more bits; one day I will finish something
When natural disasters happen, the numbers and pictures of widespread devastation and everything get so overwhelming they cease to have much meaning. It's the personal stories from the human interest side that bring back the impact this has on people, for me.
Sometimes I find that trying to put myself in survivors' shoes in writing helps me process it more. I dunno. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not trying to co-opt the Christchurch earthquake for my writing/entertainment or anything; I'm trying to understand the people who went through it.
Originally written in early March, this was one of those pieces of writing that you never consciously intend to write but you get bunnied so hard for that it won't leave you alone until you write it down. The joys of plonking a character in a city that would later get hit by two major earthquakes. Naturally, it petered out and I don't even know where it's going so that I could finish it. But, here it is.
Day two. It’s only day two.
In the three weeks that Brendan’s been back in Christchurch, the aftershocks from September have been few and pathetic, the kind that his new flatmates, who were here for the big one, can grimly work through, and that he, a Wellingtonian who was safely overseas, puts on the bravado for and yawns at. As such, Brendan is pretty sure he can tell the international students in the class by who throws themselves under the tables.
The next wave sends Brendan’s laptop crashing to the floor, and for a moment all Brendan can think of is how faithful this laptop has been, how it has survived being dragged around America and the sprinkler system switching on when Jamie started a cooking fire-
The next wave sees Brendan joining the international students on the floor and trying to fit as much of his gangly frame under the table as he can.
His laptop survived the fall. His Facebook refreshes with a new load of status updates: The Christchurchers’ are along the lines of “Earthquake!!” and “Bloody big one!!!!!”
Brendan had been at work in America during the September quake, and not many people had been awake and online for that one. How like New Zealanders to social network during a natural disaster.
He’d join them, if he wasn’t trying desperately to hang on to that stupid lecture theater desk which he’s sure is going to cave in onto his head. Beside him the girl who had been doodling through the lecture starts praying in hysterical French; Brendan recognizes her accent as Canadian.
“It’s okay,” Brendan tells her in French, letting go of the table with one hand to grab hers. “It’ll be over soon.”
It’s not that he believes it himself; he just hopes that saying it aloud will make him believe it. It worked with lost kids at Star Tours. Let it work now.
The lecture theater seems to shake forever. Someone screams on the other side of the theater. When it’s all over, the Quebecoise girl bursts into tears beneath the desk.
Brendan peeks out to survey the damage and instantly decides he’s never making fun of earthquakes again. Panels of the ceiling have come down; someone is crawling out from underneath one that landed on top of the table she was sitting at. He can hear a fire alarm going off somewhere in the building.
Brendan forgets about aftershocks, fumbles his phone out of his pocket, and speed dials. It doesn’t occur to him that the phones might be out, but eventually he gets through to voicemail.
“Dad? It’s Brendan.”
He’s surprised by how calm his own voice sounds.
“Big earthquake just now. I’m okay.”
God, he hasn’t even seen the rest of the city yet, his flat…
“I love you, Dad,” he settles for, before hanging up.
And then the first aftershock hits. The Quebecoise girl cried all the way through Brendan’s phone call and now cries harder. Brendan puts an arm around her. When it’s over, he tries and fails to work out EST before telling her to call her family and let them know she’s okay.
His next speed dial is Dairine. It seems like forever before she picks up, but at least she picks up.
“Brendan?”
They have each other’s time tables. She’s in French 315; her accent gives it away now that Brendan’s forgotten.
“I’m in class-” and again, with apologies, in English, because Dairine is far more fluent than him.
“Another big earthquake,” Brendan says, and Dairine shuts up abruptly. “I’m okay. Just wanted to let you know.”
Brendan is out of practice thinking in two languages at once and the quake shook his ability to switch quickly; it only hits him now that the Quebecoise girl is telling him she doesn’t have credit for an international call.
“I love you,” Dairine says, because his girlfriend has always been terrible with timing. Brendan does not notice how she’s suddenly breathless.
“I love you too,” Brendan replies. He tries to keep his tone light: “Talk to you later, eh? Go back to French class.”
“Okay,” says Dairine shakily, and she hangs up.
Brendan leaves his brother a voicemail before handing his phone to the crying girl. He keeps that physical contact with her in the hopes that it will help. It does seem to; she manages to keep it relatively together on the phone, before passing it back with her thanks.
Class is dismissed before it had even started; Brendan and the other people in the theater had been early. Their lecturer tries to give safety warnings and tells them to go to the field, but Brendan doesn’t think anyone’s listening. He packs up, but checks on the Quebecoise girl before he goes.
“Will you be okay?”
“Yes, I think so.”
She pauses.
“I’m Ariane.”
He hadn’t known her name until then.
“Brendan,” he says in return. “Here-”
They swap contact details. Brendan promises to help out if she needs anything, be it advice from an almost local or translation, because Ariane is possibly the least confident in her English that Brendan has ever seen from anyone on study abroad.
It’s the second day of the semester, his second day back in school for over a year, and he made a new friend.
