Chewing gum for the eyes

Like a piece of chewing gum on your clothing, dreams stick in my head when I awaken. I am used to being fuly awake as soon as I become concious in the morning, and often remember my dreams despite the sudden awakening. Like a habit. But lately when I waken, my body feels so heavy and disorientated. And all I know is that I have to get out of bed now or I will be in trouble. Like when we were kids and were late for school. I don't want to obligated to anyone, I don't want to live a life where tardiness equals less worth. And I will be even less inclined to get up if I carry on thinking like this.

So instead I roll out of bed and drag my bruised body over and out the door. It must be 16 degrees at 7am yet I stand shivering before the mirror, brushing my teeth and wondering if it's true that toothpaste can give you an appetite. But I still can't eat in the morning because I get sick. Anyway, I make up for it during the rest of the day as I swallow everything in sight. I trust my body (sometimes).

The pattern to my work is pleasingly zig-zag. 3 blocks down, three across. Four, if you include Plaza Catalunya which I could cross, but I only do when it's wet because then I can skate it. There are all kinds of interesting skips along the way, which reminds me that I will go skip browsing some day soon after work. I need some space fillers for my rooms, and I would love to have stuff to make and paint.

Magic dusk falls early here. I will miss the sunlight until 11pm that we have in Ireland, although the light is not everything I suppose, and it is fantastic to be able to walk around in the heat here and enjoy it. On Sunday I went to the beach but ended up in the park (I know I already mentioned this), but it was so peaceful. It felt like I was inside and everyone else outside, and I was shielded against them all be virtue of being so completely alone. I don't think I will ever love the idea of being alone, but it is certainly alluring. Watching foliage that no-one else watches sprout and grow. Living so completely in the moment. My ex-boyfriend used to reproache me for my ability to relax. He couldn't. He envied how I could relax completely for five minutes or ten, and then carry on again. When I did theatre, it was my party piece that I could sit doing nothing like nobody else. They would bring in others to watch me do nothing traquilly and without effort.

The obvious part is that I am sensitive and nervous and shy and out-spoken and part-outgoing and part-introvert and it is the middle of all these traits that make me able to relax. And unable to make a decision that is real and meaningful. That's why I always wonder when I read in the papers about politicians talking of "real and meaningful dialogue to further peace in the six counties and the Republic of Ireland". What do they mean? Cos all I see is poor people with their generations of ancestors behind them without time to reflect on pretty words and betrayals, because they are too busy trying to make bread out of hope.

Laneways and Rabbits

When we were small, we lived at the end of a laneway. There were two small single storey houses, and ours was the one with the red door. When my dad painted the door, he had to wash my sister from head to toe in white spirits because she jumped into the bucket of paint when he had his back turned a second. And I spoiled another bucket of paint by balancing three milk bottles on my head and dropping them as I went through the door on my return from the shops.

Easter morning meant surreptitious glances through the yellow curtains in our bedroom, trying to catch the Easter Bunny out. We knew that he was out there, but he was awful crafty. We would obediently wait in the living room, using whatever tricks we could for going into the bedroom for a quick peek, but we never caught him. All we saw was my parents coming back from the garden to tell us he was ready. Of course, I was far too old to believe in the Tooth Fairy in those days.

Sometimes, if the weather was nice, we would take the red plastic bath tub out doors and bathe in it. Our neighbours' uncle Christy would come along and present us with a Wispa egg, which was my favourite. Sometimes we would get the Walnut Whip instead, which my mother loved. Poor Christy didn't know where to look when we stood up in the bathtub clapping our hands excitedly and greeting him. Mrs Murphy always beamed at all six of us as we clambered around the tub naked to the sunshine, but once I caught her giving out to Bridget for not dressing her Sindy doll because it was "dirty, filthy dirty and a sin!" I found out it was also a sin to whistle in the house at Easter. Mrs Murphy said God didn't like whistling all the time cos he was so busy and he didn't have time to be always listening to people like me. I thought I'd better give him a bit of a break and went off to rollerskate around the laneway instead.

