West Coast Cill Dara

Significant Story

2009-12-29T23:54:00.000-08:00

Last year I posted a little ditty I wrote for my sister's state-sponsored social inclusion project back in Dublin, and this year I have a little something I wrote for a competition that I came nowhere near to winning (not enough sex or violence no doubt). Slate.com (my favourite online source for all things culturally current) had a collaboration with a web site called SignificantObjects.com to generate fictional stories on a random object, the idea being that the story would increase the monetary value of the object when auctioned on EBay. The limit was 500 words and I decided to write a story 24hrs before the deadline, so like last year I took the train to work and banged out what Sonia thought was a presentable entry. Unlike last year's piece this is a work of purest fiction and outright lies. A picture of the object is below, followed by the story, the winner can be found here.

When I was thirteen I visited my grandfather Paddy every Saturday morning. Inside his sitting room the walls were stained brown from turf and cigarette smoke. Near the open fireplace, above the mantel, there was a large framed black and white photograph, a team of young men in jerseys and shorts, their arms folded, smiling maniacally, a sign at their feet - '1944 County Senior Football Champions'.

My granny died before I was born and as Paddy got older his daughters and their children stepped into the empty spaces of his life. He was an army officer for forty years, a man in charge. He was now no longer in charge, the glaucoma slowly advanced and his hands developed an uncontrollable shake. My first job was to read aloud from the newspapers. He was only interested in sports news and only then in the gaelic games section; soccer and rugby were referred to as 'foreign shite'. My second job was to administer his weekly shave.

We set up in the sitting room for the shaving. Paddy had no time for modern aerosol cans. He wandered over to the mantel and took down a brown glazed jar with 'Bar-B-Q Sauce' written across it, he popped open the lid to reveal the brush underneath and the tube of shaving paste. I added paste and water to the jar and mixed it into a creamy consistency with the brush. I lathered my grandfather's face and neck, smiled to myself and asked the question I asked every Saturday morning - 'where did this jar come from grand-dad, sure nobody barbeques around here?'

Paddy told the story of how he was stationed in the Curragh in 1944; it was an internment camp for foreign servicemen who crash-landed in neutral Ireland during the war. He was the physical fitness instructor and insisted on playing gaelic football only. I always asked who his favourite foreign footballer was. US Air Force Captain Mike DeLuca was 'horrid handy' and 'deadly dangerous'. By arrangement with the US government the American internees were allowed weekends outside the wire, Paddy began to take Mike home. Every Sunday after mass Mike togged out with Paddy's local team and played gaelic football. That year they won the county championship for the first time in a decade.

When I finished shaving and had wiped down Paddy's face I sat with the Bar-B-Q jar cupped in my hands and, still smiling, asked my last question - what happened on the night they won? My grandfather grinned, his eyes on the wall above the mantel. The whole town went out for the night, there was drinking and dancing, and when Paddy awoke the next morning Mike was gone. Paddy took his time reporting the missing pilot, he was never found. Six months after Mike disappeared Paddy received a package, it was post-marked Chicago, inside was a photo of a smiling Mike DeLuca and a brown glazed jar with 'Bar-B-Q Sauce' on the side.

Winter Weather

2009-12-29T19:14:00.000-08:00

Portland has been hit by a surprise snow dump, an annual event that the local forecasters invariably fail to forecast. This time it happened while I was at work and my wife, the driver in the relationship, and her 4-wheel drive Landrover were at the coast with her family. Ordinarily I would down tools and car and take the train home, trusting my adventurous (and heavily pregnant) woman to come get me from the light-rail stop, conveniently located as it is opposite the Goose Hollow Inn, a warm and inviting tavern in Southwest Portland. However, I am on my own and opted to leave work in the car at 4:30pm, much like several thousand like-minded commuters. One hour and four miles later I had circled around to the car park of my local New Seasons supermarket, a half mile from the office. Oddly enough I have had snow-chains in the car for nearly 10 years and never once thought to use them, so my moment had arrived and after 20 minutes of soggy-knee'ed wrestling and driving back and forth I got them on (sort of), at which point I retired to the New Seasons delicatessen.

The deli counter in this supermarket is my favourite dining spot for lunch, or evening meals when Sonia periodically chooses to abandon me. The food is fresh and there is always a fine veggie selection, the seating area is amply stocked with free newspapers and chess pieces and, in the evenings, knitting circles (!), they even let you drink beer or wine with your meal. It is a peculiarly Portland area institution, Whole Foods is the big corporate competitor but New Seasons keeps it local. As big a fan as I am I have to say that the one in my own neighbourhood is pokey and crowded and the kids who work there are way too cool for school, the piercing-tattoo-dreadlock ratio verging on the ridiculous. My suburban work spot has an older demographic, both customers and workers, there is even one employee I keep bumping into in the fruit & veg section who I had initially met in a drunken line outside a TV On The Radio concert in Portland. My kind of people.

After a delightful spinach salad and bowl of pesto-tomato soup I returned to work (chains still intact) which is where I am typing this, having established from the radio that 'no-one was going nowhere' in the greater Portland area. Yet again I am the only person at work during inclement weather, this time around at least I'm not actually doing any work.

[UPDATE: Left work at 9:30pm and made it home by 10:40pm using a crafty 25 mile network of back streets and freeways. I passed scores of cars littered along the side of the road or precariously skewed on freeway off-ramps. The chains worked the finest, I may use them again in the next decade or so.]

Vacation Delayed

2009-08-23T21:39:00.000-07:00

I had, in fact, put together the pictures below not long after we returned from our holiday but because of some odd http text formatting problem (still not 100% fixed) was entirely dissuaded from posting - such are the energy barriers I battle. I have had many people, well maybe two, ask why I haven't been posting anymore and I couldn't come up with a credible answer except that it was too much like hard work. Yet if I can find myself at 12:15 am of a Monday morning cleaning the kitchen floor (badly), and at 1am the night before applying polyurethane to a new stairs, then surely I can find time to throw a few ironic words together for a quasi-diary of this ex-patriate life for the amusement of the silent majority. Greeted with the resounding sound of one hand clapping I shall persevere.

We had a very pleasant time of it in the 'old country' (as people here of vaguely Irish ancestry and none refer to Ireland), not getting to bed before 1am on any night, meeting with some friends and lots of family, and consuming vast quantities of black liquids - Guinness and tea for the most part, with the odd Americano thrown in for measure since everyone in Ireland now has an Italian espresso machine. I was drinking twice as much as normal because we were endeavouring to keep secret the fact that Sonia was 10 weeks pregnant. The fact that she was sick as a dog, constantly napping, and pushing glasses of red wine in my direction were something of a give-away but, based on prior bad experience, we were superstitious to a paranoid degree.

The ostensible occasion for the trip home was the marriage of the younger brother to his long-term and very patient accountant. Unlike his brothers he got married in a church to an Irish woman, thus everyone knew what to expect - no flies 'dying in lonely singularity' - and the stage was set for a good time for all concerned. Even the nasty weather couldn't conspire to ruin the day since the wind and rain gave way to a miraculous moment of sun and surf just before sunset. Enda and Tanya obviously picked up some tips (along with a baby) at our own nuptials since they bravely had an open bar for most of the reception, this is no small feat at an Irish wedding, it's akin to an all-you-can-eat surf & turf barbeque in suburban Cleveland, small children can be crushed in the onslaught. We made it home that night at 4am to our Clonakilty bed and breakfast - Sonia soberly drove in the dark and fog on roads built for a narrow cart and small donkey and managed to find an inadvertent short-cut in spite of my drunken directions.

We landed in Ireland in the aftermath of its economic implosion, any hopes of taking advantage of the newly humbled economy were quickly dashed when we were charged two euro for a cup of coffee at the airport Starbucks - per my Starbucks' price parity index that was twice as much as the same drink in Portland. The dollar is still mostly irrelevant so the price of everything was keenly felt, with the exception of some very sublime pints of the black stuff. If they were charging for the weather I would have asked for a refund, for the second year in a row I left sunny Portland to spend a week of valuable vacation time wrapped in water-proof layers in the face of yet another record setting wet Irish summer. We had one day of nine when it didn't rain and indeed with one eye half-closed I could almost make believe that I was on a Mediterranean beach. I cannot remember the weather ever being this bad when I lived there but maybe I'm just spoiled these day. Luckily we weren't there for the weather and what weather there was could be found in Amsterdam.

Ah, the 'Dam - drugs, sex-shows, and near-naked women in neatly rectangular display boxes, sort of like Barbies-gone-bad with Russian accents - all of which we mostly managed to avoid on our vice-free and very pleasant vacation. Our hotel was centrally located in Dam Square, a short stroll from the elegant Jordaan neighbourhood and an even shorter stagger to the (in)famous red-light district. We bought small wheels of Gouda (rhymes with cow-da apparently) and apples and crackers and retired to Vondelpark to watch the locals on their bikes, in between visiting Van Gogh and the odd Old Master. We celebrated Sonia's birthday with a dinner in Jordaan, we were the sole patrons, the window open in lieu of air-conditioning, candles flickering from the warm air drifting along the adjacent canal, the perfect-English-speaking white-clad waitress dancing on our every need. It was almost romantic.

The red light district is not romantic. But it is fascinating, built as it is in a warren of dark and winding lane-ways with an overtly sexual surprise around every corner - a bikini clad 6ft transsexual here, an array of battery-powered paraphernalia there, and an erotic museum with some intriguing 19th century hydro-mechanical handiwork. The Dutch are a famously liberal bunch but most customers in the district are foreigners (40% British allegedly). Similarly a lot of patrons of the 'coffee-houses' are young Americans escaping ever-paternalistic Uncle Sam in their quest for the perfect hit - which is surprising to me because they seem to have no problems getting their hands on the good green stuff this side of the pond. But like Bangkok the reputation is bigger than the reality and the city has a lot more to offer than nookie and (space)cookie. We shall be back.

God-daughter Grainne Mahony sitting guard outside our bedroom, her morning ritual. She has a lot of patience, the panda fell asleep half way through this particular morning.

A surprise birthday cake for Sonia, a chocolate caterpillar picked by Grainne and Peter. Daddy Niall guards the Cava.

Sonia took this to prove that there are still some trees in Ireland. Although these are probably Scandinavian pine or something similarly non-native. Her dad recently became acquainted with the idea that the British took all the Irish and Scottish trees for their empire conquering navy - see this link.

Clonakilty, July. Wet.

Happy Finn women and Lorcan.

Ariana and Aunty Mia.

Caoimhe plays with the whiskey, a traditional Irish past-time.

All dressed up with a wedding to go to.

The happy couple.

The (low resolution) Finn clan.

Another happy couple. Note the umbrella.

The happy threesome.

The garden cafe, Hotel Krasnapolsky, in the 'Dam.

Not all the hugs are free in this part of town.

Amsterdam Canal I

Amsterdam Canal II (I think those are Cactii)

Oregon brewed beer on sale inside - Rogue Brewery. Note the transplanted Oregonian poking around inside this beer shop, owned by a Canadian, run by a Scot.

Extravagant travelers that we are we splashed out on a paddle boat for Sonia's birthday. We tried to take a picture but instead took a very shoddy video.

Summer Summary

2009-06-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

Six months between posts is a tad tardy. I've opted to adapt the Tammar model and belt the bloody thing out, ditching the poetic allusions and filling in with well placed pictures where words are lacking.

How to cover the events of half a year? How about quickly:

January: Weather was cold and wet. Snow finally disappeared into gritty black puddles. I was warm and dry, literally and figuratively, having assumed a sober posture for the month, like Lent in January, my third annual, it wasn't easy. Wrote to separate groups of people offering advice on travel to New Zealand and the Pacific Northwest. We went nowhere, but I booked flights to Madrid for the brother's stag party, and Vancouver for our annual 10km trip. New bookshelves ordered (8ft x 8ft). Started to fix up the 'sun room' to be Sonia's office, the dining room isn't working out. Sonia's dad dumped several million slides on us, Sonia allegedly asked for them. Changed Pilates studios, have swapped middle-class lycra for twenty-something lower back tattoos. President Barack Hussein Obama sworn-in, gun sales rocket in South Carolina.

February: Weather was cool and wet, so we decided to spend a weekend at the beach with our friends Teri & Randy. The Oregon coast is very pretty but it has not pulled me in like Santa Cruz, or even Ballybunion. Filled new bookshelves in as pretentious a fashion as possible, sections include: art, poetry, philosophy, science, politics, history, general non-fiction, literary fiction, book club fiction, to-be-read, and Irish. My efforts to include an erotic shelf were thwarted, magazines apparently are not allowed. Continued to fix up the 'sun room'. Got very drunk in a vegan bar in North Portland on some red drink with Southern Comfort and Tequila, started the night with a veggie chili dog and a side of brussels sprouts, was sick for two days thereafter. Sonia continued to spend every waking hour scanning and archiving the Halvorson slide collection. Pilates continuing, the view is better but the space is cramped.

The big bookshelf.

March. Weather was cool and wet. We spent a very pleasant weekend in LA with Sonia's family. Sonia's labours over the slides were translated into a mammoth 4hr slide show which I saw twice. I now know more about her family's history than my own, her dad was also very cute as a 2yr old. Ireland beat Wales in rugby to win the 6-nations grand slam for the 1st time in 60yrs, I watched it on a lap top in my father-in-law's condo before the slide show. I screamed and swore a lot before the uncomprehending in-laws but was hoarse and happy for the following 8hrs. Back in Portland we ran the Shamrock Run for the second year, rain was horizontal, winds were hurricane-esque, we were very slow and very wet. Celebrated Paddy's day in local pub, almost won the pub-quiz, subject was Ireland-Green, got all the Irish questions but what the hell is 'Ann Of Green Gables'. Turned 38, celebrated with a four day NBA basketball, dinner/concert, dinner/concert, and dinner. Beginning of minor obsession with local basketball team - Portland Trailblazers. 'Sun room' not finished. Pilate's abandoned, intricate body art notwithstanding, the back is no better.

Sonia's great-grandparents on a visit to Egypt.

