INTRODUCTION - JL Nash
LORDE WHEN WILL IT BE OVER - Shirley-Ann Rowling
WHY SUP? - Pedrobatpoet
LOVE IS NOT ALL WE NEED - Richard Dell
OLYMPIA ELLINAS - JL Nash
TEN DEGREES OF ERMINGARD - Maya Stiles Parsons Spier
Introduction
I’m not known for turning up on time and so this is proved once again because The Issue has taken some time to be ready for posting. Three months late in fact! Apologies to our patient writers and to our patient readers – and many thanks to our incredibly patient editor. Ill health is my excuse with a very luxuriant period of recuperation. Me? Now? Well, I’m sure I've seen enough of the inside of a hospital for a good while and can honestly say that I am ten stones lighter (cholesystectomy joke). Enough of my wiggling in embarrassment, welcome to the second issue of The Issue. As we set up this and future posts we are decided of the fact that we will provide an eclectic mix of issues and opinions. We don't have to swim with the current and are quite happy for our articles to swim upstream from time to time.
This Issue brings you opinions on cultural appropriation (or not), paddleboarding, a parent’s passion and some words of love, after all, we have recently seen Valentine’s Day pass us by.
JL
Lorde when will it be over?
B y Shirley-Ann Rowling
New Zealand’s pop culture princess Lorde released a mini album on September 10th. The songstress took five of her original songs and reinvented them by translating each one into te reo/Maori the unofficial indigenous language of New Zealand and I’m in awe of her creative bravery. Lorde the most successful recording artist of her generation and perhaps the nation’s history dropped her album three days before Maori Language week to which you might expect an outpouring of positive praise and excitement. But that was not the case. Apparently, it wasn’t good enough for some.
The root of the issue is still the same offense. Colonization of New Zealand and the disembowelment of Maori culture from one clan to many parts strewn upon the wind. I get it! It’s critical. But how are we going to find our way back to the spiritual rest of Hawaiki people if we continue to gatekeep who can and who can’t enter our holy of holies, the temple of language, story, and song?
Specifically, Lorde was criticized for being pakeha -- a New Zealand national but not of Maori descent -- who disrespected cultural appropriateness by translating her creative intellectual property into te reo. The thanks the artist gets for showing courage and attempting to lift the profile of te reo to a global audience include the following harsh press: boring, superficial, no musicality, terrible pronunciation, she’ll make money from it and -- my favourite -- she had to hire people to produce the album. Really? How else do you navigate uncharted territory if not by being mentored by experts?
Maori are identified by our song, story, poetry and dance around the world. But if we continue to raise the mere and chop off the feet of those pakeha attempting to walk down our hallowed halls what will become of us? When the All Blacks take to the field and perform the Haka for their fans, do we vet the crowd to see who is pakeha and tell them not to join in? When Air New Zealand launches another safety video, do we stop laughing to criticize the pretty Samoan air hostess for speaking te reo? If Prime Minister Adern achieves her election promise to make Maori the third official language of New Zealand taught in all primary schools by 2025, what will we say then, knowing that the future bearers of the sacred word will be every ethnicity under the sun?
The problem I have with Lorde’s critics is simply this, to stop someone speaking te reo based on ethnicity is racist. There’s no place for that level of defensive argument in the ‘enlightened’ era of the twenty first century. The deconstruction of the fabric of a conservative right wing value system instituted upon colonized countries hundreds of years ago is now unravelling at an unprecedented rate. Maori need to consider where they stand and why they are there. I say this as a 58 year old housewife of Maori and Cook Island descent without the ability to speak te reo. I am another casualty of the integration policies of the 1950s that oppressed language and culture amongst Maori. One of my parents adjusted well. One of my parents didn’t and so we lost our language and a big part of our story. My brother and I were like many others from the 1960s -- poor shabby Maori with grass roots rural values trying to blend into big shiny cities. We had to accept, adopt, adjust, and sometimes succumb to the pressure of change as the tectonic plates of Wellington continued to shift underneath our feet literally and figuratively. We did this not because we were mindless sell-outs of tradition, culture, or identity but because that’s what resilient people do. That’s what survivors do.
