Miss Anthrope Takes to the Hill(s)

An hour’s walk outside Marlay Park, lost and drenched wondering why walking for hours on a Friday had ever appealed, I think a map might have been a good idea after all. It was probably the wait at Castleknock train station that took away my common sense and the heretofore morning’s resolve to undertake my journey despite the weather warning, looking at the tracks wondering how the train wheels don’t get stuck on the rocks. My rain poncho proved pathetic and in the middle of traffic it appears “in-the-general-direction-of-Wicklow” was misguided intended destination to walk and camp.

As it often uncharacteristically happens to me, for a misanthropic curmudgeon, I turn optimistic and cheerful in difficult situations, and in my staunch atheism, the animist in my me sends signals to the universe which means I often get away with my caprices – but how often will fortune be provoked before it smacks me on the lip with a rather large destiny cane, I ask myself. Just then a car pulls up and the nice couple who had guided me uphill, stop and offer to give me a lift. I apologize profusely for disrupting their day, but they insist and take me all the way to Knockree, stopping in Glencree to show me the sanctuary centre for German orphans of WWII, now used as a reconciliation venue for different peoples of the North and the Republic. I imagine a world reconciliation centre where dictators start hurling crockery about because there’s no vegetarian option for tea. Four deer stop to greet us down the narrow path where we look for a hostel which should be here. They leave me at the doorstep eventually, and a drizzle overtakes the floods at the feet of the Wicklow hills. A hare hops towards the fence, and hops back, judging me. I walk inside slightly defeated.

Sat on the verandah with a cheap Merlot and Mathiessen’s account of dying species from African Silences, I think this is what my life will be defined by: aborted and paralyzed adventures, something out of an unpublished French roman at the turn of the century. Eating dry-roasted peanuts en masse, listless yet grounded. In the dormitory, an American woman living in London seems fresh from her whole day’s walking. There are bits of her creamy olive skin and naturally shiny hair as we get ready for an early night in our cots, and I tug at my gourd of a stomach and feel my thinning grey hair on the pillow.

In the next, bright morning, the hills blaze in green with cross-stitched patterns of wilderness. After a mocha from the coffee machine, a pear and chocolate biscuits, I head towards where I think Enniskerry should be. The sun shining on the valley in a way to make one think there are mythical monarchs buried all around. Arriving shortly after, I am surrounded by what an Irish village on an autumn Saturday morning should be – I need to write an essay studying the relationship between an Irish village’s topography and its Hegelian essence at certain points throughout the day. Brief stop to adjust my as yet unused camping gear, then uphill to see the Powerscourt waterfall. I confess, I hadn’t woken up this day thinking to myself “I simply must go and visit a waterfall immediately or else my hair will turn into owls,” but it seems like something I must do. Peace greets the visitor from the fee-paying lodge – I mean 5 euro 50…I ask you…- and the trees arrange themselves reverently in the soft light. Above the rumble of the waterfall, a witches’ brew of cloud wisps gathers along docile hilltop. Fatigue and sleeplessness makes me lie against a tree for a good while, listening to water. Falling.

Perhaps because of this, I get a slight paranoia walking back towards Glendalough in search of an isolated spot to pitch my tent for the night. There is a couple collecting blackberries along a steep hill and a hush along spectral iron gates. I push on a bit further and “Community Watch” signs that have been part of the journey, pop up again, more sinister than reassuring. The couple gathering blackberries have taken on a Bergmanesque element of fright. I skirt around towards Roundwood and decide to try to climb up the isolated hill with the abandoned troughs.

On the edge of an intersection where the lower vegetation makes it easier to climb the stone fence, I hoist the bag up and furtively tug at the branches to see if they’ll lift me. I manage to fall in the brambles and drag my bag through the thistles, by this point determined to stay here even if a serial killer with a penchant for Coldplay should happen to be staying nearby.

Immediately, my tent is impregnated with wind and it takes six or more heavy stones to keep it grounded. I struggle to hold on to it and the various pieces that need joining, hoping my Keatonesque pitfalls will assuage any angry farmers or vagabonds- I imagine a Dickensian villain, but more dangerous because he’s actually read Dickens. I’ve a panoramic view of the mountains, Bray coast and an assortment of animal feces. An assembly bracket hits me on the lip and I realize what’s wrong. After a sip of wine, the rigidly flaccid tent takes on a more comic personality, and though it somewhat obey henceforth, it still seems to need some sort of exorcism, flailing and battling in the wind.

