Loose Cans

For nearly a fortnight now, Sadie has spent every available moment hunched over the kitchen table, laboriously translating Herodotus and Hecuba. When I hadn't been watching movies (Lawrence of Arabia yesterday), I had made small efforts to read Sons and Lovers, which I found atrocious (his characters are just the nastiest, most horrid people, but the worst part is, he seems to genuinely sympathize with them, as though they were his little minions), and then Persuasion, where they won't shut up about the mortgages. Couldn't keep either one down. So last night I switched gears, decided to save Realism (for which, I remind you, I've read nothing) for the last-minute panic rush, and polish off The Sound and the Fury, as I'd also read nothing for the Faulkner class Michaelmas term. By polish off I mean pick up at page 113, where I left it in October, and read straight through till the end. Solidarity, you know? I had resented Faulkner when I tried to read S&F six months ago. I found him considerably more difficult than Joyce, on the grounds that, with Joyce, so long as you read and remember every single word, it would all make sense, whereas with Faulkner, nothing so simple will suffice. No, to get Faulkner, you have to read him at least twice. Chutzpahdic? A little. S&F frustrated me beyond reason last time, to the point where I nearly winged the book across the room. But this time, little by little, as the narrative unrolled, laid itself bare, I started to see the sorcery. No epiphanies, no "sudden spiritual manifestations," no flashes of insight necessarily, but the rare frisson that thrills the spine when the words come alive on the page, giving off brief crackles of light. I understood it. I can't say what I understood yet, but I felt it. Knew it. Nearly enjoyed it. I'll have to read it again.

At 9pm, I started at page 113. At 2am, despite the fortification of steak and potatoes, plus two cups of tea and one of instant coffee (which does me in completely--sends me right to sleep, can't understand it), I decided to go to bed, 60 pages from the end yet. Figured those 60 were just too thick to bull through tonight. But I lay in bed, still reading, and half an hour later, it was over. Over 200 pages of Faulkner in a night. Not skimmed, no. Just inhaled. I don't think a little smugness is unwarranted. Shit, if I can do that, line them pins up, baby, I'll knock 'em all down. Imagine if I coud read a book a day for the next week--no, that's not doable. Let's just see how many I can get through. Go at it hammer and tongs. For like a week. I'm going to reread S&F, but then next up is The Crying of Lot 49 (I also never really finished anything for PoMo). Then maybe I'll be primed for Persuasion. I'm going into Realism kicking and screaming though, believe that. Hate that course. I'm sure I've said it to most of you, but for the few among you what haven't heard it, on matters of Jane Austen, I defer to St. Mark Twain, who put it precisely: "Whenever I take up the works of Jane Austen, I feel like a bartender entering the kingdom of heaven. I know what his thoughts would be. He would not find the place to his liking, and probably say so." Word, Sammy, word.

Every so often, Dublin redeems itself. Granted, it's rare, and when it happens, it's never because it's done something characteristic--what is characteristic of Dublin is a de facto negative--it's because it's managed to shrink the distance between here and home. It reaches across the ocean and brings back something yearned for, something whose absence is acutely felt. Kid Koala, for instance, was an act of redemption. Yesterday, though, was definitely its faite accompli.

The day did not start well. Got out of bed--most unwillingly--because I had to make it into college before 12:30, when the English office closes. I needed to get the official results of my essays to send to colleges; unfortunately, when I showed up, they weren't ready. Checked the mail before I left. Only thing in my mailbox was a bill from eircom for €90. The billing period in question began the day we discontinued service. That means they are charging us for absolutely nothing, and that the Irish rip-off economy has rendered satire obsolete again (the national motto is, of course, "Cead Mile Failte," which, as we all know, is Irish for "bend over"). In a text to me, Sadie put it best: "Fucking eircom mafia. I'm glad that in Ireland it is perfectly acceptable to bill a person for thin fucking air. What the fuck is going on? Fuck." This is what I mean by characteristic of Dublin. We're not paying it, in any case. Sooner blow up the building.

