The Auckland Game

This is my own idiosyncratic map of the place where I live.

It's a grotesque distortion of the three-dimensional Auckland of the mapbooks.

It occurred to me one day that it would be interesting to try and create a kind of subway map of the events, places and people most significant to me.

If you consent to play the game, I imagine you might be inspired to create your own private dreamscape of the place you live inside your head.

The rules are here.

Start out on the place board, then move onto time.

gameboard (place)

0 - 8.00 am START
Throw the dice. Move ahead that many spaces. Read the square.

1 - 8.30 am ALBANY VILLAGE
Start up your car. Keep driving till you get to Coromandel.

2 - 9.00 am MASSEY CAMPUS
Turn on the computer. Search until you find your double’s name.

3 - 6.00 pm UPPER HARBOUR HIGHWAY
Jump ahead to Car Accident!

4 - 10.00 am FERRY RIDE
Buy a ticket and set sail for Rangitoto.

5 - 9.30 am MAIRANGI BAY
Leave the house too late and Miss the Bus!

6 - 11.00 am SUNNYNOOK
Go to the movies. Nothing on. Crawl back to Massey campus.

7 - 4.30 pm CASTOR BAY
Get off the bus. Walk back to Mairangi Bay.

8 - 10.30 am FORREST HILL
Stall the car at the traffic lights. Drive across to Birkenhead.

9 - 12.30 pm MISS THE BUS
Return to Start. Throw the dice again.

10 - 5.00 pm RANGITOTO
Rough on the harbour. Stop for breath halfway up the hill.

11 - 4.00 pm BIRKENHEAD
This is where it all stops. Miss a turn as you kill time.

12 - 2.00 pm DEVONPORT
Cruise the bookshops until it’s time for your Ferry Ride!

13 - 2.30 pm PONSONBY
Time for a coffee as you wait for friends (they’re late).

14 - 3.00 pm WALK IN THE PARK
From Grafton Cemetery through the Domain to Newmarket.

15 - 6.30 pm EDEN CRESCENT
Get off the bus in Albert St. Cross over into Shortland St.

16 - 1.00 pm HIGH ST
Lunch with an old friend yattering on & on about her kids.

17 - 3.30 pm K RD
Buy some shirts (or have them bought for you).

18 - 1.30 am GRAFTON
Take a leisurely Walk in the Park!

19 5.30 pm CAR ACCIDENT
Miss a turn. Get a lift from the cops back to Mairangi Bay.

20 - 12.00 noon GREY LYNN
Help a friend move house (for the umpteenth time).

21 - 1.30 pm NEWMARKET
Do some shopping – see what’s on at the movies.

22 - 7.00 pm WESTERN SPRINGS
Party in the house with the book-shaped letterbox.

23 - 7.30 pm COROMANDEL
End of the Road. Throw the dice to move back through TIME .

24 - 8.00 pm STOP
Shift over to the TIME gameboard.

gameboard (time)

24 - Stop 8.00 PM
Throw the dice. Move backwards that number of squares.

23 - Coromandel 7.30 PM
Start the car. Keep driving till you get to Mairangi Bay.

22 - Western Springs 7.00 PM
Video and pizza on the sofa with a friend.

21 - Eden Crescent 6.30 PM
Car towed. Taxi to the impound yard.

20 - Upper Harbour Highway 6.00 PM
Scoot round the corner from the off ramp just in time.

19 - Find a Car Park 5.30 PM
Practice the art of parallel parking. Back to Stop.

18 - Rangitoto 5.00 PM
Halfway back, two passengers are missing. Ferry Turns Back!

17 - Castor Bay 4.30 PM
A CD launch with snacks in the hills behind the bay.

16 - Birkenhead 4.00 PM
Work party in a glass-fronted house overlooking the sea.

15 - K Rd 3.30 PM
Arrive at the bookshop too late because you Trip & Fall!

14 - Trip & Fall 3.00 PM
Scramble up with a fixed smile – saving face.

13 - Ponsonby 2.30 PM
Not as many bars are open as you’d expect.

12 - Devonport 2.00 PM
Climb up North Head. Get lost inside the secret tunnels.

11 - Newmarket 1.30 PM
Walk by the CD shop before going to the movies.

10 - High St 1.00 PM
Climb the stairs to the trendy bar to give your launch speech.

9 - Catch the Bus 12.30 PM
Take the Link Bus. Get off again after 9 stops.

8 - Grey Lynn 12.00 NOON
Drive by your friend’s house. She’s waiting by the letterbox.

7 - Grafton 11.30 AM
Finally manage to Find a Car Park!

