Amy Cunningham, a “green” funeral director, says in an article for The Atlantic that people “really don’t like the idea of the body disappearing into the soil and they’re fighting it in every single way.” Allan Kellehear also talks to this idea in The Social History of Dying. He writes about how, in thinking about modern death, there is an obsession with trying to buy more time, as well as eternal youth and beauty. The obsession with youth and beauty extends beyond death, and we are often embalmed and filled with chemicals to keep us looking alive at our most beautiful so our friends and family can spend more time with us.

I do not want to do any harm when I die, but I still am self-obsessed and want to be preserved as my most beautiful self for as long as possible.

Embalming is important for the emotional needs of friends and family, but this process of stopping ourselves from decomposing when we die is harmful; as Cunningham explains, the chemicals put in our bodies make the potential energy of our bodies inert. When we embalm our bodies we make it harder for the earth to reuse our energy in a positive way. Not only do we ruin our body’s energy potential, but the chemicals used for embalming, like formaldehyde, are harmful when leaked into the earth during decomposition, or when released into the air during cremation. Embalmers also have a higher chance of getting cancer, as formaldehyde is a carcinogen.

I think about bugs eating the scars on each of my knees. How these scars are memories and how it would be nice to have these memories preserved.

There are alternatives to embalming. One of these is a “green funeral” (also “eco funeral”, “green burial”). In a green funeral you are not embalmed, and are instead buried in an eco-friendly coffin that will decompose with you. In New Zealand these coffins must be made out of native “sustainably grown softwood with no preserving treatment” —  they’re not allowed any artificial or synthetic materials. This means the body will decompose more easily into the earth with less harm to the environment.

This means the bugs will eat my body more quickly.

In the past few years green funerals have become a viable option for New Zealanders. There are currently five certified natural burial sites in New Zealand, in Wellington, Kapiti, Carterton, Marlborough, and New Plymouth. Green burials are becoming popular, but there are only a small number of sites available due to limited council approval in different areas, so it can be tricky to arrange. It is also illegal to bury people on private property if there is a cemetery within 31 kilometers. This means that a green funeral has its limitations. If the body is not close to a site, it becomes hard to transport, especially since embalming is not allowed and decomposition will happen faster. It seems like an extra amount of effort for loved ones to arrange who would already be going through a hard time.

Finding a burial site in New Zealand is becoming hard. Newshub reported this year that many cemeteries in high density areas are filling up, with over half the cemeteries in Auckland being full and the operational ones burying up to three coffins and eight urns on one plot. There are also no certified green funeral sites close to Auckland, despite a demand for them.

Even with a green funeral your body can still do harm to the earth. Artist Jae Rhim Lee delivered a TEDx talk about the human body being a storehouse for environmental toxins, and that when we die these pollutants are “returned to the environment one way or another, continuing the cycle of toxicity.”

She started the Infinity Burial Project which lets people be buried in suits filled with mushroom spores that will grow and eat your body to help clear these toxins. Your dead body’s energy will turn into mushrooms and you can live forever renewing energy as a mushroom ghost. Jae Rhim Lee hopes that this will be the start of “true environmental responsibility.” This seems like a good option to do no harm to the earth as a dead body, and being eaten by mushrooms is slightly more appealing than being eaten by bugs. In The Social History of Dying, Kellehear describes a good death as dying with your responsibility to your community in mind. Jae Rhim Lee’s Mushroom Suit is a good way to take responsibility, but buying a suit would add extra costs to a funeral so it may not be affordable for all.

Embalming is still an important part of many traditional cultural practices, and to implement these types of burial responsibly would require adjusting these cultural practices. The Parsi community in India is a good example, having adapted their practices to a changing environment. Khojeste Mistree, head of Zoroastrian Studies at the Institute of Mumbai, talked to Elliot Hannon for NPR about this; he explained that the usual practice is to have the corpse “exposed to the rays of the sun, and the corpse is consumed or devoured by birds of prey — vultures, kites, and crows.” This practice was affected when the vulture populations started to disappear. The Parsi community adapted by introducing solar concentrators to dehydrate the body faster to be more easily consumed by smaller birds.

Environments changing due to climate change is something that has affected many burial sites. In New Zealand burial sites are being washed away by higher tides. Steve Bagley talked to Radio New Zealand about this, saying that “coastal erosion over the years has frequently turned up kōiwi and bones,” and he expressed concern that this could have a big impact on historic and archaeological records.  

Tree pods are another new idea that is being developed by Italian designers Anna Citelli and Raoul Bretzel. The concept is that your body is placed in a seed-like pod with a tree planted on top of you, and that your body will act as a fertiliser for the tree to grow. The creators hope that we will start to have forests instead of graveyards. Earlier this year they led a workshop at Te Papa Tongarewa where traditional Māori weaving techniques were used to create these pods. These pods are not currently available in New Zealand but there is potential for this idea to take off.

The Eternity Reef Project in the United States cremates your body and mixes your remains into a concrete ball. It is then placed in a construction called a reef ball, a structure that is being used to help rebuild dying reefs.

There are also places that compress your body into a diamond, make it into a firework, a bead, a pencil, or you can be loaded into bullets.

