ding dong merrily

It's Christmas. And I am happy.

Phone me in the head, why don't you

There's a band called The Spoonbenders based in Buenos Aires, as it happens. You really should listen to them. ALRIGHT, I admit, I am not entirely subjective. But still. They sing in English with the best lyrics I have ever heard. These lyrics are mainly written by the lead singer, whose marvelous use of English has long gobsmackered me. Born in Spain, and then carted about continents for years before settling in Argentina, he has a way of molding a language to suit his purpose that produces sometimes comical ("I just felt tenderised," he said in one sweet exchange, while in another claimed he'd been "hornified" by something unrepeatable on this blog) but always appealing results. Then I heard his wonderful tunes, with lyrics such as: "As I fall to sleep, something travels with my mind," and my favourite "I'll phone you in the head..." Readers, I am phoning you in the head. Go listen to The Spoonbenders at: http://www.myspace.com/listentothespoonbenders

Swimming

This time we got to swim. Cold feet, it turns out, warm up pretty quickly by a wood-pellet stove in a round rock house on the Oregon coast.

Racing

It's not, dear readers, that I have nothing to say. It's that I have no time to say it, lately. What with the running around and great and numerous activities. I will come back and say more things when the time : things to say ratio has righted itself a little. I'm sure you're all on the edge(s) of your seat(s).

What have the Romans ever done for us?

I know America is not very fashionable right now, but being the day that's in it and all, I just thought I'd say hurray for all the delightfuls it's given me over the years, among them the wonderful words of e.e. cummings, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Whitman, Dorothy Parker, Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer ... (my list trails off into a roll call of looming great literaries and a reverie on the lovely moments spent with well-spun words missing arguably unnecessary vowels); the music of the Beach Boys, Janis Joplin, Sufjan Stevens, Johnny Cash, Will Oldham (I can't keep these lists up or they'll gobble the screen); movies like (almost all the best ones I've ever lived in); that growing-up J1 summer on Cape Cod; chocolate chip cookie dough ice-cream; one big love and several big life friends; last month's Portland sunshine; this computer I'm typing on that brings me to you; heroes, heroines and in the dark ages of Ireland when things were low, hope. Oh, and this picture. Happy Fourth of July.

Surprise!

I lose my mobile phone. A lot. Not proper lostness, just temporary misplacement. Every five minutes or so. Often when I'm about to leave the house. So, every time, I call it from my landline, and when I hear it twittering its location is revealed. Aha! Under the bed! Behind the cushion! In the fridge! My phone and I are emotionally reunited and EVERY SINGLE TIME I get excited when I see that I've missed a call. I check the missed calls, all gleeful that somebody wants to talk to me, only to be reminded that lo and behold the missed call is from MYSELF, from my own landline in fact because I just that second called my mobile in an attempt to find the cursed apparatus. Every. Single. Time. Technology is clearly wasted on the likes of me.

Cold water

I wish
we'd
swum up
to the waterfall;
instead,
we let
our feet
get cold.

America

I just lost Harvard. I mean, the one I had imagined since I first heard the word reverently mentioned in hushed tones that implied great wisdom and ivy-ness. In my head it was broad and green with the university ambling in the middle, a bit like Trinity College (I never said my imagination wasn't limited), and in some kind of wide open, sprawling space in the Massachussets countryside.

Today Mike brought me to see my imagined Harvard. Except it turns out that place doesn't exist. There were buildings and coffee shops and different colours and cityness. And it wasn't autumn, and the trees weren't rust-coloured with students swishing learnedly through piles of leaves. Poof! My Harvard is gone. Replaced with the real one. I'll tell you one thing, I'm NEVER going to San Francisco now.

Soupy Norman

This from Time Trumpet, but it's the only relevant clip I could find for a new series that began on RTE last night called Soupy Norman. Stupendous enough for me to break my habit of not posting videos on my blog. See for yourselves.

The names have been changed to protect the innocent, you morons!

