Poems from a Decade (7)

Dreams (2004)

I am fascinated by dreams, and I am fascinated in a different way by people who say they never remember their dreams, or who are dismissive of dreams in general. This poem is about dreams in a literal sense, and fantasy and imagination in a broader sense. Reading it now, I'm sorry I made it so even-handed. The father is reality divorced from imagination, so I felt compelled to make Elizabeth imagination divorced from reality. (Which only really comes through when she describes the world of others as 'the place of stone'.) If I was writing it again, I would not be so even-handed; I would favour Elizabeth even more than I do here. I was infatuated with the idea of objectivity at this time.

Funny how things come around in cycles. I wrote this in 2004, and dreams and imagination were obviously on my mind. Only very recently-- within a matter of weeks-- I have found myself much preoccupied by dreams, and by a conviction that dreams play a much bigger part in our perception of reality than we usually assume.

Why does she tell him them, every day?
And what on earth is he meant to say?
In forty-five years-- much more, it seems--
Not once has he spoken about his dreams
If he has them at all; for they fade away
And disappear in the light of day.

His daughter stares into the misty street
And butters toast that she will not eat.
A convent of nuns that must feed on blood;
He wonders how that should be understand.
She had no nuns at the private school;
No fairy tales, was his golden rule.
No stories of angels to fill her head
Or telling her dead people weren't dead.
No men in robes when her mother died;
The only father who never lied. 

But nothing is true where nothing is lies
And nothing can happen behind closed eyes.
He looks at that mild face, that auburn hair,
And wonders if madness is hiding there.
Those soft blue eyes, and that soft red blush,
A tender flower that the world will crush.

Elizabeth looked in her father's eyes
So stony grey and so worldly wise
And thought about offices full of men
Who lived there lives in the there-and-then
Their faces touched with a deep regret
For something they couldn't quite forget
But gone forever. Would she go, too,
To that cold world of the real and true?
The kitchen filled with a gentle dread;
She was already drifting where all life led.
From the garden that every soul calls its own
To the world of others, the place of stone.
She hugged her knees to her body's heat
And gazed back out at the misty street.
Why did they fear what doesn't exist?
The world is beautiful, seen through mist.

Every Child Knows (2002/3)

Every child knows that the smile of a clown
Hides a deadlier threat than the darkest frown;
And their maniac laughter, unnatural tones
All speak to a dread that is bred in the bones;
The skull-white face and the blood-red hair
Speak of fun more cruel than the fun of the fair;
For every child knows, in his inmost heart,
That laughter and pain cannot live apart;
And an infant sees what his elders miss,
That the sight of blood is primeval bliss.
For the smile of a crown is a rictus grin
That wallows in man's wild tract of sin.

Fellow Travellers (2002/3)

I thought this was brilliant when I wrote it. It seems less impressive now. It grew out of the realisation that the one sight nobody can ever really see is their own face when they are asleep. It's not autobiographical in any way.

You lie back dreaming as these dream-like scenes fly past
That are as old to you as they are strange to me.
Your perfect eyes have seen them all, and stay shut fast
And still they miss the single thing they'll never see.

You'd never dream I love to watch you dwell in dreams
Dreams that are sweet to you as mine are sore to me;
But, out of all the sights with which your tired thought teems,
I know too well the single face you'll never see.

I could shake fists at life or take the gods to task,
But one thing that is kept from you is left to me.
These hours to gaze upon that alabaster mask
Your sleeping face, the single thing you'll never see.

Poems from a Decade (6)

Development (1998/99)

When I was in my teens and twenties I hated business people with a violent passion. I seriously thought they were worse than criminals. I had a fantasy of walking up to one or several of them and asking: "Have you made anyone redundant today?". It never occurred to me that  business-men are the ones who make job in the first place. I'm over it, even if I still think too much commerce-- or rather, too much commercialism (because they are not the same thing)-- is bad for society.

I came to a place where two suited men stood
As they looked through the rails of our town's little wood
And the first one said, "All of these shrubs are a waste
Blocking up where a decent sized Plant could be based."

And the high-flyers bandied their high-flying words
As freely as flew the park's low-flying birds.
One said, "Could we just swing the cousnillors' vote
And build on these flowers, then imagine our growth!"

"Say dry up the ponds, build industrial estate
And watch our competitors all liquidate.
And sweep what's left into our organization.
We'd profit well from such cross-pollinization.

They walked away, speaking more I couldn't hear.
Amidst the park's beauty I filled up with fear;
Not so much at what might come in the park's stead
As the thought of what thoughts fill a business-man's head.

