seahearth

Sam has a new motorscooter, gift from his parents. He lets me ride it; and last night he was going out to club and drink and be merry in non-scooting-conducive ways, so.
The thing with the scooter is, I can just go places, and not have to organise, and not take a long time getting to them. I'd done spontaneous beach trips a couple of times the last couple days; I decided I'd be a proper city person and go to the movies and go to the midnight fireworks display.
So, I ended up at The Favourite, at the Brooklyn Penthouse Cinema at 8.30 in the evening.
And gosh.
It starts brilliantly; all style, all wit. A high court, high court politics, a smart and charming young woman trying to come up from poverty, a whimsical queen and her down-to-earth friend-advisor.
And it stays stylish, and witty. The queen and the friend-advisor are lovers. The young lady is getting herself up in court. There's a war being fought...
There are seventeen rabbits in a cage which stand for the whimsical queen's seventeen lost children....
And around that point I stop noticing style and wit. The story moves on through and around two people who I love and one I am trying and trying not to hate. And hurt comes up and spits hurt, and hurt. And the rabbits sit in their cages, or, let out, play on the floor.
At the last shot of the film my hands are covering my mouth. I don't know it's the last shot. It holds, and holds, and the longer it holds the more I want to cry and the more I feel like it could, perhaps, be hinting at some kind of mercy. And then it changes slightly and the rabbits are there. They move about. There are more. And more. The rabbits are scuttling among each other. They are scuttling over each other. There are tens of rabbits. There are surely hundreds of rabbits. There is a wolf, but the wolf is a pattern of scuttling rabbits, and it's gone, and surely it was never there. There is terrible, terrible noise of paws.
And then there is a pattern of light and dark wisping in the air, and then there is nothing. And my hands are clenched over my mouth, and a song plays, and people leave, and the song dies down, and more people leave, and the credits roll and roll in their weird hard to make out style, and at the end, right at the end under the people talking at the back who haven't left yet, there is the sound of birds. And insects. And wind through leaves. I walk out still wanting to cry and also probably smiling madly. And call Sam, while sitting on the comfy Penthouse sofa. I'm wearing my nice fancy polka dot dress

leaflemming got me on my birthday, and a woman smiles at me.
Then I ride to the very end of the Wellington coast road, which I have thought of as slightly sacred ever since me and

landingtree discovered it at the end of 2014, and which has seals living at the far end of it. And there are stars.
And I see fireworks as I ride back along the coast, and think that it's the new year, and I've missed the display. There are crowds at Oriental Bay. There are crowds in the city. But when I draw up to Frank Kitts park the countdown to 2019 is at twenty, and the fireworks start going up as I'm locking my scooter, and keep on going as I cross the road into the many many many people.
And when they finish I ride to Tass and Simon's where I am kind of housesitting, and have a gin and tonic, and go to bed.
And now it is 2019.
Happy new year.