Peering Through Misty Windows

The Bosphorous

We went away for her birthday – although by the time we were actually going, I had forgotten what had made me want to take her. An eastern city she hoped would be filled with eastern promise. For me, another attempt to win a mother’s love, and fail somehow, and only then realise that I had been trying. Even in the airport, she merely followed, like a dog. Her mantra for the trip was that she didn’t want to have to think, which left me in the unfortunate position of having to think for two – not the easiest way to relax. I fought through the lines, the directions, the checkpoints – she floated in my wake, mind filled with the words of dead men whom she felt akin to. They would have dismissed her in a moment as a simple woman – but then that is the beauty of feeling a connection with the dead, you can assume they would have felt it too.

It was colder than we were expecting. We jumped on the last metro from the airport – running and giggling in heady expectation and nerves, knowing we were getting closer to our destination, feeling in our hearts that we were merely receding further from home, the string that attaches us across the world to love and security growing thin, disappearing into the darkness. The metro slid out, the carriage brightly lit, lots of men and one other woman, eyes and subdued foreign talk – they knew we were strangers – we felt unwelcome, but didn’t acknowledge it. We were too loud, defiant, but our stances turned inward, enclosed. The traces of western influence were everywhere, marring our tourist desire for exquisite orientalism. I was anxious for it to be what she had expected. A couple kissed greedily in the carriage ahead, a middle aged man looked on with disapproving jealousy. An elderly couple, large-nosed and dark-skinned, sat together without saying a word – when they got off, he led, she followed. My mother shouted out that we were at our stop. In a panic we jumped off, and it was the wrong stop, as I had guessed. A man opened the doors for us, and we got back on, but only just. I felt annoyed.

We got a taxi from our stop. As I conversed energetically, trying to make him feel as though we were friends, as though his comments weren’t falling on tired, desperate ears, she stayed quiet, refusing to engage, ‘not thinking’. I had to chat with extra vigour to allow for her. I had to remember that this was her trip. He tricked us when we got out, charged extra, pretending we hadn’t given him enough. We didn’t realise until the next morning in our cramped room that looked nothing like the ones on the website. She woke me with the news, said she’d known something wasn’t quite right. We lay in silence, and I fought the despair. I couldn’t help but be angry – I didn’t understand why anyone dwelled on bad things, but she did. She liked to. It was one of our many differences. Irreparable differences. But it had to be put aside, she hadn’t been thinking, and this was her trip.

We had two full days. By the second, my mother and I had grown sick of one another. I had grown sick of thinking for two, and she had grown sick of being told what to do. We chatted, miscommunicating, saying things that didn’t suit the other. Her quoting, me joking, both suffering. She read as I told an anecdote, and I told her it was rude. She told me I was very bossy, as we sat in the palace of the sultans and drank coffee. We were lost to one another, lost on the way. My heart cried out in agony, wondering how one could lose one’s mother. How one could dislike one’s mother, and want to love her so much as well. We walked home in silence. She went to bed as I cried in the shower. I thought my agony would fill the entire city, the city of our unhappiness. The enormous river that ran through it was the distance between us. I didn’t understand when it had grown, this void, or why, but now we looked at one another across it, and I screamed out to her, but she couldn’t hear me. She turned away and read a book by the dead.

This was our last night, and she refused to get up. She stood, tiny body, enormous presence to one who has been her child, and told me I was difficult to be on holiday with, on her holiday, and packed her case for the morning. She returned to bed, and I sat on mine, staring. My body was on fire and she couldn’t see it. My mother, the child. The petulant bitch. How had this happened? When I was small she had read me all of the Little Women books by Louisa M. Alcott. On Christmas Eve, she would climb into my bed and tell me exactly how the next day would go, unfolding each separate hour like a chocolate from a shiny, crinkly wrapper. Now we didn’t like each other, and I wanted to cry. I had lost my mother.

I told her to come out, I couldn’t bare the idea of having failed so completely. To have to acknowledge our loss. So we went. We had a meal with a chatty waiter, and went to a traditional show designed for tourists, overpriced. We giggled at how appalling it was, and at the ignorance of the Americans sitting beside us, with their eternal positivity, saying to one another ‘well, it was an experience!’. We mocked, and I secretly envied the simplicity of it, and we went home. The pain lingered, but not too much – we both counted down the hours until we got home, got to others who understood us better. I saw her writing in her journal on the plane. She said ‘looking forward to getting home – to house, kids, dog, guinea pigs, lover’. It made me wish the plane could go a little faster.

When we got home, people asked us about it, and we told them how great it was, how beautiful the buildings were, the weather, the food. We didn’t mention that we had lost each other, out there in the east, and that we could never find one another again. We didn’t mention that. Now we have coffees, and talk about things going on. We pretend that the river that divides the city is far away, and that we are no longer standing on the banks, as I scream out, and she turns away to read the books of dead men.

John Doe

He couldn’t breathe. He felt only the constriction, magnified, illuminated in his mind above all else, glowing, pumping along with the blood, the rhythm, beating below the tight tug of the rope, trying to push through, willing him to live. He wouldn’t live, although in this moment, when the choice had finally been removed once and for all, out of his control – victim of his previous self, of only minutes ago – he wished he could. He saw his stupidity, he saw with terrible desperation his daughter’s face, smelt her child-baby-power-warm-milk smell, saw summer evenings, low sun lying, resting on the edge of the world before slipping off to sleep, saw this from the rolling swirl of a convertible car looping around the bend of a winding road with no end up / down the coast of the American Pacific, high walls, steep edges, sound of the engine and the lapping lips of the ever-hungry, tasting sea below, smell of salt and gas and fresh freedom. He thought of his mother, holding him as a child, her arms wrapped tight. How long it had been since she had been his mother, and not that woman who annoyed him with her callous words and broad dismissals, and slept around, and sought forgiveness – sought and sought and sought until she had sucked the life blood out of you. Bundle of contradictions. Thoughts of his wife could not be removed from the realm of melancholia. Even the early days, that tug at his heart / stomach accompanied her image in his mind. They had met in the dark days of his life, they had wed in impurity, in filth, the filth of his daily existence, that no amount of Californian sunlight could penetrate – he lived in a state that light had forgotten, ignored. He lived in perpetual darkness, beneath the thick covering of his skin.