Maori are survivors. If we allow ourselves to, we can still get to the rudder of the waka and continue traversing the seas of change wholly in control of our context, honouring our ancestors and refining our unique identity each day choice by choice. I’m choosing to plan for a stronger future in te reo. I’m choosing to step aside to fling wide open the door and to let those who want to come forward with energy and hope -- come. I’m going to let those seekers take a leaf from our tree of knowledge and watch them plant it in new fertile soil. I’m choosing to support Lorde’s Te Ao Mārama project 100%. I’m proud of her guts and unique identity as a performing artist from the beautiful shores of Aotearoa.
Why SUP?
By PedroBatpoet
Stand-Up Paddleboarding (SUP), this vibrant sport, was side-lined for too long by the younger and faster sport of surfing as it cuts through the briny.
It began in the 1940s in Waikiki when John Ah Choy, with creaking bones but the sea still coursing through his blood -- refused to remain shore side in his retirement, finding that a paddle allowed him to seek the waves once more. His sons, Leroy and Bobby Ah Choy, and their friend, Duke Kahanamoku, found this was a great way to keep an eye on surf students while also being able to observe the swell plus this offered a great way to take pictures.
Who knew that this sport would become more universally popular – and accessible to more people -- saving the most souls from the mundane. Now, the waterways, lakes, lochs, seas, canals and rivers are filled with bright colours and the laughter of friends and families. This sleeping gentle giant finally awoke thanks to innovation, the beauty of engineering and blue sky thinking.
When you are on a board, travelling at the pace of a 1950s rural farm setting on a Sunday afternoon, unwanted thoughts and toxins are banished from your brain. The fragility of the human form against the forces of nature brings you to a focused state for every part of the journey. Standing on the simplest of forms (a board), with one of the oldest designed tools in the history of humankind (a paddle), yet with the designing innovation akin to a well-oiled group of NASA scientists, paddleboarding has become even more accessible due to iSUP – inflatable Standup Paddleboarding. These safety nets for our sanity now fit into a rucksack, with a pump and safety equipment; weighing in at around 12kg; they have opened this gentle whale of a sport to endless new beneficiaries who now have a way to make their minds a better place to live. For extra safety, a paddler can be connected to an engineered supportive lung providing 250 litres of oxygen.
So, back to blue sky thinking. What SUP does for us, who paddle in order to stave off the misaligned energy that comes when the paddle is out of hand for more than a few days, isthrow us straight into Attenborough’s back garden. It gives us purpose, lets us positively influence all we touch. No engines to prime, no tanks to fill with foul fluid and with no negative energy, this eclectic rainbow includes a myriad of genders, shapes, sizes and ages all with a different journey that has led them here. In these special places, nature has opened herselfto us and welcomes us back to her fold.
Paddlers-to-be look are inspired by this joy, this freedom, this purging of all life’s travails and dream of joining in. As we pump precious air into our board, we feel the first sensation of adrenaline and endorphins, tingling toes and finger tips as our chariots fill. As our board reaches its maximum, where no more air is needed, we take this opportunity to exhale with passion and patience of a moment that we have planned out for days. It’s a feeling for which many have been yearning for years. Weather and wind apps checked, double and triple checked, tide times known…all mapped out to 6 hours beyond the paddle. Our south-westerlies known from our north-easterlies, our on-shores and off-shores assessed, our up-winds head down driving moments planned and our down-wind back of the board surfing moments relished --we can’t just drive, inflate and go! To make every paddle count takes thought, care and respect.
Our fragile frames and equipment are now in the hands of nature and all of the power this beautiful and wild planet can muster. Our brains now in overdrive, all our equipment inspected and aboard, we splash our way toward adventure. In truth, the moment we launch and our feet feel the deck, heels down as we unfurl from crouching tiger to proud water-warrior scanning the horizon, hands in position, knees slightly bent, the feeling of that first stroke…well it feels like the first hand held, the first lips kissed and the first tragic loss. Loss because our time on the water is sadly limited, the hourglass turned at launch as the weather, like life, won’t stay the same. SUP truly connects us to all that is important in life, the energy of this planet, the plants and all living wild creatures that allow us to share their space. For all my summits conquered, there were times where a corner of my brain stillharboured unwanted tenants. However, SUP frees my brain of all external clutter, my brain completely devoid of noise. All I see are sea currents, dark and light patches, cloud patterns and colours affected by wind. The chop, tides, wildlife and the movement of my board. Adventurers are too often famous in terms of their destinations, but rarely the contents of their journey. SUP, as with life, is ALL about the journey, and little about the destination.
