For some people want to be at the heart of things, to participate in what is to come. And back then, in that time of earthquakes, Christchurch was reconsidered, restarted, rebuilt, renewed. It could have been the death of the city. It was the birth of a new city. For a city is the crystallisation of a culture and its values at a point in time. Christchurch was the early twentieth cetury frozen in brick and stone facades. And the culture had outgrown the city, and the city had to change.  And your mother and I were part of that change.

Civil union

There is a lot of confusion about what these are, that they are non-binding or a lower grade of commitment, that they are only for gay people, that anyone can administer one. The legal commitments and protections in New Zealand are in fact the same as with marriage, although they are not recognised in some countries. It is all too easy to call it a wedding, but we have been training ourselves not to do that, because that defeats the point. The point is, as a straight couple, we had a choice and we chose a civil union. We chose a commitment ceremony on our own terms, and one of those terms is that we not participate in something from which some groups are excluded. There has opposition to civil unions and their “separate but equal” status, with Marilyn Waring commenting for example:

Marriage is a civil and political right and civil and political rights are not negotiable. You can’t have half a right. If it’s a civil or political right in international law it’s immediately enforceable. It’s not something that progressively – you know – as it depends on what you can politically get away with you might get there. So my submission is focused very much on the fact that civil union was a separate but equal approach and we’ve seen separate but equal approaches throughout history. Apartheid is a separate but equal approach. Segregation in the American south was a separate but equal approach. [Source]

Although I agree that marriage should be open to everybody, I disagree on tactics, but it’s not my fight. Also, she loses me at the point where she makes the inflamatory comparison with Apartheid.

Fundamentally, we believe there is value in the concept of a public commitment, and that a union is a product of a community, not just of two people. Also, is a lot of fun to bring together all the people in your life, and there are all too few opportunities to do this (and for one of those opportunities you have to be freshly deceased).

Incidentally, we have discovered that the details of weddings are very different around the world, even in Western countries. For example, In Germany, one has a registry office legal wedding followed by a celebratory wedding. In the UK, you may only marry in registered premises. Here, you may marry or engage in a civil union anywhere but you must have a registered celebrant, and the numbers of these are tightly regulated. In the US, it is straightforward to become a celebrant temporarily so you can marry your friends, or you can choose a Quaker wedding where there is no celebrant at all.

How to apply

In Christchurch, post-earthquake, the process of applying for a civil union (or a marriage) licence has become a mysterious and secret journey — ten months after 22 February and there is still no information online. Here is the process. Visit the Internal Affairs website and print and complete any forms you need. Drive to the airport and park in the short term airport parking. Walk back to the roundabout and turn right along Orchard Road. Turn left onto Perimeter Road. At this point, the footpath runs out, the buildings look like they are for aircraft maintenance or in-flight catering. Continue on foot to the Customs building on your left, and you will see a sign pasted to the wall explaining that it is also the temporary offices for Births, Deaths, and Marriages. The address is 26 Perimeter Road, there’s no parking outside, and if you arrive after 4pm you will have to go home and come back later. Don’t just follow these instructions though: email them first to confirm they haven’t moved!

Celebrant

It is difficult to find information about celebrants, particularly civil union celebrants. Our celebrant is an Anglican minister who gay and is in a civil union herself. We found her through the advice of a marriage celebrant friend of ours. We met another celebrant first who would have would have worn a nice floral hat and done whatever we wanted. She would have been perfectly fine. The second celebrant we met had very clear ideas on what a civil union meant, she understood why we chose one, and she had her own rules and values that she brought to the occasion. We chose her.