Dictionary (2002/3)

I wrote far too many sonnets in this period. Come to think of it, everybody writes far too many sonnets. And far too many vilanelles, rondeaus, ballads, and haiku-- especially haiku. (I despise haiku, though I'm sure that they are very fine in Japanese.)

You know, I think that poets really should re-invent the wheel every time when it comes to verse form. What's the point of ready-made verse forms? What purpose do they serve? They're lazy.

The poem is not much of a poem, but the ideas are OK. I do find dictionaries tremendously exciting.

All sprawling histories, and every simple song,
Lie hidden here between each leather cover.
Amidst these doomed adventures to discover
The secret truths of words, to sift the right from wrong.
For words are not the element where truths belong
And language has no mistress set above her.
We are condemned to serve her and to love her;
And all the perfect poems are only one word long.

What poet has sought truth? Its thin voice speaks in prose;
What fool presumes to freeze a word in ice?
For sense and meaning fight it out as endless foes
And all our words spin on as ever-rolling dice;
The speaker speaks in every word more than he knows
Nor can he ever truly speak the same word twice.

 Down Memory Lane (2004)

I am fascinated by family lore, though I have seldom written about it-- other than here. I'm not sure Americans have the term 'an old dear'. It's a patronising term for an older person, especially an older woman, especially a chatty and amiable older woman. I hate the term-- and I don't think I've ever heard any Irish person actually use it, as it's more English-- but this poem is written from the point of view of a rather obnoxious young person. (Re-reading it, I'm a bit taken aback at how obnoxious he is. I would tone it down considerably if I was writing it now-- enough for the reader to sympathise with him, or at least identify with his thoughts.)

The reference to the 'stained net curtain' is a wrong note, I realize now. A woman like this would have an immaculately clean house (even if it had the tackiest decorations). The reference to "old men who will curse you for your pains" is also a wrong note. This poem is about the traditions of the Dublin working class, and old men are generally courteous and stoic in that tradition (most especially in illness). Naturally, the reference to women dying from "child born after child" is just me echoing the anti-natalist prejudices of the age. (I won't hide behind the character in the poem; "he said it, not me!".)

The poem is quite autobiographical, in that I am a scion of a very working-class Dublin family-- I don't just mean a nuclear family (in fact, my mother's family was rural and well-to-do), but an extended family and lineage (for want of a better word)-- and there were times in my youth that I developed an intense dislike of the values, atmosphere and memories of working class Dublin. It seemed sordid to me. (Dublin slang, both past and present, is still rather too scatological for my stomach.) I hasten to add, though, that I now feel nothing but pride in my background and heritage-- especially my family heritage.

In terms of accomplishment, I think this is one of the better poems I wrote in those years. I think it grew out of the term "Memory Lane". I love that term, and the expression "A walk down memory lane".

Why did I start her off? And what disturbs me 
About an old dear's memories? I try
To say "I have to go", but something curbs me;
Something inside that hazy blue-green eye.
The doctors said what doctors have been saying
So many years about her; sooner, now.
The fifth stage means (they told me) it's past praying;
So auntie Rose is taking her last bow.
And none-too-soon, I hate myself for thinking;
But then, why does she have to hold me dear?
Oh, all those cups of tea I grudged the drinking
And all those stories that I groaned to hear!
Her love is hard to pardon; should I love her?
I spent so many years pretending to;
Pretending that my thoughts were not above her
And seeing wisdom in those greeny-blue
And hazy eyes. Surely I've grown past lying
At seventeen. Another cup of tea?
Yes, auntie Rose; a kindness for the dying;
But turn those blue-green eyes away from me.

They see down streets of years best unfrequented;
A saga of the tenement's proud squalour;
Of doss-house days so stupidly lamented,
The happy hunger and the bare-foot scholar.
TB and broken biscuits; "look behind you!",
Cowboys and injuns on the silver screen
And how my sister's eyelashes remind you
Of cousin Kate who died at seventeen.
It all comes down to death; that's where your thought is;
The family plot you've tended twenty years.
How many have you kissed in rigor mortis?
Why do those blue-green eyes seem made of tears?

But then, just when I've put you down for certain--
You, and your dynasty in love with doom--
The midday sun beams through the stained net curtain
And brightness fills the dingy little room.
And love-- dumb, dogged love-- fills all my being;
Your love, not mine. This love is just the kind
I've spent the best part of two decades fleeing;
That raw, relentless love that doesn't mind
Eight to a room, and sweeping up the vomit
Of old men who will curse you for your pains;
Such perfect love; may God protect me from it!
Must broken hearts line all our memory lanes?