If you’re curious, please don’t just take my word for it. Health experts also see the benefits of this manta ray style of gliding as a means to heal. In the USA, they’re ahead of the curve with mental wellbeing, especially for veterans where they have led the field with PTSD awareness and recovery since the end of the Vietnam war.
Sadly, when we leave the water our cargo nets hold plastic bottles, bags and straws – but this is our opportunity to give back. To cleanse our Mother of the debris and detritus even as we cleanse our own souls. Connection to, and clearing of our waters, one piece at a time, makes us a loving part of nature, not a careless besmircher of beauty. Our community is small, our hearts are big and we are growing in numbers this armada of love, this armada of respect, this armada of a community.
I am PaddleboardPedro and every second I am awake, and asleep, all I have on my mind is nature, the sea and my paddleboard!
For more information, follow these links:
https://good-trails.com/2019/01/15/mental-health-benefits-of-paddleboarding/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5057214/
Love is not all we need, but we do need it
By Richard Dell
Let me give some dating advice to young people. There is something so touching, so beautiful, so utterly entrancing about young people courting, and young people falling in love, that I will address this primarily to the young. But all must read this – young, middle-aged, and old – for of course this is not to do with courting and dating at all. Of course it isn’t!
If a young person seeks the favours of another, there are so many things they can do. There are myriad ways to beguile one’s way into the affections of another, and perhaps they work. Sometimes.
But there is a better way. Oh my word, there is without any doubt a much better way. Not only that, this better way is undoubtedly the best way, and it is the best way because it is undoubtedly the only true way.
Love.
Nothing is so beautiful, so entrancing, so complete, as to be loved. Nothing makes us open up with our secrets and our fears, with our hopes and our pleasures, with our desires and ultimately with our arms like love. NOTHING.
And those ultimate favours are at their most exquisite, are as close to perfection as one can get on this Earth, when they are given and received in love.
Given and received in love.
AH, so now to what this is about. Our Earth. Our planet. My, how we have taken her for granted. This beautiful blue orb in the deep star-lit emptiness of space. But we have, at last, woken up to her needs: like a young person who has always taken his friend for granted, and suddenly sees them with the eyes of love.
So these days we court our beautiful and perhaps secretive planet. We worry about her atmosphere and about her seas. We consider her vast reaches of forest, and her tundra, and her deserts, and her savannahs. Yes, we consider all those things, and we seek to protect them.
And why?
Because we want our planet’s favours. We want her favours. We want everything she can offer, and we are frightened that now we are grown-up she will not bestow them. So we court her. For our own ends. For what we can get from her. For what we can receive from her. For our own ends.
Thank God we have woken up to the need. Even if the uninformed and the cynical think global warming is a myth -- though I don’t think it is -- thank God we have woken up. But this courting; this utilitarian approach done for our needs and wants is only the beginning of the answer. This is adolescence stuff and will serve for a while. But soon we must go further. Soon we must be truly adult. Soon, if we are to enjoy the wondrous favours of our beautiful blue orb in the deep star-lit emptiness of space, we must court her because we love her. Because we love her. We must nurture her forests because we love her forests, and because we love her. We must wash her seas clean because we love her seas, and we love her.
And if and when we do, then at last shall we receive her favours in full, in her own love. Then shall our grown-up ‘marriage’ with our beloved spouse begin. And the bounty shall be immeasurable, and the ends of that shared journey indescribable.
Love is not all we need. But we do need it. And perhaps sooner than we think.
