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March 31, 2006

Fragrant in Taste - A Short Story

My father always told me that you should never fell a tree. He said that trees that grew fruit we’re all we could depend on. We couldn’t depend on the government, we couldn’t depend on our neighbours but we could depend on trees. It made sense when I was little. My family lived at the bottom of Beilun Mountain. There was my mother who stayed at home and worried, my sister who was only six, our dog who we hadn’t bothered to name and my father of course, who was a kumquat farmer. As the son of a kumquat farmer my life revolved around kumquats. We picked, ate and drank them. At night I even dreamed about them.

 I’d see two of them, golden yellow, hanging in the centre of a platter of dark green leaves. I’d stand there for a while. Watching them. Then they’d start to grow until they started to look like oranges but they’d grow and grow and keep growing. And just when they looked like they might explode I’d turn and start running down the mountain. Weaving in and out of the thick crop. Kumquats everywhere. I’d keep running and running until the mountain started to slope. The kumquats would start dropping off the branches. Thousands of the little yellow beans flying through the air, hitting the ground, bouncing and then tumbling. And every time, every single time, I’d loose my footing on one and fall backwards, smashing my head on a rock. I’d awake then and my little sister would be at the end of the bed watching me.

My father’s father had been a kumquat farmer too. It was all you could become in Beilun, my father would tell me in the evenings. I had no choice, he’d say. Back then we couldn’t just leave and do studies like you can. He’d tell me this next to near every night and every night I’d listen carefully like I was hearing it for the first time. My father had been harvesting all his life. Forty-nine years. It was hard to tell if he liked doing it. He knew all there was to know and how to do things like any master of a craft but did he enjoy doing it? I just don’t know. I thought to ask him some days but couldn’t do it. What if he said no. What if he said no I don’t like doing this but yet I’ve been doing it for the past forty-nine years. And then what? We’d probably both be embarrassed and when we got home my mother would be able to tell something was up and she’d ask what was the matter and that would only make things worst. So I didn’t ask.

One thing I did know was that I didn’t like it and I’d tell my sister that sometimes. She’d always go and get an old leaflet we had on the benefits of kumquats and give to me when I told her that. She liked kumquats and she knew how important they were to the family so she wanted me to like them too. I’d read the leaflet out loud for her. "Fragrant in taste, enjoy the effects of stomach-appetizing and aerating, thirst-quenching and sleepiness-allaying, phlegm-reducing and cough-relieving, and odor-preventing and lung-moistening of the kumquat." I miss her. I miss my mother and my father and I even miss the stupid dog. I only see kumquats in the supermarket now. When they’re in season. Six apiece lined up in a little plastic tray. Country of origin Beilun, New China.

Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist

Posted by LiamG at 11:16 PM

March 18, 2006

The Pleasure of Your Favourite

There is something innately pleasing as to have a selection of favourite writers whom you keep to yourself. A small list of names to which you hold so dear you wish to stunt there potential book sales by not telling anyone about them. It is, perhaps, a childlike instinct. A sort of "I found it first" line of thinking. If everyone else were to be reading you’re favourite books willy-nilly it would, you think, detract from them. And you’d be right. I have never read a book by Jack Kerouac, George Orwell or Yann Martel. Nor any books by Joseph O’Connor, Jane Austen or Frank McCourt. Sufficed to say I have never read any books by Dan Brown either. The chances are very slim of me ever reading them. I can say that in total sincerity none of these authors have taken my interest. Much in the same way you might be holidaying with you’re wife in Austria, where she wishes to spend the day climbing a mountain, while you feel the time given over to this activity would be better spent having blueberry ice-cream on the veranda of a local café.

My favourite writers manage, with the utmost concern for their readers, to stay out of the best-seller lists. At least they do in Ireland anyway and for that I am grateful. Contrary to what you might think one might write at this point, I’m going to tell you the names of my favourite writers. Not all of them of course. One must keep some things to themselves and considering the writer I admire the most passed away some years ago, they won’t be losing out in publicity sales of their books. In fact, even the writers I’m about to supply you with the names of, won’t benefit greatly from being mentioned. This is because I’m certain that only a very small number of people (one probably, two at a stretch) will actually go and seek out these books that I have yet to mention. I know from experience that recommendations from strangers in newspapers are very hard to believe. Then again I’m not recommending these books to you. If anything I recommend that you don’t purchase these books.