They look at me through you, so soon to join them;
The mothers dead from child born after child.
The five-year-olds with ten-year-olds to mind them;
The half-cracked aunties, all the men who toiled
Long hours to earn their poverty, who died
So long ago, their ghosts forget their names
And you alone remember; clannish pride
Propped up with would-have-beens and it's-a-shames.
And in those blue-green eyes it sometimes rouses;
The pride that burns more fierce year after year.
Your Memory Lane is full of shuttered houses;
For you, its echoes ring out loud and clear.
A world is dying with you; all these stories,
Who will recall them after your demise?
How could I bear to hoard these dismal glories?
Is this the plea inside your blue-green eyes?

Poems from a Decade (5)

Death of Man (2004)

This poem proves that I was not only an atheist but a pagan (in the gloomy Teutonic sense) in my twenties. Yet I was groping my way towards some kind of optimism.

All of his mourners dressed in white;
The nurses who were on that night.
The next-of-kin was far away
And hardly knew him anyway.
So, looking at his empty bed,
They said the best that could be said
And reassured themselves at least
Of some good things in the deceased.
His sourness was the driest wit
And the ice with which his eyes were lit
Was irony. But all allowed
The man was proud, the man was proud;
And all he finished with what pride
That sugar-coated cyanide.

The youngest girl, with smooth white hands,
Told them he never made demands.
The others nodded-- this was true--
But thought of how he'd look at you
With cold grey eyes that seemed to ask
Why life was such a thankless task.
It seemed he had not understood
That life is good, that life is good;
And flat refused what they supplied,
Their sugar-coated cyanide.

If life is lethal, life is sweet,
And poison can be good to eat.
Why should the smooth white nurse regret
Her business is to sweeten death?
She knows nobody else can claim
Their work is not to do the same.
And all our billboards, all our shows,
Deny what everybody knows;
However much we see or own
We die alone, we die alone;
But sweeten what we can't avoid
With sugar-coated cyanide.

But she ends her shift of night
The smooth white nurse sees city lights
Reflected in the river's gloom
And feels that life is more than doom.
And, walking through the neon streets,
Fills with a thirst to taste life's sweets
Although they kill you, and they lie.
For if to live is but to die
Then dying is a kind of life;
The nurses' cares, the surgeon's knife,
Do more than pull an empty stunt
In winning us an extra month.
And for a month's, a moment's joy,
We gladly die, we gladly die;
For this doomed roller-coaster ride
This sugar-coated cyanide. 

December 31 1999

This is almost certainly the most widely-read poem I've ever written. It was written on a suggestion of my father, to appear in a Millennium issue of the community magazine he edited (and mostly wrote), The Ballymun News. That issue never actually appeared; The Ballymun News was dying a long (but honourable) death at this point. 

However, I did enter it into a Millennium poem competition that ITV, a British television station, were holding on their Teletext service. (Teletext never really caught on in America, as I understand. It was a technology whereby each television channel would have a number of text pages which you could access with your remote control-- almost a forerunner to the internet. Some of the pages were quite functional-- TV listings and so forth-- but there was lots of other stuff, too, like advice columns and gardening sections and quizzes. I liked it.)

I entered the poem, it made the shortlist, and on the last day of the new Millennium (unless you want to insist that was actually December 31 2000), it was chosen by the British poet Roger McGough as the winner. I got a few book tokens and a signed volume of Roger McGough's poems, but of course the big deal to me was that thousands-- hundred of thousands?-- of people might be reading my poem. And the feeling that I was starting the new Millennium in style.

Incidentally, the rhyme in the last verse-- rhyming 'again' with 'vain'-- has become one of my pet peeves, and something I would never, ever do these days. Who actually pronounces 'again' like this?

My father was so fond of this poem he would keep a copy to read to visitors, to my mixed pride and embarrassment. He still mentions it. In the intervening fifteen years, I've come to see it as over-florid, but its message seems quite laudable. The English poet referred to is, of course, Tennyson, and the poem quoted is the New Year section of In Memoriam (1849).

The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
The poet wrote who did not know
And would have shuddered if he knew

The horror of the coming age
Eclipsing all the ills he cried.
How could he hope to turn the page
To know of wars where millions died

And lands touched by the colonist
Left withered into penury?
What wonder if his vision missed
What only madmen could foresee?