They had met on the set of a film they were both cast to star in – Big Pussies Get Fucked Hard 3 – in a big house in the lower hills of Los Angeles, a house where no one lived, used for films like these, soulless, just like the people who worked there. He had fucked her from behind while kissing some other woman – he didn’t know her name – as she groaned, pretending to enjoy it, in fact focusing on making her face stay sexy and holding her stomach in. Dettol Sex, he called it, the kind of sex you had in porn flicks. Every time he came he felt as though his body had betrayed him, and as though he had lost a small part of himself he would never get back, seeping out the end of him like gloopy, sickened tears. How could his cold, dead body produce that warm, creamy liquid, he wondered. But he was known for being a reliable actor. She had contacted him through his agency two months later. He had forgotten what she looked like, and approached the wrong woman in the corner cafe where they had arranged to meet up. He had dreaded it. Thought she wanted a date, tips, maybe she had thought she would be business-minded, make her own films, ask him to act in them, of course she wouldn’t be able to pay him up front she’d say, but if he would get on board, invest his time, energy and dick, she could set up the website, they’d be millionaires, she’d always wanted to direct. Fuck no.

The place they met in had been chosen by her. Pretty, corporation-quaint, on Melrose, with painted upbeat messages on the wall, colours, 20 kinds of tea – made-to-order individuality, barista’s reluctantly wearing nametags, smiling through gritted teeth for dingy apartments and a desire to make it big in Hollywood. The perfect place for people who had sex on film – a shrine to the unreal, the double-life, cognitive dissonance, the realm in which the population of L. A. Survived – just. She had looked the same as she had on set, fake, perky and plucked, smiley, giggly. He got the impression that she only understood about 40% of what was actually happening in the world around her, and that she bluffed the rest, through force of habit. She was not smart, and she was not naturally attractive, but through extensive surgery, training, semi-starvation and caked-on bronzer she had made herself sexually-edible. Rapable. And that was something at least. He wondered, as she chattered on dimly over her peppermint tea about different films she had worked on since theirs, and double-anal and cumshots and gang bangs, how she slept at night, if she cried at all, or went to sleep with the tv on, to drown it out. He imagined she didn’t cry, too real. Probably with the tv on. He didn’t think she was someone who would seek out company for distraction, who would fuck for fun. She was one of those highly sexed pornstarts who could now only see sex, intimacy, as their work – she had lost the original idea of what sex actually was. Perhaps she watched her own videos online in bed, but not for pleasure – to critique, to learn her best angles, to train herself, so she could make it big, be one of the great stars of the industry. He scoffed inwardly, with no outward sign, sipping his black coffee and appearing to react to her trite conversation – really? Oh, cool! Yeah yeah I know Mandy, great girl.. Oh you did? That sounds like fun, wink wink, nudge nudge, playful, authoritative, in control of this stupid female creature sitting across from him.

So it had come as a surprise, when in the carpark, she had blurted out that she was pregnant, and that she thought it was his. She couldn’t tell for sure who the father was, of course, she had been on the pill, but she was pregnant, and the timing meant it was either through their shoot or two others, but she had told him first, because she couldn’t remember the name of one of the other guys and the third guy refused to meet up at all – smart guy. So that left him with a maybe baby and a crying 22 year old pornstar with bleach-blonde hair in a parking lot in L.A., with passersby staring as they stood awkwardly in the dead heat and odd droning silence of a Sunday afternoon. The heat. Up close, with an arm around her shoulder as she wept, exposed, trying to pull herself together – don’t fucking cry, for fuck’s sake, don’t you know the rules? – he could smell her sweat, the only small evidence of her original state of being – human girl. In that moment, he felt sorry for her. He remembered, somewhere deep, the idea of real life, of not living / acting, of backyards with small blow-up pools and running around with a dog he loved but who died when he was in his teens and far away and who he had almost forgotten, and eating hotdogs in buns with ketchup and spilling it and getting a sharp smack and red hot tears and cool fresh sheets unexpectedly and just living. He asked her to marry him, and she had said yes. They never found out for sure if the baby was his, as soon as she was born it hadn’t seemed to matter that much, since he was the only dad she was ever going to get anyway, so they might as well make do, and anyway, they needed all the money they would have spent on the paternity test for drugs.

They didn’t suit one another, but she was grateful, and he was relieved for a while from the loneliness and deep terrible lack that his life consisted of – better to come home to someone you dislike than nobody, and there was the baby. But to pull it off, they needed the drugs. They had both dabbled before. But now on the long, bright West Coast evenings, light and unfulfilled potential pouring in through the slats of the cheap white plastic blinds of the front room on their red, sore eyes, when the baby was asleep, and the idea of having sex off-set made them both want to burn up in hot flames from a blowtorch their respective genitalia, drugs slotted in nicely. They would end their days in a haze of oblivion, get up in the morning, keep busy, until evening again. This life functioned as well as they needed it to. They did not require self-actualisation; they lived on the treadmill of life, running running and happy to be going nowhere. Once or twice, she had overslept for a shoot and gotten into trouble and done them out of at least two grand each time, which he wouldn’t even care about except that their smaller amount of money had to be spent on baby food or formula rather than quality heroin, and he’d be pissed off for a few nights and drive around until late and she’d put the tv on going to sleep alone, but they always pulled through – the next time she would let 5 guys come on her face and maybe double vaginal, so she’d get a bigger paycheck, and they’d celebrate.

He did love his daughter. The best he could. He would have given her anything, the problem was that he had nothing left to give. So then one morning, a Saturday, when his daughter was napping, three years old and curly-haired and full of tantrums – who could blame her, in this house? – and his wife had gone out to their regular dealer to try to get some stuff that they’d pay for later in the week – he had some idea how she would manage to convince him, he didn’t blame her either – he decided he’d had enough.

