Apocrypha Scripta: A Surrealist Novel

By Michael O'Leary

During the writing of his autobiography, Die Bibel (published in 2016 by Steele/Roberts), Michael O'Leary began a parallel fictional autobiography which he conceived as an 'apocrypha' of additional aspects to his intellectual & emotional life, combining myriad intertwingings of previous works to form a synthesis, a kind of Rainbows End of the Mind, as its characters & events ride a rollercoaster of the psyche, a tipi haere helter-skelter on what might be called the Stratosfear or WindstarZ encompassing a spiritual weltanschauung of history & life. It reads not unlike the earliest Dadaist writings & therefore has the sub-title: a Surrealist Novel. Perhaps it's about dislocation in society: perhaps it isn't. Maybe it's about a suburban man becoming unsettled in real life & entering the 'other' world of the imagination: maybe it isn't. Apocrypha Scripta is about identity & belonging. It looks at the Sixties generation of 'peace & love' & anti-materialism which morphed & degenerated into the 'I, me, mine' of the reforms (a much abused and maligned word) of the mid-eighties & nineties which created the 21st Century Schizoid Person, fuelled by technology & greed, love & dreams, war & peace, culminating in the 'stop the world, I wanna get off' motif, as the earth cries from Cloud 9: wiith 2020 Vision & Reality of Covid-19 & the 'Existential Crisis' of realising that we need to not want so much, as well as finally understanding that the word 'Existential' might really have a meaning. Amen.

 

"O'Leary's wonderful novel spans the global, local, and personal. Intensely beautiful and deeply dark material is consistently tempered with superior mad-cap word-play (in various languages, te reo Maori, German, Irish, Samoan etc), because O'Leary is a poet and a trickster. The writing is constantly deft and energetic, pulling the reader on and on through places, people, and extraordinary scenarios. O'Leary uses many vehicles literally and figuratively; among which are poetry, art, music, dreams, and trains. He keeps this ride careening along the tracks. Time is fluid; we can segue from the Scottish clearances to Covid seamlessly in one sentence. It is an enormously satisfying and mind-blowing novel and requires total commitment from the reader. A culmination of a life's work so far from a fine mind with a five-dimensional view of life." Unity Books, Wellington

Note: This is a parallel fictional biography to the autobiography Die Bibel (Steel Roberts 2016).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael O'Leary
• Release date: Jun 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223044154

Michael O'Leary

Michael O'Leary was on the founding team of Bain Capital’s social impact fund. Previously, he invested in consumer, industrial, and technology companies through Bain Capital’s private equity fund. He has served as an economic policy adviser in the United States Senate and on two presidential campaigns. Michael studied philosophy at Harvard College and earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives in New York.

Book preview

Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop

Paekakariki

2020

© Michael O'Leary 2020

––––––––

From Parihaka Rapes

To Starvation & Chains

From Flanders Fields

To Pumped Up Veins

From Auschwitz Fires

To Covid-19 Explains

That Each Generation Has Its Pains

––––––––

Special Thanks to: Bill Dacker

Front Cover photo: Serah Fesolai

Concept & Design: Michael O'Leary

Back cover - Self Portrait with Aitu: from the Martin Brown collection

Technical Editing, Design & Printing

Precise Print

7 Manchester Street

Paraparaumu

[e-mail]

––––––––

First Published by: Earl of Seacliff Art Workshop

P O Box 42, Paekakariki, 5034, Aotearoa New Zealand

Email:  [e-mail]

Web Site:  http://michaeloleary.wordpress.com

APOCRYPHA SCRIPTA

DREAMS OF LOVE & WAR: Ngā Moemoeā o Aroha a Riri taua whenua

And you will hear of wars and rumours of wars –

Jesus (Mathew 24:6)

Love is all and love is everyone ...

Listen to the colour of your dreams –

The Beatles (Tomorrow Never Knows)

He wahine he whenua, ngaro ai te tangata

(Māori proverbial saying)

All war is deception –

Sun Tzu (the Art of War)

Wood becomes a flute when it’s loved –

Yoko Ono (Born in a Prison)

And I will war, at least

in words (and – should

My chance so happen – deeds) with all who war

With Thought ...