(Extract from Richard Dell’s book WILD WINDOWS 1, available from Amazon.)
https://www.amazon.com/Richard-Dell/e/B0034PDLMC?ref_=dbs_p_ebk_r00_abau_000000
Olympia Ellinas
An interview with the artist Olympia Ellinas
by JL Nash
Olympia Ellinas, well, there’s something rather special about her. She has severe visual impairment, is on the autistic spectrum and has cerebellar ataxia. Photographing for her is a challenge. Her disabilities, however, do not define her -- they are merely statements of fact. There is so much more to Olympia Ellinas. Not only does she hold a BSc in Pharmacology, but she is also a weight lifter as well as a photographer. Yes, even with her visual impairment, she creates excellent images.
Using filters and her computer to adapt and doctor the photographs instead of creating a record or a snapshot of a specific moment, as is, she creates images with almost a dreamlike quality which challenge the viewer to define or label the images on show.
At 31, also suffering from chronic migraines, OCD and being partially deaf, Olympia takes her refuge in photography and scientific research.
I had the chance to catch up with her recently and ask some specific questions about her work.
Q: Does your Obsessive Compulsive Disorder hold you back?
A: OCD -- yes, I take so many repeated photos of the same thing, and end up having 400 photos to sift through to find the perfect one. Then you'd think I would delete the bad ones but I don't and I back all of the photos up, and then end up hoarding files on storage devices 🤦🏽♀️. It's silly, I know. Also, I have OCD issues with repeatedly cleaning my lenses and going into panic if I so much as bump my camera slightly. As for editing, OCD slows me down considerably, but oddly sometimes results in better art.
Q: What equipment do you use to capture such amazing photographs?
A: Equipment - Sony a7ii camera with lenses I bought off eBay that were put together by a man that makes them cheaply (one wide angle, one narrow angle -- I hope to one day get the strongest macro lens for this one). Also a Nikon D5300 camera with available filters: a Polaroid filter, a neutral density filter, and also a really good macro lens. I always keep the UV filters on my cameras to prolong their life. I have a 1.5m tall tripod; I bought it off Amazon, nothing hugely professional. Also, I have a small tripod for closeups where I need to not have my hands shaking. I have a padded camera rucksack.
Q: From where do you take your inspiration?
A: Inspiration is usually from my lack of helpful vision, oddly. With my terrible vision, I can't see the sky's patterns nor can I see the landscapes or trees/objects clearly. But when I get the camera out and that viewfinder shows me (I can see it close up) what I am presented with, it's a world being opened up to me. It's me wondering -- can I capture what my eyes can't? I have reduced colour sensitivity so I get so excited when I can bring out the colours of things I had no idea were so vibrant.
Q: You don’t photograph people -- why is that?
A: I don't like taking photos with people. It's for two reasons. Firstly, when I was a child, my mother used to insist that every holiday photo had to have a smiling person in it. I thought -- how cheesy and artificial -- so I started making really atmospheric faces in photos, to which she would get really angry at me for. She made mockery of my dad who takes photos of landscapes and nature (he's where my interest in nature started from) when I love his photos (he is very talented). Having people in photos just reminds me of my mother insisting on what she did, and how annoying I found it, and it somewhat stuck. Although saying that, I have done up some photos of my friends and my cat. Second reason, is my autistic dislike of eye contact. I don't like staring into the eyes of photos of people looking straight at me, or looking at each other, it just makes me nervous. I suppose that if I were to overcome my psychological hang-ups then I could do photography relating to people. Just don't ask me to airbrush – lol -- airbrushing is not only unappreciative of the beauty of natural "flaws" but also it is really not my type of thing, editing-wise.
We would love to fill this issue with Olympia’s photography but our GB allowance doesn’t allow. Here’s a link to some of her superb work.
https://www.redbubble.com/people/OlympiaEllinas/shop
https://ko-fi.com/schrodingershuman10853
Ten degrees of Ermingard
By Maya Stiles Parsons Spier
People sometimes say that we lack remorse or guilt like it's a bad thing. They are sure that remorse and guilt are necessary to being a 'good' person.
M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
*Some details have been changed to protect myself, not her.