So here he was, in the closet, as the beam above him creaked, and some semblance of real life passed behind his eyes before the final gush, and someone cries cut in the background.

Friday Nights

When she walks out into the cold crisp yellow-lamp-light-ultra-violet-blue night, she is a tornado. She is a twister, an earthquake, a volcano. Her chest is writhing, tormented, shaking. Her body cannot express itself. It is too weak, too physical. She doesn’t understand, walking across the street, seeing the dull brown brickwork, the flickering lights of bluish television behind white lace curtains, how no one can hear her - she feels so loud - she is erupting.

Nothing stirs, except a cat, scurrying from below blueyellowwhite van to below blueyellowred car. Cats forever moving in the night, from one safehouse to another, back and forth, back and forth. Colours created by dusk. The world makes quiet world sounds - hum of street lamps - meandering cars - creaking on its axis. The distant hush__hush__hush__hush of the sea, in out, in out. She is dictated by the sea, the moon. She is nothing.

Sometimes she finds this a comfort. Her inevitable failures will not matter, they will amount to nothing, a whisper on the wind, too fast to grasp, passing. Now she finds it infuriating, intolerable - she is nothing, where she walks, this grey cement path, between blueyellowgreen grass, is nothing, doesn’t exist, because it didn’t exist, and because it won’t. (Her feet sound lightly, scuffing the cement - her pace is fast, she rushes to reach nowhere quickly). This grass grows, is cut, grows, is cut. It’s as simple as that. Nobody misses, remembers, the grass that was cut. Transience destroys her every thought, hope, dream - ha, to dream, she hates herself for even thinking of the idea of thinking of the idea of thinking of it. Push it away,  away,   away.

She despises being within herself, despises it.  Impermanence. This flesh, if only to tear it were to reveal: She would tear it this second, rip-tear-lacerate - pump blood. Blood rich with what is inside her - blood of fury, hot-hot-red, pure red, and singing, screaming herself. But to tear her skin would reveal only more flesh, layers and layers of animal fat and bone and marrow. It would achieve nothing, and she walks on. 

She is a tornado inside herself, a storm, a storm that leaks hot salted rain, and nothing more, and stops, because it achieves nothing, only trivialises. She wishes, as she crosses the road, whiteyellowbrightagainstdeepblue headlights in the distance, coming towards her - who? Home to bed, home to safehouse, hide, forever - she could be a lion for a day, and stalk an innocent antelope, watch it, smell it, desire it, and chase it down, and tear its flesh, claws and teeth, and eat its warm meat. She could do this and be satisfied, and share, and not talk, but share. She longs for that. 

She cannot talk - she was not taught. She can imitate the sounds, and understand what is said to her, and she can pretend to talk back, but she is only imitating sounds. She has grown suspicious that the people who profess to talk to her, are too, merely imitating sounds. Sounds of their parents, of their parents, of their parents. She wonders which generation was responsible for forgetting how to talk. Maybe nobody ever could. She is not one to idealise the past, or the future. These sounds make her grow weary - they are exhausting. Nothing is said, but they require response. But to be alone - as she is now, watching the night set in, watching her breath before her, step right, step left, step right, step left - each breath one-breath-less to the end - ah, is that a comfort? Only if it is a choice - and how to be sure, that one has chosen, and not been forced to choose? There lies the eye of her storm. There lies her fury - insolvable: To be oneofmany - obliterated. To be one - isolated. To think of oneself so intensely - redundant, inescapable - layers upon layers of idiocy in a single thought.

She walks, and if our senses were of a different sort, she would be seen - by anyone who happened to look out from their yellowcreamwarm windows, to shut the blinds, to close the window - lock out the encroaching night, do not let it in - to be glowing, a raging red beacon, fire in the yellowlamplight-interrupted-darkness. As it is, she turns a bend, towards the sea, and fades, a deepblackblue speck in the deepblueblack night.

The Space Between Tick & Tock

The dissolution of her illusions made her feel shrivelled and worn and old inside – all used up. Like a balloon that has been allowed to stay blown up for days, and has deflated and become ugly and useless of its own accord, and all the more pathetic for the memory of what it once had been. As though her mind had been raped over and over without a sound until all of the worth she had felt in it was gone, destroyed. She didn’t even want to look at it. She sat on trains and rejected her thoughts as clichéd, pushed them out like playdough through a spaghetti-maker, looked at the sea and forced her mind to remain blank – no meanings, no metaphors. It was frighteningly easy. She watched television and only watched it – nothing else. She watched it the way obese people keep eating after they’re full, late at night, the way drunkards keep drinking, until they can stay awake no more, oblivion – fuck it, that had become her 21^st century-saturated mantra. And she loved it. What else was there? Worthlessness. People had for so long been focusing on the exterior they forgot there was anything else to see. And if that had happened now, who knows what else had happened throughout the ages that she was too stuck in her own particular time to appreciate. Young monks her own age and younger had spent hours and hours and weeks and years painting patterns into the margins of the Book of Kells. She could not comprehend believing in anything that much. She couldn’t imagine focusing on anything with that much dedication – except herself. She was her own God, her own Book of Kells, but she would have nothing to show for it throughout the ages. Nothing. She would be a statistic in an endless stream, a raging tidal wave of numbers. The general public, in the beginning of the 21^st century; there was her legacy. They would be talking about her. She believed and didn’t believe that people changed with society. She believed simultaneously that people had always been worthless and that they were becoming more so. It was a difficult combination to stomach. She had been better than this. She sat and thought - and disregarded her thoughts as having been thought better by someone else before, but unable to escape her own measly mind persevered in spite of herself – of how the progression of one’s life from birth to death is the slow acceptance of one’s lack of importance in the world, one’s inevitable average role in the system of things, in the mechanics of time. She was just a matter of a few clock ticks, a few bell tolls, and then on to the next, and what harm, what difference? None. She sat and looked, and tried to remember what it had felt like to have hope, to look forward to something more than the weekend or the changing of the seasons. She couldn’t remember, and she knew she had lost something irrevocably, something that had possibly been the best part of herself. And yet she couldn’t mourn what she could not grasp fully, and she sighed, and forgot, and returned to her surface self. Soon these moments of regret would stop altogether, and she would be left in peace to live life on the face of the Earth, without any delving or digging to find white rabbits down dirty, frightening burrows.