Lord Byron (Don Juan, Canto the Ninth xxiv)

Doctor Richard Asher, father of Paul McCartney’s girlfriend in the 1960s, the actress Jane Asher, was the first to describe a pattern of self-harm, wherein individuals fabricated histories, signs, and symptoms of illness. Remembering Baron Munchausen, Asher named this condition Munchausen's Syndrome in an article in February 1951: ‘Here is described a common syndrome which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written. Like the famous Baron von Munchausen, the persons affected have always travelled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to him, are both dramatic and untruthful. Accordingly the syndrome is respectfully dedicated to the Baron, and named after him’.

R.A.J. Asher, M.D., F.R.C.P. (British Medical Journal)

All the world is up-sa-daisy

And the genius's is crazy

Peter Sellers

PROLOGUE (dreams of experience)

This is the story of dreams of love and wars: of many dreams of many loves and many wars. Mika had a dream that Hinengaro was the wife of both himself and Te Ariki in pre-Pakeha New Zealand, which was an interesting aspect of their ménage à trois, perhaps it even explained the situation they were in. He told them both of the dream when they were having breakfast that morning. Te Ariki was intrigued as it fitted in well with his Jungian concepts. Hinengaro’s response was to ask of her part in the dream: ‘What was I wearing?’ - which brought some levity to the situation, as Fred might have said by way of interpretation.

Ranginui and Papatuanuku are the Parents of Tāne, the progenitor of humankind. God is a concept by which we measure our pain, I’ll say it again, Ranginui and Papatuanuku who are the Parents of Tāne, the progenitor of humankind. Some versions say that humankind descends from Tūmatauenga, another child of earth and sky, to wit, his father was of the sky, his mother was of the earth, but he is of the universe and you know what its worth.

Tāne is a celebrated figure in iwi traditions and stories, and among his many feats Tāne fashioned a woman from the soil at Kurawaka. Her name was Hine-ahu-one. Hine-ahu-one and Tāne had a daughter named Hine-tī-tama who became also known as Hinenui-i-te-pō. This Hine became the custodian of the threshold between night and day, between darkness and light. Hence, Hine is seen both in the morning with the birth of sunlight, and in the evening with the setting sun. These are the ancestors of human kind.

Patrick Mika’s dream

The only time that Mika did sleep that night he dreamed of her. The dream was so vivid and real and alive that he felt it was more real than things were when he was awake. Together they walked, Hinengaro and Patrick Mika, through the twilight centre of Dunedin city. Everything seemed exact and yet dislocated. The old Stock Exchange building was still standing and the pre-neon illuminated clock flashed an iridescent flicker of colour on to the tramlines. It had been raining and the streets looked washed and clean as only summer rain can do.

The time flashed again – koata Pahi i te ono karaka – followed by the date – te tekau mā ono o ngā rā o Hune; ko te tau kotahi mano iwa rau mā whā. It was their first walk together, and they clung to each other like barnacles. As the 6.15 tram to Caversham went clanking past they saw a notice stating the mayor had asked that the Order in Council for the Andersons Bay tramway might be hurried on. They walked further away from their time out to be together place, still locked arm in arm. She was explaining to him how some young women suffered a kind of dying by inches. ‘That is the only way to describe hundreds of bloodless girls who are slipping slowly but surely from simple anaemia into a decline,’ she was saying.

They walked past the bank towards the Octagon. Looking in the window of J & J Arthurs where they saw some all-wool Colonial Tweed Suitings for only £2/15s/0d. ‘That’s cheap’, Hinengaro said, and as they moved further along George Street they discussed the idea of going for a coach ride to Highcliff and Sandymount. ‘Let’s go next Tuesday – it’s only 1s/6d each way’, she said to Mika and everything went red like a lightning flash with colour. Hinengaro Hūmārika and Patrick Mika were both in love and they walked as if on air. Indeed, the local newspaper said as much as they swung back towards the Octagon, ‘truly much is in the air', to sit silent at the foot of the future Poet’s statue.

‘Doomsblay may be amidst the smoke of battle, but there is no battle in the smoke of Juno, and Wai Rongoa now holds ten special gold medals,’ said Mika as they walked quickly past Dallas and Watts. It was getting dark now and the last tram up the valley would soon be leaving. What with the death of a footballer and Bibles in schools Mika could feel the city re-enter his mind and he wished she had been with him. He carried her through the hard-nosed day of a labouring man and her beauty was so strong that he wept inwardly ... Mika woke up with the image of her in a long flowing early century dress and hat walking down the Boulevard de Dunedineaux, holding his arm as they went window shopping.

