Rain rain rain on the window pane!
Through the computer threads streak out linking me to the wide wide world which has form for me and voice but no blood and thunder. I wonder about narrative and how to string these thoughts together into pattern and form. Is the narrative the weather day by day and this cocktail of mood and cloud and sunshine continuing and changing but always moving in one direction: my Narrative? Is it the buckled belt of the concrete path and the cloak of the bóithrín and the steel structure of memory? Or is it nothing but a vague wandering aimlessly through feelings and time and space, signifying, as the bard and many others have said, absolutely nothing?
Through the computer threads streak out linking me to the wide wide world which has form for me and voice but no blood and thunder. I wonder about narrative and how to string these thoughts together into pattern and form. Is the narrative the weather day by day and this cocktail of mood and cloud and sunshine continuing and changing but always moving in one direction: my Narrative? Is it the buckled belt of the concrete path and the cloak of the bóithrín and the steel structure of memory? Or is it nothing but a vague wandering aimlessly through feelings and time and space, signifying, as the bard and many others have said, absolutely nothing?
Hard to decide in the first moments of consciousness as I am once more born and waking to another day. One more anyway! At least one more! Tea! Tea! Tea! I scatter pills into my mouth like peanuts, little tacks holding my life together. We plough the field and scatter the good seed on the land but it is fed and watered…. But then, what is the difference between the pills the doctor prescribes and the food I put into my mouth when I am eating with care and conscientiousness and with the intent of staying alive, perhaps even a bit past my allotted time. Who organises the allotment, after all?! We plough the fields….. Of course then there is the weeding!
Tea tea tea and toast. Whatever the weather I shall now slice off that small portion of the bog that is mine and place my footprints on its face and breath the outside air and walk through the Jerusalem Artichokes to my green hill not far away without a city wall but with lots and lots of stone ditches and the fanfare of hoarse horsy hosts hurrah! Now give me the tea!!
I have fed the birds again, filled the new and shiny feeder to the brim. No peanuts available at the Co-op. I get a big sack (I can hardly lift it!) of small bird seed for small birds. Half of it immediately falls through the meshes and feeds the field mouse. They were made for peanuts. At least she won’t have to climb the pole into visibility. The feral cats (for I have met them in the bóithrín lately and got their number) will be happy, should they deign to return. They are probably prowling the environs of a richer household by now. And anyway they don’t like the rain.
Rain! Rain! Rain! Rain! Never seems to stop. The Mayo monsoon, becoming endemic, like bog-mosquitoes. August. Holiday month. Karma for badly brought up kids. Or badly bringing up parents. It must be nice at Enniscrone today, the wind whistling through the reeds and fescue grass, the sand fixed and battened down by the downpour. No whirling into your eyes. Reek of seaweed, kelp and
salt and dead crabs. Old razor shells and clams, or whatever they are, and the sandpipers marching up and down, learning to goosestep for when they go abroad. Or is this abroad? Everything is topsy-turvy these days. Nothing new. The world turned upside down again. As it always was!
Rain! Rain!. Amazed the birds put up with it. But they are out there quarrelling as usual, now they have something to quarrel about. I hate the greenfinches with their hooked beaks and avaricious eyes. They are a good proof for where Tyrannosaurus Rex went when he was offered the witness protection programme after fingering the Space Invaders. Brute force when they can’t get their own way. Where do they come from? They go back sometimes. Not for long enough. Take what they can and go and come back for more. Carpetbaggers. I favour the home bred: robin and the wren, in spite of its short fuse, and the dunnock. No trouble. Almost pets. And Mister Peepsie the chaffinch. Knows enough to ask for his breakfast. Can’t call it singing for his supper. More like an annoyed glottal tick. He has a growth like a reed blossom on his leg. Like his father. Runs in the family. His grandfather learned to bump the kitchen window and get seeds on the sill. Gave him an advantage over the others. How long do they live? Someone told me three years. Their day must be pretty intense then. Lots of immigrants here. Not real asylum seekers. They go and come. Earn here, take it all home to wherever, Africa, who knows, and come back for more. No regulations.