Well did the English poet know
That every foul and evil thing
Would not melt with the winter snow
Nor mercy blossom with the spring;

But had the gods allowed him look
Into the deep and many hells
Of future days, he might have shook
With horror at the New Year's bells.

............


Tonight it seems, like poets' dreams
That peace on earth has really come
As all life joins its many streams
To celebrate millennium.

As midnight near and nearer grows
A myriad congregations pray
That many ills our present knows
Might start this night to melt away

And peace begin to reach to all;
Who would not echo such a prayer?
And yet I cannot but recall
How vain the English poet's were.

...........

A thousand years escapes the power
Of human thought to comprehend;
Ten centuries of hour on hour
All working to this midnight's end;

The last breath of the thousandth year
Looms larger as time onwards rolls
And I feel the ambassador
Of thousands of departed souls.

Along with us who breathe tonight
How many others, passed away,
Had fondly wished to win respite
To celebrate at least this day;

While thousands upon thousands more
Back through the vast millennium
Had pondered what time held in store
For humankind in years to come;

And musing thus upon what fate
The distant future might allow
Had fixed their eyes upon this date
That sees us gathered here and now;

This beacon-point, this final day
That fell to be unveiled to us?
So why should we not gladly play
The role of mankind's witnesses?

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky--
Though every hope may be disproved
May none see through such jaundiced eye 
As to regard this night unmoved--

Although so many a New Year peal
Brought forth so many a hope untrue
Still whisper with unvanquished zeal
Ring out the old, ring in the new;

Ring in the new, ring out the old;
For who can say that hopes are vain?
And if they fail a thousandfold
May others hope them all again.


Deja-Vu (1997)

All writing, perhaps, could be divided into that which is written for the sake of writing it-- from a newspaper editorial to a sonnet written in a creative writing workshop-- to that which is written because the writer has something he or she is yearning to express. (I'm not suggestion one is necessarily better than the other, or that the division is absolute.) Anyway, this is a poem I wrote because I had something very definite I wanted to express. I'm not sure how well I succeeded. Maybe it depends on whether other people have had this feeling. "Deja Vu" might be a bad way to describe it, because it is not confined to deja vu. It is something I still yearn to express-- which may go to show I didn't succeed this time.

I think an elipsis at the end of sentences is generally a thing to be avoided, but that it is entirely appropriate at the end of this poem. Of all my 'Poems from a Decade', in fact, this might be my favourite-- an opinion I don't expect anyone to share!

It all fell apart in the hundreth part of a second
As he walked by the side of the road, and the cars came and went.
And he came to the part where the onrush of vehicles thickened
And they slowed down and stopped, near the place where the avenue bent.

It all fell apart without even the tiniest warning
but it always falls down in a place where you'd never have guessed.
He heard a friend calling his name, through the air of mid-morning,
And they turned and they greeted each other with scant interest.

And they talked-- and he felt himself drift to a time that was twisted--
A time that had slowed, as the traffic about him had slowed.
He felt that this moment was all that had ever existed
This meaningless mid-morning talk by the side of the road.

A numbness crept into his soul-- like some soft anaesthetic--
This moment was all he desired, drained of passion and depth.
Who needs all that stuff? It was nice here, secure and hermetic;
He felt as the drivers might, snug in their cars as they crept.

He knew every inch of this homely, familiar terrain
And each words that his friend would say next; but this did not seem strange.
He had been here before, and would be there again and again
In this dull conversation, forever protected from change. 

And then he stepped out of the cosy and echoing cave
And all of a sudden returned to the workaday sky
And the traffic jam broke, and the cars broke out, wave after wave,
And he helplessly felt the last trace of the strange feeling die....

Poems from a Decade (4)

City Street: Early Morning (1995/6)

No matter how often it seems that the world can afford
No new revelations of beauty, you find yourself here
Again, in the heart of this windswept and crowd-deluged street
And though you had lost all your faith in the magic of feet
That bless again and again the same ground, to stave fear
From the spirit, you find that it does. Oh how you could be bored
Of this dawn of creation, created and dawning anew
This promise that never falls into cliché or betryal
No matter how often revived or restated, a rope
Of rescue that never runs out, and the sum of all hope,
A well never dry, a staff of life never grown stale,
And a moment of life in a life that gives so very few?

The Cold Light of Day (2002)

I think I wrote this because I like the phrase 'the cold light of day' so much. However, I find it an uplifting phrase, whereas the poem is far from uplifting.