April: Weather is warming, still wet. Booked flights to Ireland and accommodation for De Wedding, managed to squeeze in a final few days in Amsterdam. This trip will consume 11 of my 15 vacation days, if I stay with my current employer I jump to 20 next year, that's still 7 less than I had when I started work 17yrs ago! Went to Vancouver for the 10km run. As can be seen below our Canadian running partners are quite the fit feckers, we've long since given up competing with the bastards. Note the improvement in the Halvorson time as her lung function wheezes back to quasi-normality. I have no excuse for my poor showing except I was feeling a little tired that morning.

________'06_____'07____'08______'09
Finn_____57:39___n/a*___56:03____58:46
Halvorson_1:05:12__n/a*___1:07:32___1.02.42
Hughes___51:56___49:41__49:17____51.49
Taylor____53:05___51:42__53:31____n/a**

* Withdrawal due to injury (Finn back).
** Withdrawal due to injury (ankle, or maybe arse).

Courtesy of my extravagant woman we went to a Blazer's play-off game against Yao Ming's Houston Rockets, we won that game but lost the series. Courtesy of my extravagant woman we got hit with a massive tax bill, she blames the TB, I couldn't sleep for a week.

View from the new 'office'.

May: Warm-ish weather, not so wet. Trip to Ashland to prepare for the tourist season, lots of beers and food and weeding. Sonia has decided to try and sell the place, but not til August. She opted to stay on for a few days, I flew back to to Portland for $100 on a 5:30am flight, up at 4am, it was a long day. The trip to Ashland was one week after I flew to Madrid for Enda's stag. What follows is a very condensed version, as much as I can remember and am willing to admit. Left Portland at 8:30am on Weds, arrived Madrid 8:30am on Thurs, found the apartment, bought beer and yogurt and laundry detergent, took a nap, put on a load of clothes, the washing machine leaked and flooded the kitchen, frantic phone calls, problem solved by Spanish-English speaking petite Polish senorita. Wandered around the neighbourhood, centered as it was in a bohemian-gay district, admired, from a distance, the graffiti and trash and African whores. Found several bars and cafes to sit and stare in sober fashion at the Madrenos, taking advantage of off-beat locations and quietude before the descent into Irish alcoholic mania and mainstream tourism soon to follow. The brothers did not arrive 'til 10pm, I was sitting on the balcony, sipping beer and watching, from a distance, the police arrest suspected drug dealers. I made it to bed at 9am the next morning, myself and the elder Finn staggering through the sun filtered Friday morning commute. 3hrs later a bunch of blurry figures with thick accents were in the bedroom and laughing at me, these were friends of the younger Finn not seen in many years, their receding hairlines and expanding paunches confusing me in my semi-drunken state. And so began the stag proper, afternoons spent in vast plazas, serial rounds of drinks magically appearing, euro after euro magically disappearing, drinking games, red lycra & lipstick (the younger brother), dancing Spanish girls, dancing Irish men, vodkas and red bull, and on the second night we made it to bed at 6am. Most of the 'lads' were rugby friends of Enda's, old and new, this lent a certain give-a-shitness to the proceedings, one that it was best not to subvert or avoid but to embrace as much as one dare. The last night I opted not to go to bed at all and found myself yet again with Mark, this time at 7am in a Bangladeshi kebab shop with the elder brother holding forth on the merits of Irish cricket with the perfect-English speaking owners. At the time I thought he was full of crap but it turns out perhaps not. Shortly thereafter he retired and I sat on the door-step of the apartment with a gallon of water admiring, from a distance, the north African drug dealers, the pigeons and the late night party-goers returning to roost, and the sun rising over the red tiled Catholic girl's school next door. A couple of hours later as I staggered through Madrid airport I kept hearing voices, mostly Mark's, I would turn suddenly and stare, expecting a naked rugby player from Kildare to come charging through the crowd of travelers, but no it was just me with a weakened body and a weaker mind. The trip home was a blur for the first half to Philadelphia but at least I slept on the plane, the 5hr flight to Portland nearly killed me: small, cramped, crowded, warm, head nodding in momentary slumber and cracking back into place with loud, dry snorts. I got into Portland at 8:30pm on Sunday (that would be 2:30am in Madrid), went to work the next day, played basketball after work and scored a nice lay-up after a well executed pump-fake. Two weeks later my system collapsed and I slept for 24hrs. That was a once in a decade trip and subject of a short story at some point to be called Mi Hermano, or Bad Toro.

June: Tentatively sunny and relatively dry. A month of yard work mostly, some nice hikes thrown in for measure. I realised that a cubic yard is 27 cubic feet and not 9 but only after I ordered 7 yards of top soil, about 4 yards too many.

Soil anyone?

The sanctuary.

A very good raspberry crop this year. Lovely with cream.

More foodstuff - potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, basil, peppers. The black thing is the compost bin, conveniently located under our bedroom window.

Front of house, concrete wall as old as the house is leaning precipitously. This is the Donny and Aggie memorial (sort-of) space since they cleared this entire area of ivy some years ago.

Tarts

2008-12-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives--
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

from Clearances - 3, In Memoriam M.K.H., 1911-1984, by Seamus Heaney

As mentioned in the last post my sister twisted my arm into writing a rose-tinted reminiscent piece about food in our family; or maybe I volunteered when back home for the summer but then forgot about it until the week before it was due when I started receiving reminder emails from Maria. So I persuaded Sonia to drop me to the train station for a few days last August (no snow in sight) and out popped the commuting composed, deadline driven paragraphs below; but only after some judicious editing by Sonia (I was persuaded to leave out the incident with the bread knife). Apparently it made my mother a little teary when she read it, which, I am told, is a good thing.

You will note a distinct absence of humour, ironic distance, or even sarcasm. I'm not sure what to make of that except to say that normal broadcasting will soon resume.

Aggie's Apple Tarts

The centre of my childhood week was Saturday. It was Saturday when the turf boys came with thick plastic bags stacked with sods. It was Saturday when the fruit and veg van came with the potatoes and cabbage and cooking apples. It was Saturday when my mother would wheel out the twin tub washing machine with the hand wringer and tackle the week's laundry. It was Saturday when the stew was cooked for dinner and the sausages fried for tea. Above all, it was Saturday when my mother would work her weekly magic and produce the best apple tarts in Ireland.

On Saturday mornings my mother's ever clean kitchen descended into an unholy clutter of children and washing machines and tables and television. The kitchen was the centre of our house, and the centre of the kitchen was the range, the four-footed solid fuel stove that warmed our feet, cooked our food, and heated our water. In a house without central heating the kitchen doubled as dining room, living room, and laundry room. My mother would drag the washing machine from its hiding place into the middle of the floor and set to work. She loaded the first batch of laundry and started on the stew to come and piled the apples on the table for the tart to follow. The stew held little interest for us; we were turned off by the raw potatoes and red meat and tuned in instead to the television blaring in the corner. Only when the mixing bowl was pulled down from the cupboard did we get up and shuffle over, smiling and sort-of-willing to help.

Ignoring the hungry eyes my mother mixed the flour, water, egg and butter in the bowl, kneading the pastry mixture with her fingers into a white lump that looked like play dough. She dusted the table with fine flour and began to flatten and roll the pastry to fit the dinner plate that would act as a baking pan. My mother never used a rolling pin, she always used an empty glass milk bottle, plucked from its spot on the doorstep. Once the pastry was ready it was time to add the apples. We were thrown an apple or two and told to peel the skin. In the time it took us to hack away at our apples, my mother would have peeled several pounds of big cookers. We would always wonder at her agility with a peeling knife, running it over apple after apple, the skin descending like a winding staircase. Her skill was such that we could take the peeled, continuous skin and reconstruct a hollow apple. We never knew what type of apple was used, all we knew was that they were cooking apples and the skins tasted very tart, so much so that we generously dipped them in sugar, sometimes we would lick the sugar off and double dip the sticky skin. This was our favourite part of the morning, this was our favourite part of the week. Meanwhile my mother sliced and arrayed the apples in the pastry sandwich, skimmed the overhanging top layer, and sealed the edges with the prongs of a dinner fork. She repeated this with two or three tarts, shoving each into the oven in the range, the temperature gauge on the outside firmly in the red.

In the next hour or so my mother would finish up the laundry, set the stew to simmer on top of the range, and restore the kitchen to its previous state of hygienic grace. The smell of oxtail soup from the stew mingled with the sweet aroma of baking apples and pastry. In time the tarts were removed and allowed to cool, steaming and crisp in the corner of the kitchen. The next we saw of them was after dinner, when they were sliced and served as dessert. To us children the apple tarts made by our aunts and grandfather (the army cook) were very foreign, full as they were of spicy cloves and glazed on the outside with jagged shards of baked sugar. We loved our mother's simple apple tarts; the cooked apples were soft and tangy, the pastry crisp, with a dryness that called for a cup of strong tea. On Sundays we were allowed to have custard or even ice cream with our tart. By Monday the once full dinner plates were reduced to crumbs, the apple tarts were gone and we were left again to wait for Saturday.

Slow Snow

2008-12-23T18:39:00.000-08:00

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes -
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one's hands -
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Snow, by Louis MacNeice

If I had wanted to experience sub-zero (in the celsius sense) temperatures, snow ploughs, snow chains, and frozen roads I would have relocated to upstate New York or to Mt. Hood. But no, I chose the temperate climes of the Portland metro area, expecting the odd chilly downpour but nothing like the craziness of the past ten days. We've had about two feet of snow, followed by freezing rain, followed by more snow. My car has been parked in its spot for ten days, day by day submerging beneath an ever expanding pile of ploughed wintry debri, the car parked behind was hit today by a fish-tailing commuter on their way to a soon to be closed office. I've been diligently going to work everyday with the help of public transport, my woman and her four wheel drive Land Rover Freelander. The car I daily rail against for its fuel ineffiency and lack of headroom has proven its worth over the past week, its heated seats ('butt warmers' in the local parlance) are particularly pleasant of an early morning. But even the Freelander cannot cope with snow drifts without snow chains, the missing essential component for winter weather driving I've learned. When Sonia finally opted to get them today she joined a queue of 35 people only to find they they were out of stock. Yesterday there was the sum total of three people in my office, it took me two hours to get there and two hours to get back, I would like a medal.

Day 6 of this winter weather madness. I thought this would be the height of it.

Day 9. Where's my feckin' car? Apparently there is more to come.

On the travel front we recently spent pleasant weekends away in Vancouver, Seattle, Maryland, and Ashland for, respectively, a mini college reunion with Herr Doyle from Munich, the third annual halfway trip to meet the Vancouverites Hughes & Taylor (of Paradise Park fame), the seventh quasi-annual trip to Arnold (nope, you never heard of it) to spend Thanksgiving with the HalvoCarlsons and their ever expanding menagerie (now including humans), and a random visit to Sonia's hometown for their Halloween festivities for which I dressed in stockings and blonde wig (no photos available, you'll just have to use your imagination).

With some of that imagination you can believe that this is me 17 years ago. I dug this up after meeting Doyle & Hughes in BC.

Sonia has been exhibiting some photos in a wine shop in North Portland. The subject of the show is 'Fear', a little cliched perhaps so she decided to explore the cliche a little more with her choice of photo - guns. We discovered we had a friend who was born (almost) with a 9mm in his hand, and he currently owns quite a few others, mostly inherited from relatives, including a Beretta - the preferred lethal choice of one James Bond. The photos were blown up to 2ft x 2ft and are hugely impressive, God knows where we'll put them when the show is over (none purchased thus far) - they might be a little intimidating in the bathroom or the foyer, perhaps in the basement, next to the machete? The pictures provoked a range of reactions, not always predictable, and sparked some lively discussions, not always rational. Job well done I thought.

9mm Beretta.

In other news I had my first piece of writing formally published in a book of collected reminiscences about food and family. The fact that it's a non-profit publication by Dublin County Council and my sister was intimately involved in the production should not in any way take from the significance. I received my copy the other day and I noticed that my sister had decided to give herself a joint writing credit (she was always generous) and that a government minister (of the newer, lesser corrupt variety) was also a contributor. It's the last story in the book, which is apparently a good thing since it should be the last piece people will read and remember, I would have thought it a bad thing since I doubt that anyone will actually read the whole book to the end, unless they're like my sister who used read the last chapter of her holiday novels first to avoid the annoying suspense bit in the middle. I will publish it in its 700 word entirety in a later posting.

This was in my knee (see here). I don't know what it is.

I have decided to follow good on my pledge to try any old holistic shite to get my back in order and have been attending twice weekly pilates classes. Pilates certainly does not have the cache of Yoga and is generally associated with middle-aged women and lots of Lycra (this, I can confirm, is true). But what it does is to strengthen ones stomach and lower back muscles - and it seems slowly to be doing the job. I've gotten over my initial embarrassment at often being the solo inflexible male in a class of rubber jointed women but have yet to fully eradicate the occasional flatulent outburst. This is a particular risk when one has been consuming stir-fries for lunch and is then expected to lie down and bend backwards with legs apart, like an inverted squat. I try to look serene (through the pain) and hope my fartiness blends into the background noise of rubber floor-mat against middle-aged Lycra.

On the home front we have been quiet, merely completing the backyard fence, starting a raised planting bed with retaining blocks, installing a brass chandelier in the attic (having first cleaned it with Brasso - there's a story there to do with childood rituals and old artillery shells), and painting the outside of the dormer extension. Oh, and three weekends spent cutting and nailing and painting trim for the baseboard (skirting board in Irish) to hide the edges of the new floor in the attic, a fake wood vinyl affair ably installed by my good woman.

Attic update, note that the attic passed building inspection one year ago tomorrow but is still not quite 'finished'.

Christmas is upon us. The lights are lit. The rented (?) tree is decorated. The presents are wrapped. The cards are in the post. The in-laws are in town. I am weary from work and weather and looking forward to rest and festive recuperation. In the mean time snow will be general all over Portland.

Paradise Lost

2008-08-19T19:32:00.001-07:00

The little pansies by the road have turned
Away their purple faces and their gold,
And evening has taken all the bees from the thyme,
And all the scent is shed away by the cold.