The first of my beloved authors is Daniel Handler. Handler is an interesting choice for one of my favourite writers as he is known by a great number of people - only they know him as a one Lemony Snicket, the writer of A Series of Unfortunate Events. While Lemony Snicket’s books regularly appear on the children’s best-seller lists, Daniel Handler’s two published adult novels remain largely unknown to the greater pool of readers. The Basic Eight is a terrific satire on American culture, dealing with teenagers in particular. The other is Watch You’re Mouth which the blurb rightly describes as "the best incest comedy you’ll read all year." Handler has a wonderful style complemented by his creative story structures. For instance, while the first half of Watch You’re Mouth is told as though it were an opera, the second half swivels radically to continue the story through a self-help book.

At an onstage interview with McSweeney’s editor and writer Dave Eggers, Handler once told the audience of how much his writing has been influenced by Lorrie Moore, especially by her novel Anagrams from which he read an extract for them. "The most embarrassing thing about re-reading Anagrams for this evening was realizing that I’d stolen from her again," he said. "I stole from her in The Basic Eight and I stole from her in Watch Your Mouth. It’s a short book," he continued. "There’s only, like, five words left that I could steal. And I’ve written a new novel, which will be out next year, that is stolen completely from Anagrams." "And what is the name of the new novel?" Eggers asked. Handler, after a brief pause, replies "Adverbs." And that particular book is to be released in April.

The thing about discovering a writer who is largely at the beginning of his career is that they don’t have many books, and so the wait for each new book, to be completely melodramatic, is excruciating. Furthermore, if that particular writer isn’t swimming in the mainstream or even dipping his toe in the little stream you’ll find yourself obsessively trying to hunt down a copy of the book as soon as possible. It goes without saying that my copy of Adverbs is already ordered and waiting to cross the Atlantic. The other thing about Handler is not just his writing but his persona. In all interviews he’s so incredibly sharp and amusing that you can’t help but fall in love with him.

For instance, when asked did he have any favourite questions that kids have asked him, Handler answered, "This kid at a reading the other day asked if I had a hot tub, and I said no. So he said that neither did Christopher Paolini - Christopher Paolini wrote Eragon, a popular children’s series. I said, well, that’s why Christopher Paolini and I had never been in a hot tub together, because every time we were together we’d say your hot tub or mine, and we’d both have to say we didn’t have one, which is why Christopher Paolini and I have remained total strangers rather than hot tub partners." If his literary works and sparkling wit wasn’t enough for me to love Daniel Handler he also occasional plays accordion with one of my favourite bands, The Magnetic Fields. In fact in writing all this this I realise that I still want to keep him and the rest of my favourite writers to myself but it’s late, I’m tired and I’ve a dentists appointment in the morning, and so I don’t have the energy to delete what I’ve just written and write something else in its place. I’m just going to have to trust you. Don’t buy any of his books.

Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist

Posted by LiamG at 11:47 PM

Red Robins and Green Monsters

It’s morning and I’m in the kitchen. Nothing vastly remarkable about that, except I rarely see mornings. I usually see afternoons, evenings, night times and times of the night other people don’t see. My body clock is off kilter. These days I go to bed at 4am and get up at noon. But today it’s morning and I’m in the kitchen. I’m savouring it as it may be sometime before I see another one. From the window I can see all the birds that live in the garden. Some blue tits on the trellis. Sparrows hopping along the path. There’s a magpie on the stone bird bath. He’s big. I open the window and clap my hands. The magpies leaps into the air thrashing its wings and leaves. So do all the other little birds but I know they’ll come back in a minute or so. The robins arrive soon after. Two of them. They’re nesting in the hedge somewhere. I open the window again and whistle to them. They hop closer, just below the window looking up. I whistle and talk softly to them. One of them, friendly and brave, flies up to the window ledge. So I converse with him for a while until he decides to go back into the hedge with his friend.

 I make myself a cup of tea. It’s my third this morning. In my favourite mug. The one with Mickey Mouse on it. I don’t know why I like it, I just do. Someone’s at the front door now. I can hear something large dropping and the porch door sliding closed. Must have been the post man. And it was. I take the package into the kitchen. It’s for me. Inside is a book. An awfully big package for a book, I think. The book is called "Not Like I’m Jealous or Anything: The Jealousy Book." Edited by Marissa Walsh, it says. A little three-eyed green monster is staring from the cover. I begin to read the introduction where Ms. Walsh tries to list all the things she is jealous of. She lists people with iPods, people who hang out all day and write and paint and people who spend their summers on Cape Cod. I try to think of all the things I’m jealous of as I flip through the pages of the book. I needn’t think too hard when I see the contents. On page 78 is an essay entitled "The Driver: Me and Marty Beckerman" written by a friend of mine, Ned Vizzini. Just under that, on page 88, is a listing for an essay called "Why I’m jealous of Ned Vizzini" by yet another American friend of mine, Marty Beckerman. Instantly I know what I’m green with envy over.

