Hollywood Juniper and the persistence of longing

A snippet of washing line footage that became a part of A Lonely Place Facing The Sun, from my MFA exhibition in February. Small pleasures right here - sunshine, mānuka blossoms and freshly laundered linens.

I guess I should mention that I am writing here about hope, and hopelessness, and if you’re grieving, or experiencing depression, maybe proceed with caution.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted on my Instagram Stories a Google Street-view screen grab of a densely populated urban hillside at the Southern end of The Terrace. In the image, the pixelated forms of twisty conifer trees could just be made out. These trees grab my attention every time I drive past, and I figured others would remember them too, and might be able to identify what species they are. I find them devastatingly attractive. Uniquely corkscrew shaped, and precarious, perched above the Terrace Tunnel on State Highway One , they appear to be shaped by the notorious Wellington wind. My Instagram community delivered - I’m now confident that I can name them Hollywood Juniper (Juniperus chinensis, or ‘Kaizuka’), thanks to the keen eyes and botanical memory of one follower. (Here’s to you, Danny Todd). These trees, Google tells me, originate in Asia, but became de rigueur for the 1920’s Hollywood elite. I’m far from any kind of elite, but I really like the idea of having some wild spiral trees in my vicinity. There’s something very Dr Seuss about them - not only the wiggle and twist, but the fact that they can develop that sideways list. They bring to mind a plethora of Tim Burton films and a kind of hallucination of the Umbrian countryside. They look a little bit like my hair after a day in the trenches of a location photography shoot. They’re how I’d draw a tree if it was meant to be part of a dream.

It’s safe to say that I’m guilty of dwelling almost exclusively in thoughts about things both past and future, likely to the detriment of my attention on the ‘now’. When I consider those trees, I’m imagining that in my dwindling years, I’ll enjoy inhabiting a house in the countryside, with some hollywood juniper planted against the cladding, or on a ridgeline. I feel like they’d bring me a measure of extra happiness, because they are so imbued with energy and character. They’ll mingle with harakeke and mānuka and muehlenbeckia in irreverent and spiky clusters. When I dream of an aspirational tomorrow, it looks ironically quite a lot like nostalgia. I long for a rambling Edwardian farmhouse, set at great distance from any neighbours, with more garden than I can possibly manage, and forested peaks and valleys close at hand. I’d also like to be beside the sea. You can imagine that the likelihood of that rather utopian combination positions such a future ever further from my grasp. Mostly, I think I long for the seeming simplicity of a rural life, which I equate with a slower pace than the one we lurch along at currently. When our boys have reached adulthood, I imagine us upping sticks and heading out of the city. The irony that the fantasy-inducing wiggly trees I witness live above the entrance to the motorway of the capital city, rather than on the crest of a gently rolling patch of farmland, is not lost on me. Perhaps it’s a good thing, to glimpse another life in the vignettes of this one. After all, if being confined to the here and now means only noticing the concrete kingdom of the city, and the motorised rush from one errand to another, then freedom and possibility might wither.

One of my jobs today was to prepare the Te Whare Hēra artist residence for our next artist. She’s arriving tomorrow, to begin almost a month of working on a project that will likely be her last significant body of work. Her arrival is reminding me that life is precious, and our longevity is not assured. She’s using her precious energy to make something impactful that she will leave behind. I’m struck by the poignancy of that, and wonder if I could have the fortitude to keep creating even if I knew my own ending was approaching. I like to hope that I will. I feel like there is so much unmade work inside me, and the frustration of not finding time to bring it forth is actually just evidence that I don’t have an accurate sense of my own limited opportunity. Instead of making art, I squander my spare moments, feeling that there will always be another tomorrow to start and finish the things on my bottomless list.

I’ve had multiple conversations in the last week, with friends who have children who are anxious and depressed, and feeling hopeless about the future. This morning was the most recent of those, and it’s hit me quite hard. It’s the problem, I believe, that every parent fears most. That their child will struggle with finding purpose and hope, and that they won’t find a way back to joy. I haven’t ever experienced any proper degree of depression, with the exception of about a two week period of post-natal baby blues after our youngest, Vinnie, was born. I’m drawing upon that memory to most closely understand what such despair feels like. I clearly remember understanding rationally that life wouldn’t always be as hard as it was in that newborn moment (while pinned to the couch with the baby perma-glued to me, and my toddler perpetually at a distance, looking at me with wounded eyes and the certainty that I had betrayed him), but my heart chose despair in spite of that knowledge. It just seemed impossible to hope for ease, freedom, and fun, and recall a kind of numbness as I was crying about it. I was lucky - as my hormones settled, that cloud lifted, and we got on with the normal business of tired but predominantly happy parenting. I was largely back to my old self. I haven’t had any experience of an ongoing despair, and today I’m not taking that for granted.

Today, I am activating my appreciation for the good things of right now. There might be hollywood juniper trees in my longed-for empty-nest idyll, but rather than fixate on those right now, I’m enjoying the rain coming straight down, the kids learning to make spaghetti and meatballs, even though teaching them to cook makes me grind my teeth together, and all of my clean washing is put away. Small pleasures, perhaps, but those are the kind I can access daily, as opposed to luxuries and lofty achievements. I’m not one to actively keep a gratitude journal - although I admire those who do. Instead I think I need to practice a more moment-by-moment gratitude. Thank you for the husband who did the dishes after the kitchen carnage. For Nino practising his Spanish, and for the comfort of an electric blanket for the first few minutes of getting into bed. And thank you for the promise of a good and big tomorrow.