Limbs

Slowly Friday slips beneath
The gravel which once was concrete
We travel nowhere down this street
As time unravels at our feet

And night comes on without alarm
It takes us in with seasoned charm
The wistful words, the twisted arm
She stays to please, but comes to harm

The orange glows conceal the hours
The hidden hands, the city cowers
Cocooned in cars and lonely towers
Marooned within these walls of ours

And yet, despite her taunts, we dare
To step unchecked into her lair
The fingers tremble in her glare
She does not fear, nor feel, nor care

Numbers

Numbers. Everywhere, numbers. Passengers get on. “One fifteen” “Two twenty”. “One sixty five”. That’s all they say. No hello. Just numbers. Sometimes they question me. I respond, “No, take the 16A or the 11” and the like. Numbers. Always numbers. Letters too. But mainly numbers. I have a number also. D12. It has replaced my name. It is how headquarters know me. “D12, you’re the 39A at 7:15.” And it’s how I introduce myself to them on the radio too.

I stare out through the windshield out at a sea of license plates. Countries with their names sliced: IRL, ENG, NED, FRA. Counties gutted of their letters: CN, WW, LK, MN. They’re bringing in postcodes soon. All that clambering for upper-class addresses, and soon our homes too will be reduced to numbers.

From the table of elements’ atomic numbers to the galaxies Abell2667 and IOK1, we have numbered everything. Before me the traffic stutters forward, stopping and starting, engines quickly resuming their gentle murmurs. And the rain drifts across the day, decorating the pane in tear-like drops, trickling down the glass in ever-changing glances; rivulets joining up and moving off in larger diagonal currents. Numbers. Everywhere, numbers.

Daylights

It’s funny how bright this place seems now, these fields, open and expansive. Even the woods feel light and easy, unburdened by memory, unhindered by regret. I stroll around the edge, stopping every now and then to read the names which have been carved into the barks of trees; wondering if I might recognise any. So far, I haven’t. Some are barely legible; only a vague imprint that something was once written there remaining. The trees also struggling to conceal their scars; each year falling a little further inside themselves.

It has been so long since I have been back here. My brothers – born a year either side of me: Darren, older; Shaun, younger – have long since left. As have I. We chased this place away when we could. It’s funny though; growing up we spent so much time running about these fields and woods that I keep expecting either one of them to jump out at me from where they have been hiding in the long grass, or to drop down before me from a branch above. I keep glancing over my shoulder, in case they’re coming up behind me with water-balloons.

You always had to be on your toes with Shaun. Ever-grinning, he was always up to something, and I was usually its victim – he was scared of pulling pranks on Darren, scared of how he might react. Shaun was an interminable messer. That cheeky smile fixed to his face, he was more prone to fits of giggles than anyone I’ve known. Strange how, when we meet these days, the memory and the man seem so at odds. The years have pulled down his cheeks. He smiles now only with his lips. The jokes no longer funny, his eyes grew dim.

A year and a week older than me, Darren was the rock of us. It almost seemed like he was born to be older than us, as though he had chosen the role. He was always the one with the plan and Shaun and I would follow him regardless. I remember the bridge he built. We found a log deep in the forest, a large trunk, and he pulled it at least a hundred metres along the forest floor, waded the water with it resting on his shoulder, and laid its end on the opposite bank. Shaun and I had given up after an hour; feeling ourselves to be more of a hindrance than a help. But Darren pulled that log all day, without a break, half a metre at a time. Step by painstaking step. And when it was done, he was proud. And he was happy. When he set his mind to something he could not be stopped. No matter how hard it was, or how long it took, he would not give up until he had succeeded. He never complained and he never cried. I remember how, once, while cutting roses for our grandmother, he fell into a mass of briars, and came out covered in thorns looking unrecognisable. He was so cut-up that I cried, and I could not look at him, but he didn’t shed a single tear. He didn’t even seem upset. And I really believed that he could not be hurt.

I continue walking along the track where the field and forest meet. No kids play here today. Maybe they don’t come here any longer. I go on a little further, and then stop; contemplating whether or not to venture into the woods a little. I look in past the trees, and then back out across the field. It is so much brighter here than I had recalled. Even the breeze is light. And as the sun streams down gently, I am stricken with sadness; a sense of grief, knowing I have lost something, but unable to remember what. And I steal off into the past. We catch minnows in the shallow pools; and cautiously inch across them when they freeze each winter. A fox’s den in the undergrowth; we lie in wait, us three, camouflaged, under mounds of leaves. Defending tree-huts from invasion, alliances rising and falling. In the long grass, after school; nervously; my first kiss. Her name escapes my memory, her face too.

It’s strange how far we let ourselves drift. Drifting off, and away, and apart. We were so inseparable then; my brothers and I, keepers of a sacred bond. Now we are grown, and we do not share our fears anymore. We divided them up between us, and each buried a piece.

For there are those other memories too. The ones we hid, and bade ourselves keep. The ones that Shaun could not laugh off; that Darren could not fight. Memories of hiding out here past dusk, refusing to go home; of the things we could not do then, of the things we did not understand. Feeling afraid. And over time, that fear became anger, and I could not put it out. We locked them up in the dark, and made them dull; those memories. We left them in our wake, so that they might fade. And the details slip away towards obscurity, but never fully get there. The colours dampen in the mind. Who wore what when? Who did what to whom? And in what order? These things go. Dialogue is erased, the faces are drawn blank; the light drained.

I look at the land about me, the woods, the sheer brightness of the day, the colours so vibrant in the daylight, and it hardly seems like this could have been the place.

