Rod MacKenzie's Blog, page 5

My father told me…

  My father came and told me of a place he went to as a child. It was a tunnel sweet with weeds and a rushing, voiceless wind. He said he wished he could take me there, sometime.   My father came and told me of places he went to as a youth. They were...

Sony cashing in on Kim Jong-un

This is a movie producer’s wildest dream. Make it look like you pissed off one of the most popular “love-to-hate” dictators in the world because you did a comic movie about having him assassinated by two United States late night talk show clowns. Have it leaked that his country, North Korea, hacked into the Sony mainframe to...

Why ‘freedom’ sells

Having lived in China for seven years I have my own kind of sorrow, mixed with the tenderness of memory when I see a small Christian community deep inside China harassed for their faith. The leader, pastor Zhang, was imprisoned for 12 years and his family was in danger of losing their lives before making...

Why “freedom” sells

Having lived in China for seven years I have my own kind of sorrow, mixed with the tenderness of memory when I see a small Christian community deep inside China harassed for their faith. The leader, pastor Zhang, was imprisoned for 12 years and his family was in danger of losing their lives before making...

Trying to describe South Africa without ‘overkill’

The novel I am writing has its opening scene in Cape Town on the day Mandela was released from prison. This manuscript is my project for the masters degree in creative writing programme at Auckland University in New Zealand. My protagonist, Ruth, is a young South African, and Chinese in appearance. She does not know, among...

Accusation and failure: The JM Coetzee – Paul Auster correspondence

In the correspondence between the writers JM Coetzee and Paul Auster in Here and Now (Letters: 2008-2011) we encounter a Coetzee largely unfamiliar to readers. Coetzee converses, even chats, in letters with another writer arguably of the same stature (certainly in Europe) in a manner sometimes bordering on the confessional. Coetzee is famous for his...

Queers and men with blunt instruments

So I read the very short “Queer” by Courtney Bassett and was drawn to the “idea” of it, best expressed — I thought — through prim lips:   People tell me how lucky I am It was not forty years ago I was being declared Mentally unfit Never mind the lobotomy I would rather have...

Turning 50…and full of bubbles

It amazes me how we give meaning with structures that have no intrinsic meaning. Take the idea of reflecting on the significant events of a millennium or poignantly reflecting on your life around the time of a “fiftieth” birthday. One thousand or fifty … mere multiples of ten. Why not have similar reflections on 857...

If that was Madiba’s memorial – God help us all

I was deeply moved watching this video of Johnny Clegg with Madiba. Songs like these make me shiver. They reduce my feelings to ash, the kind of ash that sweetens and embitters you with the memories of the promises most South Africans held closer than the breath in their lungs in the heady days of...

Paedophilia, paranoia and becoming strangers to our children

I stroll through the Now We Are Six woods not far from my home in Birkdale, Auckland. Any second Piglet will bounce out.  I shall ask him, ‘What day is it today?’ Piglet will squeak, “It’s today.’ And I shall exclaim: ‘My favourite day!’ The streams are laced throughout Auckland suburbia, with bridges over them and thickets...