You can also avoid the decision of how to dispose of your body altogether by donating your body to science. In New Zealand you can donate your body to Auckland or Otago University when you die. However, this bequeathment can be vetoed by your family.

It seems that there is no good universal way to dispose of a body, but there are many new thoughtful ways to do it. Most of these are also ways in which your ghostly energy is used to create or grow something new.

Jae Rhim Lee says that “accepting death means accepting that we are a physical being intimately connected to the environment.” It would be nice to become a diamond or a coral reef, but I will probably become a mushroom. In any of these circumstances the little ghosts in my body will become something new and I think I can get over not looking pretty when I die if I think about how my energy can be reused.

Since radio first began broadcasting in New Zealand there have been amateurs experimenting with it, often ignored government bans. Brenda Bell, New Zealand’s first female amateur radio operator, was one of those who ignored such bans. She sums up the attitude, in a quote in Patrick Day’s The Radio Years: “Many of us had a sense of awe, of dealing with things greater than we could understand. And we knew that throughout history many good men, and women too, had been ruined, tortured, and burnt at the stake for dabbling in magic not one fraction as wonderful as this.”

*

Radio in Small Nations, edited by Richard J Hand and Mary Traynor, discusses the role of radio in forging national identity in small countries, allowing people to see themselves reflected in local and national radio through particularity of place, ethnicity, and language. This is reflected in The Radio Years, which discusses how radio serials, which were first aired in New Zealand in 1928, became a subject of debate, since many of them were imported from Britain and America, and held “non-New Zealand values.” New Zealand slowly moved away from using imported material for these serials and by  the ’70s most of the performers and writers of radio serials were New Zealanders. New Zealanders wanted to see themselves reflected in their entertainment, and this meant local voices and stories needed to be given a public platform.

In 1921 the government started giving out transmitting permits, and with this New Zealand broadcasting really began. Radio had sparked excitement in the public. Robert Jack gained the first transmitting permit, and broadcasted music by playing records on a gramophone and having live singers — this was a brand new way to listen and have access to music in New Zealand. Day writes that it “provoked an emotional response in the first listeners.” This excitement persisted through to the ’50s when amateur radio was finally permitted. Day talks about how at the end of the ’50s broadcasters were excited to explore and extend the “nature of New Zealand broadcasting and its place within New Zealand society” with more independence.

In the late ’60s amateur radio experimentation became popular in universities as student radio emerged. The stations dealt with flimsy construction to transmit their signal. Andrew Glennie from RDU (currently Christchurch’s “only bastion of alternative radio”), talked to RNZ about how they had to put up the transmitter before every broadcast, and how their transmission construction began as a table on a box in the middle of a creek. They certainly weren’t the only one with limited resources; RadioActive and Radio One also dealt with cheap parts and self-built transmitter masts. Despite these humble beginnings, many of these stations have gone on to become successful alternative radio stations, helping to grow our music industry and nurturing many upcoming New Zealand broadcasters.

In 1969, 95bFM, University of Auckland’s well known indie station, launched an illegal pirate radio station from the Waitematā Harbour. Andrew Dickens, who was station manager of 95bFM from 1981, told RNZ about how in the early ’70s the transmitter was passed from flat to flat to stay ahead of the police. The station was eventually granted a semi-commercial in the ’80s, and their success inspired other student radio to apply for broadcasting warrants.

L to R: Richard Segedin, Romi Patel, and Ron Imms, 95bFM technicians working late into the night to upgrade the mixer before an on-air broadcast. AudioCulture.

95bFM technicians Pete Gronous and Neil Dudley (at front). AudioCulture.

The end of Waikato University’s Contact 89FM, which ceased broadcasting in 1998, was a loss in New Zealand student radio. Max Christoffersen wrote for Stuff: “The demise of Contact 89FM still raises tense emotions today. With hindsight I will always wish I had harangued Vice-Chancellor Bryan Gould to not let the station be sold to private interests that would guarantee the end of its broadcast life and the end of its founding student and university-centred spirit.” Max talks about the station with heavy sentimentality — “every time I drive into Hamilton today I think of the students who built the station foundations in the 1980s” — and emphasises the community that the station was building by providing “a window to university life.”  

This sense of community and sentimentality is part of what helped RadioActive earlier this year when it started a Givealittle campaign to keep the station going. Their campaign video featuring prominent New Zealanders such as King Kapisi, Metiria Turei, and Samantha Hayes, all who had spent time at the station, urging people to donate to keep the station running. Justin Lester also pitched in to say that if we didn’t have RadioActive then Wellington would be “losing a really important voice.” The station reached its goal, because it had created such a strong sense of community within New Zealand and Wellington, evident in the support it garnered from some of these names in New Zealand entertainment and politics.

This is the second time that RadioActive has reached out for help to the community they have built. When VUWSA could no longer afford the station in 1989, RadioActive scrambled to become independent, and the community of volunteers, listeners, and friends all pitched in money to form a business and keep it going. Salient interviewed Miles Buckingham from RadioActive in March, and he spoke about how a security guard was put on the door by the students’ association to stop them from getting in when they could no longer afford to be run from the university, “although I think Liam Luff managed to break back in and run “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy on a loop.”