The absurdity of such a vision made him want to burst out in laughter. The shadows and light of the living room gave a certain surreal aspect when married with his dreams. He fell asleep again and his waka entered into the strange seas of another moemoeā o aroha. This time she came to him brown, bare breasted, laughing and radiant. They felt each other’s presence as earthbound, yet beyond the confines of obstacles – as manacles released from chains, the uncertain yet true manu o aroha hou was about to express its new freedom.

Hinengaro’s dream

Lying in the darkened bedroom as the first light of dawn began to rise slowly above the darkness, Hinengaro realised the enormity and the necessity of what had happened. Drifting between dreams and sleep, she found herself wandering alone along a desolate beach. The scene then changed to te tekau mā ono o ngā rā o Hune, ko te tau kotahi mano, iwa rau mā wha, and as the tram to Māori Hill clanked along George Street they looked at each other and burst out laughing. ‘We missed our tram again, eh Mika!’ she said. ‘Oh well, what do you expect from the only Māoris living in Maori Hill!’

‘Anyway, is the game worth the candle?’ Mika mused enigmatically as they walked further back arm in arm towards the Octagon, where they sat silent at the foot of the yet to be Poet’s statue. This was the first day they had walked out together and both were wearing their nicest winter DRESS MATERIALS, which they had purchased from THE DUNEDINERS, Dallas and Watts. Hinengaro laughed as she recalled to him how she had just made the late letters guard’s van of the port train at 2.30 that afternoon. ‘I told him in the epistle in no doubtful language of the result after taking Dr. Morse’s Indian Root Pills,’ she said almost in hysterics.

Having a discreet shot of Wolfe’s Schnapps (for kidney ailments, naturally) they walked, arms still linked, along the streets of Dunedin. Hine felt happy and light, and as they planned a trip by horse and coach together the following Tuesday to Sandymount, she almost forgot her husband and child and the family obligations which stood between them like trees against the horizon. They were happy.  But, suddenly the dream darkened, as though the Sow of Hades had descended, her dark shadow throwing everything into evil contrast and premonition of the winds of a terrible century ahead looming.  Mika stood solitary at a river mouth and she could see he was wearing a military uniform of some description. She went up to talk to him, touching him softly on the arm. She then saw he was holding a child who had been badly wounded by a bullet. The horizon had an unnatural, ethereal glow – like a sunset in reverse. Hine took the silent, bleeding child from Mika and he jumped aboard a tank which was headed towards the front. He saluted her in a half-reverential, half-mocking manner and as Mika and his comrades turned into a cloud of dust she was shocked to see he was wearing an Iron Cross with a swastika held in the talons of an eagle. She was overcome by the stillness.

Te Ariki’s Dream

My Grandfather, Rifleman Alfred Charles Varney, was in the Great War. He was one of those who marched away and did not return. He left his photo on a wall, a violet coloured card in a drawer. In the drawer, cards from him to her received and others, from her to him, returned to sender, because he died. In the drawer, two medals, one the size of a plate, inscribed with his fate: death in the Great War for civilisation that failed to end war and save civilisation but opened him, drained his blood into the Passchendaele mud. Among the cards, one, violet coloured, carried his request, ‘Violet, give your name to our child’.

It became a bequest: love for the wife he did not return to and for the child he never met. Though his death & love were all in vain, name, wife and child passed love from him to us through a century of war, vanity and heartache at the heart of it, repeating past crimes and binding us to war in ways never dreamt of. He was one of those who marched away and did not return, leaving his photo on a wall, in a drawer a violet coloured card that passed his love from him to us, giving love another chance to redeem civilisation in a war never dreamt of, reason enough for us now to remember his name as again we join the toil of sun and rain breaking the silence of the earth’s cold clay. 

Te Ariki’s dream then settled on his German ancestor, who spoke to him thus: ‘There was no more ammunition. We had fired off the lot and the first of the enemy attackers were within thirty metres. Vizefeldwebel Einig fired off the last of the flares and we had to leave our leopard skin pillbox hat. Racing from shell hole to shell hole, we broke free of the enemy, but they continued to press us hard. Suddenly we were saved. Our airmen had understood our signals from the bunker and threw out ammunition and food to us. In a few paces we had both collected it and were once again resupplied. Then we saw that the enemy had turned away. They were pulling back all down the line. Reaching a swift decision we headed back to the concrete pillbox. There we ate the iron rations that the airmen had thrown to us’.