Our memories are elusive. They paint their own past. Or cover it over. We are left with a negative; a small dark clip of the truth, and that is all that we are able or prepared to see. We are afraid to blow it up, afraid of the bigger picture. These things we have seen; they have shaped us. They direct us still. And we will keep them with us always, whether we mean to or not. So, no, we have not forgotten; but then again, nor do we remember.

Crumbs

How long had it lain there? Hiding behind the remote controls; controls which either work for appliances that don’t, or vice versa. If one of them did function, I have no doubt that I would, this very instant, be upturning the entire front room, looking for it, and effing and blinding the blasted thing, and breathing loudly through my nostrils, and cursing the fuckhead who had put it in such a ridiculously unfindable place. Naturally, it would turn out to have been me. And, it would be down the back of the sofa; not that it had slipped there. No. I would have put it there to hide it on someone else, and then I would have forgotten I’d done it, and the prank would have backfired on myself.

I have lost so much money down the back of that sofa while napping in the evenings, that I now look on it as a kind of comfortable piggy bank. In a couple of years, if the housing market and my increasing narcolepsy continue in their current directions, I’ll find enough change down there to buy a nice place overlooking a nicer place overlooking an even nicer place overlooking what’s left of The Liffey.

But, it is still looking at me from behind the remote controls, inviting me to taste it. Cellophane wrapped, its gorgeous bun-ness tempting me to partake of its delicious chocolaty-ness. How long has it been there though? I saw it first some time last week. Where did it come from? I’m not sure. I don’t know whose it is. Every evening I sit here with my housemates talking, and there sits the little cake on the edge of the table crouching behind the zappers, looking up at me. But now, I am alone. And I am weighing the options in my head.

It has an air about it, that cake, as though it had been specially baked for someone, and therefore I ought not steal their gift, and yet I also think that had its owner really appreciated their gift, they should have eaten it by now, and if they had been waiting to eat it later and savour it, and cherish it, and give it its due attention, they ought not to have left it in such a conspicuous place. The reasoning process stirs. I already know the verdict. I just need to justify it, work out the probable cause, tamper with the evidence, select the jury. We all know I’m going to eat that cake. I just need to go through the mental motions or else it would just be heartless. Who would abandon such cocoa-laden delicacy? Who would ignore such saliva-inducing chocolacy? It has been slightly crushed or misshapen by its ungrateful intended eater. This cake’s owner loved it not, not like its baker did. It has been left to me to appreciate this crumbly muffinesque offering. In fact, not only would it be right for me to eat it, I fear it would be wrong for me not to. It is my duty to eat it. It is my calling.

I move the remote controls aside and eye it greedily. I pick it up and hold it to the light, like a priest with communion. The cellophane wrapping glistens; hopefully it has kept it fresh. I pull the cellophane off slowly. I bring the bun to my nose and inhale the care with which it was made. I bite into it and pause; even though it’s not, it still tastes warm. I hold it in my mouth for a second before I begin to chew, slowly at first, then faster, before I swallow it down into my hungry, hungry belly. The second bite I eat a little more quickly, and then I just shove the whole rest of the bun, over three quarters of it, in to my mouth, in a moment of uncontrollable self-indulgence, crumbs flying, drool slipping out, murmurs escaping in little ‘m’s and groans. And it is so satisfying, so good, like I imagine a vampire’s first kill must be.

And just then Damo walks in. He fixes me angrily. My jaws cease from their movement.
“Eating my bun, are ye?”
What can I say? I clearly am. I look up at him with what I imagine is a mixture of guilt and surprise. He looks at me with disdain; a look of continued disappointment in me.

And then, in my surprise, the cake, reduced to mulch in my mouth, goes slightly down my throat and gets stuck. And suddenly I can’t breathe. I try punching myself in the back, but I can’t dislodge it. Damo stands watching me choking, as though deciding whether or not to intervene; whether my life is really worth saving. I stand up, and with my eyes, and ever-reddening face, I plead him to come to my aid. I beseech him. He looks doubly irritated now, but he turns me around, and putting his fists under my ribcage, he pulls up sharply, giving my lungs a sharp squeeze, the food is forcibly ejected from my throat. It flies out of my mouth and lands in a mess on the carpet. I fall to my knees, gasping the air I was briefly deprived of.

Damo turns to leave the room. He looks down at me unsympathetically, shaking his head

“Get yourself together”, he says disapprovingly, and he walks out.

I am in a heap on the floor, legs tucked under me, with one hand supporting my upper body. I am dejected and humiliated. I disgust myself. I am shamed by my feebleness; my lack of will power and restraint; my clumsiness. Why do I do these things I wonder, and why do they happen to ‘me’.

Before me, the ex-muffin soils the floor. I look down at the brown crumbs scattered there. Amongst the crumbs lies the offending object, still stuck to itself in a sort of ball. That mass of chocolaty brown that was stuck in my throat, that murderous lump. ‘It sure tasted good though’, I recall. It sure did. Maybe the nicest muffin I’ve ever known. I wonder how something so simple could give such pleasure. And I’ve already chewed most of it up. And it’s not like it was in someone else’s mouth. And it’s not like anyone would know. I scoop it up and look at it closely, pulling off a small piece of fluff that has attached itself. I look about me, and listen for steps.

‘It’d be a terrible shame to see it wasted’, I say to myself.

And then I toss the chewed-up chocolate back into my mouth, savour its loveliness for one short but-oh-so-sweet moment, and then send it straight down my gullet, and on into my belly where it belongs.

Leaves

He always goes to the same place, when he goes. We tend to let him there a while before we’d go after. Usually, one of his brothers goes to get him. And if they fail to coax him out, I go.