So. It turns out this whole blog thing is public - who knew?
Now, before you hit me with all those Snigger Out Loud acronyms, I did actually know that and all, kind of in the same way I know where the kerb is but still manage to park light years away from it. But, as I am the only gombeen in the blogosphere who has used her own name on her blog (ah, there's no end to my smarts), several people who know me and who clearly have far too much time on their hands have happened upon this little corner of the internet. Curses. I mean, I knew every post was out there to be read by all and sundry - I just expected all and sundry to be strangers I would never meet, cyber people as it were, not people I know or have known in my ramblings and certainly not gentlemen I might have stepped out with on occasion. So I knew it was public - I just forgot that I actually know members of the public, and now they know a lot more about me. Oops.

First up was the Neurotic Philosopher, who stumbled upon my last blog. And the one or two entries that, you know, may or may not have referred to him. Yikes! Abashed, I immediately erased all the relevant posts, along with any that revealed me as anything less than a Nietzsche-spoutin' Barthes-totin' genius. You can imagine what that left - the odd pilfered photo and some tumbleweed. Luckily I changed domain name and learned from my mistakes. Ha! Turns out you can't teach an old blog(ger) new tricks. So along came the new charming friend with whom I was attempting to come over all coy and mysterious. Yep. I'm such an enigma, me - read all about it in my highly personal online journal! And yesterday, lo and behold, the delightful Aussie Ex (I am compelled to use such adjectives as I now know he reads this, but in your defence AE, it's sincerely meant) mailed me to let me know he Knew Where I Lived. Cyberly, I mean. So any airbrushed version of my love life I might have been tempted to create, along the lines of a millionaire-rocket-scientist-human-rights-lawyer boyfriend who plays guitar to ailing children in his spare time, makes furniture and rescues baby seals in his manly arms - well, kinda scuppered, frankly.

So just to set the record straight, my name is Juan-Paddy and I am a very tall gay farmer from Tuvalu. Google me!

Progress? Pah!

Sometimes I come over all poetic-like and enter posts like that previous one, which, on re-reading, makes me want to womit a little. Even though it was meant in the best possible way, I could have just said something along the lines of: "My very good friend is coming to see me in a week. I haven't seen him in three years. I hope he got rid of that anorak."

Last night, full of such melancholy sentiment, I sent a mail to a certain gentleman - he of napkin fame - positively dripping with overwritten pathos. This morning I have no idea what mad woman got into my email and sent such overwrought balderdash out under my name. This is why I should NEVER write at night. There's something about 3 a.m. and wi-fi and a glass or two of vino (veritas indeed) that allows me to act immediately on such powerfully-felt emotion in a way that snail mail - ah, the days of several kindly hurdles to be jumped before a letter could even set off for a destination - would have prevented. If only I'd woken up this morning and found a scrawled epistle by my bed! I could have shredded it, laughed at it, maybe even filed it, but certainly not put it in an envelope and posted the shaggin' thing.

Alas, I have no way of inserting my hand into a street-corner postbox and retracting the offending document. Why? Because it's already In His Inbox. Marvelous. What kind of ludicrous system is that? And they say technology has improved our lives!

Amistad

It's been three years since we stood by the rusty bridge in La Boca and looked out into the gloom together. I remember you wearing an anorak, and that we'd walked a long way, and I remember our friendship wrapping around us as the light eased into the dark. We both had absent loves oxidising in a future we couldn't see back then. Things would happen - sooner, later - to change the contours of our hearts. Our lives were behind us and stretching ahead, but we were present then, you and I, in a city neither of us were born to but where, right then, we belonged.

When you touchdown in Dublin airport, you and I will be three years more than we were back then. Our geographies have shifted - seismic changes, shifting plates - but we'll both be in the same place. Three years will have been and will be gone. We'll walk a long way, along a different river. You may not be wearing an anorak. But our friendship will wrap around us and the light, as it does at the end of the day, will ease into the dark.

Spillage

What to do with twelve red napkins that tumble through your letterbox? Twelve red napkins, covered in Somebody's slowly drunkening hand in a first class seat to the other side of the world. Folded - yes, impressively - then sealed in two envelopes and urgently posted at touchdown. Twelve red napkins of words to be read and re-read, red and staining the edge of sight as they fall across white sheets. And it strikes me now that they have lost their purpose. Now that they have been written all over, they can't wipe anything away.