Independent radio stations have gone on to help shape New Zealand music and broadcasting culture. Paul Casserly says that “[Radio] used to be kind of the record store for the country. Now, it’s not that. But it still is relevant, so it’s having to find its way again, which it seems to be doing.” The community and sentimentality that has been built out of these stations is what has kept many of them going. Is this feeling still alive in the newcomers at these stations?

*

I spoke to several people working in independent radio, who are not yet part of its history, about the contemporary culture of alternative radio, and asked them if the community and sentimentality around these stations is enough to keep them going.

The answer was a resounding yes.

Many of the people I asked had listened to these stations or had ties with the stations growing up. Gussie Larkin from RadioActive talked about how her mum used to DJ on RadioActive “when she was a young mum with me,” and remembers that it was often playing in their Cuba Street home growing up. Geneva Alexander-Marsters from 95bFM had a similar experience, as her mother was also part of the Auckland station: “My mother actually did a graveyard show back in the ’70s when it was still a student run station. Funny how I ended up in the same place!” Geneva did a graveyard shift with a friend when she was 16, and described how they would “show up in uniform and do the 3.00am to 7.00am slot and then head to school for the day!” Most people I spoke to had already been a listener of these stations before they started DJing there; they were already a part of the community before they began at the station.

The excitement of radio still exists in this younger cohort, which is how alternative radio has always grown and created communities. These stations still require volunteers to help run them; Tommy Wroe from Radio Control emphasises that “the most important people involved in the station are all the volunteers,” so “there has to be a strong community.” George Banach-Salas, who volunteers at RadioActive, says that “I have always felt very welcomed and cared for” and that the “majority of us are volunteers and do this for love!” In an Audioculture article “BFM — The First 10 Years”, Russell Brown says that 95bFM (then Radio B) “attracted the same kind of enterprising, slightly strange kids that it does today.” These newcomers and volunteers seem to easily find a comfortable space within these stations and feel at home there. Gemma Syme from RDU says it “sounds cheesy, but these are my people.”

*

The sense of community and sentimentality are definitely still strong within these stations, which has helped them last. They still need to grow to stay alive, and that is something that newcomers are aware of. One important way that the next generation involved in radio are helping grow the stations is by being aware of changing technology, and as Gemma explains “translating to digital platforms” — by creating online content that helps them stay relevant.

Another important way they are helping grow these stations is through wider representation. Geneva notes the importance of making an effort to “provide a range of artists from different backgrounds, prioritising people of colour, transgender artists, ladies in bands, young bands, unfamiliar genres, and of course, music that features Te Reo Māori.” This is a trend across all of these stations, of an increasing awareness of what music they are presenting, and giving everyone a voice and a platform. Jess Fu from 95bFM was aware of this when she got involved; she wanted to contribute to the Auckland music scene and support local musicians, but underlying that was an urge to expand the community “to help create more representation of women of colour in radio, because I know how frustrating it is to be underrepresented in media as a young Chinese woman.” George from RadioActive says that “most student/alternative radio stations are really keen on supporting and promoting youth and I think are quite political.”  

Giving local people a voice, and having the ability to see yourself reflected back in a public platform, is what has always been exciting about radio, especially alternative radio. This is how radio became popular in the first place, and how it helped shape New Zealand culture, so as long as this growth continues to happen these stations have a good shot at lasting.

“It has to continue, it’s just common sense” — Geneva.

*

When I think of red, the four most significant things are periods (’cause, obvs), the opera Carmen because I went to see it when I was a kid and the costuming was very based on red, Hispanic floral patterns, and anger/passion, the emotions. I think red gets co-opted in dumb ways (lady of the night, etc.) but the more I think about it, it seems to be used as a symbol of femme mystique historically. Red symbolises the dangerous and mysterious, and red might kill you in your sleep after luring you to a group orgy. Red is also pleather devil costumes in LA, and about 30% of Charmed’s set design for the underworld. Mila Jovavic in Zoolander, and lipstick of the woman who will slit your throat in a slow motion fight scene. Red is also political sometimes but it’s much less interesting when it is. I don’t wear a lot of red because I used to be heaps-pimply when I was growing up and it brings out the wrong tone in my skin. Fuck! Wrong tone? Stupid society making me feel like there’s a wrong tone to my skin. Also red is the colour that women with “I want to speak to the manager” haircuts coordinate their kitchen with, I reckon.

— Flo Wilson, Sonic Artist

*

I’ve got a real good pair of red shorts that my mum gave to me about eight years ago. They’re probably my favorite item of clothing. I like wearing red shorts/hats but don’t like wearing red t-shirts. I don’t know why that is. It feels like a red t-shirt is too much of a statement, like “I’m wearing red, what about it.” Whereas a good red hat or pair of shorts with more neutral coloured shirt is more chill.

— Eamonn Marra, Writer and Comedian

*

I feel 100 times more comfortable when wearing full red.

Interesting unique things about red:
— When you bleed it is red.
— When you look at the sun with your eyes closed all you see is red.

