W. Stubbs
  • About
  • Novels
  • Short Stories
    • Calvin's Peach: A simple story of childhood
    • I Choke
    • In Amongst the Ruins
  • Poetry
  • Music
    • Music
    • Proposed Albums
    • Opus List
    • Songs Without Music >
      • 1993
      • The Hunter's Knife (Lyric)
  • Music Reviews
  • WarBlog

Minimum Wage = Minimal Effort

26/9/2018

0 Comments

 
​The ache in my bones, in my muscles, is minimum wage slavery. I bend over to tie a wire and irrigation pipe together with “piglet rings”. I have already, after only five days on the job thought of an easier way to achieve the same goal through less work and better time management. But will management ever listen to someone new? Not in this industry.

​The horticulture industry has to be one of the most undeserving of good workers that I have ever worked in. If they ever cry out about going through a crises of having no workers, it’s simply their own fault – pay your employees more. Maybe then potential workers will look at bottom-feeder jobs out in the hot sun and bending over all day as a viable option. When a teenager straight out of school can earn above $18 an hour for just standing behind a counter, why would they ever choose the horticulture industry as a viable work option? One ungrateful son on my first day complained that the work wasn’t worth it, and he was absolutely right. The ungrateful child should have at least done a hard day’s work just to experience and remember it forever, but ultimately, his complaining and refusal to work was spot-on. This modern day slavery is just not worth the time and effort when better paying and easier work is available in the world.

It’s quite ironic that an industry that thrives on capitalism will eventually destroy itself through the share lack of filtering that capitalist money back down the vine and to the roots. Of course this ‘trickle down’ effect has been proven as a failure over and over, but it is a fact that capitalism is what allows the pay of workers to be increased – if you sit there and say your multi-million dollar business can’t afford to pay above the minimum wage, then you have an extremely bad business model that values CEOs more than the people who do all the work on the ground.

Minimum wage = minimal effort. If employers don’t get that, they don’t get that it is now the 21st Century, not the 1950s.
​
0 Comments

Home - A Song from 1995

4/9/2018

0 Comments

 
 
Will the stars come out
Will they come out tonight?
Will the stars come out
Or will they sleep all night?
The moon is quiet
Without a voice,
It’s lonely tears
Fall without choice.
 
I’m going to a place
Where no one has gone before,
I’m going somewhere
Where I cannot fall.
I’m going to a place
Which will not leave me alone,
Where I’m going
I think I’d call it home.
 
There are places
You cannot go,
There are faces
You must not know.
We could pretend
Mine is one of those,
Or we could make amends
And find our way home.
 
Do you call this home
A place where you belong?
Or is it just a home
Where you can do more wrong?
 
Will the stars come out
Will they come out tonight?
Will the stars come out
Or will they hide all night?
Behind clouds of gloom
I face up to the sky,
And stare at the moon
With tears in my eyes.
 
You can’t call this home
A place where you belong,
How can you know
What is right or wrong?
 
​
  • 1995, Gisborne
Home [Bedroom Recording from 1995, age 18].mp3
File Size: 9791 kb
File Type: mp3
Download File

0 Comments

26/07/18

28/8/2018

0 Comments

 
The 26th begins this tale of the last days of July. Come into the passenger's seat here with me, listen to the wind bow the trees, truck suspensions grunting over potholes, rapids winding downriver settling the storm; and the ticking of time as feet point upwards perched between door and window.

I have you here in my heart. A thought, a happiness long past. We shared days in the sun, cuddled for warmth during rain, joked about opinions and rational assumptions. 

But numb are the laughs. Dying days for ghosts.

I sit by the fireside, coffee and poached eggs, morning light drifts between trees. I wonder: Is this the end? All I have to look forward to - collecting wood, drying it over ashes, washing dishes in the river, reading a book when mind and body are too tired for anything else.

Or will spring raise the spirits up and remember feet are for walking, the pen is for writing, the mind is for thinking? Is today just a dead day?