Her name is not Ermingard. I’m not telling what her name is. I don’t want that name connected with me or mine -- not now or ever, ever again. She is the only person in the world I truly hate and will never forgive, no matter how many earthy-crunchy, never-victimized people tell me (while afloat on their sea of lily pads and hyacinth blossoms) that I need to do it “for my own sake.” God can forgive her. I don’t have to. To this day, if I meet another predator, I evaluate them for “degrees of Ermingard.” Even two degrees of Ermingard sends up warning flares.
When you are raised to think you are absolutely nothing, the first big predator that comes along is going to get you.
Predators often come in glamorous garb, dripping words that simulate real wisdom like a honey trail to attract hapless ants. They smile charmingly, they focus on you. It can be sexual, but it doesn’t have to be. My predator was as straight as I am. Gorgeous, her native language was French and she came with two pretty little children in tow, one almost the exact age of mine.
I can honestly say that I have gone from an unloved child to one of the best loved women I know. This gives me the strength to get through nearly anything. At the time, I was just 21, so raw from my upbringing and my subsequent survival flailings that had you looked closely, you would have seen me bleeding.
I met her in a grocery store. When she spoke, I heard her accent and called out to her "I speak French" (my first mistake).
And so it began. She paid such sweet attention to starveling me. She told me I was beautiful and didn’t understand how my family of origin could be so cruel. She went places with me. She loved my child and I loved hers. Her boyfriend was kind. I felt wanted and included.
Except…
Except she would offer to take care of my daughter for an hour in trade for childcare and then be gone for five or six hours, leaving me to feed her always-ravenous children food I could not replace. I went hungry after that so my daughter could still eat.
Except when her sister-in-law gave me gas money for running them all up to Seattle, she wanted it and when I said that it was given to me for desperately needed gas money I’d just spent on her, she went into a rage, tore the bill in half and said "There. There’s your half."
Except she said she loved going places with me -- wasn’t it fun -- but to get there on time because she needed a ride to an appointment.
Except she stole the crepe de chine yardage inherited from my grandmother I’d planned to use for my daughter’s wedding dress. Nobody else knew where it was stored.
Except she told me that people despised me, would invite her to parties but tell her not to bring her fat, repulsive friend, but that she was my friend, my only friend and they just didn’t know me.
Except she moved her entire family including boyfriend into my apartment for "a week" and then wouldn’t leave.
Except she offered to take care of my daughter during summer breaks when I couldn’t even afford child care and I found out, years and years later, that she’d starved my child even though I gave her every penny I could, so much I had to hitchhike out to see my child.
But oh, she loved me and valued me. I was family. Of course, I was threatened with ejection from that family if I didn’t toe the line. And all my opinions were crap, all my beliefs were stupid. My daughter was somehow inferior to her children, but that was okay, she loved her anyway.
She particularly specialized in stealing the loyalties of children and I watched her do it over and over. She stole my daughter’s loyalty. It was so easy in the days of exhausted single moms. In those days, so many dads just left and we couldn’t get them to come back even enough to spend time with their children. And child support? Piffle. They needed the money to support their new families. So we all banded together for support. She would offer to take someone’s kid for a week “because I know you’re tired and really need the break. Once the child had been at her house a few days she would tell them that their mother didn’t want them but that she did -- and then start hammering the kid with all the ways their mother was a terrible parent.
It was a consistently successful strategy.
It actually didn’t take me that long to figure her out and to despise her, but I was also trapped in my solitude, self-hatred and vulnerability. I was raised despised and the idea of being cast out by a second "family" was more than I thought I could survive. I didn’t know then the degree of abuse my daughter was suffering although I do now and I have had to pull over to the side of the road when driving because when I think of it, I cry too hard to safely drive.
The final straw was when she allowed my daughter to smoke pot and take mushrooms while I was at work
That. Was. It. We were getting out, whatever it took. Amazingly, that was when I met my now-husband. I didn’t fall in love with him in order to get out, but get us out he did.