 I’m green that my two friends, both writers, have achieved enough success for them to appear in an anthology where they both write about how jealous they are of each other’s success. I close the book and finish my tea. Damn them. Dublin writer Claire Hennessy crosses my mind just then. She had her first book published when she was twelve and has had five books published since. Damn her too. Damn them all for realising that in writing, waiting for inspiration to come is fruitless. It took me years to realise that. I must write something today, I think. Yes, really I should. I’ll have another cup of tea and I’ll go write something. So I have another cup and I go upstairs and switch the computer on. It purrs pleasantly at being awoke. I put an old notebook on the desk and sit my mug on it. I must now write something. Ah, but first a little music, and a little dance perhaps too. Yes. Something by Jeffrey Lewis I think. That will do just fine. So I listen and I dance a little and I drink some more tea. Now I’ll write. So I write. And I write. And I can scarcely believe that my mind is clear enough to write more than a paragraph. Then a foolscap. Then two. Two is plenty for now, I say. No need to exert myself on such a fine morning. I’ll write two more pages tomorrow and the day after I’ll do the same.

I then remember something Ned Vizzini once said to me. We we’re talking about Cecelia Ahern’s success in the literary world. I mentioned how at first she was greeted with a myriad of begrudgery and jealously from a lot of people in Ireland. Especially from embittered writers. Ahem, I thought. "When it comes to Cecelia Ahern and PS I Love You," Ned said, "you shouldn’t waste you’re time being jealous. I have lot’s of problems with jealously; I get jealous of everybody. I was particularly bad last March when Marty (Beckerman) got a blurb from frickin’ Hunter S Thompson, but my Dad told me, Ned, jealousy is a waste of time; you just have to worry about what you can control."

Ned paused before continuing. "And I throw that back at you. If you think Cecelia Ahern is a bitch for writing a big-time novel when she was 22, then write one yourself and out-bitch her. I have a lot of friends who write that stuff (chick-lit) and they’re not that bad - it’s best to keep an open mind." I remember this and think yes, yes you’re right. And then I remember something the novelist Martin Malone once told me. He said I’ve got youth on my side. That I should write and write and to stick with it, that I shouldn’t abandon it. I should pursue it. He’s right, I thought. He’s right. And Ned’s right too. So I put my hands to the keyboard and start typing.

Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist

Posted by LiamG at 11:42 PM

March 11, 2006

Bed

I lie in my bed. Pillow propped up against the head board, head propped up against the pillow. I fell alone and serene. The wind blowing outside along with the rattle of an empty can rolling down the street below. I look around at the room before me. The two black and white photos of Fozzie Bear and Kermit the Frog. They must be hanging there a good fourteen years. From when I was small. From a time when all I wanted was to be a puppeteer. Nothing more. Nothing less.

I remember how, being small, I would always look in the mirror and try to imagine myself older, in my twenties. I could never do it. I could never get my head round the concept of growing up. My days we’re spent playing spies and rounders and games we’d just invent ourselves. I look at the poster beside them. A huge image of a bottle of Jack Daniels. Jeff bought it for me on his birthday. He seen it somewhere and thought I’d like it. I was really pleased about it. How even though I’ve slight obsessive compulsive tendencies and don’t like putting posters up on my wall, I put this one up anyway. Because it didn’t signify whiskey more than it did a thought, a kindness, a spontaneous gesture.

I look further to a plywood board with a couple of photos tacked to it. One of me smiling as a baby with someone wriggling my toe. A photo of Lucky our little dog when he was sick. We laid a huge orange quilt for him on the kitchen floor to sleep on. Then onto the shelves and balancing towers of books upon them. Books I’d be given. Books I’d bought on the strength of their covers alone. Regretting doing so in some cases but delighting in most. My favourite books. The one’s I love to much to ever recommend to anyone else. Then to the books with inscriptions written in them. Some just a standard phrase or greeting from a tired author but others more special. More personal, from a friend. More kind gestures. The books written by friends. I chuckle a little. Thinking about the times when I bump into authors in Credit Union queues or out shopping or at the bar. I like it. I think of the people who have sent me books from another country. Books that crossed the Atlantic.

My eyes move down to the pipe I got in Slovenia one time and to the small tin of McCrystals’ Snuff resting beside it. The snuff was a present from a friend I know longer see. He remembered me talking about snuff one day and weeks later he saw some tins of it in a tobacco shop front in Clare. I look at the pile of DVD’s which I’ve stopped buying. How they represent almost nothing. They’re quantity illustrates a gap I was trying to fill, a gap that sometimes felt like an abyss. I look to the door which I’ve turned into a sort of ongoing collage. Some posters from a reading series me and a friend put together. Some postcards of Tintin and James Bond and The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Alfred Hitchcock that my parents brought back to me once. A bright blue ticket I kept from a time when me and a comrade had gone to see Bret Easton Ellis. We stuck around until every last person was gone so we could talk to him alone.

