What is my purple notebook? A notebook of inspiring memories, of various kinds. I describe it here, and list the first few entries, explaining what they mean to me.
The Iliad, E.V. Rieu. I bought a second-hand copy of the Iliad, as translated by E.V. Rieu, when I was eighteen. I couldn't really get into the story much but the atmosphere of the epic and the tragic stuck in my mind.
Star chart, Eason's. A very old memory. I remember writing about it in a diary when I was seventeen. Eason's is a bookshop in Ireland, which also sells posters and stuff like that. I saw a poster of a star-chart whose blue background seemed gloriously deep and sublime to me-- the whole atmosphere seemed solemn and lofty, the atmosphere of the night sky. All my life solemnity has thrilled me. I don't understand people who can never be solemn, and who boast about it. What's admirable about that? Of all the emotions and atmosphere of life, surely solemnity is the one under-represented in modern life.
A day of dappled seaborne clouds. A phrase from Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. I read the book when I was seventeen and one sequence (which is often considered deliberately overwritten and parodic) thrilled me and made me yearn for a life of vivid, fresh, memorable experiences.
Matisse and Picasso. A lavishly illustrated book about the two artists which gave me a new zest for the visual world, and the fluidity of experience.
EWTN Doctors of the Church, Sunday dinner, gravy, camaraderie and anecdotes in the studio. A recent memory. I was having Sunday dinner with my father. There was a panel discussion about the Doctors of the Church on EWTN. The dinner was delicious, especially the gravy, and the joviality and camaraderie in the studio-- amongst regular pundits-- made me yearn for something similar in my life.
Feelings into Words. Being there. The title of an English prose text book I found at home, and the title of a chapter in it. The chapter was about first-hand experiences. Nothing is more exciting than the immediacy of experience, and the idea of the immediacy of experience.
Michael Scott, Colorado. The episode of The Office where Michael finally goes to live with his lady-love.
The drama of every situation being what it is-- lecture, dinner, drinks, flight, bus ride, scene in street. Everything is what it is and not something else. That is a thrilling thought to me.
When Harry Met Sally, Christmas Eve, Pope Francis on TV. One Christmas Eve I flew into JFK airport. I watched When Harry Met Sally on the flight (it was Delta airlines, who give you a personal screen and choice of movies). There was a very festive atmosphere. In JFK, Pope Francis celebrating Midnight Mass was being shown on the TV of a bar. Nobody was looking at it, but that seemed entirely appropriate. Who looks at the sun on a sunny day at the beach? I felt such a profound sense of how Christianity and Catholicism were the very foundation of a culture, even when people aren't thinking about it.
Midnight Mass with Michelle in Richmond Cathedral. I don't really like cathedrals, but the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond is an exception. It is cosily compact, and it has the coats of arms of all the past Bishops of Richmond on the ceiling. They all have Irish names!
Holy Eucharist church with Michelle. The church where she made her confirmation. We visited it while attending the funeral of one of her relatives. It was a privilege to pray with her there.
Beach in New Jersey with Michelle. I wrote her name in the sand and she took a photo of it. This touched me very much. It was a cold day, but I prefer beaches on cold days.
NFP event with Michelle. Crucifix on wall. Michelle has a special, and now professional, interest in Natural Family Planning and everything connected to it. We attended a seminar about it together once. It was in a Catholic centre and I remember looking at the very stylized Cross on the wall of this room and feeling a surge of gratitude for our Saviour and God.
Christmas concert with Michelle in General Post Office. On her first day ever in Ireland, we went into the General Post Office, the headquarters of the 1916 Rebellion, and still a functioning post office. It was Christmas. I didn't expect to find a little Christmas concert taking place in there, but there was. And mechanized life-style figures, I seem to remember!
Walter Mitty movie with Michelle. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty starring Ben Stiller, watched in a cine-bistro (a combined cinema and restaurant) in America. Quite an emotional ride of a movie. Just a special evening.
Looking at over-the-top Christmas lights with Michelle. A tradition in Richmond, Virginia. A very special and happy and silly memory.
Chiocca's and It. The Beast, Coke. It by Stephen King is a novel that seems to capture the excitement, terror, texture and wonder of life as few others. Chiocca's is a ratskeller in Richmond, Virgina which is my favourite eatery and one of my favourite places in the world-- baseball on the TV, slightly shabby and worn interior, full of regulars, full of miscellaneous bric-a-brac, cosy but never packed. The Beast is a particular sandwich which I always ordered, with Coke. Reading It in Chiocca's while eating the Beast and drinking Coke was one of the best experiences ever.
Lunch in Walgreen's with Michelle after dental surgery. I had dental surgery in America one day. Michelle was very attentive and caring to me all day long. I enjoyed being a patient. I am never sick, I miss out on all the sympathy!
Whiteboard brainstorming. "All the debates we had".... I love hearing about the creative process in anything, especially the up-in-the-air stage.
The Bible, mullioned windows, Ballymun Road. Reading the Bible (or quotations thereof) always makes me feel I am accessing the deepest layer of human experience and culture. Mullioned windows always seem to me like something decorative in the background, rarely noticed, but symbolic of tradition and heritage. Ballymun Road is full of old red-brick houses. These associations form a chord for me. Somehow, when I think of the Bible, I often find myself thinking of mullioned window and the Ballymun Road.
Letter to the Hebrew, Black Hand Café. This is a café in Richmond. I remember reading the Letter to the Hebrews there one day, while having a coffee, and feeling full of zest for the Christian life.
Book of Revelations, flight to Dublin. The Book of Revelations must be the book of the New Testament that I've read the least. On a flight to Dublin, I read the entire thing through overnight. It filled me with excitement and zeal.
Funny toothbrush. My mother bought a toothbrush once. Only when she was looking at it with my sister did she realize it was in the shape of a woman's torso, complete with prominent 'lady bumps'. They laughed at it a lot. And I felt such a sense of warmth and happiness. I was only a kid. I love those moments of togetherness in humour.
Going straight to Mass from airport. Once I went straight from Dublin Airport to the Holy Spirit Church in Ballymun, complete with luggage, and just caught Mass. I felt like a very dedicated Christian.
Aviator scene with Odie. A scene in the movie The Aviator, where Leonardo Di Caprio (as Howard Hughes) is shown giving himself a respite of only a few seconds before he launches back into supervising his many business and aviation affairs, firing on all cylinders. I never fire on all cylinders. I wish I did.
Tapping and whistling in bathroom pipes. A haunting, pleasantly melancholy sound. I liked listening to it while lying in the bath.
Paintings in Ballymun vegetable shop. When I was a kid. Sunny and Mediterranean and bright. I usually hate that atmosphere, but these caught my imagination. The mundane and the glamorous accentuating each other, again.
Kilmainham prison museum. Concerted struggle. A visit to the museum where many Irish nationalists were held, especially after the 1916 Rebellion. My imagination was fired by the idea of a group of people being entirely and whole-heartedly devoted to a cause, together. Single-mindedness of any sort inspires me.
1992 Christmas exam results. After a year and a half of struggling in secondary school, I finally made a continuous effort and did relatively well in my Christmas exams in 1992. The idea that work paid off seemed magical to me, I was so fatalistic as a teen. I look back on this to inspire and motivate me today.
Alcohol shelves and labels in Tesco. Bhagavad-Gita. We had a lavishly illustrated copy of the Bhagavad-Gita at home when I was a kid. It seemed so classy to me, and helped me see sensual richness as a metaphor for the spiritual life. For some reason I always associated it with the handsome and richly-coloured labels of the alcohol bottles in my local supermarket.
Radio interview, Leaving Cert, "everyone when they're students". Irish people take the Leaving Cert exam when they're eighteen, at the end of the school. It decides college entry. I felt I'd blown my Leaving Cert and wouldn't get into college. I was listening to a radio interview and heard a musician talking about his musical interests in college, saying: "Everybody when they're a student"... It made me wistful for a common experience, a part of life's topography, that I felt I wouldn't know. I like it whenever people identify anything typical of particular periods in life. Special times and special places, again.
Schmaltzy, gentle LPs and LP covers, American men in hats, nineteen-forties. I have a memory of listening to such a record in my childhood, or even seeing a cover of one. Rat Pack era. Men in dinner jackets getting soppy about women with classy hairstyles.
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
The Complete Purple Notebook, Part Three
What is my purple notebook? A notebook of inspiring memories, of various kinds. I describe it here, and list the first few entries, explaining what they mean to me.
South African Paul. A student in the library, from South Africa or Australia or New Zealand-- it's hard to tell with his accent-- who is extremely friendly, chatty and well-groomed. I like looking at him just because he's so well-groomed. Somebody who is very well-groomed is like an island of order in a world of chaos. (Especially a man, since it's relatively rare!) I'm not well-groomed but I constantly have it as an ambition.
Macy's Parade. My first American Thanksgiving. I watched Macy's Parade and the National Dog Show on television with Michelle, and had a Thanksgiving feast later. I felt absurdly happy and in love. It was so different and fresh, a whole new world.
Painting, Lenny Henry, DJ Show. In my early teens, everything seemed to go wrong for me. I was failing all my tests in school. I was friendless and withdrawn. I was tired all the time. And I seemed to spill and break things constantly, especially in art class. One evening, I painted a picture for art class at home, and nothing spilled and none of the colours ran and I was amazed how neat and tidy it was, and how it worked out. "Life could always be like this", I thought. "Why not?" The English comedian Lenny Henry was on TV, on a terrible show about a pirate DJ.
You've Got Mail. My second favourite movie ever. Impossibly romantic. Romance of the everyday, kind of.