Behind the old library are the woods. They stand still; quiet in the sunlight. As I enter, looking up, the sky above seems to shift from blue to white. But, as I go deeper, the sky itself gets lost; pushed aside by ancient branches, blacked out by a sea of leaves. It is neither night nor day here. A few minutes in, lies a long-fallen oak, around which have grown bushes and brambles, which seem to be consuming it. It is here where I find him.

I walk around it to where he hides. Even though, I cannot hear him, I know he is there. I can picture him, trying to be silent. I speak to him softly. He doesn’t answer. I try again, and he tells me to go away. But of course I do not leave. I move to find him. I part the briars which dangle down over the log and see him sitting within. Only his face breaks the dark. He looks up at me, but does not return my smile. And we stay like this a while, mainly in silence; me, outside crouching; him, inside with his knees to his chin.

And, so I edge in further, lifting the thorns carefully, stooping my way through, and sitting down beside him. The brambles form a kind of roof. Last year’s leaves carpet the ground. It is cosy; his den. I like it here. And I can see a bit of me in him. I can see why he likes it in here. I almost wish I’d found this place first. We sit here in silence for a time; I don’t know how long. This place is without time. It may be afternoon outside, but in here, there is no day; the leaves having extracted the light.

Eventually, he speaks. “Anthony McBride stood on my train set and crushed it”, he tells me; his tone betraying no anger, only sadness.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to”, I assure him.

But, no, he tells me how Anthony had explained what he was going to do, before, while, and after he did it, and I feel cheap for doubting my boy. That train set didn’t cost much, but I know what it meant to him.

I turn to him and thumb his cheek, clearing the dirt, which always seems to make its way towards young boys’ faces. I tell him that he is better than guys like Anthony McBride, and tell him how good he is, and how strong, and lowering my eyebrows, leaning closer, I tell him conspiratorially how we are going to show him. He turns his head and catches my eyes.

And then, bottom lip quivering, eyes welling up with tears on the verge of escape, he adds, “And Mary Jo says my ears look like a mouse’s.”
As though, somehow, this was worse.

Streets

Thursdays, 5:30. This is where weekends begin for me. I’m lucky. The sun is out. My coat is bunched into my bag. I stroll home avoiding the shadows. I cross Dame Street, go through Temple Bar, up Capel Street, turn left before the sex shops, around The Capel Building, and then along the Luas tracks behind The Four Courts to Church Street, and on towards Stoneybatter; choosing the side-streets or main streets, depending on the colour of the traffic lights as I get to them.

The city is in a great mood. Dublin rarely looks as beautiful as when viewed from Capel Street Bridge on a sunny evening in May. As a nationality we tend to panic in good weather. Our awareness of its fleetingness triggers some hereditary response; solar warmth is as rare to us as solar eclipses are to most of the rest of the world. We know that it will not last. Driven by something beyond logic, we know we must make the most of this momentary reprieve. So, all previous arrangements are scrapped or adjusted, and we launch ourselves into the light, and put aside all our better judgment, to revel in the rays of summer.

I am not a great lover of the sun, but nonetheless, I enjoy the walk home, filling melodies with random rhymes. I turn right before the Smithfield Luas stop, left before the Whiskey Factory bar, and go up through the square and on to North King Street. I pass Delaney’s, which I have never entered, and wonder if anyone’s inside cowering in the dark, loathing the light, nursing pints of plain.

My housemate and I disagree on Delaney’s. We both pass it most mornings on our respective ways to work, and see the stragglers of the night before huddling in the doorway, flicking lighters with numb and uncoordinated fingers, battling against the wind, as they cling in vain to the hope that it might still be yesterday. We see them emerging into the morning light looking dazzled, having forgotten the impermanence of night-time. Whereas he admits to being tempted on hungover Mondays to write off the whole day, and pop in for breakfast beer and liquid lunch; for me, Delaney’s is one of the things which; as I step towards work reluctantly, head down, hands in pockets; makes me appreciative that I have a shit job to go to. Delaney’s at half eight on a Monday morning reminds me to be grateful.

I turn past the recently completed, but discouragingly unoccupied, office buildings, towards Brunswick Street, where the Italian Restaurant’s neon sign accosts everyone who turns that corner – no matter how many times you have seen it, it always takes you by surprise – though on this evening, it is not yet lit-up. Inside it is homely and calming, with simple but appetizing courses, but the huge, glowing letters flashing red, blue, pink outside, are more evocative of a Shibuya massage parlour or hostess bar than an Italian eatery.

Nearing home I cross the road to stay in the sunshine, still humming my little ditty, half in my head, half out loud depending on my proximity to other people. I’m too self-conscious to walk the streets on my own singing openly. I guess I worry what other people, complete strangers though they may be, think about me. Perhaps I shouldn’t. But, I do, and I don’t foresee myself changing in this regard at any time soon. At the moment someone passes me, I have lowered my singing to almost complete silence – although the song itself never stops – and the further away I get the louder I sing, When off on my own in fields, beaches or mountains, unsurrounded by friend or foe, I can really let it all out, and sing as loud as my poor blackened lungs will allow. Up ahead, between Centra and The Elbowroom centre, where the health-conscious better themselves with yoga, pilates, martial arts and other wholesome lifestyle choices, I see a man and a woman coming towards me, cans in hand. I begin to sing a little more quietly. Then, I see the woman pass her cider to the guy, look around guiltily, and move as if to sit down on the ground. And it is then that I see the trickle.