Rain! Rain! Rain!. Hard now. Like lead shot. The deck round the studio filling up like a grey lake. I’d better put newspapers down inside. The Bog wants to wipe everything out. Smooth it down and turn it into turf and grow over it nice and neat. Turn us all into bog mummies. Then we can be dug up in a thousand years and put in a state-sponsored museum and called heritage. Make money for somebody.
Rap at the door. Louder than the rain. Using the brass harp door-knocker. Brassy and peremptory. Un-Irish. Do I want company. YesNoYesNo Who is it? I hide behind the door frame and peer through the bathroom glass.
It’s Schwantz. Professor Schwantz. Schwantz the Professor. Not from here. Not from Curryaun certainly. Not from Ireland. Another continental blow-in that stuck to the Mayo cloth like a burr and hasn’t the will to pull himself loose and get a real life in a real place. A gabber. A real gab-man. A gab-gubbe. Never stops talking. I wonder about letting him in. Once he opens his mouth he never stops. He stops but his mouth doesn’t. Loose-hinged. All flaps open. All stops out. Machine gun palatals. Motorised labials. Epiglottis can’t keep still. Glottolalia. E' glottolalia magistralis (dicesi glottolalia lo stato in cui il santo o il mistico prestano il proprio apparato vocale alla divinità che parla per bocca .... Glossolalia maybe. Glossodoolalia. I do not think he talks in tongues, only in the tongue of Saint Schwantz himself. No need for a connection with God, for he is Him. Still I appreciate the gallon of poitín he brought me a couple of years ago. Or I would if I dared to drink it. I took a small sip once. The next day I was down with a hallucinatory kidney infection. It might have been a coincidence, of course. If one is spiritually impoverished enough to believe in coincidences, that is. I may well be of that category, but I prefer not to take chances, at this tender extremity of life. I serve it to visiting foreigners at the studio only and they feel well-Irished.
Well, I suppose I need a break.
Schwantz the Professor. Professor Schwantz. Don’t know Professor of What? Punch and Judy most likely. European sort. University of Gothenburg he says. But he can’t speak Swedish, for I tried him. Says it was a long while ago and I did not press the point. I said it was a quotation from Hafez, merely, and in the original Farsi, and that I was simply summing up the futility of living in memory and the draughty halls of the past, and who cares about Gothenburg now anyway, whatever it might have meant to us both at the time, which in my case was not much. He agreed. Or at least he let it pass without further elaboration.
Everything is a long while ago now. Stinking old-age. Age, age where is thy stink, death where is thy what? Or was it the grave?
Anyway, he blew in there too from somewhere faraway else, who knows what place? Sort of Central European I would guess from the rich cultural baggage he carries about with him and shares lavishly. Too rich for the bog, but I am thankful for small mercies. He is after all a real person and could never be confused with a computer monitor. A monitor lizard, perhaps.
Reckons he knew me from then. Might have. I don’t remember those years. Pripps Number Three.
Tea tea tea and toast. Whatever the weather I shall now slice off that small portion of the bog that is mine and place my footprints on its face and breath the outside air and walk through the Jerusalem Artichokes to my green hill not far away without a city wall but with lots and lots of stone ditches and the fanfare of hoarse horsy hosts hurrah! Now give me the tea!!
I have fed the birds again, filled the new and shiny feeder to the brim. No peanuts available at the Co-op. I get a big sack (I can hardly lift it!) of small bird seed for small birds. Half of it immediately falls through the meshes and feeds the field mouse. They were made for peanuts. At least she won’t have to climb the pole into visibility. The feral cats (for I have met them in the bóithrín lately and got their number) will be happy, should they deign to return. They are probably prowling the environs of a richer household by now. And anyway they don’t like the rain.