The Agony and the Ecstasy, Y------, fresh paint. I was sixteen. I was reading The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone, a novel about Michelangelo and artistic creation. My father was painting at home. And we had a sex education course in school where we were talking about the changes of puberty. And somehow all these notions of growth and change and fluidity seemed to run together in my head, in an exciting way. For some reason one class-mate called Y---- is attached to this memory-- I didn't have a crush on her or anything. Maybe I just happened to notice her at a critical moment.
All Good Things. The last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Possibly the greatest hour of television ever, and full of uplifting messages. Especially the final scene, where the god-like Q character-- half-adversary, half-friend-- tells Picard he has passed the test, humanity will be spared, and that he is learning to open his mind to the possibilities of existence itself. He leans towards Picard to tell him some final secret, but then starts to float away, and says: "See you...out there!" as he recedes into the distance. It ends on a note of near-religious awe and wonder.
Foundation Series, Ballymun Library. The 'Foundation' series of science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov also filled me with a sense of wonder and awe. I would walk away from the library carrying one, or giving one back, aware I was on one spinning planet in one galaxy of a vast cosmos.
The Great Artists, flowing pen. I took Art in school. I enjoyed Art theory. On the Saturdays of my final year, I would go to Ballymun Library and read about artists in a bound collection of magazines they had called The Great Artists. I would take notes, and one Saturday I was taking notes with a very nice felt pen my sister gave me, as snow fell outside. A feast for the senses.
Starman, computer synthesizer voice. I woke up late one morning and my younger brother-- who was very into David Bowie at the time-- was experimenting with a voice synthesizer while listening to Starman by David Bowie. It all created a sense of futuristic wonder. Things always seem more impressive when you've just woken up.
Newgrange. A Neolithic passage grave in Ireland, older than the pyramids. I visited twice, once with Michelle. Both times I was awed by the sense of the sacred, even if it was pre-Christian.
World History Board Game. A board game of world domination that I played with all three of my brothers (we rarely did anything all together) when I was about seventeen. Life, and the world of knowledge, seemed to be opening up to me and so the geopolitical struggle on the board seemed entirely appropriate and a good metaphor for my new vistas.
"We have it in our power to begin society over again". I had two wonderful single-volume encyclopedias when I was a kid-- the Guinness Encyclopedia and the Hutchinson Encyclopedia. The former was in themed chapters, the latter was alphabetical. Each chapter started with a two-page photograph and a stand-out quote. The above quotation from Tom Paine (I may have misquoted it) was paired with a picture of some politically rally in Eastern Europe. There was such an excitement in the crowd. The idea that we could begin the world all over again was one that I found intoxicating-- and I still do, even though I am a conservative. Because if you can choose to begin all over again you can also choose to preserve traditions-- it's an active choice.
Mown grass, Carnival, summer night. A memory from late childhood or early teens. I was reading the novel Carnival by Compton Mackenzie, about a young ballerina growing up. It was summer. I remember one night catching moths and humanely throwing them out our bedroom window with my younger brother. Life seemed so full of early summer excitement and anticipation.
Morning I learned Irish history dates. One morning, close to the end of my schooling, I learned dozens of important dates in Irish history, really trying to get a handle on Irish history. They still form the nucleus of my understanding of the subject, all these years later. I am so rarely on top of things in my life that the rare instances where I do feel on top of things are intoxicating.
The specificity of a book on a shelf. The wonder of every book sitting on a shelf is that it's about what it's about, rather than the effective infinity of other things it could be about.
This Fellow with the Fabulous Smile. The title of an obscure book of tributes to a bad Irish poet. (All modern poets are bad.) But I like the title. I like how personal and emotional it is. It would take too long to expand.
Argos, town. When I went into the city centre with my mother, as a kid, I felt a sense of wonder that everything I saw was the product of centuries of human history and culture. There is a catalogue store called Argos and the classicism of the name seemed a perfect example of this. The ordinary and the grandiose.
Grattan's parliament, history and politics. In transition year in school, we had a 'history and politics' module that was several weeks long. One thing we learned about was eighteenth-century Dublin, which had its own parliament and was renowned for its elegance and splendour. And that atmosphere seemed to fill the classroom.
South African Paul. A student in the library, from South Africa or Australia or New Zealand-- it's hard to tell with his accent-- who is extremely friendly, chatty and well-groomed. I like looking at him just because he's so well-groomed. Somebody who is very well-groomed is like an island of order in a world of chaos. (Especially a man, since it's relatively rare!) I'm not well-groomed but I constantly have it as an ambition.
Macy's Parade. My first American Thanksgiving. I watched Macy's Parade and the National Dog Show on television with Michelle, and had a Thanksgiving feast later. I felt absurdly happy and in love. It was so different and fresh, a whole new world.
Painting, Lenny Henry, DJ Show. In my early teens, everything seemed to go wrong for me. I was failing all my tests in school. I was friendless and withdrawn. I was tired all the time. And I seemed to spill and break things constantly, especially in art class. One evening, I painted a picture for art class at home, and nothing spilled and none of the colours ran and I was amazed how neat and tidy it was, and how it worked out. "Life could always be like this", I thought. "Why not?" The English comedian Lenny Henry was on TV, on a terrible show about a pirate DJ.
You've Got Mail. My second favourite movie ever. Impossibly romantic. Romance of the everyday, kind of.
The Agony and the Ecstasy, Y------, fresh paint. I was sixteen. I was reading The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone, a novel about Michelangelo and artistic creation. My father was painting at home. And we had a sex education course in school where we were talking about the changes of puberty. And somehow all these notions of growth and change and fluidity seemed to run together in my head, in an exciting way. For some reason one class-mate called Y---- is attached to this memory-- I didn't have a crush on her or anything. Maybe I just happened to notice her at a critical moment.
All Good Things. The last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Possibly the greatest hour of television ever, and full of uplifting messages. Especially the final scene, where the god-like Q character-- half-adversary, half-friend-- tells Picard he has passed the test, humanity will be spared, and that he is learning to open his mind to the possibilities of existence itself. He leans towards Picard to tell him some final secret, but then starts to float away, and says: "See you...out there!" as he recedes into the distance. It ends on a note of near-religious awe and wonder.
Foundation Series, Ballymun Library. The 'Foundation' series of science fiction novels by Isaac Asimov also filled me with a sense of wonder and awe. I would walk away from the library carrying one, or giving one back, aware I was on one spinning planet in one galaxy of a vast cosmos.
The Great Artists, flowing pen. I took Art in school. I enjoyed Art theory. On the Saturdays of my final year, I would go to Ballymun Library and read about artists in a bound collection of magazines they had called The Great Artists. I would take notes, and one Saturday I was taking notes with a very nice felt pen my sister gave me, as snow fell outside. A feast for the senses.
Starman, computer synthesizer voice. I woke up late one morning and my younger brother-- who was very into David Bowie at the time-- was experimenting with a voice synthesizer while listening to Starman by David Bowie. It all created a sense of futuristic wonder. Things always seem more impressive when you've just woken up.
Newgrange. A Neolithic passage grave in Ireland, older than the pyramids. I visited twice, once with Michelle. Both times I was awed by the sense of the sacred, even if it was pre-Christian.
World History Board Game. A board game of world domination that I played with all three of my brothers (we rarely did anything all together) when I was about seventeen. Life, and the world of knowledge, seemed to be opening up to me and so the geopolitical struggle on the board seemed entirely appropriate and a good metaphor for my new vistas.
"We have it in our power to begin society over again". I had two wonderful single-volume encyclopedias when I was a kid-- the Guinness Encyclopedia and the Hutchinson Encyclopedia. The former was in themed chapters, the latter was alphabetical. Each chapter started with a two-page photograph and a stand-out quote. The above quotation from Tom Paine (I may have misquoted it) was paired with a picture of some politically rally in Eastern Europe. There was such an excitement in the crowd. The idea that we could begin the world all over again was one that I found intoxicating-- and I still do, even though I am a conservative. Because if you can choose to begin all over again you can also choose to preserve traditions-- it's an active choice.
Mown grass, Carnival, summer night. A memory from late childhood or early teens. I was reading the novel Carnival by Compton Mackenzie, about a young ballerina growing up. It was summer. I remember one night catching moths and humanely throwing them out our bedroom window with my younger brother. Life seemed so full of early summer excitement and anticipation.
Morning I learned Irish history dates. One morning, close to the end of my schooling, I learned dozens of important dates in Irish history, really trying to get a handle on Irish history. They still form the nucleus of my understanding of the subject, all these years later. I am so rarely on top of things in my life that the rare instances where I do feel on top of things are intoxicating.
The specificity of a book on a shelf. The wonder of every book sitting on a shelf is that it's about what it's about, rather than the effective infinity of other things it could be about.
This Fellow with the Fabulous Smile. The title of an obscure book of tributes to a bad Irish poet. (All modern poets are bad.) But I like the title. I like how personal and emotional it is. It would take too long to expand.
Argos, town. When I went into the city centre with my mother, as a kid, I felt a sense of wonder that everything I saw was the product of centuries of human history and culture. There is a catalogue store called Argos and the classicism of the name seemed a perfect example of this. The ordinary and the grandiose.
Grattan's parliament, history and politics. In transition year in school, we had a 'history and politics' module that was several weeks long. One thing we learned about was eighteenth-century Dublin, which had its own parliament and was renowned for its elegance and splendour. And that atmosphere seemed to fill the classroom.
The Complete Purple Notebook, Part Four
What is my purple notebook? A notebook of inspiring memories, of various kinds. I describe it here, and list the first few entries, explaining what they mean to me.
Clare, December 2001. 9/11 programme on radio. My mother died in January 2001, RIP. Obviously, in September 2001, the terrorist attacks on America happened. That Christmas, since we wanted a change of scene to escape sad memories, all my family stayed in my sister's house in County Clare. I was listening to a radio documentary about 9/11, and somehow I felt a sense of relief and gratitude that life went on, despite tragedy. We come to terms with things, personally and as a society.