Perhaps deciding it too far, she has shunned the nooks and gateways round the corner on Grangegorman Road, and has opted for the comfort of the open footpath as her best bet for bladder relief. Next to her, her drinking partner does his best to preserve her dignity by standing in front of her, but; not wanting to have wee on his runners, is standing about half a metre to her right; rendering his efforts completely futile. His attempt at keeping sketch is equally ineffective. He glances left and right, like a meercat in peril, stooping his neck out of pointless instinct, but though he does this unaffectedly – he has evidently kept sketch before – he is not quite as good at it as he ought be. Again, he casts his eyes up and down the street to see if any people are coming, and this is where he really falls down in his task; there clearly are. There are people coming in both directions, carrying shopping bags and briefcases, headphones in ears, days behind them, traipsing homeward. He is on alert, but for what? He is like a kid, who when asked to keep an eye on the cake in the oven, does so, in childlike literality, by standing there by the cooker, and watching the cake rise, harden, brown, blacken, crack, dry up, and eventually catch fire, and when his mother returns to find the kitchen ablaze and starts to chastise him with “I told you to keep an eye on the cake!” will reply in genuine innocence, “I did. I watched the whole thing.”

This seems to be turning into a Thursday tradition. Last week, again as I wandered home, I had come across a similar spectacle. I had turned off North King Street to nip through Red Cow Lane to Brunswick Street, when I spotted some booze-hounds hanging out outside the apartments there. I continue undaunted, but then I saw one of them scurry across to the opposite side of the street; I glimpsed a flash of fleshy arse, knees crouching between cars, I couldn’t take it, I turned back to take the long-cut home. With my poor vision, I hadn’t caught whether it was a man or a woman squatting there, decorating the cobbles. If it had been a woman, it wouldn’t have been so bad somehow, but had it been a guy, well… let’s just hope it wasn’t. I had toyed briefly with the idea of returning later to see which it had been, but I quickly decide against it. This was knowledge I could live without.

A few weeks before that, late at night, on the opposite side of the street from where this lady now leaks, my friend and I had found a woman surrounded by bags passed out face-down on the street outside the entrance to the apartments there. Eventually, after a little coaxing, we managed to wake her; she was bleeding from her forehead, and was incoherent. She tried to assure us she was fine, and that we should just leave her there, but we were unconvinced. We were soon joined in our concern by a girl entering the building, which we were glad about, as anyone who had happened upon the scene and seen two adult males standing over a bleeding corpse-like woman, may not have interpreted it as we would have wished them to. We got her sitting up, and she became slightly more communicative. The Gardai arrived not long after, and while my friend was explaining how we had come across her to them, she threw up a vile lumpen pink on her lovely black suede boots. I recoiled at the stench, and nearly retched myself. The Gardai took over and we didn’t hang around.

And yet I love these streets. Through Duck Lane with its whiskey drums and Americans; an alley evocative of a quaint mountainside hamlet, and at the same time some kind of mugger’s paradise. Past the chimney viewing tower and out into Smithfield square; stinking of horseshit every first Sunday, and blaring ice-techno every December. Up Manor Street, past the Charity Shop; the only shop in the city which lets customers price things themselves. Next to that is Dean’s Bargain Basement, specialist in spatulas, Godzilla videos, and illuminated portraits of The Virgin Mary. Further up on the same side is Drink with its affable chat – I’m often tempted to crack open one of the cans I have just bought there, and treat the counter as a bar, and natter on about RTE 2 sports panellists, new album releases, and whatever shit-shat comes to mind.

So now, as I draw near to this pair of Brunswick Street libertines making the most of the broad daylight, I am caught by the smell of wee. I see the stream creeping its way down the path. I pass them, stepping over the rivulets of urine flowing down from her, running over the kerb in tiny waterfalls collecting in a yellow puddle by the roadside. I turn to look back, out of some weird morbid compulsion, and see her stand upright, and reach for the band of her tracksuit bottoms to pull them back up, but it was only then; when she brought her hands down towards her knees to grip the elastic that she realised, or remembered, that she had never pulled them down to begin with.

Buttons

She arrived with buttons; varied and colourful. She did not say so, but they clearly pleased her greatly. In fact, she said nothing. Wordlessly, she shook the bag with glee. I was not sure how to react. I feigned mutual enthusiasm, but I was bemused, happily bemused. Bemusement trumps understanding any day. She held the phone to her ear, and spoke rarely. I looked on from the steps. With a slight shrug of the shoulders, and a casting of her eyes towards the receiver, she made an awkward apology. She did not need to. With a failed attempt at grace, I pointed palm-wards down the street and we began to walk.

She had been talking to a friend. Or rather her friend had been talking to her. Her contributions being little more than ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘maybe’ and ‘bye’. Perhaps, she knows the guy who does the voice for the menus on telephone banking and misses the sound of his voice. Is this a glimpse into her routine? Perhaps he is no longer of this world, and this is how she is coping with his passing; by listening to his voice each day, pretending to herself that they still talk. I do not mention my suspicions. She might feel I am mocking her. Or even worse; what if I were right? I remain silent.

Over carrot cake and tea, we watch the people on the wall. They were, as we had been, transfixed by the spider’s eye. And the spider too, was transfixed by them. On the wall visitors smiled with wonder, unhidden and unashamed, and knew nothing of the projector behind our heads in the closing café. The spider tilted his head; his photographic eye latching onto a new face. There’s only 15 seconds of fame for these stars. A waitress mops between our feet.