Let’s All Sit Around and Watch

Television has a bad reputation. It’s widely considered to be a brain-dead activity, something that is taking over our lives, ruining free-time by creating a society of apathy that is lacking in creativity or communication. Nietzsche said that the modern attitude to leisure time as time to ‘relax’ after work would eventually destroy the intellectual mind, making people think that intellectual pursuits were ‘work’ activities, and thus not something they wanted to do after a hard day at the factory / school / office.  Television’s presence in modern life is extensive, as research carried out by Paul C. Adams in his essay ‘Television as Gathering Place’, has found; ‘Watching television is the greatest single use of “free time”…not only in post-industrial societies such as the U.S., but also in industrial and many preindustrial societies.’ In 2011, Official Nielson figures showed that Irish people watched an average of three hours, thirty-seven minutes a day. That’s a lot of TV. One of the most widespread fears regarding television, is the view that watching it is an anti-social activity. It is well known that the TV must be turned off for family meals, and it is considered a little odd to have the TV on in the background on a romantic date. To an extent, this is fair enough - there are certain occasions when you do not need to hear Ryan Tubridy’s voice in your ear. Having said that, there’s something to be said for television’s presence in the room in certain social situations.

Sure, Nietzsche had a point about leisure activities, and it is true that television has its negative aspects. On the other hand, he also said that men ought to whip their women, and died alone and insane. Maybe, if he had spent a little more time chilling out with friends and family in front of the TV, he’d have had a little more to talk about with the people around him, rather than just writing away angrily in his room all the time. And maybe, if he’d had the opportunity to observe social norms as they are presented to us through interaction within television programmes, he would have been able to get a girlfriend without feeling the need to whip her to keep her in line. Maybe not, but anything’s possible.

My point is that television is a much more useful and necessary social tool than we give it credit for. I believe that television is a bonding device in modern society that allows for more successful interaction and communication in almost every social dynamic, be it within the family, peers, colleagues or couples. In fact, I would argue that many of the social situations we find ourselves in today would not be possible without the mediating device of the television. Television not only provides a talking point for other situations, but the activity of watching it itself allows for a time of communal experience without great effort on the part of those involved. This is also true of films, naturally. Think only of the dreaded First Date situation. Where would all these young budding couples be without the wonderful opportunity for shared experience afforded them through the cinema? We’d all be stuck at home alone like Nietzsche, that’s where. It has been proven that the activity of watching television – or in this case, films – is especially useful for male viewers, as it allows for a level of intimacy with another person that they are comfortable experiencing. This is discussed by Nancy M. Hopkins and Ann C. Mullis in the academic article ‘Family Perceptions of Television Habits’, where they claim that, ‘By focusing primary attention on the  television, a simultaneous activity involving interaction can take place with the co-viewers. Touching is acceptable under those circumstances, while otherwise it may not be.’ In other words, no first moves would ever have been made were it not for the beauty of the screen. Thanks, TV.

Socially, it would be difficult to imagine life without television as a reference point. Friendships within school, the office or college, can often circle comfortably around the shared experience of watching a comedy together, or of watching a great movie in the cinema. It is possible now to quote television amongst your peers without even registering that it’s a quote – they have become so integral to communication, especially, I would imagine, in groups in their teens and twenties. I for one cannot imagine being able to find a single group of friends in Trinity who wouldn’t have automatic reference points (i.e. quotes) that immediately imply a shared meaning from a film or television. I can say almost anything from Father Ted – as can all of Ireland, surely – without ever having to explain myself; ‘I’m putting you on my list of enemies Tony’. For my particular group of friends, shouting ‘Father!’ and running theatrically away, would not suggest a sudden case of insanity, but instead bring to mind The IT Crowd, and through that, our trip to Morocco, where the joke was first formed. Thus one can see the associations brought about through the shared experience of television. Comedy in particular, as I think I have suggested, immediately creates a positive association. Standing around and discussing Peep Show is essentially modern day social code for ‘I have a great sense of humour, and so do you, this is great.’

It is also very important to consider the role of television within the family unit. Television is especially useful in today’s modern world, where parents can often be too tired after a hard day’s work to do anything energetic with their children. According to Hopkins and Mullins; ‘Joint television viewing requires little parental planning or input, unlike playing games or reading to children.’ Thus, although perhaps it is not as actively interactive as other options, it is also more realistically achievable, and provides a means of relaxation alongside familial bonding. It is also ideal for those parent / children relationships that may be a little more awkward and formal than others. Think of all those awful, austere fathers one reads about in old Dickensian-style novels. Wouldn’t it have been wonderful if those fathers and sons had been able to sit down together and watch the rugby, or maybe even an old episode of Fawlty Towers? Look, for example, at The Royle Family. This highlights the importance of television in family relations two-fold. Not only do the characters of the family within the show base their entire lives together around television, but they are also in a show that is itself ideal for family viewing (it’s so, like, meta). Where on earth would Jim, Denise and the rest of the gang be without television? Certainly not sitting around together anyway. The incredible amount of time they spend together as a family is only made possible through the comforting background presence of television in the room. It allows for a natural flow of conversation that can end in a lapse filled by whatever is on the screen, rather than an awkward silence. This, although clearly presented in its most extreme form, is also true of real families spending time together. Having the television provides a safety net for the conversation – if there is a lull, or a lack of anything to talk about, one can watch, or discuss, what is on the screen. It’s a perfect third presence in the room – one that never stops talking, or get’s awkward, or goes to the loo and leaves you alone together with nothing to say – it’s brilliant.

