Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

false origins

to the Library, hunting. So I couldn’t say

what I wanted to say. No matter.

At nine I phoned about the mice and rats

which infest us, and departmental cats.

Are they procurable or not? No matter.

map sheets of Hokianga. One weakly faded,

the main part of a research scheme gone

mainly own the drain. Even when bought

it did not tell the truth (if truth I sought)

about that district. Some roads were gone

some only projected. I quibble. It was truth

I pressed after to the blazing four

dusty points of the local compass, ground

by ground hunting for Mahimai and found

how legend bred him still, not one but four,

in their ways different but yet held true for some

around those parts. They’ve not roads, mere tracks

in scrub or scruffy bush, beaten, halfway lost,

uncertain where they go, or stay. What cost

to follow them? What gains? Tracks are just tracks.

otherwise, fictions of any parish’s mild dreams

mounted towards a future where times

would not work out of joint. Those sad dreams ailed

materially, the vision in them failed,

Sailed off like so much junk caught up in Time’s

dumped among mangroves, slumped like driftwood on water

frontages. “The tourist will find much

To interest him, from …” From here to there,

hunting or haunted. Finding, found out where

roads disappear or don’t amount to much.

No matter – no, that isn’t true. Dusty, bitter

our ways work out, crudely move like tides,

nonetheless turn; comes turnabout in flow

and ebb, they matter. Down at the Head glow

finely the dunes. Promise still rides the tides.

Within limits. All grid coordinates on this sheet are

true only in terms of false origin.

almost opposite this shortcut through the gorge.

You want to bear west beyond the store,

back of the district high school. As you go

you raise an abandoned church (which is here)

with a small marae. Shortly, the river.

Follow its bank for a bit, until

a farmer’s yard, between the cowbail and pigpens.

So drive slowly. You’ll need to.

The map says the road ends there. Not true.

You are now right under a stone face.

See the quarry sign? Drive

into the quarry, keeping to the hill side

(because of a fall on the other hand to the river).

You skirt a shoulder. Look for an unformed road

lifting suddenly, steep. But get over the crest,

you’re on top of packed sand.

Carry on to the Head. You cross

the old tramway which used to go up to

the Harbour, remains of the one time main road

to gumfields (south of the river and this next

river) out from the edge of the Forest. It went on

down the coast, then climbed inland on the line

Of a Maori trail. Of course, the map doesn’t

say anything about that. Maps can

They know little about what’s past and only

so much about outcomes. They work within

tacit limits. They’re not good at predicting.

If everything is anywhere in flux

Perhaps we may not read the same map twice.

region in a Mappe that wee know strait the fashion and

place as it is. Or reading an Historie (which is but a Mappe

of men, and dooth no otherwise acquaint us with the true

Substance of Circumstances, than a superficiall Card dooth

the Seaman with a Coast neuer seene, which alwayes

prooues other to the eye than the imagaination forecast it)

that presently wee know all the world, and can distinctly

iudge of times, men and manners, iust as they were.

                                                                       Samuel Daniel

Left at Ripley on B 6165

    to Patley Bridge

    on B 6265, to connect

B 6160, through Kettlewell, Starbotton

    and Buckden

Turn left at Buckden and follow

    Lanstrothdale Chase to Hawes

    (not numbered)

Hawes-Bainbridge on A 684, cross to

    Askrigg and on (no number) to

    Castle Bolton

Reeth into Arkengarthdale

Turn right beyond Langthwaite over

    Scargill High Moor to meet A 66

Right again to B 6277, there left to

    Barnard Castle

    inn where Dickens wrote Nicholas Nickleby

    (so the Treasures book says) and esp.

    Bowes Museum (if open??)

Watch for turn off (unnumbered) to

    Egglestone Abbey

(Have tea there or in town?)

Then follow River Tees to get back to

    A 66 for Greta Bridge (isn’t that Dotheboys

    Hall?)

Carry on A66 to Scotch Corner, down A 1

to turn off on A 59 through Knaresborough

              to Hawes and site of fort at Bainbridge

              From Greta Bridge A 66 follows a Roman

              road (no name)

especially where sands are on the move.

not of a map’s ineptitude but of

some shiftless nature which is prior.

Maps merely feign to represent the case.

Shiftless? A shifty case, more like,

unsure in its election as well as

in its origin, oin its ground

of being as well as in its becoming –

neither works any way too well

for this instance. Are we not assuming

that what one has here to purport

to use as an example will survive

scrutiny? Somehow, has survived?

and have not, of a sandhill lake

which comes and goes. Or maybe, came and went

since when I was last probing there

forestry men and engineers intent

on reform were then debating

how best to right an aberrant nature.

with it. It was offence to natural

justice, natural right, and law.

when not existent. Boundaries

tentatively it had, often flouted.

It had? Check my legal fiction.

Rather, they had. Sometimes three lakes flaunted

themselves, sometimes two, or only

one, or none. Not only sands were on the move,

the lake dissolved, moved, reappeared,

will dwindle, again quicken. In remove

a presence, in presence a fact

substantial, insubstantial form

no less? This play with arid words,

dry as lake beds where cloudy midges swarm

until extinguished, the dunes made

to conform to rational order and

rabid, but useful, their surgent pines

established turn to increase wayward sand.

Then how, best right aberrant nature?