I can’t honestly say I freed myself from her immediately. It was so entrenched. My sense of self worth, shattered from infancy and never rebuilt, kept me so vulnerable. But I can now say I haven’t seen her in nearly 30 years and I hope never to lay eyes on her again. I can’t be sure I won’t cause her serious harm if I do. I was scared to death of running into her for years -- literally would shake in terror. Now, I’m not sure I could resist the urge to harm her.
Best to just stay away.
Sociopaths are everywhere and they tend to be highly skilled at pretending to be human, but they aren’t. If you know what you’re looking for, you can spot them pretty quickly, but don’t kick yourself if you get taken in. They’re predators and fooling the unwary is their stock in trade. In fact, I was taken in, if not ensnared, by another such sociopath in recent years, but this time I got a good warning before I got caught up. It didn’t hurt that this person lives a long way away from me. And now I recognize them when I come across them.
Do they do horrible things and make you think you either imagined it or it was your fault?
Do they give a little first and then take far out of proportion to what was given?
Do they isolate you?
Do they thrive on the cult of personality, setting themselves up as the be all and end all of wisdom and charisma, with a little central clique of sycophants?
Do they publicly torment anyone who bucks their commands and skillfully make it seem like that now-ostracized person was the evil one?
Do you somehow feel inferior and that you should be grateful that this great one deigns to notice unworthy you?
Does it feel like you exist to be their worshiping audience and if you want to shine, too, they do their best to (often pityingly) squash you?
The list goes on and on and on, but the best indicator is that you feel used, diminished, inferior and apologetic about it, but can’t quite put your finger on why.
I’ll tell you why. You’ve been snared by a sociopath. You aren’t stupid and you aren’t weak. (You aren’t inferior and unworthy, either.) It really can happen to anybody. If you aren’t sure who it is, just think of the self-aggrandizing narcissist who makes you feel you aren’t quite the thing. Know who it is now? Yup, that’s the one.
There’s not much you can do about them except RUN, don’t walk, away from them. If possible, make sure they don’t know where you are. Their vanity will have them writing you off sooner rather than later, but that same vanity will try to re-ensnare you because you had the audacity to get away. Also, try to get away before you have children with them. Their children are built-in sycophant/victims and they will hurt you to get control of them. In fact, hurting you to get control of the kids is bonus. Mostly just GO – and get started figuring out who you actually are as opposed to the sad, diminished, inferior, apologetic pod person your sociopath created to stick in your body. That isn’t you.
It never was.
Contributors
Maya Styles Parsons Spier is the Editor-in-Chief for The Issue and previously held that position for iPinionSyndicate.com. She is a wildly opinionated grammarian who keeps all that tolerable by not minding if people agree -- at least on most things. She has spent a lifetime as a creative explosion, trying her best to be a good person despite autism (and more neurodivergences) not equipping her with any sort of innate understanding as to how. She lives in the United States Pacific Northwest, lives for her grandchildren and has way too many very small rescue doggies. mayaspier.theissue@gmail.com
JL Nash, the Owner, writes and has published many works from Haiku Chapbooks, Short Stories to Columns to Essays and much in-between. Also a psychotherapist and clinical hypnotherapist, her passion is the word -- written or spoken. http://www.janenash.com or http://www.monkeymind.cloud
Shirley-Ann Rowley is a musician and performing artist of Polynesian descendent living in Cairns, Australia.
PedroBatpoet tells us ‘I fill my full-time bills paying responsible life with part-time escapisms so my soul stays energised. My passion for life is manifested in my beautiful family and friends, my writing and poetry and when I am adventuring across mountains and at sea with my trusty paddleboard, Moana. When the dust settles, respect for nature will mean everything, profit and greed will be left baseless.’
Richard Dell was raised in Southampton, England. His grandfather was buried in a pauper’s grave. His father sold penny insurance. Richard was a street kid; weather allowing. At school ‘I slept. I loved history, but the important thing about history was which words were underlined. Of course I slept’. Richard left school age 16. He cleaned lavatories, drew maps, and worked in a tunnel beneath the sea. While working in an army cookhouse, he discovered books. These raised questions but provided no answers. His spiritual journey had begun.Books led to Oxford University. He became a teacher and a headmaster.
Our March Hare