The Christmas shop after Engaged Encounter. Myself and Michelle attended a pre-marriage course called Engaged Encounter. It was one of the best experiences of my life, though it's hard to say why. I describe it here.
Immediately afterwards, we went to a big shop (not a Christmas shop, though it had lots of Christmas stuff) with an enormous blow-up snowman outside, and tea-towels that said: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (only in America), and other touches of domesticity and the magic of everyday life. And I felt so much in love and happy.
Sushi in Kroger. A memory of having lunch-time sushi with Michelle in the American supermarket Kroger. I felt so happy and in love.
Richard Branson, Limerick. On one visit to my aunt's farm in Limerick-- on the day we were going home, which always had a bittersweet atmosphere-- I read a newspaper story about the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, who might have been the richest man in Britain at the time. Somehow I was taken with the idea that a person who looked ordinary, identifiable, human, was the wealthiest man in Britain. But it's not really that. I can't explain the appeal of this memory.
Sepia newspapers. Those hazy lazy crazy days of summer. I read a newspaper article with the headline Those Hazy Lazy Crazy Days of Summer. I didn't know the phrase at the time and it struck me as incredibly poetic-- and the idea of special times also appealed to me, as ever. (Seasonality has always seemed primordially mysterious to me). The photo showed an attractive woman in a bikini. The story struck me with all the poignancy and sweetness and fleetingness of summer. I don't know if it was really a sepia newspaper-- it probably wasn't-- but I felt I was looking at a yellowed, decades-old clipping.
Stories...that have stood the test of time. Me and my brothers used to collect a set of books-and-tapes published by the Ladybird imprint. They were retellings of classic stories. The back flyleaf always had a golden scroll against a mahogany background listing all the titles, with the caption "Stories...that have stood the test of time" at the top. This captured my imagination. How could it not?
Black and white World War documentaries.
Egyptian mythology, Ballymun library. I had a bit of an interest in Egyptology when I was a teen. I remember borrowing a book about Egyptian mythology from Ballymun library. Every time I read up on such a subject, I felt inspired by the idea of becoming well-read and becoming a freeman of all human history and thought. The idea enthralled me in my teens. And nothing in human history seemed wasted. The dead gods of Egypt stood for something worthwhile, something unique. And the exoticism of the mythology were a pleasant contrast to the utilitarianism of modern life.
"Journey". Voyager and general. People use the phrase 'journey' to describe everything from a training weekend to a spiritual quest. It's a cliché. But I love the cliché, and I can never get enough of it. I love thinking about how much of life is a journey, in so many different ways. The Star Trek show Voyager, which follows the crew of a stranded ship on their way back to their own part of the galaxy, is one example of this classic narrative.
Superted, big wheel. A memory of my mother bringing me and my young brother to a funfair in Dublin City centre. We went to a funfair, including a big wheel. I remember telling my mother I felt sad to see her not getting on any of the rides. She said, "Just watching you having fun makes me happy". It seemed strange to me now, though of course I understand it now. The same day we bought an illustrated book about a Welsh superhero for kids called Superted.
Slógadh, tomorrow already. The Slógadh was a drama and music festival which our school entered every year. I think my class took part two years. One year, we stayed overnight in a town. We were in a hotel (or somewhere) and I referred to the next day-- Wednesday, or whatever. One of my classmates said, "It is Wednesday", since it was past midnight. The combination of being up so late, and realising the fluidity of time, gave me a thrill.
Doing work on the English literature shelves, John Cheever, Diarmuid McCullough. In the library, I was doing some work on the English literature section one summer, while listening to the audio history of Christianity by Diarmuid McCullough, through headphones. I found myself looking through book after book of criticism, including one about the American author John Cheever. Suddenly the idea that many people devote the bulk of their attention to writing and analysing words about life itself, and the human condition, seemed wonderful.
S---------- ------------- and his father. This one makes me feel like a bit of a stalker. There was a guy I knew only distantly, but with whom I was friends on Facebook. I kind of envied his life and lifestyle, which seemed very cultured and intellectual. One picture showed him and his father in a restaurant and somehow I found it very appealing and inspiring. That's it.
Quinnsworth with mother. Skips. There was a big supermarket in Ballymun all through my childhood. At first it was Quinnsworth, then Tesco, then Crazy Prices. I used to go there shopping with my mother and the artificial light of the supermarket, not to mention the labyrinth of the aisles, gave me a sense of the eternal. Skips are a brand of crisps (potato chips) which are very tangy and, at that time, had information on the back of the packets about various extreme sports.
Sapper and Sniper, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Werewolf. Paint. Prince August. Various toys from my childhood. Some of them were not ready-made but you moulded and painted them yourself. My elder brother supervised. The smell of paint is such an exciting smell; the smell of freshness and possibility.
Four-sided on crisps. A very dim memory. I remember looking at a four-sided star image on a packet of crisps (potato crisps). I was very young and it seemed to me like the definitive and simplest and most classical symbol of glamour, excitement and celebration. I've always loved simple symbols that evoke a whole atmosphere.
Collecting clothes in Scoil Caitriona. My school sent us all door-to-door collecting clothes for a school sale of work (rummage sale). I was very shy and the idea appalled me. When I actually did it, and it wasn't so bad, the relief was rather euphoric. And I got the rest of the day off! All the time, whenever I have done anything slightly different, the pleasant sense of combined anxiety and disorientation seems to wake my soul up.
Film review website for CD-ROM. I bought a film review CD-Rom and stayed up very late reading review after review after review, while the house around me was busy. The two degrees of removal-- reading reviews of films, which are themselves a commentary on life and its infinite diversity-- made me feel both distanced and closer to human life in all its variety.
Space shuttle in D-----'s class. There was a skylight in my school classroom when I was about nine. Also, we used to take turns to bring a budgie (and other things) home. These were combined in a dream about a small spaceship which would shoot out the skylight, and which we took turns using. A great sense of excitement and discovery in that dream.
Santa transparency on balcony door. Hard to describe any further. A transparency on a window-- or the glass of a door- transforms a room into a different place, a different world.
Clare, December 2001. 9/11 programme on radio. My mother died in January 2001, RIP. Obviously, in September 2001, the terrorist attacks on America happened. That Christmas, since we wanted a change of scene to escape sad memories, all my family stayed in my sister's house in County Clare. I was listening to a radio documentary about 9/11, and somehow I felt a sense of relief and gratitude that life went on, despite tragedy. We come to terms with things, personally and as a society.
The Christmas shop after Engaged Encounter. Myself and Michelle attended a pre-marriage course called Engaged Encounter. It was one of the best experiences of my life, though it's hard to say why. I describe it here.
Immediately afterwards, we went to a big shop (not a Christmas shop, though it had lots of Christmas stuff) with an enormous blow-up snowman outside, and tea-towels that said: "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord" (only in America), and other touches of domesticity and the magic of everyday life. And I felt so much in love and happy.
Sushi in Kroger. A memory of having lunch-time sushi with Michelle in the American supermarket Kroger. I felt so happy and in love.
Richard Branson, Limerick. On one visit to my aunt's farm in Limerick-- on the day we were going home, which always had a bittersweet atmosphere-- I read a newspaper story about the British entrepreneur Richard Branson, who might have been the richest man in Britain at the time. Somehow I was taken with the idea that a person who looked ordinary, identifiable, human, was the wealthiest man in Britain. But it's not really that. I can't explain the appeal of this memory.
Sepia newspapers. Those hazy lazy crazy days of summer. I read a newspaper article with the headline Those Hazy Lazy Crazy Days of Summer. I didn't know the phrase at the time and it struck me as incredibly poetic-- and the idea of special times also appealed to me, as ever. (Seasonality has always seemed primordially mysterious to me). The photo showed an attractive woman in a bikini. The story struck me with all the poignancy and sweetness and fleetingness of summer. I don't know if it was really a sepia newspaper-- it probably wasn't-- but I felt I was looking at a yellowed, decades-old clipping.
Stories...that have stood the test of time. Me and my brothers used to collect a set of books-and-tapes published by the Ladybird imprint. They were retellings of classic stories. The back flyleaf always had a golden scroll against a mahogany background listing all the titles, with the caption "Stories...that have stood the test of time" at the top. This captured my imagination. How could it not?
Black and white World War documentaries.
Egyptian mythology, Ballymun library. I had a bit of an interest in Egyptology when I was a teen. I remember borrowing a book about Egyptian mythology from Ballymun library. Every time I read up on such a subject, I felt inspired by the idea of becoming well-read and becoming a freeman of all human history and thought. The idea enthralled me in my teens. And nothing in human history seemed wasted. The dead gods of Egypt stood for something worthwhile, something unique. And the exoticism of the mythology were a pleasant contrast to the utilitarianism of modern life.
"Journey". Voyager and general. People use the phrase 'journey' to describe everything from a training weekend to a spiritual quest. It's a cliché. But I love the cliché, and I can never get enough of it. I love thinking about how much of life is a journey, in so many different ways. The Star Trek show Voyager, which follows the crew of a stranded ship on their way back to their own part of the galaxy, is one example of this classic narrative.
Superted, big wheel. A memory of my mother bringing me and my young brother to a funfair in Dublin City centre. We went to a funfair, including a big wheel. I remember telling my mother I felt sad to see her not getting on any of the rides. She said, "Just watching you having fun makes me happy". It seemed strange to me now, though of course I understand it now. The same day we bought an illustrated book about a Welsh superhero for kids called Superted.
Slógadh, tomorrow already. The Slógadh was a drama and music festival which our school entered every year. I think my class took part two years. One year, we stayed overnight in a town. We were in a hotel (or somewhere) and I referred to the next day-- Wednesday, or whatever. One of my classmates said, "It is Wednesday", since it was past midnight. The combination of being up so late, and realising the fluidity of time, gave me a thrill.