Tirty Tree

Go on then, all ye non-Irish who have spent years slagging me over the 'th' business. At long last, I'm turning TIRTY TREE today, providing you with a full year's entertainment. Oh yes, every time I mention my age, you will all collapse in hysterics. Just wait until June, when I turn TIRTY TREE AND A TURD! Ah, the good times we'll have.

Aunty me

Petrichor

It's the scent of rain on dry earth. At its strongest during the first hard rain after a long dry spell. Try as they might, the noses of the world have yet to bring it through a bottle to our city skins. It can only be found in the desert, after rain. But it has a name, this elusive, far-away fragrance. Petrichor. The scent of rain on dry earth.

And then he x-ed me

There is nothing that can make my stomach flutter like a kiss on the head from the right man. It's not a lead-up kiss, or a bye-honey kiss, or a stop-talking kiss. It's a kiss that is all tenderness and there is really nothing like it. Except. When you've been corresponding for months, mail forward, mail back, and then, out of nowhere, he plants a little x on you. Just there. Outside of anything else. A little, lower case x in an email. And it almost floats to the top of your head and lands somewhere in your hair. And oh the flip and sigh of it. Sweet.

Czech Inn - get it?

After that, well, it was all we could do but drink. "God Save the Queen" sung in Croke Park. 43-13 to Ireland. I even drank Guinness in my patriotic fervour. But where did we end up carousing? In Eastern Europe. See, we started out in Keatings. Then the Hop House. O'Connell street was mental, crawling with little folk with big bellies in green jerseys, wrapped in tricolours and carrying foam hands and jester hats. Then we went to the Sackville Lounge where we met a self-confessed twat from Surrey. He even wore tweed. And then, well, after much meandering up and down the quays, we ended up at the Czech Inn.

Entering this particular establishment is a bit like rushing through platforms nine and ten to end up on three-quarters. It's a whole other world. As the only Irish people there, it was buzzingly like we were on our holidays. Dancing strange feet-twisting dances to the beat of a red-jumpered drummer (special mention to this tiny stick-wielding rhythm master with his carefully parted hair and expression of faint surprise every time they made contact with the drumskin). Drinking Czech beer and eating Czech crisps and chatting to George and Joseph (not their real names - the English equivalent of their real names because we were having such a hard time pronouncing their real names after so much Czech beer). Boy those lads can drink. And do. They even put us Irish to shame.

So there we were. On our holidays in the mini Czech Republic. As all of Dublin was awash with all things Irish and green and comeallye, we managed to celebrate the historic moment by going abroad. Folks, it was quite a trip.

And that, I think, is worse

The Neurotic Philosopher and I wailed down the phone at each other in the lonely wee hours of Sunday morning coming down. "Why don't we match anyone?" he asked. It was my question too as I clamboured gracelessly out of another budding two back into one again. I just don't match anyone. On brighter days, I add the yet. But sometimes, when the shared shards of all those almosts, all those sweet but also rans, chime against my ribs, I wonder if I ever will.

Audible sighs

OK. Now I'm just sad. Because not only is Miss Tickle having theatre troubles, but now they're closing Andrew's Lane Theatre. The cretins, whoever they are. Only weeks ago, I was back in its blacked-out belly with a box of hand-made chocolates on my lap and an all-singing, all-dancing cast at my feet. And I thought to myself - how nice that despite all the changes in brand-spanking, go-getting Dublin a little shelter for old-school arts like Andrew's Lane can still nestle contentedly on a city centre sidestreet. But no more, we were cruelly informed on Valentine's Day, of all days. It was too much for a drama queen like me. Hence the sighing. But the sadness, folks, is genuine.

It takes all sorts

The SAIB and I made pizza on Thursday. He put banana on the pizza. I am still getting flashbacks. I don't want to talk about it.

Bring on the rain

The sky is the underside of a frying pan, blistered and black. It's been spattering rain on me all morning, and I am grateful. I've had some week, the kind where one big-full emotion smacks you in the head and then steps aside to make way for the next. I am glad of a grey day to wrap me up in clouds as I curl inside its slate comfort and let things unfurl in the shadows.