A few years we got to go to Galway for Easter to stay with our favourite cousins. They lived on the edge of the Burren, a limestone outcrop which harbours a mysterious mixture of antarctic flowers, bonsai trees, and magic wells. You can go out on the hills at night and find all you need for a good camp if you go along these well trails, but remember that you have to leave something behind for the next people, like a fresh lighter or a few quid.

The Burren is also home to many lost Easter eggs hidden by us over the years and never reclaimed. We used to go for walks with the baskets we'd woven from paper with my aunt, careful not to spill the little eggs my dad brought back from Holland or Italy. Somehow the weather would always be fine so we'd be able to play games of Postbox and Circus and go out and pick sloeberries for my Grandfather's winemaking. We always returned with a good big basket-full, despite having faces covered in sticky purple juice and mouths wrinkled from the sourness of the unripe berries. My mother was always presented with a bottle of the sloewine at the end, and she warned me that if ever I got a bottle off him when I was older to throw it out cos he made it with garlic.

Circus was possibly our favorite game. We would transform the garden and surrounding fields into a circus park and go off in gangs to make perfoformances and shows. The old abandoned rockingchair became "the twister", the shed became a haunted house. We used to put a ladder up to the roof and slide down on old fruit crates before landing heavily in the flower beds. There was a dress-up box in the loft and we would take all the stage make-up my aunt had and make ourselves up. I think our crowning glory was the halloween show we did on the open road, where we all dressed up as Leprechauns and played tin whistle and danced around with our convincing beards and silicon noses, scaring half the neighborhood cars off the road and creating a popular legend for the village.

My mam phoned me to wish me a happy Easter. I like the way that although we are not Christian, all holidays are embraced as days to enjoy and do something nice. I think that everyone should have the ability to enjoy them without feeling guilty for not appreciating Jesus enough or whatever. So I took myself off to the park today for a good read and a bit of sun and had a spot of lunch while watching the robins and green cockatoos fly around. And now I am off to have some Bunny soup.

I don't expect any more or less

The sunlight is locked out of the hallway full of stairs, and the iron railings curl like tenrils of poison ivy up the wall. The door slams shut behind me with a dull thud that, though it is quiet, it has a hard finality to it. The only way is up, either by marble staircase or death-defying elevator. I choose to scrape my flipflops up to the fourth floor, and drag myself huffing and puffing into the office of the job agency.

After several minutes of patiently waiting as agents schlumf by looking busy, I finally grab one by the arm as she passes. "Do you speak english?" I ask, a little desperately. She stares at me and tugs her arm away. "Dees way pleez" she says coldly, and leads me to a chair two feet away. I sit back against the wall until finally a blonde lady comes over to me. "Yes?" she inquires helpfully. "Er, I'm looking for a job, that is to say, I brought a CD...CV I mean, I mean I speak several languages and well I thought, hey are you working here?" The lady manages a terrifically patronising smile and takes the CV, telling me sweetly that they will call, in the meantime since she is so VERY busy, would I mind...?

Before I know it I am outside the door heading down the stairs. My friend has only just made it to the top(she was having a fag outside). "Finished already? How'd it go?" I shake my head and wave vaguely at the steps stretching out in front of us. As I begin to detail my experience I hear a definite "de-dum de-dum DE-DUM DE-DUM" behind me. I turn around and there is a blonde man in a pink shirt hurtling round the corner of the stairwell. He barely registers us in time to stop from bowling us over like a couple of skittles. "Oh!" he exclaims, clearly disconcerted. "I thought you are gone...I am..." He hesitated, trying to put the words in order. Brushing his hair back from his forehead nervously, he announced "You are Irish! I mean you speak English but you are from Ireland". I stare, more out of shock at the near memory he awakens than out of amazement at someone finally getting (part of) my nationality right. "I want you to teach me English," he tells me, gripping my arm, as though it's a matter of life and death. "I will pay you. And teach you Spanish if you like." I nod like the idiot that I am. "You will give me your telephone number," he states. "I mean, you will?" He smiles anxiously and I recount my number, still staring like a white cat. He pats me happily on the arm, smiles, hops back and touches my back lightly. "Well!" he says, and then takes off up the stairs again.