Against the hard and pale blue evening sky
The mountain's new-dropped summer snow is clear
Glistening in steadfast stillness: like transcendent
Clean pain sending on us a chill down here.

from Meeting Among Mountains, by D.H. Lawrence

I am typing this on a Tuesday afternoon and I am not on vacation. While my work environment is a little odd these days (the new CEO is cleaning house) it is not yet odd enough for me to be blogging on the company dime, or, at any rate, to expect to get away with it. I am on sick leave, recovering from minor knee surgery - an arthroscopic meniscectomy, try saying that when you're full of painkillers. I had a torn meniscus (cartilage) in my right knee, and when they went in to repair it they also found a pea-sized lump of something else, which may have been the cause of my on-off knee problems of the past decade. The surgical experience was curious and drug-fueled, they pumped me full of narcotics and put me under a general anesthetic - I was a babbling mess for 48hrs thereafter, an unusually pleasant mess according to Sonia. Before I went under I had a stream of medical people asking me the same questions, including which procedure I was to have. I told the first nurse I was in for a vasectomy, she drily pointed out that it appeared they had shaved the wrong area.

Back in my younger days my knee used to inflame dramatically after a night of boozing and so-called dancing; alcohol inflames the joints and, perhaps more importantly, induces the illusion in me that I am an Irish knee-dropping hybrid of Elvis Presley & James Brown. There'll be no dancing for a while, I have three small cuts in my knee and instructions to stay away from work for a week. It is day two of the week and I am a tad restless, my unused bottle of prescription painkillers is looking very attractive right now, all I need is some Gilmore Girls. In the meantime I'll content myself with the Olympics on the telly, the web, a book on traffic (called Traffic), DVDs, the web and the (we)blog. The TV component of my recuperation is significant since this is the first time in 4 years that I have had a television with actual TV stations. Since we now have a flat panel digital thing (Sonia's birthday gift to me) and broadcast TV is still free, and increasingly digital, I purchased an antenna. Now we have the grand total of ten channels. One of the channels is the public radio network (NPR), complete with blank screen and a scrolling text box that says 'audio only'. It's only been a week but already I find myself escaping the incessant commercialism, violence and sentimentality of American television (and that's just the Olympics) to the land of political correct discourse and middle-class mores that is NPR, staring at the blank screen like a latter day Luddite (this is where those painkillers could come in handy).

Before I became a sofa bound invalid our Anglo-Hiberno-Canuck friends (Taylor & Hughes) popped down from Vancouver for the Oregon Brewers Festival and a little bit of hanging out at the end of July. It was a very pleasant trip, that is until I had the bright idea that we should all go for a walk in the woods. Mount Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon and a not-so-active volcano. Paradise Park is an alpine meadow on the south-west slope, it is well known for its wildflowers and is accessible with a 12 mile round trip hike from the famous Timberline Lodge. Part of the hike traverses along the 2000 mile long Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) and is considered the most beautiful hike in the Mt. Hood Wilderness, it's also only 60 miles from Portland. The word 'wilderness' should have been a warning, that and the fact that my ten year old hiking boots died the week before and the guide book blandly listed the twelve mile trek as a five hour walk of moderate difficulty. Ten hours after we set off we staggered into the lodge just before sunset, very tired and very hungry, the apple, two bananas and small bag of nuts long since consumed. Sonia was not so much hungry as malnourished, she was beyond exhaustion and collapsed in a dehydrated heap on a couch, I knew she was in a bad way when we couldn't even interest her in a pint of pale ale. The cause of this misery? Snow.

One hour into the hike we lost the trail, it was covered in cold white stuff that looked remarkably like snow, but since this was a blistering hot day in July we were a little confused. Since we were at ~6000ft (~2000m) we shouldn't have been. Instead of finding the trail we found an older male hiker, complete with compass and map, who had spent the previous two hours wandering around in circles. At this point the so-sensible Irish men in the hiking group suggested that we turn back but, as always, were swayed by the enthusiasm and raw sex appeal of the Anglo-American female contingent. With a little help from some fellow walkers we managed to find the trail and wound our way up and down to Paradise Park. It proved tiresome to have to continuously cross snow and ice strewn trails in a pair of hiking shoes, particularly when one's hiking partners were skipping around like drunken mountain goats. Suffice to say my arse was well wet by the time we reached the Park which truly was very beautiful, the mountain looming large and the flowers in kaleidoscopic bloom. The real problems started on the way back, when we hit the less sunny north-west section that looped back to the PCT. The snow was more prevalent and the trail periodically disappeared for very long sections, this proved to be troublesome. Since I was slipping and sliding and even more useless than usual the three others fanned out to find the trail - essentially locating fallen logs with chain-sawed edges. This was a slow process and at times the mountain slope was precipitously steep and snow scattered, my arse was getting wetter. We eventually found our way back to the trail intersection only to realise, not surprisingly, we had traversed a complete circle. Since the sun was setting we started jogging down the trail, led by the super fit Canadian contingent. We still had three miles to go when we reach the top of the steep Zig-Zag Canyon. It may well have been thirty. Myself and Sonia were not well and struggled along slowly. John & Caz laid down markers across the earlier snow covered trail and waited for us near the end. The sun was going down, the wind was winding up, and our car looked very lonely in a once full car park. As we headed down the mountain, full of water, coca-cola, veggie burgers and beer, the empty gas tank warning light went on - it was 20 miles to the next gas station, luckily it was all downhill. We left the house at 8:30am that morning and limped back in at 11:30pm that night. It was a long day but the pictures are very pretty - see John's phone and Caz's pics below. The day after our hike a mountaineer was killed coming off the peak and a hiker was airlifted, having slipped and fallen 200ft, breaking his ankle and shoulder. We won't be going back in a hurry, at least not without proper preparation, and a saline solution for Sonia.

A common sight. Note the light clothing, the running socks. What happened to the well equipped Irish hillwalker? Too many walks on too many well marked trails on too many sunny days leading to a false sense of American ease.

I see a mountain, but where's the trail?

View from the Park.

Sonia and Rock.

The weekend before the operation we took ourselves off to the Columbia Gorge for Sonia's birthday weekend of hiking, massage, and strong beer. The trail we hiked was the one we should've taken with John & Caz, it's called the Eagle Creek trail, it was also twelve miles, and actually did take 5hrs, it was very pleasant, almost as nice as the marion-berry pie, pale ale, hot soaks, and massage that followed. We took no pictures but our friend Richard took much better ones than we could have and he's conveniently put them in his blog. This coming weekend we're off to visit John & Caz again in BC, this time with the excuse that our mutual friend, Mr. Doyle of Munchen, is over visiting for the first time. There will be no hiking, just lots of medicinal alcohol consumption, tea sipping, abuse and Afghan rugs (we're gonna visit the neighbours).

This is Kali. She was the best-dog at the wedding of our friends Tom & Kiernan in Northern California just before we went to Europe. She is the Platonic ideal of a beautiful, friendly, golden Labrador and is originally from Ecuador. This picture was taken a few weeks ago on our front deck the weekend before she died, we miss Kali.

Irlanda

2008-07-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

‘I am of Ireland,
And the Holy Land of Ireland,
And time runs on,’ cried she.
‘Come out of charity,
Come dance with me in Ireland.’

© W.B. Yeats, from I Am Of Ireland.

We've been back in Oregon for three weeks, but it seems like three months. Did we really just spend 2+ weeks careering around Ireland and Spain? It's all a blur, and a very pleasant one at that. We met everyone we could and enjoyed every last cup of tea (there was a lot of them) and pint of Guinness (not so many) and americano (twice a day in Barcelona).

My home town (that would be Kildare) is about 1600yrs old and was founded as a monastic site by St. Brigid, or so the story goes. It has a Grey Abbey (Franciscan, in ruins), a White Abbey (Carmelite, still in service) and a Black Abbey (Knights Hospitaller, in ruins), in addition to a modernist Roman Catholic parish church, and a Victorian-era Protestant (Church of Ireland) Cathedral. It also has a 150ft high, 1000yr old stone round tower, and a 1200yr old Celtic high cross. Americans are fairly fascinated by the depth of European cultural history and oddly obsessed by castles. Hence people are always asking me about castles in Ireland, of which there are many, but never ask about monasteries or celtic/pre-celtic strucures, of which there are many more.

The country has changed in very obvious ways - there is more money, drugs, sex, and Polish people (not necessarily in that order) - but has also stayed the same - the barmen are still funny, the news chokingly parochial, and the society incredibly inter-connected. I did notice a particular increase in sexually explicit grafitti, including a minimalist line drawing of the male genitalia at the entrance to my parent's housing estate (or sub-division in American); when I pointed this out to my mother she responded, without missing a beat, that all she saw was an airplane. Ancient fertility airplanes seemed to abound.

Other than castles, most Americans seem to assume that housing in Ireland consists of white-washed stone cottages with thatched roofs, or red-bricked Victorians or Georgians with iron railings out front. When I explain that most housing in Ireland is less than 40yrs old they seem so sad, they would be sadder still if they saw the row upon row of concrete boxes that blight the landscape. I grew up in one such concrete box in a public housing estate of many more rows of such boxes - a particular function of a society that generated little wealth and exported most of its human capital for many decades. Now that Ireland is going through a nouveau-riche phase the concrete boxes are bigger, more widely spaced, and better landscaped. Not that quaint white-washed and red-bricked abodes do not exist, they do, but in relatively few numbers and are generally full of English artists or Irish solicitors or, in certain parts of Dublin, Nigerian refugees.

One thing that certainly hasn't changed is the weather, a subject I broached in an earlier post. It is still shite. I had forgotten how unpredictable and potentially miserable the summers can be, we were in Ireland for about 10 days and it rained for about 7 of those, and was intermittently sunny, but not really warm, for the remaining 3. Barcelona was a comfortable 30C (86F) for most of our stay, but when we returned to Dublin airport there were gale-force winds and horizontal rain. The irony is that the Irish on the plane were sun-burnt and clad in t-shirts and shorts (myself included), but the handful of Spanish tourists were well prepared with waterproof jackets and fleece. Familiarity perhaps breeds less contempt than a sort of optimistic amnesia.

The trip to Barcelona was for 5 days at the end of our holiday. This was a deliberate attempt to escape the Irish weather, get a bit of foreign culture, and spend some quality time with my niece and nephew (and maybe their parents). Barcelona is a fascinating and beautiful city, art suffuses the place, from the churches to the streets, and the city is bursting with life - Portland seems comatose by comparison. Our favourite tourist spot was Gaudi's unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia; our favourite museum the Fundacio Joan Miro; our favourite restaurant L'Hortet; and our favourite Barcelonians (?) were Carlos & Ramon - the very generous friends of Debbie & Mark who gave them full run of their apartment, where we spent a lot of time on the 'terraza'.

Sonia took her 30yr old manual camera with her and so we got a bunch of de-focused but kinda cool black and white shots of people and places. But we really couldn't be bothered bringing it to Barcelona, hence photos from the Catalan capital have a little more colour.

This lovely little lady is Caoimhe Molly Finn. Her dad is my little brother. That's my big hand. She is the most beloved baby in Ireland.

Side entrance to the Holy See of breweries - the Guinness brewery in St. James' Gate, Dublin. We sucked up the 14euro per person fee and took the tourist tour. It was actually worth it, especially since all the fee-free National museums I had intended showing Sonia were closed that day (Monday, for the weekly dusting).

The inside of the oldest pub in Dublin, The Brazen Head. The barman is English, the wait staff Polish, and the customers mostly American. But the pints were lovely.

St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, around the corner from where I went to college, and within which I had my graduation ceremony. It is a Protestant Cathedral (Church of Ireland) - note that St. Patrick pre-dates the reformation and is equally claimed by both sides of the ecumenical divide. In fact, the Protestant church in Ireland can claim a more direct link to early Irish Christianity than the current Papists since the Celtic Church was community driven and decidedly anti-Roman .

A rare sunny day that we managed to find on the day we went to Glendalough for a hike with my big sister Maria - that's her disappearing in blue and blonde. Guess what lies in the middle of the valley? Yes, another monastery, dating from 600AD and founded by St. Kevin.

The picturesque town of Killaloe. Everybody I know in Ireland seems to live on the other side of the river in Ballina. The river is the broad majestic Shannon, and beyond the bridge is Lough Derg. Killaloe is where Brian Boru, the last high king of Ireland, was born. The current high king of Killaloe-Ballina is Brian Grogan.

The Mahony Clan.

Not an original Celtic High Cross, but you get the idea.

The lovely Riona and two of her Grogan men.

Barcelona, viewed from near the Olympic diving pool in Montjuic. La Sagrada Familia rising regally in the distance.

La Sagrada Familia, the nativity facade. This really has to be seen to be believed, and preferably lying on one's back, since the level of detail beggars belief and neck muscles.

Lorcan Dominic Finn standing coolly beneath the main entrance.

Interior columns, tree-like structures stretching to heaven, carved in a semi-ellipsoidal geometry that was invented by Gaudi but implemented using computers. The church is still a work in progress and won't be finished for many years to come.

A leaning colonnade in Park Guell, something that Gaudi actually finished (according to Mark).

Sonia's arty street shot.

Uncle attacks nephew with water on the roof-top terrace. Nephew actually enjoys it.

The lovely ladybird is Ariana Alice Finn, enjoying her 2nd birthday. She is a force of nature - especially if you're a pigeon.

Sonia and the father-in-law in the repose of choice.

Erratica

2008-06-05T04:58:00.000-07:00

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.

Four o'clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.
There's something laughable about this,

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow
Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart
(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

High and preposterous and separate -
Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!
O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

One shivers slightly, looking up there.
The hardness and the brightness and the plain
Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

Is a reminder of the strength and pain
Of being young; that it can't come again,
But is for others undiminished somewhere.

© Philip Larkin, Sad Steps

If this latest series of posts appear a little erratic then it is perhaps because they tend to be written between the hours of 2am and 6am as I recover from a poorly chosen combination of dinner and dinner hour. The last time it was a soy-burger/beer/noodle soup/ice- cream/tea/chocolate chip cookie at 9pm choice, this time it's a lentil-potato curry/beer/sponge cake at 10:30pm choice. The latter was at one of our favourite spots, The Farm Cafe, where the food is fine, the music eclectic, and the waitresses of the knowledgeable-bohemian-smiley Portland variety. These meals were also preceded by a couple of hours of sweaty grunting and general thuggery that could be described in some quarters as basketball. The basketball is at once a source of exercise and injury, of pleasure and pain, both physical and mental. Time was, when I was 20 years younger and 50lbs lighter (!), I wasn't half bad but now I'm about three-quarters bad, the quarter good comes from my elongated proportions, the fact that half the guys I play with are Vietnamese (on the short side), and a residual ability to pull a jump shot out of my arse (not an easy feat). Some nights it goes well, others less so, I take ibuprofen for the knee and the battered back, and pale ale for my bruised ego. Americans take basketball much more seriously than the Irish, I was always fairly ridiculed by my rugby-soccer-hurling-gaelic football-playing siblings for indulging in such a foreign, vaguely feminine game. Of course there's an entire language and play book in use over here to describe the game that Brother Canice, back in St. Joseph's Academy, never quite taught us - 'post up', 'baseline', 'fade-away'. I have no idea what they're talking about, I just run around like an eejit jumping on people.