Now I am aware that it could be said that family viewing is unlikely, that children are generally watching the most inappropriate things they can find, off alone in their rooms, avoiding communication, but it was found by the Irish Broadcasting Commission that in 2005, the show that had the greatest number of viewers between the ages of 4 and 17 on an Irish channel was The Late Late Toy Show. Now if that isn’t a family bonding experience, I don’t know what is. Certainly, there is the problem of what is being watched and where, but studies - such as those carried out in the article mentioned above – have shown that; ‘Careful and judicious use of television may suit the emerging lifestyle of dual-career couples and their children, especially if programmes are carefully chosen for co-viewing and attention is paid to the need for discussion during and following viewing.’

Thus I would like to conclude that television, far from being a negative aspect of today’s modern world, is a positive means of sharing and communicating with those around you. It is a very necessary social adhesive in today’s society where most technological developments only encourage further anti-social behaviour – innovations such as mp3s, kindles and lone-player video games. Instead of the old Irish tradition of a storyteller, we have television, a teller of endless tales about anything you like, with pictures to accompany them. Instead of the old English tradition of reading aloud after dinner, or perhaps listening to the young lady of the house play a little Chopin in the evening, we are free not to be bored out of our minds, and watch TV together instead. Not only that, but we can stay at home and wear snuggies while doing it! Sure, television is slowly turning our brains to mush and requires less energy than sleeping – but at least it’s doing it to all of us together.

Vixen 521

He had told me to meet him outside the drugstore at the corner of Lackan Park and Cuneas Street. I stood out in front, so he couldn’t miss me. It was cold. The glare of the gaudy white window shone upon me, the green neon cross, with its constant ‘hmmm’, expanding, contracting, expanding, contracting, forever, and ever. I looked out ahead; the park was dark. I heard the jostling buzz of traffic in the distance, faint sirens, receding horns, life going on - but not here. The street was quiet. I began to feel as though I were on a stage; on show, lit up so bright and the darkness all around – like there could be an audience out there, just beyond my eye’s reach. I always feel like I’m being watched when out in public. Always aware of how I would appear if someone were looking at me at that moment – ever the object. I tugged at my skirt absent-mindedly, and glanced at my reflection in the window. Fine, I’d had to rush, didn’t finish work until well past 8.30, then the Underground was late, and I’d gotten ready quickly to be here for 10. My lips were still ‘Vixen 521’ red. Red lips always made me think of sensual danger, as though blood stained, a devouring woman. Red lips telling a story of past sins; delicious.

I rubbed my gloved hands together to combat the cold. My breath made a billowing stream of condensation each time it left me, a ghost, losing a little of myself with every exhalation. What time is it now? I peered in at the clock behind the pharmacist’s counter at the back of the store – 10.42! I could’ve frozen to death at this stage! I let out a little groan, and started shuffling from one foot to the other to combat the freezing sensation covering my toes. I looked around, willing him to come into sight. A car crawled past filled with young, overweight Latino men. They were quiet, windows up, prowling the streets for something to do, something to ignite them – they stared at me, desiring me to offer them amusement, to give them a good time – I stared back in pointed disgust, then looked away, not wanting to give them an opening. The car trailed off into the blackness, the grumble of the engine fading to nothing, the tail-lights eyes in the back of its head, receding out of sight. It made me feel relieved, then oddly sad, abandoned, as I watched it go. I shook myself. If I had been waiting for anyone else, I’d be long gone by now; home, hot shower, bed, then on the phone to Nancy, talking about how I would give the guy hell next time I saw him. But for this particular man, I’d have waited an eternity. He was different. ‘Debonair’ Nancy had called him, when he’d stopped by the diner that night. He was a real gentleman, just like the ones you read about – dashing, tall, brown hair, blue eyes, brilliantly white teeth… His teeth were so noticeable – I’d never seen teeth before, the way I saw his, I’d just taken them for granted, but they were dazzling, hypnotically white. He was so beautiful. Beautiful. I sighed, and felt butterflies of expectation in my stomach, warding out the cold. I don’t know why he fell for me - it remains a mystery to this day, despite his reassurances and coaxing caresses. The first time we’d met was the night Nancy had called him debonair. He was in a booth, alone, a long camel coat folded beside him. He wore a grey suit, well-fitted, expensive looking, his face buried in the menu. I’d checked myself quickly in the mirror behind the counter before walking over to take his order – my blonde hair tied back in a regulation bun, my green eyes bright, my cheeks flushed from the hot kitchen. When he looked up, his eyes…his eyes! Everything else melted away, all I could see were those piercing blue eyes. I forgot myself, that I was a waitress, that I was 21 and had just come up from the South and lived in a flat on the outskirts of the city in a Greek neighbourhood. That my favourite food was P&J sandwiches, my favourite singer Van Morrison, the early years. At that moment I felt like whatever he told me about myself, or about anything for that matter, I would’ve believed. He could’ve told me the sky was red and I’d have argued it to my dying day. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before – it reminded me afterwards of those hypnotising snakes you see in the east coming out of baskets, the way their eyes envelop you, and seem to go in crazy circles - at least in cartoons. He told me afterwards that it was the two of us falling in love at first sight, but when I told Nancy she said it sounded like the two of us losing our minds at first sight. She hadn’t been a fan of us dating right from the start – she couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was something about him she didn’t like, said he was almost too perfect, that you couldn’t get a firm grip on him, he was like sand slipping through your fingers. I didn’t know much about that, I’d always thought he was just the right amount of perfect.