6 - Sunnynook 11.00 AM
Power-walk to the multiplex. After the movie, back to Mairangi Bay.

5 - Forrest Hill 10.30 AM
Memories of the day you got soused by the water main.

4 - Ferry Turns Back 10.00 AM
Still blithely unaware as they climb on.

3 - Mairangi Bay 9.30 AM
Leave the house on time to Catch the Bus!

2 - Massey Campus 9.00 AM
Morning classes never starts on time. You hope.

1 - Albany Village 8.30 AM
End of the Road. Toss the dice to find your PLACE.

0 - Start 8.00 AM
Shift back to the PLACE gameboard.

Keep playing till you've had enough.

Time to play the game ...

The instructions are very simple:

You can play alone or in a group.
You'll need two dice.
Highest score goes first.
If the winning score is odd, the game starts on the Place Axis.
If it's even, start on the Time Axis.
Click on the hyperlink for the number that you land on, then follow the instructions.

Keep playing till you've had enough.

Place Axis

0. 8.00 Am Start
1. 8.30 AM Albany Village
2. 9.00 AM Massey Campus
3. 6.00 PM Upper Harbour Highway
4. 10.00 AM Ferry Ride
5. 9.30 AM Mairangi Bay
6. 11.00 AM Sunnynook
7. 4.30 PM Castor Bay
8. 10.30 AM Forrest Hill
9. 12.30 PM Miss the Bus
10. 5.00 PM Rangitoto
11. 4.00 PM Birkenhead
12. 2.00 PM Devonport
13. 2.30 PM Ponsonby
14. 3.00 PM Walk in the Park
15. 6.30 PM Eden Crescent
16. 1.00 PM High St
17. 3.30 PM K Rd
18. 11.30 AM Grafton
19. 5.30 PM Car Accident
20. 12.00 Noon Grey Lynn
21. 1.30 PM Newmarket
22. 7.00 PM Western Springs
23. 7.30 PM Coromandel
24. 8.00 PM Stop

Time Axis

24. 8.00 PM Stop
23. 7.30 PM Coromandel
22. 7.00 PM Western Springs
21. 6.30 PM Eden Crescent
20. 6.00 PM Upper Harbour Highway
19. 5.30 PM Find a Car Park
18. 5.00 PM Rangitoto
17. 4.30 PM Castor Bay
16. 4.00 PM Birkenhead
15. 3.30 PM K Rd
14. 3.00 PM Trip & Fall
13. 2.30 PM Ponsonby
12. 2.00 PM Devonport
11. 1.30 PM Newmarket
10. 1.00 PM High St
9. 12.30 PM Catch the Bus
8. 12.00 Noon Grey Lynn
7. 11.30 AM Grafton
6. 11.00 AM Sunnynook
5. 10.30 AM Forrest Hill
4. 10.00 AM Ferry Turns Back
3. 9.30 AM Mairangi Bay
2. 9.00 AM Massey Campus
1. 8.30 AM Albany Village
0. 8.00 Am Start

Coda

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Blinds
(at Massey Albany)

blocking
the wind’s
wolf-howl
as students
scribble

Judith
Fredricsen
walks past
towed by
her seeing-eye

dog
Hi Jack!
won’t stop
I stop
remember her

three months
after
the funeral
where Fairburn
walked

that poem
she cut out
read out
by me
he’s buried

over there

Coromandel (7.30 pm)

[photograph: Simon Creasey (2005)]

Coromandel

Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird
– Paul Celan, “Corona”

bird stalks by
5-fingered sky
Sunday

in the rearview mirror
Autumn gnaws my hands
we’re friends

van reversing
past the
pharmacy

check out those jeans
swap spit
talk shit

don’t stare at
us
it’s

time she said
it’s time the asphalt
bled

it’s time

[First published in Poetry NZ 28 (2004): 92.].

Western Springs (7.00 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Unsuccessful Applicant for
Neighbourhood Watch

