A man in a wheelchair moves between the cars that are stopped for the red lights. He shakes his paper cup of coins and asks for more. The drivers tell him they don’t have any spare change, and they say it from behind closed windows. When the lights change to green, they drive away from him, on O’Connell Bridge, in the centre of Dublin.
A man rummages in a bin looking for empty plastic bottles, that he can return for their deposits. He rescues four, and puts them in his bag, that is filled to explosion with empties already. His hands are dirty, and his hair is matted, and his clothes stink of street, and shit, and horror. He takes his bag of bottles and moves onto the next bin, to look for more.
A woman talks loudly on her mobile phone and explains that she is on her way, to collect her pay.
“You can have the lot,” she says, “I can give it you directly, just meet me there!”
She is rushing through the crowds, to give away all her money, so that there is nothing left.
To begin so far behind, feels like free falling.
Feels like drowning in fire.
Dublin is being cooked slowly; stewed in its own fat and poison and is becoming inedible.
The Liffey should be raging in a blaze of anger, to make shame of the violences and grim meanness we live with. The “Ireland that we dreamed of” was full of storytellers, dancers, and wild free singers.
There was a time, in February, when the sun didn’t shine for 11 whole days.
Met Éireann kept a day count of how long it had been without the sight of sun rays, and everyone collectively sighed. Most Dubliners didn’t even notice for a week, such is the greyness of winter, in this city.
But as a longer time came, people felt ill at ease.
The lack of light, and endless dense foggy cloud made the Dubliners less chirpy and less able to demonstrate the famous craic agus resilience. But the sun did come back, and now all the daffodils are sitting up straight, while the birds busily make their nests and there’s enough heat in the day, for the humans to go about their business.
In Dublin, at the first sight of the spring sun, it’s common for people to throw off their clothing, as though following an ancient form of ritual.
“I have no need for these hats, scarves, gloves and other garments,” those people say. “Indeed, I have no need for socks or tights, or long-sleeved tops! Let me celebrate the sun by wearing shorts and t.shirts and opened toed shoes! I AM SPRING”.
Watch them standing tall like the daffodils, the people, in the sunshine.
Others have come back to the city: the short-term tourists, and the English language students, and the swallows. You see the students with their bewildered expressions and matching language school rucksacks. They have no more interest in learning the language than the man in the moon, but they like shopping at Penny’s and kissing people from other schools. They complain about Irish food and the weather. Their exhausted looking, anxious teachers chaperone them around the streets and try telling them about the Irish revolution, Molly Malone and Bono.
The students are not interested in this content, currently.
If the students come from the Mediterranean, they struggle all the more when they see Dubliners walking down O’Connell Street without much clothing. They take photos of the anomaly to show friends and family back home. They caption the photo with the phrase: just look at them!
Meanwhile some daffodils came up too soon this year: they popped up out of the ground in the first week of January, and now they are all gone. They were frozen over in January or blown away in February. But the spring daffs, the ones that waited for the sun, they are the ones on full display now. The patient ones, the ones with an end game.
The daffodils are of no use to birds or the pollinators, but they make the humans happy. Humans love how the flowers reflect the sun, and nod their heads, and respond to light.
The daffodils reply, “look at us! Here we are again! Aren’t we beautiful and a little bit divine! Admire us please!”
Meanwhile, the sun watches over it all again, another hustle spring, another season of growth.
Everything is waking up again.
And in the quiet of spring, the sun replies, “it was always me”.
Last week, as I was walking down O’Connell Street, a young man unzipped my rucksack and popped his hand into my bag to try and take my purse. I didn’t notice his movements, which were as light as a ballet dancer’s. I didn’t feel his breath on my neck, nor did I hear him. I didn’t feel any difference in weight or speed as I walked at my normal pace, and he walked just behind me.
What I did notice was that two other men, two plain clothes Guards, swooped in and stopped him, mid-crime. One man took the would-be-thief, over to the Public Order Van, parked next to the Spire. And the other plain clothes Guard walked me over to the wall of the GPO, to ask me some questions, and take my details.
The man had to tell me a few times, that he was a plain clothes Guard, as I wasn’t sure what was happening. He told me to check inside my bag, which I did, and I reassured him that everything was fine. He wrote down my name, address and telephone number, and again, I told him that I felt OK.
Dublin has a poor reputation these days.
Everyone criticises it for being dangerous, unpleasant and harsh. I’ve been like an eternal ex-girlfriend, singing its praises and defending it, despite the reality unfolding in front of me. I see the correlation between political neglect, inequality, rising prices and a rise in crime. But as it’s been my home for half my life, I still hate it when people are mean about it.
That said, when I was nearly the victim of crime last week, I wondered if it was time for even me to finally say, “Dublin is shit”.
The plain clothes Guard finished writing down my details. Then he asked me where I was going for the evening and so I told him that I was on my way to my writing group. I explained that it was more of an open-mic event, than a traditional writing session, and that it was filled with eclectic and inspiring writers.
He nodded and said, “well good luck with that Ruth, and tell me are you more of a poet or a prose writer?”
“Both!” I said enthusiastically. “I’ve always written short stories and flash fiction or vignettes, if you will. But recently I’ve started experimenting with poetry and I’ve had two poems published in a magazine called “Flare””.
