KIRK LAFFERTY

In 2016 I was invited down to cook for 'Wellington On A Plate.'  Wellingtons yearly food festival. Short works of my fiction added to the event. I created banquets for the  second week of the festival  in 30 Upstairs Art Gallery  Courtney Place Wellington, Lamb smoker hanging out the window, hotplate on a shelf, all without a kitchen.    A Cook A Gallery A Painting A Feast The Event ran over a week with diners enjoying banquet meals  each night presented as 'Art Cuisine' in their own right.  I was asked to base it all on Abby Meakin's still life painting  which hung in the Gallery behind the Diners. The Middle Course was served on long banquet boards,  each person received a scroll of my short fiction and poetry  to indulge in and converse over. This Dessert the finale of the night was Audible. Wasabi and Coconut Panne Cotta  Ginger Soil / Lemongrass Jelly Yuzu flakes / Lychee popping Candy. Hann

A hippy, a skeptic and a tie-dyed mung bean walked into a circular breathing session. I will finish the joke at the end but to put things in perspective I was the skeptic. The course I had embarked on offered to alleviate stress, give a smile to a person suffering from depression, and calm anxiety bringing a sense of total well being to the inner-self. Well, my inner-self was suffering from bouts of depression, extremely anxious, and generally feeling like I had been rolled through the wringer of an old barrel washing machine.                   So I rolled myself up at 6pm on a Sunday night following a line of dreadlocked saffron orange and shades of green smocked souls into the Titirangi centre for body soul and mind. I knew something was amiss when I took off my not very vegan leather Doc’s, placing them next too, woven knitted sock-shoes, hemp sandals and woollen beige fake fur hug boots.   The next thing that alerted my atheist alarm bells was the singing in unison of songs

                                                                                       Craig sat on a park bench at the top of Arch hill waiting for the library to open. A mass of black hair hiding a large Polynesian man made its way up the steps towards him.   It had been ten years. From this angle, he couldn’t tell if it was him or not. With each step that the man-made, Craig’s breaths deepened. A vein on his neck poked out and pulsed with his quickening heart. Nature screamed aromas. Manuka trees were bursting into blossom subtlety juniper. Wild onions had taken over the hillside, colonizers pushing the natives out. Beyond the trees, car exhausts wafted up from the valley where the motorway cut through like a river, sounding like a sea. None of those scents Craig received, all he could smell was fear. Sione had grown up in Tonga where scents embraced. Seaweed baked in the tropical sun, its saltiness touching every surface. Whichever direction he walked, the sea was clos