Buy a word

Go on. Buy a word. You never know when you might run out.

Vorsprung Durch Technik

The Eco-ranting Pregnant One requires an immediate name change. In the blink of an eye, she is no longer pregnant, having given birth to Racing Baby. In the car. In about one second. Germans, like the artist formerly known as the Eco-ranting Pregnant One, amaze me.

The Eco-ranting Speedy Birthing One has constantly astounded me with her ability to do things right after she thinks of them. I mean, she makes plans and then she CARRIES THEM OUT. Un. Be. Lievable. No vacillation, no prevarication, no procrastination. None of the ations to which Irish people like me, who still have their pyjamas on at 2 p.m. when the LoM (see below) call to the door, are so attached (and don't get me started on libation). The E-R-S-B One just does things. And now she has outdone her own doingness, by giving birth in about one second. This is the German way - no time-wasting. So having experienced a slight twinge at around 5.30 a.m., she called the babysitter for Bilingual Boy and, ushering his father out the door, she got into the back of the car to have a bit of a lie down on her way to the hospital. But then, having set the whole thing in motion, she just decided to finish the job and be done. Next thing, and I really mean next thing, BB's (and now RB's) da heard a baby crying in the back seat, and it turned out that Eco-ranting Speedy Birthing One had given birth in the back of the car while he was busy figuring out how the wipers worked. Most characteristic of her, I have to say. She probably did it to save petrol. She is most efficient and ecologically sound. I am astounded. And still in my pyjamas.

The Legions Arrive

I opened my door just moments ago to two tiny old ladies with big, beamy smiles and blue rinses. They told me they were from the Legion of Mary. So I told them that while I had been baptised into the Catholic church, I did not consider myself a member any more. Their brows furrowed a little. It felt a bit like I had just fornicated in front of my aunties.

But they were not to be cowed, these two legionnaires. "Well, that's the great thing about the Catholic church! Once you're baptised, you're in. You're in FOREVER! You can NEVER LEAVE!" She was gleeful, the older, less bobbing-about one. Beads of sweat broke out on my own furrowed brow. "But I want to leave!" I told them. As I began to enumerate my reasons for opting out of the whole thing, while convinced that if they knew the half of it, they wouldn't want to hang on to me anyway, I could see the Legion of Mary Ladies were busy being on Another Spiritual Plane. Particularly the bobbing-about one, who appeared to remain with the angels for much of the conversation. That is, until I mentioned Limbo.

See, the more vocal one was telling me that it was a bit much to be expecting the Pope to go about changing things, like letting women be priests and the like, because, well, because you, er, can't, I think the argument went. So I retorted cunningly: "But he's able to change Limbo, isn't he?"

Well.

At the word Limbo, the bobbing-about one came crashing back to earth with an almost audible wallop and yelped like I'd just summoned the divil himself. "NO!" Oops. "He's not! He's not changing Limbo! Limbo's still there!" Clearly, these ladies were not letting go of Limbo, regardless of what the higher ups had to say. And they weren't letting go of me either. "You're Catholic and you will be Catholic for the rest of your life," pronounced the tiny-but-fierce old dears on my doorstep, even as it began to dawn on them that perhaps I wasn't exactly the most expedient case on the block. So they linked arms, and bobbed off, with this, final parting shot: "You LOOK Catholic and everything!"

What now? I look Catholic? How? What on earth did that mean? Was it the fact that I was still in my pyjamas at 2 p.m. in the afternoon that gave me away? My unbrushed and unfeasibly large hair? Perhaps my furrowed brow? The shifty, guilty look of One Who Has Been Sinning(I was still in my pyjamas WELL into the afternoon after all). I look Catholic? This is most certainly not the look I have been aiming for, unkempt as I may be when legionnaires come to my door. I am alarmed.

Snowy and Alice are laid to rest. In the bin.

