Cassandra Voices

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  • Manus in Seomra Spraoi

    Seomra Spraoi was a hub of resistance. The space was located just off the quays close to Dublin’s city centre. It was used to organise campaigns against, Shell oil’s Mayo pipeline, the World Bank and the deportations of non-nationals, among many other worthwhile causes.

    It is hardly surprising Seomra Spraoi was closed down under ‘fire regulations’. It had probably only been allowed to stay open for as long as it did due to a lack of visibility. No one caused trouble, there were no fights and the Gardaí were never called out over loud music late at night, until they were one night.

    When they came over they were not overly-impressed with some of the anti-capitalist and anti-police posters. Perhaps they began to perceive the space as a possible threat. In any event, Seomra was closed down under fire regulations a few days later.

    But that’s just political spiel. Seomra Spraoi was also a social centre. A place where personal stories unfolded.

    *******

    Manus had just finished with a relationship. The woman had moved out and even though he had custody of the child for more than half the week he still felt a yawning gap in his life. Even more so when the child, Shirifa, went to her mothers.

    Mentally, physically, and economically, Manus couldn’t afford the pubs, and while he could pass the time reading and writing, he still craved human contact.

    For Manus, Seomra Spraoi was manna from heaven. A; social club/drop in/resource centre, not-for- profit, non-hierarchical, and run for and by the people who used it. Those were the ideals to which the centre aspired. Of course ideals and humans don’t always get along perfectly together. It’s hard once you’ve invested time and energy into creating and maintaining something to think of it in any other way than as your baby. It may belong to everyone, but it still belongs more to you. Unofficial hierarchies and cliques seem to evolve naturally regardless of ideology. But having said that the centre did its best, and its best was pretty good.

    Sundays had activities specifically catering for kids but it was child-friendly in general.

    Shirifa loved it.  Even when there were no people her own age the older people took an interest in her, made allowances for her and in general showed her the respect we are all due.

    There is an old African saying, ‘it takes a whole village to bring up a young person’, and Seomra Spraoi was as close to a village as could be found anywhere in Dublin. Manus was enjoying bringing her up in the right type of atmosphere. An atmosphere of mutual respect.

    It was in Seomra Spraoi that Shirifa and Manus heard about the protest against the World Bank, and Manus and Shirifa, along with a handful of others, decided to participate.

    ‘We do very well out of it,’ Manus explained to his daughter. ‘It’s  because people in other countries are kept so poor that we are rich.’

    Shirifa nodded her three year old head and looked serious.

    Manus laughed. He wondered about his motivation for attending the protest. There was only a dozen or so people in attendance. Manus wondered about that too. How come there was so few protesting? Did everybody believe the world order was set like concrete and could never be changed? That protest seemed futile. Or did nobody else care that the poorest countries in the world were having to pay the richest countries in the world lots of money, and as a direct consequence thousands of people lived and died with intolerable hardship?

    People’s apathy amounted to criminal negligence. Manus applied uncle Noamy’s example and felt like a German civilian during the Second World War, looking at the smoke coming from chimneys and saying, ‘am I really sure what’s happening in there and even if I was what could I do about it?’

    Manus didn’t feel like he was doing much but he supposed standing in the cold outside a hotel where members of the World Bank were meeting and saying ‘boo’ was better than doing nothing.

    Anyway the protest in Malahide was a day out for Manus and Shirifa.

    After a few hours they headed off for cake and coffee in a café along with two single parent mums and their kids. Manus was a single parent dad and he had to get used to the idea. He had to start looking at other women, or looking for another woman.

    Phrases like, ‘back on the market’, or, ‘on the hunt’, could now be applied to him.

    Mostly he had enjoyed monogamy but he wasn’t cut out for abstinence.

    These women seemed sensitive, intelligent, strong, independent and politically aware lefty types. Manus was pleased to think they existed, and pleased to have their company. He wondered if he would stand a chance with either of them. Either would do, but shouldn’t he have a preference?

    He would have been hard-pressed to decide. He wondered if his need denied him a preference. One of the women appeared more youthful than the other, more impulsive.

    He had vague recollections of other women he had known when he had been younger. Impulsive times.

    Manus wondered what it would be like to live with either of them over a period of years. He had visions of both women wearing completely different faces from the pleasant persona’s they presented at this moment.

    How far away were the faces of anger, resentment  or painful sadness? How long before he would see those faces?

    Manus had made a few quid that morning. It was the first bit of cash he had made in months and he was pleased to have money in his pocket.

    He offered to buy both women their dinners with wine at the café, but they each refused. He didn’t know them that well and they were of a different gender.

    Manus had an easy-come eas- go attitude to money and would have offered to pay for the food and drink regardless. He was pleased to be able to offer and pleased to sit with two adults who brought their kids to protest against the World Bank. But that didn’t take from the fact that he was still a mate-less male and these were two seemingly mate-less females. He wondered if his offer was really him making a play for the women or if he was just being human and wanting to share in his good fortune.

    In any event they had both refused dinner. The single parent mums were younger than him. Everyone was younger than him.

    They all travelled back on the train together. The three lone parents and their three children.

    One of the women told a story about a skeleton that gave one of its bones to make soup, but when the soup wasn’t shared out the skeleton chased the nasty people out and let a poor little boy stay in the house.

    The story kept the kids happy the whole way back.

    Manus couldn’t help comparing the women to Shirifa’s mum Janice.

    Janice was thirty one going on nineteen. She longed for the heady social life of her late teens and early twenties. For Janice things had taken a distinctly downward turn around the year two thousand and one, when she had been twenty-four years old, and met Manus for the first time.

    For Jan the relationship was never meant to be anything more than a cheap thrill for a fleeting moment. The satisfaction of idle and lustful curiosity. But what should have been a passing fling turned into a prolonged nightmare. She felt trapped by her pregnancy too, and her relationship with this man, an older man, someone from another place and another time.

    She had even been unfaithful to him as a ploy to get him to end it. Shagging someone else had always worked before, but not with Manus. He stuck like shit to her shoe. Just to make her suffer she sometimes thought.

    Janice had fought against and in many ways denied the relationship most of the time but for the sake of convenience, and due to economic restrictions, she ended up living in the same space and even sharing the same bed as Manus, for the best part of six years.

    Receiving a bequest of fifteen thousand euro from her grandfather gave her the freedom to re-arrange her life. So Janice and Manus had officially broken up. That is, they no longer lived under the same roof or slept in the same bed, but they still had to deal with each other.

    Throughout the relationship Janice had fluctuated between being churlish and rude to being needy and crying. Sometimes she wanted his emotional support, other times she just wanted him in bed.

    The break up hadn’t changed the nature of the relationship.

    When she needed him or even just wanted him, she had only to ask and he would be over in a flash, panting like a puppy on her porch. Occasionally he might hesitate for a moment, but it seemed so pointless. Why would he lie on his own and deny himself the warmth and pleasure of her body?

    There were a couple of reasons why. After sex she might pat his crutch and say ‘you were always a great shag’. She probably thought she was flattering him, but a part of him would want to quote Billy Holiday, ‘you’ve had the best now why not take the rest, come on, have all of me.’

    But Jan didn’t want the rest and the parts she didn’t want felt lonely and rejected.

    She would never let him stay the night and he would feel like the dog getting put out at the end of the day.

    He would try to rationalize that lots of people would love such a relationship. Sex and then piss off, but for some reason it didn’t always appeal to him.

    Looked at from a certain slant of rationality, Jan was doing everyone a favour breaking out of a relationship she felt trapped in. Manus didn’t always look at it from that particular slant of rationality.

    It’s funny how unrequited love can turn to hate.

    But then life could sometimes be seen as a very funny experience, especially if you are living in the wealthy West.

    And Manus was living in the wealthy West.

    *******

    He brought Shirifa to a protest against deportations. Manus had friends who had been forced out of Ireland. He had felt frustration and anger. He didn’t have that many friends and couldn’t afford to lose any of them. One of his friends was called Addi. They had met in a border town. They both lived in the same housing estate . They both felt very isolated amongst the remnants of die-hard Republicanism, and the alcoholism which seemed to dominate the estate. They met on a regular basis for over a year, never doing much other than smoking African bush weed and talking or listening to music.

    But contacts like this were an oasis of human interaction in his otherwise social desert. Manus felt close to Addi. Then one day Manus got a message on his mobile saying Addi was in prison and asking for help. Manus didn’t know how to help. He never heard from Addi again. Apart from feeling useless and guilty Manus didn’t know what else he could do.

    His friend Okoro was a different story, which ended with Islam Okoro not being allowed back into Ireland, even though he had three kids who were born and living in the country at the time.

    So now the government was having a pre-Christmas round up of Nigerian fathers. They would be deported and their wives and children would follow them back.

    Manus was angry about the loss of his friends and infuriated that the government still used the tactic of separating fathers from their children. If any one for any reason thought they had the right to separate Manus and Shirifa, they were wrong. They had no such right. Manus was sure of that.

    He got himself a bit worked up as he walked down to the protest.

    Shirifa was sleeping in the buggy. He stood outside the immigration office with a dozen others. He was given a placard that read ‘no deportations’.

    He was glad to show some of the people going into the building that not all of the Irish thought it was ok to deport these men.

    Then a racist, a male in his thirties; poor, uneducated and socially deprived, went by and shouted: ‘shouldn’t let the black bastards in in the first place.’

    The words ‘fucken wanker’ erupted out of Manus in a loud and violence-threatening voice.

    It was always impossible dealing with blind ignorance and hatred. Manus had dealt with a lot of it as a child on Belfast’s Ormeau Road. Then it was called sectarianism.

    ‘Taigs out’ would get painted on the walls, and he and others were chased through the streets. Sometimes people were caught and killed stone dead because they were Taigs.

    Manus could never really figure it out. Was it that perpetrators of these types of crime had defects which they tried to compensate for by showing off an ability to hate? Were they acting under the influence of a crowd with a collectively low IQ? Probably a lot of the blame lay with newspapers, clerics, and bosses who told them it was right to have contempt for people even slightly different from themselves.

    As a child Manus could never figure out why people he had never met could hate him. And there would be no chance to talk, to rationalize. These people wanted to stop you talking, stamp out your rationality.

    Manus’s instant and uncontrolled reaction at the racist statement had shocked him by the depth of violence it carried in its tone. By its vicious rage.

    It shocked the racist too, who kept moving for a bit but then decided to come back and stand up for his right to be a loud-mouthed racist.

    ‘Who called me a wanker? are you looking for a fight?’

    Manus followed his breath closely as he took off his shoulder bag full of nappies and wipes, set it gently on the child’s buggy and stepped out to meet his would be assailant.

    ‘You looken for a fight?’, the man repeated.

    Manus felt centred enough, and just tried to keep his eyes on his opponent’s feet and fists. A head butt would also be a danger as they squared up.

    It crossed Manus’s mind as he approached that it might be best to just lash out with a kick. He was glad he wore heavy shoes and if it was going to happen it would be better to get the first blows in. It would end the tension for a start. But how would it look on the camera? Surely they were on CCTV camera?  Maybe Manus could just stand him down. As he drew closer Manus cursed his own stupidity for having brought a blimp of draw with him to the protest. Manus wasn’t the brightest.

    Then he had Shirifa with him and if they arrested Manus what would they do with his daughter?

    Manus squared up to the man. ‘Just leave’ said Manus and luckily for Manus the racist left.

    Pauline stuck a small camera in Manus’s face just as the racist left. She asked Manus how he felt. Manus had felt slightly overwhelmed by the spontaneity and ferocity of his own reaction, but all he could say to Pauline was, ‘I feel too emotional about the whole thing. I just wish they’d stop this shit.’

    He wasn’t even clear what ‘shit’ he was referring to. Racism. Deportations. The main stream press, who’s messages divided people and diverted them from the real issue of the destructive policies and practices of the world’s greedy, wasteful corporations;

    All of the above he supposed.

    *******

    Shirifa woke up hungry and a bit grumpy. After the protest he brought her round to Seomra Spraoi. They boiled rice and ate it with yogurt. Pauline’s daughter played with Shirifa. So did Patrizia. Pauline was about the same age as Manus. Patrizia wasn’t half his age. Both females seemed fit and healthy, and he wondered if either would consider him a potential shag. He seemed more detached about this question than his sexual needs usually allowed. Did detachment come with age?

    Both women seemed worthwhile human beings. Human contact meant a lot to Manus and although he still worshiped sex more than money or any other god, he sometimes preferred it when sexuality took a back seat to a more rounded and fully human interaction.

    Seomra Spraoi was a slightly different social setting to most. Alternative social relations were possible. Manus didn’t feel like he had a need to show sexual interest in any one, nor would he be too offended if no one showed that type of interest in him.