I have you here in my heart. Sleep wants me to forget, light all I can see. I awake to me, as I have always been.
​
​
  • Motueka
0 Comments

The Sea... The Sea and Me...

21/8/2018

0 Comments

 
What is it about the salty sea breeze, lapping waves, rusted chains? These things that set me at ease? Glistening sun across ocean bays, harbouring yachts, crustacean homes on weathered rocks. So far away the horizon speaks of unknowns, eternal dreams, far from the pat of feet across concrete walkways travelling a pondering mind forward. Always forward.

My mother is the daughter of a fisherman; My grandfather, in his later life, made nets. I remember visiting the sheds once in Gisborne where they all hung up and he was there trawling through used nets looking for holes to repair; I see his worn and sunburnt Italian hands knitting the nylon materials through knots and patterns he held in his mind. I remember his laughter and joy, the good spirits he held in his heart up to his last days. These are all the merits I see in my mother. Her love never dies.

I have been drawn to the ocean for years. Songs I've written would occasionally feature stories about ocean life throughout my years as a songwriter: 'The Pirate's Flesh', 'Diamond Betrayal', 'Dullfish Angler', "Daddy never came home...", and 'Seafarer' are some of the songs that feature heavily the force of the ocean in the lives of men, and sometimes the impact on family. The Blessing's 'Hurricane Room' from their debut album Prince of the Deep Water has been one of the 'great songs' of my life, a tale about travelling coastlines, the oceans, and the colourful characters and situations around that; not so much a 'tale', but a travelogue of experiences through imagery, and a chorus that pleads "I sing my misappropriation song for lovers land-locked far too long."

Yet, I am not an ocean dweller. Nor do I see myself becoming one. The ocean has fascinated me, occupied my mind; perhaps will remain the greatest force of nature untameable by humans. Winds scour the earth, we harness them for power; fires scorch and destroy land and houses, we use it to keep our houses warm; mass oceans of salty water filled with life, we dump our garbage into, trawl nets to feed the masses... But the ocean will have the last say. When the winds become too destructive and carry too many storms for us to inhabit ground level, will we burrow into the grounds, or will we finally seek refuge by sinking into the watery depths?

Clouds are low here in Nelson. They fascinate me too. Crawling across surrounding hilltops, resting in the crevices, the slopes and valleys; I have never seen such low cloud cover before. This morning it covers all of the Tasman bay, hanging just above us all. If we climbed one of those hills opposite the bay, as we got to the top we'd walk straight into the cloud cover. Today's forecast was for sunshine.

My river campsite calls me. The river is a pathway to the ocean. Maybe I will walk the pathway only, return to the boulders and stones, the scavenged dry wood; and be content there, be at ease there, be at peace there. Far from the maddening crowds, the traffic cues and horns, the forced conversations, the deserted conversations; the desire to only know those in an immediate circle and leave others to perish with the vultures. The city has no desire to nourish, nor those entrapped inside it; the individual must break free if they are to be true to themselves, true to their human nature; true to acceptance, trusting, supportive, and loving.
0 Comments

City wants me dead, Country demands I survive

14/8/2018

0 Comments

 
Life expectancy is low when walls of the city enclose. Helping others lives only through the dollar sign, every bit of dishonesty builds to alienate the honest, to trample sincerity, to disown trust.

Are we too soft? Is this what honesty breeds? Can't lie to save myself, can't force my will to get what I want, can't pretend to ignore the strife.

​Hopelessness dreams of escape.
​
~//~

​I have lost faith in finding any kind of happiness.


- 06/08/18, Richmond
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Some updates to keep me updated.

    Archives

    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    May 2015
    March 2015
    July 2013

    Categories

    All
    A Scene
    Assault
    Bandcamp
    Classical
    Culture
    Dim Day
    Egoism
    Fiction
    Home
    Journal
    Justice
    Miscarriage Of Justice
    MuseScore
    Music
    Music Reviews
    Musings
    Novel
    Orchestral
    Rugby
    Society
    Victims
    Writing
    YouTube

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.