Eloped to (Stokes) Vegas!

Kia ora my friends, I'm gonna take a leaf out of my own (journaling) playbook and start exactly where I am: looking out a different window to a different view. Gone is the sea and the rumbling commuter train. Gone too the fennel, and the green fence, now I'm looking at overgrown wildflowers in pink, purple, yellow and white, a lemon tree leaning full as bees run their pollen deliveries.

So much has happened it is so hard to know where to begin - and when I say a lot, I mean A LOT. I had a wedding!! Words were exchanged! Hands symbolically bound!

But before I get to that, I really wanna address a few things on my blog-backlog. First up:

Summer Journaling Club

Ghadaam!! I never did get around to posting up that bonus journaling episode. Unsurprisingly, it was a bridge too far on the week of moving and planning a housewarming slash surprise-wedding. I did all the prep for that post, including a podcast-style interview with Anahera Gildea, and I'll aim to publish it some time next week. I know a few people are still working through the posts, so as a reminder there's four blogs with about 27 hacks and a range of examples from my own journals. You can find them all here . Thanks to everyone who participated and let me know how it went - and I'M SORRY if I haven't replied to your email yet.

Here's the hacks again in a handy downloadable format;

The chain zines

Aahhhhhhh!! My heart sings. Two of the chain zines have arrived back with me - thank you for the updates people sent as you received and passed them on. I have faith that they will all show up in time. Here's me and my stupid face when the first one arrived back the DAY BEFORE I moved out of my old whare:

If you've only recently joined this blog, you won't know what the chain-zines relate to, so I'll share this video in which it is (partly) explained.

There's about 4 or 5 zines still traveling around (one overseas) and when they all come back I'll share them here one at a time so that if you can see how the collaboration came together. Here’s a sneak peak in the meantime:

I plan to submit the zines to the Porirua library for their new zine collection and I'll encourage them to be issued on home-loan. Zines love to travel. I was in a meeting last week with a colleague based in Malaysia, and she couldn't wait to show me that she had a copy of Tui, Tui, Tuiā (my sewing zine from 2021). She had no recollection of where she picked it up - but when we talking in a zoom recently she remembered it and went to grab it from her bookshelf. Trust me when I say that that zine did NOT have an international distributor - and only about 100 copies were ever made. We just sat there laughing and wondering about the odds of something like that happening.

But that's zines for you; they have their own mauri. See?

Zines always makes me think about impact, and what we 'count' as valuable. Some value is felt more than seen, and in a time where the world feels more uninhabitable than ever, to hold these zines in your hands is to reconnect to a currency that is never - despite how it feels to watch the horror unfolding all around us - going to be exhausted. That currency is mauri ora: an abundance of generosity and goodness.

Ockhams Longlist is out!

Last week, the Ockhams longlist was announced and I was gutted (ugh!) that Slowing the Sun wasn't on it. Ugh, because I didn't want to have my hopes up in such a high stakes competition, but you can't always divorce yourself from the impulse that seeks external validation. On the other hand, I've had heaps of opportunities already, and I'm not the only one to miss out - the long list is notorious for shelling out disappointment (I can't even adequately express how I loved Michelle Duff's Surplus Women and it unfathomably wasn't picked and nor was Fulvia by Kaarina Parker which I also loved).

But putting aside hard feelings I wanna congratulate everyone who was very deservedly long listed. They'll be fizzing. I can recommend so many - heroes like Rebecca Macfie and the trio of māreikura for Books of Mana, Jacinta Ruru, Jeanette Wikaira and Angela Wanhalla, as well as Lucy O'Hagan who I shared a stage with a few times last year. Her memoir Everything But the Medicine combines everything I love and admire about creative non-fiction. Then there's fiction, Tracy Farr's Wonderland and Khadro Mohamed's novel Before the Winter Ends (GO TENDER PRESS!!!!!), and as for poetry - hika, all of them. Such a formidable category to be in.

Anyway, if you missed out on the Ockhams too, ka aroha! But we’ll keep on writing because that’s what we do. Meanwhile, good luck to those who have a nervous wait for the blardy shortlist, eeeeeee!!! Let us know in the comments your picks, as well as the ones you’re sad not to see there :)

Okay, the wedding....!

I love how, if you say: "I'm never gonna get married again" the Universe will lay out a sunflower aisle and have your lover croon "Ka Pinea Koe" and laugh as you practically RUN down that aisle:

I'm gonna publish the words I exchanged here on the blog later in the week (cos that’s so me, lol), as well as a few more pics. It was such a cool day and I wanna share it, tho probs just with paying subs ‘cos I’m not sure it needs to be uber-public. I was gutted so many of our closest couldn't be there... we only decided to go ahead two weeks ago; it had been at the back of our minds but the stress of moving had been so intense we couldn't think about it. Once we were in it felt like the right time - a small ritual to mark the transition to this new phase of life (& love).

By the time you read this I'll already be on my honeymoon.... my honeymoon with my daughter! I'm dropping her back off in Dunedin, then heading to Kākā point to write and read and sleep in Papa Hone Tuwhare’s crib!!! Whaaat?!! And for a WHOLE MONTH........ALONE!!!!!!

Is this not the DREAM honeymoon!????? Who knew a second wedding could be so flippin' magical?

Love u, universe

Finally, if you haven't already seen it, here's a video I made for my girl's birthday (born on the 25th of Dec) for joy, for mauri ora, for never ending abundance.

Sending big love to you all in hellish times, keep hanging in, keep holding each other.

Arohanui,

Nadine