Walking in had been no picnic, either, only made matters worse. It was one of those truly gray days, nondescript, when there is not even the possibility of something exciting happening to you. As though there never had been, nor will there ever be, anything new, serendipitous or surprising. This place is undead and undying, white eyes bulged as though strangled, "the grey sunken cunt of the world." You hear death in the wind here. What is deathless is deathly. It is defined by death, the thing from which it differs, the only thing it cannot know, hence consumed with it, obsessed with it. This stultified, stunted, sunken city.

Came down to this computer bunker, antiseptic and cold white, even less an incubator of fantasy. Found no enthusiasm, no whim. Nothing to say. Wandered home. The sun had come out, but altogether too late. And here, when it won't last, we feel it, and by its brevity, sunlight can end up even more demoralizing than the rain. Sadie and I sat in the living room, she getting ready to buckle down and translate the dreaded Herodotus (which is how she spends her days lately, when Duncan isn't very charitably giving her grinds; she has an unfathomable amount to translate and not much time to do it), and I, aimless, pacing the floors. We lost a light bulb in the living room last week, the one above the couches, but haven't bothered to replace it; we never liked that light anyway, and the light through the window usually does the job. Plus if we need that half of the room lit, there's a lamp in the corner. Left it off, however, so the room is dark, half-lit. The sun had long since disappeared. Started to rain again, hard skinny drops. The sky was a stormier gray now, more agitated than before, moving and churning. Swollen, tensed, almost--ready to break open. Reheated for the fifth or sixth time the pulled pork I slow-cooked a few days ago, warmed a tortilla, tossed on some tired, brittle rice and went over to sit in the window and watch the rain. Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James are whispering the toothless blues. Sadie was horizontal on the couch in panic mode, which is how she usually deals with Greek. I set my plate down on the coffee table and went to fill a pint glass with orange juice. As I walked out of the kitchen there was a sudden flash of light. Sadie sat bolt upright. I stood still, holding my glass. And then we heard it. A very definite BOOM.

And all at once the sky loosed its load. Rain like rope, the skinny wet pellets becoming fat warm whomp bombs, plashing spectacularly on the leaves of the trees in the courtyard. Like children, we rushed to the window, bewildered, dumbstruck, full of a thrill we hadn't felt since we first saw snow all those months ago. We have never had a thunderstorm here. We may hear thunder in the offing, but it never brings serious rain. The rain, of course, is constant and therefore bored, unwilling to make an extra effort. This was like Christmas--no, Christmas had nothing on this. You know Christmas is coming. A Dublin thunderstorm was the most impossible thing in the world. This was like some kind of pathetic fallacy, the deafening BABOOM when Lear cries, "O, Fool, I shall go mad!"

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage, blow!
...Strike flat the thick rotundity of the world!
...Take physic, pomp;
Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,
That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,
And show the heavens more just.

Except, of course, this was, like, totally nothing like Lear. Just some of my favorite lines in Shakespeare. No, my first thought was, "How did they know?" How did they know! All the way home, I'd been wondering what, if anything could redeem this day. What novelty could smack the day into brilliance. What genius could astonish my condition. Couldn't think anything. But Dublin, for once, came through. And it was genius, the storm: to take the wearying theme, the rain, always in a minor key, and just...modulate it. Make it major. At heart, it wasn't something new and foreign. It was just a variation on a theme.