Grandfather, Oskar Winkelmann, had brought in a sandbag which contained several water bottles full of rum and continued talking to Te Ariki: ‘We all took a good drink but, while we were still eating, we heard the crash of hand grenades once more. For a moment we were taken aback. Had the Tommies not had enough? Our machine gun opened up immediately. The enemy attackers had thrown their grenades too early, which alerted us in good time. Nevertheless, a section of ten men fought their way right up to our pillbox, despite the machine gun fire. We killed them all in hand-to-hand fighting and the remaining British soldiers withdrew once more through our destructive defensive artillery fire.

‘Our 11th Bavarian Infantry Division was directly responsible for the defence of Passchendaele. But many, many, faithful comrades, including the courageous Leutnant Schmitt: they all lay still on the captured field and much noble blood mingled with the water and mud of the captured position. Shells were still howling overhead in the direction of the Osthof, which the morning after our departure collapsed in ruins, burying all its occupants. Out on the railway embankment entire sections of men lay dead next to the shell holes. We were relieved at 2.00 am and were very happy about it. It had become an eerie experience, rather as though we could hear the beat of the wings of death, which had already reaped a dreadful harvest earlier that day.

‘Dog tired and exhausted, our little band, those who were still alive, stumbled along the road in the pale moonlight mile. Nobody spoke a single word. Deadly serious, the dark forms with the heavy helmets on their heads, headed back to their billets, sick to the heart with mourning for the fallen'. Both Te Ariki’s grandfathers, New Zealand and German, were reported missing in action, October, 1917 – it is possible they killed each other and lay in the same blood and mud. Not to mention Patrick Mika’s tipuna, son of Jas McLaughlin and Mary McLaughlan/Brooks/O'Connor. Born at Ahaura 1888. Rifleman Henry James McLaughlin of the New Zealand Rifle Brigade, 4th Battalion embarked 5 Feb 1916. Killed in action 27 May 1916 in the Somme, Northern France. Buried at Cite Bonjean Military Cemetary, Armentieres, France.

Talking Paekakariki Dreams

What does your family name mean and where does it come from: we do not live by man’s leg alone! When and how did people sharing your name immigrate to the world? What did they do and how did they live? Our Name in history is a great way to spend time with mum and learn about the history that brought your family together, travelling through the Esk Valley with the whining wheels of their oinochoai echoing from the dusk of the Otherworld, both sensual and materialistic ... In the 1820s Ngāti Toa established Wainui Pā at the mouth of Wainui Stream in Kāpiti.

A smaller Te Āti Awa Pā, Pari Pari, was a kilometre south of this site, and Whareroa Pā was by a stream to the north. Te Rauparaha, the Ngāti Toa chief, was badly beaten in battle at Paekakariki in 1823 by local Wellington tribes after crossing to the mainland from his Kāpiti Island retreat and was subsequently forced to flee to the north. Paekakariki, as the gateway from Wellington to the coastal lowlands, has always been a place where travellers paused for rest and refreshment. The coastal track from Pukerua Bay was the original travelling route for Māori, missionaries, traders and from 1840, settlers and mail carriers. The first cattle from the area for Whānganui were driven through in 1841.     

One of the first Europeans associated with Paekakariki was a whaler and trader named ‘Scotch Jack’ Nicol, who roamed about Cook Strait and the east coast. Well known to local Māori, he married a Māori woman of high birth, Kahe Te Rau-o-Te-Rangi (known as ‘Betty’). She was the sister of Te Rangihaeata and she was a signatory to Te Tiriti o Waitangi, one of the few women to sign the treaty. Betty achieved fame by swimming from Kāpiti Island to the mainland near Waikanae with her child strapped to her back to warn her tribe of an impending attack from another Iwi. One of the couple's daughters later became the mother of Sir Maui Pomare. Betty and Jock opened an accommodation house at Pari Pari. They moved their establishment to Paekakariki in 1847, before it existed by that name, where it gained a high reputation for its hospitality and cleanliness.    

Not far away from Paekakariki during this time, however, in the Horokiwi Valley which leads up to the Paekakariki Hill Road, there was fighting against the formidable chief, Te Rangihaeata, Kahe’s brother, and Government forces. Paua-taha-nui Pā, now known as Battle Hill Reserve, was converted into an Imperial military post. It was garrisoned by detachments of regular regiments of the Colonial Army, and for a considerable period after hostilities had ceased it was occupied as an advanced post covering the construction of the main road northward between Porirua and Paekakariki. The Paekakariki Hill Road was completed by soldiers of the 58th regiment, with the help of local Māori labourers, in 1849.