Near the door handle a letter from a girl in San Francisco. I stuck the letter up because its one of the few letters I have that isn’t typed and whose penmanship is beautiful. To it’s left a package that arrived in the post one morning out of the blue. Instead of a regular envelope it was sent in one of those green and white envelopes you usually get when you collect you’re photos from the chemist. And it held a short story and some music. A most wonderful gesture. Looking closer now my, beside locker. The lamp shade titled slightly so the light spills over my bed for when I’m reading into the night. A stack of albums. Charlie Parker. Eels. The Magnetic Fields. Music is my tonic. Administered by dancing alone to it. No need to discuss it or analysis it for now. Just listen and dance to it. Stand alongside Brel, duet with Bobby Darwin, conduct the Tokyo Symphonic Orchestra, jam with the Blues Brothers. Below the CD’s are some freshly printed pages. Various collected blog’s of people that require further attention. Then back to the bed. Pillow propped up against the head board, head propped up against the pillow.

Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist

Posted by LiamG at 10:22 PM

March 01, 2006

Cold Turkey

I’ve just gone cold turkey. Not from drugs, alcohol or smoking – I’m still very much addicted to all of those. No, I have just managed to stop buying DVD’s. And we’re not talking a DVD every once and a while here – we’re talking full-blown addiction. I remember the days when I’d have to save my pocket money for months on end to buy a video. It was usually something like Indiana Jones or James Bond. Ah, VHS. That clunky format of my childhood. Everything was on tape in those days. "A film? On a CD!?! Get outta here!" we’d say.

Nothing could rival VHS. It was an age where you could turn a movie you hated into a TV show you loved just with a little piece of sellotape. For years we didn’t question why when you tried to rewind videotape the player went into convulsions. It didn’t bother us that dirty great lines would occasionally inch across our screens. The ugliness of the thing was never remarked upon. Then DVD arrived. Oh provider of clear picture quality, oh giver of bonus features, how I marvelled at you’re slim donut shape. I was still in secondary school when DVD arrived and it would be some years before it took over from VHS in a big way but when it did I was ready. A twenty-something from the "me" generation. Could God have provided anything better for me to waste my money on? I think not.

At the start of my illness I just bought a couple of DVD’s here and there but it wasn’t anything serious. Just a bit fun. It quickly moved on to director’s cuts. They gave me such a buzz. All that added material. It wasn’t long before I was on box-set’s and at this stage I was well and truly hooked. I started importing the stuff from America. Even got a region-free DVD player to play em’ on. Man I was spiralling out of control. That’s when I decided to stop. Hell, I needed to stop. Any more DVD’s and I could open an Xtra-Vision store. You see having DVD’s gives you pleasure from purely owning them in a way owning a kettle or a toaster could never give. In a sort of sad way owning DVD’s in my generation can define you, can make you an individual. I’d go through phases thinking Bill Murray is so great I must own all of his films. Everything from Groundhog Day to Ghostbusters and from Stripes to Rushmore.

 I even bought a DVD fireplace once. "You can almost feel the warmth as your screen turns into a romantic log fire," said the blurb on the front of the box. With no chimney to sweep or smoky smells who wouldn’t want a copy of this, I thought. What a fool I was. I’ve only ever watched that fire burn once. In fact, its much the same with my entire collection. You buy a movie, watch it and then its confined to spend the rest of its days sandwiched between the Star Wars box-set and Logan’s Run. Worst still is when, at the height of addiction, you buy so many DVD’s that you haven’t even watched them all and it may be weeks, months even before you mange to sit down and do so. Then there are the bonus features. Those commentaries from directors and actors with anecdotes only they find funny. "Oh how we laughed!" The option of different languages because watching Cary Grant speaking in Polish is kinda funny. And of course there are the obligatory trailers. They put them on because even though we’ve bought the movie, we may not find the time to watch it, and with trailers these days usually summarising the entire story in two minutes, they’re the perfect addition to our busy lives. Busy buying more DVD’s.

So I’ve finally managed to kick the habit. It’s going quite well so far. I only had one craving in the past couple of weeks. I needed to confirm that Steve Martin was funny at some point in his career, so I bought a trilogy of his films. Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid gave me my answer. Other than that I’m clean. I’m a reformed man. I see the light, baby. Praise God, I see the shining light.

Downhill from here by Liam Geraghty appears every week in the Kildare Nationalist

Posted by LiamG at 11:56 PM