...more recent posts
Jun 29, 2000
Fresh from the other side of the Atlantic: Hibernia, the old sod, Eire, home, the sow that eats her farrow... Actually, it seemed far more benign than JJ's moniker for his deserted muse. D. and I spent a magical ten days in Connemara sandwiched by familial visits in Dublin. Two weeks, the statutory vacation time, seemed cruelly short. But today, my first day off since return, reminded me how this time can refurbish the soul. The cooler weather of today in Manhattan had me wandering the streets and relishing the juxtaposition of Ireland and New York. It seems to me the perfect pairing, and my Gemini self wishes it could flit more frequently between the heteregeneous streets of New York and the dense homogeneity of Ireland. We ate well, as we always do, wherever we are. We drank well, as we always do. We are indulgent and don't seem to suffer too much guilt. We drove one and a half hours to purchase the hindquaters of a Connemara spring lamb in the town of Cong, Co. Mayo, which we marinated in port in a bucket and transported back to Dublin for a BBQ. The barbecue was borrowed from a friend, one returned from America, and my father emerged from the house and inquired if the barbecue was battery operated. He had never seen one before. Neither had he ever eaten the indigenous lamb in such a delicious guise. Wandering has its benefits, though they are difficult to define precisely. My friends in Ireland appear to have been tackling the underpopulation of their isle with a personal fervour. One's ovaries always ache a little during and after a visit there. They make childrearing look simpler and more of a necessity. However, all of that energetic investigation undertaken in one's early/mid-twenties, and late too, was postponed for many of them with the responsibility of caring for infants. Those infants are now half grown and some of their parents are itching to carry on in the way I remember doing so when I first arrived on these shores. It makes for interesting encounters. Some of the women have a sweet and desperate look in their eyes.
Apr 25, 2000
In honor of spring I had my nether regions waxed today. I'm not
going to get into the whole subject of depilation, whether one
should or shouldn't and if one should what the most effective
method is to maintain it, but rather the joy and the difficulties of
that endeavour to distance ourselves from our simian forefathers.
I've always enjoyed a good waxing. It supplies just the right
amount of discomfort for the results and requires less attention
than the shave. It can, for a few days, catapult the hirsute among
us into the regions of the hairless. One's skin feels newly made.
One's bits look better. The shortcomings, in my mind, are not the
regrowth, it's the unavoidable interfacing with the waxer. The
waxer, poor dear, confronted with the unwanted hair of
hundreds, the wayward beaver, the tufted pit, the wooly limb,
even the bearded lady, constantly battling a tide of encroaching
hair, is—not surprisingly—often a tad mad. This is my problem.
Here one is relinquishing one's tenderest bits, one's epidermis to
a woman (invariably they are female) who is liable to rant for the
full 30 or so minutes required to give the illusion of pre-pubescent
bliss. I'm not sure I can tolerate another rant. I want to be
depilated in silence. Hence I've become the waxing whore. I've
found several who do a truly excellent job; I just want one to do
an excellent job without railing. It makes me think that the
"superfluous" hair might actually be a bad thing. Some
inadvertent way of telling me that because I have hair "there"
she's going to tell me how bad, generally speaking, the world is.
While on the subject of maintenance, I have to address my
recently aquired affection for the New York subway system. The
only instance when I take the subway is to visit my hairdresser
uptown. I've noticed that the subway has taken on a sort of retro
appeal due to the fact that nobody can use a cell phone there,
everyone is just there, forced to be where they are and not
planning or implementing something better.
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.