Doing work on the English literature shelves, John Cheever, Diarmuid McCullough. In the library, I was doing some work on the English literature section one summer, while listening to the audio history of Christianity by Diarmuid McCullough, through headphones. I found myself looking through book after book of criticism, including one about the American author John Cheever. Suddenly the idea that many people devote the bulk of their attention to writing and analysing words about life itself, and the human condition, seemed wonderful.
S---------- ------------- and his father. This one makes me feel like a bit of a stalker. There was a guy I knew only distantly, but with whom I was friends on Facebook. I kind of envied his life and lifestyle, which seemed very cultured and intellectual. One picture showed him and his father in a restaurant and somehow I found it very appealing and inspiring. That's it.
Quinnsworth with mother. Skips. There was a big supermarket in Ballymun all through my childhood. At first it was Quinnsworth, then Tesco, then Crazy Prices. I used to go there shopping with my mother and the artificial light of the supermarket, not to mention the labyrinth of the aisles, gave me a sense of the eternal. Skips are a brand of crisps (potato chips) which are very tangy and, at that time, had information on the back of the packets about various extreme sports.
Sapper and Sniper, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Werewolf. Paint. Prince August. Various toys from my childhood. Some of them were not ready-made but you moulded and painted them yourself. My elder brother supervised. The smell of paint is such an exciting smell; the smell of freshness and possibility.
Four-sided on crisps. A very dim memory. I remember looking at a four-sided star image on a packet of crisps (potato crisps). I was very young and it seemed to me like the definitive and simplest and most classical symbol of glamour, excitement and celebration. I've always loved simple symbols that evoke a whole atmosphere.
Collecting clothes in Scoil Caitriona. My school sent us all door-to-door collecting clothes for a school sale of work (rummage sale). I was very shy and the idea appalled me. When I actually did it, and it wasn't so bad, the relief was rather euphoric. And I got the rest of the day off! All the time, whenever I have done anything slightly different, the pleasant sense of combined anxiety and disorientation seems to wake my soul up.
Film review website for CD-ROM. I bought a film review CD-Rom and stayed up very late reading review after review after review, while the house around me was busy. The two degrees of removal-- reading reviews of films, which are themselves a commentary on life and its infinite diversity-- made me feel both distanced and closer to human life in all its variety.
Space shuttle in D-----'s class. There was a skylight in my school classroom when I was about nine. Also, we used to take turns to bring a budgie (and other things) home. These were combined in a dream about a small spaceship which would shoot out the skylight, and which we took turns using. A great sense of excitement and discovery in that dream.
Santa transparency on balcony door. Hard to describe any further. A transparency on a window-- or the glass of a door- transforms a room into a different place, a different world.
The Complete Purple Notebook, Part Five
Robert Picardo tweets. The only Twitter account I follow is the Twitter account of Robert Picardo, the actor who played the holographic doctor in Star Trek: Voyager. I like the character-- a holograph who is learning how to be human, which is how I often feel-- and I like the actor. I like his face-- a genial, avuncular face. I like the slightly tongue-in-cheek way he plays the role, a twinkle in his eye. It's very confident. He's a Catholic too! And a funny guy.
The Lion and the Unicorn, king in a bath. There was once a cartoon in a Sunday paper called The Lion and the Unicorn-- it featured a literal lion and a unicorn, who served a king. I may only have ever read it once. But there was one strip where, on the first panel, the King is sitting in a bath-tub and says to the Lion, "Put some more coals under the fire. It's a cold day." So cosy! I always think comfort and discomfort are interlinked, even imaginatively. As in this poem.
Dormitory, Slógadh, posters. There is an Irish language drama and music competition for schools called the Slogadh (pronounced slow-ga). My school entered it every year, and often won it. Once we were staying overnight in the town where it was being held. We stayed in a convent school and slept in a girl's dormitory. I was twelve. This had a profound impression on me on many levels, only one of which was erotic. (There you go.)
I wrote an article about this memory on the Philip Larkin website, of all places. It's connected to a Larkin poem. It appeared in print, I think, in the Larkin Society magazine, but I don't have a copy. I'd have to buy a back-issue and I don't want to do that.
Shakespeare series, dark background. I've never been able to get into Shakespeare's plays, though I love the speeches. But I've always loved the idea of Shakespeare. When I was a kid, my father was watching a season of Shakespeare productions on BBC. My only memory is of an actor speaking against a completely dark background. Even at that age, I got the idea of a drama that went to the very essence of the human condition. I felt the Shakespeare legend in all its force-- and the augustness and tragedy of the human condition, as Shakespeare is held to delineate-- though I've never been able to enjoy the plays.
RDS, Groovejet. In 2001, when I was in a government library training course, we had a vist to a job and training courses convention (since we were all unemployed). The chorus from a hit song of the time, Groovejet by Sophie Ellis Bextor ("If this ain't love, why does it feel so good") was playing over...and over...and over in the conference hall. It has imprinted itself on my memory. I wasn't very happy in that hall, since I wondered what job I could possibly get, and yet it's a happy memory somehow. Maybe because I stepped back from my life and looked at it, and this is always a distinctive memory.
Gorsky, Winter, TNG. TNG is Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was in my late teens and watching a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was a very cold spell, and I was reading a memoir of childhood by the Soviet writer Maxim Gorsky. I was also very worried about something, and it made the world around me seem very vivid and precious-- as often happens.
Mini-company party in school. When I was sixteen, I was part of the first generation that did a 'transition year' in school-- a year more focused on personal development, and work experience, and trying new things, than examinations. One of the 'modules' that we did was a 'mini-company'-- we actually started a limited company that sold candles and soap. I designed the logo for it. On the last day, we had a little party to celebrate-- which I found embarrassing at the time, since it was thought it was too small a thing to make a fuss over. But, deep inside, I liked the idea of fuss and ceremony for everything, and marking rites of passage and endings and transitions.
Teachers' line dance. In my last year of school, at Christmas (I think), when a line-dancing craze was sweeping Ireland, some of my teachers dressed up in cowboy get-up and performed a line-dance for the benefit of the students. I may have cringed at the time, but-- once again, in my heart-- I loved that they had done something so gratuitous, one-off, and just-for-the-sake-of-it. I love such things so much. I even think they are an echo of God's gratuitous love and creation.
Glacious gazebo. The cosiest picture I've ever seen. See above.
Bats. Limerick. Salem's Lot. Each summer, myself and my mother and my little brother and (in the early years) my elder brother used to visit my aunt Kitty in Limerick. One particular time, I remember looking at bats fluttering in the sky at twilight-- which I consider a beautiful sight, and strangely bound up with summer and anticipation and growing up. The memory is attached to watching the TV series of the Stephen King novel Salem's Lot, a vampire-themed series. One particular scene-- of a vampire boy floating outside a window-- is rightly celebrated. Somehow it seemed creepier-- and more haunting-- in the loneliness of the countryside. But, along with the bats, it shared a Gothic beauty.
Get Them What They Really Want This Christmas. I got my library assistant job in UCD in 2001, after having been on the panel for library assistants, from which vacancies were filled as they arose, for months and months. So I was looking forward to working in UCD for months before it happened. I expected it to be a disappointment, but it was great. My first experience, close to my mid-twenties, of having a paid job! I couldn't believe anyone wanted to give me money. I still can't.
The commute was long, and I used to get up very early-- dark mornings always spark my sense of wonder. At the time, there was a bus ad for a mobile phone company that showed a very attractive blonde girl holding a power drill, looking bewildered. The caption was: "Get them what they really want this Christmas". The sitting room was the kind of tidy, comfortable sitting room of which I'd never had much personal experience. The girl seemed like a symbol of the ecstasy of ordinary life, which we so seldom see It's hard to say why, exactly.
David Copperfield, snow. I was reading David Copperfield in my teens and one evening it snowed. There was a kind of warm-hearted, somewhat ironic wordliness about David Copperfield that seemed to throw its atmosphere over the time I read it. I remember looking at light snow falling on the Georgian houses of Dublin and somehow the eighteenth century houses seemed to harmonise with this atmosphere. I think this is an atmosphere that appeals to a male teenager because, at heart, you realize your angst and posturing is silly.
Ballymun News, snow. My eldest brother is an artist. He would sometimes illustrate my father's community magazine The Ballymun News. One particularly cover showed snowflakes, in close-up, falling against the Ballymun apartments. The contrast of inky black and snowy white was excellent. I remember watching him draw it and being very impressed, really getting drawn into the atmosphere.
Parents buying globe. We never had much money. One year, towards the end of my schooling, I asked my parents for a globe of the world. Which they bought me. I felt loved.
Sign on M----'s door, party. When I was a kid, my aunt M---- had a sign on her bathroom door showing a cherubic boy peeing into a decorating pot. It was done in a mock-classical style and I thought it was amazingly classy and elegant. And I saw it at a party-- I think-- and I loved the atmosphere of parties, when celebration was the whole point.
Chagall exhibition. I went to a Marc Chagall exhibition in Geneva, with Michelle, when we were attending my niece's wedding. We watched a video about Chagall that was on a continuous loop. Michelle fell asleep and leaned against me. I sat through two screening because I liked her leaning against me so much. The whole exhibition is a happy, happy memory. Michelle seemed very absorbed in it.
Friends Thanksgiving Memories. There is an episode of Friends called 'The One with all the Thanksgiving Memories'. You've probably seen it. All the friends are describing their worst Thanksgiving memories. I remember the first time I watched it, I was feeling afflicted with the briefness and uncertainty of life. Somehow, watching it gave me a feeling of comfort. Life may be brief and uncertain-- but it's long enough that people pass the same landmarks in time over and over and over. And it's certain enough that you can be sure most people have experienced certain holidays, rites of passage, places etc. I love the past imperfect.
