The Swimmers author Chloe Lane interviews Zina Swanson, whose paintings are inspired by old and outlandish books about botany.
December 1990, my family and I stayed with my aunty and uncle in the Christchurch suburb of Mount Pleasant. I remember the summer mostly hazily – picnics, swims, long hot days – though I also have specific memories. Buying a new sleeping bag; Batman-themed gifts including a torch with “bat signal” accessory; the volume of prickly Onehunga weed on my aunty and uncle’s lawn. It was impossible to take a step on that grass without my young, soft feet getting hooked by a fistful of prickles.
Earlier this year when my family relocated to Christchurch, we visited my aunty and uncle who live at the same address but – post-2011 earthquake – in a different house. Entering the new house felt a bit like visiting the old house in a dream – familiar but destabilising. My son immediately wanted to play on the lawn, and before I could retrieve his shoes from the entranceway, he stepped off the deck and onto the grass. As he did, I flinched. Though three decades had passed and the Onehunga weed was long gone, I had a muscle memory of being repelled by that surface – of the small pain I had experienced the summer I was eight. Unawares, I had created my own little personal history with this patch of grass...
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