The mechanical numbness with which he managed that Disney-bred guest service for Ariane shatters when he steps outside. Uni didn’t come down entirely, but he can see a house opposite campus missing its chimney. Students all around him keep bursting into tears and hugging; Brendan somewhat regrets separating from Ariane.
He’d taken the bus to uni today; it takes him several minutes before he realizes the buses aren’t going.
He’d walked home yesterday as an experiment (he’d lived in a hall in first year), but today seems longer, not even counting the times he has to stop for an aftershock.
The flat is still standing.
Brendan thanks every deity he can think of off the top of his head as well as Mickey Mouse that he didn’t decide to live in that lovely brick flat where he would have had a bigger room.
“I want you out of there,” his dad says. “I’m booking you a flight home.”
“I can’t afford-” Brendan starts dumbly.
“I’m paying,” Kit snaps.
“Can’t I take the ferry-”
“I don’t care how airsick you get as long as you’re out of Christchurch as soon as possible.”
Brendan looks at the map of Asia-Pacific on the wall, the map he’s had ever since Chris rang home to announce he was in the Navy, the map that came with him to his first year in a hall and to Florida, the map he’s broken bones over. He has no idea where Chris is right now, or if he’s even alive.
Even Chris’s last call from Hong Kong two weeks ago (“Welcome home!” “Chris, you can’t welcome me home when you’re not even in the country”) is an improvement over his mother’s cutting off all contact.
“What time’s my flight,” Brendan asks quietly.
Dairine’s with his dad waiting for him at the airport and gets to him first, throwing her arms around him and clinging.
His Wellington friends, Dairine included, are in uni or working; his dad falls under the latter. Without either to fall back on and his drum kit in pieces at the flat, Brendan doesn’t have much to do.
He walks around town and looks at new drum kits in Music Works.
He gatecrashes his friends’ lectures at Vic and doesn’t hear a word of them.
He makes a lot of money in Farmville.
He writes a truly terrible song using Space Mountain as a metaphor for a relationship.
Eventually he takes off to the yacht just to get to a space that he associates more with alone time than with people, but his sea legs are gone. His aftershock-honed instincts tell him to get under something but there is nothing to get under. Brendan has to take her back in.
It’s a beautiful day and it’s the first time the boat has ever failed him.
Suddenly he’s grateful that his father insisted he fly back to Wellington rather than let him take his usual ferry and public transport trip.
Suddenly he realizes why his flight back to Wellington was about the third flight in his life that he hadn’t thrown up on: The plane had been the steadiest ground he’d been on since the earthquake; even the typically turbulent landing in Wellington seemed rather minor.
Sometimes I find that trying to put myself in survivors' shoes in writing helps me process it more. I dunno. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not trying to co-opt the Christchurch earthquake for my writing/entertainment or anything; I'm trying to understand the people who went through it.
Originally written in early March, this was one of those pieces of writing that you never consciously intend to write but you get bunnied so hard for that it won't leave you alone until you write it down. The joys of plonking a character in a city that would later get hit by two major earthquakes. Naturally, it petered out and I don't even know where it's going so that I could finish it. But, here it is.
Day two. It’s only day two.
In the three weeks that Brendan’s been back in Christchurch, the aftershocks from September have been few and pathetic, the kind that his new flatmates, who were here for the big one, can grimly work through, and that he, a Wellingtonian who was safely overseas, puts on the bravado for and yawns at. As such, Brendan is pretty sure he can tell the international students in the class by who throws themselves under the tables.
The next wave sends Brendan’s laptop crashing to the floor, and for a moment all Brendan can think of is how faithful this laptop has been, how it has survived being dragged around America and the sprinkler system switching on when Jamie started a cooking fire-
The next wave sees Brendan joining the international students on the floor and trying to fit as much of his gangly frame under the table as he can.
His laptop survived the fall. His Facebook refreshes with a new load of status updates: The Christchurchers’ are along the lines of “Earthquake!!” and “Bloody big one!!!!!”
Brendan had been at work in America during the September quake, and not many people had been awake and online for that one. How like New Zealanders to social network during a natural disaster.
He’d join them, if he wasn’t trying desperately to hang on to that stupid lecture theater desk which he’s sure is going to cave in onto his head. Beside him the girl who had been doodling through the lecture starts praying in hysterical French; Brendan recognizes her accent as Canadian.
“It’s okay,” Brendan tells her in French, letting go of the table with one hand to grab hers. “It’ll be over soon.”
It’s not that he believes it himself; he just hopes that saying it aloud will make him believe it. It worked with lost kids at Star Tours. Let it work now.
The lecture theater seems to shake forever. Someone screams on the other side of the theater. When it’s all over, the Quebecoise girl bursts into tears beneath the desk.
Brendan peeks out to survey the damage and instantly decides he’s never making fun of earthquakes again. Panels of the ceiling have come down; someone is crawling out from underneath one that landed on top of the table she was sitting at. He can hear a fire alarm going off somewhere in the building.