As I stood reminiscing, forgetting myself, he appeared silently out of the darkness. The cat, which had been loitering around the bins near to me, jumped suddenly and scampered off, startling me out of my reverie. Before I knew it, he was all around me, embracing me entirely. His warmth reminded me of just how cold I was. Momentarily irritated, I tried to push him off. He grabbed my arms, and looked me in the eye without saying anything. I caught his stare, and he smiled. I couldn’t stay mad; I was just so happy to see him all of a sudden. I asked where he’d been, and he said sorry, someone he used to know had held him up, couldn’t get rid of them. I wanted to know more; who did he used to know? A woman? He smiled, and started walking, linking my arm. Yes, a woman – but she was gone now. I didn’t like it one bit. Through my mind went images of him and some beautiful, mysterious woman, foreign no doubt, and petite, in a wild passion, as I stood like an idiot outside a goddamn drugstore. As I brooded, and we walked in the opposite direction to that which the young men in their frustration had gone, away from the liveliness of the city in the distance, I felt him looking at me. But he wasn’t, he was looking straight ahead. It was more that I felt him looking in me. I felt ashamed of my thoughts, as though he could see them, and disapproved. He was a lot older than me. I pushed them out of my mind, and made myself think of the night ahead. Before I could ask, he said ‘we’re going to my place, I think it’s about time you saw it, don’t you?’ He smiled, and drew me near as we walked around the corner of Bauss Street. My stomach turned – his place. His home. It had become a sort of mythical place in my mind, as though it didn’t actually exist. I had waited so long to see it, had begged to see it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it now. I immediately wondered if it had anything to do with the woman he had just been with, and suddenly felt uncomfortable, although I didn’t know why. The street was yellowish and dim. As we progressed, a hum grew loud in my ears. The streetlamp at the far corner flickered and groaned, attempting to stay alive, to fight the fatigue overcoming it. There was something so desperate about it, so disconcerting about the erratic, jumpy light, I shivered. I felt a cold creeping over me. The isolation of the street, the quiet of the night, both slowly dawned on me. As he walked, I listened for his breathing, but somehow felt that I could only hear it when I actively tried. I grew uneasy, and I felt, as though in reaction, his grip tighten slightly around my shoulders. I had a sudden urge to turn back, but I couldn’t. What would I say? I looked up at his face, and saw he was smiling slightly to himself. God he was beautiful. I felt that familiar feeling of reassurance wash over me; but this time something of the uneasiness remained. This was a new sensation, to see him and remain unsure. I didn’t like it.

He led me down a maze of side streets for what seemed like an eternity. My nose stung with the cold, and I nestled into his warm body for protection. He wrapped his coat around both of us, never relenting his pace. I stumbled on, allowing myself to entertain the bulging dark notions that filled my mind. I was jerked back to reality by a sudden halt. I peeked out; we faced the enormous, ornate door of a building that stood cramped between other, similar buildings, on a residential street that was clearly in the higher-class end of the city limits. I’d certainly never been there before, and I knew the city pretty well. In fact, I was proud of my geographical knowledge of it. In the early days, before I’d landed my job in the diner, I’d filled my time by getting $1.25 trams all over the place and walking home from wherever I landed. Sometimes it took hours, but I was guaranteed never to make the same mistakes again. I had a mind for directions, and landmarks, just like my father; so I was told. I didn’t know, I could barely remember him.

He rooted a key out of his pocket, temporarily dismissing me from my warm coat-sanctuary, and fitted it into the gold-leaf lock. It clicked, the door groaned open. ‘You should get some oil for those hinges,’ I said in the hallway, shaking the cold out of my bones. ‘You could wake the whole neighbourhood with that big creaky thing.’ He smiled wryly, and said I was right, he should, but I could tell he had no intention to. I felt foolish. A realisation had been slowly expanding in my mind, like water in a balloon. As the door shut behind us, it burst, and flooded me entirely. I did not want to ascend the stairs to his apartment. Dread seeped through me. He walked directly behind me, so I couldn’t pause to get my bearings. I couldn’t let him see, even for a second. The fear was growing, fear of him knowing I was scared, fear of what lay ahead. My heart thundered, I prayed he wouldn’t hear it. All the while I kept my steady pace, and he kept his behind me. I felt his presence at the back of my neck, tingling. His foot fell on each step like the drum in a funeral march. The panic grew quickly, painfully in my chest. At that moment, all I wanted was to be at home, in my Mother’s house, in my own bed, looking out, through the mesh that stopped mosquitoes entering through the open window, at the stars, hearing only the hum of the insects, the rustle of the great oaks in the garden, feeling the light breeze wafting in, playing over my thin white sheets.

At the top of the stairs, there was a door. He whispered in my ear to open it. I hesitated. I didn’t want to, not yet, I wasn’t ready, I wanted to go home. He tipped me, ever so gently, on the shoulder. I entered, and he followed. The door shut with a heavy click behind us, and we were in darkness. I felt his breath on my neck, felt his presence swell behind me as though his whole form, his whole being, was growing, looming over, encircling me. He lingered just beyond the realms of touch, but I could feel him. It was then the clouds lifted from my foggy, grey mind, I knew. A surge of red. Perhaps I had always known, that it would be like this. I took a deep breath, and turned to face him. His eyes and teeth glimmered in the faint light filtering through the net curtains covering the musty windows. His mouth was open, and he was panting slightly. He saw my face slowly fall into one of defeated recognition, and he smiled.

Mornings with You

Mornings with You,

Sun, rain, gale  or snow,

Light shines through your smiles,

Pure contentment.

Tousled hair pokes out from twisted sheets,

Smooth skin, calm skin, soft to touch.

Warm body, entwined in mine, a mess of limbs,

Morning love.

Groggy eyes, sleepy affection, potential of our day,

Nobody else (that’s how we like it),

Bubble.

Scrambled eggs, toast and tea, duvet on the couch.

Sit so close our hearts might touch,

Bliss.

Title (i)

I marvel at how many amiable people there seem to be in the world. I get a taste of them from le interweb. I marvel because I wonder how, with all these Means of Connectivity, designed so that one can SHARE with friends, never be isolated, it is still so possible (more possible even? Impossible to say, I’m idealising the unlived past) to be so achingly alone. So desperately.

Ah the cliche. Surrouded by water, but not a drop to drink - the greater torture of seeing what you cannot / do not have.