On the screen a guy with a blond tempest of hair laughed genuinely. Had he known he had an audience, would he have laughed the same? Would he have tried to tame his escaping fringe? We all fall short of the image we create for ourselves. How different we become when we know the cameras are on. Mirrors have ruined us all; from Narcissus to Joan Rivers

The first bathroom door shows symbols for men and women. However, inside, there are only toilets for women or for the disabled. Are we supposed to draw comparisons? Is this a comment on the male species? Galleries tend to increase people’s wariness of everything. They increase paranoia. I once studied a fire extinguisher in The Tate Modern for about 3 minutes trying to figure out if it was an extinguisher or a piece of art. I never did work that one out. Perhaps I made it art by thinking it so. I’m sure some wanker somewhere has written a treatise on this idea. The disabled door is locked. I turn around and walk out. I can keep it in.

I want the electronic t-shirt, but they will not sell it to me. They tell me when I may return. I will not. I am too whimsical. I will be glad they didn’t sell it to me tomorrow.
We leave the people playing with their robots and we leave the robots playing with their toys.

Before the show, she gives me a die. I like dice. I do not gamble. I just enjoy its feel. Six sides of chance between the fingers. Twenty-one dots to do you down if you dare; so simple, so cruel. More often than not, die are miscalled their plural; dice. I kind of prefer the erroneous word. ‘Dice’ sounds better. ‘To dice with death’ makes sense. ‘To die with death’ isn’t even an oxymoron, it’s just moronic. What else do people die from? I roll it in my hand. We go in. The lights go down.
.
The players revolve and the voices soar. The sofa deflates and the ball-bearings roll to their points on the floor. The dogs burn and the astronaut suffers. The piano mourns and the unmarried women will cry out for lovers. The mattress dances and the keyboard grooves. Copernicus renounces, yet still it moves. The plates of the planet collide all around us. Future tsunamis intending to drown us. Satellites drifting out of their orbit. Existence cares little if we can afford it. The lights come up. The actors bow. We applaud, twice. It feels fair somehow. We empty out past the uncurtained stage. From a room in his name, Beckett returns to his grave.

She is tired, but the evening is not. She concedes. The night wins out.

The bar is recycled; almost too trendy for itself. We borrow stools and order cheese. The Irish will never be European, no matter how much wine we drink. Perhaps that’s the point. We haggle over slices and wait for more crackers. She does not eat the rinds. I have less class.

We talk of bills and dating; of Godot and tidiness. There are toilet-seats on the wall. I wonder if they have toilet-seats on the toilets too.
“They remind me of the ‘Dior’ logo” she says.
She is astute. We know each other both little and a lot.

“I used to have so much more passion for creativity” I profer.
“Yeah, well. I used to be French” she adds.

I roll the die. It falls to the floor. As I pick it up I see it’s odds. I stand up and pocket the die.
“Shall we go?” I say.
“I guess so”, she replies.
We leave the bar and outside say goodnight. I turn my way, she turns hers, and we start our walks back home.

I am jacketless, refusing to admit that the summer, which never arrived, is already leaving. I wish I’d checked out that bar’s toilets for more reasons than one now. But I can hold it in. I wish I didn’t have to work tomorrow. I wish men weren’t disabled. I wish the spider had seen me smile. I wish they’d sold me that t-shirt. I wish I’d worn warmer clothes. I wish Copernicus could see us now. I wish the plates of the planet would make peace. I wish the pieces of the puzzle would find their positions. I wish the prayers of the pagans would find their magician. I wish that our moon would cease from its drifting. I wish its darknesses were sooner in lifting. I wish we had learned to live without. I hold it in, but wish I’d let it out.

Lessons

“Come in. Come in.”
The invitation hangs; undeclinable, but untempting.

“For one last supper that I will make you.”
A weariness pervades the air. A certain inevitable gloom tinges the melody.

It is a song that I have long held close to me. For me, it is not just the song itself, but the memories I associate with it. What a song means and what a song means to the person who appreciates it are not always one and the same. But, it is here where the beauty of music lies. Any listener’s take on a song is as valid as the song’s composer’s. It may hit you in a way that hadn’t been intended by its writer. Songs can be inseparable from where and when you heard them; more than the sum of their parts, I guess.

Written by Will Oldham, and released under the name of Palace Brothers, one of his many monikers, this song entitled ‘Come in’ and released on a hard-to-find EP, is, for me, one such song. To me, it is not just a song, but a play, a dialogue, a poem, a glimpse, a critique, a riddle, a glance, and a ticket.

“It is a small one for I am no cook”
Such pre-emptive apology as this bodes not well.

Offering us snippets of this final meal, the lyric leads us to a typically ambiguous lack of conclusion. Like eavesdropping on one half of a conversation, we are left to wonder about the other, the you, who, though present in the scene of the song, remains elusively silent.

I used to love this song. I heard it first back in the day when I knew how many albums I had. I had this one on a cassette that I copied from a friend who had copied it from his brother. I loved cassettes. You could throw them around, treat them like crap, and they were fine. And if they did get broken, it was generally the cassette player’s fault. And, in any case, when they did get chewed up, they could always be taken apart and repaired with tiny pieces of tape, and rewound on a pen by swinging it about like one of those clackers that fans used to bring to football matches in the black and white days.

I heard ‘Come in’ again recently, and I still loved it. The language feels slightly archaic, yet conversational, and this adds to its charm, and lends mystery to the scene. We are, I suppose, to read between the lines. It’s what’s not said that intrigues, more than what is.