Sometime after we moved from our bungalow in the country to the lofty two-storey in Celbridge (with disappointing banisters) I was plagued with a Great Worry. Worries were not new to me - almost daily, something disturbing and grave was revealed to me about the world about me, and it was my lot to lie awake at night and fret about things like brainwashing, cancer, fire and germs (particularly the ones you got from eating things you found on the road, even though your mother warned you not to put them in your mouth). During one insomniac period, the fire fear in particular took up residence in my little-girl-mind, and I spent many a late night hour (often as late as 9 o'clock) perfecting elaborate plans that would enable me to escape crackling flaming monsters from my second floor bedroom window and land safely on the ground way, way below. These usually involved tying my bed sheets together in a secure but speedy fashion and abseiling down the cliff face of number 15 into the crocuses. A plan that saved me, but did nothing to allay the Great Worry - what would happen my toys?

Now, before I get dubbed a callous materialist, concerned only for a Sindy house or Scalextric while my family burnt to a crisp, let me make it clear: I had no intention of going looking for the Etch-a-Sketch as the flames engulfed me. But Snowy, Alice, Paddington and Pinky? They weren't just toys - they were family, for crying out loud. Besides, strictly speaking, both Snowy and Alice were pyjama cases. But I loved them dearly.

Alice had about twelve strands of wooly yellow hair that grew in a straight line from the top of her flat pink head. Fortunately, her pale colouring was nicely set off by her triangular-shaped, blue and white floral skirt (with a slit in the back where the pyjamas entered and exited) because it was stitched to the bottom of her neck. The entire ensemble was accessorised by two blue triangles, or shoes in the world of Alice and myself, stitched to the hem of her skirt. Truth is, she wasn't pretty in the conventional sense, but she had character and a certain innocent charm, and the guys were very fond of her. She was particularly close to Snowy, maybe because he was also a pyjama case, but with the head of a white furry dog and the added sophistication of a zip. Neither Alice nor Snowy were ever employed as such, however, and instead lived a life of relative leisure on my bed where they hung out with Paddington and the wise old elderly statesman teddy-bear, Pinky, who'd been knocking around since just two days after my birth.

Given that Alice had no legs to speak of, and Pinky was in a permanent sitting-down position, it wasn't clear how much help they'd actually be in the case of fire. I knew I was responsible for them, and I had to incorporate their salvation into my plan. So I resolved to chuck them all out the window first, and then descend on my bed-sheet rope to safety. So far so good. Until, greatly preoccupied, I hit a snag. Being a realistic child who had seen enough late-night films from behind the couch to know bad things can happen to good people, and are very much likely to happen to bad people, like those who try to push their (then bosom-less) little sister down the stairs, for example, I knew there was a chance that the flames would engulf me in my bed before I could scrabble to the window and chuck out Alice and the guys. Imagine the state THAT put me in. Hours, hours of fretting in my room with my trusting friends snuggled around me, oblivious.

I remember finally working it out. I got out of bed, and pattered into Ma and Da's room. I have no idea what time it was, but I'd imagine it was Very Late. But my task was urgent, so I shook Ma awake (I knew I was wasting my time with Da). As she opened a bleary eye, I explained the predicament. Quickly and with a precision born of urgency, I told her that what I needed her to do. Luckily, my mother was an accommodating woman, and I managed to elicit a promise from her that, in the event of her middle child being engulfed by flames in a fire, she herself would rescue Alice, Snowy, Paddington and Pinky and carry out the window-chucking plan as daughter number two was incinerated. I went back to bed and slept like a baby.

***********************************************

Time passed, and myself and Alice and the boys lost contact. Yesterday, I found them at the bottom of a very large box. Alice had holes in her head, where mustard stuffing was peeping out. And Snowy had lost his nose and much of his whiteness. Paddington was gone missing - he was always of a travelling bent. They were bundled in with all the other cuddly toys accumulated over the years, most of them intact and ready to be passed on to a children's charity. But Alice and Snowy were beyond even that. I had to say goodbye. It was a brief re-encounter that brought me right back to a moment of panic soothed in the wee hours of the morning when I passed the buck to my groggy mother, who probably doesn't even remember. Luckily, the fire never happened and she never had to step up to the mark. So Alice and Snowy survived to languish at the bottom of a box as their entirely responsible carer went vagabonding herself.