    In truth Manus doubted his ability to go with anyone other than the mother of his child. She was the only one he’d known for six years. He figured he would miss the familiarity and resent the break in intimacies continuity. Maybe he was just scared of the unknown.

    After Seomra Spraoi was shut down under fire regulations Manus felt a terrible sense of loss at the news. He felt isolated again. Where would he go? Where would he bring his daughter?

    With no where else to go Manus called on two people he knew. Unfortunately Seamus from County Clare had returned to smack, while Ghanny from Nigeria had found Christianity again. Manus turned first to alcohol, and then to scribbling.

    Seomra Spraoi would open again, even if it was in another building. It was a place where people could get together and exchange ideas and go some way to creating social norms, maybe even a social revolution that suited themselves rather than their rulers. But that’s just back to political rather than personal spiel.

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  • Is George Orwell’s England Now Home to Fintan O’Toole’s Swivel-Eyed Loons?

    It was flattering to read Fintan O’Toole respond, however oblique, to my criticism of his generally hysterical book on Brexit. In an Irish Times article on February 19th he claims the English eccentricity I praised has morphed into sinister idiosyncrasies, personified by what he impolitely refers to as the ‘swivel-eyed-loon’ Brexiteers. The association of physical disability with an opposing point of view is a low blow indeed in a bigoted article attempting to define apparently timeless national traits.

    As a last throw of the dice O’Toole adduces evidence from George Orwell to the effect that the English have always been, in actual fact, rather a conformist lot, now queuing obediently for the train marked oblivion.[i]

    O’Toole realises you cannot blacken the reputation of all things English, and seemingly as an afterthought, invokes the authority of the English secular saint. Never mind that Orwell actually credited his compatriots with an abiding belief in the Rule of Law and in holding power to account, a trait the once inquisitorial O’Toole seems to have forgotten.

    It is fair to say that Orwell has never been unfashionable, but the spectre of his ideas is much evident in this zeitgeist. Beyond even his novels, Animal Farm (1945) and 1984 (1949), which define and anticipate the nature of totalitarian rule, Orwell was probably the greatest essayist of all time, foreseeing, like a clairvoyant, so many of the problems we now confront. He still stands for decency and humanism.

    O’Toole, in a spurious impression of radicalism – reminiscent of an intellectual Father Brian Trendy – appeals to the baser instincts towards English-bashing in Ireland; essentially condemning the vainglorious Brexiters for cutting off and undermining our gravy train of inequitable farm subsidies.

    Unlike O’Toole, Orwell respected the common sense of the common man, and never resorted to popular prejudice or vulgar nationalism.

    In ‘The Lion and The Unicorn’ (1940) Orwell claimed that English people held a belief in justice, not a fear of power. He further argues, in ‘Inside The Whale’ (1940), that this stemmed from a lack of experience of government repression:

    With all its injustices England is still the land of habeas corpus and the overwhelming majority of English people have no experience of violence and illegality.[ii]

    In ‘Homage to Catalonia’ (1938) he shows how extremism imposed no restraints or boundaries, leading to a descent into lawless banditry. England today is still suffused with moderation, incrementalism, and the population are not generally exposed to licensed thuggery.

    In my experience of living in the country, people commonly still do not understand and do not tolerate the manipulation or abuse of law by Power. In this respect they are increasingly alone in Europe, with Spain mounting show trials against Catalan ‘putschists’ for daring to hold an independence referendum, and fascist taking power in Hungary and Italy.

    O’Toole could profitably read various pieces I have written on the Rule of Law and corruption of state agencies in Ireland.[iii] These are all available for free online – unlike the subscriber-based Irish Times. He should take note of the following points, which might cause indigestion in his pampered readership of retired, or retiring, civil servants.

    1. An Garda Siochana, the Irish police force, has been a criminally-led organisation.
    2. A politically-anointed judiciary have contributed to the undermining of the Rule of Law by supporting this police force, and have failed to build on existing Constitutional rights to alleviate the Housing Crisis.
    3. Government agencies have framed ‘enemies of the people’, who blow the lid on corruption (Orwell in ‘Such Were The Joys’ is remarkably insightful about the manipulation of children, whereas O’Toole, with a unique platform in the Irish media, does nothing to draw attention to ongoing injustices).
    4. Ireland is the perfect neo-liberal shit storm, where high economic growth is an illusion, as evictions continue apace, amid spiralling inequality.

    Without succumbing to timeless stereotypes, I suggest the English still commonly believe, in the confused conversation around our global meltdown, that the underdog should be protected. As a barrister I have found that the obligation to vindicate the Rule of Law against the interests of the powerful, and holding elites to account, is taken seriously. Among the myriad motivations for the Brexit vote was a discomfort among ordinary people with the idea of being undermined by faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.

    In contrast Fintan O’Toole’s Irish Times upholds the obligation of the common man to repay his debts to predatory international financial institutions.

    In ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ Orwell also notes how the English instinctively despise miscarriages of justice and hold power to account, believing in the impartial administration of the law by independent magistrates. In contrast, I find little attention being paid to the daily injustices occurring in Ireland in Fintan O’Toole’s current output.

    Orwell is also very attuned to misuse of language. A prevalent theme is how expression should be clear and unequivocal, and in a plain style that emphasising informality and flexibility. He would have no truck with the cheap rhetorical devices O’Toole trades in.

    In ‘The Prevention of Literature’ (1946) Orwell intimates that the enemies of truth and freedom of thought are press lords and bureaucrats. In Ireland today a preening Irish Times sits atop the tree, reassuring all and sundry about what a wonderful creative country this is – and never mind you can’t find somewhere to live.

    O’Toole’s sanctimonious brand of journalism works a treat, offering sufficient distraction to the little people to allow the ‘adults in the room’ to get on with plundering the larder.

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    [i] Fintan O’Toole, ‘The English Love of the Eccentric has Turned Sour’, February 19th, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-the-english-love-of-eccentricity-has-turned-sour-1.3797907, accessed 22/2/19.

    [ii] http://orwell.ru/library/essays/whale/english/e_itw, accessed 22/2/19.

    [iii] David Langwallner, ‘The Fragile Rule of Law in Ireland’, 18th of February, 2018, https://villagemagazine.ie/index.php/2018/02/unruly-2/, accessed 22/2/19.

  • The Limits of Multiculturalism

    I have previously warned that austerity economics and moral relativism are giving rise to a new fascism, last seen between the World Wars. First published in English in 1926, perhaps the most influential text of that period was Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of The West, which blamed Slavic and other ‘degenerate’ races for Europe’s impoverishment. The counterpoint of his argument was that ‘noble’ Aryan blood, whether Germanic or Anglo Saxon, was the highest expression of humanity. This slow train of pseudo-scientific conjecture terminated in the nightmare of the Holocaust, or Shoah.

    Until recently merely of historic concern, debased Social Darwinism is back in vogue. I fear a new corporatised Shoah of economic liquidation and social-atomisation is on the horizon. The rehabilitation of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini’s reputation by Steve Bannon, and others, is laying the tracks.

    The words of Stefan Zweig, who committed suicide in Brazil after fleeing Hitler’s Europe are returning to haunt us: ‘I feel that Europe, in its state of degeneracy has passed its own death sentence.’[i]

    There is evident an increasingly differentiation between ‘them’ and ‘us’, involving unedifying forms of class warfare and demonization of those outside the dominant culture, whether foreigner, migrant or displaced. ‘Killing an Arab’, the central theme of expurgation of ‘the other’ in Albert Camus’s L’Etranger ‘The Outsider’ is writ large in our culture.

    Within this discourse lies the vexed question of immigration or mass migration. Who should be expelled? Who can stay? And why?

    The mainstream Left – the hopeless and incoherent Left – has hitherto uncritically endorsed mass migration and diversity, equating any form of immigration control with incipient fascism. This is the soppy, unthinking multi-culturalism of ‘Nadia’ Guardian reader. During the Blairite regime one of his ministers Barbara Roche, gave carte blanche to unrestrained abuse of the asylum system, telling officials, ‘Asylum seekers should be allowed to stay in Britain. Removal takes too long and it’s emotional.’[ii] How times have changed.

    A Wandering Cosmopolitan

    Let me lay my multi-racial and cosmopolitan cards on the table. I am a mongrel breed of Irish Catholic – a disease from which I am still recovering – Austrian Catholic; with a soupcon of Jewry, and distant Welsh. Educated in Britain, America, and Ireland, and much travelled, I am a shaggy dog of various stamps. Labels of multiculturalism and internationalism are plastered all over me. Paddington bear from Peru arrived in London. I have no built-in prejudice against other races in the pot.

    I believe in the idea of the best man or woman for the job, but baulk at political correctness, affirmative action or quotas, and all other self-protectionist strategies that justify the promotion of the indigent or semi-competent. I also believe that anyone should be given the opportunity to develop and fulfil their potential in a chosen fields, now increasingly difficult in a world of zero-hour or short-term contracts.

    Britain in Brexit limbo is a crucible for these cross current. Babylondon, a Babel’s Tower of voices and many vices; a petri-dish for immigration policies over which I have had a ringside seat in London’s extradition courts for the past year

    It is taking on the appearance of the coliseum with non-nationals being thrown to the lions, for the amusement of a generation of global political leaders on a spectrum from Caligula to Nero; Gore Vidal’s ‘United States of Amnesia’[iii] has gone viral.

    In the 1930s the UK was a refuge for those extirpated by fascism. Freud fled to the UK in 1938, alongside numerous Jewish intellectuals, including the historian Eric Hobsbawm and jurist Hersh Lauterpacht, who nourished the UK’s intellectual life for decades. That was then, and British tolerance, an indicium of the national character, is not as open to the reception of the poor huddled masses today, while under Trump, America is developing a siege mentality.

    The idea of American universities being staffed by left-wing intellectuals such as Thomas Adorno and Hannah Arendt, as in the 1950s, is now decidedly quaint. In Trump-land even moderate liberalism is an invitation to censure or disempowerment by squeamish authorities. A quick word from our sponsors. A quiet petition. A public shaming for the temerity to speak the truth in Post-Truth-land.

    The New Determinants

    The reception of the genuinely talented, who add spice to the melting pot, is still desired by the UK authorities, and perhaps America. The question has narrowed to what adds and what detracts? These new determinants are increasingly based on financial calculation, or on the requirements of the service industry; servility and obsequiousness have acquired a new currency.

    As a result of its colonial heritage, the UK had to accommodate former imperial subjects from the Caribbean, South Asia, and even its neighbouring island. Now the Home Office is rigorously scrutinising all claims, as I discovered in the case of a white South African client invoking the ancestral clause.

    The apocalyptic warning by Enoch Powell at the time of mass immigration in the 1960s was of ‘Rivers of Blood’. The inflammatory racism was reprehensible, but Powell’s prophecy was not entirely without foundation.

    The question of how those communities would ultimately integrate has been inadequately settled, with Asians in a city like Bradford still ghettoized: a sealed-off and closed community, not so much Rivers of Blood, as opposite sides of the fence.

    Norman Tebbit’s famous remark that to be properly British one should have to pass a cricket test of loyalty is apposite in that many second generation Asians still support Pakistan or India in cricket. The same can be said of the Irish in their preferred sports.

    Upon migrating anywhere it is surely advisable to wear the colours of the host nation, without necessarily negating your own inheritance. There is an obligation to adapt and make reasonable accommodations, and the host nation may absorb aspects of your culture too, just as the Indian curry has been taken to the bosom of the UK, all too literally in some cases.

    Caribbean, and indeed Irish communities, have settled better, but racially targeted police surveillance was a phenomenon in places such as Brixton, and IRA bombings led to the false prosecution of the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six.

    Acceptance is often on the terms of the host nation. The integrated Irish now excel at light entertainment, from Danny La Rue to Graham Norton via Tony Clare. They offer amusement but not much more. Perhaps we have found our level, considering public intellectualism is virtually extinct in Ireland. At home, indulgence of ‘the craic’ has brought sub-Trumpean political discourse, and the circus clowns of our political, legal and media classes.

    New Species of Racism

    The Labour Left in its present UK incarnation displays a distinctly contradictory attitude towards multiculturalism, and indeed racism. Ken Livingston was surely not an isolated case of virulent antisemitism. Unfortunately anti-Zionism easily morphs into outright antisemitism in supposedly radical left circles. Why?

    Even before fascism there was widespread hatred of the shadowy figure of the cosmopolitan Jewish financier, epitomised by members of the Rothschild family. Anti-capitalism easily falls prey to fictitious Zionist financial conspiracies to rule the world, regurgitating tropes from the Protocols of Zion forgery. The ingenuity and wit of hard-working Jewish communities around the world is rarely acknowledged. This attitude is not evident across the Left, and certainly not in Corbyn. But it is there.

