It’s been a longer than usual silence from me, I know, and I rush to assure you that what you assumed is in fact correct. I am dead. No, I just had a lot of work.
What? Zombies can have work.
This morning I wake up suddenly, in abject terror. Somehow I know…I just know, in the way humans have known for centuries…that the worst that could befall a communal household has happened. We have run out of toilet paper. Jumping, staggering, I throw on a pair of pants (almost missing) and rush into the hallway. Bathroom A, no toilet paper. My heart begins to race. Bathroom B, no toilet paper. I rush to the cupboard, but the cupboard is bare. Although accustomed, when I happen to wake up early enough, to take my early mornings quite lazily, I immediately rush out into the street, down the street, over the street, and purchase a four pack. As I return to the kitchen, breathing more easily, I notice that Holger is a couple steps behind me with a two pack. As I put it into the kitchen cabinet, Marcus arrives with another four pack.
The doorbell rings. It’s a hallmate, brandishing a roll. “Is everything okay?” he says. “I thought… “ No, no. Crisis averted.
How the hell we keep running out so fast I haven’t the faintest, but I suppose it might be time to stop making life-size toilet-paper Marlon Brando sculptures.
Ireland, you see, is making me lose all my indulgences.
(Author’s note: I wrote the proceeding just over a week ago. I wake up today and we have in fact run out of toilet paper again. What the hell guys? Some things just aren’t decent to talk about, of course…)
I live, actually, in what approaches barbaric splendor. Because things are so expensive, and because our fridge is tiny, I've become very creative. I am flush, right now; I have five hamburger patties freezing in our tiny freezer, 8 chicken patties sitting in the fridge, three different kinds of cheese (because that's how you vary your diet, given the circumstances), an enormous bag of noodles, and three cans of soup. When I want something besides tap water, I buy 20 oz cokes from the vending machine and drink 10 ounces a meal. Cold coke, of course, I do not have.
As I’ve joined the basketball club (yes, I am on what appears to be the junior varsity squad for Trinity College and yes, that may say quite a lot about their team), I attended, last Saturday, basketball karaoke night. A bonding experience. How are you going to feed the cutter appropriately, as our captain put it, if you haven’t had a pint with him? Was the idea. Anyhow, I was sitting there looking through the list of songs they were offering, when I noticed they had a song that I thought would be particularly funny, and appropriate, as I am from Texas. I had, however, misgivings "Oh man," I said to my table companion, 'I'd love to do this song but I'm pretty sure the Irish won't know it." "Are you kidding?" He said, being Irish. "We LOVE that song! I always thought it was Irish!"
It’s not Irish.
And so it came about that I performed "Take me home, country roads." Before I got halfway through the whole room joined in. He was right. Two rather pretty girls rush up to the front, and start singing with me, we put our arms around each other. The instant the song ends they vanish so fast they seem to have dematerialized. There is much hand shaking and back slapping, after. My Irish friend looks at me for a while and says “You probably should have held on to one of ‘em.”
For Halloween I go to an Anglo-Irish literature costume party. Previous, I sit in my room for a while trying to think of a costume idea. “Darn,” I say to myself “I have no money. I can’t afford, food, booze, AND a costume.” It occurs to me that I’m an English masters student and that I’ll probably never be able to afford all three. This gives me an idea. I have cardboard in my room, and dental floss. I make a sign and hang it around my neck with dental floss. The sign says “will expound for food (or penguin editions)”. I put a T.S. Eliot book in my shirt pocket. I am good to go.
Other guests at the party it being an Anglo-Irish lit party, and remarkably well done I do say, include James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and William Butler Yeats. Someone asks me whether the T.S. Eliot book is part of my costume or whether I just like to walk around with Four Quartets in my pocket. I have to think about it…
It’s amazing how new experiences color the use of previous ones. Am I intimidated, now, to speak up in class? Of course not. I have jockeyed with the best at Brown University where, regardless of your opinion of the intelligence present there (all though certainly, as everywhere, there were those surpassingly endowed with this), they were consistently vocal, indeed, vociferous. Am I afraid of an Irish winter? I am not, for Providence was truly terrible, weather wise. What, then, shall I not be scared of having successfully made my way , for a whole year, in a country where I had nothing but the language? I’m in good shape.
We’re not counting chickens, we’re just prognosticating reasonably.
Not much more to report. I’m presenting a paper on Wednesday at a staff and post-graduate colloquium. As they sent me the emails I had no idea it was unusual for mere masters students to do that. On a whim I whip something up on a book I just read. With great shock, I discover I’ve been accepted. With greater, I see the list of other presenters, all professors and doctoral candidates.
Like the grizzled chief of NASA in Apollo 13, while some might believe this to be our greatest tragedy, on the contrary, gentleman, I believe it will be our finest hour…
Going to Dun Laoghire on Saturday, I think. Maybe I’ll make it out to Christchurch or St. Patrick’s one of these days, if I’m not too lazy. In case you don’t hear from me till then, I’m going to Istanbul on the 22nd. I will be spending Thanksgiving in Turkey. This is, of course, fitting. Specifically, as I have a bad knack for falling into shenanigans, I will spending Thanksgiving in a Turkish prison, presumably without one of my hands.
Andrew out.
PS. I get some emails back, whenever I send these out, and I just want to say I love hearing from you guys. Tell me what you’re up to, if you want. Sometimes people send me poems and things. These, too, I encourage. Or murals, but you’ll have to ship those over here…
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