Terms of reference not precise,

you guess, we may not read the same map twice.

two sections of REFERENCE

Distribution lines, Conventional spacing, Wooden poles and Actual

positions

anything to do with telephones, tramways and the distinctions of

Principal from Smaller stations.

or short row of trees, fence (prominent), swamp, mangrove, drain,

sand, shingle, cliffs & terraces, stop bank, rocks, building,

church, cemetery, windmill, radio mast, additional clues for

trigonometrical stations with permanent signals, spot heights in

feet above mean sea level, sketch contours at 100´ intervals, and

bits about post and telegraph services. Outside the limits of the

code are two other notes, how to recognise a pa, and rock

outcrops with large boulders.

Within or without prescribed or designated limits.

You may yet have to go to the wall.

How was I ever able to find my way there?

          This another, how to get back

          (whenever that was magnetically drawn

          to harbour. Instruct me, all I ask,

          instruct me how – this plus, or lack

          as minus, evidently apply — to unmask

          a not altogether dissembling

          map? True, is true of false origin.

MAGNETIC BEARING                         GRID BEARING TO A

TO A GRID BEARING                           MAGNETIC BEARING

     ADD G–M ANGLE                            SUBTRACT G–M ANGLE

                                add the Annual Magnetic Change

                                multiplied by the number of years

                             since 1965 to the G–M angle for 1965

                                   1° = 60′

                                   Annual Magnetic Change + 3´

                                   G–M Angle for 1965 16°30´ for

                                the Central Grid Line of this sheet

twice. On such least point we may agree

without implying more. Or may we? Add or subtract,

something’s still to be read as before

contemptuous of cartography

as of art or art’s surrogates, its sniffling poor

relations which I ape, thumb at lip

lacking bearing, puerile seen-through act

It comes and goes because covered with symbols.

Isn’t this the symptom of a psychotic state?

to hold in my hand a necessary guide to

SYMBOLS USED ON THE MAPS, to hold as I was driven.

‘O take fast hold’ – that’s Sidney, in CS 32.

twenty of them in one section. Here’s from

another:

                Castle or house with interesting interior

                Abbey, priory or other ecclesiastical

                     Building (usually in ruins)

                Parish church

                Castle or house in ruins

                Archaeological monument

                Garden (usually attached to private house)

                Botanical gardens

                Zoolological gardens

               but no Interesting church. Interesting churches are

                in Symbols Used on Town Plans, another section.

Here I am told how to find a Frontier post

I shall go down to the river which may be

Perhaps this is a frontier. We have crossed

frontiers before this.

Go on, write on it. Why do you write No.?

What number do you mean?

it, a loop road which hadn’t been built

in hill country Tokomaru Bay.

Way forward proved the way back.

died under a mount, a none too significant

mound. So have we all, well truly spent.

Well, there was the mount. On its round

His neck arched, the masculine pouch,

his weapon cooling, out to prove

that way forward is the way back

certainty in seeing, grit and spray

confronting or bedevilled, those dun

sands drove at berm and cliffs while away

in their distance sea leagues with

the land’s league collogued were one,

classically distant. Could you well say

how far in space or time you were astray

from plainjane rivermouth, that plebeian

beyond the mundane?

                                   On the wall

fronting me I pinned, years ago, a wry

black toro from a Spanish bottle

to further esemplastic

legend’s proclivity

for becoming and there would do as well

as anywhere, near Mahimai’s burial

place. As chance worked, it’s not very

’69, was it?) the skyline

crests learned how to break with their severe

old puritan habit, its condign

bearing, stood – preliterate,

hieratic – risen clear

above confusion the young bulls in line,

preternaurally clear. They define

and redefine what you perhaps swear

plausibly, an unlikely stock.

Surveyors missed them running out the coast

but legend needs. We are what dreams shock

briefly to become; this you heard

long since. Then where, at cost,

shall we amazed be forced to press the rock

channel deep, final, face him who will lock

and batten on us? Fictive, will most

baffling to wayward plan or chart,

a maze the end and origin, track

not made good though trick you got by heart

sorely. I speak of the Minotaur

at the heart of us, the black

kruptos , that animates each crafty art?

All pay him tribute, kill him off, and start

to run his course again shiftless, bleak

Headlong. Sprawls, fold on fold. Heaves,

scarred hide. Promise still rides.

in their skies. Here, to the north a mast,

a television repeater station catches

signals. What sign/signal/symbol for

the Muse? Perhaps

His progeny champ below, mouse-coloured

in their rat run. He bellows, hefts clods.

They caper excited, I am shit-scared

fencing wire the guard rail of a swing

bridge over a creek. Just discovered

that several planks ahead are missing.

as well as my pack there’s all the camera gear.

He bellows and buttocks. They collect, they dance.

We are offered, in season. In season

not at the dark heart, out in the open

Mahimai and probably Rutherford

(if that was his name) who disappeared

in a cloud of bullshit, who said he spent

ten years of himself back of Tokomaru.

for Maihimai and Rutherford, sidetracked

into hunting after graveyards’ wooden

headboards, their iconography lost style.

About them maps are reticent.

And the Wesleyans’ plot. With those boards

which we cannot read and the grave of

their millenarian teacher, Heke’s tohunga

Papahurihia. The vates? They deny

   is 1:63360, 1 inch to 1 mile,

     and is outmoded.

   is given as base from which we work, almost capable

     until outmoded.

   or drove headlong, taking whatever a telltale dial

     on an outmoded

   and There, the literal. Metaphor too, and parable

     long since outmoded.