— Alexa Casino, Musician

*

I’ve never really worn red, compared to other colours. Might be because it looks too fancy? Or it makes my skin look pink or something. I haven’t been able to wear lipstick either, my lips aren’t full enough to carry it. Maybe I’m a little jealous of people who can do red, it’s pretty confident and fiery, I usually always think it looks good.

The best is seeing the most vivid red in flowers or little inedible berries, sometimes I can’t get over it.

When mixing paint, I have to be the most careful about red. The tiniest bit too much will overpower everything else and I’ll have to start mixing the colour all over again. Lately I have been aiming for kind of dark reds. Someone brought iron oxide into university which I mixed as pigment into cadmium red; I only used a little bit but it went this super dark luxurious rusty red.

— Teresa Collins, Fine Arts Student

*

Red makes me think of food. All the fast food chains have red on their logos. I think it’s supposed to make you hungry.

— Tyler Carney, Dancer

*

I remember my science teacher telling me that advertising uses red because of some human primal instinct thing. Red makes us immediately think of blood which raises our heart rate so I guess the idea is that we associate that adrenaline with whatever advertising we’ve just seen.

— Georgia Beechey-Gradwell, Dancer

*

Why does everyone give such a damn about red? Red’s the colour of blood, ooh, so human. So alive. Life is very long and the blood right in the middle of me is black. The blood I forget about is black. Everything slippery crammed in there out of the sun. My psychotherapist says that when I feel the crushing weight I gotta go inside my body to where I can feel it hurting, and then I gotta make it soft. I get inside there to make the big hard pain go all soft. And I got nothing very special to say about red out in the open. I just like red when it’s in the dark.

— Freya Daly Sadgrove, Writer and Performer

*

Red makes me think of YouTube Red, which is a dumb name for a premium subscription service because it sounds illicit, like Redtube, which then makes me think of Reddit, as I’d wager there’s a bubble-bellied Venn diagram crossover of Redditors and Redtubers. Reddit is playing on the past tense “read”, which is also fucked, because online reading is often barely reading at all and is killing our generation’s mental health and attention spans, and sending us down spinning association spirals like this one, rambling and invariably pointless, except my point is maybe that the colour red should just chill out and read a book, and then maybe it wouldn’t be so perversely frustrated all the time, so branded and corporate, maybe it would revert to being red for communism and Spanish flamenco, y’know, because that’s the red I wish I’d thought of.

— Holly Hunter, Editor

*

Red is really intense and not always in a good way, but I like red because it is fleshy.

— Georgia Lockie, Friend

*

LOVE RED

— Gussie Larkin, Musician

*

When I feel nervous my neck and chest go red. Usually this happens when I’m speaking in front of a group of people. Something will suddenly trigger in my brain, telling me I might embarrass myself in the situation and flooding my skin with colour. Tendrils of red creep up like fingers around my neck and I just don’t know how to stop them. I really hate that feeling and the colour that comes with it. It seems to make me quieter and shyer than I actually am.

— Kerrin Burns, Dancer

*

(First) blood

(Mother’s) blood

Blood (brothers)

Blood (sisters)

(Love) blood

(Hot) blood

(Give) blood

(Take) blood

(Symbolic) blood

(Imagined) blood

(Last) blood

— Anon, Artist

*

We had visited the rock quarry in Warkworth and then had driven to the beach. We took off our clothes to get into the ocean.

Alexa took us to Piha, near the waterfall. She filmed us all wading in; she wore a wedding dress.

On the drive back from New Plymouth we took photos of buildings and listened to an old CD I had mixed from 2008.

— Lucy B, Musician

*

I have some shoe glue I used once, it’s the perfect red, it’s on show in my room. I have old spice deodorant that is a muskier red (display deodorant). I have a red coat hanger I just paired with some blue silk. I wore the blue silk with a red top and decided this is a graphic outfit to wear when I’m being graphic. I have an art friend who made some art that was red (it was the wrong red according to another friend). I once was told by a family friend that I deserve another family friend’s red coat because it suited me so much. I don’t wear red too much but I want to own a lot of red. I have red socks that a friend always comments on. I love the red bit of a bic lighter. I have a red backpack, my favourite pen to write with is red. All my red things are sentimental to me as they are red. I stole a red eraser at an art gallery in Europe. My relationship with red is also a relationship I have with friends. Mostly I love red in print, glossy signage, on glass, and paired with other colours of the rainbow. Basically kid red…

— Ellyse Randrup, Cloud

*

In A Rainbow Reader Tessa Laird talks about how we are “red on the inside” and that our “whole interior is coursing with this opulent substance.” She talks about how red is the first colour we encounter, how it is “perhaps the originary aesthetic awakening of every human being. From the dark womb our first encounter with light must be mediated by these, our eyelids, not to mention the bloody mucus we come wrapped in.” 

Alexa Casino has a song called “Red”, I think that the lyrics sums up the colour and this article.
red my heart beats
red my soul feels
red my eyes see
red my insides
red

I stand looking in the mirror considering cutting my hair off as a way of coping with a current sad and stressful situation. It would be nice to feel powerful. It would be nice to feel like a new person. It seems destructive enough to feel unruly and it doesn’t hurt anyone so why not?

