punting on the avon

I think I've gotten used to the backwards dates.

I feel like the luckiest person alive at the moment. I'm sitting (well was when I wrote this by hand) outside in the middle of Cathedral Square, just outside of a fantastically ornate church...Christchurch Cathedral. Of course I've forgotten all the parts of a church that I once learned in Art History. I do know it's a cruciform church, and I can tell you that the clerstory windows are a beautiful stainedglass depiction of a not so beautiful religion. When the saxaphonist takes a break between songs (Crazy for You), you can hear the very English recorder being played from behind. The human chess game goes on to the right, the warm cloudless sky shines on my back and the restored red and tan tram pulls off for its city loop once again.

It could be Washington Square if the cathedral was swings instead. I'm ashamed to say that I'm sitting here drinking Starbucks. I am proud to report, however, that I did order fish and chips from the vendor in the park yesterday for lunch. It was delightfully greasy and over priced.

There's an independent movie festival making its way across NZ at the moment and just happens to be in Christchurch at the moment, so I went last night to see (a US film nonetheless...how exotic) "Courting Condi." This guy (a poor overweight white man from NYC) was infatuated with Condoleeza Rice and this movie documented his attempt to get a date with her...or "court" her. He travelled down to Birmingham, where she grew up in segragated America, and made his way out to Stanford, eventually ending in Washington DC, all the while making these awful "love disks" or music videos and sending them to her (as if she opens her own mail).

Eventually he learned the truth of her heartless determination to make it to the top. It's scarry to see how determined and hell-bent she was to make it to the top that she just had no regard for the people she stepped on and fucked over....especially when the government helped her originally (although she denies that her free ride to Standford, courtesy of Affirmative Action, had any role in where she is today). She did so many horrible things to benefit herself and climb to the top...she had a whole country to care for. It's appalingly and devestatingly sad.