Websites

We have found Offbeat Bride particularly useful. It is a community of people all doing their own thing to a greater or lesser degree (and their own thing very often involves Star Trek). Weddingbee is also quite useful. I have been subscribed to a local Facebook group, which has provided some striking insights into how self-centred people can get about their “special day.” For example, some people feel that everything must be perfect, and that therefore precludes the presence of small children, and that guests who have a problem getting their children looked after all day should stop being so selfish. Well, I believe that the selfishness vector should perhaps be pointing in the opposite direction. At the very least, friends with children should be treated with understanding instead of bitchy comments on a closed group. Fundamentally, we believe small children are part of the community and are of course welcome. Another hot topic has been partners and whether it is OK to invite one person and not the other if you don’t know them well or don’t consider them to have a meaningful or valuable relationship. This is a reasonable discussion as these events can be expensive, but there is no need to excoriate guests for their selfishness in wanting to bring a partner. I think the hypocrisy is pungent: expecting guests to honour your relationship while disrespecting theirs.

Venue

Shortly after our engagement, we spent a couple weekends driving around the countryside looking at community halls. We were struck by the high standard of many halls. Farthest afield was the Staveley Hall, in a beautiful spot but quite dark inside and rather far away. We looked at the Ohoka and Brooklands Halls but dismissed them both due to lack of outside space. We considered the Cust community centre, but it was too prosaic and too public. We dismissed the North New Brighton Hall as it is just too nearby and we wanted a fresh space. We chose the West Eyreton Hall, which has a new kitchen, a large hall with a polished wooden floor, pleasant grounds with native plantings, and a pretty little oak grove across the road, all for just $150 (we feel guilty paying so little and are considering making an additional donation). We have since discovered the Kainga Hall which has ample grounds across the road for photographs, but our choice is already made.

A community hall is not necessarily the cheap option though: you need to organise your own decorations, equipment hireage, catering. Everything adds up quickly: $50 for forks, $200 for linen napkins, and so forth.

Catering

First, a preamble: Sarah describes herself as vegan. I usually describe myself as “semi-vegan” which raises howls of protest from the carnivores. They question what that means, thinking that it means I’m vegan except for when I’m not vegan. That is literally true. But what people don’t understand is how incredibly difficult it is to be vegan in social situations. I can easily eat vegan at home, but if I am out at a bar or restaurant, there is often absolutely no food available at all, or it is not clear. As of Christchurch 2011, a choice to be strictly vegan would mean that I could eat safely at one Christchurch restaurant and nowhere else. I will also sometimes eat the non-vegan birthday cakes staff bring in to work. To me, that’s more important. That’s what semi-vegan means to me.

So anyway, with all that in play, we felt we wanted full control over the catering. We have opted for a combination of vegan and vegetarian dishes, and we will prepare everything in advance as best we can. We are very fortunate to have a friend of Sarah’s family taking charge on the day to cook, prepare, serve (he will hire staff for us). We were very impressed that he was willing to work with what we provide and to trust that we will do it right. Then he let us know that he catered his wedding over new year and he made the event last four days!

We have yet to finalise the menu, but we do have all the drinks sorted. I have conducted research into the credentials of wines and beers, and this is what I have found. Wines today are typically fined with milk and sometimes egg. Very few bottles are unlabeled. There are a few vegan wines, of which Wither Hills seems to be a well-known brand. Vegan beers and ciders are very common — in fact most brands are vegan. They tend to be either vegan or non-vegetarian as they are fined with isinglass. There is clearly a trend away from isinglass. Monteith’s is one of the few major brands that are not vegan (although apparently is is usually vegan). Many craft brands are also not vegan, although several are (for example, Moa, Stoke, and Tuatara). There is good information at barnivore.com.

Clothes

Sarah found her dress almost immediately, using Etsy to locate a dressmaker who is in fact in Christchurch. This has been easy, fun, and affordable. I looked at a lot of online options for suits. Locally, only the most boring styles are available and I wanted something a bit different. A host of sites online will offer to make suits for you, but I read many reviews of these services suggesting that the quality was low. Ultimately, I selected a linen suit, which was quite affordable.