One person I spoke to about cutting their hair when going through change said that “having people receive me differently to the way they did before made a huge difference to my confidence.” People notice when you make a drastic change to your hair, they see you when you walk into a room. If you are sad, this can help you feel a sense of strength. Ovid, a classical poet, said in Ars Amortoria to never let “your lover find cosmetic bottles on your dressing table: art delights in the hidden face.” In other words, don’t let your efforts at beauty be visible or obvious. Cutting off a large chunk of your hair is a big fuck you to this idea and it feels like you are allowing yourself to be seen.

Being visible in new ways and showing different versions of you can be affirming and positive. My friend who shaved her head talked about how it made her “feel ‘seen’ as queer in a way that [she’d] never experienced before, which was really validating since [she’d] spent quite a lot of time feeling quite invisible.” Feeling valid and having control over how you present yourself is powerful.

In the back of my mind a horrible little voice considers that maybe I will be less pretty with short hair. I feel disappointed in myself that beauty ideals still bog me down.

Royce Mahawatte writes in Hair that the “history of women’s hairstyles can be read as a history of the perception of femininity.” Beauty standards and ideals are something that I cannot ignore when it comes changing my hair. No matter what my decision is or motivations are, it still feels like I am either rebelling or conforming to some sort of archetype.

In the 1920s the bob became popular, and this marked a change for women’s hairstyles, as short hair on women was not considered feminine. There was resistance to the bob, and women were discouraged against it. Emma Tarlo talks of “doctors, hygienists, and priests” arguing that this haircut “was a symbol of paganism” and suggesting that “it stimulated baldness and the excess growth of facial hair.”  F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair” tells of a woman who is tricked into cutting her hair and is subsequently snubbed by all the boys. The bob blurred the line dividing femininity and masculinity. It was also a physical step, of women moving into places designed for men, as many women went to barber shops to have their hair cut in this style. Despite the active manipulation and resistance against it, the style won over convention, and it gave women room to experiment more freely with their hair and identity.

Holding the scissors and looking at myself in the mirror. I tentatively trimmed a little bit off my fringe and some pieces of my hair fell into the sink.

I consider gathering up the hair I just cut off and keeping it. I know my hair will be around longer than the rest of my body, except for maybe my fingernails. Which makes me feel sentimental towards it as I separate it from my body. My hair also sheds all the time and I am always picking strands off my jersey and throwing them away, so I am not sure why I am being so sentimental.

There is a 90-year old woman in London who saves every strand of her hair that she is able to. She has been doing this since early childhood. Emma Tarlo talks of her in her book Entanglement. She is careful to collect strands of her hair as they fall from her head. The idea of holding on to your physical history by holding onto your hair is not specific to this one woman. Tarlo also writes about a minority group in China who cut their hair in the prime of their youth; they keep their hair and bring it out when they are dying. They believe this connects them to the start of their life before they pass away, creating a full circle. Hair can hold considerable emotional weight, as a part of you from a different time. It carries such power that people used to burn their hair after cutting it for fear that it could be used against them to create curses or spells.

I found a strand of my ex boyfriend’s hair in my bed a week after we broke up. Red hair on a blue pillow. A physical part of a person who is no longer there, it felt strange to just throw it in the bin.

Historically people have kept locks of hair from loved ones as mementos. It is a representation of their connection to that person. Often this hair was made into  jewellery. In the Encyclopedia of Hair, Victoria Sherrow explains how Queen Victoria fueled the popularity of this type of jewellery, by wearing it for 40 years after her husband passed away. The weight of meaning behind being in possession of somebody else’s hair can be observed it literature, including Austen’s Sense and Sensibility, where a lock of hair was kept as a confirmation of a marriage proposal, and The Rape of the Lock by Alexander Pope which shows the scandal and shame that can result if a lock of hair is taken without permission. Sherrow also explains that this was common practice during the American civil war; hair was exchanged between soldiers and their sweethearts when they parted, to keep as a reminder of their affection.

Cutting your hair can be a tangible way to separate your timeline. Cutting your hair can be a way to let go of a past self, or can be a way to grieve for the loss of somebody else.

Hair is rife with meaning and the decision to change your hair can be incredibly intimate and personal.

My childhood hairdresser said that when someone comes in to change their hair after a loss or break up she has to ask a lot of questions to make sure it is what they want, rather than just a rebellion that they will regret later.

I consider cutting all my hair off to try and make myself feel better. I have done this in the past and it has felt destructive as well as freeing. But I am so sentimental lately and I don’t feel ready to let go of everything at once.

What I do is trim my fringe some more, enough to feel new. I will trim my fringe every couple of weeks and let go of little pieces of hair until my fringe is new and there is no old hair left.

I resisted the pull of Wellington’s coffee culture for six strong years before caving; I feel like I am late to the coffee game. In the short period of time that I have been drinking coffee I have become aware that people have a complicated relationship with their coffee. They need it and they love it, but they also hate it and don’t want it. I am starting my very own complicated relationship with coffee and I am unsure if I want to keep it up, but it seems like consciously I’m having less and less say in the matter the more coffee I drink.