Playing a game of basketball or soccer with someone is a great way to get a sense of their character, their willingness to compete, how they perform under duress, and what they look like in nylon shorts (or crotch length cotton ones in my case). You have the selfish, the generous, the stoic, the whingers, the reckless, the conservative, the confident, the weak, the delusional, and the plain useless. Back in California, where we played soccer together after work, these characteristics also got mixed in with national stereotypes since we had a truly international cast of characters - Palestinian, Italian, French, English, Egyptian, Algerian, Ethiopian, Corkonian, and the odd American. The Irish and English played in their usual robust fashion, that is to say with more sweat and swearing than skill, the Italian and French connection were full of semi-effectual flair, and the north Africans were flashy but unreliable. I was always pushing for Ireland against the rest of the world, but since the Irish were already perceived as taking over the company this never went down well. I do miss the multicultural milieu that was my work place in San Jose, my religio-republican co-workers up here are a tad more middle American (little Vietnamese lads notwithstanding).

I am an uncle again, Caoimhe Cahill-Finn was born on June 2 (Pacific Time), weighing ~9lbs. Mother and child are doing very well, the father is apparently a little traumatised. Her name poses yet another challenge for Sonia, she has only recently come to grips with my God-daughter's name - Grainne (pron. grawnya) - now she has baby Caoimhe (pron. kwee-va) to contend with. The name is fairly common back home and apparently means gentleness/loveliness/grace, she'll be taking after her mother it would seem.

The beautiful baby Caoimhe.

The fence project is 90% complete and, for once, I am quite happy at the outcome (I am a hard man to please according to my mother). Sonia did her bit and single-handedly mounted most of the facing boards, about half of which I re-mounted the next day 'cos I wanted the sanded side facing out (hard to please?). Post construction most of the neighbours gave us the thumb's-up (I think it was their thumb), so maybe they're as anxious to hide from us as we from they. We've taken to sitting out of an evening, burning down the remnants of the old fence, sipping cold beer or warm wine as the geese echo-bark their noisy way into the sunset. Next we need lights, a barbecue, and then a big garden party, maybe when we return from the holiday.

I don't have a baby, just a back yard that demands an equivalent amount of attention.

The holiday? I keep forgetting that we're going home (or to Europe as Sonia calls it), in about two weeks for two weeks or so. This trip is costing a small fortune, what with the American dollar's descent into irrelevancy and the rocket fuel rising cost of air travel, so my goal is to get value for money, I may even have a plan. Certainly, 5 days are to be spent in Barcelona meeting up with Mark & Debs and the bambinos, so that'll be all Gaudi and Dali and midnight meals by the plaza. Ireland will be an exercise in catching up over endless cups of tea and pints of Guinness, taking abuse over my elongated American vowels, dodging rain-showers and speeding drivers, going to my local pub and nodding at over-weight alcoholic men in their late thirties that I last saw as over-weight alcoholic men in their early twenties. And then I'll come back and wonder what makes a home, what is place and what is culture, where is my community, what has changed more - me or my family or my friends or my country? I'll be conflicted and confused, dislocated and depressed, at least until Sonia pats me on the left buttock and hands me a gin and tonic (Tanqueray, with a twist of lemon).

This entry may have started erratically at 4am of a Thursday morning but it's ending erratically at 8pm of a Sunday evening. I was hungover and disoriented for most of today, a once common condition but now a rather irregular occurrence. We took ourselves off last night to see our friend Mike's band, Ronster, play their unique brand of whiskey-metal-indie-flamenco-punk-rock. As if that wasn't enough excitement we happened into another bar where we discovered the best female punk band I've heard in a while (actually the only one I've heard in a while) - Sick Sick Sister is the group. Staying on the musical theme, on the radio right now is my favourite Portland musical maestro - DJ Santo.

Next weekend we happily go to the Hodge-Piel wedding in Northern-Northern California and then we're off to 'Europe'. Posts will be infrequent until I recover from the mania that usually precedes these trips and the jet lag that succeeds them. Hopefully the bit in between will be full of friends, family, wine and funky architecture.

Politico

2008-05-22T23:40:00.000-07:00

Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forwith, and we
Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days
For our majorities to rent
With unshared friends and unwalked ways,
But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of minorities
That, unopposed at last, return
Each night with cancelled promises
They want renewed. They never learn.

© Philip Larkin

All politics is local. As of Tuesday 20th Portland has elected its first openly gay mayor, a chap called Sam who looks quite like Morrissey, and Oregon came close to selecting a 4' 9" political activist called Steve with a hook for a left hand as the Democratic candidate for State Senator (he won a majority in Portland but lost the hook averse rural vote). The fellow with the missing fibulae garnered some national interest, not least for his self-deprecating wit, but the handsome devil of a mayor was largely ignored, this in spite of an (alleged) inappropriate relationship (aren't they all?) with a 17yr old intern. This, one hopes, is a sign of the times. The mayoral race was probably well worth ignoring at any rate, it's hard to get excited when some of the key issues are urban growth boundaries, sustainability, and bicycle lanes. This is not to say that Portland does not have more pressing issues, such as income inequality, crime, homelessness, and affordable housing, but they're not as easy to make fun of.

The primary system used to be a mystery to most non-Americans until the Obamania-Clintonista marathon captivated the world's attention for a few weeks back in February. Foreigners were particularly fascinated with the idea of ordinary voters choosing a party's candidate, instead of some incestuous committee of cowboys and apparatchiks. Of course initial enthusiasm has worn somewhat as the months dragged on and the race assumed the air of a distant battlefield, Flanders circa 1915 perhaps, at the height of trench warfare, well established front lines, occasional pot-shots interspersed with all-out frontal assaults, mass casualties, and headlines on page five. But the mud is finally beginning to dry, if not stick, the end is nigh and, ironically, the candidate will ultimately be selected by a group of unelected Politburo types called super-delegates. For the record, Portland went for Mr. O by a margin of 65 to 35, they're all Obama mamas and papas around here.

I have no vote, in this land or my homeland, I am thus doubly disenfranchised. Ireland refuses to grant expatriate voting rights, and America refuses to grant tax-paying non-citizens the right of redress at the ballot box. What is one to do but badger and berate one's friends and relatives into doing the right thing, or renounce foreign kings and pledge allegiance, or renounce foreign countries and move home. My political persuasions are a mystery to most people, God knows they're a mystery to me, I haven't had to make an electoral choice in ten years. I am equally comfortable arguing for globalisation (exhibit A: me), against global exploitation, for the right to have an abortion, against the act of abortion, for remaining in Iraq, against the invasion of Iraq, for socialised health-care, against (some) social welfare, for low corporate tax rates, against corporate consumerist culture; and will readily agree with whatever Noam Chomsky or The Economist tells me to think. I blame the Finn family dinner table, where robust, if not rigourous, debate was the norm, particularly amongst the pig-headed males. I once famously demanded of my father: "if one man wants to shove his lad up another man's arse, what business is it of yours?", I was 19, he was speechless. I suppose I'm some type of crypto-socialist-libertarian-capitalist hybrid with working class roots and middle class guilt. It's just as well I moved to Portland.

On the home front the fence building is entering it's second phase. The first phase was fence posts and concrete, the second will be retaining walls, cedar boards and chop-saws. The concrete brought back mixed memories of my time working as a labourer on the EuroDisney construction site between college years. That experience could be the subject of a separate post (pardon the pun), or series of posts (likewise), or a minor novel, or a three act play - Act 1: naive, skinny omnivore boy lands in exurban Paris via London via Dublin, lost and a little confused, looking, searching, mostly for money and loose French women; Act 2: caravan living, cheap French beer, cheaper Moroccan hashish, concrete fumes, horse meat, hairy Cork men and Tipperary plasterers take their toll on his innocent Irish soul; Act 3: a confident (sort of), skinnier vegetarian man emerges, tanned, a hint of a Cork accent, with a fondness for sandwiches-aux-frites, and a deep disdain of all things Tipperary.

Fence posts by Finn. Not a hairy Cork back in sight.

On the travel front we took in a flying trip to Ashland, spending a sun-stroked day fixing the irrigation network (at least I did). We also squeezed in a so-so play (Indian (sub-continental) but in American farcical style with accents to match), some tequila shots con Los Cordovas, and a pleasant mother's day breakfast with Sonia's mum Esther. Ireland's mother's day was back in March, or so my mother informed me last week. Prior to that we trekked up to Vancouver in British Columbia for our annual pilgrimage to the Portland of the North (as we smug Oregonians like to think of it). We completed a 10km run with 60,000 or so Canadians, and our friends John and Caz. T'was John Hughes' ducking and diving cousin who got us both the start in Paris back in the day. A little bit of Hughes can probably still be found in the walls of 'Pirates of the Caribbean'. We were mixing the plaster for the walls when the Galwegian was overcome with the after-affects of his 21st birthday celebration of the night before. Suffice to say that the buckets were convenient and the glitter you spot as you hurtle by the Johnny Depp animatronic is probably not gold but a little piece of petrified carrot.

Cosy country cottage, as Sonia likes to advertise it.

Well pruned apple tree, struggling to recover from the coldest Spring on record (...for existence of global warming, against massive ethanol subsidies...).

Well pruned Finn head, can't blame global warming on this, perhaps paternal genetics. Note the caterpillar/una-brow.

Good Fences

2008-05-08T22:05:00.000-07:00

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

© Robert Frost, from Mending Wall

I am building a wall between myself and the world, or less dramatically, I am replacing a fallen down fence in the back yard. The fence mending and barrier creating may yet be a metaphor for my changing sensibilities since becoming a home owner and city dweller. Until our move to the northern rain forest I had never actually lived in a city, I had always confined myself to the outskirts and suburbs, close to the factories where I worked, I even commuted to college by train from my small home town. I was somewhat proud of being the only student in the class with sheep shite on his shoes - the woolly bandits would come in off the Curragh plains to munch on our residential grass and rose trees, leaving little nuggets for the unwary or the hungover of an early morning.

I have found that city living brings with it certain challenges, not least of which are the mentally deranged individuals one encounters on the street on a semi-regular basis, such as the gentleman who randomly informed me that he had been advised to hit me a punch. I responded, in high pitched agitation, that I didn't know him from Adam. Sonia informed me that he wouldn't know that phrase from Adam as it is not in common use in these parts. Then there is the minor matter of three visits by the police, on at least one occasion I was greeted at the front door by a shaven-headed member of Portland's finest donning blue rubber gloves and told 'you know why I'm here', actually I did but he had the wrong address. On another occasion we called them since some good citizen had opted not to trouble the local dump and had instead left the remains of their garbage all over our side yard, including a fridge and a table (refinished and in the foyer).

Location, location, whatever - our house is on a main street, not far from Portland's oldest city park and the gateway to a 40 mile network of trails that is commonly used by the city's ever shifting homeless population. Homelessness is not unique to the USA or to Portland, but I grew up in a town with one homeless person, and even then it was only for a few months for one year. Here there are vast hordes of mostly men rambling the streets, collecting cans and bottles for cash deposits, sleeping rough or in shelters. It is not unusual to find a grown man rummaging in the neighbour's recycle bins, filling his shopping trolley and rattling away down the sidewalk. They're mostly harmless, and mostly mentally ill in one way or another. One Saturday as I was out weeding my way into an early grave I had occasion to listen to what I thought was a very loud and very vulgar cell phone argument across the street, but no, it was the local loony shouting into the void, fighting whatever devil was in his head. On the same day two likely characters came stumbling along the footpath, arguing about the communal shopping trolley or the walking pace or the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, until Bert grabbed Ernie by the neck and pushed him to the ground. All the while I'm sitting on my front door step, trowel in hand, observing the drama, pondering the imminent ethical dilemma of intervention or non. Luckily my UN security council resolution moment was avoided by the arrival, yet again, of a Portland police car.

Not that it's all mad men on an endless quest for empty beer bottles (or even full ones) around here, I meet most of my neighbours when pottering around the front or back, walking (some might say patrolling) the property line, pruning trees and scrubbing stop signs (don't ask). I met a Russian chap for the first time last weekend, I tried engaging him on the subject of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest, but he seemed unaware of what I was talking about - that happens a lot. Some Americans have the disarming habit of divulging the most personal of details to relative strangers, hence I had a chap tell me the other day about his adoption plans as I was out with the measuring tape by my fence to be. In Ireland we talk about the weather or the football or pedophile priests, certainly not about ourselves, and certainly not about ourselves to people whose name we can't remember and just before we put an empty beer can in the neighbour's big blue bin. I was out and about another day when an SUV pulled in looking for directions, it turned out to be an Irish chap called Aidan from Limerick, whose brother works in my former company, it's a small world says he, it's a small country says I (meaning Ireland, because the USA is in fact quite large).

So a fence will be built, not necessarily a total barrier, but perhaps enough of one to keep the shopping trolleys and schizophrenics at a comfortable remove, whilst I sip tea and watch the flames flicker in Sonia's newly baptised-in-fire pot belly stove.

Hibernus Finus

2008-03-16T23:14:00.000-07:00

My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair
one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with
the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

from The Song of Solomon (King James Bible, 1611)

It seems that indeed the winter has passed in this land, or at least we are yet again lulled into a false sense of summer by an unusually sunny April weekend. So it is an appropriate time to emerge from my blogging hibernation and regale the world with tales of woe and woodwork, opera and operations, shamrocks and brass monkeys.

