City Boy to the bone

It’s good to be back in the city. To breathe in the thick familiar air of people living close together. To walk the paved street valleys between the close buildings. To casually bump into people I know while strolling past the Gingerbread House. To simply amble the streets and watch the people as they pass. To follow the face of some good-looking girl as she moves unawares through a crowd. To share in the unspoken history of over 800 years of people living together.

I just don’t think I could ever live in the countryside. Especially somewhere as remote as Corca Dhuibhne – or the Dingle Peninsula as most of you may know it. Don’t get me wrong, I love the place. It’s the most beautiful part of Ireland. No argument! The mountains that swoop to the sea, or sweep up from it like jutted rocky waves. On a sunny day, the grass is greener than I’ve ever seen and the shadows of calm white clouds lazily flow like liquid across the stony hillsides, and the water in the little coves and beaches is as blue/green as anything you’ll see in a Caribbean holiday brochure. In the summer months, fuchsias crowd the hedges on the winding roadsides, filling them with a riot of pink/purple. It really reminds a city boy like me of the might and fragility of nature. And life moves even slower there than it does in Cork, if that could be possible. Every local has a story in them and about fifty ways to tell it. If I’ve done my job right, it should sound like Utopia to you. So why wouldn’t anyone want to spend the rest of his or her days there?

Part of me would, and maybe when I’m older, should I reach that certain age, I might up and move down there to wile away the rest of my days. But not now, oh no. A week was hard enough. One never considers how dependent one is on modern conveniences until most of them are taken away. As soon as I’d left Dingle and was over the mountains to the western half of the peninsula, Meteor abandoned me to the wilds of West Kerry. If not for Elaine and her Vodafone, I may have lost it completely. Well…ok, that’s perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, I’ll grant you; but I did feel very disconnected for much of the time. I missed just being able to start up random conversations with friends. It’s a comfort to know that most of you are just a text away, and when that comfort is taken away, one can be left feeling quite alone. I wasn’t too alone of course, I did have Elaine to annoy and gently wind up for my amusement. But still, you get my point.

What’s as bad was that the closest thing to proper civilisation – Dingle – was a
n almost 10 minute taxi drive away. Even then, for all its charm and some interesting little shops (check out Café Liteartha), within twenty minutes one can have walked around the whole town. After you’ve explored all the shops worth exploring, there’s little else to do but wander around and pick out the tourists. While one can argue the same about Cork much of the time, I like walking around the city and just watching the people or immersing myself in my thoughts and letting my legs take me where they want to go. And there is always the chance, of course, that you’ll bump into someone, though that can be a bad thing as much as a good one.

The thing about the countryside is that it takes so damn long to get anywhere. In the morning, Elaine and I would have to cycle 2 miles to the hall in which the classes were held and then 2 miles back for lunch. And man, was that cycle back a tough one! I’m not even sure why, it just always was. Always. If something else was happening at the hall during the day, it was another 2 miles there and 2 miles back. There’s just so much open empty space in the countryside, it’s just not natural I tell ya! And what’s with all the animals? The so-called “fresh air” seemed perpetually filled with scent of distinctly un-house broken creatures. Give me the pungent whiff hops from the Beamish and Crawford Brewery any day.

Of course, having said all that, my self-imposed (though not entirely intentional) severing from the rest of civilisation did get the creative juices flowing a little. If I’d had a computer and internet access (yet more things I sorely missed), this blog would certainly have MANY more entries in it by now. Unfortunately (for me anyway, maybe not for you, I don’t know) I’ve forgotten much of what I wanted to write about while down there, so I’m pretty much just working from memory now and the few pages I jotted down one particularly wet day.

So maybe those hermits of old had it right, in that a certain amount of escape from the modern world is good for the soul. I will of course return down there again, this year even, because I do love the place dearly. But don’t ask me to live there!

The Revolution Shall Be Televised

He stood on the bustling city pavement, amidst a foul flow of busy passers-by; all wrapped up in their turgid insignificant commercial little lives. He was going to shake their worlds, shatter their very foundations. His lips slowly curved into a subtle malevolent smirk as he stared up at the towering glass skyscraper across the street; a huge gleaming symbol of everything these nobodies held dear in their lives, reflecting the endless blue skies of their perceived possibilities. He would smash it.

It unfolded before his mind’s eye, as it had many times before. The explosion would billow outwards as a giant black and red fiery cloud, rising up through the structure as the secondary explosives were triggered. The repugnant rats below would scramble and swarm to escape the beautiful shower of shimmering shards that would rain down upon them, cutting and shredding their grey skin. The old, weak and crippled would be forgotten and trampled underfoot. Cars would crash as their drivers stared in amazement and fear at their bright blue sky fragmenting and falling down around them.