There are so many ways to access people ‘just like you’. Same sense of humour, same interests, same views (is it on some level actually more depressing to know for sure that you are so unoriginal? Everyone comes across the same, everyone links to the same viral videos, everyone comments on the same events, says the same things, with slight alterations in phrasing, thinking the same thoughts - what’s the point in you, if there are so many carbon copies of your early-20s-free-range-chicken-liberal mindset? Just a question) But you don’t KNOW these people, do you? You couldn’t call them, when the cloud settles over you, the cloud that makes everything you see through it look grey, cold (it is impossible to predict, but it comes, and stays a while, and leaves, but will come again, always).

Surrounded by people, but not them, not really, by their bodies, their fleshy armour, their shaved and tanned and plucked outer-shield, ready for public presentation, giving away nothing. Or surrounded by their image, their projected idealised electronic selves, an even better, less approachable version of the physical presence (what’s the point in physical presence now, when there are so many alternatives? It is now possible for a hermit recluse living in a cave to have more friends than I do. Interesting). There is no way in, except through words (damnable limited frustrating meaningless / meaning-FULL words), or friendship, but friendship is a difficult thing. Acquaintances are my personal forte. That I can do. Light chatter, a few laughs, drunken tomfoolery - what is it worth?

These ’friendships’ embody the age we live in - they have the depth of a computer screen. So many people liked and disliked (can I say ‘liked’ now, without Facebook popping into your head? It is worrying, destroying) over such simple little events, their fate decided in my eyes. And why not? Who cares? Snap judgements are a necessary part of life in the age of accessibility, the age of liberalism gone mad, we’re-all-the-same-let’s-all-communicate-online(-but-not-really). It is only my opinion of a person, and there are so many others to take their place, in my world of acquaintances who I barely know really but can use to socialise with, so as not to appear alone. It is safer to reject a person - so they cannot do it first, figure out that you have nothing to offer but uncomfortable truth - you piss and shit and have red marks on your body that cannot be seen under your clothes and you cry sometimes alone at home, and they’ll know, and they won’t want to know. Another layer of bedrock over my body’s cave.

Who are you really? Lord knows.

So many potential relationships - people to turn to in times of need, and to comfort in times of strength - washed away by the onslaught of bodies, by the mass of PROFILES, of too many options. People who, on those awful grey days, would know, and come, and sit and talk, or not talk. But you know none of them. You really only know about three people in the world, (and that is stretching it, that is your outlook on a good day, usually it would be one) who aren’t related to you, and even then, you often communicate in ‘nothings’ - chit chat, surface matter, like those insects that float on water - too light to penetrate.

I write this as though I am open to suggestions, to new people, to friendship, to honest uncomfortable true friendship, and perhaps I am (I like to think I am, but I like to think a lot of things about myself that clearly aren’t true). But perhaps I’m not really. I am a bitch in many almost imperceptible ways (and, it goes without saying, in many perceptible ones too, but those are the less dangerous ways).

We are all both so kind, so open, and yet so incredibly cruel, and closed, and unwilling to allow those who we do not deem worthy, in. Ha, like we have any knowledge of what is worthy - but we hoard the idea that there is some form of social cast. People have always had categories, and now, since we are breaking down those imposed by society, those unspoken, unacknowledged ones of our own are growing stronger, and firmer in their places, like great big tree roots reaching deeper into the fissures of our brains. The inherent cruelty of our own subconscious selves makes solving this impossible (not that I ever proposed solving anything - let it burn and watch the flames grow higher, that’s my motto), but it also makes self-pity, which is so delicious, very possible, so perhaps in a way we have it good. Unsolvable.

Sprouting Mind

I hate these things, these green objects, munch, munch, munch, healthy, healthy, fuck. No - not hate, I don’t hate them - I must learn to stop using the word hate so excessively - I don’t really hate them, I don’t stay up at night thinking about them, plotting my revenge on their existence, they didn’t pillage my land or rape my women (my women?) - I am largely indifferent to them. In my day to day life, their existence alongside mine on this GODFORSAKEN planet is completely coincidental and of no importance. I imagine my life would not be much different did they not exist at all. I wonder. Perhaps my life would be enormously different. Not just due to a few less fart jokes, a few less dinner time battles as a child, different Christmas traditions (what would replace them, I wonder? What is the veg that would take their place, the one that didn’t quite make the cut as things presently stand - asparagus perhaps? Mmm, pass the Christmas asparagus - urine jokes replacing fart jokes - ah, and life goes on. See, I told you it would make very little difference). Perhaps, at a push, in a slightly negative mood, I have a passing, ethereal dislike for them. I realise ethereal is an odd adjective to use here, but ethereal is what I mean - well, dreamy, sort of, is what I mean, but I don’t want to write dreamy, I’m not doing a junior certificate exercise in descriptive language for fuck’s sake. So fuck off with your comments and suggestions. I know what I’m doing. If there is a misspelling, it is intentional - it has some hidden meaning that you don’t understand. Idiot.

Anyway, sprouts. Did I mention I was talking about sprouts? Did you know? Did I know? I knew a girl once whose great aunt was a Brussel-Sprout. Lady Brussel-Sprout the third, married to Lord Sprout of Brussels. It got very confusing for visiting foreign dignitaries, being introduced to Lady Brussel-Sprout of Brussels in the Manor’s vegetable garden - I think it was something of a private joke of hers, receiving them there. She hated sprouts too (no, not hated, had an ethereal dislike, yes), ironically (was there any need for me to say that? You saw the irony without my pointing it out - superfluous, narrator). Couldn’t stand them. In fact, she tried to have them all destroyed - it became her mission in life (so maybe she did hate them after all really, I don’t dislike them enough to do that). She rounded them all up, all over Brussels, and had them buried in a great big pit by her house in the garden. Only problem was, a year or two later what should happen, but the greatest brussels sprout plant that had ever been seen in the history of sprouting things grew straight out of the pit, and grew to such a height, and so extensively, that whenever a slight gust of wind came along, brussels sprouts flew from the branches, and it rained sprouts all over her lovely house and gardens (I realise brussels sprouts don’t grow on branches, I am not completely ignorant of all things cabbaceous [a word to describe plants in the cabbage family, sounds real, doesn’t it? It is real now], but in this case that’s how they grew - I suppose they were seeking revenge).