I like to see
what people do
in private
in secret
in the dark

Newmarket (1.30 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Newmarket

Everybody’s got to
have plans
my magnum opus

For a hard-earned
thirst
face caked with clay

fixed-rabbit stare
from the kid who
cut me off

Everybody’s got to have
this headache
sick to your stomach

Everybody’s got to
dress
dress to impress

Grey Lynn (12.00 noon)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Every girl’s a babe

in Jackworld
Annora’s mother

pilloried on 12 o’clock TV
not answering the door

We’ve had her up before
she’ll keep on doing it

untilunspoken
feral old man

tethered in the yard
titanic mounds

of garbageThey’re afraid
of dinging up their cars

They always stop
comforting me

when I stalked out of Poetry
Livea good kind woman

turned into the butt
of media mikes

& yetthe squalor
freaked me out

that dark reporter …

Grafton (11.30 am)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

The Kid Stays in the Picture

Don’t want to just be intellectual
The way I feel is sexual
– MORE FM

Twisting my rubber arm
bronze blue
VALISÈRE

Mocha almond
Jellytip
Cookies & cream

OUR ALLEGIANCE
IS NOT TO A CREED
NOT TO A BOOK

NOT TO A CHURCH
BUT TO THE GREAT
SPIRIT OF LIFE

Oh shitoh shucks

K Rd (3.30 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

This DVD contains everything there is to know
about Stargate … & more!

Everything there is to know
& more

They got it slightly wrong
for

Everything
you ever wanted to know

Tempting, though
to take them at their word

fill in the blanks
fulfil the prophecy

Just like that waitress
pulled back from

her breaktime cigarette
by one more customer

arriving
or the cell-phone girl

left in the middle
of her afternoon

TRUST UP sewn
on her Bermuda shorts

High St (1.00 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Cycle Couriers in Freyberg Place

a mirror hit him from behind

up the back orifice

where was that

he rings me up and goes

yeah blah blah blah

what was it

he was fucken doing?

Eden Crescent (6.30 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

First Night

Incorrigibly punctual
talk to me
forgive me

in the park
I suddenly thought
shit

you’re on tonight
he told me
it was all

one thing
looking forward
to a cognac

since this morning
me a wine
the others

to a scream

Ponsonby (2.30 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Such Manners

“Such manners …”
with the emphasis
of early afternoon

Medusa
waiting for your friend
to come (she’s late)

whisper whisper
from the little girl
“You’d like to stay here”

water baby
with a coke bottle
clear dishes

Merry
Xmas!
traffic’s already

starting to build up

Devonport (2.00 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

A Sunday Walk

Heteroglossia is as close a conceptualization as is possible of that locus where centripetal and centrifugal forces collide …

– Michael Holquist

MTChalk butterfly
VICTORIAetched in the pavement
faded to two wings
an eye open on each

bridge binding up the harbour
sails becalmed
stick-figure
mother
halfway up the slope

… as such, it is that which a systematic linguistics must always suppress.

– The Dialogic Imagination: 4 Essays by M. M. Bakhtin

NORTH· How did you do that?
HEAD· I’ll scrub them when I get home
· Whatever
· Have you had an inspiration?
· Uh
· Get up and stop being stupid
– to a fallen child –

[First published in Poetry NZ 28 (2004): 91].

Birkenhead (4.00 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Birkenhead

Out of this universal feast of death, out of this extremity of fever, kindling the rain-washed evening sky to a fiery glow, may it be that Love one day shall mount?

– Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

If you can’t park in Birkenhead
where can you park?
Slip Inn

Play the Big Game
Dollars & Dealers
money talks

but bullshit walks
exchange the orange baby
for the panda bear

Since the All Blacks lost
’s such a hassle
two mouths crooked so

mother & daughter
Full prog
& bikini underarm

Black on white
& white on brown

Breaking the norm

[First published in Spin 49 (2005): 60-62].

Rangitoto (5.00 pm)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

Refrigerium

the damned have holidays – excursions … to this country
– C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

Acc. to St. ThomasIt came to me
Aquinaslike a light
the smallest painin the centre of my vision

blanking outin Purgatory
allis greater than
but the peripheriesthe greatest on earth


Screamingwalking up Rangitoto
I buried my facestopping
in my teacher’s robeswinded

halfway upThe morning! The morning!
to read out versesI am caught by the morning
to the scoria& I am a ghost


it being relieveddown by the wharf
howeverwe waited
by the certitudefor the ferryman

to take usof salvation
to the asphodelsestablishing Holy Souls
the farther shores ofin deepest



[Portions of this text were sampled from C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce: A Dream (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1945) 60-61; 117; & the entry on “Purgatory” from The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. F. L. Cross (London: Oxford University Press, 1957) 1126].

Forrest Hill (10.30 am)

[photograph: Jack Ross (2006)]

DEATH & BEYOND
ALL WELCOME
– Forrest Hill Presbyterian

New & Pre-Loved
Patroklos

O my rider
does that ring a bell?

Have we been here before?
Or never

suppedtuppednapped
rapt

hips above a skirt
that tilt

of innocent intent
PatroklosO my rider

Hektor has you now
Osama-bearded

laughing as he kills