The pandemonium would be deafening; the screaming of the frightened, the screeching of the injured, the crying of the dying (why should they cry? He would be relieving them of their disgusting banality!). The blaring of the car horns, as their drivers lay dead and sprawled over their steering wheels, bleeding over dashboards and seats. The wail of the siren as the agents of authority rushed through the mayhem to save all the drones they could.

It was then that the foundations would give way and the tower would collapse with an earth shattering rumble, drowning the beautiful bedlam below in a suffocating blanket of dust, ash and rubble. Those not shredded by the rain of glass would be bludgeoned by the debris of concrete and steel, or choked by the filth. For those still alive, it would be as night, the fog of wreckage smothering their sun and blue sky.

At this time the vultures would descend, the masters of manipulation, the monstrosity of the media. How he detested those vermin - the strongest arm of those that controlled. Using, shaping and misusing the misery of people for the consumption of the mindless masses, keeping them subdued and docile to serve the needs of the greater few. They twisted the minds of these peons into filling their lives with the wares the Powers sold, handing over their hard earned capital to lose their soul. But today, yes today, they would serve his purpose, for they would carry the blast around the world, into the houses and minds of every slave, every serf, and every dutiful downtrodden follower of the almighty green. They would be shaken, to see the symbol of their material dreams crumble before their glazed eyes, their wide-open sky horrifyingly scarred by a cloud of smoke and destruction. Their stomachs would turn at the sight of their fellow zombies, blood-spattered and skin-torn by the collapse of their collective dreams. And they would weep ten times over for every life lost.

They would be suddenly lost, disillusioned and disenchanted in their existence. With their beacon of materialism and wealth in a smouldering heap, burying their brothers and sisters and children, their eyes would clear. They would perceive the hypocrisy, the lies, the propaganda, the Big Brother and Ministry of Truth, the convoluted structures and twisting hallways of bureaucracy hiding the true nature of all power. They would see through their so-called ‘leaders’ for the monkey-puppets they are, and follow their strings back to the puppet masters and know the truth of the world. They would realise the oppression of their "middle-class" existence. And they would be angry.

They would throw off the shackles of their proledom, rise up against their oppression and manipulation for the sake of the high living of the blue blood. They would gather in their hundreds of thousands to scream their discontent and dissatisfaction so loud as to rattle the corridors of Real Power in the remaining dream-towers of glass and steel. They would tear down the gleaming grinning faces of advertising; reject the ideals they had once placed so much faith in. The Powers, so smug in their security would become scared, as the rioting rabble drew closer, ripping up the world around them to reveal the hidden truths. There would be nowhere left to hide; they would be hunted like vermin and dragged through the streets they had paved with fool’s gold. The people would burn and behead these fallen gods in the squares they had built in reverence of them and pile high the charred black bodies.

The new morning would rise brighter and better than ever before and every lungful of air would taste of relief and release. The sun would ascend into a new sky, full of new dreams and new futures. The world would be different. The world would be superior. They would have split apart civilization in the hopes of something better and found the pearl of truth. The cities would empty as the citizens returned to the land, casting aside the supposed luxuries of their suburbanality and embracing a simpler life; a life without the complexities of what car to buy and which channel to watch. No longer would people pass each other in the street and not acknowledge one-another’s existence. No longer would they be wrapped up in their own petty greed-driven lives. No longer would they drive to their nine-to-five jobs, each alone in their own moving metal prison. They would hunt deer together across the planes. They would farm the land and reap the rewards; making clothes from the wool of sheep and the hides of cattle. They would tear down the dream-towers piece by piece to build their own dreams. They would be happy. They would be free. They -

He felt a strong hand on his shoulder and turned to see the golden badge of authority, the ruling star, pinned to the chest of a man standing before him. “You ok sir?” asked the star. He shook off the hand and merged with the crowd, feeling the eyes of authority, burning into his back as he walked away. They were scared of him. They always had been, always would be. They were everywhere. On every corner in every town; in every house on every street. In the sky and below his feet. But someday that would change; he would be free and they would watch him no more. He would no longer just be Timothy. Someday he would move out of his mother’s basement and change the world.

Someday.

A Picture's worth exactly 1002.324 words! It's true!

Just figured out how to put pictures up on the blog so there should be more pictures on here from time to time. Just as an experiment I put this picture up of me and my dear dear old friend Hector who I met on St. Patricks Day about two years ago! God, I look SO weird with short hair! *shudder*

Me and Hector on St.Patricks Day! Some man for one man! And Hectors cool too!