However, not everyone accepts the invitation. I recall playing it to a group of students, years ago, in a small language school in China. It was my first ever teaching job. It was a beginners level English class in Shenyang, China. And I, noting that the lyrics were relatively simple, and the song was entirely in present simple tenses, thought the song would be understandable to my students. But, it was more than just a simple teaching aid. I treasured this track. And I had hoped that some might warm to the melancholy of the song, and appreciate its air of restraint. I had also presumed that the awful sentimental quality of music that my class seemed to enjoy with such delight was due only to the fact that they had not been exposed to the kind of music which held such sublime beauty and depth as the one which I was about to play them. I had expected they would be moved by the music, and brought to tears by its passion and loss which had been deftly camouflaged in images of the mundane.

“You have a long way where you are going”.
Perhaps it was these lines more than any of the others which held such resonance with my former self, and which still holds pangs for me now; the line remaining the same, but one’s understanding of it ever evolving.

I had envisioned them nodding knowingly when he sang, “I am happy. Yes I am happy”, a claim which is belied and betrayed by his breaking, mournful voice. I had imagined they would be absorbed by the unspoken subtext, which is left to the listener’s imagination alone; and that upon hearing, they would be overawed at the simplicity of such a subtle song, which is so laden with sadness; and that they would be brought to tears by the unexplained parting of the song’s characters, and their intertwined pasts, which are only barely alluded to; their humanity aroused by the covert tones of failure and bitterness, and the seemingly undramatic pictures that we glimpse therein; and that they would hold me aloft for introducing them to the gifted visionary that is Will Oldham; and that they would be uniformly in awe of the great man, and thank me for the thoughtfulness I had shown them by so bringing him into their lives.

“They are not family. They are not friends”.
Though this was true, I felt that we knew each other some, and I had hoped that music, over which I had formed many of my closest bonds, might have taken us that extra inch.

As the tape played on, and the bewilderment, discomfort, obvious dislike, and in some cases clear disgust, appeared on their faces, I grew increasingly less optimistic. They looked toward the tape-recorder wondering if it was broken, or if the batteries were dying, or if I had put on the wrong tape – some recording of my own I had made as a teenager – but no, I was playing the song I had chosen to play, and that squeaky, crackling voice was recorded like that, and okayed by the singer and producer, and what’s more; people, me included, apparently insisted they liked it, and thought it divine. The students read the words I had given them, and some of them even filled in the missing words as they heard them, but with their heads shaking in disapproval. They glanced around at each other in confusion, sharing whispered jokes and muffled laughter; the dismay at the sheer absurdity of what they were being forced to endure hanging in their eyes. One second short of three minutes, this chorusless song seemed to drag forever, as my initial excitement turned to despair, and on to embarrassment and a slowly rising shame for my sick and uncultured mind. I did not know what beauty was. Music was beautiful. It was a thing to be enjoyed. Music had nicely tuned pianos; demure, yet feisty pretties with angelic voices; and gelled-up, suit-wearing bad-boys, with slick moves; and melodies, melodies that you could sing along to if you liked; and lyrics which could be fathomed, and explained, and whose poetry was undeniable. I was the one who had so much to learn about beauty. I could learn much here, I was told. And there weren’t just upbeat disco tunes, but mournful ballads were plentiful too, for sensitive types such as I. Oh yes, I had much to learn.

“Or am I silly for saying such things?”
It can only be concluded that I was.

And I did learn something valuable that day; as a teacher, and as a person. And, I try, though I don’t always succeed, to bear them in mind as much as one can. I learned this; do not presume your taste to be superior to those of others, or your experience of art to be any more meaningful or deep, by reason of its obscurity. And secondly, if you decide to play a song to your students in an English language class, play Mariah Carey.

Echoes

Echoes

Here comes Azusa with her handbag in the crook of her arm. I’m not in the mood for this. I’ve just learned that some prick has just cost me 500 quid. I hadn’t managed to get anyone to move into the room I’d been staying in in Dublin, but my flat-mate had eventually found a guy who moved in. Trouble was; he never paid the deposit which should have come to me. Then, this new guy’s friend moved in, and they proceeded to wreck the gaff, having mad mid-week parties and what not. So, pretty soon, everyone I knew who had lived in that apartment had left, and I still hadn’t got the money that I was owed. So, here I was, stuck in Japan, on the other arse of the earth, cursing these unknown French cunts, swearing vain oaths of vengeance to any unfortunate who happened to cross my path.

Otherwise, Japan had been great, with the exception of the ever-looming question that hovers ominously over every EFL-ers head, namely, “What am I actually doing with my life?”

Anyway, here comes Azusa with her handbag in the crook of her arm and I’m not in the mood for such unjustified upbeatness. I brace myself.

“Hello. Hello.” she says.

She would make a fantastic London PC I think to myself. I can even picture her wearing the bobby hat. If British policemen were a bit more like Azusa, the nation might have a lot fewer social problems.

“How are you?” I ask.
“Good, good, good” she replies.

She’s gotten rid of her old habit of saying every word two times, and replaced it by saying every word three times instead.

”You’ve dyed your hair” I say.

She answers by widening her eyes and the muscles of her face tighten – the universal expression of ‘I haven’t understood what you said’.
“You’ve changed the colour of your hair” I say.
“Yes, yes, yes” she says, “I’m looking for a job”.
“Azusa, that doesn’t make any sense” I say.
“Yes, yes, yes” she says as though I have just completely agreed with her and was just as convinced by her reasoning as she obviously is.
“I want job, so I change my hair.”
“Okay” I say with a slightly elongated ‘kay’.
“Are you going to Enoshima?” she asks.
“Of course” I say, “all the teachers have to go”
“Me too. Me too. Enoshima. Enoshima”.
She only said it twice. Interesting. Maybe she only says one syllable words three times, and those with two or more syllables she says twice. Perhaps there is method in her madness. She laughs. Why? I wonder. Why not? I suppose.

