He became President again, but I’ll not say his name.
I’ll not excite the algorithm and send my clicks his way.
I’ve removed him as a topic from my news feed. And his wives and many children.
Even in jest, I will not make a comment about his Comic-Con inauguration, nor will I open an article which features him. Calling him a super villain negates the felons he is guilty of, and I will not repeat a phrase he uses this term.
The only power I have over him, is to not donate my attention to him, in a basket of fruit and flowers. I will not promote the crimes he was not punished for, nor call him words such as “unlikeable”.
Instead, I lovingly give my attention to the wind and wondering if the robins that visit my garden, have enough hedgerow to shelter from the storm. One day the garden will reveal itself. Or will it?
Maybe the best we can hope for, is that we cause no harm. Give money to Amnesty, volunteer with Tidy Towns, exercise, travel sustainably, buy less shit.
The Achilles Heels of all billionaires is their surprising lack of imagination. A super yacht isn’t enough, but that they want a super yacht with a golden ceiling and a helicopter pad. The helicopter that comes with the super yacht must have a drinks cabinet on board, and this cabinet must hold the best champagne in the world, and if it doesn’t, then the dream is dismayed.
All this, and more.
More, more, more.
Stay out of this domain, where satisfaction never comes and do not let his shadow cast over your sun. You are a child of this universe, and here due to millions of years of evolution – millions of moments where your blood line could have ceased, but here you are. A direct line back to the first people who lived! And before that again.
To those who made stories on horse backs and fought enemies and had friendships and love.
This is your cave now, decorate wisely.
Read, listen to music, watch films on Netflix and enjoy the January blues that we see so often on these bright crisp mornings. We are so lucky, so blessed and it’s so enormously wonderful. Don’t let them make you think that it’s all lost – as it’s not.
It’s like the mystery of the missing Amber Room, where did it all go?
Where did so much of the 24th year of this millennium go? Much has disappeared; vanishing and evaporating under pages of this year’s diary.
Some days were brilliant, with crisp blue skies and delicious snacks, and harmony. Other days were mud fests as challenging as walking up the mountain in crocs. Some days were boring, others frustrating and some days were wasted and left behind.
All in all, and in the tears and the smiles, we try to be kind and somewhat honest, and we turn up again, and we do it once more.
We wrote poetry for one another and spent our time with those who are close. We watched sunrises and swam in the sea. When bigger than one, and when all is done, we elected politicians who will do us harm and shrugged at the results of our broken climate. We felt sadness and loss and felt love and light-heartedness.
Here it is: the last few weeks of the year.
And a few nights ago, in St Patrick’s Cathedral I listened to the carol singers, and I felt wonder and awe. In the lights of the 800-year-old cathedral I heard the magical voices sing ancient songs with notes known from the start, and there, in that place of refuge, I said a silent thank you to the inventor of music, the director of sound, to the waves that carry them forth into me, and I felt a peace.
A piece of the harmony that was there in the spirit, and the into the rhythm of life’s quiet.
Press four if you’d like to complain, about the lack of time for idleness and lolling around, despite all the buttons promising a saving of time.
About the fear to digitally disentangle oneself from the noise, competition and fierce need for validation from strangers. From the pettiness of it all: see my thought, see the image I see now, and value it.
Press four if you want to speak to a human, and not a hybrid attached to data and content, showing you a different view of the sunset, one you didn’t see.
It’s all smoke and mirrors and a bottomless pit of promises, dissatisfaction and eternal consumerism. Nothing tangible, just motion and a suggestion that this post, yes, this post just here, will bring happiness.
But it won’t.
And you know that, and I know that, and still we post.
If you would like to deactivate your account, please press four.
If you want to decompress from too many opinions and too many thoughts, from too many strangers over too much time, please press four.
There are simply too many voices now, jabbering on incoherently about everything, all the time.
One thought at a time please. The chorus is too loud and too discordant. One idea at a time, one complaint at a time, please.
I long to be idyl longer. Lay down in the long grass with my feet up in the air. Making shapes with the clouds and not share them with anyone, but gurgle if I want to gurgle.