The Complete Purple Notebook Part Six
What is my purple notebook? A notebook of inspiring memories, of various kinds. I describe it here, and list the first few entries, explaining what they mean to me.
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean. A line from 'The Burning of the Leaves' by Laurence Binyon, a poem I read when I was just discovering the glories of poetry. It's fragrantly and quintessentially Halloweeny and Autumnal.
C-- K---y's house, Tarantula. I had a 'step-grandfather'-- my mother's step-father-- who my mother and my brother and myself visited a few times, in my childhood. Nobody in the family liked him, though I feel rather protective of his memory for that reason, and often pray for him. His house had a powerful effect on me. For some reason, it felt more real and solid and vivid than almost any other place I knew. The fact that it was a bit sombre only gave it more of an appeal. There was a spider in the bath and it reminded me of a character in a comic called Tarantula.
Crows, Croom. My step-grandfather lived in Croom. One morning, very early, I was the only person awake and I saw the white morning sky explode with crows. There seemed to be hundreds of them. I've loved crows all my life. This was one of the most formative sights of my life.
Ever since I've assumed that this wasn't really such a big deal, and that my imagination enlarges it in retrospect. But only very recently there was a story on the radio about huge amounts of starlings in strange formations flying over-- Croom. A pretty obscure part of Ireland.
Music in cinema before screening. Nothing is more tremulous or gentle or contemplative. It seems to be whispering the secret of the universe.
Stars in Limerick. Avalanche. This is a very important memory to me. My mother, my younger brother, my sister and her husband called to my aunt Kitty's farm in Limerick. For some reason, there was nobody there, and we were locked out. I remember standing on the farm with my brother and looking at the night sky. There were more stars than I had ever seen in the polluted Dublin sky and the more we looked, the more stars seemed to emerge. Hardly anything in my life has given me such a sense of the sublime, the solemn, and the awe-inspiring.
Eventually my aunt and uncle came along and we got into the house. I found myself reading a girl's comics that was in the house for some reason. The idea that there were girl's comics was a revelation to me. For some strange reason, it seemed unutterably strange and surprising-- I felt like Keats's astronomer "When some new planet swims into his ken". This particular comic involved a girl in some Tibetan-type mountain kingdom, and featured some kind of Eastern sage with a shaven head and a robe. Someone shouted and there was an avalanche.
It sounds ridiculous, but this was the moment in my life when the otherness of the female struck me most powerfully. And not only the otherness of the female, but an infinitely exciting sense of otherness in general. The difference between the sexes has always seemed to me the paradigmatical instance of otherness-- on earth, anyway.
Joh Bjelke Petersen interview, cosy middle-aged interviewer.
Fifth Avenue shop, night. There was a clothes shop in our local shopping centre called Fifth Avenue. It was actually a cheap clothes shop, as I learned much later, but in my childhood it seemed like the summit of elegance and classiness. I had a dream about being outside it at night-- I thought being out at night was also the summit of elegance and classiness.
All's Quiet on the Western Front, Christmas. In my early teens, I got gastroenteritis immediately before Christmas. I couldn't eat anything at all-- though I cheated by sucking lollies. I was reading All's Quiet on the Western Front. I remember sitting in the living room while my father was speaking to my cousin D-----, who had just become an adult. The Christmas tree was pretty in the corner. My father asked D----- what he was going to get from Santa Claus. "Bills", said Dominic. "Shouldn't you give them back to Bill then?" asked my father. I felt very happy.
I think one of the reasons I was happy was because I realised growing up didn't mean giving up Christmas.
Picture of J----, mullioned windows. J is my uncle. I once saw a photograph of him with my brother, when my brother was very young, against a backdrop of mullioned windows. He may have been wearing a tartan jumper. Mullioned windows and tartan always seemed to me symbolic of a kind of middle-aged, mildly traditional, mildly genteel atmosphere that I savour very much. Middle age has always seemed to me like a world of its own, with its own poetry.
Mary, Mother of the Son. A trilogy of apologetic books about the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in Catholicism, by the fantastic Catholic author and blogger Mark Shea. It's one of my very favourite books and I love the conversational, friendly, chatty tone. I read all three, pretty much (not for the first or last time) on one transatlantic flight. Mark Shea's writing style has influenced my own a great deal, but you shouldn't hold that against him. I love the atmosphere of the book.
The hall in Scoil Caitriona, study class, history timelines. I was sitting in the desks in the main hall of my secondary school, studying history timelines during a free class. A certain hush had come over the school. I was almost alone in the hall. And suddenly I was struck by the reality of the past. All of this had happened, a second at a time, in the same way and at the same pace that things happened today. There was no moment when the present became the past. The past flowed into the present. The fluidity and reality of time has never struck me so powerfully. We were all part of one vast story.
Hot summer's day in Limerick, Ireland's Own. Hot summer days are rare in Ireland. This was a day on my aunt's farm in Limerick. My mother was sitting outside in a chair while me and my brother sat on the grass, me reading an old-fashioned magazine called Ireland's Own. And I had such a sense of the day being an event-- a special time--- as though it literally had a spirit of its own.
Because you have better things to do with your ears. The caption to a magazine ad for headphones. It was in black and white, very high quality, showing an old-fashioned cabaret comedian, with a bandage (the only part of the ad in colour) over his mouth. The appeal of the ad to me was the idea of the private world that headphones-- and, even more, imagination-- make possible.
Westbury Hotel, Gothic club. The Westbury Hotel is a very plush hotel in Dublin city centre. My horror club-- a bunch of guys who are really into horror fiction and horror movies-- often meet in its lobby, since it is spacious and quiet. The quality, seriousness and profundity of the conversation in the Gothic club-- which doesn't always confine itself to horror-- is beyond almost anything I know elsewhere. How often I've looked at the elegant furnishings around us, as the conversation probed into the profundities of art and life, and felt so awakened to the excitement and enigma of human existence!
Black family in London café. I was with Michelle in a pleasantly down-to-earth café in London. A young black family were sitting at a table opposite. The mother was telling one of the daughters that when she got very old she would die and go to Heaven. In that moment, life seemed very simple and charmed.
Back to School computer game. An eighties console game that my brother D---- had. I never really got to play, but just looking at my brother and cousin playing filled me with awe.
Michelle smiling at me from a Merry-go-round horse. A blissful memory from a visit to King's Dominion theme park in Virginia.
Radio Four, Dandelion Books. Dandelion Books was a brilliant second-hand bookshop in Dublin, that I often haunted during my college years. It was full of every sort of book, but I especially liked the sight of the big bulky serious books on politics and economics and so forth. Radio Four, a very serious and sober British radio channel, was always on the radio.
Pub mirrors. Especially ones with lots of florid decorations. The same kind of working man's gentility and refinement that I associate with tartan and mullioned windows.
The Rage Against God, hot chocolate, Dublin Airport. The Rage Against God is Peter Hitchens's account of how he returned to faith from atheism. It's superbly written and full of the biographical, anecdotal asides I love. I was reading it before a flight from Dublin Airport, while drinking a big cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows, and thought: "Golly! This is wonderful!".
Magazine racks on level two. On level two of the library where I work there are shelves containing the current issues of various magazines. Many are highly niche magazines, accounting trade journals and the like. The sight of them fills me with delight at the 'incorrible plurality' of life.
Hello, Goodbye bath. I was taking a bath in my sister's house and listening to herself and her children downstairs. Somebody starting playing 'Hello, Goodbye' by the Beatles. Suddenly I felt absurdly light and happy.
Volleyball court white-out. Twice in school I had a strange experience while playing volleyball (a game I don't like). I suddenly forgot where I was and came to after a few moments, with the world completely reborn. It was a feeling that was at once ecstatic and completely detached. Very hard to describe.
Fish shop sign. A cartoon hanging sign of a fish in a raincoat in a fish shop of my childhood. Looking at it made me feel happy.
Mairead's candle, school leaving. At my graduation, there was a school leaving ceremony during which parents handed children a candle, symbolically granting them adulthood. I didn't attend. At the time, I scoffed at the silliness of such a ceremony. But in my heart I craved ceremony and I was very impressed. It was organised by a class-mate called Mairead.
Fourteenth birthday, dinner table, N. Just that. I realized I was an adult. N--- is my sister. She said: "You're an adult now". And I felt pleased. It was one of those moments in your life when you feel like you're looking at yourself from outside yourself-- or maybe looking into your life as though you are looking into a window in a house, glimpsed in passing from a train.
Amber. Reflection in a window. In my teens, I liked a fantasy book by Roger Zelazny called Nine Princes in Amber. It is set in a 'multiverse', the centre of which is a city called Amber-- the only place that is real. It's portrayed as being the most desirable thing in the multiverse. I took Amber as a symbol of happiness. For some reason, reading this novel, it first occurred to me that happiness might be possible, and Amber might be a symbol of that. One day, in a maths class, I saw the horizon of Dublin city mirrored in a piece of glass. That seemed to me also a symbol of ultimate happiness-- the very evanescence and ghostliness of the image made it more poignant. I felt no spiritual undertones to these emotions at the time, but I guess I was thinking of Heaven, seen 'in a glass darkly'.
City lights. I've always loved the stereotyped silhouette of city lights, as a way of evoking big city life and excitement. There is a particular barber's in Dublin called City Barbers that uses this. I love every idyll that can be evoked so simply. The way Christmas can be evoked by a bauble.
Breakfast Club, industrial estate, faded posters. Not sure how to explain this, it's so specific. Somehow, the pop culture of the eighties and some picturesquely faded and worn parts of Dublin city seemed to harmonise together in my mind. There is something wistful about both. I couldn't explain without an essay. Again, the glamorous and the everyday accentuating each other.