“That’s really wonderful”, the plain clothes Guard said to me encouragingly. “Keep it up!”
…and our thief, what about him?
He needed to take something that didn’t belong to him.
There were at least 20 uniformed Guards on patrol that evening on O’Connell Street, and so his chances of getting caught were enormous. Nevertheless, he thought it was worth the risk. I don’t look like the sort of person who would have a lot of cash with me, or a fancy new phone, but he thought it would be worth his while to see what I was carrying. Even if he had been successful, all he would have stolen from my bag was 20 euro, a Leap card, a 4-year-old phone, and a poem.
He risked it all for that.
Later, after the writing session or open mic event, I walked back down Dame Street to take a bus home, and I saw plenty more Guards in groups, around the city, keeping its residents and visitors safe. As a woman, walking to a bus stop alone in the dark, I was happy to see little groups of Guards. But wouldn’t it be cheaper and better if we just made the city a little easier to live in, so that people don’t have to choose a life of crime?
Couldn’t we just have a city where everyone had a home, no one needed to queue for food outside the GPO, and no one needed to try and steal from passers-by? Where everyone had enough comfort and security to be able to call their lives, “real living”, and where we all looked after one another?
Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world right now, with full employment and a big bank balance thanks to the Apple tax. If we can’t accommodate everyone now, and give those who need a little extra help, a little extra help, then shame on us.
The place I call home is magnificent.
But it could be so much better and brighter for all.
I am on the ferry travelling from Holyhead to Dublin, but this time I’m sitting next to a Chinese family preparing lunch in a portable rice cooker. They’ve asked me, several times, if I want to join them, but I’ve politely refused each time. Instead, I’m eating a dry cheese sandwich, and I would prefer to eat their food because it smells very delicious.
The Chinese family have just watched me come back from the Duty-Free shop and they asked me why I have three pairs of reading glasses. I tried to explain that one pair is for reading books and my mobile phone; one pair is for my laptop screen, and one pair is for reading the prices of goods in shops, or the numbers on the buttons you find on cookers, and washing machines.
The Chinese family have no idea what I’m talking about.
It took me five visits to Specsavers to explain my visionary needs. On the final visit the optician simply put his head in his hands and asked, “what is that you want?”
Oh, gentle eye man, if only I knew the answer to that question.
The Chinese family tell me that they spent the Lunar New Year in Shrewsbury, and I am not clear if they are going back to Dublin to visit family, or if they are flying back to Sichuan. One of them lost their mobile phone earlier, on the car deck, and I’m trying to explain that they should ask one of the ship mates to announce this over the loudspeakers. I’ve suggested that perhaps the Captain might be able to help.
I’m not sure, but I feel like Jessica Fletcher on the verge of unravelling a mystery.
I am currently only five years younger than Jessica Fletcher was when she started fighting crime in her free time in Maine. Like her, I used to be a teacher and have a passing interest in local politics. Like her, I don’t have children and can give disappointing looks to strangers on cue. But this mystery of the missing phone on the journey of the Chinese family, will have to wait, because I am busy writing.
I write, ergo I am a writer.
I love to write. Any words and in any formation and for any reason at all. I write a daily journal and postcards, letters and flash fiction. Recently I’ve started writing poetry and I send my stories off to be read at magazines and publishing houses. Typically, they thank me and say that my piece was good, but that they received a particularly high volume of submissions this time, and that I mustn’t be despondent.
I write for many reasons.
Firstly, to make room in my head for all the new thoughts and words that rush into the space like ice-skaters without helmets or knee pads. If I didn’t manually remove all the words from my brain, there would a traffic jam of letters, and they would all get loose and be mixed up like this: x e f ggggg h k v b fffff
So here I am scribbling in public.
I write about what I ate for dinner and who my main enemies are. I write about the weather and how happy and sad I felt during the day. I write about my plans and then reflect on what really happened after the plans turned into rainwater. I make myself laugh sometimes, with the absurdity of the thoughts as they dash about like gold, or copper or vomit.
I love to write in public.
Look at me! Look at me just writing about it all…maybe I’m writing about you, gentle stranger. You there with the leather jacket that’s a bit too small for you, who’s been drinking the Duty Free since we left the port and is probably an outlaw. Or you, dressed in hemp dungarees with the children and the two dogs. Or you with the older parent in a wheelchair, who probably can’t fly anymore.
I write because I must.
The only writing I don’t enjoy is work emails. I remember years ago, when I still worked at the British Embassy in Copenhagen, and we were going to start using this new thing called, “Email”. One woman I worked with, a woman I liked very much, asked if this new email meant we wouldn’t have to manage the regular mail coming into the office.
Oh no, said the IT Guru. We would still have to manage regular mail, but we would also have to manage these virtual inboxes as well.
Ah, said the woman.
Ah, indeed.
And so, we write a million emails to people who read a million emails and somewhere in between, we find the time to write something more interesting. Like about a mystery on a ferry concerning a Chinese family, who are on the move, or that time we went ice-fishing. What about that evening when we watched the new moon move around the sky, and it felt like it was playing hide and seek?
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.
Shorter than me 