Perched on a stone, munching on wine, apple and peanuts, I listen to the ululating wind and see the sun fade over a lush green temple, with thousands of spots that would have better hosted a tent and its useless owner. The wind and persistent paranoia keep me up throughout the night, and finally decide to pop outside the tent to make sure there’s no one approaching. Only a phantasm of a perfectly still half-moon and huge stars atop black hills.

The next morning on the walk towards Bray, I make use of my groggy, sleepless voice to try out my Tom Waits on the quietly grazing horses.

                              Marie you are the wild blue sky

Men do foolish things           They turn kings into beggars            Beggars into kings

The train back to Dublin with a longing look at the sea, a would be welcome relief to my blistered feet, as the women next to me discuss the ingratitude of guests. I turn to Mathiessen and accounts of elephants that aren’t seen and the red hum of the harmattan wind.

Floating round a zine launch

Walking into the Vintage Room of the Workmans Club, the sounds of the “The X Files” theme tune permeate a dark blue hue while projected drawings make curtains of the wall. The founding members of The Runt zine are scattered about the venue getting ready for the launch of the paper’s sixth issue, this one on the theme of SPACE. Colm Kearns sits concentrating on the UFOs he constructs out of tin foil and the finished products that end up swinging on the chimney and beside the entrance, anticipate the whimsical evening that awaits the audience. I first met Colm at the Zine Fair a couple of weekends ago, the polka-dot handkerchief in his breast pocket sprouting a discussion about the pitfalls of being a truly original tramp.
The zine was co-founded by a group of friends* in English, Media and Cultural Studies course out of IADT college as much a platform for their own writing as an incentive to write more and do something with it. The overall theme was to be one of “hyper-capitalist parody,” eventually opting for specific themes, like “Friendship” and “Music” once the submissions started pouring in and members were assigned individual issues to edit. The editor of the current issue, Richard Howard says there’s a healthy zine culture in post-depression Ireland analogous to more people going to see bands than they used to. He himself is suited to the theme having grown up on “the trippy science fiction,” enjoying its irreverent sense of humour. The current cover by resident artist Lori Turner, redolent of “Houses of the Holy” was inspired by sci fi book covers, specifically Hawkwind.
I confess to having no real knowledge of science fiction besides radio plays of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and am impressed by the amassed knowledge of the genre and the contributors’ comic and heartfelt take on it, which I think is what creates a feedback loop of goodwill throughout the evening. Enthusiasm for the genre and the spirit of community at the birth of the zine is also present in its sixth series’ launch.
While images of esoteric landscapes and alien creatures shift shape around modestly dressed contributors – with the exception of the sartorially innovative Colm – lovingly hand-crafted baked goods are offered in exchange for a space-themed limerick.
“SPACE is really big…and yet we’ve captured it in a Zine”
Colm starts the proceedings, introducing a create-your-own-adventure Neptune travel story, stringing the evening with the audience and adding a new level of whimsy. Stephen Hill, provider of sweets, reads the adventures of a potato in space, and Saul Philip Bowman presents Stephen Totterdell’s piece, not included in the issue, of a lonely man who looks at the ambiguities of his past and present relationships through his newly diagnosed Asperger disorder, then Lorcan Blake is gifted with the back issues give-away before his poems. Current editor Richard reads “Floating Hell,” where Irish allusions still linger aboard a spaceship, and snails (or slugs?) take on a metaphorical dimension. Vestiges of human emotions, of the human condition seem to be a motif in most of the pieces somewhat confirming my notion that the zine and this particular issue come from a place of alienation; to a very small extent I hasten to add, these people are amiable and welcoming. A cosmic loneliness in an age where the cosmos is cool.
Brian Dunster reads an existential piece about how big space really is, and Ruairi Conneely presents a verbally engaging story from the perspective of a private contractor on the moon. James Moran is introduced “for the sparkle,” a softly spoken funny stoic (I’m guessing) with hair that is both static and mobile: “I don’t want you to feel like you can relax,” he sighs, while the James Blunt-like troubadour next door serenades us. I feel the slightly clunky delivery by most of the readers adds to the charm of the evening and the feeling of ease about the rafters. It’s refreshing considering the oftentimes obfuscating, or alternately overly optimistic poetry nights I go to. This isn’t trying to be anything and there’s a quiet self-deprecation within the humour that follows the evening’s rhythm. A simultaneous world-weariness and a kind of euphoria – many audience members laugh consistently and loudly throughout.
It’s a pleasant evening in the company of writers and artists who love what they do, often paying for the publication themselves without any knowledge of what profits may come “like lending money to a friend” as Colm quips. At the end of the day, it’s a window into storytelling from a niche publication: if we ever have to leave this planet, we would spend our intergalactic journey telling stories about adventures we imagine we might one day have.
And not one Uranus joke.