    Also – and here I enter transgressive territory – the rise of antisemitism is linked to the influence of the rich Asian community within the Labour Party. The hostility of Islam towards Israel and Judaism has transmuted into discernible antisemitic attitudes in a purportedly tolerant and multicultural party. The Jewish community can be forgiven for sensing a throwback to another era.

    Brexit extremists are also hostile to multiculturalism, and inheritors of Enoch Powell’s odious strain of English nationalism. The objection to Europe is at one level an objection to undeserved immigrants poaching ‘our’ jobs. It is Spenglerian in that much of the ire is directed against the Slavic ‘degenerate’ races, and despairs at how a ‘nanny’ state permits degenerate lifestyles among the indigenous English working class.

    Puritanism often morphs into sexually-sanitised racism, just as J. Edgar Hoover targeted Martin Luther King’s tomboy promiscuity. It is no coincidence that non-nationals are often portrayed as sexually degenerate, while the religious mania of the U.S. Republican Party promotes a generally hypocritical sexual purity.

    We are seeing a growing hostility towards miscegenation, mixed marriages and corruption of bloodlines. This is apparent in Ireland, where members of the blue-blooded, ‘Anglo-Norman’, Fine Gael party display an absurd sense of entitlement.

    The Right also adduces arguments about abuse of welfare or health care entitlements by migrants. Socio-economic rights are often denied altogether. It all leads to the impression that migrants are sponging off us.

    Other disturbing trends are also on the rise. The vigilante Catholic Right inveighs against alleged paedophiliac Asian men, while ignoring the litany of its own abuses.

    Britain is enmeshed in Brexit dialogue, and arguments about multiculturalism are also pertinent in other jurisdictions. Indeed it has become the burning European issue.

    Thus in France their version of a cricket test was to ban the wearing of garments such as the hijab in public institutions. This was upheld by the European Court of Human Rights in S.A.S. in 2014[iv]; where it was justified within the parameters of secular ordre publique. The consequences were profound: civil unrest, bombs, and murder of journalists and cartoonists.

    Yet orthodox Islam has no truck with the core Enlightenment principle of freedom of speech, which an English judge describes as the ‘lifeblood of democracy’. As Stephen Sedley points out, the word ‘lifeblood’ is particularly apt, since ‘free speech enables opinion and fact to be carried round the body politic.’[v]

    But extremism is not restricted to Islam. The Marxist and gay Italian film director Pasolini may have alienated the Roman Church, and mafia, in his 1971 One Hundred Days of Sodom to the extent that he was murdered at their behest on a beach near Rome, with a gay hustler framed for the crime.

    Let us nonetheless hesitate before regulating expressions of culture, particularly as Muslim women see their dress code as an expression of who they are, and ignore the views of some American feminists. The Turkish secular state set up by Ataturk took a similar exclusionary stance towards religious garments; yet, as Orhan Pamuk’s splendid 2002 novel Snow illustrated Turkey was still beset by religious fundamentalism. Liberty demands tolerance of cultural distinctions, albeit there are limits.

    It is clear that excessive multicultural tolerance has permitted the rise of religious fundamentalism, extremism, and indeed terrorism in ‘Londonistan’. Fundamentalism is not, however, limited to Islam, and actually the word can be traced to descriptions of early twentieth century Protestantism. Catholicism has a similar strain – seen vividly throughout Irish history under autocrats such as Archbishop McQuaid.

    The Outsider

    I recently read The Meursault Investigation, written by the Algerian writer Kemal Daoud in 2015. The book is a rebuke to the greatest Algerian, and indeed French, writer of the last century Albert Camus, and his iconic The Outsider, about, as aforementioned, killing an Arab.

    The book is implicitly critical of Camus’s putative racism or imperialism, or at least, a lack of empathy with the murdered Arab. It is certainly not univocally hostile, and the author himself has been the subject of a fatwa, and clearly despises what Camus presaged, namely the rise of religious extremism; one aspect of the multicultural meltdown.

    The book concludes with a consideration which Camus would identify with, namely how do we hold on to the precious commodity of truth?

    The attribution of racism to Camus has been made by others, including Edward Said in his 1993 Culture and Imperialism, which argued he essentially approved of French dominion over Algeria. But Camus is unfairly criticised. He was in origin a member of the French community in Algeria, doubly despised by mainland French as a pied noir outsider, and by the Islamic majority population of Algeria as an occupier.

    Above all he was a product of the Enlightenment, and the French tradition of letters and reason. A devotee of Voltaire with an epigrammatic style redolent of Pascal. There is an austerity about his prose, but also a romantic lyricism born of a mongrel Algerian background.

    In his writing on Algeria – as in his 1951 The Rebel, a book length treatment of secular extremism in the French Revolution – there is a distaste for fundamentalism, secular or religious, which is why he remains relevant. It should be stressed that he advocated co-existence between the transplanted French and native Islamic population in Algeria and condemned the torture and the death penalty inflicted on the Islamic population by the French authorities, graphically conveyed in the 1966 film The Battle of Algiers.

    This all seems impeccable multiculturalism, but Camus saw clearly that there was going to be bloodletting in Algeria. He despised religious fervour, just as he had contempt for the secular extremism of the French Revolutionary Terror. Those qualities of middle-of-the-road restraint are in short supply today.

    So what conclusions do I draw from limbo Brexit-land, and with Euro-wide fascism and racism on the rise, about multi-culturalism?

    Here are some tentative, provocative and perhaps disturbing conclusions.

    The liberal consensus based on such values as the Rule of Law, humanism, tolerance, the promotion of excellence irrespective of race, and affirmative action to compensation for historic discrimination has broken down. In an Age of Extremes, the Left and the Right are demonising each other. Reason and moderation are in desperately short supply, as are the Enlightenment values of Camus. Alas, extremism will continue to rise even in multicultural Britain.

    The Extradition Courts in which I appear are going to be flooded with cases resulting in deportations of ‘undesirables’. Only economically productive non-nationals will be allowed to remain in post-Brexit Britain. All non-nationals, perhaps even Irish, will become part of the precariat. Racially motivated crimes and targeting will continue apace, unchecked by an increasingly authoritarian state.

    Merkel’s Open Door policy cannot last, there are limits to the number the continent can accommodate, and the interests of indigenous workers are damaged by an incessant stream of migrants willing to work for less and longer.

    But given the state of Europe with fascist enclaves in Hungary, Poland and the iridescent fascism in Austria – no to mention the deep-seated extremism of Irish neo-liberalism – Britain will probably be the last place to see the Rivers of Blood flow. There are still residues of those precious qualities of rationality, rigour, tolerance and humanism espoused by Camus.

    All is not lost in Britain, but even in the polyglot cosmopolis – the ultimate melting pot that is London –  the sense is that multicultural tolerance has been eroded substantially, and is being replaced by fractious intolerance, class warfare, intimidation and social fragmentation. The European experiment is over, in truth, having contributed to its downfall, but islands of humanity endure.

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    [i] Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday, London, Pushkin Press, 2014, p.425.

    [ii] James Slack, ‘Conman Blair’s cynical conspiracy to deceive the British people and let in 2million migrants against the rules: Explosive new biography lays ex-PM’s betrayal bare’, The Daily Mail, February 27th, 2016,  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3466485/How-Blair-cynically-let-two-million-migrants-Explosive-biography-reveals-PM-s-conspiracy-silence-immigration-debate.html, accessed 6/2/19.

    [iii] Gore Vidal, Point to Point Navigation, p.55, London, Little, Brown, 2006.

    [iv] Eva Brems, ‘The European Court of Human Rights and Face Veil Bans’, E-International Relations, February 21st, 2018, https://www.e-ir.info/2018/02/21/the-european-court-of-human-rights-and-face-veil-bans/, accessed 6/2/19.

    [v] Stephen Sedley, ‘The Right to Know’, 10th of August, 2010, The London Review of Books, https://www.lrb.co.uk/v22/n15/stephen-sedley/the-right-to-know, accessed 6/2/19.

  • Demon Cum

    DEMON CUM

    I

    He’s the latest spawn of Hell
    with a lanyard and a notch lapel
    and “there is no alternative,”
    as if nothing has to give,
    a stench of sulfur to intrigue
    some think-tank from the Ivy League.
    Gray-flecked beard and close-cropped hair,
    a ruin that’s beyond repair
    but crying out for management,
    refurbishing, and rising rent,
    but atop primordial slimes,
    an op-ed in The New York Times,
    a view where people look like ants,
    paid by fellowships and grants,
    a Predator drone with mark on lock,
    an unpaid intern on his cock,
    a data-driven genocide,
    a seminar taught on the side,
    a speech into a thousand mics,
    a million viral Facebook likes,
    a sociopath with lots of friends,
    a handshake that never fucking ends,
    a five-star meal, a rail of blow,
    the so-called former status quo.

    II

    The poem is reduced to a statistic
    of lines and syllables, attempted tropes,
    and stresses. Still, you should be realistic—
    you’ll hold off the degenerates with rhyme,
    with Ivy League credentials, and you’ll cope
    in little magazines, marking time
    with versifications of the status quo—
    a plea for dialogue, an early snow
    beatified, a metaphor that’s felt
    in the flipping of a calendar,
    one more year before the ice caps melt.
    It’s either not our fault—or all our fault.
    Shake your head and grip the bannister.
    Head to bed or dress up like John Gault,
    content there’s really nothing you can do.
    content that all real change must start with you.

    III

    Resistance wears a muu-muu now.
    “Yes we can” and “we know how”
    becomes your mother on the line.
    You tell her everything is fine,
    but she knows better. All the fuss
    takes on shades of Oedipus—
    a tired old lady on a stage,
    the slapstick ending of an age.
    Daddy Warbucks, Howard Roark.
    A NASDAQ surge. A high-tech dork.
    A mother-god is on the phone,
    scolding you in monotone.
    A shattered statue, endless sands—
    a poem no one understands
    despite iambic clarity.
    Inside a tent marked “VIP”
    our goddess goes back to her crypt.
    The tripwire, yet again, is tripped.

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  • Old School

    I felt him sliver under my shirt as she belted me in with a quicksilver click. The shoulder strap muffled my mouth and eclipsed an eye. Mom sipped her coffee, singing along to the song on the radio, ‘One less egg to fry … ’ Only half of what lay ahead was in sight, but one wide eye watched her cigarette ashes take flight and land in one hundred percent humidity on the dashboard. Sticky plastic sword in hand, I grappled with an apple for breakfast in our Volkswagen, spieling, ‘Nein, nein, nein,’ all the way uptown. The Beetle was a shade of blue I think you’d call Tiffany.

    The epiphany that something sublime writhed round my collarbone, that I hadn’t come alone occurred before lunchtime. Frank and furtive, Alfred recoiled pretzel-like in the well of my tender clavicle, his tiny tongue darting at everyone in my kindergarten. Fraulein’s wrists regrettably garbled into a sort of swastika, as she hissed, ‘It won’t be long now.’ The kids thronged to see me prove the venomous Frau wrong. To her dismay, I displayed his length, with all the strength of my Lilliputian limbs. Adamant even, that while he had not a leg to stand on, my king snake, Alfred the Great’s congenital regalia exhibited double genitalia. I was only bested by Mom’s suggestion I stroll my two-penised pet in the yard. I’d hardly let go when he stole away, and you know, I bet she planned the hole thing.

    ‘Roll’ simpered the director. I’d been pimped and primped, as per the script. It was cool to skip school and spend all day in a pool of hot light. The blazing burlesque began with the future governor grilling me over an antique desk. He gave me the third degree and being only four, I took The Fifth. If the camera had closed in tightly on Edwin Edwards, it might’ve seen the politician took pains to burn book learning into my brain. The necessary votes were sustained, note not without substantial commercial gain. The campaign to elect the high roller hit a nerve. As 50th Governor of Louisiana he served an unheard of four terms during a legendary sixteen years. I fear that’s longer than he spent pent up in federal prison for conspiracy, money laundering, racketeering, extortion and fraud. The ‘Silver Zipper’ is still lauded to this day for his rebuke of the KKK’s David Duke, ‘We’ve both been wizards under the sheets.’ This is my ode to a sweltering state still sheltered by Napoleonic Code.

    A child is a sponge, able to absorb the plethora of Playboy and Cosmopolitan’s iconic chronicles accumulating on the coffee table. These juicy pages, Dr. Seuss, Shakespeare’s complete works and other tearjerkers make for a berserk library. Wary I’d acquired precocious social skills, my father enrolled me in an experimental public school program where pupils deemed pliable were thrilled to be drilled under controlled conditions. Seditious teaching techniques were scrutinized, I expect for their effect on us like fruit flies in an elite Petrie dish. We learned Latin in togas, and outside in the arena, laughing like hyenas, lay the hoi polloi. We graduated to the vulgar gate of a junior high school, massive and without barriers to entry, except for the metal detectors at the door. The Creole elite monopolized the air-conditioned gym, while the Latinos rolled in the leafy shade of live oak trees outside. One hot day, I pushed a fellow, pell-mell, out of a second floor window, garnering for myself an enduring infamy as a ruffian, a femme fatale, gone feral. Maintaining my new found tough talking notoriety mortified my mother. Veering around in her Volvo, she voiced her vexation that my vocabulary had evolved.