All over the city, one by one,
Alarm clocks screech that dreams are done;
A million separate souls by night,
In gratitude and grief, unite;
Grief for the rounds to which we rise
But gratitude that dreams are lies;
For few the halcyon seas that lap
A dreamer free from all mishap;
And what tormentor knows us best
Than that one lodged within our breast?
Who sees our weakness, mocks our strengths,
More surely than a vulture scents
The scent of death; who knows our fears
And deftly rolls back drapes of years
To bring us scenes we would forget
Or those we long to dwell in yet;
Words branded on our mind with pain
Or loved tones that must mute remain.

Grey skies of dawn, how sweet a sight
To those self-tortured thralls of night!
And all the armoury of routine
Our business so morose and mean
Is blessed refuge from those hours
That yield us unto unknown powers;
The vast recesses of the mind
Where none would seek, and none woudl find,
Awake, what there in dreams they found;
Like depthless dungeons undergroudn
Where sun's ray never sent its sheen
On wholesome works and labours clean;
Where, in the deep of day's disdain,
Is forged the ancient arts of pain.

But, waking in his dawn-tinged room,
For now man dares forget his doom;
The grave is sure, but surer this;
The world's sweet weight, his wife's sweet kiss,
And all the sighs that bring to mind
Much life to come, though much behind;
He does not feel life slip away
In the cold and certain light of day.


Crossword (2002/3)

Half-thinking of a house she might be buying
(At least it's in the nicer part of town)
The secretary scans the words put down
And glares at the rogue boxes still defying
Her nimble wits. Her colleagues grow more trying
How can Graham wear that awful shade of brown?
The truth contains five letters; it's a noun.
She never feels her own heart might be lying.


All of our days are spent in filling boxes;
The smallest one comes last. Triumphantly,
She jots one more down, she who nothing foxes;
Who knows where, when, how everything should be;
And would, if she had time for paradoxes
Say that the things which hold us make us free.


Crows and Weeds (2003)

(This poem is particularly special to me.)

Her mother scolded her for picking weeds
And calling crows' song pretty, quickly losing
Her temper with the pebble hoards, her choosing
Of empty spots to sin. Scorn succeeds;
She grew up loving flowers and cuter breeds
Of avian, and turned from the accusing
Of the girl who picked toys no-one else was using
And savoured music nobody else heeds.


But when the flowers all fade, the larks depart,
The cold grey dawn recalls the cawing crow
And the mother of four, the girl who stood apart
And shy delights, and beauty not for show;
And strives to make her house out of her heart;
A place where crows can feed, and weeds can grow.


Death of a Critic (2004)

A 'clever' poem. I have come to detest 'clever' poems.

Mum was the only woman; no girl since
(And there were lots) could be so fresh and sweet.
Dad frowned at everybody on the street
And most of all on me, his pale Crown Prince.
All of my tales, my smiles, failed to convince
And year on year his gloom grew more complete.
Tears seemed too trite when he collapsed beneath
The ten-ton weight of his omniscience.

And now it's killing me...these films, these books,
Each one that comes along seems like the worst!
And me; I earned my father's dirty looks;
All of my readers should be reimbursed;
My life's a dud, with no real theme or crux,
Riddled with cliché from the very first!

Why I Love Star Trek: Voyager

It occurred to me today to write a post devoted to Star Trek: Voyager, a programme I've mentioned often enough. I've watched a lot of it in the last few months-- or half-watched it, since I usually have it on when I'm making dinner or cleaning up.

It's true that I've written a post on Star Trek as a whole (and if I link to it again, I'm liable to prosecution under the Control of Self-Promotion Act of 1932), but I think Voyager deserves an article of its own. It's a very different show.

(I am a little bit hesitant of going all Trekkie on my blog. But, then I think-- why ever not? Most people like Star Trek, after all.)

Star Trek: Voyager has been described as 'the red-headed step-child' of the franchise, and I can understand why. Despite running for a whole seven seasons-- which is impressive, considering the cancellation-happy nature of American TV networks (after all, the original Star Trek was cancelled after two seasons)-- it hasn't got a very good reputation. Most people who are at all interested in science-fiction TV profess a fondness for The Next Generation and for Deep Space Nine, but are withering about Voyager.