I turn around and my friend is in knots laughing. She knows what I am like. "You should really meet him," she teases. "You never know!"

Of course, I defended my virtue and my integrity and denied any feelings, besides, wasn't Dani coming over? I dutifully met my Uruguayan with the green eyes a handful of times, and truly tried to do a proper language exchange. But one day he commented on the colour of my eyes, and all the barriers came down. I shut up. I closed down. I withdrew inside and locked him out. He probably wondered for a little bit where I had gone, before going off and finding a new interest.

But then a year passed, and despite having diligently deleted his email address, somehow I found myself writing an email to an address I had procured from sheer determination. Hi. Sorry I disappeared. I'd a lot going on, however that's no excuse. If you can forgive me, I'd like to be friends again.

Then yesterday I dreamed a dream where I introduced the man to my family. I don't remember what they thought. Many things have me worried. He is conservative, he is strongly catholic, he is classic Uruguayan, he is handsome, he is a business man, I remind him of his MOTHER!!!(apparently this is a good thing!), he is machisto, I am lonely...but what the hell...I also need fun, I need to practise my spanish, I'd like some male attention, and then...

Then he phoned me when I awoke from my dream...what a lovely pattern of events! What can I do...?

Picture perfect!

There is a painting in my room that everyone wants to buy. It is a grey green mountainscape in early morning with ghostly white trees reaching their skeletal hands upwards, straining like eager beggars to the morning's stingy sunlight. I think it is in winter. There is the slightest reflection of the dim yellow of the sun in the water and that is it. I don't want anyone to buy the painting because then I will lose it. But I know how hard it is for artists to survive on painting alone, and part of me would like it to sell so that the artist can keep on creating.

I also wonder if I would buy the painting, had I the money. My dad is an artist and it would feel like a betrayal. Only because he needs money and whereas I would just take a picture from him without paying, I would have to buy from someone else. I would like my first purchase to be one of his, as I love his work. Not just because I am biased, I assure you. He has had so many phases in his work, ranging from purple orange portraits of Caribbean models to stippled landscapes, political art to abstract. My favourite is his work on censorship and his montages...the censorship pieces are brightly coloured ink and mixed media behind non-reflective glass, every word of the news print relevant to the piece in question, and suited somehow (accidentally) to any location. The montages are bigger, brighter, more personal, wood and plastic acrylic paints creating a vortex of shape and a riot of colour. I miss the painting he gave me that I have back in Ireland - the one titled "Van Gogh's room". The actual painting of Van Gogh it refers to is little like it except in a vague manner, but oddly, that Van Gogh painting is of great significance to me. It reminds me of the first card I received from my ex and the first picture we had in our first flat. It is odd that it has become the postcard of my life.

Summer is blooming in Barcelona. The sun flirts with the tourists, the trees are in full flutter, pigeons bombard the streets, the Irish are on the beach already (the locals will be a bit longer). It seems like everyone is in love despite the fact that anyone who knows me has recently broken up with someone. Today I had my first day completely on my own in the flat. I made Mexican lime soup and a goat's cheese salad. I spoke with no-one. I like it like that. Sometimes, all I need is a little space. I figure if I sort out the music side of things, the rest will come. I would like to rephrase an old Irish saying:

“Mol an ceol agus tiocfaidh se"Praise the music and the rest will follow/he will come

The original line is "Mol an oige agus tiocfaidh si", for those who wish to know: praise youth and it will blossom.

The Hole

I went to London on a whim. I basically sat here and decided I wanted to go somewhere really soon, and London was it. I thought I was mad, because I have a craving for green and for countryside and the noise and dirt of Barcelona is getting to me. I knew I had been irritable and scratchy lately and withdrawing from people. Suffering from fatigue, on edge, nervous, and on top of it all unhappy but not sure why. I had already decided that I would stay in Barcelona til about October, and then if nothing comes of nothing then I will move.