W--- singing The Fields of Athenry. The Fields of Athenry is a song about the Irish Famine, but at the time I didn't know it was about the Irish famine. I was a child and I heard my farmer uncle singing this in the bathroom; the tiles made it echo, the house was empty apart from us, and the farm was very quiet. The tag-line is: "It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry". It was such a haunting sound.
Killinascully screening for community. There is an Irish comedy called Killinascully, set in a fictional village and filmed in a real one. I saw a few moments of a documentary about the show, in which they showed footage of an exclusive pre-screening of the latest series in the village hall, as a 'thank you' to the villagers. I relish that kind of informality and life behind the scenes, of any enterprise whatever.
Fingers of fire are making corruption clean. A line from 'The Burning of the Leaves' by Laurence Binyon, a poem I read when I was just discovering the glories of poetry. It's fragrantly and quintessentially Halloweeny and Autumnal.
C-- K---y's house, Tarantula. I had a 'step-grandfather'-- my mother's step-father-- who my mother and my brother and myself visited a few times, in my childhood. Nobody in the family liked him, though I feel rather protective of his memory for that reason, and often pray for him. His house had a powerful effect on me. For some reason, it felt more real and solid and vivid than almost any other place I knew. The fact that it was a bit sombre only gave it more of an appeal. There was a spider in the bath and it reminded me of a character in a comic called Tarantula.
Crows, Croom. My step-grandfather lived in Croom. One morning, very early, I was the only person awake and I saw the white morning sky explode with crows. There seemed to be hundreds of them. I've loved crows all my life. This was one of the most formative sights of my life.
Ever since I've assumed that this wasn't really such a big deal, and that my imagination enlarges it in retrospect. But only very recently there was a story on the radio about huge amounts of starlings in strange formations flying over-- Croom. A pretty obscure part of Ireland.
Music in cinema before screening. Nothing is more tremulous or gentle or contemplative. It seems to be whispering the secret of the universe.
Stars in Limerick. Avalanche. This is a very important memory to me. My mother, my younger brother, my sister and her husband called to my aunt Kitty's farm in Limerick. For some reason, there was nobody there, and we were locked out. I remember standing on the farm with my brother and looking at the night sky. There were more stars than I had ever seen in the polluted Dublin sky and the more we looked, the more stars seemed to emerge. Hardly anything in my life has given me such a sense of the sublime, the solemn, and the awe-inspiring.
Eventually my aunt and uncle came along and we got into the house. I found myself reading a girl's comics that was in the house for some reason. The idea that there were girl's comics was a revelation to me. For some strange reason, it seemed unutterably strange and surprising-- I felt like Keats's astronomer "When some new planet swims into his ken". This particular comic involved a girl in some Tibetan-type mountain kingdom, and featured some kind of Eastern sage with a shaven head and a robe. Someone shouted and there was an avalanche.
It sounds ridiculous, but this was the moment in my life when the otherness of the female struck me most powerfully. And not only the otherness of the female, but an infinitely exciting sense of otherness in general. The difference between the sexes has always seemed to me the paradigmatical instance of otherness-- on earth, anyway.
Joh Bjelke Petersen interview, cosy middle-aged interviewer.
Fifth Avenue shop, night. There was a clothes shop in our local shopping centre called Fifth Avenue. It was actually a cheap clothes shop, as I learned much later, but in my childhood it seemed like the summit of elegance and classiness. I had a dream about being outside it at night-- I thought being out at night was also the summit of elegance and classiness.
All's Quiet on the Western Front, Christmas. In my early teens, I got gastroenteritis immediately before Christmas. I couldn't eat anything at all-- though I cheated by sucking lollies. I was reading All's Quiet on the Western Front. I remember sitting in the living room while my father was speaking to my cousin D-----, who had just become an adult. The Christmas tree was pretty in the corner. My father asked D----- what he was going to get from Santa Claus. "Bills", said Dominic. "Shouldn't you give them back to Bill then?" asked my father. I felt very happy.
I think one of the reasons I was happy was because I realised growing up didn't mean giving up Christmas.
Picture of J----, mullioned windows. J is my uncle. I once saw a photograph of him with my brother, when my brother was very young, against a backdrop of mullioned windows. He may have been wearing a tartan jumper. Mullioned windows and tartan always seemed to me symbolic of a kind of middle-aged, mildly traditional, mildly genteel atmosphere that I savour very much. Middle age has always seemed to me like a world of its own, with its own poetry.
Mary, Mother of the Son. A trilogy of apologetic books about the Blessed Virgin Mary and her role in Catholicism, by the fantastic Catholic author and blogger Mark Shea. It's one of my very favourite books and I love the conversational, friendly, chatty tone. I read all three, pretty much (not for the first or last time) on one transatlantic flight. Mark Shea's writing style has influenced my own a great deal, but you shouldn't hold that against him. I love the atmosphere of the book.
The hall in Scoil Caitriona, study class, history timelines. I was sitting in the desks in the main hall of my secondary school, studying history timelines during a free class. A certain hush had come over the school. I was almost alone in the hall. And suddenly I was struck by the reality of the past. All of this had happened, a second at a time, in the same way and at the same pace that things happened today. There was no moment when the present became the past. The past flowed into the present. The fluidity and reality of time has never struck me so powerfully. We were all part of one vast story.
Hot summer's day in Limerick, Ireland's Own. Hot summer days are rare in Ireland. This was a day on my aunt's farm in Limerick. My mother was sitting outside in a chair while me and my brother sat on the grass, me reading an old-fashioned magazine called Ireland's Own. And I had such a sense of the day being an event-- a special time--- as though it literally had a spirit of its own.
Because you have better things to do with your ears. The caption to a magazine ad for headphones. It was in black and white, very high quality, showing an old-fashioned cabaret comedian, with a bandage (the only part of the ad in colour) over his mouth. The appeal of the ad to me was the idea of the private world that headphones-- and, even more, imagination-- make possible.
Westbury Hotel, Gothic club. The Westbury Hotel is a very plush hotel in Dublin city centre. My horror club-- a bunch of guys who are really into horror fiction and horror movies-- often meet in its lobby, since it is spacious and quiet. The quality, seriousness and profundity of the conversation in the Gothic club-- which doesn't always confine itself to horror-- is beyond almost anything I know elsewhere. How often I've looked at the elegant furnishings around us, as the conversation probed into the profundities of art and life, and felt so awakened to the excitement and enigma of human existence!
Black family in London café. I was with Michelle in a pleasantly down-to-earth café in London. A young black family were sitting at a table opposite. The mother was telling one of the daughters that when she got very old she would die and go to Heaven. In that moment, life seemed very simple and charmed.
Back to School computer game. An eighties console game that my brother D---- had. I never really got to play, but just looking at my brother and cousin playing filled me with awe.
Michelle smiling at me from a Merry-go-round horse. A blissful memory from a visit to King's Dominion theme park in Virginia.
Radio Four, Dandelion Books. Dandelion Books was a brilliant second-hand bookshop in Dublin, that I often haunted during my college years. It was full of every sort of book, but I especially liked the sight of the big bulky serious books on politics and economics and so forth. Radio Four, a very serious and sober British radio channel, was always on the radio.
Pub mirrors. Especially ones with lots of florid decorations. The same kind of working man's gentility and refinement that I associate with tartan and mullioned windows.
The Rage Against God, hot chocolate, Dublin Airport. The Rage Against God is Peter Hitchens's account of how he returned to faith from atheism. It's superbly written and full of the biographical, anecdotal asides I love. I was reading it before a flight from Dublin Airport, while drinking a big cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows, and thought: "Golly! This is wonderful!".
Magazine racks on level two. On level two of the library where I work there are shelves containing the current issues of various magazines. Many are highly niche magazines, accounting trade journals and the like. The sight of them fills me with delight at the 'incorrible plurality' of life.
Hello, Goodbye bath. I was taking a bath in my sister's house and listening to herself and her children downstairs. Somebody starting playing 'Hello, Goodbye' by the Beatles. Suddenly I felt absurdly light and happy.
Volleyball court white-out. Twice in school I had a strange experience while playing volleyball (a game I don't like). I suddenly forgot where I was and came to after a few moments, with the world completely reborn. It was a feeling that was at once ecstatic and completely detached. Very hard to describe.
Fish shop sign. A cartoon hanging sign of a fish in a raincoat in a fish shop of my childhood. Looking at it made me feel happy.
Mairead's candle, school leaving. At my graduation, there was a school leaving ceremony during which parents handed children a candle, symbolically granting them adulthood. I didn't attend. At the time, I scoffed at the silliness of such a ceremony. But in my heart I craved ceremony and I was very impressed. It was organised by a class-mate called Mairead.
Fourteenth birthday, dinner table, N. Just that. I realized I was an adult. N--- is my sister. She said: "You're an adult now". And I felt pleased. It was one of those moments in your life when you feel like you're looking at yourself from outside yourself-- or maybe looking into your life as though you are looking into a window in a house, glimpsed in passing from a train.
Amber. Reflection in a window. In my teens, I liked a fantasy book by Roger Zelazny called Nine Princes in Amber. It is set in a 'multiverse', the centre of which is a city called Amber-- the only place that is real. It's portrayed as being the most desirable thing in the multiverse. I took Amber as a symbol of happiness. For some reason, reading this novel, it first occurred to me that happiness might be possible, and Amber might be a symbol of that. One day, in a maths class, I saw the horizon of Dublin city mirrored in a piece of glass. That seemed to me also a symbol of ultimate happiness-- the very evanescence and ghostliness of the image made it more poignant. I felt no spiritual undertones to these emotions at the time, but I guess I was thinking of Heaven, seen 'in a glass darkly'.
