems. New editions of the cards are printed and distributed every season. Poems include those from contemporary poets (especially New Zealand writers), older poems, a haiku, and poems for children. They are selected for readers’ enjoyment and are in no way a vehicle for delivering any social/health messages. The cards may be read and left on site or taken away for sharing or further reading."
      Ruth wanted to use "Giverny in Autumn" for a new card. Of course I immediately said yes - Harvey would have been delighted. She wrote back telling me why she'd chosen it: "I spent a month in Italy and France two years ago and Giverny was the highlight of my trip. When I came across Harvey's poem I was immediately back on that famous green bridge - how poetry can transport one."
      We went to France in 1999. Staying in Rouen, we'd arranged to meet two English friends, who came all the way from London to see us for the weekend. They had their car, and suggested going to Giverny on the Sunday. We were so lucky - it was 31 October, the last day Monet's house and garden was open to the public. But it was fine, and we wandered around hardly believing we were actually there. Our friends took our photo on the bridge.

I wrote an article about Giverny later for Next magazine, and Harvey wrote his poem.

     Giverny in Autumn 

     This boy knew

     the grace of willows

     weeping light into the Avon.

     At Giverny similar

     willows trail fluent

     through quiescent water 

     flecked by a few  late water-lilies.

     A frog on a pad.

     no princess to hand

     the figure's disappearance

     from the artist's canvas.

     Up close, mere daubs

     of paint - tactile texture -

     but in vista how they shape

     into a space, a green bridge

     reflections, clouds as they

     were at the turn of the century

     as they are now at its end.

     The calligraphy of a place

     the copious confusion of autumn leaves.

                        from Recessional, 2004

Another year

How long is it since Harvey died? I know, of course, that it was two years ago and that today I began my third year without him; but at some times it feels like yesterday and at others it feels as if I've been without him for a very long time. 

          People keep telling me how well I'm doing, and on the whole I think I am. Going to Auckland for Christmas resulted, as I thought it would, in my being too caught up in the full-on family Christmas at my sister's to sink into sadness, though at the same time I knew they were conscious what this time of year meant for me, and intent on taking care of me. And as soon as I got back I had the great pleasure of a visit from my niece (well, Harvey's niece really, but I always think of her as mine) and her fiance. This time next year I'll be on my way down south for their wedding. In the meantime, I've got plenty of other absorbing things to look forward to - including the launch in March of my food memoir e-book, which is partly a tribute to Harvey and our life together.

           So as this new year begins, I hope that anyone reading this who has experienced the loss of a beloved partner recently will take heart from knowing that it does slowly become easier to cope with, and that simply staying alive gives way (for most of the time, at least) to living your life as best you can.