It's hard to disagree with most of their criticisms. I don't usually like bullet point lists, but I feel one coming on here:

• The whole Maquis/Starfleet device is dropped almost as soon as it is introduced. To those who don't know, the set-up of Voyager is that a Starfleet ship is stranded in a far part of the galaxy, out of contact with Starfleet, and-- through plot mechanics that I won't go into-- many of the crew belong to the Maquis, a terrorist/resistance organisation on which Starfleet frowns. This was obviously to set up dramatic tension in the series. But the two groups gel so quickly that it hardly seemed worth setting up, despite occasional (rather clumsy) attempts to revive this plot element later in the series.
• Many of the main characters are just dull. Commander Chakotay, the Native American second-in-command of the ship, has a face tattoo instead of a personality. The Vulcan head of security Tuvok, like all Vulcans, eschews all emotion in favour of logic. How exactly are the audience supposed to relate to such a character? The fresh-faced Harry Kim is everybody's little brother, but he doesn't really have much going for him apart from that-- he seems to have no interests or passions, other than an occasional amorous streak.
• Time travel is overused mercilessly. I'm not a big fan of time travel myself. It doesn't make sense to me. If you can change the past (or the future), isn't everything infinitely provisional? Doesn't that leech the drama out of everything?
• The aliens are terrible. When it came to inventing antagonist races (or even other races in general), Voyager was really the pits. Nearly all the races they run into are militaristic, beligerent, honour-obsessed races like the Klingons-- who are themselves the most boring of the classic 'Trek' aliens.
• The Borg and the Q, both brilliant concepts when they are introduced in Star Trek: The Next Generation, are overused in Voyager to the extent that we grow contemptuous of them. The Borg, when first glimpsed, were terrifying and all-but-unstoppable. By the end of Voyager, they are about as terrifying as a koala bear.

But Voyager had a lot going for it, as well. Since I perpetrated one bullet list, I might as well have another:

• The captain, Katherine Janeway. When I first saw Voyager I was rather dreading a female captain. Not because I have anything against the idea of a female captain per se. But because I assumed they were going to make her the antithesis of every stereotype of femininity, and we would have a hardass, ball-busting Captain with ne'er a streak of tenderness.
  
  Thankfully, this counter-stereotype was avoided. Captain Janeway is as tough as anyone could ask for, but she's also very feminine. She's even maternal towards the crew. Above all, she is simply a very well-drawn character. Her particular combination of toughness and tenderness is very believable. A lot of this is surely down to the skill of the actress, Kate Mulgrew-- who is staunchly pro-life, as it happens!
•  There are other excellent characters, as well. Tom Paris, the jaunty and fun-loving pilot who has a love for twentieth-century Americana, is someone I would like to have as a friend. I'd like to be more like him, too. His romance with the half-Klingon Bel'anna is very believable, and their rocky courtship is well portrayed. I've always had a crush on Bel'anna. Fiery, brilliant women are the best, even when they have head ridges.
  
  Neelix, the perpetually upbeat alien they take along for the ride, is also an endearing and well-delineated character. And then there's the Doctor and Seven of Nine...but I want to devote a whole bullet to those.
  
• The set-up of the story is very compelling. A protagonist (or a set of protagonists) trying to get home is one of the most timeless and powerful narratives you could imagine. Indeed, I think that only the Christ story runs deeper in our collective consciousness.
  
  It's just occurred to me that, although Voyager is a very obvious reversal of the basic Star Trek premise-- "to boldly go where no-one has gone before"-- it actually has the best of both worlds. They are exploring unknown parts of space, but they are not exploring for its own sake-- they are desperately trying to get home.
  
  Star Trek Voyager has an 'all or nothing' dimension that The Next Generation lacked. The crew will either get home, or they won't. It gives the whole drama an added intensity and poignancy.
  
  Of course, as the journey goes on, the crew more and more come to see the experience as something valuable in itself. This is a theme that is very deliberately and quite skillfully brought out. Harry Kim, the eager-beaver young crewmember who is most intent on getting home, at one point gives a toast to that effect: "To the journey!". I just googled "To the Journey" and the first result was a Voyager fan podcast. I think this is an important theme, too. So many of the challenges in our lives are challenges we would never have chosen. If we can embrace them all the same, if we can affirm them, it is quite a triumph.
  
  The plot conforms to another classic story-telling convention-- the group of people who are thrown into a common situation, a common dilemma. This may be a cliché, but it's a cliché for a reason-- it works. There is such a loneliness at the core of the human condition that having a similar experience to others is of huge importance to us. It's why people join support groups and veteran groups and, well, groups of every kind
  .
• The Doctor and Seven of Nine. The Doctor is an emergency medical hologram on a ship with no human doctor. As the series unfolds, his programme is enhanced, so that he becomes more and more like a human.
  