Don’t tell anyone…just loll about in quietness.
Retain a private thought and image, retrain my brain to not want to capture it all and spread it around thinly.
So drink it in fully, and don’t leave it on the window sill going stale. Taste every molecule of the thirst-quenching delight. Even the sour bits and the pieces that are hard to swallow. It’s not forever. It is now.
Last weekend, someone tried to kill the former President of the United States of America.
To be clear, a young, white, male Republican, took a shot at Trump, at a Republican rally, using a gun that most Republicans believe is the right of all Americans to own. That young man was “neutralised” and is now dead.
24 hours after the young man tried to shoot Trump, the conspiracy theorists lost their shit: who did it? Was it Melania, the ghost of Ivanka, Biden or Hilary? Was it CIA and the FBI and where was Stormy on that fateful day?
4 days after the attempt, at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, the Republicans officially nominated Trump as their candidate for the elections in November, and JD Lance was chosen as Trump’s running mate. JD Lance then made a speech about the importance of gun ownership, because Americans need guns for protection.
Who do you need protection from JD? Other white, male, gun owning Republicans?
JD Lance is an interesting choice: he’s young and ambitious and he might one day make Donnie look like an innocent little bunny rabbit. JD wants to stop all abortions everywhere, he wants to oversee mass deportations, and he thinks unemployed people are lazy. He used to call Donnie “America’s Hitler” but has now obviously decided that Donnie isn’t quite as “Hitler-ish” as he might have first imagined.
Maybe not Hitler-ish enough for JD.
Republicans at the Convention were adamant they needed to keep their guns. One nurse from Idaho said she owned 20! 20 guns in one household. 19 guns weren’t enough for this woman to feel safe. She needed 20 of them.
Donnie is on record for saying that school shootings are not a gun problem but rather the fault of the Democrats, mental health issues, marijuana and the transgender community. We live in a world where Donnie might be elected President again. The last time he had the job he started a coup. The only way he can top that is to go nuclear.
There was a time when the assassination of even a former American President would hold our interest. But all week, there was an energy and enthusiasm missing from the attempt. No one was really that bothered. We’d all lost interest by Friday.
Not to be upstaged by our American cousins, this madness is being echoed in Ireland.
This week in Dublin, some Irish people rioted and tried to burn down buildings that were going to be used to home non-Irish people seeking refuge in Ireland from war, genocide, poverty, famine, drought and floods. Some of the people burning down buildings, (that could be used to house people), are doing it because there are not enough buildings to house people. Some are setting fire to buildings because “they don’t know any better” or “they got into a bad crowd” or “they are very easily led”. And some are doing it because they are hateful little racists and xenophobes.
They, like JD and Donnie, want migrants to go back to where they came from, and they are willing to use violence to support their demands. Ironically though, these protesters are not indigenous to this island, and how could this Republic house all the Irish diaspora, if they too had to come back to where they came from?
Too many concerns and questions for the racists, and so little time.
There’s no point debating an issue like this will people who don’t believe in news, science, facts or rational argument. It’s like trying to tell a jelly fish about astrophysics, or a talk to a fruit fly about the opera. The jelly fish and the fruit fly won’t understand a word that you say, and you’re simply wasting your time. You’re wasting even more of your time if you try wade through this discourse on X, which is owned by Musk, who is financially supporting the Donnie and JD campaign.
Is anyone else finding this season finale very dull and grim? All very bland because it’s being done for the money: not for political idealism or an academic principle, but all for the greed and the dollar, and nothing more.
Was it always this awful, or am I just feeling more tired, sadder, older and melancholic? How can we feel less of the pain?
Press one if you want to step away from X.
Press two if you want to do the fandango once a day, enjoy the clouds more, and the garden birds.
Press three if you want to enjoy the delicacy of a rose, and marvel at their light and velvety textures to see how honest, and true they are. They bloom and offer their perfume to the pollinators, and then they fade. Their simple beauty, so short lasting, but with such kindness and the love they bring. That’s all that matters, the love and kindness, as this summer moves on.