First Dance

We have worked with Marcela, an Argentinian woman who is as friendly as she is small, to learn a choreographed first dance to a song we selected. This has been fun, although we have needed a lot of time to practice. Private classes are a much different experience from group classes: if you find something easy then you move on, if you find something difficult then you can stop and work on it rather than being left behind for the remainder of the class. The result was that we learned a four-minute routine in just three classes.

Time

We are arranging every detail of this event ourselves and we are working with large numbers (around 110). In this context, we have found that the eight month timeframe has been a challenge. The organisation, on top of selling a house, working full time, and earthquake issues (dealing with contractors, insurance, breakages, picking bookcases up off the floor), has well-and-truly taken all our time. Wedding or union planning is complicated and stressful, and can include some delicate balancing and management of family. Anything and everything I might have wanted to do with my time has simply not happened. Sometimes I wonder who I am and why I am here. In retrospect, we needed a year.

That’s all I have for now, but I’ll probably add more notes as I think of them.

Inky, the landlords’ cat, caught the bird. I could hear it outside one morning over breakfast and I went out to look for the bird and I met Inky at the door, mouth full of feathers and legs and beak. I wrested it from her surprised jaws before she realised what had happened. Leg broken. I took it to a woman from Bird Rescue that I found on the Internet, and she didn’t think it would survive. She bandaged its leg and sent me away.

I learned to feed it. We spent time together in the garden looking for worms, quite hard to find, apparently. Last week, Sarah, bird and I all drove to West Eyreton to measure up the wedding venue. It grew a tail. It learned to fly. It learned to balance on my hand, or on my keyboard. It found its voice and would happily sit on the kitchen counter chirping, no two notes ever quite the same. We would talk to it, and it would talk back in its own chirpy way. It tried lettuce, and tofu, and millet, but it really only liked cat biscuits and worms. We bathed it a couple of times, and it would splash around unhappily, revealing its true, dinosaur form. We would cover it with a blanket to keep it warm. It roosted on high shelves. We would play it birdsong off the internet. We would play it “The lion sleeps tonight” on a tiny music box and it would stop and listen.

We removed its bandage and the leg was clearly destroyed: the lower leg was withered and dead, while the upper leg was pink and swollen. Today I took it to the Animal and Bird Hospital. I took a book so I could wait. They whisked the bird away and sent me away, and I asked and asked and finally they gave me a card so I could call later. Bad feeling. I called as soon as I got home, to check they wouldn’t put it down. Too late.

We had marvelled that something so small could do so much. Its eyes knew me.

Di Lucas is talking about the natural world that lies under the city, invisible yet insistent. Manchester Street dropped almost a metre over the course of an original stream. Under the ruined conference centre lies an underground forest of totara tree stumps.

It is all too easy to lay down some concrete and nullify what lies beneath, entomb and condemn it like North American 17-year cicadas. It is all too easy to drain swamps and build subdivisions. It is all too easy to think in terms of surfaces. But the land returns to its natural state, in a matter of time.

My father grew up in post war New Zealand. A land where you work hard, you conform, you get rewarded. You improve the land and you deny the state of things. That was his reality and he lived it all his life. He never realised I didn’t live in that world. And now here we are, questioning the whole idea of progress. And I wonder what he would make of the new city, the city of empty spaces. And I wonder if he would think this was progress, and I wonder if it would cause him to question everything he believed. And I know I am glad he didn’t have to see his city destroyed, because I know that it wouldn’t change the way he saw the world: it would simply sadden him.

No one could have believed that in the early hours of 4 September 2010 it was all just beginning. In twelve months we have endured three major earthquakes and 8000 significant aftershocks. We have lost power, sewage, and the city centre. Many of us have lost jobs, many of us lost friends. Entire suburbs have been condemned. Many of the landscapes of our memories are gone: the beautiful stone buildings, the ugly brutalist buildings with the boutique shops, the churches. Even natural landscapes have been destroyed: 6000 year-old sea cliffs have collapsed around Sumner. Shag Rock and Castle Rock have crumbled.