*Founding members: Colm Kearns, Richard Howard, Lauren Turner, Stephen Hill, Stephen Hughes, Colm Whelan, Mary Margaret Regan, Rose Fortune, Stacey Grouden

My first Edinburgh Fringe show

At Ray Fordyce’s Brunchtime Banter, 2013. Video by Gen Cytko.
This was at 11 in the morning. I can even be funny at 11 in the morning

Dead poets/mice society

The two Irish poets I like quite a lot who died this year

Now, it is the least necessary thing, the most superfluous, the most un of unnecessary things to have a day dedicated to poetry, especially for those of us for whom poetry is important on a daily basis. However, it is National Poetry Day in my recent homeland, the British Isles, and I’m drinking beer and smoking in my bachelor flat after a very prosaic work week, in anxiety of the mice that are sauntering along the cracks of my ceiling, atop their dead comrades ,(I’ve named one Robert for obvious reasons, and the other one Duchess, re; Blandings) and Seamus Heaney died recently, and there was no one, being new and odd in town, to whom I could say “Janey Mack, isn’t it terrible about old Seamus being dead ‘n’ all,?” and the other party going “O aye, the poor creatuir – sure he looked grand on the telly all the same.” So I’m including a poem I wrote that will (hopefully) be included in the fifth issue of Dublin based The Poetry Bus magazine.

The problem with attachment

–Prosigo sin cuerpo – Octavio Paz

Find your breath in meditation

and the world outside turns into

hundreds of starlings

unfurling your fingers in flight

The thing you desire the most,

like a telephone wire

hanging from the side of the building,

burnishes trapped memories

you catch from the corner of your eye

Each calculated move in gratification

starves in a satisfied hunger,

lives in folly on a stage

of its own making

You fall into the unwinged

shadow of your being

Fingers break the skin

that bind you to yourself

A Telmetale Bloomnibus: 18 Tales from Modern Dublin

Can’t believe I’m missing this. Should be brilliant

Alan Jude Moore

To celebrate Bloomsday the Irish Writers’ Centre asked 18 writers to bring Ulysses into the 21st Century. As Joyce once took inspiration from the texts of Homer, the writers have taken the 18 episodes or chapters from Ulysses and transported them into modern Dublin.

They have each written a story inspired by a title from Ulysses and will perform them in the Irish Writers’ Centre on the 14th of June. Stories will be told through prose, poetry and song. The only rule given to the writers is that the stories cannot mention Ulysses, The Odyssey or Joyce (though inspiration from the texts is allowed).  The stories are all original pieces of work set in contemporary Dublin.

A Telmetale Bloomnibus: 18 Tales from Modern Dublin,
Irish Writers’ Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin 1,
Friday, June 14th, 2013 at 7pm.

The Writers (in order of reading):

Pat Boran, Colm Keegan, Jane Clarke, Niamh…

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Night of the dying comics

Locomovie of the week – doesn’t he look like the fella who was after Bugs Bunny?

Something happens to people when they put on high heels. I was looking for a job, so I put on formal wear and plopped myself over to the consultancy office on the other side of Edinburgh, only to discover my duffel coat still bore traces of Devon mud, my heels’ echoes fighting with the construction cacophany on George’s Street, and then I found a job. Wandering around the closed Queen’s Street gardens (on a sunny Friday!) after the meeting, I chanced on R.L Stevenson’s family house. Hypnotized by rows of Georgian houses, I was thinking about what whimsical office experiences awaited me on Monday. So far, these have included team huddles, having minutes’ long discussions about the best method for three people to stuff an envelope, and the indispensable online instructions for lifting boxes (there is usually a “Nice job!” message when the model is shown following said instructions). I don’t particularly dislike any of it, except for the Orwellian symbolisms – “priorities” is a word used to indicate which spreadsheets should be tackled first – and the general positivity, which is more comedy fodder. But that must be the case for others as well, and I’m looking forward to translating our boxed human energy into something completely different (the Highlands are going to be magical in the summer, I can feel it).

