Nicole Field’s Reviews > From a Shadow Grave > Status Update

In this brutal environment, you can drown in your own depression or you can float above it. It's not something you choose -- if it was a choice you'd have chosen long ago. But now you know you are going to live, so you float upwards. You swim.

You won’t talk about how she survived and you didn’t, but the two of you are both changed and undefeated.

“He put out some cones and made it look official like, so everyone assumes it’s someone else’s responsibility. I’m sorry, Phil, but I think he’s trying to recreate the scene of your murder”

You may be dead and everyone you knew back when you were alive may be dead, but you’re glad jazz has survived even if not so many people listen to it, even if radio doesn’t function how you’re used to. You’re glad there’s music.

Once you dreamed of being something like that, unholy and vengeful, screaming around the city striking fear, wreaking retribution on every man like George, every man who misled young women and, worse than merely striking them, made them believe it was their own fault when they were struck.

Like most ghosts, you’re tied to the location of your death, cursed to keep reliving it. Your spirit is on one hill, and your body lies deep within another. Your mother visits the Karori Cemetery every Sunday after church for a year, but she never visits Mount Victoria. She visits your body, but she never visits you.

“It’s not people like Ma that are the problem. It’s our whole society. Us poor folk are pushed to fight each other because it means we’re not fighting the rich people. Well, things are going to change.”