Loose Cans

It really is barter, I think. Money being the signifier, the sound-image, for things. This is what I mean. I do not--nor does anyone, I think--conceive of money as being anything other than the possibility of concrete things. It has no life of its own, for me. I have therefore set up my own currency. Hard currency. I price things only by this scale:

€3-4: Pint of Guinness.
€6: Ticket to the cinema.
€10: Pizza at any Italian restaurant
€15: Night in a hostel
€22: Ticket to the Gate
€45-60: Airplane ticket

Fortunately, thanks to Global Freeloaders, I don't have to sweat over the hostel price anymore. But really, this is how I've been breaking things down, and it makes so much more sense than money.

Quiet. I went to bed at 5am.

It has been SUCH a delight explaining my haircut to every single one of my friends. Their eyes go big and they can't find the words, and before they've even started I just cut them off, saying It involves wine, women, and scissors, and no, I didn't pay for it. Later I am going to go buy a hat with Sadie.

Spent four solid hours playing Ultimate yesterday. First practice in the gym (three new recruits showed up; very encouraging), then we trooped over to Herbert Park for some pickup. After practice, though, we had the AGM (every club has an Annual General Meeting right around now), where we discussed next year and named new positions and so forth. We still don't have a name we're all happy with: I can't stand Fite-Wassilaks anymore, Force Kings, while witty, is a bit vulgar, and the same goes for the name Sparky's been pushing, Rim Job 7. She had another one, though: Stallin'. I agree with it only if the second L is out: Stalin. I think Stalin might be a good name, even if it has all the wrong connotations. Any suggestions would be happily accepted. Bombard away; it's all about volume.

We also picked posts and so forth. Sparky ascended by unanimous vote to Captain, and I was made Secretary (that is, Captain-in-waiting). More or less the functional one. So when she leaves after next year I more or less ascend to captainship, unless Cian, who is one of the beginners playing Worlds this summer--Irish fuckers--comes back leaps and bounds better than me, which I would rather not see happen. I think I've previously mentioned the fact that I can't play for Ireland until I've lived here three years. So I need to find somewhere to play over the summer.

Because these are the things we do. These generic stupid college things. It's appreciating the generic. So funny story. Last night my head was set upon by a battalion armed with weedwhackers.

Of course by weedwhackers, I mean many (five) slightly wine-touched women with scissors. Yes. The story involves five women, two pairs of scissors, a wee bit of spirits, and a shocking haircut.

Yes. I have to make this short because, of course, I have to go play frisbee with the same people that did this to me. So last night is a party at Sparky's flat in Christchurch, nice place. It's a dessert party, which means that there is a hell of a lot of dessert and slightly less wine and beer. It's mostly frisbee people in attendance, so we all know each other. And suddenly, Brona, who is otherwise a very intelligent girl, gets it into her head that she is going to cut my hair. And I say No, you aren't, either. And she says Yes I am. And I said Not without much, much more beer. And she says Drink up. But I don't. See, this is the funny thing: this story doesn't really involve as much alcohol as it should. I just change my mind. I figured yes, these are the things we do, the things we regret doing tomorrow, but regret not doing in twenty years. And I said Okay. Go to town.

And go they did. I have few complaints; I had five gorgeous ladies buzzing around me with their fingers in my hair for a good half-hour. Hair kept getting in my beer, though, which was a problem. The main complaint I do have is about the left side, where Sara Jane really was using a weedwhacker. See, there were two pairs of scissors going, Brona on the right, SJ on the left. Between them Sparky and another I couldn't see were getting in on the action. Apparently this is a tradition at this party, but this was the first time it had been made into a full-on spectator sport; everyone was watching. Brona was brutal but even; Sara Jane I will never trust again. It's shorn and angular. I have a picture. But only one. There's no vestige of widow's peak anymore, nor is there any length at all. No resemblance whatsoever. I have to touch it up and buy some gel, but strangely enough the general consensus is that it looks pretty good. Go figure. There's no accounting for taste. I meanwhile am for the first time since I was ten experiencing the queer sensation of the wind on my scalp.

Damn, I'm hungry. I should eat. But I'm going over to Sparky's in an hour, and she's throwing her annual Dessert Party, which I take to mean a lot of food. So why spend money?