So, where was I? Ah yes, a cramped and sleepless Thanksgiving was indeed spent in a boat with a heavily pregnant sister-in-law and four dogs. It was more fun than it sounded, so much so that Sonia just went back for two weeks, this time to help with the just-born Gage Carlson as his Mom reluctantly returned to work.

This is wee Gage Carslon being fed to an alligator by his mommy
(I think that's an arm).

This is not just the longest separation of our short married life, but the longest split for about five years. It's taken Sonia this long to leave me alone for two weeks, she normally worries that I'll be off gallivanting (as my mother would say), drinking and what-not. If only, per my latest re-incarnation I occupied myself with painting and woodwork and a 720 mile round trip to Spokane in eastern Washington. Our friend Bernie Brazil, aunt of the bold Colm Brazil, decided to move back to Spokane after being absent for 28 years. Myself and another of her friends volunteered to make sure she got there in one piece. I drove her car, a rather compact Toyota Corolla; I turned up that morning with my Anna Karenina book on CD (all 30hrs of it), to find that Bernie had only a tape-deck, and that her radio had no FM reception. During the next 7.5hrs I managed to find about 20 minutes each of (bad) country music, right wing talk radio, and religious propaganda. That left about 6.5hrs of wind and rain, and the sunshine of the eastern Washington plains and upper Colombia river valley. It was a fascinating drive nonetheless, winding through the sheer walls of the Colombia Gorge, and the broad tree-less slopes east of Hood River, the tumbleweeds of Kennewick, and then lovely Spokane with the snow-tipped Rocky Mountain foothills in the near distance. It was sad to see Bernie leave the area but she's been a social worker for over 40yrs and is a little burnt out. She's gonna try something different and look after herself for a change, she has no regrets.

Christmas was spent here and at the schizophrenic Oregon coast (four seasons in one hour), where we occupied ourselves with walks and fires and speeding tickets. That was Sonia's third in 18 months, which ultimately resulted in a letter from the state informing her that she may not drive between 12am and 6am during the month of February - a rather arbitrary restriction it would seem, but entirely appropriate in my opinion, in Sonia's opinion someone is out to get her. We took another trip to Ashland, where I went snow-shoeing for the first time ever, that was at once pleasant and painful, my extra few pounds at times resulted in me sinking in snow drifts up to my oxters, much to my companions' amusement. I also managed to get in my bi-annual apple tree pruning, this time I also tackled the plum tree, and much like how my sister would over-zealously pluck away an entire eyebrow, I managed to reduce the plum tree to a rather minimalist state. I'm confident it will recover and eventually blanket the ground and, by extension, the carpets of the house and cottage with an impossible-to-remove purplish mush.

We also spent a rushed but very entertaining weekend in New York City, meeting up with Sonia's Godparents (Dan & Ruth) to go to the Metropolitan Opera to see Peter Grimes, a dark and depressing tale of social isolation, death and dishonour. It wasn't cheery but it was very good, the stage moving back and forth with the imaginary wind and waves, the chorus moving as one, the presence and violence of the lead character, a strong narrative, lovely music and powerful voices. All that and the red velvet seats and floors and walls, not to mention the dark suits and dresses and the blue hair of the New York octogenarian glitterati. When not getting in some culture we walked the streets in the rain - massive downpours of the heaviest rain in the world - struggled with the subway signage, strolled through Central Park, battled the crowds at the Museum of Modern Art, were equally amused and tortured at a comedy club, and of course explored as many Irish pubs as we could find. We managed to shut down at least one pub in Greenwich Village at 4am, a very sensible closing hour in my opinion. Sonia emerged from the bathroom to find the place empty, save for me, the bouncer and the Donegal bar-maid, talking crap in the fading light. I imagine that is how I will end my days, talking crap in the fading light to the great big Donegal barmaid in the sky.

Our hotel was in mid-town Manhattan and on that first night after the opera I wandered off to find some food as my good woman lay collapsed in bed. As I emerged from the 24hr diner I found myself walking down a broad boulevard, my newly purchased rain coat hanging at my knees, hands dug into the pockets in my best Jimmy Dean pose, I glanced up and there was the Empire State building, clouds drifting around its red-lit upper stories, still and quiet and utterly imposing. This was one of my American Moments, an iconic time and place burned into my cultural sub-conscious suddenly become real, I half expected King Kong to sweep down and knock a plane or two out of the sky. I get these moments every now and then, like the first time I saw the Golden Gate Bridge, or the Grand Canyon, or Yosemite. I haven't had one in Portland yet, seeing the condominium complex where Drugstore Cowboy was filmed doesn't really do it for me.

As March came and went so too did a number of milestones, the 8th anniversary of me metaphorically stepping off the boat, the 37th year of my existence, and St. Patrick's day - the annual excuse for Americans to drink like fish and blame a Roman holy man. In Portland they also have the annual Shamrock Run, this year I did the 8km and Sonia suicidally tackled the 15km. It was, as they say in London, brass monkey weather, as in: cold enough to freeze the balls off a metallic monkey. Although veterans of the race reliably informed me that the weather was balmy by comparison to previous snow-strewn years. Photos below for your amusement, including the official photo from the organisers - my brother said that I appear to have a poker up my arse, certainly it felt that way at times. Oddly enough, it was his gifts over the years of Paddy paraphernalia that I finally found a use for - note the attractive boxer shorts.

Arse, by Halvorson.

Marathon Man (poker not in sight).

The younger brother also appears to have found success with his efforts at rugby coaching, having just made the local club, Cill Dara RFC, provincial champions in their division. He is quite the hero, wherever we go now in the town we shall be known simply as Enda's brother, or father, or sister, or mother. We shall dwell in the quiet anonymity of his belly's shadow, walking his dog, mowing his lawn, or begging for favours as the case may be (a jersey in my particular case - hint, hint).

For those of you waiting with baited breath for news of home improvement projects they run something like: attic passed inspection; chimney in attic exposed and cleaned with hammer and chisel and lower back pain; attic painted ('silver fog', i.e. bluey-grey); bathroom cabinetry re-sanded and re-stained with new hardware; bathroom painted ('honey', i.e. yellow); kitchen cabinetry re-painted ('squire', i.e. browny-green) with new hardware; corner shelves in the bathroom (fir, stained red mahogany); lintel molding across kitchen windows and doors (likewise fir); new picture rail in the dining room (hemlock); repainted above picture rail in the dining room ('rye grass', i.e. green). Yet again I am reaching a point where a hiatus will be required, lest I lose the plot and take my new and rather dangerous circular saw to the walls ('tate olive').

The biggest excitement of the past few months has been the eventual diagnosis of Sonia's chest ailments, she's been wheezing and coughing for a while. It turns out she has TB (Tubercle Bacillus, or Tuberculosis), as you might imagine this came as something of a surprise, particularly since we aren't living in the 19th century. Since this is the 21st century and we live in the USA then antibiotics are readily available and, as of her last x-ray, the infection has completely cleared up. Unusually, she was presenting symptoms of active TB but it still took her crack doctors several months and two bronchoscopies to figure out what was going on - when they eventually did the basic skin test it was kinda obvious within 5 minutes. She still has to take a daily cocktail (of antibiotics) for the next three months but is otherwise the finest, allergies and 15km runs nothwithstanding. The developing world is quite overrun with TB so most cases in these parts are foreign born types - the local TB clinic has signs in Spanish, Russian, Chinese, French, and Vietnamese. It's hard to know where she got the bug but the chief suspect is Nepal, where 50% of the population has at least a latent TB infection, i.e. carrying the bacteria but with no active symptoms. Immediate family have all been tested and have come back negative with one exception - yep, me! I have a latent infection and have to take one antibiotic a day for six months (half way there), which is fair enough since it was my idea to drag her to one of the poorest countries in the world for a bit of sight seeing.

The various reactions to the news have been curious. People of our generation know little about the disease, they think CDC and drug resistance and airplane bans, they're better informed about HIV or syphilis - o.k. maybe not syphilis. Although some did sarcastically suggest it was an ideal time for her to drape a tartan blanket over her lap, grab a wheelchair, head to the desert and write romantic poetry. The older friends and family are quite familiar with it, my grand-uncle spent 6 months in a sanatorium in Ireland, my aunt spent 2 years in the same place (and apparently had a baby in the mean time). It also turns out that lots of people have the bug or once had it, co-workers, hairdressers, friends and relatives. Although having the active disease is still a rarity around here, so Sonia still gets cool points for that; she also gets paid a visit once a day by a Somali or Vietnamese representative of the county health department for 'directly observed therapy', just in case she forgets to take the pills (I wouldn't trust her either). So it's been all very dramatic and Sonia's complaints of 'chummy' lungs these past years weren't just needless griping or vain efforts at eliciting sympathy from her heedless husband. She reckons the TB has been secretly holding her back, and now that her lungs are all cleared up she can run marathons again, hence the 15km in March, which nearly induced respiratory failure, and the the 10km in Vancouver BC next week.

I will endeavour to keep posting on a more regular basis, keeping everyone up to date on whatever strange ailment is currently afflicting my wee woman - apart from ancient bacteria, she is also harbouring severe allergic reactions to tree pollen and small dogs. Perhaps I can choose as my next topic the peculiarities of American politics and the infinitely long presidential campaign, of which I can take no part - taxation without representation anyone? Or maybe our upcoming trip home (June 20th - July 6th), note that I still refer to Ireland as home, when will that change I wonder?

Rome Is Not Built

2007-11-17T05:43:00.000-08:00

You also loved lines pegged out in the garden,
The spade nicking the first straight edge along
The tight white string. Or string stretched perfectly
To mark the outline of a house foundation,
Pale timber battens set at right angles
For every corner, each freshly sawn new board
Spick and span in the oddly passive grass.

© Seamus Heaney, from Markings.

I had meant to promptly follow up the last batch of serious writings with more light-hearted fare but 'promptly' and 'blog' don't sit well together these days, in fact they're sleeping in separate bedrooms of late, on entirely different schedules, muttering at each other over toast of a wet morning before their dreary morning commutes. It's this bloody house I tell you, I have a love-loathe relationship with it. As I type this I am lying on my lovely long red couch in a warm glow of tall green walls and soft lighting and all is well within these lines. But if I step out the back there's a minor mountain of damp leaves freshly raked, beside that the 6" deep trough freshly dug and awaiting the cubic-yard (?) of pea gravel that's been sitting outside the front for four weeks because the delivery truck couldn't fit down the lane.

Pea gravel you ask, perchance what for? Because ten years ago my obsessions were drinkage and fornication, and today they are drainage and insulation. I should have realised that this would happen when I entered the mortgage market, in every performance review I've ever had in my corporate-slave career I've always scored highly in the 'ownership of issues' ('giving a shit') section. I find myself sitting in the living-room staring at the beige plastic light-switch wall-plate, bothered not just by the blandness of the colour, the cheapness of the material, but the fact that it is clearly not level and is tilting several degrees relative to the horizontal (as is so much in this house). Now all the rooms have brushed nickel wall plates, put in painstakingly (I was electrocuted after all) and positioned with a spirit level. This is madness. Two years ago I knew nothing about wall-plates, could care less about them, I couldn't tell you what pea-gravel was, nor did I own three shovels and a pick-axe, or a lawn-mower, or a string-trimmer, or two machetes, not to mention the flagstone, the cedar posts, the trees, or, for that matter, a fridge, a washing machine and a clothes dryer - for which I find myself downloading instructions from the web, putting it into bizarre test-modes and interrogating hexadecimal codes because I think the outside is too hot.

And of course, there's the attic remodel, two months overdue and 50% over budget. We find ourselves on a Sunday morning in giant cathedral-esque hardware stores pushing giant trolleys laden down with doors, or toilets, or sinks, invariably shouting at each other, or complete strangers, in the car park because we know we'll be back in a couple of hours, having forgotten a hinge or a husband. It's exhausting, and every now and then for a period of several weeks or months I just give up, the door of the vanity in the bathroom is off its hinges, has been for six months, waiting for a good staining, propped up beside the new taps, new in the sense that they are four months old. People tell me I should relax, take a measured approach, Rome wasn't built in a day - bugger that, it's been nearly two years of this crap. But one shouldn't dwell on the negative, it's not in my nature (ehem), the end is nigh for the attic and the place (in & out) is looking well - with the possible exception of the pile of lumber in the back that needs dumping, and the basement which is semi-finished, and the...

On the work front it's been a ridiculous couple of months. My department was effectively shut down and 13 of 18 people were laid-off. The company is in the shitter, they haven't made a profit in years and my group was not quite key to the corporate strategy. I was kept on with my boss to finish up some projects and then migrate to a different group, doing similar work, but on more advanced technology. That was not a pleasant wedding gift. I am happy to still have a job, and glad of their vote of confidence, but quite dis-heartened that my co-workers were tossed out with the garbage, in some cases after 13 years of service. At least two of them have left Oregon in order to find work. Welcome to America, home of the free, land of the brave, and domicile of the one-day notice. And then my boss (now my peer) exited for 6 weeks of sick leave, a minor matter of fusing some vertebrae together, so I am a one-man show until Christmas. It's all a bit odd, I'm sitting in a sea of empty cubicles, there's a distinct echo, I am beginning to withdraw into my own world, I even put paper over the glass cubicle partitions. I also have a lab and some very expensive equipment to play with, or possibly sell on EBay. Over the years I've realised that I am not at my best when left alone, I like (need) to work with people. When my (ex)boss arrives back he may find me in a corner of the lab, talking to an oscilloscope, or more likely shouting at it, naked except for a few strategically placed anti-static velcro straps.

To compensate for existential career angst and sisyphian home improvement projects we've taken ourselves off to Ashland, Olympia, and Seattle over the past weeks, soon to be followed by Thanksgiving in Maryland. Seattle was our second annual half-way meeting with John & Caz from Vancouver, it was a very pleasant weekend of topless trapeze burlesque, Brazilian dinner-cabaret, vegan breakfasts, gay bars, Pollack originals, and pale semi-transparent tight-jeans-wearing vegetarian boy-girls. Olympia was a visit to the relatives of my former room-mate (Colm) - a nun, an ex-nun and a priest's house-keeper - conversation varied from landscaping to abortion to the masturbatory practices of circumcised versus non-circumcised men (my contribution). Not your mother's nuns. Maryland is where Heather, the pregnant sister-in-law (!), lives with her hubby and their four dogs on a boat, while their house is in a state of re-model. We will be joining them on the boat for four days, it will be cozy, I will be suitably inebriated for most of it.

