A PERFECT DAY

Experiencing beauty and transcendence in everyday life.

An oasis of peace and beauty: Kitekite Falls. Photo G Cartwright

A week or two ago I wrote on seeing Wim Wenders’ latest film Perfect Days - I liked the film and have since found that its stayed with me. So much so it has made me note certain similarities between myself and the main character. I know, we all like to think of ourselves as characters from a movie - although its unlikely many people see themselves as akin to a Tokyo toilet cleaner.

Perhaps its reflective of ageing that I no longer imagine myself as a cowboy or one of Easy Rider’s wild and free Harley-riding protagonists but, now, more a humble toilet cleaner? Although it wasn’t the character’s job so much as his lifestyle - a creature of habit who lives alone in a small apartment, enjoys music and reading and appreciates the everyday - that I found kinship with. Like Hirayama (the cleaner) I also snap photos, often of the same subject. He had a special tree he liked to photograph. I take a few snaps every time I shop at East Street Market on a Saturday (one day I might post some here).

Anyway, that Hirayama found happiness - perfection even - in his ordinary life makes Perfect Days a life affirming film. After The Iron Claw and The Zone Of Interest - the previous films I’d seen at Peckhamplex - which both focus on human brutality and suffering, I think I found a solace of sorts in Wenders’ film. As the news is currently jam packed with extremes of violence and suffering, I imagine many of us are looking for things that bring happiness, joy even, into our lives. I guess for some this involves shopping or holidays - stuff that gets you away from the mundane - but I’m looking more for salvation in the everyday.

Which is why I decided to call this post A Perfect Day and share with you the above photo. I took it on my phone in, I think, March 2021 at Kitekite Falls, near Piha beach on the West Coast outside of Auckland. I had been in New Zealand since early December, having gone out to spend time with my mother as my father had died in June. This meant I experienced the 2-week solitary quarantine all of us international arrivals had to undergo upon arrival (Covid pandemic, remember?).

Four months back is the longest I’d spent in NZ since I left in early 1990 and I was blessed with a great Kiwi summer. By March, knowing my time was running out and Piha having been, since childhood, one of my favourite locations - its a surf beach with fierce currents and a primordial landscape (amazing rock formations, dense native bush) - I headed out there for the day with my friend Tracey. Did we swim? I’m unsure. I love being in the sea but Piha’s where I almost drowned in the 1980s so I might have just enjoyed a paddle (the waves and the undertow often prove deadly to the inexperienced or overconfident).

Anyway, we had gathered a few food stuffs for a picnic and decided that, rather than get sand in our sandwiches, we’d eat at Kitekite Falls, which aren’t very far from the Piha. To reach the falls you trek through native bush for a couple of kilometres and then you arrive at a remarkable location. There before us were the couple in the photo. I loved how they were relaxing in the shallows, legs intertwined, she had a big tin of biscuits (you can see the tin to the left of her) while he had an ashtray and was smoking. They looked blissful - sugar and nicotine, what else do you need? Love? Well, I think they had that in abundance.

That she’s wearing a hijab is interesting in the sense that, when I was growing up, I don’t recall ever seeing a woman wearing such. Back then there was only a tiny Muslim community in NZ. Since the 1990s there’s been an emphasis on attracting more skilled migrants to settle in Aotearoa and many have come from different parts of Asia - thus leading to mosques not only in the major cities but even in small towns (stopping in Taihape, a small country town in the middle of the North Island, last year, I noticed a tiny building had been transformed into a mosque).

As with most things in NZ, the new migrants have been absorbed into Kiwi society without fuss - bigots in NZ are far more likely to hate on Maori than Muslims. Indeed, the 2019 mass murder by an Australian far right terrorist of worshippers at two Christchurch mosques is the only time I can think of Aotearoa’s Muslim community making headlines. That was an awful day, this day at Kitekite Falls was a perfect day.

I enjoyed being there, sitting on the rocks, listening to the birds sing and insects buzz and the constant pounding of the water as it came over the falls. I enjoyed our picnic and I enjoyed Tracey’s company, her Maori heritage ensuring she had a perspective on our nation that I found enlightening. And I enjoyed watching the anonymous couple enjoying the peace and beauty, water between their toes, late summer sunshine warming all our shoulders. I didn’t ask them but I think if I did they would have agreed with me that it was a perfect day.

In homage to Hirayama I will finish this post with a photo I took this morning in Burgess Park as I cycled towards East Street. I’m unsure what kind of trees these are but, as their branches are covered in blossom, they’re gorgeous. I like how they resemble a spidery web against the sky - a sliver of perfection? Something like that.