City lights. I've always loved the stereotyped silhouette of city lights, as a way of evoking big city life and excitement. There is a particular barber's in Dublin called City Barbers that uses this. I love every idyll that can be evoked so simply. The way Christmas can be evoked by a bauble.
Breakfast Club, industrial estate, faded posters. Not sure how to explain this, it's so specific. Somehow, the pop culture of the eighties and some picturesquely faded and worn parts of Dublin city seemed to harmonise together in my mind. There is something wistful about both. I couldn't explain without an essay. Again, the glamorous and the everyday accentuating each other.
W--- singing The Fields of Athenry. The Fields of Athenry is a song about the Irish Famine, but at the time I didn't know it was about the Irish famine. I was a child and I heard my farmer uncle singing this in the bathroom; the tiles made it echo, the house was empty apart from us, and the farm was very quiet. The tag-line is: "It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry". It was such a haunting sound.
Killinascully screening for community. There is an Irish comedy called Killinascully, set in a fictional village and filmed in a real one. I saw a few moments of a documentary about the show, in which they showed footage of an exclusive pre-screening of the latest series in the village hall, as a 'thank you' to the villagers. I relish that kind of informality and life behind the scenes, of any enterprise whatever.
The Complete Purple Notebook Part Seven
What is my purple notebook? A notebook of inspiring memories, of various kinds. I describe it here, and list the first few entries, explaining what they mean to me.
Thomas Nagel, blue flame. Nagel is a philosopher-- an atheist-- who writes about fundamental matters of metaphysics and reality. Once, when I was reading a quotation from him, I found myself picturing the blue flame on a gas oven. When someone questions the very nature of reality, everything solid and taken-for-granted seems as evanescent as that blue flame-- and it's intoxicating.
Single-panel cartoons. "Tell them I died unrepentant". When personal computers began to go mainstream, I find myself reading an issue of a general-interest magazine entirely devoted to the subject. There was a cartoon of a man on his death-bed, saying to those around him: "Tell them I never bought a PC. Tell them I died unrepentant." I love single-panel cartoons lik that. They encapsulate a whole cosy world in one frame. I also find death-beds a cosy idea. As an idea. I'd rather not occupy one any time soon. But, "to pass upon the midnight with no pain..."
Cosy, chunky jumpers. No comment needed.
Steam rising from tea. Ditto.
Data's poem in Star Trek. In an episode of Star Trek, the android Data recites a poem he has written, for the benefit of another crew member, whose opinion on it he seeks. Can you imagine that in any other grown-up TV show? Poetry is the ultimate luxury. It's completely unnecessary. And wherever anyone finds time to make it a priority, life is exalted.
Political campaigns, thesis and book dedications, film productions. Excitement, focus, cameraderie. I always want to be 'on the ground floor' of something big. Or even something small.
Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians, brandy and Coke. Brandy and coke is my tipple-- it tastes like Christmas pudding. My brother bought me a DVD about the Victorians presented by the British broadcaster Jeremy Paxman. It was absorbing, and made me thirsty for more ideas and more brandy and Coke.
Seeing out a back window through a front window. The most evocative thing in the world. Somehow the world filtered through those two frames is transformed.
Curtains make a house a home. From a previous post I wrote: "I remember a book of stories I had in my childhood, which included a few ghost stories. In one particular ghost story, there was one passage where a boy looks at a new house and feels a chill, then reflects that it will look less spooky with curtains up, since-- as his mother always says-- "curtains make a house a home". The phrase, hardly profound in itself (but new to me, back then) had a powerful effect on my mind, and still does.
If anyone were to ask me to summarize my social philosophy in one phrase (which seems, unfortunately, highly unlikely to happen), I might answer: "Curtains make a house a home". The curtains in question being ceremony, tradition, ritual, convention, chivalry, custom, politeness, taboo, community and all those other intangibles that (to adapt Burke) economists, sophisters, calculators, radicals, revolutionaries, progressives, libertarians, feminists, and one-track minds of every sort will never understand.
Russian dolls toy, early childhood, Star Trek monitor. A very early childhood memory-- dimmer than dim. I was playing with some Christmas gift, some set of toys that fit into each other like Russian dolls. And somehow my mind was on Star Trek-- the original series, which I've never liked much. I was thinking especially of the monitor on the bridge, through which the crew see the cosmos around them. A sense of slightly spooky wonder.
Corridors of my invented world. In the aforementioned book about writing fantasy, horror, and science-fiction, one (female) novelist said the ultimate thrill of writing was having the reader enter her invented world; something like "the fields, chambers, battlegrounds, and corridors of my invented world". But it was the word 'corridor' that electrified me. It has always seemed one of the most exciting words to me. Anyone can walk down a corridor at any moment. And the fact that corridors are relatively mundane somehow made the idea of an invented world that included them more solid and convincing and entrancing. An invented world that even has corridors-- how magical! I suddenly wanted to invent a world with corridors. SO badly.
The books on the shelf. Sober, magisterial. Image of old men with big glasses.
Moment in Eason's with parents, Turlough, CDs. My parents were wonderful and my upbringing was fortunate, but we rarely DID things all together. This is a happy memory of a quarter of an hour we spent browsing CD's in a shop in the city centre-- my brother, my mother, my father and me. Just browsing CD's, not going anywhere or doing anything or having any serious purpose. So rare, and so happy.
Girl putting poem with decorative border up on wall. In my teens, I found an anthology of poems chosen by teenagers, with written accounts of why they chose them and liked them. This transported me. One girl chose 'El Dorado' by Edgar Allen Poe and even said she had written it out on a nice piece of paper, put a decorated border around it, and put it up on her wall. I had never heard of teenagers putting up anything except soccer and music posters on their walls. Poetry is the ultimate luxury.
A Whole New World and the poetry in it. A school text book.
That red-haired Irish fan in snooker hall. I read a soccer magazine in which Irish soccer fans were recounting their memories of the 1990 World Cup-- Ireland's first World Cup, and a massive event in Ireland. One story was told by a thirty-something fellow with red-hair, who was (in the accompanying photograph) sitting in a snooker hall, holding a snooker queue. He struck me as being quintessentially Irish, an Irishman of a certain type-- gentle, manly without being loutish, respectful, educated, fun-loving but not a party animal. I wish I could get a copy of that magazine. Maybe it's better remembered?
Africa's space and silence. The first poem we studied in the second year of my secondary schooling was called 'First Day at School' by Prunella Power. It wasn't a good poem, but I was excited by the attention the teacher lavished on analysing its lines. It was about a girl's first day at a new school. She had obviously come from Africa, because she wonders about the other girls; "What would they know about Africa's space and silence?" Those words stuck with me-- as a symbol of poetry, and of the drama of human experience.
Coke and Snopes and the Science of Christmas. I spent most of one Christmas reading article after article on the urban legends website Snopes.com. I also drank a lot of Coke that Christmas. I'd also been given a book as a Kriskindle gift, at my first library Christmas party-- Can Reindeer Fly? The Science of Christmas. The magic of Christmas is how lots of experiences run together and form a chord.
It's also an example, to me, of how it's hard to tell whether any particular activity is worthwhile. Around then, I was also reading A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell-- a series of novels that is very celebrated. I remember almost nothing from those novels, which seemed such a laudable thing to read, while the memory of browsing articles on urban legends and swilling Coke remains a precious one.
US Airways, Two and a Half Men. I hate the show, but somehow the memory of seeing it on the screen during a flight with my favourite airline is a very happy one. Maybe because sit-com sitting rooms are always so clean, and because it looked so strangely and intriguingly out of place.
Rathfarnham Castle, RTE news, Rosary book. I went to a play staged in the rather unusual setting of Rathfarnham Castle, a castle in a suburn in Dublin. Before it started I had a drink in a local pub. The pub TV was showing RTE news-- RTE is Ireland's national broadcaster-- and the news was all quite insular. Only a few regulars were in the pub. I was reading a book about the rosary. It felt like a rural pub, and for a moment I could daydream Ireland was still Catholic Ireland-- a rather sleepy, holy, agricultural country.
Great fire of London sticker, Kitty's. It was the summer of 1995. My parents, my younger brother, and myself were staying with my aunt Kitty and uncle Willy, on their farm in Limerick. This was the only time we were all there together. My parents were in the pub with my aunt and uncle. Me and my brother were in the farm-house. My father phoned me and quoted Browning, sounding ridiculously out of place, far away, and near, all at once. We had the run of the house. On the light-switch in the hall, my brother had stuck up a sticker that came with one of our comics-- it had some cartoon picture saying that only six people had died in the Great Fire of London. That didn't seem too bad. Nothing seemed too bad. Life seemed spacious and hospitable.
RTV rental ads. A huge cardboard cut-out ad in my local TV rental shop, in the eighties, showing a dazzling woman resplendent in a dazzling gown at a dazzling Regency ball. Once again, the contrast between glamour and the everyday-- making both seem more precious.
Portugese Africa and the West, The Jungle is Neutral etc. Titles of books on the shelf, at home, that awed me with their grown-upness, when I was a kid.
Dark Side of the Moon. Christmas morning, some time in the 1980s. Everybody awake very early, before daylight. My elder brother got a telescope from Santa. It came with a chart of the moon, and I encountered for the first time this phrase, which is one of the most poetic I know.
Big pictures of album covers in Celtic Music Shop. Everything seems to mean more when it's made bigger. The centrepiece of this shop's window display is the cover of some recently-released album blown up to a huge size. It gives it an air of great event and consequence.
RTE eighties ads. One of the most recent memories in my Notebook. I was working at my desk and listening to ads from Irish TV in the 1980s through headphones. The nostalgia!