Feeling despondent, I was listening to Bruce Springsteen singing “My city of ruins” earlier.

“The church doors thrown open. I can hear the organ song, but the congregation’s gone. My city of ruins….”

Only, we have lost our churches too. Living here is a struggle. We hear the trite remarks of journalists: Christchurch people are tough, stoic, resilient. We are just people, grieving, heart broken. We are tough because we have to be. Or we leave. We are positive because we have to be, but we are also negative. We love the city, and we hate it. Cheryl Bernstein talked about this: “The question of people’s toughness in the face of these repeated blows to their financial and social security is glib, irrelevant and insulting.”

Many people have left the city, taken their families, taken themselves, found somewhere better to live. Most of us remain though and the question needs to be asked: why? Particularly for those of us in the east, where conditions are still difficult, and where the aftershocks hit harder. Some of us don’t have the money, freedom, or options to move. Some of us do. I could move and start again elsewhere. But I don’t want to. This is my home. This is a city I love, and I would not walk away from a crisis. But not only that. This difficult, tedious, frustrating place is also the most interesting place in the country. I want to see it rebuilt. I want to see a new, smart, post-petroleum city. We are starting over. We can choose to lead the way, if we have the vision, or not. “Tell me how do I begin again?”

I am starting something new. I met a girl, and she is beautiful and smart and full of love, and we will be married in the summer. The party we will throw is our response to the times we are living in. We are making it bright and bold, we are making it fun, we are making it big (with 130 guests), and we are making it cheap. Because these are hard times. I can no longer afford to buy books or music or even orange juice. We will sell a car and a kayak, and we will make do.

“Your smile girl brings the morning light to my eyes, lifts away the blues when I rise. I hope that you’re coming to stay.”

Last weekend, Sarah and I crossed into the central city and wandered along one of the dark but accessible streets. We were impressed by the new series of Yann Athus-Bertrand posters outside the museum. It is nice to look out upon the rest of the world. And we explored the geodesic dome tents and fairy lights of the temporary cultural centre in the park there. And it got me thinking, we need the arts now more than ever. We need more than demolition crews. We need more than planning and rebuilding. We have so much to talk about, and so much to say.

If you would like to see what has happened to the city so far, then try these videos from inside the red zone. To me the empty voids are shocking, but so is the desolation. I do not know the city like this, muddy, vacant, and silent. Lifeless save for the demolition workers and the winter trees. And the demolitions are far from over. The difficult, large buildings are yet to come down. Something else that strikes me is the art. Most of our statues came down and snapped at the neck, but the city’s scattering of large sculptural work remains. I think of “Reasons for voyaging” surely stopped in its gentle mobility, and I am amused.

• http://www.youtube.com/user/goatracing610#p/u/4/XNcauMwKnaY
• http://www.youtube.com/user/goatracing610#p/u/3/AFXI1uEBzsQ
• http://www.youtube.com/user/goatracing610#p/u/2/jKUFjhpgILU

Alternatively, leave all that behind and watch the Mean Kitty Song. “Cos I got my safety gear on and I’m not scared.”

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qit3ALTelOo

So much has changed, and we can never go back.

While you were sleeping
You tossed, you turned
You rolled your eyes as the world burned
The heavens fell, the earth quaked
I thought you must be, but you weren’t awake
– Elvis Perkins

My father died unexpectedly two years ago from a brain aneurism. I sat with his body, still warm and pumping blood, for a day and a night, drinking bitter dank instant coffee and nothing logical to do. Resenting my body wanting breakfast in the circumstances. We are trapped in these primitive structures. I watched the doctors conduct brain stem death tests: like two jesters playing ridiculous pranks: light in the eyes, ice water squirted into the ear, a hard pinch.