“Well, I like your new dark hair” I add. “If I were an employer, I’d give you a job in a second”.
Her eyes widen again. “You have a company?”
“No, no. If I had one” I say with a stress on the ‘if’.
“Oh, oh, oh”
The lobby is filling up. I see Tom’s EC is breaking up slowly. So is Brendan’s. They both look like they know what there doing, even if Brendan is demeaning our entire profession by sitting on a giant multicolored testicle. That pre-class genktivity vibe is in the air, before all the students go to their respective rooms and become suitably terrified and uncomfortable.
“I haven’t seen you for a while” I say.
“Yes, yes, yes” she says as though I have just complimented her. “very busy, very busy”.

So there is a kind of pattern to her repetitive way of speaking.

“Are you coming to school tomorrow?” I ask.
”Yes, yes, yes. I come tomorrow”.

I ask her in Japanese if she is a serious student.

“Hai. Majime, majime” she replies.

So, it’s not only English; she does it in her own language as well. She is a riddle. But, maybe, maybe a decipherable one. Maybe she is a riddle which cannot be understood logically, but one so indefinable that it leads to enlightenment.

And once again she smiles. She smiles this massive smile that only Azusa can smile. Positivity bursts from her teeth. Optimism emanates from her lips. Her wide-for-Japanese eyes dances like little pixies.

“Ok, I have to go and teach”, I say. “See you later”
“Yes, yes, yes. Me too. Me too” she says.

‘No, you’re a student and I’m a teacher’, I think to myself, but hestitate befire speaking. My eyebrows pull down and I look at her inquisitively asking her using facial expression if that’s what she really meant to say, but she just beams back broadly, and it is then that I really realize that she does have to go and teach. She has to go and spread the word of Azusa, spread the word of her weird and wonderful world, infuse the earth with her unphasable positivity. She has much more to teach than I or anyone ever could. She hurries out, taking those tiny steps she takes. Her feet move at a ridiculously fast speed compared to the distance that they cover. If she fully utilized her energy she would be out of the building in ten seconds. But then again, the energy that flows through her is infinite and she doesn’t have to worry about conserving it, or wasting it, like most people have to. There she goes. There goes Azusa with her handbag in the crook of her arm, and I am once again certain that life is a beautiful, beautiful thing, and that this world is a ‘good, good, good’, ‘place, place, place’.

Teeth

It’s been quite the week. And sure, it was a cold one too. When it’s genuinely freezing, time seems as though it’s close to standstill. Waiting on a bus becomes an endurance test. Getting out of bed requires will-power unimaginable in the summer months. But, so it goes. Don’t we all forget what cold feels like? Every winter seems like you have never felt cold before. The body does not remember cold, like we remember memories. We know that it must have been cold, but struggle as we may, our bodies just can’t recall it.

I’ve been working a bit more too, which pleases the pocket, but tires the mind. Still, it’s only for a while. And, on top of work, I’d been learning to drive, and going to football practice. Yesterday, I had to go to the old dentist. It’s just across the road, which is handy.

Everyone hates dentists. I’m sure even dentists hate each other. I’d been putting off going there for a while; far too long as it turned out.

I was the only person in the waiting room, which is always better, not just because it means you won’t have a long wait, but because the presence of others increases the communal sense of fear. People in waiting rooms in dentist’s and other medical facilities, don’t make small-talk with each other like they might at an interview or in a hairdresser’s. And this silence makes the anxiety worse.

I only had to wait about 5 minutes before I was called in. The dentist called my name, and I went in. She asked me some basic questions about my medical history and what-not and then I sat down on the chair. She lowered me down in the chair, and I was slowly moved into a near-horizontal position. She brought the big light over me face and told me to open me mouth, which I did. She had a look in, poked around and then stopped after no more than fifteen seconds.

“Mr Hall” she said dryly. “You have no teeth whatsoever in your mouth.” She seemed shocked?

“Ish shat shtwange?” I asked her.

“Yes” she said, “Very strange indeed. Most people your age have loads of teeth.”
“Sho, shcan you chlean shtem?” I asked.
“Well, No”, she replied “I can’t clean them. You don’t have any teeth there to clean.”
“When did you start losing them?” she asked.
I shrugged me auld shoulders. I had no idea. I couldn’t remember what had happened them all. I sat up on the electrical chair and tried to recount.

I know I used one of my canines to block a leak in the engines of a plane on a flight to Sudan that would otherwise have had to make an emergency landing in the desert. I swapped one of me molars with a banshee in exchange for some magic pants. I gave one of my incisors to a baby who didn’t have any himself and was having trouble opening a bottle of Erdinger. I gave most of my upper teeth to a little juggling squirrel, who used to juggle thumb-tacs, but was giving himself squirrel stigmata so often that he was close to retirement. There were so many holes in his hands that his hands were barely visible anymore. You could just make out his lifelines and very little else. I asked him why he didn’t use acorns, and he said that every time he tried acorns, his instinct would overcome his co-ordination prowess and he he’d wolf them all down before he’d even got to the old under-leg throws bit. Anyway, I sold him five teeth for a 10% share of the profits, and he agreed, and every year since, he has sent me four to six big boxes of Weetabix which is what squirrels use as currency, so I reckon he’s doing pretty well, though I haven’t seen him in years, and amn’t really up to date on that particular rate of inflation.