Two years ago, my friend Frances and I decided to learn about opera.
We thought we could buy tickets for concerts, read up on it beforehand and improve our knowledge of an art form we knew nothing about. We began with Faust, moved on to La Boheme, Salome and most recently La Traviata. We read what we can ahead of the show, and then just enjoy the experience of the singers and the orchestra and the drama.
We’re still very much opera beginners, but we’re becoming more comfortable saying things like, “I preferred the costumes in La Boheme, but the choreography in Salome was spectacular”.
However, Frances and I have noticed that something quite dramatic happens in real life, on opera night. When we were at La Boheme in November, Dublin experienced some quite enormous riots. And when we went to La Traviata, I fainted.
I had given blood earlier in the afternoon and it was one for the first things I told Frances about over dinner, before the performance. I was so excited that the Irish Blood Transfusion service had updated their criteria for giving blood, so that migrants like me, who previously couldn’t donate, now could give blood a couple of times a year. She was thrilled for me, and we spoke about other things too, like our families and work, and our gardens.
As Frances was telling me a little about her plans for a summer holiday in France, I suddenly felt unusual. I remembered the nurse had told me to drink plenty of fluids after giving blood, so I poured myself a second glass of water.
But then I felt very strange indeed.
I tried to say to Frances, “I feel like I’m floating away to the clouds just now” but all I could sound out was, “aaaaaahhhhhhhhhh mmmmmm oooooo”.
I knew that I needed to be close to the ground, so I stood up and moved away from the table and put my back up against the wall, near the window. I let myself sink right down to the ground, but it was there I realised I needed to be lower still. I let myself fall over to my left, until my face’s left cheek was also connected to the floor. It looked as if I was trying to listen to what the floorboards were telling me.
Frances asked if everything was alright and I said, “aaaahhhhhhaaaa, mmmmmmmmmm, ooooooooooo”.
Some other diners, who were also getting ready to go to the opera, looked away from me and I could hear one of them saying, “I preferred the costumes in La Boheme, but the choreography in Salome was magnificent”.
In a moment, a lovely waitress came down to the floor to speak with me, and she said very loudly, “I think you might be more comfortable downstairs, in the bathrooms”. I agreed with her completely and said, “ahhhhhh, mmmmmmm, oooooooooooo” one more time.
She helped me up, and took me downstairs to the bathrooms, where she suggested I put some water on my face and perhaps lie down on the lovely tiles there.
Oh, the bathroom tiles were glorious.
They were so cool, and even, and smooth. I stayed on the gentle tiles until the seasickness disappeared, and until my face didn’t look green anymore, and until I could speak English again. When the feeling passed, I retuned upstairs to Frances, and then we went to see the opera.
La Traviata (The Fallen Woman) is all about a woman called Violetta who has a party to celebrate her recovery from an illness, and a friend of a friend, called Alfredo, comes along. They fall in love, and move to the countryside, but Alfredo’s dad pops around because he’s annoyed that Violetta is bringing disrepute to the family.
Violetta leaves Alfredo, and there’s some gambling, some business with horses and some more parties in Paris. But then Violetta faints to the floor because she has TB, and of course when Alfredo finds out, he’s miserable about it. He rushes off to see here, and they do a quick duet, and then she dies in his arms.
It’s one of the most beautiful things you will ever see, and it’s extraordinarily touching and tender and endearing. The performance had me in tears several times and I just feel like opera is one of those things, that the more you experience it, the more you enjoy it. It’s funny how invested in the characters you can be, and how much you simply enjoy the singing and the orchestra and the costumes and the setting. I enjoy it most when I’m not really thinking about it too much, but just letting it wash all over me, from head to foot. The thrill of the acoustics and the lighting and the wonder of the performers. The extreme pleasure of the professional opera singers doing what they do every night – signing, performing, fainting, living.
Maybe one day, AI will compose opera for 3D printed singers to perform, and Frances and I will be replaced by hybrid humans.