This summer I drank a sweet milky cold brew out of curiosity because it seemed to be the hip drink of the summer and I wanted to be hip. It helped me talk to people and it made me faster and more productive. I remember thinking “is this how people feel everyday?!” I had to wander round town feeling giddy and weird a few times before I had calmed down enough to be able to drive home. It was horrible, but I kept drinking it, and now I drink it almost everyday.

I feel like a baby entering this new world of coffee. I don’t even really know if I like coffee, and I am trying to work out whether or not I should continue my relationship with coffee; here are my thoughts so far.

Do I even like coffee?

//

Being a coffee drinker is like having horrible a crush on someone. It sucks, you think you hate it but also you love it. When you have coffee you are thinking about your feelings toward it, and when you don’t have coffee you are thinking “maybe I should have a coffee.”

//

How do I order a coffee? How do I know the barista is not judging me for my coffee order? There seems to be a lot of rules when it comes to ordering a proper coffee. Is it worth learning these rules? I used to get really nervous going into a “serious” coffee shop. There are some parts of Wellington coffee culture that seem weird and elitist. Even though I know heaps of lovely people who are really into coffee, that vibe still exists and I still feel uncomfortable sometimes in coffee shops.

//

I get so much more done when I have a coffee. Will I be more successful if I continue to have it? There is a scene in Fern Gully that I sometimes think about when thinking about coffee. The wise grandma fairy gives the young plucky fairy the glowing magical seed, and she says, “every seed holds the magic and power for creation, so too do you.” And then the plucky fairy goes on to conquer her demons, trap the villain in a tree, and be the hero she truly was all along. I think the old fairy was talking about coffee and that the glowing magic seed was actually a coffee bean.

//
Coffee breath makes me think people are tired. I remember being young and smelling coffee on my parents’ breath, I remember thinking that it smelt like they were tired. I have smelt my own coffee breath and it makes me feel gross and sad.

//

I can really relate to the legend of how coffee was discovered. An Ethiopian man named Kaldi saw some goats doing some really intense frolicking in the field. He looked at them and thought, what the heck, why are these goats so filled with energy? This is how I used to look at people who drank coffee.

Kaldi saw that these goats were eating some berries on a bush and he decided to try these berries to see what would happen. Kaldi ate these berries and he suddenly understood the goat’s energy. I am like Kaldi. I tried the berries on the bush and now I am part of the frolicking goat herd. It is nice to not feel left out.

//

A big reason I had my first few coffees is because it seemed funny. Coffee is funny. It is funny to drink coffee. I am funny when I drink coffee, and it feels good to be funny.

//

Coffee is not funny when you are alone all day. It is like a really unreliable friend; really helpful one moment, and then the next making you doubt every decision you have ever made.

//

It is nice to remember that coffee has always made people happy and has been part of human routine for a long time. It is also comforting to know that coffee has always made people feel weird and conflicted. Feeling like you are taking part in a regular human activity is reassuring.

These are my thoughts to add to Wellington’s vast collection of articles about coffee. I still think coffee is bitter and yuck but I will probably continue to drink it now that I have started.

— Mitski on young adult romance novels

My uncle once bought me Twilight as a Christmas gift. I thanked him politely but inside was thinking, “I am better than this book.” He said, “I asked the lady in the store what teenage girls were into and she suggested this, I hope it’s okay.” I thought I was above the book but I read it anyway and enjoyed it, even if at the time I would never admit to it. I believed it was bad literature, because it was made for teenage girls, and things made for teenage girls were not meant to be taken seriously. I am glad I now know better.

The definition of young adult fiction is very very broad. Tatjana Schaefer, Teaching Fellow at the School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies at Victoria (SEFTMS), who has published several works on children’s literature says, “I have never been able to draw the line properly between children’s and young adult fiction, or young adult and adult. I think books that address issues that reflect teen experiences (sexuality; romantic relationships; starting adult life/work), are no longer pure children’s literature, so they must be young adult, but that is only one aspect of a novel, and not every book addresses such issues.” It is easy to see how the line can be blurred between “young adult” and “adult” literature. Many historically well-regarded novels can now be called young adult fiction, such as Lord of the Flies, Great Expectations, and The Catcher in the Rye. Anna Jackson, who is Associate Professor at SEFTMS and who also has an interest in young adult fiction, explained to me that these books, “now considered classics of young adult literature, were not defined as young adult when they came out in the ’50s as the genre did not exist as such.”

The classification of young adult fiction is relatively new. In the 1920s Sarah Trimmer wrote a periodical called The Guardian of Education, which aided in defining and reviewing children’s literature. Then in the 1950s the Young Adult Library Services Division was founded, which meant that there was more focus on developing content for young readers and giving them space in the library. It was after this that S. E. Hinton wrote The Outsiders, published in 1967, which pushed the genre further and we started to see more books aimed at young adults that dealt with darker, sexier themes.

This dispels the idea some people have that young adult fiction is about teenagers and therefore for teenagers only; the idea that it is merely an indulgence and not worthwhile literature. Ruth Graham in an article for Slate in 2014 — when adult consumption of young adult fiction was on the rise — said that if adults read young adult fiction it “may mean fewer teens aspire to grown-up reading, because the grown-ups they know are reading their books.” Luckily the literary world has moved away from the idea that young adult fiction isn’t valuable because it would be a shame to not give young adult fiction the credit it deserves.