Brendan forgets about aftershocks, fumbles his phone out of his pocket, and speed dials. It doesn’t occur to him that the phones might be out, but eventually he gets through to voicemail.
“Dad? It’s Brendan.”
He’s surprised by how calm his own voice sounds.
“Big earthquake just now. I’m okay.”
God, he hasn’t even seen the rest of the city yet, his flat…
“I love you, Dad,” he settles for, before hanging up.
And then the first aftershock hits. The Quebecoise girl cried all the way through Brendan’s phone call and now cries harder. Brendan puts an arm around her. When it’s over, he tries and fails to work out EST before telling her to call her family and let them know she’s okay.
His next speed dial is Dairine. It seems like forever before she picks up, but at least she picks up.
“Brendan?”
They have each other’s time tables. She’s in French 315; her accent gives it away now that Brendan’s forgotten.
“I’m in class-” and again, with apologies, in English, because Dairine is far more fluent than him.
“Another big earthquake,” Brendan says, and Dairine shuts up abruptly. “I’m okay. Just wanted to let you know.”
Brendan is out of practice thinking in two languages at once and the quake shook his ability to switch quickly; it only hits him now that the Quebecoise girl is telling him she doesn’t have credit for an international call.
“I love you,” Dairine says, because his girlfriend has always been terrible with timing. Brendan does not notice how she’s suddenly breathless.
“I love you too,” Brendan replies. He tries to keep his tone light: “Talk to you later, eh? Go back to French class.”
“Okay,” says Dairine shakily, and she hangs up.
Brendan leaves his brother a voicemail before handing his phone to the crying girl. He keeps that physical contact with her in the hopes that it will help. It does seem to; she manages to keep it relatively together on the phone, before passing it back with her thanks.
Class is dismissed before it had even started; Brendan and the other people in the theater had been early. Their lecturer tries to give safety warnings and tells them to go to the field, but Brendan doesn’t think anyone’s listening. He packs up, but checks on the Quebecoise girl before he goes.
“Will you be okay?”
“Yes, I think so.”
She pauses.
“I’m Ariane.”
He hadn’t known her name until then.
“Brendan,” he says in return. “Here-”
They swap contact details. Brendan promises to help out if she needs anything, be it advice from an almost local or translation, because Ariane is possibly the least confident in her English that Brendan has ever seen from anyone on study abroad.
It’s the second day of the semester, his second day back in school for over a year, and he made a new friend.
The mechanical numbness with which he managed that Disney-bred guest service for Ariane shatters when he steps outside. Uni didn’t come down entirely, but he can see a house opposite campus missing its chimney. Students all around him keep bursting into tears and hugging; Brendan somewhat regrets separating from Ariane.
He’d taken the bus to uni today; it takes him several minutes before he realizes the buses aren’t going.
He’d walked home yesterday as an experiment (he’d lived in a hall in first year), but today seems longer, not even counting the times he has to stop for an aftershock.
The flat is still standing.
Brendan thanks every deity he can think of off the top of his head as well as Mickey Mouse that he didn’t decide to live in that lovely brick flat where he would have had a bigger room.
“I want you out of there,” his dad says. “I’m booking you a flight home.”
“I can’t afford-” Brendan starts dumbly.
“I’m paying,” Kit snaps.
“Can’t I take the ferry-”
“I don’t care how airsick you get as long as you’re out of Christchurch as soon as possible.”
Brendan looks at the map of Asia-Pacific on the wall, the map he’s had ever since Chris rang home to announce he was in the Navy, the map that came with him to his first year in a hall and to Florida, the map he’s broken bones over. He has no idea where Chris is right now, or if he’s even alive.
Even Chris’s last call from Hong Kong two weeks ago (“Welcome home!” “Chris, you can’t welcome me home when you’re not even in the country”) is an improvement over his mother’s cutting off all contact.
“What time’s my flight,” Brendan asks quietly.
Dairine’s with his dad waiting for him at the airport and gets to him first, throwing her arms around him and clinging.
His Wellington friends, Dairine included, are in uni or working; his dad falls under the latter. Without either to fall back on and his drum kit in pieces at the flat, Brendan doesn’t have much to do.
He walks around town and looks at new drum kits in Music Works.
He gatecrashes his friends’ lectures at Vic and doesn’t hear a word of them.
He makes a lot of money in Farmville.
He writes a truly terrible song using Space Mountain as a metaphor for a relationship.
Eventually he takes off to the yacht just to get to a space that he associates more with alone time than with people, but his sea legs are gone. His aftershock-honed instincts tell him to get under something but there is nothing to get under. Brendan has to take her back in.
It’s a beautiful day and it’s the first time the boat has ever failed him.
Suddenly he’s grateful that his father insisted he fly back to Wellington rather than let him take his usual ferry and public transport trip.
Suddenly he realizes why his flight back to Wellington was about the third flight in his life that he hadn’t thrown up on: The plane had been the steadiest ground he’d been on since the earthquake; even the typically turbulent landing in Wellington seemed rather minor.