I stayed in London with my friend Gary Dunne and his girlfriend Lynnea. They were so relaxed and their flat was white and warm, like a healing capsule. I got up early every day and sat by the window reading and watching the poor mangey foxes and squirrels outside. Even though it is now 20 degrees, and yesterday was even warmer, my flat feels cold because the Catalans don´t do heating. Funnily enough it was cool in London but bright and sunny like a truly crispy spring fresh that you only seem to get in Ireland and England and although cold, it felt somehow less biting, less gnawing, than the cold here.

Gary lent me a book called "Soil and Soul" by Alastair McIntosh.It was just what I needed, and I think he knew. It is a book about a kind of eco-passivist in the Hebrides who undertakes a struggle with the local people of one of the islands to stop a superquarry (i.e. Crater) being made out of an island, and another island to free themselves of their laird (landlord). It is a strangely spiritual book which has traces of prosaic passages about his childhood, about singing by the sea, about his study in Edinburgh and how they kicked him out after 8 years as a professor because of his success with the islands even though he was doing ecology. But most of all there is an undercurrent of the old celtic social ways and without seemingly meaning to he explains how old communities work and why they worked without problems and how corporations´mindsets and plantations have destroyed that and why it should be reawakened. He has none of the defeatist attitude of "the old way is dead", rather he stresses how the celts have always worked new stuff into their way and improved it, but how everyone old and young had a role to play, and they never felt left out.

It made me realise a few things. First of all "The Hole", as I think of it, that we always feel needs to be filled, is a hole due to life these days not being the way I want it. It is partly a feeling of no control and partly a feeling that I don´t really understand why things have to be so difficult and complicated and unfair. This is a heritage and an upbringing I have inherited and you know what? I love having these morals. People have told me for so long that I can´t do this or that, that it is not practical to live in a mutually benifiting society, that each person has to fight the other to get on, that ambition is necessary (something that my best friend's stupid ex told me once and I couldn´t comprehend), that eating your neighbor beating your neighbor is normal, that violence is inevitable, that irresponsibility is wrong, that nature is dead. Sorry, I don´t mean to preach, but who the fuck decided that? I discovered that I CAN live the way I want, maybe not right now in Barcelona except for in my own head, but that you don´t need to own, that I can sing in the sea,that buying things serves to make me just more insecure, that violence and impatience comes from frustration. I feel I know who I am, where I came from, and that actually my needs are much more simple that ever and I feel relieved. I was trying to take other people´s advice when all along I should have heeded my own.

I went to a concert in the Venezuelan embassy while I was in London, of Ricardo Iznaola and Giovanni Guzzo. Iznaola is a classical guitarist born in Cuba, but brought up in Venezuela. Guzzo is a violin player who dances when he plays and with whom I fell in love immediately. At the wine reception afterwards Gary and I sat taking the piss out of the upper crust of London, while I tried to avoid the Venezuelan Violin player as he went round to everyone one by one. We just about managed. I went home feeling a bit lost and super-aware that despite anything anyone says about "things work this or that way" that I am still in love with my ex and that Mr Guzzo is somewhat like him. Then it occurred to me that perhaps I have these feelings still for my ex because I have a very clear idea of what I like. That maybe I am attracted to people like him only because we were quite well suited, not because I can't get over him. This made me feel a lot better.

Eventually the time came to leave the bright and sunny place that London provided for my stay. I went and visited my last museums and bought my last lunch which I shared with a friend of mine who is Austrian and who happened to be in London that day. Then I went and sat in a traffic jam to go to Luton airport, and of course missed my plane. But it was great. I booked into a hotel with a Swedish girl who also had missed her flight, and relaxed for 24 hours with baths and tea and food and beer and books for the modest price of 25 pounds, excluding the food of course.

The following day, as I flew home, I realised that I was coming home, at least for the moment, and that being alone here in Barcelona is not so bad for me right now.