    Mom resolved to commit me for a stint at a sporty Spartan school, just south of Bayou Sauvage. Not for fauves, was this amply proportioned concentration camp on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain, presided over by a megalomaniac vegan grammarian on mega-doses of vitamin C. At lunch break, saving me for last, Mr. Bentham spanked the bad boys’ backsides, swinging that baseball bat in a tiny room at the top of a tower, underpinned by bunkers where a curious curriculum was cobbled together by his wife. It operated like a panopticon, from which he took a jocular view through his binoculars. Noontime came soon enough, confined with the solitary Dr and his most contrary students. Stockholm syndrome smarts, but art transmogrifies the purge of pubescence, and it seems there’s really no scourge for true incandescence.

    The time was right to wear black and white. I was in like Flynn with the Dominicans. The inquisitive sisters came from Dublin’s Cabra convent, to cope with girls who hoped to propagate with Jesuit-made men. Something about that sub-tropically pugnacious khaki uniform issued by Saint Ignatius drove me right up the nearest palm tree. So much better was it built than our off-kilter tweedy chastity belts, I confess to cross-dressing. Borrowed one from a boy named Boyle. The nuns were sore. Defrocked my puerile attire at the door, but not before Harry Connick Jr picked me out. Don’t doubt he had sonic pitch way before he got hitched. Back then, the seminarian parked his bike on my porch. We sat scorching on the swing, talking about most anything from Buddha to the birds and the bees. Pleased as rum punch, Harry had that hunch to go hear the now dearly departed Hunter S. Thompson at Tulane University. Perverse Promethean. Slurred convictions. Should we blur fact with friction? Bless the good doctor’s heart, before I tested his best thesis, Hunter self-canonised. Rest in pieces.

    Image (c) Mike Skinner.

    Without a real care in the world, I twirled my pencil and stared at the exchange student’s daring hairdo. It was an iron curtain beehive and I didn’t behave. I connived to perform a vivisection, a dissection on something alive. Why stab a frog when you can go whole hog on the foreigner? Who knew she had haemophilia? My heresy hastened a schism with Superior Sister Delia. Habitual offenders get sequestered until the end of the semester. Clearly the clergy weren’t big on surgery, and saw me as the straw that broke the Carmelite’s back. Sacked in March, I was informed the Archdiocese would have one girl less.

    Yes, knowing the New Testament by heart, I had a strong start at my next school. When they mentioned the Second Coming I didn’t dumb down. A class clown, I waywardly won the award for Wit and asked the valedictorian to the prom. A ticking bomb squad, we patrolled the bars in a police car. Arguably an all-nighter, it was getting lighter when I limped in to the parents. An errant heir, in their purview, I’d scantly measured my curfew, and was out of control, ergo, out on my ear. No clocks to tick-tock, no loud locks to click, nor bones to pick. Newly emancipated, it went undebated, I dinner dated and drank Chablis insatiably.

    The class voted me Best Personality. There was no award for promiscuous thighs, but the guys prophesied when my dimples were done I’d contemplate a wimple. Be a nun, take the cloth. In a slothful simulation, one day I’ll mirror the moth. Before it’s too late, negate earthly aggravation, and commune with the moon for celestial navigation.

    Did the university need another Margaret Mead, who can’t stand the ant in Anthropology? Documentaries about Mbuti Pygmies put a bee in my bonnet, and I wrote sonnets about insects being my bugaboo. Through Totem and Taboo, I found Freud, the human zoo and allow me to assure you in our age, the cage is online.

    Flunking math, my path went west, for the best PhD at a mountain monastery. Those Jesuits wouldn’t quit till I’d got the gist of Psychology. One day my professor tidied his toupee, promising that with a little private practice he could improve my score by 69. I dodged the codger’s inclination to roger. Not a priest in the least, he’d hoisted his own petard, ignited by my vapid paper, ‘The Southern Belle: An Exaggerated Sex Role and its Indications for Therapy’.

    God gave me sisters, but I relate to baroque A-listers, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Mexico’s Tenth Muse was a philosophical feminist who knew foolish men were led by a thread through love’s labyrinth. Not full of papal bull, through a plague this phoenix flew till she too was dead. Would Wicklow Head’s Pharos light the shipwreck of my lustrated soul’s intellect? Erudite. An Anchorite. Can I join that club? A Petrarchan archetype parked at the pub, gallivanting like Dante. A dilettante, my Ezra Pound of flesh extracted, exacting in the end. Outspoken. Unbroken. A bar nun.

    I hear after the hurricane hit New Orleans, some of the Dominican mendicants came back to their convent in Ireland. I hear too, albino crawfish are indigenous to our bit of the Liffey. The river runs under this old school house where I live, and shiver about how much there is to know. So I claw my way to the water’s edge on dodgy days and see no smart salmon but I crane for cunning crustaceans. Trust the clever are forever caught up in what we’re taught, lest our thoughts paint palimpsests. Suggest we cut class but keep an eye out for that old snake in the grass.

    Featured Image (c) Sonny Carter.

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  • Artist of the Month – Emily Robyn Archer

    It’s a dark, stormy night in the middle of January, 2016 and I am listening to gale force winds slam on the tin roof overhead. We are in a small fishing cottage in Donegal, on one of the most remote headlands in the country. There is no electricity, the closest neighbour is a twenty minute drive away and the nearest pint a hike over the looming mountain. As harsh as this sounds, it is exactly what I need.

    I am suffering from ‘burn out’ you see, so these icy blasts of Atlantic air are a soothing balm to my scorched senses, the isolation a tonic. For six years I have been a freelance artist, environmental activist and educator, based in Dublin.

    In that time I have scraped, salvaged and hammered large-scale art installations into being. Using reclaimed materials as my medium and naivety as my armour, I have tried to raise environmental awareness through art.

    These attempts have included vertical ‘window farms’ in school foyers, multi-storey cardboard dragons in Barcelona, and a shoal of two hundred tin can fish to highlight the blight of overfishing. Suffice to say, I am a bit tired.

    We are facing environmental collapse and I am holding a pencil

    The journey began quite some time ago. I was under ten when I staged my first ‘protest’ (solo and quite ineffective, but charming I’m sure). I filled my bedroom with hand-drawn environmental posters. My heroes then were the bedraggled eco-warriors living atop trees in the Glen-of-the-Downs, who I had seen on RTE’s Six One News in 1990’s Ireland. I idolised them from a threadbare armchair in West Cork.

    If Nature was my first love and inclination, Art became my boon and in 2010 I graduated from the National College of Art and Design. Emerging from the shuttered, blue gates on Thomas Street into peak-recession Ireland, I felt distinctly confused, and became caught up for a while in the art-clique-jargon-speak of galleries, shows and funding proposals. I engaged for a while, until realising with a jolt I had lost my way.

    I came across a headline stating: ‘Scientists say by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.’ I remembered my ten year old self and the joy of playing by the sea. By the time I would reach sixty-four systems such as these could be in irreversible crisis. The more I read, the starker the prognosis became: species loss; extreme climate events. We are facing environmental collapse and I’m holding a pencil.

    As an alternative to all out panic, there ensued six years of magical, exhausting and invigorating creative activity. ‘In flow’ I found huge resources of energy, produced installations incessantly and started my own environmental education company. I cycled, danced and skip-dived through my twenties in fabulous company, finding like-minded people and speaking plainly. I became so contented I almost forget the instincts of my ten-year-old self.

    That was until I began spending more time with ten-year-olds, visiting schools all over Dublin to educate them on environmental issues, and inspire creative activism.

    Native Circles by Emily Robyn Archer

    I find all young people intuitively care about the natural world. This is despite many being cut off from its beauty, solace and life-giving force. I also cannot help noticing that ‘proper’ grown-ups, while claiming to care about the environment are unwilling to change what are often destructive behaviours. Over time we become disconnected from Nature, and cease to really care.

    Oh dear, here I am again. Except now the climate science is more alarming and the political situation even more dire. What on earth can I do from this small art studio on Francis Street? I stare at the wall. I pretend to be busy. I help others with their projects, to distract from my latest creative paralysis. I am asked to speak at events as an ‘art-activist.’ I flick through slides of my work feeling like a fraud. Global Warming Anxiety and Creative Burnout, sweat prickles my brow, ‘Can someone please open the window?!’

    Mysterious circular patterns

    I walk from the fishing cottage down to the foamy shore. All is white in a terrific whipped cream, post-storm sea. The wind is still strong and I have to concentrate to stay upright as I watch flurries of sea birds find shelter in their cliff-face hide outs. Inky-black, an otter weaves in and out of the zinc white surf. With oil-spillery movements she is making the most of the many fish swept in by the mighty Atlantic heaves.

    For two weeks we walk and explore, allowing our cheeks to be pelted pink by the icy winds. Venturing over the mountainside for a pint, we discover a small village with ancient standing stones scattered in unlikely positions: one is propped up by the local post office; another serves as one side of a farm gate; yet another towers conspicuously tall in a famine graveyard. All of them display mysterious circular patterns, which I trace with a gloved finger.

    Back at the cottage, by the fire, I am reading Jung and his ideas of circle mandalas as a complete expression of self. I think about my own inner cycle, restless with creative energy before an inevitable collapse. Things come into focus, and I feel like a beach pebble finding the shape and warmth of beachcomber’s palm. At the old wooden table I begin drawing circles and start filling them with what I know of Nature.

    And so from the darkest point in winter again flowers an impulse to art and curiosity. I draw circles depicting natural cycles. The wheel of the year, the phases of the moon, a woman’s energy cycle – cycles I know support whole life systems. I locate myself somewhere on this wheel, shifting through different seasons, through different levels of uncertainty.

    Peaks and troughs

    There are periods between budding and blossoming; times requiring rest and reflection, as in a rich compost. I am beginning to understand that I, like the plant or a tree, am a cyclical being. This is the greatest connection I have forged with the natural world, and one that I know is vital for me to share.

    Native Circles is my latest art-offering in the ever-confusing, messy and beautiful landscape of earthly human experience: a field guide to a life more connected to the natural world.

    www.nativecirclesart.ie

    www.emilyrobynarcher.com

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    [Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”30″ gal_title=”Featured Artist of the Month: Emily Robyn Archer”]

  • Inside China: What My Students Knew about European Culture

    Up to my retirement several years ago I taught spoken English at an agricultural university in North-East China. The routine was relieved by an assignment to deliver an elective course that I called ‘Western Art and Culture’. I was given carte blanche to draw up a curriculum to fill the ten weeks allotted.

    From my experience of teaching at this and two other Chinese universities I was aware that young students have only a patchy knowledge of visual arts, theatre and music. At middle school they study Dynastic nature poetry, and read some of China’s classic novels including the sixteenth century Ming masterpiece Journey to the West.

    I once glanced at a middle school textbook, in Chinese, on ‘Western Culture’. It carried black and white photos of Greek temple, ceramic pots, an armless Venus de Milo, the Roman forum and Colosseum, and Leonardo’s rendering of Mona Lisa. Musical and artistic instruction is only offered in a serious way on curricula of select urban fee-paying schools. Middle class parents in the booming cities often pay for their sons and daughters to be privately tutored in piano or violin, or traditional string instruments like the erhu or the guzheng.

    Guzheng practice.

    Sweatshop Art Reproduction

    I discovered that few third level Chinese students have ever visited a city art museum. One reason is the high cost of admission relative to most students’ disposable pocket money. A lucky few have visited the Summer Palace and Forbidden City in Beijing, or lit incense sticks ‘for good luck’, at a Buddhist temple during the annual spring festival. Downloading free movies on their laptops in student dormitories is the most common cultural experience.

    Female students in China are particularly draw to romantic B-movies, churned out in South Korea, with Chinese subtitles attached. Japanese Manga comic books, infamous for lurid depictions, cater to lowbrow reading taste.

    Around China you might see replica Mona Lisas in cafes, restaurants and hotel rooms. Van Gogh’s expressionist studies of ‘Starry Night’ and ‘Twelve Sunflowers in a Vase’ are other common wall-fillers. Renoir’s charming portraits of the late 19th-century French bourgeoisie are also to be found.

    There are two or three factories in South China where teams of skilled painters churn out reproductions of these and other Western classic. One week they might have to recreate a Constable, the following a Rubens. It is sweatshop reproduction art.