Yesterday, we - Alice, Snowy and I - said our farewells and I laid them to rest. In the bin. With First Love Susie, whose head had taken leave of her body. Pinky, now aged 33, came with me.

How to have a successful blog

I have spent many a sleepless night gainfully employed in blog perusal, and have gleaned some much-needed tips on how to have a successful (and comment-laden) blog. Here is what I have come up with in handy point form:

1. Forget what your English teacher taught you. Use Capital Letters mid-sentence for words that are not Proper Nouns (see what I did there?) This is very humorous. It is so that knowing people reading your blog can go hahaha, she is not crap at English, oh no, she knows where capital letters belong but is Employing them with Irony to great humorous effect. And so that when such people read the blog out loud, to their friends say, they know which bits to Emphasise.

2. Introduce regular characters. Heretofore, I have not had any regular characters like a Canadian pathologist or a He Man Pilot Hero or indeed a Short Tony. This clearly explains why I am not inundated with comments every single day. So, just to show that you CAN teach an old dog new tricks, I am going to introduce some quirky characters, cunningly combining them with rule number one to make things like: Generously Bosomed Little Sister or Eco-ranting Pregnant One (this latter one might have a short shelf-life given that she may some day give birth. But hey, the rate she's going she's bound to be knocked up again in no time).

3. Post some pictures. People like illustrations. It breaks up the text. Like this.

4. Write about Topical Things and Current Affairs. Comment on Big Brother. And Update your blog daily or people will stop giving a fiddlers. You will lose the interest of your fickle, Big Brother watching audience. Even if you've nothing to say, post. Post about posting if you will. Like I am now, really.

5. Tell people about your blog. Shout it defiantly from the rooftops. Introduce yourself at parties in the following fashion: "Hello, I'm (insert witty blogging name here) from (insert witty blog title here). You can find me at (insert URL here). Don't walk away from me you (insert expletive here)." Enough of all that "I wanted to remain anonymous and keep my private life out of the public eye" business. If you're blogging about your private life, dumb-ass, then that's all a bit on the redundant side don't you think?

6. Draw. This one is hard. I can't even draw with a pencil and paper, even if the paper is transparent and there's a highly visible easy to follow work of art underneath. As if that wasn't hard enough, now it's all the rage to draw on your blog. I have yet to fathom how people do this with their computers. The mind boggles. And jigs about a little, but that's a separate issue. I'm going to have to omit this key rule exhibited finely here. This may be why I will never get any comments and he will get gazillions.

That's all for now folks. Just a few simple rules and you too can be a Successful Blogger. Unlike me. Sigh... (When all else fails, just look for sympathy and talk about being sad and alone and angst-ridden in general. The people who read blogs are a morbidly depressed lot really and like to Identify with other Blue People.)

the leaving train

There's a moment for leaving, that moment when, if you just turn and exit, you can accomplish a clean cut. I somehow always miss that point. As a result, I'm left with jagged, stuttering endings and overlaps, and frayed memories that sully my pasts. I've missed a leaving train more than once in my life, and had to hitch a ride out. And that, I've found, is not always the quickest way away.

P.S.

Clearly I was technologically savvy at 12 and hip to the Atari groove (I have subsequently discovered that this is what I was trying to spell). Other choice entries to come soon where I become obsessed with Mass and Peter Buckley.

Diary entry: 9/1/1987

Today I went to Anita's. We played computer games. The first one was called Aviards or Anvacards or something. If you got 2,100 points you wrote your name up on a kind of list. Anita wrote Anita but then changed it to Nits because that is her Nicname.

Adios dos mil seis

This time last year I was living in an apartment on calle Mexico in a city that was my home on the other side of the world. I had not met Lars, nor Diego, nor Raphael. My left knee still didn't work properly and I had yet to be referred to as 'all legs' by a gentleman who saw me in my first real high heels. I had not been to Africa. I had never dived into water and I did not know the word stridulate. Now I know the sound a cicada makes and how to make mince pies. This time last year, I didn't even know I ever would.