We are also now in a glorious time where teenagers are given more credit for their tastes and their contribution to culture; you only need to look at the influence of publications like Rookie which was started by Tavi Gevinson as a teenager and has gone on to influence the likes of Teen Vogue. Harry Styles recently defended his teen fans and scoffed at the idea that he needs to become credible to an adult audience in an interview with Rolling Stone: “Teenage-girl fans — they don’t lie. If they like you, they’re there. They don’t act ‘too cool.’ They like you, and they tell you. Which is sick.”

This bright new wave of giving credit to teenagers’ tastes mean we are allowing them to have space to do creative and amazing things, and only more good can come from it. It also means that the age of people consuming products that are made for teenagers is rising. According to Publishers Weekly a 2012 survey showed that adults were buying 55% of young adult fiction. Another study, prepared for a Nielson Summit in 2015, showed that adults bought 80% of all the young adult books that sold. Why are these sales rocketing? What is young adult fiction doing and providing for adults that books written for adults is not?

Young adulthood is an age when people readily and clumsily fall in love. Young adult fiction has plenty of romance; there are not many young adult fiction novels that do not include a love story, and people have always been keen for a good love story. Anna Jackson affirms, “romance is one of the great subjects for narrative.” There are plenty of love stories in adult fiction but the type of love is often less all consuming and transcendental. Books that have love stories like this such as Fallen and Twilight could be more popular with adults because they can feel nostalgia for their own ill-fated high school crushes, without also having to have ill-fated high school crushes.

Many of the topics that are brought up in teen fiction are really heavy; they are just made to be readable, which is important for these topics. Jacqueline Wilson writes about poverty, sexuality, self-harm, and sexual assault. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky deals with issues of domestic violence, suicide, and abortion. The Hunger Games deals with living under an oppressive authoritarian state, and The Book Thief deals with death and prejudice. To have these themes dealt with in a comprehensible way means that more people can access and discuss these ideas and surely that can only be positive moving forward.

Further, a dystopian future is glaring down on us politically and environmentally. According to Craig Welsh for National Geographic, climate change is “altering what people can eat; sparking new disease risks; upending key industries; and changing how entire cultures use the land and sea.” This, paired with the current political climate, means books like George Orwell’s 1984 are having a resurgence of popularity and people feel a newfound resonance with Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which has now been adapted as a Hulu series. People are feeling spooked, and turning to these types of stories for comfort and to understand their surroundings. For example, in a recent Radio New Zealand interview, Margaret Atwood spoke about “30 silent women dressed as handmaids [who] were seen roaming the recent SXSW Music Festival in Austin, Texas” to protest an “abortion ban in the Texas Senate” — they took Atwood’s story and applied it to their own circumstances as a political statement. It seems more than ever that people are now relating to these stories about dystopian futures.

Handmaids at the 2017 SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas. Austin American-Statesman. March 10. 2017. 

Fantasy novels about dystopian worlds are published mostly under the young adult fiction classification: The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and Divergent are examples of this. These novels possibly offer more hope than novels such as The Handmaid’s Tale and 1984, and this could be why people are turning to them. These stories show people actively fighting and resisting oppressive governments and perhaps people feel as though it offers them something more optimistic than adult novels on this subject, as well as a juicy love story on the side. Or maybe people have always loved fantasy novels and this is just where they are currently being published.

When I read a young adult novel I find it easy to laugh at some of the emotions a character may be having, which in a large way is a self reflection, because I was that dramatic as well. In 2013 there was a show in Wellington called Corner Diary — the concept was people reading from their old teenage diaries. It was hilarious and endearing because everyone in the audience could relate to those teenage emotions. It was also affirming and comforting to know that you are not the only one hiding a book of angsty and dramatic teenage poetry. In many ways reading young adult fiction is similar to this; I feel this same reassurance.

Young adult fiction stories are often coming of age tales. I am continually understanding how to be a better person and am learning new things about how the world can be a dark and complicated place. I feel like I am always coming of age. Reading young adult fiction can be grounding as it can help show us how we have grown and where we may have started from, and allows us to give ourselves room to nurture ourselves and develop further. It is very much worthwhile, and I would definitely no longer roll my eyes at a young adult fiction novel if I were to receive one as a gift.

One of the reasons I find crying in public alarming is that I become hyper-aware of how my body is occupying the space it is in. Like stepping into a bath and feeling the water shift. It’s always easier to keep my emotions at home where they are safe and I am safe. When I am crying alone I can forget about my body and burrow inward. It’s harder to forget about your physicality and retreat into your head when you are out in the open, because you are sharing space with strangers.

As a kid I found it easier to cry in public. My sadness didn’t really belong to me then; it belonged to my caregivers, they were the ones who had to take responsibility for it. My caregivers’ reaction to my sadness would indicate if I was okay. If I fell over and they laughed, I would laugh; if I grazed my knee and they fussed, I would cry; if they told me how brave I was being, I would be brave. I hadn’t yet learnt how to manage my own emotions.

