Helen Lehndorf

Category: literature

  • off, off it goes

    I’m launching my book in less than two weeks.

    I would love to see you there, if you are in Palmerston North or Wellington!

    Here are the details:

    Palmerston North launch: Friday, 2nd December, 6.30, Palmerston North City Library. Books available on the night for $25. There will be refreshments and general book related frivolity. All welcome!

    Wellington launch: Saturday, 3rd December, 3pm. The Wellington launch is at a private residence, so I don’t want to put the address on the internets, however, if you would like to come to the Wellington launch, email me: helenlehndorfATgmail.com – and I will let you know.

    ***

    I got my copies of the book in the mail on Saturday. It was a surreal and lovely moment. I immediately sat down on my bed and read the whole thing cover to cover – even though I know all the poems inside out.

    It looks like a real, proper book! and I feel very proud of it. It IS a real, proper book.

    I’m very much looking forward to, with the help of friends, giving it a good send off into the world at the launches. I’ve organised lively speakers and a blessing of the book. At the Wellington launch there will be some live music!

    It’s really happening. This thing I’ve hoped for since I was a teenager. Someone pinch me!

  • teaching your mother to suck oranges

    I was sitting across from Magnus watching him eat his dessert which was, that night, two cut-up oranges.

    Magnus was really eating those oranges. He was so present in his enjoyment – he was sucking every drop of juice and had the fixed stare of someone experiencing great sensory pleasure.

    I love that about children. They are great teachers in being fully present in the moment.

    Watching Magnus eat an orange made me want to eat an orange, so I did. It was delicious. We sucked oranges companionably for a good ten minutes.

    Messy fruit offers a particular pleasure, I think. Sensual and fun, all at once. It also demands presence of mind. You can’t suck oranges and read. You can’t chew out a mango and talk on the phone.

    Messy fruit as zen practice? Why not.

    At least we are free to suck oranges in public…unlike in this quotation about oranges in Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell:

    “When oranges came in, a curious proceeding was gone through. Miss Jenkyns did not like to cut the fruit, for, as she observed, the juice all ran out nobody knew where, sucking [only I think she used some more recondite word] was in fact the only way of enjoying oranges; but then there was the unpleasant association with a ceremony frequently gone through by little babies; and so, after dessert, in orange season, Miss Jenkyns and Miss Matty used to rise up, possess themselves each of an orange in silence, and withdraw to the privacy of their own rooms to indulge in sucking oranges.”