To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
David Sedaris
Life, whether we agree with it or not, is a series of compromises and tough decisions. Sometimes, the best we can do is make the least bad decision, and move on. We might not like Option A and think less of Option B; but we have to choose one, and see how it all works out. We nod and agree to things we wouldn’t have dreamt of in our 20s and 30s, and we try to make the best of it.
I’m happy with some of my recent decisions.
For example, I’m happy that I only fly once a year, or less if I can help it. Aviation is a major contributor to the climate crisis, and as only 1% of the world’s population are frequent flyers, it feels like a no-brainer to make the decision to fly less. I am also aware that my action won’t make a hill of beans of difference to the effects of the crisis, and that I won’t ever convince even one person not to fly as much.
But I like to do it, it makes me happy, and it makes me smile.
We know when we’ve made a good decision, as we feel it in our bones.
Another example of an excellent and wise decision would be my recent choice to buy a late Victorian style, stone bird bath for the back garden. It’s so beautiful and intricate, and it brings me joy. I’ve placed it in the middle of the garden, so that birds can hop into the hedgerow for safety, and it’s wide open enough for the songbirds to spot predators.
So far only one tiny bird has used it, but I hope it will gain popularity as the summer progresses.
We know in our hearts and heads when we’ve made a terrible decision too.
We feel those all over our bodies and we can ruminate and regret for decades. By this rationale then, perhaps it’s OK sometimes, to make the least bad decision, and then not ponder it afterwards.
“It was the best call at the time!” we will say to ourselves.
I’m currently making a large, life-decision and I honestly don’t care for any of the options. Option one is a bland, unappetising chicken that looks very dry and undigestible. Option two is a platter of shit with broken pieces of glass in it. I don’t have a time machine in my pocket, so I’m going to have choose one option and wait and see…
Perhaps we have too many options.
A thousand and one posts an hour, on social media, show me where to view the best sunrise, how to lose weight, where to see pregnant squirrels and how to stop a genocide. I watch my life scroll on by, daily unfolding one image at a time. It takes more than a breath to slow it all down, and it speeds on relentlessly, no matter the decisions I make.
Sometimes, when I’m watching the birds ignoring my new bird bath, or on the boat trip between Ireland and Wales, I see it all as it was meant to be.
Tranquil, still, peaceful, perceptibly moving on and in harmony with our motion. In times, perhaps a sequence and a rhythm known, since the beginning and felt in our heartbeat.
This is it.
This is my life.
I can manage each challenge before me, of course I can.
Feel the wonder and the pain.
It’s there in the Irish sea sometimes, when land is out of sight and there’s just the water and the sky, that the grandness and the beauty of this world makes me so grateful.
My life with the raw bits, and I’m grateful.
Through salty tears, I give thanks to something wilder than the waves, further than the clouds, more spectacular than the seagulls, chasing the light.
That we move through our transitions and become. That this journey is the reason, and we take our warm blessings, and give thanks.
I’ve written a list of questions, for the politicians soon to come to my door, canvassing for my vote.
1.What are you going to do about the dog poo on the street, dogs that are not on leads, and the litter in general?
2. What are you going to do about the people who put their dirty, filthy feet up on the seats on the bus?
3. What are you going to do about the rising sea levels and the air quality? Can I leave those two issues with you?
4. I want a politician who will love politics, the law, governance and democratic systems. I want a representative who will love and honour the role, and give their heart and soul to it.
I’m looking for a representative who is still curious about the world, who wants to play and learn and isn’t jaded by the grimness of capitalism, but one who wants to make this world the paradise it was supposed to be. To usher us all through to fill our full potential and who experiences awe frequently.
I want a giddy politician who thinks this world is exceptional and often gets up early simply to watch the sun rise. I want a politician who feels pain when other species suffer, and who wants to ease the burden, for those of our species, who find time here, harder.
I’m looking for a politician who spends time with painters, writers, dancers and jugglers. Fill up the cabinet with mime artists and circus performers. I want a symphony of delegates who are joyous and excited, happy, and thrilled to be helping humanity be the best that they can be.
I want a representative who deserves to represent me.
Shorter than me 