Heather and Micah. There'll be none of this next week.

I actually have another expectant sister-in-law(ish), my younger brother (Enda) has successfully impregnated his lovely, and very patient, long-term partner Tanya. Apparently the happy deed was done in Ashland during the wedding week, in all possibility with my parents snoring blissfully unaware on the second floor. This is indeed pleasant news and an added impetus to visit the homeland next summer.

On the funny poem front, there was only two and they are listed below. The first is by the odd-ball Irish poet Paul Durcan, I like him a lot, as do several hundred middle-aged Limerick females - so myself and Pearse Ryan discovered one night in the Belltable Arts Centre. I read this poem in the older brother's kitchen after his wedding, he was away but his champagne was with us. The second is apparently the inspiration for the Red Hat Society of older women, making up for the sobriety of their youth. In retrospect I think we should have given both of these an airing, scummy bottoms of Guinness pint glasses might have been better than lonely flies dying in singularity.

My Belovèd Compares Herself to a Pint of Stout, by Paul Durcan

When in the heat of the first night of summer
I observe with a whistle of envy
That Jackson has driven out the road for a pint of stout,
She puts her arm around my waist and scolds me:
Am I not your pint of stout? Drink me.
There is nothing except, of course, self-pity
To stop you also having your pint of stout.

Putting self-pity on a leash in the back of the car,
I drive out the road, do a U-turn,
Drive in the hall door, up the spiral staircase,
Into her bedroom. I park at the foot of her bed,
Nonchalantly step out leaving the car unlocked,
Stroll over to the chest of drawers, lean on it,
Circumspectly inspect the backs of my hands,
Modestly request from her a pint of stout.
She turns her back, undresses, pours herself into bed,
Adjusts the pillows, slaps her hand on the coverlet:
Here I am - at the very least
Look at my new cotton nightdress before you shred it
And do not complain that I have not got a head on me.

I look around to see her foaming out of the bedclothes
Not laughing but gazing at me out of four-leggèd eyes.
She says: Close your eyes, put your hands around me.
I am the blackest, coldest pint you will ever drink
So sip me slowly, let me linger on your lips,
Ooze through your teeth, dawdle down your throat,
Before swooping down into your guts.
While you drink me I will deposit my scum
On your rim and when you get to the bottom of me,
No matter how hard you try to drink my dregs
And being a man, you will, no harm in that -
I will keep bubbling up back at you.
For there is no escaping my aftermath.
Tonight - being the first night of summer -
You may drink as many pints of me as you like.
There are barrels of me in the tap room.
In thin daylight at nightfall,
You will fall asleep drunk on love.
When you wake early in the early morning
You will have a hangover,
All chaste, astringent, aflame with affirmation,
Straining at the bit to get to first mass
And holy communion and work - the good life.

Jake applauds the wine. I have his mother warned that on his 18th
birthday I'll be flying him to Dublin for his first pint of the black stuff.

WARNING, by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter
And I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay the rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Reading(s) From A Wedding

2007-10-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

© e.e. cummings, 'i carry your heart with me'.

Choosing the readings was an ordeal, trying to strike the right balance of substance and levity, whilst avoiding excessive sentiment or pretense, is no easy matter when the subject at hand is meant to be marriage. And not marriage in the medieval, land-swapping, practical, socio-economic consolidation sense, but marriage in the modern, romantic, monogamous, friends and lovers for life kind of way - high sentiment and the meaning of life all rolled into one. Not an easy task for a natural cynic and I'm not sure I succeeded - this was all done in one weekend remember.

I also didn't reckon on the rebellion of my co-opted readers - Sonia's brother Eric, and my sister Maria. Eric ran away at the idea of reading anything by e.e. cummings, a poet who never met a grammatical construct he wouldn't willingly take a hammer to. And Maria blithely informed me that The Velveteen Rabbit was 'a load of shit' and she wouldn't be reading it. I gave Eric a pass on cummings and restrained myself from giving Maria a kick - she eventually came around, and even improvised cleverly (a little too cleverly) on the day.

I will do one more post of the alternative and funnier readings that I was tempted to put in but which I couldn't bring myself to do ('my lover compares herself to a pint of stout'). I am available for consultations, or as a reference source for any of you out there thinking of tying the knot - alternatively, do yourself a favour and go to a church or a registry office!

1. The first reading by Eric was from the letters of Rainer Maria Rilke.

"The point of marriage is not to create a quick commonality by tearing down all boundaries; on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude, and thus they show each other the greatest possible trust. A merging of two people is an impossibility, and where it seems to exist, it is a hemming-in, a mutual consent that robs one party or both parties of their fullest freedom and development. But once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky."

2. Maria had two readings, one was an old favourite of mine from the Irish poet Louis MacNeice, and the other from The Velveteen Rabbit, a children's tale. I had never heard of the children's story before but, of all the readings, it struck a chord. And apparently on the day it elicited the most tears - yes, tears! - and that was just the guys (you know who you are Pearse & Tom).

2.1 From 'Meeting Point', by Louis MacNeice

Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs)
Time was away and somewhere else.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise -
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.

2.2 From 'The Velveteen Rabbit', by Margery Williams

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but Really loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get all loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

3. And then there was the ceremony. I came across two pieces that I ran by Sonia and she thought they were cool. The first is from the sermons of Jeremy Taylor, who was a 17th century English cleric and one-time vice-chancellor of Dublin University, of which I am technically a graduate. I had never heard of him but apparently he is a well known to scholars of the period and is referred to as the 'Shakespearean cleric'. As we went through the rehearsal of this piece, which was meant as an introductory remark, it was accompanied by loud guffaws from all concerned, somehow the fly and the bee analogy didn't seem quite so laboured in the living-room the week before. The second reading was a type of blessing at the end and is an anonymous text inspired by the writings of a French chap called Antoine de Saint-Exupery, I liked it's common-sensical sentimentalism.

3.1 Jeremy Taylor.

Marriage is a school and exercise of virtue: here kindness is spread abroad, and love is united and made firm as a centre. The state of marriage hath in it the labour of love, and the delicacies of friendship, the blessing of society, and the union of hands and hearts. It hath in it less of beauty, but more of safety, than the single life; it hath more care, but less danger; it is more merry, and more sad; is fuller of sorrows, and fuller of joys; it lies under more burdens, but it is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and those burdens are delightful. Marriage is the mother of the world, and preserves kingdoms, and fills cities, and churches, and heaven itself. Celibacy, like the fly in the heart of an apple, dwells in a perpetual sweetness, but sits alone, and is confined and dies in singularity; but marriage, like the useful bee, builds a house and gathers sweetness from every flower, and labours and unites into societies and republics, and sends out colonies, and feeds the world with delicacies."

3.2 Inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at one another, but in looking outward together in the same direction. Do not seek perfection in each other. Do not seek to make the other into your own image, or to remake yourself into another's image. What each most truly is will be known by the other. It is that truth of you which must be loved. Many things will change, but change is not the enemy of love. Change is the enemy only of any attempt to possess. Go now, and may all that is good and true and beautiful abide with you now and always.

Portrait(s) Of A Wedding

2007-09-16T18:47:00.001-07:00

For the present there is just one moon,
though every level pond gives back another.

But the bright disc shining in the black lagoon,
perceived by astrophysicist and lover,

is milliseconds old. And even that light's
seven minutes older than its source.

And the stars we think we see on moonless nights
are long extinguished. And, of course,

this very moment, as you read this line,
is literally gone before you know it.

Forget the here-and-now. We have no time
but this device of wantonness and wit.

Make me this present then: your hand in mine,
and we'll live out our lives in it.

© The Present, by Michael Donaghy

We still haven't got the formal photos and we took none ourselves but various friends and relatives have passed on some pics to us and I've included a few below. At this point, some five weeks later, it's all a blur. Then again, on the day it was all a blur, it all went by so quickly. There were so many people and so little time, even though we dragged the arse out of it with golf tournaments, and pizza parties, and morning-after brunches we just didn't, and couldn't, chat with everyone. And even though we said we didn't want presents we got a bunch of really nice ones and we still owe people thank-you cards.

All told, it was a very pleasant and convivial time, we even managed to squeeze in a second stag party in Ashland, with more drinking and dancing than the first one in Portland, which is not necessarily a good thing since it was me that was doing the drinking and dancing. Everything went smoothly-ish, with some minor emergencies thrown in for spice, including a mad dash to Macy's to buy Niall (de besht-man) a black suit the day before (a short story involving the world's most useless suit renter). The day itself was very sunny and very happy, it was a rare and good thing to see so many disparate elements of our lives thrown together in one place. It didn't drag on 'til 6am the way the best of Irish weddings do, nor were there any major dramas or fist-fights, but a good time was had by all.

This is the scene from the pizza party the night before in Sonia's backyard in Ashland, all 0.5 acres of it - I only had to order 13 large pizzas and a keg of beer. What you can't see are the leaves and branches cleaned up by myself & Pearse Ryan that morning, after 4 hours of sleep and several gallons of beer the night before. The clean-up was required because there was a storm of biblical proportions on the Thursday night - a tree collapsed on the house two doors up from the parents! Niall can be observed in the front right wearing pink cut-offs.

Without knowing anything about golf Sonia went ahead and organised a tournament on the Saturday morning. By strange coincidence it was won by her dad's team. This is Ole wearing the winner's jacket, surrounded by his bevy of golfing babes.

On the day itself Sonia seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time in the 'mansion' of the winery getting ready, this is Haley, Sonia's niece and the flower-girl for the day. That pretty dress was made in one day by Sonia's friend Juliana - that was another mad Halvorson dash to Eugene one Saturday. The material for the dress is actually curtain fabric (don't tell her mother!).

The material for this dress was a little more expensive, I haven't been told how much. And no, I haven't figured out how to rotate the image, I am doing this on a Mac and am subject to the tyranny of iPhoto. Doesn't she look pretty.

Meanwhile, the lanky groom and his best men are melting in the afternoon sun. A strategy session is called for - where are they? do you have any sunblock? who's idea was it to wear black suits? why couldn't we have done this ten years ago when we didn't have receding hairlines?

This is where they are, chugging tequila and champagne back in the mansion, corrupting the morals of wee Haley in the background. Note that Sonia's little big sister, Heather, is ostentatiously sipping water - she is not a recovering alcoholic but is, in fact, several months pregnant and is due in January.

The Finn lads take a break in the shade, which one is scarier? Yes, that is a kilt, don't ask.

Finally, there's a stirring and the boys take their place.

Haley and her little bro' Jake. Jake has the precious cargo of rings in his hands, carried in a silver box from Peshwar in Pakistan - a gift from Sonia's friend Jaime Noon.

The hand-off is complete, it was touch and go for a while there, the bright light saturating the picture is the sun reflecting off Niall's forehead - it was hot out there.

Finally, a bride to be. Ole ditched the jacket from the night before. Flowers, by the way, arranged by Sonia's friend Jodie, last seen quaffing champers above.

Yes, we got married by a dude in shades.

Sonia's mum Esther played the flute, Ave Maria I believe.

I do. Do you do? I do too.

The Finn-Vorson clan. Missing from the picture is my sister-in-law, Debra, and my lovely niece and nephew (Ariana & Lorcan) - they were back in the UK as their husband and dad swanned around the western United States in a woolly skirt.

Yes, we had a cake, a fantastic chocolate thing baked by Sonia's step-sister Samantha - we had a lot of help from a lot of people with this whole wedding thing, for which we were very grateful.

We've had our cake, and eaten it.

The newly weds take their place.

Nobody has asked for them, but I intend posting the various wedding readings in the next week or so, so stay tuned for The Velveteen Rabbit and lonely flies dying in singularity.

I'll also fill you in on how I returned to work the next week to discover that everyone I work with had been fired, well almost everyone - an unforeseen, and cold-blooded extreme cutting of costs, done in that inimitable American free-market way. But I'm still gainfully employed and busily wasting weekends on fences, flagstone and ceiling fans.

The Big Day Cometh

2007-09-16T17:08:00.000-07:00

On Raglan Road on an autumn day I met her first and knew
That her dark hair would weave a snare that I might one day rue;
I saw the danger, yet I walked along the enchanted way,
And I said, let grief be a fallen leaf at the dawning of the day.

© from Raglan Road, by Patrick Kavanagh

Bless me fatter for I have sinned, it's been two months since my last post. I have committed the following in that time.

1. Read Harry Potter VII over a weekend, all the while being rudely interrupted by sleep, meals and birthday parties (our carpenter's 60th). Finished it in the bath tub at 7:30pm on Sunday 22nd, Sonia took some disturbing pictures, since deleted.

2. Entertained the dynamic Canadian duo of John & Caz as they made their annual pilgrimage south for the Portland beer festival. Apparently I forced John to eat eggs for the first time in 13 years, he's still upset about that. The same weekend we managed to catch local band Pink Martini playing in the zoo, the elephants seemed to enjoy the spectacle, either that or they were just wagging their heads in lunatic, incarcerated abandon.

3. Took Sonia to the Columbia Gorge for a birthday weekend of staggeringly steep hikes (Dog Mountain), very strong beer (Walking Man Brewery), and long long massages in the least pretentious and downright down-at-heel resort spa in the western hemisphere (Carson Mineral Hot Springs Resort And Spa).

4. Spent what seemed an enormity choosing 15 songs for the Wedding CD, and then burning 100 CDs at 7 minutes per CD over an entire weekend as Sonia continued on her endless round of showers and bachelor-ette parties.

5. Paid $60 for the marriage licence and then called ten judges in Jackson County (Southern Oregon) but none were free on the 2nd to officiate. Ended up with a lawyer friend of friends who had some on-line certificate (likely Universal Life Church, but was too afraid to ask).

