Shorter than me

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  • Fainting at La Traviata  

    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. 

    But until then, we enjoy.

  • Our daily thanks

    Our daily thanks

    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.

    Our daily thanks.

  • Atomic Emptiness

    Atomic Emptiness

    I’ll sew a hem on your trousers, so you’ll not get dirty, the next time you dance in dirt.

    I’ll learn to speak Latin for you, if you think that would help.

    I’ll accept all the unintended consequences of the least worst decisions, and I’ll watch suns set with you.

    Why not?

    But I will not jump into the icy, river water for you, that place where you always drown.

    Where the current is too strong for you, and where I can’t float to safety.

    Instead, I’ll write a haiku for you.

    Put a Victorian bird bath in the yard for you.

    Listen to the breeze and the light with you.

    And sleep until June ends.

  • And what if that slug knows more than you?

    And what if that slug knows more than you

    was data-centric,

    with a PhD in astronomy,

    from a liberal arts college, in Maine.

    Was a poet, or an unpublished prose writer.

    What if this evolutionary magician played tricks with you, danced, and was funny, and made more friends than you.

    What if that slug were kinder than you.

    was decent, and humble, and gentler than you.

    Offered its joy and its time to you.

    And basked in the sun and moonlights.

    This slug, this oozing, sliminess who may or may not

    know more than you.

    Doesn’t even know you exist.

  • Qs for the Ps

    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.

        1. I want to drive my helicopter

          I want to drive my helicopter

          all over the place, high and low

          and wherever I want to go.

          I want to drive my helicopter

          so that I get the best views, and enjoy the most sunsets.

          I want to drive my helicopter

          all over your picnic

          on the cotton quilted blanket that you kept for a special occasion.  My noise will ruin the peace of the cool meadow air.

          But I don’t care.

          Because I want to drive my helicopter.

        2. Looking Back

          Looking back at the house

          from the bottom of the garden

          where the waste bins are

          I saw clouds move away, to show the stars

          and I watched space stretch back

          toward the start of time.

          The small terraced house looked so different

          and I wondered

          how everything could fit underneath

          the roof we haven’t fixed yet.

          Beneath the numinous moon spotlight

          at the bottom of our garden

          I saw the tiger that’s been stalking me

          curled up quietly

          next to the recycling bin

          getting ready to rest.

        3. Peaceful warrior

          Peaceful warrior

          Recently, a stranger started to speak to Grace in the arrival’s hall of terminal two, in Dublin airport.  She was waiting for a cousin to arrive in from Edinburgh, and a man began a conversation about time.

          How funny it was, he said, that when people are waiting for a plane to land, time slowed into infinity.  Yet, no doubt the time spent with the people on the plane, would speed up exponentially.  The man cited an article he’d read lately, about how it was possible to control the perception of time.  All you had to do, he claimed, to slow down the perception of time, was to find something novel and fulfilling in each and every day.

          “Like this conversation?” asked Grace, and the man laughed loudly and said, “yes, exactly so”.

          They talked about technology and how detailed the airport information was compared with years earlier.  Nowadays, the large overhead boards told those waiting when the plane was approaching the airport, the moment of landing, when it was taxing to the gate, and when exactly the passengers had officially landed.  The man and Grace didn’t know, however, what to do with this extra information, or the moments of time gained.

          Were they to split the second?

          Grace was meeting a cousin she hadn’t seen since childhood and was both excited and nervous about the weekend.  When she was a child, Grace spent time visiting her cousins on a farm near Ross-on-Wye.  Her three older cousins seemed to Grace to have an idyllic existence with their dogs, chickens, sheep, and ponies.  The cousins always smelled of earth and came in enormous, warm, cosy clothes that were so well lived in.  Grace was meeting the eldest of the three sisters, at the airport.

          One time they all went to Tintern Abbey to see the ruins and they took a picnic, a flask of hot tea and a blanket to sit on.  The cousins, used to wide open spaces and running, grew tired and restless and started a game of hide and seek.

          Grace ran as fast as she could and hid between the gravestones, far away from everyone.  She huddled down beside the grave of a man who had died in 1732.

          He died when he was 34 and was missed by a loving wife and eight children.  Grace wondered if this man liked music if he played the piano or sang?  This fellow, this dead fellow, did he play hide and seek with the children, or was he too serious for games?

          Did he laugh and look at rainbows with such awe it made it want to cry?  Did he dance every chance he got and marvel at the extraordinary brightness of colour?  Did he lose sleep with worry about his eight children, his wife, the harvest, and the rain?  And did he, at times, realise fully that the best way through his short life, was to be a peaceful warrior; to defend himself fully, while not ever causing harm to any other creatures?  Did he wonder about the particles of atoms into the otherness of eternity.

          Did his children make him laugh; and did he ever save some time?

        4. Iridescent scattered reflections

          Did you see our rainbow cloud? 

          On the day before the shortest day of the year.  When we went sea swimming at sunrise.  We went into the darkest and deepest part of the water, that was so cold we couldn’t even feel how cold it was, for the first few moments.

          That was the day after we saw Robert de Niro in the doorway of Boots.  We laughed about it after dinner, and we pretended to be serious people.

          Later, when we saw the nacreous clouds, we didn’t realise that we were looking straight at tiny ice particles of reflected light, high above in the stratosphere.  We just called them rainbow clouds and we enjoyed them from the sea.

          Of course, it wasn’t really Robert de Niro standing in the doorway of Boots.  Just someone who looked like him on one of those grey cloud days, that make you sigh. When the streetlights need to stay on all the time, and 2 o’clock feels like 9.

          What time is it now, you wonder?

          The day clock on the windowsill tells you it’s Tuesday.