Mystery of school texts in shops. When I was about thirteen I went with my mother to buy school textbook for 'big' school. I found myself looking at the text-books for the senior years and imagining what Everests of intellect they must represent. It was an intimidating but an inspiring thought.
Cleaning Michelle's apartment, EWTN sermon on female martyr. One day I was cleaning out Michelle's apartment while she slept. I was watching a sermon on EWTN, on a laptop, about some female martyr of ancient times. I felt both useful and spiritually elevated. I rarely feel both useful and spiritually elevated.
Halloween party, Coultry. I love special times and places. When I was a kid I went to a family Halloween party. Fireworks, fruit and nuts, fancy dress. It has always seemed to be the example par excellence of a special time ever since. I've craved the world to be more like that.
Thomas Nagel, blue flame. Nagel is a philosopher-- an atheist-- who writes about fundamental matters of metaphysics and reality. Once, when I was reading a quotation from him, I found myself picturing the blue flame on a gas oven. When someone questions the very nature of reality, everything solid and taken-for-granted seems as evanescent as that blue flame-- and it's intoxicating.
Single-panel cartoons. "Tell them I died unrepentant". When personal computers began to go mainstream, I find myself reading an issue of a general-interest magazine entirely devoted to the subject. There was a cartoon of a man on his death-bed, saying to those around him: "Tell them I never bought a PC. Tell them I died unrepentant." I love single-panel cartoons lik that. They encapsulate a whole cosy world in one frame. I also find death-beds a cosy idea. As an idea. I'd rather not occupy one any time soon. But, "to pass upon the midnight with no pain..."
Cosy, chunky jumpers. No comment needed.
Steam rising from tea. Ditto.
Data's poem in Star Trek. In an episode of Star Trek, the android Data recites a poem he has written, for the benefit of another crew member, whose opinion on it he seeks. Can you imagine that in any other grown-up TV show? Poetry is the ultimate luxury. It's completely unnecessary. And wherever anyone finds time to make it a priority, life is exalted.
Political campaigns, thesis and book dedications, film productions. Excitement, focus, cameraderie. I always want to be 'on the ground floor' of something big. Or even something small.
Jeremy Paxman, The Victorians, brandy and Coke. Brandy and coke is my tipple-- it tastes like Christmas pudding. My brother bought me a DVD about the Victorians presented by the British broadcaster Jeremy Paxman. It was absorbing, and made me thirsty for more ideas and more brandy and Coke.
Seeing out a back window through a front window. The most evocative thing in the world. Somehow the world filtered through those two frames is transformed.
Curtains make a house a home. From a previous post I wrote: "I remember a book of stories I had in my childhood, which included a few ghost stories. In one particular ghost story, there was one passage where a boy looks at a new house and feels a chill, then reflects that it will look less spooky with curtains up, since-- as his mother always says-- "curtains make a house a home". The phrase, hardly profound in itself (but new to me, back then) had a powerful effect on my mind, and still does.
If anyone were to ask me to summarize my social philosophy in one phrase (which seems, unfortunately, highly unlikely to happen), I might answer: "Curtains make a house a home". The curtains in question being ceremony, tradition, ritual, convention, chivalry, custom, politeness, taboo, community and all those other intangibles that (to adapt Burke) economists, sophisters, calculators, radicals, revolutionaries, progressives, libertarians, feminists, and one-track minds of every sort will never understand.
Russian dolls toy, early childhood, Star Trek monitor. A very early childhood memory-- dimmer than dim. I was playing with some Christmas gift, some set of toys that fit into each other like Russian dolls. And somehow my mind was on Star Trek-- the original series, which I've never liked much. I was thinking especially of the monitor on the bridge, through which the crew see the cosmos around them. A sense of slightly spooky wonder.
Corridors of my invented world. In the aforementioned book about writing fantasy, horror, and science-fiction, one (female) novelist said the ultimate thrill of writing was having the reader enter her invented world; something like "the fields, chambers, battlegrounds, and corridors of my invented world". But it was the word 'corridor' that electrified me. It has always seemed one of the most exciting words to me. Anyone can walk down a corridor at any moment. And the fact that corridors are relatively mundane somehow made the idea of an invented world that included them more solid and convincing and entrancing. An invented world that even has corridors-- how magical! I suddenly wanted to invent a world with corridors. SO badly.
The books on the shelf. Sober, magisterial. Image of old men with big glasses.
Moment in Eason's with parents, Turlough, CDs. My parents were wonderful and my upbringing was fortunate, but we rarely DID things all together. This is a happy memory of a quarter of an hour we spent browsing CD's in a shop in the city centre-- my brother, my mother, my father and me. Just browsing CD's, not going anywhere or doing anything or having any serious purpose. So rare, and so happy.
Girl putting poem with decorative border up on wall. In my teens, I found an anthology of poems chosen by teenagers, with written accounts of why they chose them and liked them. This transported me. One girl chose 'El Dorado' by Edgar Allen Poe and even said she had written it out on a nice piece of paper, put a decorated border around it, and put it up on her wall. I had never heard of teenagers putting up anything except soccer and music posters on their walls. Poetry is the ultimate luxury.
A Whole New World and the poetry in it. A school text book.
That red-haired Irish fan in snooker hall. I read a soccer magazine in which Irish soccer fans were recounting their memories of the 1990 World Cup-- Ireland's first World Cup, and a massive event in Ireland. One story was told by a thirty-something fellow with red-hair, who was (in the accompanying photograph) sitting in a snooker hall, holding a snooker queue. He struck me as being quintessentially Irish, an Irishman of a certain type-- gentle, manly without being loutish, respectful, educated, fun-loving but not a party animal. I wish I could get a copy of that magazine. Maybe it's better remembered?
Africa's space and silence. The first poem we studied in the second year of my secondary schooling was called 'First Day at School' by Prunella Power. It wasn't a good poem, but I was excited by the attention the teacher lavished on analysing its lines. It was about a girl's first day at a new school. She had obviously come from Africa, because she wonders about the other girls; "What would they know about Africa's space and silence?" Those words stuck with me-- as a symbol of poetry, and of the drama of human experience.
Coke and Snopes and the Science of Christmas. I spent most of one Christmas reading article after article on the urban legends website Snopes.com. I also drank a lot of Coke that Christmas. I'd also been given a book as a Kriskindle gift, at my first library Christmas party-- Can Reindeer Fly? The Science of Christmas. The magic of Christmas is how lots of experiences run together and form a chord.
It's also an example, to me, of how it's hard to tell whether any particular activity is worthwhile. Around then, I was also reading A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell-- a series of novels that is very celebrated. I remember almost nothing from those novels, which seemed such a laudable thing to read, while the memory of browsing articles on urban legends and swilling Coke remains a precious one.
US Airways, Two and a Half Men. I hate the show, but somehow the memory of seeing it on the screen during a flight with my favourite airline is a very happy one. Maybe because sit-com sitting rooms are always so clean, and because it looked so strangely and intriguingly out of place.
Rathfarnham Castle, RTE news, Rosary book. I went to a play staged in the rather unusual setting of Rathfarnham Castle, a castle in a suburn in Dublin. Before it started I had a drink in a local pub. The pub TV was showing RTE news-- RTE is Ireland's national broadcaster-- and the news was all quite insular. Only a few regulars were in the pub. I was reading a book about the rosary. It felt like a rural pub, and for a moment I could daydream Ireland was still Catholic Ireland-- a rather sleepy, holy, agricultural country.
Great fire of London sticker, Kitty's. It was the summer of 1995. My parents, my younger brother, and myself were staying with my aunt Kitty and uncle Willy, on their farm in Limerick. This was the only time we were all there together. My parents were in the pub with my aunt and uncle. Me and my brother were in the farm-house. My father phoned me and quoted Browning, sounding ridiculously out of place, far away, and near, all at once. We had the run of the house. On the light-switch in the hall, my brother had stuck up a sticker that came with one of our comics-- it had some cartoon picture saying that only six people had died in the Great Fire of London. That didn't seem too bad. Nothing seemed too bad. Life seemed spacious and hospitable.
RTV rental ads. A huge cardboard cut-out ad in my local TV rental shop, in the eighties, showing a dazzling woman resplendent in a dazzling gown at a dazzling Regency ball. Once again, the contrast between glamour and the everyday-- making both seem more precious.
Portugese Africa and the West, The Jungle is Neutral etc. Titles of books on the shelf, at home, that awed me with their grown-upness, when I was a kid.
Dark Side of the Moon. Christmas morning, some time in the 1980s. Everybody awake very early, before daylight. My elder brother got a telescope from Santa. It came with a chart of the moon, and I encountered for the first time this phrase, which is one of the most poetic I know.
Big pictures of album covers in Celtic Music Shop. Everything seems to mean more when it's made bigger. The centrepiece of this shop's window display is the cover of some recently-released album blown up to a huge size. It gives it an air of great event and consequence.
RTE eighties ads. One of the most recent memories in my Notebook. I was working at my desk and listening to ads from Irish TV in the 1980s through headphones. The nostalgia!
Mystery of school texts in shops. When I was about thirteen I went with my mother to buy school textbook for 'big' school. I found myself looking at the text-books for the senior years and imagining what Everests of intellect they must represent. It was an intimidating but an inspiring thought.
Cleaning Michelle's apartment, EWTN sermon on female martyr. One day I was cleaning out Michelle's apartment while she slept. I was watching a sermon on EWTN, on a laptop, about some female martyr of ancient times. I felt both useful and spiritually elevated. I rarely feel both useful and spiritually elevated.
Halloween party, Coultry. I love special times and places. When I was a kid I went to a family Halloween party. Fireworks, fruit and nuts, fancy dress. It has always seemed to be the example par excellence of a special time ever since. I've craved the world to be more like that.
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