Speaking of money, I've just returned from the Meteor place, and have finally switched my phone service. I have been after doing this for weeks now, and at last have managed to just get it done. I got off the infuriatingly expensive vodafone (they're horrendous, I can't imagine why anyone uses it) to the pleasantly ghetto meteor. Interestingly they don't use capital letters. The upside of this is that I get €20 free call credit, which has given birth to one of my devious schemes--I bear them every so often--you know, the kind that sound brilliant in theory and never work the way they're supposed to?(videlicet, Freshdirect scam for prom party). If I can keep close tabs on my phone credit--it's easy--I can just keep switching carriers, always getting free credit, using it up, and switching again. It'd be a hassle but it'd sure cut down on my phone bill.

On the other hand the downside is that they have erased all the fucking numbers on my phone, with the bizarre exception of one: Ellen Gilmore, the girl who, you may remember, beat me senseless in October. Mysterious ways, man, mysterious ways.

Also don't worry, I have all my stateside numbers on my stateside phone.

Anyway, this weekend. I figure you deserve some news. It was pleasant enough, though by the last day we were all more than ready, I think, to get shut of each other. It makes for close quarters, three nights and four days in the country, when you only leave the grounds a few times. I have developed a taste for Calvados, but Armagnac I find tepid. We watched a lot of movies to piss away the time when there was NOTHING TO DO: Shakespeare in Love (definitely a movie for English majors); The Negotiator (didn't suck; Kevin Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson); The Blues Brothers (on TV, brilliant as ever); most of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There were others--the aforementioned were all in one day--but they've completely slipped my memory. Oversaturation. Also, the washing machine gave up and died, necessitating a prolonged and futile rescussitation effort, followed by a lot of mopping up. I had to do my laundry at Auntie Eileen's house down the road. She is a lovely person who runs a plant nursery and garden store that, Papa, would have made you plotz. Then the last night, the water just shut off. God knows why. Just stopped everywhere but the kitchen. Didn't go on the next day either. This did not improve matters.

I don't mean to piss on the party; it was good craic, certainly, and I'm glad I went. But on the other hand it's not easy living in such close quarters with people you don't know that well, and who know each other extremely well. I was worried about this before I left, but the problems didn't arise until the last day, when all I wanted was a little privacy and seriousness. There is only so long I can go without seriousness.

There was one truly lovely night, though--when the lights went out. I thought Cristina and John had thrown the fuse just for kicks, but she said No, no, this happens all the time. We have candles. We had been spending all of our time in the sitting room anyhow, with the fire going more or less constantly, and so we just lit half a dozen candles. John took out his guitar--he's a terrific guitarist, and has a very endearing affinity for the blues--Margaret took out her flute, and we proceeded pretty much to have a singalong. But none of your carcinogenic teenage Bye Bye Miss American Guy and I Hope You Had the Time of your Life, though; I should surely have run screaming. I'm talking everything from blues milestones like Sweet Home Chicago and Mojo Hand to contemporary Irish standards like Spancil Hill. So we sat, sang, sipped in candlelight. It was, in a word, wonderful. But it is not to be romanticized or poeticized: this is the way to smother a thing. No candlelight casting fluttering shadows on faces, no hushed murmuring in the low light. No spontaneous harmony of hearts, no happy accident. No such treacle; the blackout wasn't an accident. I had been right. They had thrown the fuse on purpose--though intelligently left the fridge and freezer on--and the entire thing had been engineered. Three hours of peace and music brought on by the illusion of accident, of serendipity. Which I find made it better. I can imagine that most people, on finding out such a moment was artificial, would consider it cheapened. Commodified. I say Commodify away. Commodify everything. That way everyone can have some. The fact that that kind of evening, a moment as one finds in fiction, and always looks for in reality, COULD be so engineered, molded as clay on the wheel, makes it all so much more real, so much less ephemeral. Things do not need to be ephemeral to be inspiring. Indeed, better that they be permanent or duplicable; that way they can continue inspiring. This is a case of the ends making the means beside the point. That this was real means that I do not have to wait for lightning to strike, our power to blow out, and in the morning deal with all the food which has spoiled in the refrigerator, beneath which a puddle of lukewarm water is collecting. We can make precisely the same moment--yes, precisely!--but keep it streamlined, efficient and without consequences if I just throw the switch. And this will be more real for our having created it. Because I've said it before. It's a bind we're in: we demand art from our reality and reality from our art, and this is why we rarely fail to be disappointed with either. By all means, of course, let us be disappointed. There is nothing wrong with a little disappointment. Let each infect the other as it pleases. Infection we can understand. Infection we relate to, identify with. We are infected by everything. But at the same time let us not have our art be our hobgoblin, luring and bedeviling. Keep the binary in mind.

Keep it real.