« Bed | Main | The Pleasure of Your Favourite »

March 18, 2006

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 March 18, 2006 11:42 PM