I was about six years old the first time I became acutely aware of myself crying. I thought I was alone; I was deep in my head and mumbling melodramatic statements to myself. I vividly remember exclaiming, “Nobody loves me!” My mum happened to be around the corner, her totally reasonable response was to utter, “Oh shut up,” which brought me forcefully back to earth and back into my body. I froze up, embarrassed, aware of my mum’s presence, totally aware of my physicality.

The second time I remember being aware of my own body in this way was when my Poppa died. I felt uncomfortable in my skin at the hospital as I cried, exceedingly aware of each movement I made, wanting to go and stand by my mum, but not knowing how to move my body in a way that felt natural to get over to her. When I got home I sat on the couch and cried while cuddling my cat, until he uncooperatively peed on me. I wanted to settle in a nest inside my head and ignore my body, but I couldn’t because I needed to change my cat pee pants.

I have become more and more aware of my body as I have grown. I find it hard to be vulnerable in public spaces, but sometimes I can’t make it home to cry. Sometimes I have put on a brave face and go out even though I am feeling heavy. But sometimes the heaviness hits me halfway through the day and I realise I have five hours until I can go home to do those shuddery breaths in my bed. So I just have to cry out in the open, and it doesn’t actually matter. Most people don’t care that you are crying. Realising this was heartbreaking, grounding, and liberating.

Here are some things I have learnt from crying in public, and listening to stories of others’ experiences. This will hopefully be a helpful guide if you ever find yourself about to do the same.

PRE-CRY

Physically you will be squeezing your body really tight. You start to sweat and hold your breath and clench your teeth. This will give you a headache. When you try to stop yourself from crying you often start thinking about how you are being so brave and so strong holding it together, and how you are really just so sad right now, and you feel even sadder for trying to bury those feelings. You want to be in control of your body, but your eyes will well up, and you can’t push the tears back down.

If you do really need to postpone the cry, here are some ways that, with extreme willpower, may help you to rein yourself in. You can try looking up, using cold sensations, and pinching yourself softly to try to stop crying. Shaking out your hands and focusing on your breathing and occupying your brain with a physical task are ways to try and gain control. If you feel it coming anyway, try and find a comfortable space to be in. Being by nature is nice; you can romanticise your problem by looking at the ocean or a lovely big tree, but then feel small again by thinking about nature and the size of the world or universe. Toilets are also great because as soon as you get that latch closed you can be alone; the access to tissues is also a benefit. Walking around is helpful if you are worried someone will try to talk to you. If you can’t find a space, or are stuck in one area, then choose a spot to look at, and keep your eyes on it, study that space and let it feel safe.

You can spill over.

THE CRY

It’s probably going to last longer than you think and definitely longer than you want.

People will probably ignore you, not notice, or give you a sympathetic smile. If they do talk to you, they might say something like “don’t cry” or “why are you crying?” or “are you alright?” These questions are equally comforting and frustrating — try not to worry too much about responding in the “right” way.

What is comforting to know is that people cry in public all the time, so here are some snippets of other people’s experiences, for solidarity:

I kinda just turned around and faced a bush, and just wanted to have a big cry but couldn’t so just had a little frustrated cry facing the bush. — Teresa Collins

I think I’d feel better if I didn’t get so sniffly, like if snot wasn’t involved at all, that’d be ideal. — Anon

Often I need to go to playground to swing on swings until I stop crying, this happened last week and took 1.5 hours… I don’t pretend I don’t cry. Crying is such a big part of my life that I find it part of my identity as an emo. — Alexa Casino

I went into the bathroom first and did the classic, looking at myself in the mirror, looking at how sad I looked and how my face was a true manifestation of my feeling, and obviously that was the worst way to try and compose myself. — Anon

I used to have the city clocked with where the nearest public toilet was because that was where I could cry. But now I’m just like, a tear is a tear is a tear… emotions happen whether John Smith finds it awkward or not. — Bianca Daniel

I definitely pretend it’s not happening! Like nothing to see here, just a gal on a bus! That way no one will be kind and embarrassing. — Anon

I didn’t want to be anywhere because that would mean I would just be crying somewhere else, so I just went where I would feel the least embarrassed. — Anon

POST-CRY

You will look like you have been crying and you might start to think about whether it’s better to pretend you are high or have just had an allergy attack, rather than be honest about the fact that you have been crying.

If you feel like you need to carry on with your day, here are some tips to keep going:

• Get hydrated — you have just leaked a lot of fluid so put it back in your body.
• Physical contact with water can be grounding. It will make you feel clean and less salty, even if it doesn’t completely take away the puffiness. Press cold water to your eyes and face.
• Blow your nose, and stash some extra tissues in your bag or pocket.
• If you stand up straight and pull your shoulders back it can help you feel stronger.
• Telling jokes and using humour can be ways of gaining control over your body again. It can break the tension and it can be cathartic to laugh.

Let someone know you are having a hard time. The university has free counseling services if you have no one around you who you feel comfortable talking to. Crying in public is normal, your emotions are always valid, and being vulnerable in public does not make you weak.

A puffy face is still a brave face.