6. Spent an entire weekend coming up with a wedding ceremony, including vows, readings and general pretentious nonsense on the meaning of life and marriage. My God but there's a lot of sentimental tosh out there. Speaking of pretentious, I actually took myself off to a coffee shop with a book of Yeats poetry (haven't done that since I was 19), had a fantastic blackberry shortcake, and decided that nothing was suitable. All the poets I liked, especially the Irish ones, are miserable bastards whose best work is on lost love, broken love, love almost but not quite love, never love, to hell with love. Finally settled on some Rilke, an old favourite from Louise MacNeice, and a web-inspired choice from an old children's story - The Velveteen Rabbit. The vows were copied word for word, with the exception of the 'God' word, from the Catholic ceremony of my college friend Fiona Byrne, nee Collins. After all, I am Catholic by culture, if not by inclination. I then threw is some stuff I found by Jeremy Taylor - the 17th century clerical Shakespeare - something about happy bees taking over the world and flies dying in singularity, which seemed like a good idea at the time. There's a lot to be said for having all of this done for you.

7. Got drunk and watched women dance with little or no clothing, all under the sanctioned guise of a stag party. It's a great country and a great tradition.

8. Watched as our attic renovation turned into a nightmare home improvement tale of city planning mistakes, revised plans, panic, and bedroom ceiling demolition. It all worked out in the end, sort of.

9. Got married. More on that anon.

The only wedding pic we have right now, Sonia's dad's head & sister's legs in foreground, Irish guests (taking advantage of free bar) and happy couple in the back.

Hot In The City

2007-07-10T20:02:00.000-07:00

So undo the buttons of your white blouse
and toss it over a chair back.
Let us lie down side by side
on these crisp sheets like two effigies on a tomb,
supine in the shadowy corner of a cathedral.

Let us close our eyes to the white room
and let the fan blades on the ceiling cool us
as they turn like the hands of a speeding clock.

© from "The Peasants' Revolt", by Billy Collins.

Time is not so much flying as melting, disappearing in the hot July haze and puddling beneath the hammock in the back yard. Temperatures this week reached 100F, that's 38C, or 311K if you're so inclined. Either way it's hotter than the average body temperature, which can make life a little uncomfortable. Needless to say our house has no air conditioning, but it does have a large and very cool basement where we can escape if the need arises, it's amply stocked with discount furniture, wine and power tools.

The 4th of July has just passed, although 'exploded' is probably a more apt description since the average American feels it their patriotic duty to purchase vast quantities of illegal fireworks, most of which they drunkenly set off on the night and day and day before and day after in question. I did manage to visit our friends Raf & Shauna to witness Mr. Raf setting off unfeasibly loud and impressive fireworks with a mortar-like contraption. No better man than Raf for a bit of danger in the back yard, I still have his bottle of home made absinthe sitting on the top shelf, green wisps wafting from it. When I got home, with all my fingers, I sat on our deck and listened to the thundering crescendo, this is what Baghdad must be like on an average Wednesday I thought to myself, but perhaps with fewer happy Americans.

Sonia was not with me in Portland on the 4th, she was helping her mother win first prize in the non-profit (choral) section of the Ashland 4th July parade. We arrived on the Friday night for Sonia's 20th high school reunion and she opted to stay on to help out with bales of hay and beefy truck drivers. The reunion was a curious affair for an outsider like my foreign self, everyone looked well and was very affable in that uniquely open and American way; one assumes the grumpy, ugly ones were off being disagreeable somewhere else (Baghdad?). The most amusing aspect to the night, at least for everyone else, was that Sonia had decided that giving the organisers my real name for a name tag (yes, a name tag!) was too corny. So, for that night I was Finney O'Malley, Sonia thought this was much more Irish than my real name. It made for some interesting, if confusing, conversations; ultimately I tired of the witty gimmick and the tag was last seen riding high on the right breast of an attractive former cheerleader, 'good man Finney' I thought to myself.

Sonia seemed to cope well with the trauma of finding out that a lot of boys quite fancied her back in the day, although she must have been a little addled since she didn't realise until 2am that we had nowhere to sleep. This made for an animated moon-lit conversation between us and took its toll on the rest of the weekend, she never quite regained her stride. Although we managed to squeeze in a great hike, a terrible play ('On The Razzle' by Tom Stoppard), some irrigation repair work, and way too much tequila at the WinDova ranch (those who make the wedding will soon know what I mean), which is were we crashed that first confusing night.

Meanwhile the work on the attic conversion has begun, a portion of the roof has been removed and long steel beams are killing weeds in the back yard. Sonia is the project manager, using her wiles to squeeze through the intricacies of the Portland planning department and dodge the verbal dead-ends of our chatty carpenter. It did rain once this week, a thunder storm for all of ten minutes, which occurred all of one day after the roof was opened up. Although we did have a tarpaulin cover, some water did seep through and now we have a decorative brown stain on our bedroom ceiling, no major damage otherwise. The two lads (Darryl & Garvais) have uncovered a few odd objects, including some 50 year old cheques and the skeletal remains of a large mammal (a raccoon we suspect) with its bony claws clutching the old electric wire where one presumes it was terminated (a little electrical humour). As if discovering bodies and bling was not enough the two guys, and Sonia, were treated to the Portland PD bomb disposal squad setting off a controlled explosion across the street. The guys were impressed with the bomb disposer, not so much for the expertise on display, but for the fact that she was blonde and twenty-something and cute and smiled at their smart-arse comments. One hopes the bomb threat was for the business across the street and not for us, mind you, one of Sonia's old flames had just gotten out of The Marines (!).

Who needs air conditioning?

We've been getting a little culture in lately - we went to hear a book reading by the founder of Lonely Planet (Tony Wheeler), he has just completed a tour of North Korea, Iraq & Iran and written a book about it called 'Bad Lands'. All very interesting, apparently there's a famous park in Tehran called the Finn Gardens - if they're anything like the Finn garden in Oregon then they'll be full of scraggly rosemary, thirsty roses and large Irishmen sipping gallons of tea. Soon thereafter I took myself to a live recording of the most nerdy show on American radio - Philosophy Talk. This was a discussion on poetry and philosophy, I don't know too many people I could drag along to this kind of thing but I enjoyed it thoroughly, it was all iambic pentameter and Kantian moral imperatives. And we took in another play this Friday past, 'Picasso At The Lapin Agile', a well written play, enthusiastically, if not expertly, performed. Sonia had seen it several times before, she has an odd obsession with quantum physics and has a piece of Picasso on the back of her neck. The performance was in Vancouver, across the Columbia in Washington state, the poor bastard step-sister (?) of Portland where people pay no state income tax and clog up all the bridges to Oregon. Apart from a random trip to buy a bird cage in a McDonald's car park (don't ask) this was our first social visit to the 'Couv (as they trendily try to call it), the theatre was located around the corner from a pawn shop advertising 'Guns, Diamonds, Video' - I think we'll be back.

Sonia took herself off to San Francisco the day after for a bridal shower, yet another peculiar American tradition, in this case it was an excuse for the distaff side of the Halvorson clan to get together and shower Sonia with affection and gifts. And to remind her that we still haven't sent out invites, still don't know how many are coming, still haven't bought or thought about rings, still haven't organised an officiant, still haven't.......seven weeks to go!

Left Coast

2007-06-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

The last night of the fair
From a seat on a whirling waltzer
Her skirt ascends for a watching eye
It's a hideous trait (on her mother's side)

© Stephen Patrick Morrissey, from 'Rusholme Ruffians'

It is Rose Festival time here in Bridgetown, an annual event that I have yet to fully embrace, or even shake hands with. I know it involves parades, fun runs, tall sailing ships, naval vessels, hormonal sailors, and a rather large fun fair. We did find ourselves at the waterfront last week when the inaugural night's fireworks were frightening small children and large dogs; I was a mite tired to appreciate the fiery splendour but I did rather enjoy the anthropological spectacle. The festival is famous for pulling in all shades and grades from around the city and its suburban satellites. Hence I get to see America in all its sweaty, obese, cigarette smoking, beer swilling glory; the part of this country that doesn't really exist in my limited social bubble and which I sometimes glimpse when I take the train to work. Back in Ireland these people were either my co-workers, friends or relatives but here they are distant and separate. Either this hints at something fundamental in the class structure of the USA, or I need to get out more.

The weekend of the 25th we took a trip to Vancouver in beautiful British Columbia. Vancouver has it all - mountains, oceans, lax drug laws, and the best Irish pub on the Left Coast (The Irish Heather) . We were there to visit John and Caroline, my college mate from Ballinasloe and his bit of Devon cream. Usually they would try, with varying degrees of success, to get us hiking, biking, skiing or sometimes even running 10km with 50,000 Canadians - but not this time. Using my still feeble back as an excuse we managed to while away an entire weekend with tea and beer on the back balcony, interspersed with trips to films and beaches, not to mention chats with their septuagenarian neighbours on subjects horticultural and criminal. The criminal element relates to the fact that on two prior visits I have had my wallet and my bike stolen. Notwithstanding Vancouver's ranking as the most livable city in the world (Baghdad is the least) it has one of the highest property crime rates in North America, second only to some county in Florida. The horticultural element is part of my ongoing secular conversion to the church of garden, in this case we were treated to several sermons by John's Afghan neighbour, Shlomo, in his junglish front yard. Shlomo is Jewish, a little known fact is that there was, and still is, a tiny minority of Jews scattered throughout central Asia - when he returns to the homeland he grows his beard and doesn't discuss religion or politics, a wise move at the best of times. He is in the business of importing 'ethnic ephemera' from Asia and proudly showed us his jewel-bedecked bicycle-rickshaw gathering rust in the garden (and they stole my $100 mountain bike?). Our goal is to actually buy a rug off Shlomo at some stage, allegedly he has thousands.

Happy Couple & Galwegian-Canadian Host

We also squeaked in a short notice trip to LA on the 8th for a surprise birthday party for Sonia's dad (Olaf Sigard Morgan Halvorson Junior). It was all very pleasant and polite, what with boat trips, dinners, breakfasts, cousins and sunshine. Ole and his good wife Mary live in Huntington Beach, in a lovely condo backing onto a harbour, with a deck that sneaks away time in sunsets and coffee and conversation. We flew into and out of John Wayne Airport, which is a fine little airport with a 20ft bronze statue of The Duke himself keeping an eye on the Orange County traveling masses. The only downside to the trip was at the hotel when some local ruffians decided to kick the crap out of each other just outside our room at 1am, it all ended in tears of course as the chief thug regressed into teary pubescence and the cops were called. As I lay awake to the sound of breaking bones it did occur to me yet again that the American lexicon of swear words is quite limited, focusing as it does on copulation, mothers and excrement - not necessarily in that order. Then again, most cultures tend to focus on copulation, mothers and excrement, perhaps it's the lack of imagination, dare I say poetry, that bothers me - compare 'scuttering gobshite' or 'walking bollox' to 'motherfucker' or 'pussy', the one almost lyrical, the other all too literal.

So I returned to the green valleys of Oregon and the quotidian grind of commute and work. But it's nice to know we can slip up north or slide down south to visit good people and good places in this most prosperous and preposterously beautiful of continents.

May Flowers

2007-04-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.

© Philip Larkin, from 'Cut Grass'

My ambulatory functions have returned to a state of quasi-normality, I can now walk without a stick and sneeze without support, not to mention break wind with effortless ease. Sensing my new found mobility the sun and Sonia have conspired to lure me into the back garden these past sunny weekends. This whole gardening thing, much like the whole interior decoration thing, not to mention the whole household maintenance and repair thing is a phenomenal consumer of energy, muscle tissue and Saturday afternoons. It makes me realise quite how unproductive my existence has been to date, what did I spend those endless weekends doing before I assumed a mortgage? Vague recollections of Guinness, bookshops, and mountain walks come mistily to mind; or when I was in California, wading through a part-time masters, it was all solid state physics, dark libraries and the exposed underwear of female under-graduates.

Gardening has its rewards it must be said, short term it is usually a cold beer at the end of a long day, or hot tea in the middle of it, long term it probably has something to do with the never ending natural cycle and the meaning of life (42, if memory serves).

Flagstone by Finn

We take a classical approach to gardening in our democratic division of household labours, Sonia is the nurturing planter of new life, and I am the destroyer and chief disciplinarian (pruner). Two weeks ago we had a landscaping trip to Ashland where Sonia owns a vacation rental. Our trips there usually involve an interminable drive, a long day's work and several short shots of tequila with her gregarious friends Tom and Debbie. This time round we also managed to slip in an excellent play, a salsa party and a picnic at the Eden Vale Winery, the venue for the upcoming nuptials. It was my first visit to the winery, and I was duly impressed: rolling hills, lolling vines, pear trees and friendly staff. Sonia's house is particularly suited to post pruning libations, with the tall cottonwoods, a comfortable hammock and a creek running by, whereas in Portland the calm can be interrupted by speeding Subarus and the odd bicycle accident (two in fact), not to mention the homeless characters rummaging in the recycling bins next door.

The indoor projects are also ramping up, bathroom cabinetry is in a semi-state of disassembly, newly purchased shelves are parked in the kitchen and an architect is soon to set our attic to rights with a plan of attack for Garv, our loquacious contractor. I am hoping the back will survive the summer, thankfully the therapy sessions are thinning out since I'm not sure I can cope with another Graston assault, this is a curious massage technique that involves steel, sweat and and a lot of pain. My biggest challenge during these visits is to maintain some sense of personal dignity, which is difficult at the best of times but nigh impossible when one is lying face down with trousers pulled a little too low, suppressing girl-like squeals and almost fainting in agony.

This week was spectacularly sunny here in Portland, that is until the weekend arrived along with low clouds and summer showers. Undeterred we presed ahead with wine and cheese in the back, ably assisted by some friends who dropped by un-announced, a very un-American and entirely welcome thing to do in our book. Pinot Noir was sipped and American mores and morals dissected by the Irish and English in the crowd. Hopefully by the end of the summer we'll have answered most of the pressing questions of the American condition.

Stop Sneezing

2007-04-15T13:42:00.000-07:00

An electrician is trained to hide things
under and over, behind and inside whatever,
and says that when he’s gone you’ll need
an electrometer to know where he’s been.
And of course the Creator was an electrician
with elementary particles in his care,
not a carpenter. And certainly not a plumber.