The great Ngāti Toa warrior leader, Te Rauparaha, whose Pā was on nearby Kāpiti Island, also died in the same year. But, for Munchausen Fred, like most Polynesians, the dead were by no means static figures in repose, but rather were filled with an energy, sometimes sexual, sometimes anxious. Examples include the traditions relating to Tumutumu-whenua (Tuputupu-whenua) of the Te Tai Tokerau peoples, who it is said emerged from under the ground (if that ain't Freudian I don't know what is). Another example is the birth of the Whānganui peoples from Ruapehu maunga and the descent of the Awanui ārangi peoples from a spirit living in the sky.

Then comes the real dream meeting with Te Rauparaha and the Ngāti Raukawa whānau ... The early evening finds her emerging from the water at Paekakariki Beach after swimming long and deep to forget her husband’s hysterics. The late summer colours cover the sky and the hills and she is alternately looking from the land to the seaward visage. Towards and beyond Kāpiti her eyes are straight to the horizon and he stands suddenly beside her. He gives her a distant, yet easy blessing. The beach towel over Makarena’s shoulder becomes his korowai as a koha. So, the great man who haunts this coast has visited her in friendship and aroha, and when she looks away, he is gone.

But I will not cease, I will Not Fade Away, thus rejecting the fleeting moment of the impressionist Munchausen because I was gonna tell ya how it was gonna be ... she was gonna give her love to me ... now she is gone, I feel I might just fade away and blue turns to grey and try as you may you cannot stop slipping into the nothingness whence I came without her, so this time it is man on a stool, back view in a daze I’ll remember all my kinky life, now I’m not frightened of this whirl, believe me, sings Alex as his head starts swimming ... I am no longer tied to Papa, no longer earthed, rooted, fixed ... the juices she invoked no longer flow. I am light and dried up so the wind of fruitlessness will blow me away, Aue! Aue! Aue!

Every time my uncle came and touched me ‘down there’ when I was young, I turned again into a girl and went looking for my ancestors among the Irish Animals of Aotearoa: green alligators and long neck geese, humpy back camels and chimp-panzers, all galloping and gambolling towards conquering you know where, thus get a telephone that only echoes back your voice ... and somebody spoke and she went into a dream and I’m not dumb but I can’t understand how she turned back into a man.

Ying tong, ying tong, ying tong tiddle eye-pod and Jen was dreaming also of her ancestors ... if you dream of visiting a temple, then this will mean extraordinary good fortune ... to dream of seeing statues of the Buddha on an altar means very good fortune ... to see a dead person rise out of a coffin means lots of fun at Finnegan’s wake, as round the floor your trotters shake ... to be dreaming like a nun on Sunday morning reciting mantras is good fortune ... to dream of yourself with a female spirit – a devi – means you will have a fine good day sunshine from your real wife, did you hear that, now Paddy? To dream of someone blowing a flute or banging on the old tin drum means an NSD Party will happen.

Yippee Jerry, steal that book, poke that bail and always remember, thought Aroha and Jen, wood becomes a flute when it’s loved, and there it is, boys will be girls and girls will be boys, it’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world whose heroin has been called a ‘female Hamlet’ as the man himself, no less, cock in hand, in the way of his incestors, some say the devil’s dead, some say he’s balmy, some say the devil’s dead and buried in Killarney – more say he rose again, more say he rose again, more say he rose again, and joined the British Army.

As we take out the Dead C, Fred and Murphy (not to mention Morley) and their charge are lost in their collective consciousness, I used to think I could talk to the animals when I was Jung, but when I was Jung it was more important to play more games and laugh a-much louder, yeah, only to sully the grand memory of SNAFU sleep when we go back to the old ways of looking at things and of feeling about them, to impulses and attitudes which long ago was so long ago and dominated us with demerit points.

PISSIN’ it up again’ ta wall, agin it all here he is now moving to the left, moving to the right, moving through that dark soul of the night, rocking to the rhythm of the moving train telling him he can’t go home, you can’t go back clickety clack, you can’t go back clickety clack, sings Rick Bryant, Old Father Time finally caught up with me after years of being handed rough justice, (a pound of dope for the personal use of the old guy, headpiece filled with grass) but down the track himself finish his mimi, he opens the door, the train lurches forward, the train lurches back, himself opens the door with handle by hand: Bandora’s Pox (as O’Brien’s missus, Mrs O’Brien might have said, eh! Mango, man in