    In other sections of the factories workers on assembly lines fit the canvases into gilt frames. Every six months business people from all over the world attend the trade exhibition held in the southern boom town of Guangzhou (formerly Canton). There they buy up large quantities of these as well as mock-period furniture for export. The next time you see Monet’s sunset-red grain stacks at Giverney on a European café wall, pause and reflect that it might have been made to order by a Chinese sweatshop painter.

    The Origins of Western Civilisation

    For my course I chose to begin with Leonardo and Michelangelo, moving on to Johannes Vermeer, Goya, the French impressionists, Vincent Van Gogh, Wassily Kandinsky, and finally Picasso, whose political work is officially praised in China; though his erotic material is never reproduced in schoolbooks, and shocks the curious who seek out more online.

    The Ancient Greeks and Romans form a composite myth about the origins of western civilization, succinctly laid out in the approved middle school textbooks of Communist China. Chinese school-leavers are at least familiar with photos of the Parthenon in Athens and Roman Colloseum.

    I happened to have a DVD of the film ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. which fictionally recreates the household circumstances in which Vermeer painted a work that has appeared on everything from chocolate boxes to 1500-piece jigsaw puzzles. I emphasised that the Girl is often called the Mona Lisa of Northern Europe. My students empathised with her simple peasant garb and down-to-earth prettiness. They were aware that the pearl earring had been supplied for the portrait.

    Shyness and lack of of art observation practice made it difficult for me to elicit comments on selected screened paintings. I persisted and let every student in class take his or her turn.

    Admiring Leonardo’s Guts

    Knowing that Chinese secondary school students only learn about Leonardo da Vinci through the Mona Lisa and her enigmatic smile, I took the trouble to show several of his anatomical and engineering drawings. Communist leaders are constantly exhorting young citizens to cultivate a serious ‘scientific outlook’ on life.

    I made it clear to my students that Leonardo first trained as an engineer before discovering his gift for drawing and painting. I revealed how he had been given permission to dissect and draw bodies in a hospital mortuary, amid the smell of summer putrefaction, and that reproductions of muscles, veins, organs and skeletons drawn by Leonardo were scrutinised by European medical students for hundreds of years; until the publication of Gray’s Anatomy in 1858 with its stunning illustrations by Henry Vandyke Carter.

    Some of my Chinese undergraduates admired Leonardo’s guts; others squirmed audibly when confronted with graphic details of skulls and skeletons and a dead baby in the womb, as most students would.

    In another push to get beyond the Mona Lisa stereotype I also showed reproductions of his other portraits and explored religious themes. ‘The Woman with an Ermine’ impressed students with her natural beauty, carefully groomed fawn hair and colourful dress. La Belle Ferroniere moved them similarly. I hoped this would give Chinese students a more rounded understanding of Leonardo’s stature in western art history.

    In one class I showed a selection of traditional Chinese landscapes from various dynasties and juxtaposed them with selected Dutch landscapes of the 17th and 18th centuries. I noted that Chinese and Renaissance painting styles were different but not unequal in merit; artists in different cultural milieus attempting to achieve varying social-aesthetic objectives.

    Students performing dance moves to pop music.

    Final Grades

    Music was an additional focus of my courses. I prepared a series of pictures of orchestral instruments, moving on to American popular music in Britain and America.

    Finally, I assigned short writing pieces about the painters and a final paper was written on the subject of ‘art and music in my life’.

    I was generally underwhelmed by the manuscripts. Many students wrote about listening in their dormitories late at night to popular music; none listened to Classical or jazz. Only a few wrote about paintings and sculptures. I hope my students have taken something with them about Western art, music and cultural norms. Maybe a few will drop into an art museum on their travels, assuming they are earning enough money to purchase the admission..

    Garreth Byrne lives in retirement in Leitrim, Ireland after teaching English at universities and other institutions in five different cities in China, where he spent twelve years.

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  • How Irish Propaganda Operates III – the Inversion of the Food Pyramid

    How Irish Propaganda Operates Part I (HIPO I) identifies an ‘essential constituency’ of farmers, which offer an overwhelmingly preponderance of their support to representatives of the political duopoly in rural constituencies. Upsetting this cohort frays a brittle alliance maintaining the dominant consensus of steady economic growth, and rising rents. As a result the media and politicians exercise caution where direct criticism of their interests is concerned, exemplified by Leo Varadkar’s volte-face in response to revealing he was cutting down on his red meat consumption.[i]

    To define the ‘farming’ sector as such is, however, misleading: what is really referred to is the cartels, which control the export and domestic trade in livestock products. These have, over decades, manipulated farming opinion, especially through the in-house Irish Farmers Journal and pro-industry IFA, into falsely assuming an alignment of interests. Transnational corporations also influence national nutritional guidelines, and contribute to the state’s ‘laggardly’ response to climate change.

    It would be incorrect to suggest that the sector is immune from criticism – habitually referred to as ‘our farmers’ by the state broadcaster – in mainstream Irish media. Any reputable news organisation which ignores compelling stories covered in the international press would lose credibility, and there are conscientious journalists working within these organisations. Moreover, the Irish media must appear to be balanced – ‘facts don’t have opinions’ as the Irish Times advertises – and conscientious. But the paper of record neglects to run investigations – thus the horse meat scandal of 2013 was broken by The Guardian – while subtly shaping public perception.

    Veganism, in particular, is treated with a mixture of contempt and fear. This reaction may be symptomatic of an older generation’s contempt for a thrusting, and increasingly environmentally-informed, ‘snowflake’ generation, but anti-vegan invective also advantages many of their main advertisers. A recent article in the Irish Times by Brian Boyd warned: ‘Beware the perils of Veganuary’; quoting ‘renowned chef’ Anthony Bourdain’s description of vegans as ‘the Hezbollah-like splinter faction of vegetarians.’[ii] The article recycles arguments previously made in UK publications likening the philosophy to the dietary disorder called orthorexia – an unhealthy preoccupation with eating healthy food.

    Yet the science on the matter is clear, with the American Dietetic Association advising that ‘appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases.’[iii] The rise of Veganism is the least of Ireland’s nutritional problems: the country is in the grip of an obesity epidemic, linked to the standard Irish diet. What is striking about the paper’s coverage of veganism is that vegans themselves are rarely, if ever, permitted to speak directly to the reader.

    ‘Cartels have manipulated farming opinion for decades’ Image (c) Daniele Idini

    Lancet Recommendations

    Last month The Lancet published a paper entitled ‘Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems’, which ‘found strong evidence’, indicating ‘food production is among the largest drivers of global environmental change by contributing to climate change, biodiversity loss, freshwater use, interference with the global nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, and land-system change’.

    The paper convened thirty-seven leading scientists from sixteen countries in various disciplines including human health, agriculture, political sciences, and environmental sustainability. They argued we can provide ‘healthy diets … for an estimated global population of about 10 billion people by 2050 and remain within a safe operating space’; crucially, however, ‘even small increases in consumption of red meat or dairy foods would make this goal difficult or impossible to achieve.’ This will require ‘unprecedented global collaboration and commitment’ and ‘nothing less than a Great Food Transformation.’[iv] The headline, in the Irish media at least, was a recommendation that red meat consumption should decline by 90% in developed countries such as Ireland.

    This radical and timely proposal appeared on the front page of the Irish Times. But a subtle fight back soon commenced, undermining its contents. Was it by coincidence that on the following day a recipe by Lilly Higgins appeared in the paper for sirloin steak?

    More substantially, two days on, Kevin O’Sullivan interviewed Professor Alan Matthews; the headline writer emphasising his academic credentials. Matthews argued that ‘Ireland had a role in continuing meat and dairy production, provided it backed up its sustainability credentials with rigorous evidence.’[v] This is a significant proviso given that leading environmentalists have decried the government’s flagship Origin Green as an exercise in ‘greenwashing’.[vi]

    The bias of the piece is demonstrated by a failure to canvass the opinion of an environmental scientist who could have offered an alternative perspective (and any number would have done so) to counter Matthews’s opinion. Instead the partisan views of the IFA’s Joe Healy were dutifully conveyed.

    The editorial stance of the Irish Times (penned perhaps by O’Sullivan himself?) is made clear a few days later, when it described the report as ‘narrowly prescriptive’.[vii] The message is the equivalent of a ‘fuck you’ to the thirty-seven scientific authors, saying we in Ireland prefer to invert the food pyramid and will continue to devote 90% of our land to livestock.

    The Irish Times also misleadingly conflates production with consumption. Allowing (without accepting) that Ireland enjoys a comparative advantage in low carbon-emission livestock production, which we continue to export, albeit within a reduced market: why should Irish consumers adopt a different diet to the rest of the world – especially given the authors are not only exploring environmental impact but also healthy nutrition – simply because we are living in a country currently dominated by pastoral agriculture?

    As long as we operate within a global food system – where the bulk of our own agricultural products are exported and we import essential commodities including most of our fruit and vegetables. We cannot have it both ways, and say domestic consumption should mirror domestic production.

    The Irish Times, for its part, is not displaying the “unprecedented global collaboration and commitment” the authors have called for. The editors are in no position to question the veracity of the Lancet analysis, leaving their pronouncement in Post-Truth territory.

    Change of policy in the National Broadcaster

    Hitherto virtually a cheerleader, a perceptible change in reporting policy on climate change is setting RTÉ on a collision course with the agricultrual sector.

    The legitimacy of expressing climate change denial is being denied. Shutting down discussion on any subject may seem prescriptive, and a dangerous precedent to set, but considering the overwhelming scientific consensus, and the cataclysmic scenarios painted, the response appears proportionate. This works to the disadvantage of the cartels, which have been expanding the dairy industry in particular, while cloaking its emissions.

    Michael Healy-Rae, ‘Self-styled Kerry man Joke’.

    The new policy of zero tolerance became obvious on a recent episode of  RTÉ’s Liveline, when Tim Boucher-Hayes refused to accept the validity of Michael Healy-Rae’s ‘opinion’ on climate change, before giving him enough rope to hang most political careers. Boucher Hayes exposed the self-styled Kerry man joke, who insisted he was being insulted, but could not say how.[viii]

    After many years of watching, and occasionally appearing on RTÉ, I was amazed to hear the dialogue. I fear, however, that advertisers will make their feelings known, highlighting the threat to ‘livelihoods’, ignoring how most farmers’ incomes are derived entirely from EU subsidies. If anything, farmers should be paid to cultivate healthy fruit and vegetables, or re-wild their estates.

    The sector makes great play on its importance to the Irish economy, but the input costs, including direct payments to farmers, imported feedstuffs, fertilizer, machinery, and fuel are not acknowledged; nor are externalised costs such as the pollution of waterways affecting the availability of potable water. This points to the long-standing failure of the Irish media to interrogate the structure and impacts of the sector.[ix] In this respect the environmental and agricultural correspondent George Lee has been a serious disappointment.

    It should also be emphasised that the environmental argument has moved on from a narrow focus on climate change, which can lead to damaging outcomes, such as encouraging sitka spruce plantations which acidify soils and reduce biodiversity, in order to allow the dairy sector to expand.

    The beef industry is more vulnerable to the environmental and nutritional arguments being laid against it, but the challenges to the dairy sector are mounting too, especially in terms of the idea that consumption is essential to human health, or event beneficial: the Harvard School of Public Health say that dairy is neither the only nor the best source of calcium.[x]

    The shady global manipulation of nursing mothers who are encouraged to top-up with formula, or give up on breast feeding altogether, is a scandal waiting to erupt. Ireland, as the second highest exporter of powdered milk in the world, will be at the heart of it.

    Unsurprisingly to date there has been no coverage in mainstream Irish media of the decision of the Canadian government to no longer identify a specific function for dairy produce in a healthy, balanced diet. Their new guidelines lump dairy in with other proteins. Canadians are advised to fill half their plates with fruits and vegetables, a quarter with carbohydrate-rich foods, and a quarter with protein sources.[xi]

    Canada’s new healthy guidelines do not contain a separate dairy section.

    Previously, Ireland’s leading environmental writer John Gibbons – notably writing for DeSmogUK rather than the Irish Times which he occasionally contributes to – exposed the use of fake data by the Minister for Agriculture, Michael Creed purporting to show emissions from the sector were not rising as fast as they were in reality.[xii] The plot is curdling, and the message can only be managed for so long, especially with EU fines looming over rising emissions.

    Source: Ireland Environmental Protection Agency.

    ‘Two sides of the same debased coinage’

    Fintan O’Toole is the Irish Times’s most high profile columnist. Alone arguably in the Irish media, he is permitted to do investigative work alongside editorial commentary. But he has now positioned himself as a global intellectual, rather than simply an Irish hack, devoting himself to the subject of Brexit in particular in publications such as the New York Review of Books and New York Times. His articles condemning Britain’s ‘mad’ imperial hubris increasingly appear like word magnets on a fridge that are shuffled about from week to week. It means one of the progressive ‘slots’, essential to the Irish Times’s distinctive brand of conscientious virtue-signalling, is rarely focused on Irish issues.