  Seven of Nine is a liberated Borg drone who was captured by the Borg as a little girl. At first, she is none-too-happy about being restored to humanity, and her path to becoming an individual (the Borg are a 'hive mind') is long and painful.
  
  Obviously, both of these characters are 'Pinochhio' characters-- they are both striving to become human. This could be seen as a blatant retread of Data, the android who wanted to be more human from The Next Generation. And indeed, it is. But I don't see anything wrong with this kind of self-plagiarism. Indeed, I think the Doctor and Seven-of-Nine out-Data Data.
  
  Seven-of-Nine was introduced in season four, and immediately boosted ratings. It's easy to see why-- she is undeniable eye candy, and she wears a skin-tight catsuit that shows off her impressive physique to its best effect. There were complaints about the cynicism of this move, and understandably so.
  
  But there's a lot more to her than eye-candy. Her story arc is incredibly poignant, especially in episodes like 'Raven' and 'Someone to Watch Over Me'. First of all, there is the fact that she has gone from being part of a hive mind to being an individual, with all the sense of isolation that would entail. Secondly, she has to come to terms with her past as a Borg, where she helped to 'assimilate' millions of others into the Borg collective. And thirdly, she learns about her own personal past, and the fact that she was herself 'assimilated' as a little girl, when her parents-- who were scientists studying the Borg-- were captured. She feels conflicted about whether she should explore this past or not. At the end of one episode, she very poignantly puts aside the newly-discovered diaries her parents kept, accepting that she is not ready to look at them yet.
  
  Seven-of-Nine used to be my favourite character, but she has now been overtaken by the Doctor. (He has no name, as he keeps putting off choosing one.) Indeed, the Doctor has become my favourite Star Trek character of all. He has a longer story arc than Seven-of-Nine, featuring from the first episode to the last. He gets more humorous moments than Seven-of-Nine, given his tendency towards gross vanity and pomposity. (Obviously, there is a tender side to this, too, as his vanity is frequently both bruised and subsequently salved by his crewmates.)
  
  Most importantly, he is played by Robert Picardo, a wonderful actor. I'm not the biggest fan of the acting profession. I think rather too much noise is made about (and indeed by) actors in this world. And yet there are some actors I greatly admire, and Robert Picardo is one of them. He has the sublime confidence of the best actors.
  
  He seems to be a pretty good and fascinating guy, too. I follow his Twitter account (it's the only Twitter account I do follow) and I've watched various videos of his speeches at Star Trek conventions, which are always funny and graceful, and display an obvious desire to give the fans their money's worth. He's a practicing Catholic, too, who sometimes tweets about his faith! (Although, unfortunately, he did celebrate the SCOTUS decision on gay 'marriage'. Oh well.)
  
  This is what I said about both these characters in my 'purple notebook' series (perhaps a bit too self-revelatory, but I need to be self-revelatory to explain, and I want to explain):I find these characters fascinating because they are both learning to be human, painfully and in unusual circumstance. Apart from finding this dramatically compelling in its own right, I identify with them. Other than reading or writing, I was a slow starter in nearly everything-- sometimes to a spectacular degree. Tying my laces, flying on a plane, leaving the country, having a job, making friends, drinking alcohol, going to a party, dating, experiencing a first kiss-- I did them all later and often way later than most people. So much so that it's often hard to find my experience mirrored in fiction, other than Seven of Nine and the Doctor. And the fact that their story is interesting, that they are sympathetic and admirable characters, makes me feel better about my own story.

Star Trek: Voyager isn't really a quarter as good as Star Trek: The Next Generation. (I don't really care very much for the original Star Trek or for Deep Space Nine, and I've barely seen Enterprise.) But, in a way, I'm actually fonder of Voyager-- maybe even because it's not as good.

I suppose I've always had something of a tenderness for the second-rate. It's hard to describe. I'm not talking about a fondness for the underdog. I do have a fondness for the underdog, in buckets and buckets, but that's not what I'm talking about here.

I think it has something to do with being born in Dublin, and growing up there, and spending the vast majority of my time on Earth there. Not only is Dublin a capital city, but I think it's fair to say that it's one of the great cities of the West. Dublin was the second city of the British Empire (though I see that other cities vied for that title, but let that pass). You couldn't throw a stone without hitting a house where some famous writer, artist, statesman or intellectual was born. Every back alley is knee-deep in history. Indeed, Dubliners are often accused of forgetting that there is an Ireland outside Dublin.