My partner and I bought a house, we moved, we argued. I painted walls and fixed things. I orbited the cold star of my father’s absence. We broke up. The cat moved out. We sold the house. The sale fell over. The house lay empty. I lost any money I had and a great deal that I did not have. We split possessions.

My mother came to stay the night and the ground shook. We stood each in our own doorways. Waiting for the house to collapse. It’s ok go back to bed. I listened to cars evacuate at 5 in the morning and I tried to sleep. And again in February: I lost power and water for two weeks. Smashed city. Billions of dollars in underground infrastructure — who even knew it was there. I walked through my house: one room thick with books, another scattered with shells and crystals and rocks smashed to the floor, a lifetime’s collection. A filing cabinet, a printer tossed across the room. The places of my childhood destroyed. Driving to work on crumbling roads, then home to darkness and candles and gas cookers. Thousands of aftershocks teach you to estimate magnitude and to identify the location based on Facebook and Twitter. We are all experts, we can hear them coming.

I met Sarah, and she met me. One right thing. I asked her to move in. We talked about life, babies, and the nature of marriage. On black sand under stars we drank rum and I said why don’t you marry me. She makes everything ok.

My sister had a child. He was small, he was early, he needed heart surgery. I have barely met him yet. They are staying in Auckland, and everything is definitely not ok.

A strange habitat. I wish my father was here. And then I wonder what he would make of it. And I wonder if it would all simply be too much.

He is nine weeks old now. He has been growing up, but I haven’t seen it happen. My sister sent me a picture from Auckland, and he looks like a real boy.  He had a second heart operation yesterday after the first one didn’t go so well. There are no guarantees, just hopes.

It has been an odd experience though. It is almost impossible to talk about. People either think that smokers are outrageous and should be made to stop, that I am just being selfish and malicious, or that it is in fact simply all in my head. But all I want is to not feel permanently sick. It is Saturday night and my mouth still tastes of metal from yesterday’s smoke.

In general, it has been an odd week for negative feedback.

Newmarket station, waiting for the first train, folded together against the cold, pastry dough in a baker’s hands. A man in a bathrobe stepped onto his balcony for his first cigarette. Blackness gave way to light. We wondered what came next. Secretly knowing, not knowing.

I asked you to come with me and you said ok and I watched you put sunscreen on and I wondered if you would just keep saying ok ok ok to my proposals. We took the ferry and we lay on the grass and watched the harbour and counted chimneys that would not survive a decent shake. And we talked.

Quotidian days, shifting furniture, stacking wood, shelving books, hanging pictures, setting up rental property, gardening, moving money between accounts to simulate wealth when I’m actually broke. And wonder, and wondering, what was that, how can that be possible.

Shifting states, and I learned to say your name in answer to questions. Everything contingent, Everything pivoted on your name. It depends if –, we may have to –, we need to figure out –. The compromises, the logistics, the sustainability.

Playing with your family’s dogs, your nephew, your niece’s tour of the house bathrooms and bedrooms, insider tips, this is where we go when we get scared, talking about skiing, remembering to smile, not spilling wine. taking the right amount of food, passing tests. They don’t hate me, even a little.

We walked by the estuary on broken trails with lateral cracking, I helped you where the boardwalk had completely given way, what if it collapses you said, trust me, I said. We walked in Sumner. Collapsed cliff faces, boulders, buildings become just stacked bricks, mortar failed in shocking cross hatching, Shag Rock, collapsed, Cave Rock, broken, Castle Rock, scarred. How often could this happen I wondered. These rocks are millions of years old. Not often. We visited your old house, the tree you used to play in, the schoolgrounds, memories of violence.

And we talked, threading difficult topics onto conversations like hooks on a line, and we got through each one, and we were stronger with each one. And we didn’t know we could do it, but we could do it, and we could do it with ease. And we negotiated our terms of engagement. And we circled around paragraphs and sentences and words and we condensed. And the condensate was three words, and the meaning was boundless.