    Moreover, O’Toole has long displayed a blind spot towards environmental issues. As an urban, literary man he might be excused for playing to his strengths, and avoiding environmental questions, but how these are dealt with is increasingly important to the understanding of any country. His current emphasis is all the more frustrating given during his early career O’Toole forensically exposed the collusion between Charles J. Haughey’s administration and Larry Goodman’s Anglo-Irish Beef Processors, culminating in the Beef Tribunal of 1991.

    Goodman’s company APB continues to dominate the Irish beef processing industry. Symbolically at least in 2012 the family of Larry Goodman acquired the former Bank of Ireland headquarters building on Dublin’s Baggot Street.

    Yet O’Toole’s subsequent book on the subject claimed that the ‘emerging democracy of the Irish State was in a fundamental way incompatible with the power of the beef industry’; likening Ireland to a Latin American country where conversion from tillage to grassland depopulated the land and brought speculative investment, with the difference that in, ‘Ireland, the land was cleared by emigration rather than the slaughter of the Indians’[xiii]

    He went so far as to claim:

    The strength of the beef industry has been such as to limit the development of the kind of coherent, confident civil and political society which could control that industry and integrate it into a working notion of the common good. It is no accident, therefore, that the events described in this book are as much about political failure in contemporary Ireland as they are about the behaviour of the beef industry. They are two sides of the same debased coinage.[xiv]

    O’Toole effectively conveyed the extent to which that Fianna Fáil government, especially the then Minister for Industry and Commerce Albert Reynolds, did the bidding of a company that exposed the state to a export credit liability of €100 million, and a wanton disregard for human health in the processing of cattle for food.

    At one point O’Toole described how the Irish government’s relationship with the company had:

    definitively pushed the government beyond the bounds of democratic authority and into the realms of the arbitrary abuse of power. The most basic norm of democratic government – that the state is not above the law – had been breached. And it had been done at the request of Larry Goodman.[xv]

    The horse meat scandal of 2013 provided further evidence of a permissive attitude towards breaches of health and safety regulations in Goodman’s company or subsidiaries, yet he has remains untouchable. The mainstream Irish media, including Fintan O’Toole are seemingly uninterested, or unwilling, to conduct further investigations. Instead we get great rollicking tales about English ineptitude.

    Pastoralism  

    After independence, pastoralist farmers (including the first Minister for Agriculture Patrick Hogan 1924-32) have effectively conveyed the idea that their interests align with the population at large. This account has rarely been challenged either by historians (with the exception of the late, Raymond Crotty) or journalists. Yet the pattern of immigration that continued into independence from rural Ireland was a product of a mode of production requiring low labour inputs, as O’Toole pointed out.

    Wheat production even for domestic consumption did become uneconomic once mechanization became widely available from the early 1950s. Moisture levels during harvesting of Irish cereals make them unsuited to combined harvesters. The traditional method of tying or ‘bindering’ wheat by hand and drying it bundles before storage had become too labour intensive. It then became axiomatic from the 1960s that Ireland’s comparative advantage lay in livestock production, beef in particular, despite the historic inefficiencies of the sector.

    One opportunity cost of relying on beef and dairy for export has been that overall food prices in a predominantly rural society have remained comparatively high, even by comparison with a highly-urbanised country such as Britain. This has worked to the detriment of urban workers, and even those living in rural Ireland, most of whom still live on imported foodstuffs.[xvi]

    Furthermore, since independence a lack of variety in the range of crops being grown for the domestic market is apparent. In part this was a consequence of a stunted gastronomic culture. The result has been that the traditional Irish diet is notably low in fruit and vegetables consumption, increasing the likelihood of obesity. An historic missed opportunity was the failure of the state to support an emerging cooperative movement, advocating state-assisted greenhouse construction across the West of Ireland during the 1960s.

    Today, with a climate not dissimilar, and a landmass far smaller, the Netherlands is the second leading exporter of vegetables in the world by value.[xvii]

    The arrival of EU subsidies in the form of the CAP from the 1970s ossified the structure of Irish agriculture, driving up the price of land, and thereby decreasing the scope for the kind of cutting edge horticulture the Dutch have mastered.

    Dig deeper into the substrate of Irish society and one discovers further ill-effects from Irish pastoralism’s inversion of the food pyramid. One-off housing is often seen as the scourge of rural Ireland. In contrast the Clachan of pre-Famine times involved substantial consolidated settlements, where farmers mostly grew crops for direct consumption. The Great Famine came about because of the tiny holdings of so many farmers, which brought intensive mono-cropping, and reliance on a single foodstuff.

    Abandoned settlement, County Sligo.

    Furthermore, extensive motor car reliance is connected to these one-off-developments; also bringing problems with subsequent urban development, as the preference of the pastoralist migrant to the city was for a detached home, rather than an apartment. We now contend with low density, suburban sprawl which has led the European Commission to describe Dublin as a ‘worst case scenario’ for ‘unsustainable car-dependent urban sprawl.’[xviii]

    There appears to be little genuine opposition to the political duopoly, with Sinn Fein increasingly occupying the position held by Fianna Fáil in the nationalist spectrum. Sounding off on non-issues such as Venezuela belies a growing accommodation with the dominant consensus. The worst case scenario is that a Far Right party will derive support from the rising discontent with widening inequality, a housing crisis and the ongoing crisis in the provision of publish health.

    Until we develop a functioning Irish media, interrogating the economic and social structures, including agriculture, and bringing accountability, the advance of genuinely progressive politics will remain stalled.

    We rely on contributions to keep Cassandra Voices going.

    [i] Cormac McQuinn, ‘Varadkar dines out on steak amid beef backlash’, January 16th, 2019, Irish Independent, https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/politics/varadkar-dines-out-on-steak-amid-beef-backlash-37716772.html, accessed 26/1/19.

    [ii] Brian Boyd, ‘Beware the perils of Veganuary’, January 14th, 2019, https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/beware-the-perils-of-veganuary-1.3757316, 26/1/19.

    [iii] Craig WJ, Mangels AR; American Dietetic Association.’ Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets.’ J Am Diet Assoc. 2009 Jul;109(7):1266-82. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864/, accessed 26/1/19.

    [iv]Prof Walter Willett, MD, ,Prof Johan Rockström, PhD, Brent Loken, PhD, Marco Springmann, PhD, Prof Tim Lang, PhD, Sonja Vermeulen, PhD, Tara Garnett, PhD, David Tilman, PhD, Fabrice DeClerck, PhD, Amanda Wood, PhD, Malin Jonell, PhD, Michael Clark, PhD, Line J Gordon, PhD, Jessica Fanzo, PhD, Prof Corinna Hawkes, PhD, Rami Zurayk, PhD, Juan A Rivera, PhD, Prof Wim De Vries, PhD, Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, PhD, Ashkan Afshin, MD, Abhishek Chaudhary, PhD, Mario Herrero, PhD, Rina Agustina, MD, Francesco Branca, MD, Anna Lartey, PhD, Shenggen Fan, PhD, Beatrice Crona, PhD, Elizabeth Fox, PhD, Victoria Bignet, MSc, Max Troell, PhD, Therese Lindahl, PhD, Sudhvir Singh, MBChB, Sarah E Cornell, PhD, Prof K Srinath Reddy, DM, Sunita Narain, PhD, Sania Nishtar, MD, Prof Christopher J L Murray, MD, Food in the Anthropocene: the EAT–Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems, January, 2019. The Lancet. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)31788-4/fulltext?utm_campaign=tleat19&utm_source=HPfeature’, accessed 26/1/19.

    [v] Kevin O’Sullivan, ‘No need for 90% drop in meat consumption, says Irish professor’, January 19th, 2019, Irish Times, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/no-need-for-90-drop-in-meat-consumption-says-irish-professor-1.3763038, accessed 24/1/19.

    [vi] Manus Boyle, ‘Fine Gael accused of greenwashing over Green Week campaign’, August 24th, 2018, Greennews.ie, https://greennews.ie/fine-gael-green-week-accused-greenwashing/

    [vii] Untitled, ‘The Irish Times view: Making our diets more sustainable’, January 21st, 2019. https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/the-irish-times-view-making-our-diets-more-sustainable-1.3764519, accessed 26/1/19.

    [viii] Margaret Donnelly, ‘Eating less meat over climate is ‘crazy’, says Healy-Rae’ January 18th, 2019, Irish Independent. https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/eating-less-meat-over-climate-is-crazy-says-healyrae-37723934.html, accessed 26/1/19.

    [ix] The cost of inputs https://greennews.ie/fine-gael-green-week-accused-greenwashing/was estimated at over €5 billion in 2017: https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/oiiaf/outputinputandincomeinagriculture-finalestimate2017/ accessed 25/1/19.

    [x] Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, ‘Calcium and Milk’, https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you-eat/calcium-and-milk/

    [xi] Untitled, ‘Is milk healthy? Canada’s new food guide says not necessarily’, January 22nd, 2019, BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46964549, accessed 26/1/19.

    [xii] John Gibbons, ‘Ireland’s Government Using Fake Date to Pretend Dairy Emissions aren’t Rising’, 26th of January, 2019, DeSmogUK https://www.desmog.co.uk/2018/06/25/exclusive-ireland-s-government-using-fake-data-pretend-dairy-emissions-aren-t-rising, accessed 16/1/19.

    [xiii] Fintan O’Toole, Meanwhile Back at the Ranch: the Politics of Irish Beef, London, Vintage, 1995, p.11

    [xiv] Ibid, p.21

    [xv] Ibid, p.202.

    [xvi] See Frank Armstrong ‘Beef with Potatoes: Food, Sustainability, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Section C 115(1):405-430 · January 2015, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292163391_Beef_with_potatoes_Food_agriculture_and_sustainability_in_modern_Ireland, accessed 26/1/19.

    [xvii] Frank Viviano ‘This Little Country Feeds the World’, September 2017, National Geographic, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/09/holland-agriculture-sustainable-farming/ accessed, 26/1/19.

    [xviii] Untitled, Belfast Telegraph, ‘EU using Dublin as example of worst-case urban, 4th of October, 2016, sprawl’ https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/breakingnews/breakingnews_ukandireland/eu-using-dublin-as-example-of-worstcase-urban-sprawl-28409383.html

  • Stayers’ Hurdle

    His eyes squint as the 6am light reflects off the plastic bags, cans and crisp packets of the Grand Canal. Portobello has never looked so good, as his legs struggle up the incline away from the city. The sound of the water makes him suddenly acutely aware of the thirst in his mouth, the remnants of warm beer long-replaced by an all-encompassing dryness with a sinister chemical edge. His stomach suddenly cramps, and the effort of the walk is now superseded by a fierce clench. Fifty-year-old bus driver shits himself on city bridge – the headline flashes before his fading eyes and a smile cracks out from his parched mouth. But he holds on and continues down towards Rathmines. And as he struggles down the main street past the barracks, the birds high up above the rugby pitch chirp. And he looks at the message scrawled on his hand – ‘Tomorrow the birds will sing’ – the marker still visible along with the minuscule cartoon birds in question. And he knows it to be true, for Dennis O’Kane has never felt this alive.

    Twelve hours earlier, and it’s the 5.15 at Kempton Park. That was the big one. Circled in the Post over his corn flakes, there was some serious value to be had. Those heavy spring showers really fucked up both form book and favourite, and the various weather forecasts he’d seen placed a nice dousing for the greater London area right around 4. Brentford vs Burton would be a good indicator – throw a couple of quid on that, find some dodgy website from the Far East showing it and fire on 50quid on Paco’s Prince once the heavens opened over west London. That would take him right up to 6 o’clock or so, certainly late enough for a few celebratory cans of Lidl’s finest. Premium Pils for a premium Saturday.

    The morning sun bounces off the metallic blue Fiesta outside his window. There was certainly no chance of it moving anytime soon – he’d heard the hippie girl next door come in fairly late last night, and come fairly heavily this morning. Yet another Saturday tradition in Grosvenor Gardens, one of the downsides of this cheaply built 1970s apartment block. The amber shine on the TV nearly stirred something in him, as it always did. Weekends spent punting and pinting in the rain suited him perfectly. Grey days were guilt free for a grey existence. But the sun was far more judgemental. It pierced the trees, emerging from a shadowy blue sky to permeate his ground floor flat and in one swoop of light ask the question – is this it? Is this really it? And the answer for the last ten years had been a yes, an anguished, numbed yes sustained by accumulators and aluminium Ales. An existence that he generally accepted as his destiny, but that stung on those sunny Saturday mornings to the soundtrack of a stranger’s sexual climax.