As for myself, I was never a very proud Dubliner. (Though it's more complicated than that...but that's a story for another time.) Dublin always seemed to me like the bastion of metropolitan and liberal values, while rural Ireland was the stronghold of traditional Ireland. On my summer holidays to my aunt's farm in Limerick, I always felt more of an affinity with the red-necks (or 'culchies') than I ever did with cynical Dubliners. (And I grew tired of being confidently informed that "You wouldn't like it as much here in winter".)

However, I'm veering off the subject a little. My original point was that, as a metropolitan, I have always been fascinated by all things provincial-- by the very notion of the provincial. (This is why I like Trollope.) I still can't really get my head around the idea of living in a city that isn't the capital. Being at the centre of things seems like the ordinary, humdrum thing to me. Being a provincial seems downright exotic.

That is, perhaps, one source of my fascination with the second-rate, the second-place, the not-quite, and the off-centre.

Another source is that it seems less intense, in a way. Personally, I can never understand why anyone would want to stand in a noisy pub on a Friday or Saturday night, fighting to get the attention of the barman and making reluctant trips to a filthy bathroom. I like pubs where there is enough liveliness to create an atmosphere, but you have room to sit down and relax-- midweek pubs. Similarly, I don't really get the appeal to cramming into a cinema on the release day of a big movie. I prefer half-empty cinemas. And so on.

More abstractly, I like things that are a little bit neglected-- relatively neglected. I like the fact that I'm in a minority when it comes to being a Voyager fan. It's a popular show, but not nearly as popular as Picard and Co. I like that. It makes it more mine, somehow. It makes it more special, somehow.

But the thing I like most about Star Trek in general- both Voyager and its big brother-- is the basic set-up. 

In my favourite book of all time, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton wrote: "Nearly all people I have ever met in this western society in which I live would agree to the general proposition that we need this life of practical romance; the combination of something that is strange with something that is secure. We need so to view the world as to combine an idea of wonder and an idea of welcome. We need to be happy in this wonderland without once being merely comfortable." I think that this is the magic of Star Trek. It combines the ideal of adventure, of exploring new places and new situations, with the ideal of home-- of community-- of family. Wherever the crew go, they are always on Voyager, or on the Enterprise. That's very comforting.

And the tightness of community on Star Trek is something I find very appealing. Part of the reason I like my job in UCD library is because it's almost military in terms of how immersive it is. University College Dublin isn't just like a small town. Essentially, it is a small town. All the amenities are there-- shops, cafes, restaurant, bank, post office, church, swimming pool, cinema-- almost everything. It's a world unto itself.

I grew up in UCD. I was twenty-three when I arrived, and extremely shy and immature. I had no friends. I made my first friends in UCD-- many of whom I still have. In fact, I had an experience very similar to the Doctor and Seven-of Nine.

The drama of the individual is something I find fascinating.  Perhaps this is not very conservative of me. Perhaps I have been infected by our era of life coaches, self-actualisation, self-esteem, navel-gazing, 'head space', personal growth, and the inner child. But I don't really care. I do think there is something sublime in the fact that every man and woman is a unique personality in the history of the world. I do think it's fascinating that we have so many different needs, beyond our purely physical needs-- the need for community, the need for self-expression, the need for belonging, the need for adventure, the need for growth. I like Star Trek because it follows its characters not only in their external journeys but in their internal journeys. Perhaps more than anything else, that is what keeps me going back to it, when there are so many other TV shows and movies I've never watched, and so much else to see and do in our little span of time.

A Quarter of a Million Views!

I've just noticed that this blog has passed the quarter of a million pageviews mark!

Not bad for a highly idiosyncratic potpourri of Catholic apologetics, devotionalism, horror fiction, poetry, nostalgia, personal reflections, literary criticism and unclassifiable material (e.g., my purple notebook series).

Thanks to everyone who has visited, read, commented, encouraged and prayed. I very much appreciate it.

May the Holy Spirit, St. Patrick and my namesake St. Seachnall continue to watch over this blog!

This is Exactly What I Mean

Here is a good example of what I was complaining about in my poem 'In Praise of Solemnity'. The video is worth watching for its own sake, as with all of Fr. Barron's videos, but look out for a cutesie visual device which really seems to take away from the seriousness of the subject.

Why? Why? Why?

I have to admit, I've also always been irritated by the device of Fr. Barron talking to someone off camera. Why can't he just look at the camera?