With heavy heart on Monday evening, I made my way to the Beehive Comedy Club upstairs the Beehive Inn for amateur night, going for my first stand-up spot in the city. John, one of the organizers, greeted me with the news that this was to be the last “Newbees” night, that funding was cut because of poor attendance. One of the comedians described the room as a converted house of an elderly woman who’s had to sell it to pay for hospice. AC/DC blared onto an empty audience, with the exception of other comedians who came and went, and who were to make up the majority of the audience. Four tourists came in before the show and sat in the front row, and I gave them a pitying look, staring up from scribbled joke cues on my hand, because obviously they were going to have the piss taken out of, as we say in our business.

The comedians congregated in the green room, where one of the MC’s repeated that this was the last night, and most of them were here just to witness the swan song, so we were encouraged to “fuck around.”

“How do you pronounce your name? And this is your first time here? Dude…we are gonna fuck you up!”

I smiled graciously at the proposal, among roaring laughter, and we went back to our seats, patiently waiting our turn. Being in a room full of comedians waiting to perform is like having a conversation with someone who is waiting for you to finish your point so they can tell you about their weekend.  Tensions ran high as three of the regulars performed a self-indulgent improv routine, involving dibs at the Australian couple, the German woman and the girl from the Canary Islands (the last one was accused of making the place up).

My turn came ’round midnight, second to last, after a line-up of moribund comedians. Laughter sometimes  turned euphoric because of how bad everyone had been, which highlights the need for ridicule in modern civilisation, as failure turned into comedy works pretty well. The point is not to make it flailing and desperate, but it didn’t matter all that much. My stuff was probably not all that appropriate for the night we’d been through – I talked about how depressing buses can be unless you get a seat up top by the window, our distechnic world and wanting to be a farmer, sat navs that help us avoid old flames, nostalgia and stress, but I got a couple of laughs here and there, and I wasn’t nervous, trying to keep my high-heeled shoes apart.

The only thing worse than being laughed at is not being laughed at. Or with. Not being laughed at with…not laughing with at…My feet hurt

Luljeta Lleshanaku, Kruja, Albania

Luljeta Lleshanaku, Kruja, Albania

From The Paris Review “Windows on the World” series

May the spirit of Jennifer Paterson bless and keep me

Oh to be Jennifer Paterson, to bathe in her wisdom, her dismissal of modern health trends and traditions of aristocratic circles to which she nevertheless belonged on her own terms, her  revelling in her own, what might be perceived as lack of success in life, and the frocks that she was fond of, primarily because the bulky pockets could hold a jar of her favourite tipple which left her hands free to light a cigarette. Gone are the days when I could make out a schedule for myself for the next day, usually stipulating I would be up at the ghastly hour of seven in the morning, and stick to it. Being poor makes me no more creative, though it is an incentive to sit in a room and write something, even if it means looking at the page for hours, or renouncing myself to watching videos on the internets to switch off the brain. And to revive spirits, Two Fat Ladies is just the thing.

I decided to stay in Edinburgh, if it’ll have me and if work can be obtained, primarily because it reminded me of Dublin, and because it has a jazz club AND a comedy club. Walking along Arthur’s seat just a fifteen-minute walk from my guest-house, it seemed you can get lost up in the hills and beside the sea, within very easy reach of a bustling metropolis below. I’ve left my camera somewhere down the crazy river, so I don’t have photo evidence, which is just as well. I’m sure the country will call soon, and I’ll be off, but until then, I’ll turn pale in urban squalor. The thrill of being poor and free, though the most uncivilized and greatest of conditions, will wane off soon, but in the meantime, I celebrate those who uphold the spirit of the condition.