    He crossed the Rathmines Road, interactions complete for another day. ‘That’s 6.89, do you have a Clubcard?’ ‘he’s in to 7s now, that ok?’ ’any change?’ A couple of old lads smoked angrily outside Grace’s pub, stale smell of Budweiser and farts permeating out the door. He’d given it a go, become a familiar face for a while, but it wasn’t quite him. Sometimes he could sup away in silence or pass a few comments on whatever was on in the corner. But there’d always be some loud cunt who would ruin it. Always had to get the last word in. ‘I’ll tell you this for nothing…’ That or bring up the missus. Or the kids. And he’d sit there and stare into his pint, pining for an inexistent memory.

    5.18. The muck flies up past the leathery hooves as they approach the second last, Paco’s Prince beginning his charge to the front. The silver can begins to crumple under the tense grip as the heartbeat quickens. The warm pissy beer momentarily quenches the nervous dryness and the world is a distant back marker to the action. Clears the last in second, but the favourite is leggy as fuck and he knows it. The whip cracks frantically but it’s redundant as Paco’s Prince strides past, gliding over the heavy ground. Chuck a bit of rain down and those fancy English cunt horses don’t stand a chance. Paco’s Prince, descendent of some knacker horse and trained in the non-regal Roscommon storms it at 10s. Get the fuck in. And before the high diminishes the door knocks. What the fuck. Who the fuck. Ah sure g’wan the fuck.

    ‘Yes?’
    Confused. Beautiful, but confused. ‘Simon?’
    ‘Eh sorry?’
    ‘Simon, the Airbnb?’

    She’s not Irish, that much is clear. She’s also definitely not here to see him. Nobody looking like this would be standing here to see him. Come to think of it, nobody would be standing here to see him.

    Victorious euphoria beginning to wear off sharply, as sweat forms on his neck.

    ‘I think you have the wrong door. No Simon or Airbnb here.’

    Mild distress, and he notices the case for the first time. Noticed the wet hair as drips formed on his doorstep. Those spring showers clearly weren’t confined to west London, the change in weather having gone unnoticed by him.

    ‘Is not Airbnb?’
    ‘No’
    I’m very sorry for disturb you.”

    The sadness in her eyes. He’d never seen anything like it. Never been captivated by something so instantly, strongly and painfully.

    ‘No that’s ok. I wasn’t up to much. Where were you looking for anyway?’

    Confusion again, but of a different type. The look of someone without a fucking clue what’s just been said. To be fair, communication had never been his strong point.

    ‘Ahhh – can you say again?’
    ‘Yeah where were you looking for? What address? House number?’ Speaking slower this time – fuck does she think I’m treating her like a retard? Sweat building, ads loudly interrupting in the background.
    ‘Ah yes, yes.’

    She took her phone out. It was always these moments she’d mistype her pin. Had to be on some strange doorstep in some strange town, talking to a stranger who was speaking some completely alien form of English.

    ‘One moment’, as she cleared a comically large raindrop from her screen. A mutual laugh
    ‘Bit wet out there – was sunny and all this morning!’
    ‘Oh yes – oh no! I am too late’
    ‘Sure could be back in an hour – you never know’
    ‘Here – Apartment 3, Grosvenor Halls, Rathmines,’ Their heads briefly touched as she showed him the phone, a 21st century fleeting moment. She smelled like heaven, and he was immediately aware he smelled of Lidl Cans, a chipper and a 50 year-old batchelor with a Heinz-heavy diet.
    ‘Right so I’m 3 Grosvenor Gardens, Halls is the other side of the car park.’

    More confusion.

    ‘C’mon I’ll show you.’

    He stepped across the threshold and pointed her in the right direction.

    She made her way across the potholed courtyard, and he felt a sudden urge to keep the conversation going.

    ‘Holiday is it?’
    ‘Yes yes – holiday!’ as she looked back at him through the rain.
    ‘Well you picked a great place!’ the sarcasm clear even through the linguistic border.

    And as she entered into the building across the way she glanced back at him and laughed – ‘So far so good! Thank you!’

    Door closes and for a few seconds he lingers outside. The tv is still on, horses being paraded for the next race. The horses that have paraded round that living room for the last ten years. Those fucking horses. He sits down, reaches for his can and takes a sip. 1m6f heavy going, grade 3. No clear favourite but fuck all value. Her scent lingers. Fuck all value. How many races has he watched with fuck all value. How much of his life has he spent sitting here. Fuck all value. His head is racing, his heart pumping. ‘What the fuck have you done. What the fuck have you done. Fifty years-old and this is it. Fifty fucking years!’ The remote smashing the wall startles him, as the batteries roll across his cheap, dark green carpet. And before he can stop himself the TV is off, his keys are in his hand and he’s gone.

    The Dodder. It hadn’t been the best choice of route to evaluate his existence, as young life and love buzzed back and forth to Trinity Halls, repealing and appealing. But he’d made it to the Dodder, and now he sat and watched it flow. Briefly he thinks of jumping in. Not as a suicide thing – he’d never really been into that. More just to do something. But sure he’d only end up back in the depot in Donnybrook, only this time a wet miserable cunt. One adjective wasn’t going to change much. And then he thought of her. He wasn’t delusional. She must have been half his age, and if he was a Bohs she was a Barcelona. Short of a seriously dramatic injection of funds that wasn’t going to happen. But still. There was something more. Her eyes had so much life in them, so much expression. She was hardly going to fuck him or anything, but he felt she could help him. He felt she had to help him. And as the rain started to fall again to the rustle of wind and leaves he looked around and realised his thirty minute walk to this bench was the furthest he had walked in months or even years. Rocks parted the water as it surged down from the Dublin Mountains, currents merging together again effortlessly on their race to Ringsend.

    Nature made it look so easy, like it was all part of an inevitable process. And for many years he had assumed life was the same. He’d sat and waited for it to happen. Waited for the girlfriend, the wedding, the kids, the grandkids – the milestones that those around him ticked off as they faded further from his life into their own. Friends from his road, lads from school, his brother, lads in work. ‘I met a bird,’ ‘I’ve been seeing that Sarah wan from round the corner,’ ‘lads got a bitta news – you’ll be needing your suits next summer!’ ‘its a boy!’ ‘Fucking Johnny’s got his girlfriend pregnant.’ It had always seemed so natural to them. Breathe, eat, love, live. And as the group left behind got smaller, the comments started to hurt a bit more. ‘Ah sure you just have to find the right one!’ ‘You’re better off without – they’re a fucking a nightmare.’ ‘How about you Dennis – any birds on the go?’ Like a sprinter on a mountain stage, when the peloton dropped you it hurt more. And there’d been the occasional glimmer, the odd hope of getting back on. A few dates here and there, a couple of the sexual hurdles cleared. But then just as he’d grabbed someone’s wheel the pace was cranked up, until eventually he’d let go. The river flowed on and the rock stood still.

    ‘Its beautiful, no? Is the Doo-Der?’

    Jesus. It was her. What the fuck was she doing in Milltown?

    ‘Yeah yeah, lovely. We say the Do-dder though. Not many tourists come here! You get into the apartment ok?’
    ‘Ah yes yes. Thank you again! You come to the Do-dder a lot? Is a nice walk!’
    ‘Eh yeah.. no not too much no. Actually not for years.’
    ‘And today?’
    ‘Eh.. just felt like a walk. Good to stretch the legs I guess.’

    A silence. Normally a silence was welcome – an escape route back to the sofa. But he’d already traded the sofa in for a wooden bench so he pressed on.

    ‘So what has you in Dublin?’
    ‘Holidays. Its not a normal place for holidays?’
    ‘I guess it is, but Temple Bar or the Guinnes Factory and all that stuff. Not really Rathmines and the River Dodder!’

    She laughed. She didn’t fully understand him, though it was getting easier, but there was something comforting about him. His complete lack of sophistication, his honesty – there was no agenda here. There wasn’t going to be a subtle touch of her shoulder, or some invented shit about Brecht or Voltaire.

    ‘Exactly! Everyone goes there. I don’t come here to see more French people, or Spanish or Americans. I come to see Irish people and the… Dodder.’
    ‘Fair enough – sure Temple Bar’s a fucking shithole and the Guinness Factory is just 15 quid for a pint. And you’d get a better one down the local anyway.’
    ‘Local?’
    ‘Ah sorry – a local pub. One with no tourists.’

    Was it technically a local if you hadn’t been in about four years? The place was rammed, the old lads seeking refuge in the passageway between the jacks and the smoking area as the younger crowd milled around the bar. She returned with two more Guinness. It may have been 4 years, but his memory was spot on about the pint Slatterys did.

    ‘Its got to be creamy, but smooth. Kind of velvety.’
    ‘But how can it be good in one pub and not another pub?’
    ‘It just is, but you can tell by looking at a place. No music, old lads and lots of wood – you’re getting a good pint. Pop music, disco lights and a plastic glass you may as well drink your own shite.’

    He regretted the vulgarity but she loved it.

    ‘Ok, we need to compare it. I need to see.’
    ‘You want to drink shite?’
    ‘No! I want to try Guiness in another pub! To see the difference.’

    Another pub, coming up with one had been a struggle. He couldn’t in all consciousness bring her near Grace’s, couple of the ones down in Donnybrook maybe…

    ‘You know the George Bernard Shaw?’
    ‘The writer?’
    ‘No no, is a pub. My friend lived two years in Ireland. Recommended it me. The same person who recommended me Rathmines!’

    She looked him in the eye, almost conspiratorially. Flashes of decades ago, when a girl got that look in her eye. Annie Kelly in the Bleeding Horse, her hand resting on his leg. He’d almost blown his load. He knew this was different – very little chance of a fumble down Pleasants Place – but the glint was the same. And it was fucking magical.

    ‘Richmond Street’ as she showed him her phone.

    That one. Mad looking place. Hipster, I believe the term is. Suddenly he was incredibly aware of his old corduroy trousers and baggy shirt resting on his belly of many years of neglect.

    ‘Ah yeah. You want to go there? Eh… yeah wouldn’t be my style I guess but yeah. sure go on. Bet you the Guinness is shite though!’

    The wind on the street bit at her cheeks and cleared some of the brown, stouty fuzz from her brain. Maybe this was why they drank so much, because the weather smashed you sober. And suddenly the oddity of her situation forced itself on her. She had been in Dublin for a few hours. She was drunk. She was with a fat, old man. Well not grand-pere old, but 50+. 30 years older maybe? Travelling alone always hinted at some sort of romantic possibility, but this was certainly not one of them. This was not a George Clooney, not the mysterious Irish man her friends had joked about. ‘Oh you’re going alone? Interesting… Are you coming back alone?’ But she was having a great time.

    ‘Look I know I’m probably not who you pictured spending your night here with so if you want to head off or have friends to meet, that’s grand. No need to bring me along.’

    The interruption, the silence the street, the traffic, It had thrown him. What the fuck was he doing here ruining this girl\s night? A sudden urge to run back to his comfort zone, grab a bag of chips, let off the fart he’d been sitting on for about 20 minutes.

    ‘No, no – come on! We have to try this other pint.’ She didn’t want him to go. She didn’t want to default to her people. She didn’t want to wander into Dublin, find people who looked like her. Find people who talked like her, thought like her. Find some guy who fucked like her and ate brunch like her. For this weekend she didn’t want that bullshit, the same lines and conversations. Pills and ruminations on Le Pen, house music and start ups.

    He fucking hated this place. For someone who’d spent 4 years in silence watching horses on a moderately comfortable sofa, this was too much, too quick. He lifted his glass and the plastic threw another few millilitres of brown on his hand. Nothing worse than bad Guinness, but they’d hit a rhythm and he couldn’t change. The conversation had mostly been about her and Dublin. She fielded questions on the former, he was the expert on the latter. Twenty-five-years-old. From Paris. No clue who Neymar was and indeed it had nearly killed the conversation. Intrigued by Irish culture and had planned the trip with an ex. Decided to do it solo, hence in the Bernard Shaw with a fat bus driver.

    The basics had been divulged earlier in round one – name, job and marital status. He was Dennis, she was Chloe. He drove buses, she worked in graphic design. He was single. She was single. The latter had segued into rounds two to six. The ex, The idea of Dublin. The mutual break up that turned out not to be so mutual. The drama of the French. Irish drama. Joyce. Behan. The great tradition of the drunken wordsmith, the tragedy settling at the bottom of the glass while the tomes travelled the world. But as the bell tolls for round 7, she lands the first decisive punch.

    ‘Were you ever married before?’ It was funny how rounds did that. A conversation could be halted mid-stream while beverages were acquired, and a completely new one struck up to herald their return. No warning, no context – each pint was its own snippet and this one Dennis O’Kane had been dreading more and more over the last ten years.