Man though, that little Fernandinho sure could juggle.  He could do the lot. Tail-tossing, hand-standed, blind-folded, he could even inexplicably curl up into a ball, and juggle himself as well. But, his showstopper was catching teeth in his mouth and jettisoning them back up out his rear in a sweeping seemless movement. I don’t think he had any digestive system at all, just an oesophagus that went right the way through his body. However, the acorns he gorged himself on never seemed to come out at all. They just disappeared into his body. They went down some other pipe he had. He told me that he never did number 2’s, with the exception of when juggling inedible items. He had completely reconfigured his innards. This lack of a digestive system meant that he never stopped growing and when I last saw him, he was the size of a small panda.

Anyway, as for the rest of me teeth, it’s all a bit hazy. I lost a few in a game of poker with the tooth-fairy. Mean little cockney fucker she is. Not like the pictures you see of her in children’s books. Tooth-mad she is. Claimed to have invented plaque, but I doubt it. When she’s not going around buying teeth from under kid’s pillows, she is usually sitting in a Soho basement with her saggy face, playing cards with leprechauns and Russian Mafiosos. They’ll play for anything. The leprechauns are alright, tricky little bastards, but always good with the one-liners. The Russians are cheating bastards, but the tooth-fairy is the worst of the lot. If she loses, she turns over the table and smashes her glass of vodka on the ground and assaults the victor with the shards, and hurls wild accusations at everyone and calls the entire room a ‘bunch of scrabble-flangers’, whatever the hell that means. And her breathe really stinks of paint when she gets up close in your face. A sore loser if ever saw one. Anyway, she had three kings; I only had two. She took me teeth.

A few more went in a bar brawl in EuroDisney. The place went mental. Children, parents, barmen, and everyone was involved by the end. I had been having me way with Mini Mouse in the jacks, and I think Pluto overheard us while doing his territorial pissings, and he told Mickey and the whole thing just escalated. A mob, headed by Mickey, with the Seven Dwarves in support, were waiting for us when we got out of the loo. Mickey went for me with a saw, but Mini decked him with her handbag. And then, the whole thing kicked off proper with kicks and slaps being thrown all over the place. I eventually snuck out the bathroom window after stabbing Winnie the Pooh in the neck, but by then, there had been so many miss-landed punches that no one really knew who was fighting who, and no one seemed to notice that the initial intended target of the violence had gone. The last thing I saw when I looked back at the place was Snow White crawling away from the bar with her forearm seemingly dangling from its elbow-socket and blood pouring from her eyes, while behind her, the Mad Hatter was standing enraged, with his hat on fire, holding her left ankle and pulling her ferociously back into the bar.

“And azh for zhe resht of me zheet, Godzh only knowzh whash happenedj zhem” I concluded. There was silence in the room. The dentist kept staring at me in incredulity, mouth agape, horrified and fixated. You’d think I’d told her I had murdered her family the way she was looking at me. Her assistant on the other hand seemed to find the whole thing thoroughly preposterous. She was kind of laughing through her nose, with her shoulders bouncing in hilarity. Silly old women. Anyway, she hoovered me gums, and said she couldn’t really do anything else and she’d just make another appointment to fit me with dentures. She said she wouldn’t even charge me this time. Anyway, I thanked her and made me way out, and guess what; who should be there in the waiting room wearing his trademark polka-dot dickie-bow, only little Fernandinho himself, except he wasn’t so little anymore. I swear he was the size of a Grizzly. I just stood there bewildered for a moment.

“Well, shpeak of zhe Djevil” I says.

Fernandinho looked up from Wired and, recognising his old patron, shaking his head in disbelief, with a smile rising from his lips, he rose from the sofa to greet me.

“Mr. Hall. What a pleasant surprise!” he replied with genuine glee.
“Zhou’ve been piling on zhe acornsh, I shee.”
“I have indeed”.
“Shtanks for zhe Weetabiksh”
“No problem”

We chatted for a few minutes, chewing the cud and catching up on each other’s lives, and then he did the most amazing thing. He pulled out a little purse from his fur, and handed it to me.

“You can have these back” he said.

“You know I’ve become so big now that I no longer need to juggle teeth. In fact it’s been quite a while since I’ve had use for them. I juggle bigger stuff now: vases, phones, pistols, other squirrels, lots of different stuff. The teeth are just too small for my large hands now. But don’t you worry. You’ll still get your Weetabix. You saved me at a time when I was in a hole, and our deal will stand for as long as I am standing. But, these teeth I shall return to you out of honour. I was facing ruin back then; the loss of my livelihood, not to mention the loss of my hands, and a squirrel who can’t juggle is only half a squirrel, living half a life. Now look; my hands have grown back, and grown big, and it would be an honour to shake the hand of the man who sacrificed his ability to chew or enunciate to help out someone who was down on his luck. I know, we have shaken hands before, but back then you would just use your thumb, and I had to use both of my scrawny and scabby mitts. This time, with deep gratitude and with an indebtedness I could never express with ten thousand words, in ten million tongues, I would like to shake your hand Sir, and return to you the teeth which rescued me from the brink. Thank you, Mr. Hall. Thank you”

“Zhou’re Welcome” I said, as we shook hands with great firmness, and a deep sense of meaning and brotherhood. His hands were strong and hairy, and there wasn’t a scar or a hole upon them. With his left he passed me the purse, placing it in my palm. I looked at it amazed. I shook the bag a little to hear their calcific clinking within. A great smile grew from inside me and my entire being filled with delight. I looked behind me to the dental assistant, who was holding my form, to see if she had overheard our reunion. She had, and seemed even more deliriously confused. Her face was brimming with a mixture of wonder and disbelief. I smiled at her. Then, I faced Fernandinho again and smiled at him too. And then to them both of them I added joyfully.

“Looksh like I’ll havsh to zhange zhat appoinzhmench afzher all.”