Just as a side-note, another current obsession, besides Jennifer and Clarissa, and Dan Snow’s history of the locomotive, Sherlock Holmes has loomed large in my life, not least because of the BBC”s brilliant modern-day, though quite faithful to Doyle, adaptation. I only watched the series fully over the holiday season – that Cumberbatch has the leading role is, of course, quite all right with me. I can’t wait for the next  train journey, that I can indulge in a copy of the whole Sherlock collection, and let my imagination get into all sorts of sticky situations. I took it far too seriously because I thought “Yes, better to be immune to emotions, so one can build that wonderful attic of the mind, and have the sensory receptors fully open.” However, Sherlock was perpetually in awe of something, and indulged his curiosity, sometimes at great personal expense, both of which are the most useful of emotions, without which life would be pointless.

I discovered Jennifer through Two Fat Ladies in a distraction-searching frenzy in university, and breathed a great sigh to discover that people like her and her partner-in-cooking, Clarissa Dickson-Wright existed, though Jennifer had perished by then. A friend of hers said in a documentary, that upon discovering she had cancer, the nurse assigned to look after her asked if she needed anything, to which she replied “Have you a cigarette?” In the programme, while mixing all sorts of ingredients with pink-manicured hands, she doesn’t speak instructions; she sings them, or recites an appropriate Shakespeare or Noel Coward verse to accompany each sentence. When referring to a group of society ridiculed by the fat ladies, she speaks of “those poor, little vegetarians.” She wanted to be the lady in the circus, jumping over horses, and discovered cooking in her twenties while strolling through markets in Benghazi, where she was assigned to look after a relative. Eventually this led to catering and cooking jobs, including for The Spectator luncheons, brilliant, boozy affairs by the sound of it. She was sacked numerous times because of her lack of deference to authority, but the fact that she knew most of the guests better than the host, and that she kept returning to the job the next day, made it difficult to continue sacking her. Only after she threw a set of crockery out the window at the funeral parlour across the street from the paper headquarters, was she finally let go. She returned next week to contribute a recipe column.

I’m not sure about her professed, enduring faith in God and loyalty to Catholicism. I suspect it had something to do with an idea of love Alain de Boton talked about, which is that loving someone spares us the need for anybody else. She was devoted to her religion, which freed her up from needing partners, or anybody really, and it allowed her to be her gregarious, mischievous self in all those parties by the Riviera, or in London high society. The only thing is she didn’t approve of the countryside, as far as I can tell from the programme, and preferred her motorbike to walking the winding paths. But she looked so stylish in her pretty machine, I can forgive her for it.

     

I’m hoping she’ll watch over me, in a brief lapse into religious spirituality, and over all those militaristic left-wingers, and lovely, sophisticated ladies out to lunch about to order a salad, and bakers about to use yoghurt instead of double cream. Success seekers, sea shanty singers, stock brokers, freedom narrators, time wasters all.

Picture sources:   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/716608.stm           http://www.tampabay.com/features/food/general/article744373.ece

Calling All Transition Initiatives, groups and individuals!

Transition Free Press

Happy new year everyone. The first ‘proper’ edition of the Transition Free Press is fast approaching publication and we need YOU to support us. That’s all those Transition Initiatives, related groups and individuals out there.

The editorial team, contributors, business and distribution departments have been working full-on over the past few months (did we just go through Solstice 2012 and Christmas?), commissioning, writing, collating, interviewing, proofing, editing, picture researching and making connections with the Transition network (small ‘n’) preparing this unique paper for its release on February 1st.

We have now almost covered the cost of printing and postage. But we’re still nowhere near being able to pay contributors and the core team producing the paper.

Why do we need another printed paper in the world? Because the issue you will hold in your hands and read from cover to cover on the train, the bus, the sofa or the…

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Fortresses and snow, and bakeries

 Song for the day

 

Going to write proper post soon, but I’ve got my first gig at Dada Bar in Veliko Tarnovo tomorrow, or “OneMan Show” as the club’s manager related it to his mate on the phone. Just in time for the apocalypse. I haven’t enjoyed snow since I was a child, but it’s had a sort of healing power in Bulgaria. I was meant to be off to Romania by now, but am so comfortable here, and there’s a bakery just down the little corner of the village where the souvenir shops meet, and it’s pleasant to walk up the hills in the sunshine, then play backgammon in the afternoon with the others in the little hostel sitting room, with gin and water, and the plops of the grapes from the veranda.