© Sam Gardiner, from 'The Electric Poem'

Yesterday I fixed an electrical problem in the house, an open circuit to be precise. I was quite proud of myself, but not too proud since I had actually caused it in the first place. Three weeks ago I electrocuted myself whilst changing a power outlet in the bedroom and soon thereafter a whole section of the house was without electricity. There is some irony in the fact that an Electrical Engineer could conceivably do this, and I can say, truthfully, a lot of pain and some theatrics. I'll spare the details, it's almost as embarassing as the time during college when I put a 12V power supply across my tongue to see if it would tickle the same as a 9V battery, it didn't, it nearly broke my neck. I bring this little home improvement nugget to light because within days of the original shocking event my lower back went into lockdown and I became useless. Sonia was convinced the two were related, I was not but condescended to ask the physical therapist who quietly chuckled, shaking her head as she dug stainless steel into my rib cage. But now that current is flowing again, and not through me, my back appears to be on the mend, so maybe the two are related after all - here's hoping I never break the toilet.

It has been a rough few weeks, the nadir was reached at about 9am on Friday the 6th April. Sonia had gone south for the weekend and I was left alone with pain-killers, self-pity and a fridge full of beer. At this point I had developed techniques for hitherto mundane tasks such as putting on socks (back on bed, feet in air), sitting (very slowly), and car entry/exit (tears/profanities), but I hadn't thought to strategise for the simple sneeze. I was in the shower, reaching for the bottle of aromatherapeutic shower gel, when it sneaked up and kidney-punched me. The knees buckled and I collapsed backwards, pulling the shower curtain down on top of me, crumpling ignominiously in a wet heap as the shower continued to rain on me like a careless dog. This was at once humbling and humiliating, and almost funny - or so I told myself later. At least when I'm 80 and I have that stroke or heart attack or aneurysm during my morning ablutions I can say to myself that I've been here before, that is unless I've also developed Alzheimer's. That night I managed to consume ten bottles of beer, five pain killers and six episodes of The Gilmore Girls before passing out on the couch. The hangover the next (same) day at least helped to distract from my back. Sonia was less surprised at my over-indulgence in alcohol and narcotics than my fondness for the girls called Gilmore, call it a fascination with witty badinage and well proportioned denim.

Meanwhile Easter has come and gone in a flurry of chocolate and red wine, the days are stetching out and the weeds have begun their annual siege of the back yard - I can but admire their quantity and fortitude. Sonia is busily putting together a web site (yet another one) for the upcoming event, something that can be used as a clearing house for directions, accomodations, activities and what not. She is also flexing her creative keyboard for a 'save the date' notice that will be mailed out soon. I believe she is also trying on dresses and drinking champagne next weekend. She does seem rather busy by comparison to my couch-bound self. My nuptial preparation role, it would seem, is to make sure we have sufficient people attending of an Irish persuasion to guarantee a good shindig, or at least one that lasts past 10pm. I think this should not be a problem.

Back Down

2007-04-02T18:58:00.000-07:00

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greeness is a kind of grief.

© Philip Larkin, from 'The Trees'.

The Persian Ironwoods (Persica Parrotia) that we planted in front of the house are sprouting wee leaves and surviving the vagaries of the Portland Spring. The same cannot be said for my lower back. It started with the tree planting and ended with a game of tennis, which I lost miserably. I have spent most of the past week wincing, limping and shoving hot plastic bags down my underwear. Apparently I am also experiencing a compensating muscle spasm, the effect of which is to twist my body in a rather uncomfortable, nay unfeasible, fashion. I've taken to using a walking stick (a trendy trekking pole with un-trendy tennis ball attached to the pointy bottom), being examined by useless doctors (in nothing but underwear and socks, me that is) and having a woman wrap my legs around her belly (she calls herself a physical therapist). Last night Sonia made me laugh so hard that my back seized and I collapsed in agony, but she didn't stop laughing, and worse, neither could I. This is pitiful.

As a male, and a male-Finn to boot, I am not genetically programmed for pain. I am trying to be manly and stoic but it's not easy, my inner drama queen can be heard whispering a little too loudly. I've been trying to get the doctor to give me more pills but to no avail, and I've taken to wearing, on occasion, a back brace that resembles a cheap corset. I seem to be dropping things a lot, outside the doctor's office I dropped a receipt and it took me several attempts to pick it up, all the while being stared at by a nimble six year old boy. The little bastard didn't budge and I felt like I was seventy. If I survive this episode - since Christmas I have sprained one ankle, blistered the other and electrocuted myself (twice) - I will become a krishna-kissing, roll-up-mat-carrying afficonado of yoga, pilates and any other new-age, incense-burning stretchy-touchy-feely fad that will make my back more flexible. Maybe I'll finally be able to touch my toes, I'll be happy if I can scratch my arse.

The only advantage to this mess is that I finally get to understand the fuss about prescription pain-killers - Vicadin in this case. It is, apparently, not the worst (or best) but does induce a strange and sleepy euphoria that is altogether very pleasant. The effect is heightened with alcohol, a nice glass of chilled pinot gris in my case. It makes waking up a little difficult, driving a little dangerous, and working even less productive than usual but one can entirely understand the recreational use and abuse that is very common in these parts.

Meanwhile, when not laughing at me Sonia has been booking things. We have a date for the large day - Sunday, Sept 2nd - and a place, we are to be married in a winery in Southern Oregon, not far from Ashland. My weather stats web site tells me that the sun will be shining and the rain falling somewhere in Shannon. I am hoping that getting married in the house of a minor god (Bacchus) will offset my parent's (slight) disappointment at not doing the deed in the big man's place. We had a glass of their 'claret' last night and I can at least say that it goes well with pasta and Vicadin, we may well have pasta at the reception but the guests will have to bring their own narcotics.

Climate Change

2007-03-26T11:34:00.000-07:00

In California I hardly thought about home
now suddenly I'm homesick
after three months
after a shower of rain
water everywhere, clarity
of blues and greens, bright clouds
in road pools

© Geoffrey Squires, 'In California I hardly thought about home...'

Last October, when we had the first heavy rainfall after a deliciously dry summer, several of my co-workers remarked to me that the rain must make me homesick for Ireland. I replied that when I lived in California and it rained I could be found wistfully staring out the office window, but when it rained in Oregon it just reminded me that I was in Oregon.

However, when it comes to weather I'd rather be in Oregon than Limerick. To illustrate, I found a very useful web site that provides statistical data going back 50 years for weather stations and airports all over the world. I dug out numbers for Shannon Airport (SNN, near Limerick in the Mid-West of Ireland), Portland Airport (PDX) and San Jose Airport (SJC, in the heart of Silicon Valley in Northern California).

1. Rain.

It rains a lot in Portland, but mostly in winter, whereas in Shannon it's fairly miserable all year round. This statement is generally true of Shannon, independent of the rain. San Jose (weather) is near perfect, San Jose (city) is not. Note that Oregon could almost be California in the summer. Maybe in a couple of years Oregon will be California, and Al Gore will be president.

2. Temperature

As for rainfall this illustrates the sunny secret of the Pacific Northwest. The summers are very pleasant, not quite as surfer friendly as San Jose but certainly not as sad as a Sunday in Shannon.

These days, when the sun shines clearly and warmly and rarely I do indeed feel a pang and can be found at the office window, staring wistfully at the blue expanse above. But at least I know the summer is coming, and I have the graphs to prove it.

In other news, I have just celebrated my 36th birthday and the 7th anniversary of my fateful arrival on these distant shores. Both are occasions for reminiscing and remembering, or for pondering biological determinism as hair recedes from one's head and appears in one's ears. This meditative state brought to mind the documentary series called 7-Up that runs every seven years, it first aired in the sixties and documents the lives of a bunch of English kids as they grow older (7-Up, 14-Up, etc.). Not long ago I watched all of them in a single week (right up to 49-Up). It was a frightening and fascinating experience and occasioned more than one sleepless night. I reached the following startling insights on my own 5x7: 7 (happy), 14 (not), 21 (drunk), 28 (still drunk), 35 (very sober, maybe too sober and with a large mortgage, but that's o.k. because I'm mature now and that's what us mature people do, and I'm with a woman I love very much, but where am I? And why is it raining so much?).

The week was rounded out nicely with a lovely surprise long distance phone-call from Wanaka, New Zealand where my friend Karen is traveling with her fiance Mick. Herself and himself are touring around in an old van as part of a year long world trip - we are a wandering tribe to be sure. Talking to Karen brought back pleasant memories of our own trip, which now seems so long ago, back when I was 34 and the world so much drier.

St. Patties Day

2007-03-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

'When you stop to consider
The days spent dreaming of a future
and say then, that was my life.'

For the days are long -
From the first milk van
To the last shout in the night,
An eternity. But the weeks go by
Like birds; and the years, the years
Fly past anti-clockwise
Like clock hands in a bar mirror.

© Derek Mahon, 'Dog Days'

And the weeks fly by like our neigbours the geese. The past two have been mostly consumed with painting, working and fielding phone calls and emails re. the rather large question asked and answered some three weeks ago. Reactions have been surprising, varying from disbelief (mother) to shock (younger brother) to the feeling that somebody has just lost a bet (Christmas, New Year's and Valentine's Day having just past). The suddenness of the thing (after five years?) has apparently caught some off-guard, not least Sonia, and I have had to reassure at least one person that she is not up the duff - as they say somewhere in England - at least not yet. Some from my rapidly diminishing pool of single male relatives and friends feel almost betrayed since I had been such a bedrock of rational objection to the marital state. I suspect it is less betrayal that they feel than a certain nagging pressure, I entirely sympathise.

In the meantime we decided to open our doors to our friends and relatives in Portland for a combination party. The combination being 'house warming', 'couch warming', 'engagement', 'birthday' and, of course, 'St. Patrick's Day' - or as I read in a local paper 'St. Patties Day'. The Paddy's Day experience in the USA is a rather odd one, what with people wearing green beads, drinking green cocktails and shouting 'top of the morning to you' in vaguely Scottish accents. I'm reliably assured it's much the same in Dublin these days. I've tried to explain to the locals the idea of a saint's feast day and of the Christian symbolism of the shamrock but they seem rather more interested in the drunken girls flashing their green thongs, and who can blame them.

Our party was disappointingly free of green thongs (that I could see) but was abundantly full of good people and good cheer. The youngest attendee was 9 months and the oldest was 69 years; there were several token paddies, including at least one nun, and a liquid time was had by all. The night was finished off in one of our local bars with Sonia drinking her expensive tequila and me paying for it. I also managed to accidentally spill hot wax from a candle on the bare legs of a girl at the bar, turns out she and her amigas were part of the local Portland Roller Derby, a curiously American phenomenon. I bought her a drink in apology, oddly she didn't seem that upset.

Sunday was rounded off with breakfast with Sonia's Mexican wedding party (all twenty of them knocking back Bloody Mary's), lunch in a renovated church in Washington (all five of us sipping Bloody Mary's) and dinner with Sonia's brother & lovely family (not a Bloody Mary in sight).

This was an unusually convivial weekend for us, there wasn't a sub-titled film or paint brush in sight. Hopefully it was inspired by the improved weather, as we migrate from the monsoon season to something approaching Spring, and presages a sociable summer to come.

A Pint of Plain

2007-03-01T23:24:00.000-08:00

When things go wrong and will not come right,
Though you do the best you can,
When life looks black as the hour of night -
A pint of plain is your only man.

© Flann O’Brien (Brian O’Nolan), from "The Workman's Friend"

Since I have finally gotten round to reading the porter-sodden ‘At Swim Two Birds’ then why not wet the head of the blog appropriately. The last time I used this verse was as an encouragement to my co-workers to come on an Engineering Society tour of the Guinness brewery in St. Jame’s Gate, Dublin: a trip to the mother-ship, as it were. I remember naught of the tour, it was all flashing lights and endless corridors but the pints were both sublime and free. I do recall asking the Guinness engineer-come-tour-guide why pints were so awful outside the fair isle of Ireland; he was quite disturbed at this blasphemy and sniffily suggested that the recipe was the same the world over. He clearly had yet to meet the Bettie Page wannabe who presented me with a black and white ice-cream cone one sad San Francisco night. Interesting fact: the largest Guinness brewery outside Dublin is in Nigeria.

Sonia is away for the week in Mexico shopping for a baby. Actually, she is gone to the wedding of a high school friend with her best friend from high school. From her emails I can almost taste the warm breeze and the cold tequila; weather is there, wish I was hot and humid. When in California Sonia’s absence usually resulted in all day/night/weekend feats of unparalleled drunkenness. In Portland her absence usually results in all day/night/weekend feats of home improvement, laundry and yard work. Something has changed utterly. Oh yes, I remember now, I moved to Oregon, bought a house and asked Sonia to marry me. Indeed, a terrible beauty is born.

I suppose I should answer some questions.

Q. You did what?
A. I asked her to marry me.

Q. Did she say yes?
A. Oh yes.

Q. When?
A. Sunday the 25th February at approx. 6pm.

Q. Where?
A. In the newly painted (Tate Olive) dining room, on bended knee(s), over a cup of tea.

Q. Did you buy a ring?
A. Indeed, I had been carrying one around since November.

Q. A diamond ring?
A. No. A silver thing with anchors - seriously. Not so sure about diamonds. Expensive, consumerist, fairly silly things to be found in the teeth of rappers and the Swiss vaults of central African dictators. I think S is of the same opinion, we’ll see though, her eyes are already glazing over.

Q. When’s the big day?
A. Well, Ireland just beat England in the rugby in Croke Park Saturday Feb 24th. But I suppose you mean the wedding. No idea, likely this year, likely September (late), likely in Ashland.

Q. Where?
A. The People’s Republic of Ashland, Jackson County, Oregon. Nestled against the Siskyou Mountains in the Rogue Valley, not fifteen miles from the California border, 360 miles north of San Francisco, 280 miles south of Portland. A pretty and fairly pretentious cosmopolitan oasis in the cultural desert of southern Oregon. It’s also Sonia’s home town and her favourite place to be - links here and here.

Q. Why not Ireland you hoor?
A. Indeed why not, let us just say that apart from the residency requirements, my irreligious nature, limited U.S. holidays and the difficulty of the long distance planning that nothing is set in stone. Watch this space.

Enough questions, you’re wearing me out. The weekend approacheth - I have drop cloths to buy, painting to do (Crab Apple & Oatmeal), blinds to install, electrical sockets to change and wall plates to buy (Restoration Hardware, brushed bronze, $6 a pop, 'tis far from this I was reared).