...more recent posts
Apr 19, 2000
Something peculiar has happened. My computer has become too
slow for me. Even the sound of it starting up makes me think of
the noise of old clocks being wound-up; it seems dinosaural.
Perhaps this is some kind of reaction to my ultimate and most
recent act of modern whoredom: the purchase of a cell phone. D.
and I went Sunday afternoon to the appropriately located
(pinnacle of the Flat Iron building—what a location for a cellular
phone store) Sprint PCS store. There we purchased matching
Motorolas with a 1000 shared minutes deal a month, plus 1000
minutes between our little black scarabs for a mere extra $4.95 a
month, but at that point they could have raped and pillaged me
and I would still have been smiling. Then we went outside and
called each other from three feet away, guess what? They
worked. Then I called M. and told him I'd be late for lunch. I
promised I was here to promote sentiment. Recently I've been
noticing the sounds outside my window at night. I'm only a block
from Delencey and a few from the Williamsburg bridge where all
that vehicular stuff gets inexorably sucked into the city, and yet it
sometimes sounds like the 88 bus. The 88 bus was the single
decker bus that very occasionally (and beyond anyone's
understanding when one tried to understand its comings and
goings through the immensely complex CIE timetable) met the
train from Dublin to Howth (12 miles north of Dublin, cross
between suburbia and a fishing village, which results in a
somewhat unsettling, but widely purported to be attractive area).
Anyway, this bus carried one up the two miles of hill that
separated the train from home. Home wasn't far to walk to,
though up a steep hill and with inclement attacks from foul Irish
squalls coming at you at an angle. It was the most fantastic thing
you could see at the end of a day. From my bedroom I could hear
the 88 bus all the way from the end of our road almost to where it
went over the hump at the summit. I could imagine all those
incredibly fortunate souls travelling up the hill on the 88. When I
go to bed in Manhattan I still hear the 88 bus straining up the Hill
of Howth, its gears working against the hill. I would have to say
that the sight of the 88 bus was something like a religious vision,
or the nearest I can approach one. There should be a prayer for
all Irish immigrants against the danger of becoming Frank
McCourt.
Mar 28, 2000
Overheard on Table 4, 11:30, 3/27 (guessed profession of diners
— something financial): "He likes a girl like a Hilary Swank type of
girl."
Mar 21, 2000
My mother-in-law sent us curranty bread (what American's call
soda bread) for St. Patrick's Day. She's French Canadian. Anyway,
the loaf of love that arrived via Federal Express had me thinking of
what I suspect might be a genuinely pastoral memory. My first
boyfriend was, and is as far as I know, a farmer. I went to stay
with him one early summer on his family's farm. I don't think the
family took to me, I had child bearing hips but I think they smelt
my intention not to utlise them for reproduction. However, James,
the farming boyfriend, had a much younger brother who the family
had adopted as a sort of spare heir in case a combine harvester
devoured the other son. This brother was the only other family
member who took to me and he would walk me out to the fields
to where James was working each afternoon holding my hand.
We would take the workers warm curranty bread in linen tea
towels and bottles of warm, milky tea in glass milk bottles. It was
a Laurie Lee-like idyll. James would always return to the boarding
school we attended late each autumn because his manpower was
requried for harvesting; we all thought it a little barbaric that he
was forced to miss school to bring in the harvest. Sometimes I
envy him his farm on the rich alluvial plains of Kildare.
Mar 7, 2000
As I was circumnavigating the toilet bowl of the restaurant last
night with a piece of paper towel wiping away the vomit from the
latest bulimic assault it had endured, I wondered about the
identity of the vomiter. It's part of the pleasure of being a
hostess: spot the bulimic. I also wondered why I had been saved
from this fate. I love to eat and I also love to fit into my tightest
pants, the logical extension of this conundrum is to throw up your
food. However, you're either a puker or you're not. To me it's just
too radical, all that peralstisis in reverse. So I just prefer to
oscillate between the two: eating a lot and then eating less/fitting
into pants; ocassionaly the extremes are tempered by regular
visits to the gym or during periods of interferon injections taken to
ameliorate the ravages of hepatitis c on the liver. Interferon is
probably the most effective diet drug you will find on the market
(by prescription only and with the slight drawback of flu like
symptoms, depression, suicidal ideation, hair loss, muscle
wasting, dry skin, loss of libido, intestinal problems, fatigue and
anemia.) I can't imagine puking several times a day is any better,
but that's just me. On a lighter note: yes the loins never lie, was
that not the first sweet smell of spring in Manhattan today? I
smiled at people and they smiled back; such sweet pleasure this
simple wave of delight at another passing soul. Guthrie, C and M's
Chinese girl arrives in New York on March 29th. They asked me to
be her godmother.
Mar 5, 2000
Haven't been here for a while. Winter creates those numb
interstitial bits. I like the display of abandoned garments on the
railings on the south side of the street on Rivington between
Norfolk and Suffolk. It changes regularly and I have no idea where
it comes from or who takes advantage of it. Entertaining in a way
that an installation could never be. I went to Asbury Park, New
Jersey today; I'd like to know what happened there. It looks like it
took far too much LSD. It's nearly 4am and there is a BBC voice
floating out of NPR reassuring me that the opposite end of the
spectrum to Asbury Park does exist somewhere on the planet. Or
does it? Apparently we have forgotten how to nourish ourselves.
The statisticians tell us that the number of obese people have
caught up with the number of malnourished. Complicating the
matter is that many of the obese are also malnourished. Have
decided to approach Lent with seriousness in the year 2000, as
an Irish Protestant I thought it might be fun to go the whole hog
and besmirch myself with ash on Wednesday coming and give up
something really fundamental, like liqour, again. It feels like it
might be time for a little sackcloth and self-flaggelation. Ah,
spring's sweet tremors toying with the loins.