    ‘Eh, no. Never walked the plank, as they say.’
    ‘The plank?’

    Fuck. The whole language thing. Sweat pores opened again, clocking serious overtime of a Saturday.

    ‘It’s an expression… but yeah, never got married’
    ‘Did you ever nearly get married?’

    Ah here. That first punch developed into a sequence. Irish people wouldn’t ask you that. Must be a continental thing. He looked at her, her expectant gaze unaware of any faux-pas having being committed.

    ‘Nah, not really. I mean it depends on what you mean by nearly but.. no.. not even nearly.’ It really didn’t depend on what was meant by nearly.
    ‘Is normal in Ireland?’

    Temporary relief, as she starts talking about declining marriage rates in France. How it’s fairly common these days for people to just co-habit. But he knows its only temporary and it’s time to throw in the towel.

    ‘Ah look, the truth is… I never really had anything serious.’
    ‘Serious?’
    ‘I… never really had what you would call a girlfriend.’
    ‘Ah.. you are gay?’ Says it like she’s solved a fucking puzzle or something.
    ‘Ah jaysus no.. I mean not that its a problem.. but look at me, I hardly look it, do I?’

    She laughs, eschewing her default political correctness.

    ‘Well… no maybe not.’

    He wants to leave. He wants to get up, throw his plastic pint over this crowd of young, happy cunts and retreat back to Rathmines. But she keeps looking at him. An expectant smile that knows he will submit. And suddenly he starts telling his story. A few dates in his late teens / early 20s, the odd ride up to his mid 30s and then nothing. Friends paired off and faded away. Those that remained would focus nights out on setting him up, the mortification of being shoved towards some poor girl in the corner to bore the ear off her for five minutes and apologetically move on.

    ‘Why?’
    ‘Eh.. like I said, just never really found anyone.’
    ‘No.. I ask why, not what. Why did you never ‘find someone?’

    The air quotes. The jugular. Shame turns to anger, but still she smiles. There’s no malice there. There’s purpose.

    ‘I guess… I don’t know. I mean… I’m not exactly George Clooney, am I? I watch football and horses, I drive a bus and my diet is oven chips and pints.’

    Silence. The smile, the stare but silence.

    ‘I was never good at talking to people. Like with a group I was ok, I could contribute. But one-to-one… I don’t know what to say. I never knew what to say. A rake of pints used to help, but even then…’

    He trails off. There’s a lump forming in his throat.

    Silence.

    ‘Like.. if I liked a girl I’d get nervous. I’d… I knew I wasn’t worthy. They’d want someone better.’

    Silence. He’s struggling to keep it together.

    ‘Or I’d start thinking about what my mates would say.’ See them all in the corner laughing. ‘Dennis is after scoring some rotten bird – it was the pressure. I… I… I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
    ‘Dennis…’

    She holds his hand. Relief. It’s over – he can sense it’s over.

    ‘If you do not love yourself, you will not love anybody else. If you do not love yourself, nobody will love you.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘You have to love yourself first. Before anything else.’
    ‘This advice would have been nice 20 years ago…’
    ‘Its advice for now. For today. You can start today’
    ‘Yeah… easy to say. Easy for you to say… you have everything going for you. You’re young, you’re beautiful, you’re… happy.’

    Her smile doesn’t waver. Her glance doesn’t break.

    ‘And so are you. You can be beautiful, you can be happy… young… well ok, maybe not young.’

    They laugh. A badly needed moment of comic relief.

    ‘I’m not beautiful though, and I don’t think I’m happy…’
    ‘Are you happy tonight?’
    ‘Tonight… until about 10 minutes ago!’

    Meant as a joke, and she takes it that way. More laughter. Then silence. A longer silence and she finally looks away, as if she’s calculating something.

    ‘Ok, I know what we do. Tonight we have fun, and tonight we make you feel happy and beautiful. Wait here.’

    His brain is fried. Piecing together the last few hours. Painfully regretting the last few decades. Pondering the next few minutes. Is she coming back? What’s she got planned? Am I getting sucked off here? The pints have definitely gone to the head.

    She comes back and takes his hand. Something is pressed into his palm. Her eyes dart quickly around the smoking area.

    ‘Take this.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Quickly! Take this!’
    ‘What is it?’
    ‘Ecstasy’

    Drugs and love. Two things he’d never touched. And two things he’d seen consume a fair few mates.

    ‘Ah here, I don’t do that shit. Never have.’
    ‘You don’t go out drinking with young French girls either! Try! It’s not a lot, but you’ll like it. It will help you.’

    She looks up at him, eyes expectant and insistent. He knows this only ends one way.

    ‘Now we can have fun.’

    The thing is so small he barely feels it. If it weren’t for the slight chemical tinge in his throat he wouldn’t be sure he’d taken it. How the fuck does this tiny thing leave fellas on the floor?

    ‘So what’s supposed to be happening to me now?’
    ‘Nothing! It takes time. You’ll know when you know.’
    ‘I’ll take your word for it, but I’m not sure its going to do much to a big lad like myself.’

    Forty-five minutes later and he’s standing at the bar by the dance floor. Warmth is rushing through his blood, words rushing out his mouth. The young lads he’s talking to are clearly loving the novelty of it, the novelty of him. but it’s love all the same. He sips his Becks and savours the surge of hops into his dry mouth. The dryness causes the briefest sense of panic and dread, the briefest moment of apothecary awe. How the fuck is something so small so powerful? But the anxiety is washed away as quickly as it arose, as this newly formed brain trust calculate he most likely drove them to school for 6 years.

    ‘I’m telling yiz, I drove that 16 bus for six years. Fucking hated you lot crowding the corridor in your fucking oversized blazers. Never got how yous were able to chat to any women at all looking like extras from a fucking production of Bugsy Malone.’

    ‘Did you know half of us were sneaking on without paying?’

    ‘Of course I fucking knew, You weren’t MI5 lads! Did I care was a different question. Whether Dublin Bus got their hands on your 50p or not was no real concern of mine.’

    ‘The shit we used to get up to on that top floor… smoking joints, getting hand jobs down the back.’
    ‘We saw it all. There was a few lads in the garage who were known for taking a bit too much interest in the cameras if I’m being honest.’

    The conversation goes on, and Dennis is suddenly an observer, surveying the scene in front of him. The scene around him. The crowd is swaying, if not in unison, in generally asynchronous frantic motions to the music. Chloe hovers around making acquaintances but never moving too far away. And at the centre, there he stands. He knows he stands out. He knows there’s nobody like him, not even remotely like him there. He senses and sees the odd looks and comments from the shadows, the disdainful eye of the dickhead behind the bar. But he doesn’t care. He’s aware it’s the chemicals talking, but he doesn’t care.

    Somewhere just off the South Circular Road. He sinks into a dusty sofa while around him people dance. Tiredness is taking over and the offer of ‘top ups’ sensibly declined.  The smell of spliff, so recognisable from so many routes, hangs heavily in the air. Out of the illicit smoke Chloe emerges from the impromptu living room dance floor. She sinks down beside him.

    ‘So?’
    ‘So?’
    ‘So did you have fun? Do you feel happy?’

    Such a simple question, but he takes an age before answering. His brain struggles with the various computations and calculations.

    ‘I had fun. I definitely had fun. Compared to an evening of betting on the horses I had great fucking fun. But happy?…. It’s hard to say. I mean … yeah I was happy for the night, but like, tomorrow this is just a hangover and a memory. Maybe a story. It doesn’t change anything.’

    ‘Yes.. tomorrow you will feel terrible. And probably the day after that too! Maybe even in the next couple of hours.’
    ‘Cheers for that. Feeling much better now’
    ‘Ha well, you will feel terrible maybe. But you will also feel different. You will think and realise that happiness is possible. Life is possible. If you let your brain see it.’
    ‘So take these things every day?’
    ‘No! I think never take them again. But remember that feeling. Remember how you talk to me, to them, to yourself. Remember the difference to how you talk to yourself this morning.’
    ‘It does’t work that way. I mean I’ve gone drinking and been happy. Woke up the next day and felt shit. I know how this works.’
    ‘Dennis, do you like films?’
    ‘Cinema – do you like cinema?’

    She likes these fucking random questions. Suddenly he’s properly fucking wrecked.

    ‘Eh yeah, I guess. I mean, everyone likes films, no? Look, I think I’m going to head. Leave you to it.’
    ‘My favourite film is with Charlie Chaplin. City Lights. It is a silent film, but there are words in it I never forget. The main character finds a man who is by the water. He is going to kill himself. And Charlie Chaplin, the main character, says this line to him.’

    She takes his arm and turns it over. She has a marker in her hand. And then she’s writing.

    He reads it. ‘Tomorrow the Birds will Sing.’

    ‘Tomorrow the birds will sing. Tomorrow can always be a better day than today. But you have to believe it and you have to make it happen. You will still have horrible days, you will still have horrible moments. But if you keep believing this, if you keep thinking of this message, you will be ok. Listen to the birds.’

    She draws two little birds to complement her quote.

    ‘Do you always do this?’
    ‘Do what?’

    She leans over and kisses him on the cheek.

    ‘Goodbye Dennis. Thank you for showing me Dublin and for showing me you.’

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  • Musician of the Month – Rhob Cunningham

    The other morning I was cutting through Dublin on the way to the national bus station.

    Having moved away from a cheap place in Vienna, home for nearly 2 years, a friend has offered a place to shelter, a cottage under generous Glangevlin skies, north-east of Cavan.

    The journey from Dublin involves a coach up north, in to Enniskillen, before a bus back south to Blacklion through borderless Belcoo. It’s a three-hour walk thereafter. Hitchhiking optional.

    You’ve got to set off from Blacklion by 2pm this time of year, boy-racers make it risky in the dark.

    The daylit strolls, though, are really something to behold.

    Having recently trekked for seven hours to play a gig atop a Swiss Alp – walking for six of those hours barefoot because my boots were haunted – I can safely say Cavan’s undulating hills, serpentine roads and shimmering lakes, equal the barren majesty of any European peak.

    Lordy! Such burgeoning beauty.

    Shoes or not.

    I hadn’t bothered looking at the Dublin-to-Enniskillen timetable, coaches depart every couple of hours; so, when I came across a fellow, curled up in the sun of Winetavern Street, just before the river, I had time to lean over and ask was he okay.

    A disheveled chap, Marti, was from Poland. He’d been in Ireland thirteen years, longest sober period in that time was a three-year run. He was an alcoholic and had stolen two bottles of wine this morning, leaving him mostly foetal. 

    A sister in Poland, his loving mother had passed away in 2001,
    at 8 years young his father had stepped from a height, taking his own life;
    his son, here, now, recounting the man’s insides splayed before him. 
    My mind went back to a year ago. An intelligent and dear friend with schizophrenic tendencies, showing symptoms, had been taken by his brother to be admitted. The doctors assessed him and sent him home. Within twenty-four hours his illness paved a similar end to that of Marti’s father.
    My cheeks flushed red, guilty for new gratitude at having not been below.

    Marti spoke of his alcoholism, an equally misunderstood affliction. We agreed nobody sees it here. When pressed, he told me his options: first, go to Dublin’s Simon Community; with further help at High Park Treatment Centre.

    He mentioned a dream of visiting Australia. I told him me too. They have different stars there, ones we don’t see. They like some stars so much, they put the pattern on their flag.

    Being in the heap that he was, I had called an ambulance. It wasn’t until after the phone call, when sitting him up, he peeled a sticker from his hand. The kind you get in hospitals when you’ve been on a drip.

    I asked him about how he got sober that last time, that three-year stretch. He didn’t answer. Instead, he told me how, one day, long sober, he was on a bus to leave and visit his sister. He had the ticket and it was fifteen minutes to wait and, in those fifteen minutes, he felt compelled to find a drink.
    So he went to the shop and robbed some,
    hasn’t been out of trouble since.

    As the ambulance arrived, we wished each other well. 
    I travelled the day and wrote a song. I will sing it in Australia and think of Marti.

     

    For The Depot

    ************************************

    I met you of a morning
    The sun upon Winetavern
    Dead or sleeping,
    looking pretty worse for wear

     The only person passing
    And partial to persuasion
    You pined for help,
    I called it in, faked a chair

     You’d been this bold a fair while
    And fared worse than this morning
    You told me of
    a coach that should have stretched you home 

    A battle raged internal
    To fast or swipe a bottle
    You wiped your face,
    confessed to two you took today 

    With evidence rising,
    efforts change.  

    The red that stained your clothing
    For blood, I had mistaken
    Spying your hands
    you’d think mine never worked a day 

    Your mother, she’d adored you
    Father died before you
    He took his life
    when you were just a kiddo 

    So help communes at Simon’s
    And High Park if they’ll have you
    You wished me well,
    left me for the depot 

    With evidence rising,
    efforts change.

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