Rain! Rain! Rain! Rain! Never seems to stop. The Mayo monsoon, becoming endemic, like bog-mosquitoes. August. Holiday month. Karma for badly brought up kids. Or badly bringing up parents. It must be nice at Enniscrone today, the wind whistling through the reeds and fescue grass, the sand fixed and battened down by the downpour. No whirling into your eyes. Reek of seaweed, kelp and
salt and dead crabs. Old razor shells and clams, or whatever they are, and the sandpipers marching up and down, learning to goosestep for when they go abroad. Or is this abroad? Everything is topsy-turvy these days. Nothing new. The world turned upside down again. As it always was!Rain! Rain!. Amazed the birds put up with it. But they are out there quarrelling as usual, now they have something to quarrel about. I hate the greenfinches with their hooked beaks and avaricious eyes. They are a good proof for where Tyrannosaurus Rex went when he was offered the witness protection programme after fingering the Space Invaders. Brute force when they can’t get their own way. Where do they come from? They go back sometimes. Not for long enough. Take what they can and go and come back for more. Carpetbaggers. I favour the home bred: robin and the wren, in spite of its short fuse, and the dunnock. No trouble. Almost pets. And Mister Peepsie the chaffinch. Knows enough to ask for his breakfast. Can’t call it singing for his supper. More like an annoyed glottal tick. He has a growth like a reed blossom on his leg. Like his father. Runs in the family. His grandfather learned to bump the kitchen window and get seeds on the sill. Gave him an advantage over the others. How long do they live? Someone told me three years. Their day must be pretty intense then. Lots of immigrants here. Not real asylum seekers. They go and come. Earn here, take it all home to wherever, Africa, who knows, and come back for more. No regulations.
Rain! Rain! Rain!. Hard now. Like lead shot. The deck round the studio filling up like a grey lake. I’d better put newspapers down inside. The Bog wants to wipe everything out. Smooth it down and turn it into turf and grow over it nice and neat. Turn us all into bog mummies. Then we can be dug up in a thousand years and put in a state-sponsored museum and called heritage. Make money for somebody.
Rap at the door. Louder than the rain. Using the brass harp door-knocker. Brassy and peremptory. Un-Irish. Do I want company. YesNoYesNo Who is it? I hide behind the door frame and peer through the bathroom glass.
It’s Schwantz. Professor Schwantz. Schwantz the Professor. Not from here. Not from Curryaun certainly. Not from Ireland. Another continental blow-in that stuck to the Mayo cloth like a burr and hasn’t the will to pull himself loose and get a real life in a real place. A gabber. A real gab-man. A gab-gubbe. Never stops talking. I wonder about letting him in. Once he opens his mouth he never stops. He stops but his mouth doesn’t. Loose-hinged. All flaps open. All stops out. Machine gun palatals. Motorised labials. Epiglottis can’t keep still. Glottolalia. E' glottolalia magistralis (dicesi glottolalia lo stato in cui il santo o il mistico prestano il proprio apparato vocale alla divinità che parla per bocca .... Glossolalia maybe. Glossodoolalia. I do not think he talks in tongues, only in the tongue of Saint Schwantz himself. No need for a connection with God, for he is Him. Still I appreciate the gallon of poitín he brought me a couple of years ago. Or I would if I dared to drink it. I took a small sip once. The next day I was down with a hallucinatory kidney infection. It might have been a coincidence, of course. If one is spiritually impoverished enough to believe in coincidences, that is. I may well be of that category, but I prefer not to take chances, at this tender extremity of life. I serve it to visiting foreigners at the studio only and they feel well-Irished.
Well, I suppose I need a break.
Schwantz the Professor. Professor Schwantz. Don’t know Professor of What? Punch and Judy most likely. European sort. University of Gothenburg he says. But he can’t speak Swedish, for I tried him. Says it was a long while ago and I did not press the point. I said it was a quotation from Hafez, merely, and in the original Farsi, and that I was simply summing up the futility of living in memory and the draughty halls of the past, and who cares about Gothenburg now anyway, whatever it might have meant to us both at the time, which in my case was not much. He agreed. Or at least he let it pass without further elaboration.
Everything is a long while ago now. Stinking old-age. Age, age where is thy stink, death where is thy what? Or was it the grave?
Anyway, he blew in there too from somewhere faraway else, who knows what place? Sort of Central European I would guess from the rich cultural baggage he carries about with him and shares lavishly. Too rich for the bog, but I am thankful for small mercies. He is after all a real person and could never be confused with a computer monitor. A monitor lizard, perhaps.
Reckons he knew me from then. Might have. I don’t remember those years. Pripps Number Three.
No comments:
Post a Comment