          He was wearing a long cloak, like a cape.

          Earlier that day, before seeing the nacreous clouds, with their iridescent scattered reflections, I spent time with an angry woman.  The type of woman who keeps her snakes of contradictions and unkind prejudices in a basket that she carries under her arm.  The everlasting greyness was making her angrier, more frightening because it was real.

          Hey Bob, I wanted to say, nonchalantly.  Are you here researching a role?  But now Eurythmics is playing, and the unmistakable voice of Annie Lennox disturbs your thoughts, so you don’t ask Bob anything at all.

          Sometimes at this time of year, Dublin looks like steam is coming out of it. 

          The early mist evaporates back into clouds and the sky is enchanting.  The bus into town drives past Glasnevin cemetery, where it’s hard not to think of the dead, as more than a million of them, are buried there.

          I don’t mind getting messages, signs, and musings from them.

          Let your prejudices lie back in the field, don’t hold them close.

          What if you’re wrong, have you thought about that?

          Don’t spend too much time talking to me, enjoy the rainbow clouds.

          But before Robert de Niro, and the boat ride home, and watching the ballet, and that everlasting tango between the sun and the moon, some gentle hours passed.  Not even nacreous clouds can change that.

          All the people were laughing so much, so much that we felt like we were waking up from a nap all the time.  Now the scene changes and we’re moving up the mountain so slowly and using all our might.  We’re walking against the wind, and except now it’s the stairs, not a hill.  Why are we carrying a torch inside?

          Did we forget the light?

          No, says the nice girl who comes to visit sometimes.  We saw the rainbow clouds and they are so beautiful and serene. 

          She says, the rainbow clouds will guide us, through time and days in this room; through it all.

        5. New moon writing 8: fecking eejits

          People are such fecking eejits.

          Not all people, but some of them. 

          Particularly those who tell me to just “download the app” to do the most basic of tasks.  I used to be able to manage my life, but now I have trouble ordering tickets, buying food, and opening doors at the bank. 

          “Push here when the green light is flashing,” the instructions on the door at the bank explain to me.

          I push where I’m told, when I’m told, but someone gets stuck in the chamber in between the inside and outside, and the security guard gets cross, and all hell breaks loose.

          I was just trying to open the door. 

          Who made it so hard?

          Anyone responsible for designing a two-step verification method on software, is also a fecking eejit. 

          “You told me to download the app, and now it transpires that I must download another app to keep the first app secure?  Will there be a third app needed?”

          We can send live photographs from Mars, but we are unable to keep apps safe.

          Everything is becoming harder to use!  Booking tickets, buying food, getting in and out of doors.  Everything and the place is overrun with fecking eejits.

          Download the app.

          Update to the newest version.

          Insert the code we just sent you by text.

          Use the QR CODE.

          Fecking eejits, the lot of them.

          Bring back the fax machine or better still, let us return to keeping up with correspondence with letters.  Bring back hearing less about what everyone thinks about everything, and let’s all spend more time in silence.

          Going to the cinema with a friend used to be one phone call ahead of the trip to agree a time, date and place, a week or so before hand.  Now this same appointment can require a hundred or so mico-communications and a heavenly sky full of emojis.

          Do you want to get a bite before-hand?

          Great.

          OK.

          Let’s meet at 6

          Can’t – got basket weaving until 6.10pm

          OK

          So how about 6.30pm

          Cool

          Endless.

          And once you get to the film, it doesn’t end there. 

          You can’t simply relax and enjoy the cinematic experience.  No.  You must tell all the people that you don’t know on social media, what you think about the film.  You are not required by the terms and conditions of the ticket to do this, nor do you have qualifications or work experience in this area, but that doesn’t stop you.

          “I saw, “Towels in my Bathroom.” ” You write quickly as you leave the cinema.  “…and I just wondered if the leitmotif worked as a post-post-modern denouement or if it felt too reductive?”

          Send thought NOW, CLICK SEND.

          Your response to the film must be original, tongue in cheek while being acutely aware of any challenging issues.

          Then, instead of enjoying the apres-film chat and gossip with a friend you haven’t seen for a while, you spend the entire time checking your phone for replies to your comment about the film you just saw.

          Did people like my comment, am I approved, am I the winner?

          Congratulations!

          You are the winner of the internet.  Your response to “Towels in my Bathroom” was the best one.  We have the director of the film here, to award you with the prize.

          “I was so moved by your comment about my film” says the director in a live interview from their ski lodge in Switzerland.  “I spent 3 years on this project, but your sentence simply changed my life.  I was so overwhelmed by the sentence, in fact, that I decided to give you a boat.  It’s a large boat, so I hope you can manage to keep it somewhere.  Perhaps you live near a harbour?”

          Suddenly there’s silence and the director of “Towels in my Bathroom” looks embarrassed.

          “Ah…change of plans I’m afraid.  We’re going to give the boat to someone else.   There’s another person now, in Seville, who made a better comment than you so we’re going to give the boat to them.  I do hope you understand.  The runner up prize is a donkey”. 

          Then you have a donkey to take care of.

          You have no donkey caring skills.

          You don’t have the time to look after a donkey.

          But perhaps the donkey comes to live in your garden and it’s not so bad after all. 

          Perhaps the donkey’s gentle ways make you smile, and you find that you enjoy feeding him and keeping him well.  You enjoy stroking him in the mornings, and making sure he has enough to eat and drink.  Perhaps for a moment you smile.

          A real smile.

          A smile from your heart because you feel like joy is inside you.  This pleasant feeling is like happiness and contentment and peace.  You don’t chase it all away but simply notice it there, and you welcome it in.

          “Oh hello happiness, how are things?”

          Happiness waves back to you, because it’s what happiness likes to do.