I have used up my brussels sprouts anecdote. What did you think? It was an idea. An Idea. Ideas, The Great Evaders - they flitter and flutter and appear and elude. They keep themselves busy, you could say. An idea is a leaf, a thin, crispy leaf, ready to fall, but not, swaying, swaying, swaying in the breeze. - never still. It must be exhausting to be an idea. Trying to get heard, trying to shout above the din of more loud, pressing ideas - such as ideas about dinner, and comfort, and those awful bossy ideas, about work and vacuuming and itching. Itching, now there’s one powerful idea. Itching ideas beat brussels sprouts ideas in a second. Itching ideas beat almost all others. Although, maybe they’re just thoughts - ideas have to be notions, not just mental reactions to physical conditions (that sounded more impressive than it was - I’m good at sounding more impressive than I am). Ideas are a different breed - ideas can make money, thoughts can’t. What a shame that I am so preoccupied with thoughts and not ideas. I suppose I am doomed to be poor, but not thoughtless. Ideas though, they remind me of animals passing in the night - difficult, near impossible to spot, moving furtively over dark landscapes. And most people aren’t even bothering with trying to see them  they’re at home, immured against the cold and dark, wrapped up on the couch with tea and a full, bouncing belly and bedsocks. Nothing wrong with that, that’s what I do, but you’re not very likely to catch sight of a passing fox.

Why would you want to catch sight of a passing fox? That’s the problem with extended metaphors - they can extend past the reaches of one’s memory. Foxes have red fur coats and bushy tails and they certainly do not eat brussels sprouts except that one from the West Country - you know the one - he loves them, to be fair, can’t get enough, and boy oh boy can he break wind - he’s causing 10% of the hole in the ozone layer all by himself, purely from his obsessional love for brussels sprouts. I suppose that was another brussels sprouts anecdote I could have told. You never expect you’ll have two. Oh well, too late now.

Useless Students of Ireland

The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) organised a student march on the 16^th of November 2011, to protest fees and the cuts in the grant system. These, as we all know, have been introduced by the current government, as a means of solving the budget crisis being suffered by the Irish economy. Despite pre-election pledges made to the USI last year (most notably by Labour TDs such as Eamon Gilmore and Ruairi Quinn), the government has gone back on its word, and according to The Irish Times, the Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn has admitted that ‘there is an inevitability to fees in some form’. It is being proposed that, at the very least, fees of 4000 to 5000 euro a year will be introduced, and that a cap will be placed on the number of students permitted to third level. The government have also proposed cutting the post graduate grant completely, despite having already cut the undergraduate grant by an average of 8.8%. Without doubt, these proposals are bad news for the student community in Ireland in the current climate. It goes without saying that, if put into action as proposed, the changes would be enormously detrimental to Ireland in the future, as they quite clearly provide a short term solution to IMF requirements, without any foresight as to what the country will need in years to come (i.e. a highly educated workforce that isn’t located entirely in Australia or Canada) to retain financial stability. An Irish government working without thinking about the long term effects, who would have thought, right?

Not only has the USI organised marches over the last two years, but they are also continually promoting their campaign to call up TDs and reminding them of their promises regarding student fees. One of the main tag lines designed to incite outrage this year has been that, when asked, ‘not one stated that they would keep their promises’. This is all very well and good, but the cost of advertising this campaign in two of the main national newspapers has been estimated by USI President Gary Redmond himself as approximately 17, 000 euro, which seems like a shameful amount to spend on what, in my opinion, is a largely superfluous effort towards change.

This may seem like a grandiose statement, but it seems clear to me, and one would think to most, that it is an inevitability that governments lie when trying to attain power in times of election. It seems like a given that one cannot trust government pledges made when their main focus is ensuring votes. I’m not offering a solution to this fact, merely pointing out that an expensive campaign designed to remind us of the fact that we were told lies regarding student fees, is not going to affect the government’s behaviour now that they are in power. It is an inefficient and ineffective way of fighting the introduction of fees – no government minister is going to decide now, after a few phone calls telling him/her that they’re a liar, that they are going to amend their ways and resist changes to student financing. Ultimately, it will not affect their decision making, they have nothing to fear from this campaign, especially as they can assume that most of those protesting now will have been forced to emigrate, and thus be incapable of voting against them by the time the next election rolls around.

The main issue that arises from a study of the USI anti-fees campaign though, is that of the march itself. This year’s march was something to be marvelled at, for all the wrong reasons. The majority of students who could be seen participating in November’s march, were most certainly not there for the cause, or due to any serious consideration or personal outrage at what was being protested against. Most of the students whom I could see, were treating the march as a joke, and making a mockery of the serious and life-changing issues at hand. People made ‘hilarious’ signs, with slogans such as ‘No fees, more gees’, or ‘first Dobby, now this’. It was an opportunity to socialise, to be ‘a student on a march’, not to incite any real change in government policies. This may seem harmless, but it is lessening the seriousness of the message for those of us who truly do want to prevent these devastating proposals from being introduced.

I admire the attempts at change being made by the USI as a whole. It is certainly an admirable cause, and undoubtedly ‘somebody has to do it’. My issue lies with the methods adopted by the USI in making change, in grabbing the attention of government officials and actually affecting their decisions making. One slogan that could be seen at the march was ‘If this was France, shit would be on fire’. Not that I would ever encourage violence, but I’m not sure that I would rather be on a march in which I overhear two girls saying that apparently last year’s one was ‘a great place to meet people’. It seems to me that money, time and effort are being thrown into a campaign that will not in any way affect how the government decides to approach student fees and grants. I am not, on the other hand, proposing a better idea, but then, I’m not running the USI.