There was no hesitation. I left my pork burrito and orange juice on the coffee table and Sadie left the music on. I went for my sweatshirt and she for her raincoat, the sissy. She grabbed the umbrella which she wasn't going to use and we sprinted out the door, fearful it should stop before we even made it out of the building. We needn't have worried; this was no ordinary rainsquall. For New York, it might have been, but it takes some kind of magic to haul such sheets of water and lightning onto Ireland. I believe this absolutely, that there was magic involved here. We made it onto the street and were relieved to find it still whaling down on us. We started walking northwest, the one direction we'd never traveled (there's never been a practical reason to go that way). The streets were black and slick, yet streaked ecstatically with the bright reflections from the headlamps of passing cars. Dublin itself was ecstatic, literally, out of itself, "interinanimating" at last with the place I belong, the place where I remember romping though tremendous summer thunderstorms with friends, wearing only a t-shirt and shorts, soaked to the bone. People--peasants!--huddled in newsagents and post offices, sheltering themselves ridiculously from the storm. Sadie kept her hood up; I wasn't about to. It was gorgeous, warm and wet. We walked towards Smithfield and watched our pants change color, blue to black, and my hair matte down. Every puddle we leaped over felt like the Atlantic, flying home. Pilots call it puddle-jumping.

A second thunderclap, further off, perhaps, but no matter. We were taking this for all it was worth, riders on the storm. We walked down Church street, almost passing the first apartment I looked at in September, in the Hardwicke. The rain swept in unabashedly, rejoicing. Something must have inspired it, galvanized it--magic.

As we crossed the Liffey a third and final rumble of thunder rolled up the river, receding, making its way west to drench the rest of Ireland. The rain slackened to a faint fall, a quiet shower. Realized we were standing across the street from the Brazen Head, Ireland's oldest pub (est. 1198; retains few if any of the original features). A pint of Guinness has rarely been so well-deserved--that is, we felt that Ireland had earned our custom, and not the other way round.

DeLillo says, "You know more clearly who you are on a strong bright day after a storm." True, yes, but the strong bright day bit is a necessary part of the exercise. The day remained drizzly and tin-cup gray. It's nicer today--at least it was when I left the house this morning; after an hour or so in a computer room, who knows what it's like out there. But I'm not asking too much--well, overall I'm asking too much, which is that Ireland be less like Ireland and more like New York. What I'm saying is, I may hate the big picture, but it only takes little things to soften that hatred. It's like waiting tables or bartending. I've said it before. You hate the customer automatically because you expect the worst, but the smallest shred of gratification change your mind. Incidentally, the question I get asked the most at work, next to "Where you from?" is definitely, "So how do you like Dublin?"

About as much as I like that question. Not that I fault anyone for asking it. It's just that every response has to be calculated, calibrated to the asker. It's a loaded one when you're working in a hotel. You have to gather whether the person is a resident of the hotel or not, a resident of Dublin or not, a native of Dublin or not, and then a business traveler or tourist, and finally, how said person seems to like Dublin. All of this, of course, within moment of meeting them, because it's invariably the second or third question asked (sometimes, it's preceded by a lifted eyebrow and either "so what are you doing here, then?" or "what in God's name are you doing here?"--which is helpful, since asking it that way pretty much answers all of my questions, too). Sometimes I ask if they want the brutal truth or the mitigated truth (which is, in essence, "it's a bit small"). Sometimes, when I'm really not interested, I neutralize the question with another, more rhetorical one: "I'm still here, aren't I?" That ends that line of conversation. Obvious tourists, naturally, I flat-out lie to. "It's not too bad, you know? Not bad at all" (meanwhile I am dying inside). When I really don't know what to do, I get cagey and ask them how they like it. That only works with the people who really prefer to talk about themselves (we can, of course, recognize one another). Used just about all of these last night, too. Worked in Cafe Bar, 5pm-1am. Needed the hours. Will probably spend more time in Cafe Bar. It's okay, weeknights. Not busy, just hang out. I still hate and fear the cappuccino machine. Also you know of my dislike for service bar work, which I find tedious and impersonal. But the waiters are good company, and you get a fair number of people sitting at the bar, some of whom are entertaining. You don't have to put all the bottles away at the end of the night, cleanup is quicker, and you get to go home at a reasonable hour. So I'll live.

Lastly, I've made a compromise with Ireland, one that'll get me through this next month (as it's gotten me through a year and a half): Ireland continues to fuck me over, and I continue to bitch about it. That way, we're both doing what we do best.