Driving #1

Friday of a Bank holiday
LUAS from work to Tallaght hospital
Drunks stagger in
And wonder where their stop is
Abbey Street and the Four courts
And Smithfield and the Museum
And Heuston and suddenly they're all gone.

The rest of us
Released from offices
Jaded
Looking for our own
Stops. "Pints?"
We ask our phones. Pushing buttons
To release us all from the week.

My car is in the building
Beyond the kids
Throwing fag buts and beer cans to the ground
Beside the bin.
The woman in front of me walks nervously
I think because I am walking behind her.
I slow down, watch my breath steam
In the chill dark evening.

Pay the day's parking and curse the distance from here
To the M50 to the M1 to Ardee then all the way to Derry
Pop across the border from there then Home.

I roll a cigarette but don't smoke it
Because of my daughter's chest.

Onto the roads, turning right
Turning left. Guessing my way
Out of Tallaght toward the M50
Toward my wife and child in Donegal
Pushing buttons to ask me
"Have you left yet?"

Finally, onto the M50.
And back off at the next exit
Down the wrong way on the Naas road
turning back round for the petrol station
Because it's the only one whose location
I'm definite of.

I pay for my petrol but pull across
To the parking spaces where
I jump out for that smoke
And drink bad coffee I just bought.

A young lad in a car asks
"What are you looking for?"
I tell him nothing and his friend says
"What are you looking at?"
Invitation to something unknown.
Dark shadows cast from bright lights.

Blog Action Day: Poverty

Very late in a very bad day, but here goes a completely off-the-top of the head blog for Blog Action Day. I had notes, I did some research. I even started thinking about characters for a short story. All of this is left behind, perhaps to surface again. But for now, here is my contribution.

A few days ago, I commented - cynically - that the problem with "Blog" "Action" day was that the opinion based blog did not really tally with the action. A number of events have changed my thinking on this.

Today, my wife lost her job to the ridiculously bad management of the Irish economy and the government's 'call to arms' about being patriotic. We've been wondering what we'll do. Emigration has been mentioned. 

I've lived my life with an unhealthy fear of poverty - of not being able to afford things. Of losing the things that I have. These are the things you dwell on when you have a tendency toward self pity. But then, all this is swept away with the sight of my daughter; with the thought of my wife. This is no time for 'dwelling'. It's a time for 'doing'. Sounds dreadfully American, I know. 

The next thing to come along in a flurry of texts from my family is the very good point: You have each other, you have your health. Remember, this is a chapter in a whole life.

And it hits me. I'm not facing Poverty. Because Poverty is not about being poor. It's not necessarily about losing those things you built up with a strong line of unhealthy credit. 

It's about being at the edges of life, with no way out. It's about poor education, poor healthcare, little or no social assistance. 

I'm not a socialist. I believe in Money. By its finite nature, it will always gravitate toward the entrepreneur, the lucky and the cunning. It makes some richer, some poorer. That's ineluctable, much like the modality of the visible. Attempts to control economies have proven that where the people outnumber the money, the people lose out. Stalin had 20 million losers.

The problem may seem like Money, but I it's not.

Money is a tool of humanity; no more, no less. It allows us the time and opportunity to improve ourselves spiritually and socially. It provides a means to equalise everyone's experience of life. But it is not doing this. Not right now. But that's not Money's fault. As a tool, it has no moral plane of its own. Any morality that may relate to Money and what it does has to be lain at the hands of the person working the tool. Remember: A bad workman always blames his tools. It made sense when you were a child, and it makes sense now.

The problem we face is that Poverty is caused by Money, which is wielded by Humanity. Humanity, which is imagined as much as the money it controls. Shelley once claimed "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." By this, he saw that poets captured, filtered and reformulated the way people imagined themselves and their society. Ads work like this - showing us dreams and letting on that a can of pop, a chocolate bar or a drink that tastes soft but knocks your socks off will make you the person who lives like that. The problem we face now, globally, is that we live in a world imagined by merchant bankers.

They imagined (and convinced the rest of us) that the world's finite amount of money, viewed through a prism and mathematical sleight of hand could be seen as much more than it was. Infinite, you could say. This meant that the money that was made available to Bob as a loan was also made available to me. Two people, one bit of money. Bob and I pay back our money, and suddenly there's two bits of money, where previously there was one. So now, they can lend to four times as many people. And given there was only one bit of money to start with, they can take the risk of lending money to some who may not be able to afford to pay it back. But then, it's provided to accumulate assets - so they can always take back the asset. 

This is nothing new. Sadly, it's something we've been reading for nearly ten years now. Reading, but ignoring; content to live in a world imagined by merchant bankers. By the way, the rhyming slang is fully intended here. And if you think about it, makes a lot of sense- self abuse, self delusion, ultimate emptiness of solipsism.

So, there's all this money - real and imagined - sloshing around the place. But still, and for fifteen debauched, orgiastic, onanistic years we rolled in it while using to also keep others buried in Poverty. In both the developed and developing worlds. I don't believe this was entirely intended (although I cannot say it was entirely unknown), but it happened.    And it happened because of the way we imagined ourselves. Building up our unhealthy debt; scratching our heads wondering "What can I do?" (if we had time to think of human injustice between the Nine O'Clock News and pints). But this inaction wasn't simply inaction. It was a tacit choice, based on how we imagined ourselves. Many did take action - travelling to countries to teach English as a Foreign language or volunteering, and I can't dismiss this. But these folks don't represent the multitude, and it pains me to admit that they don't represent me, who cowered in fear of Poverty - If I became a volunteer, what would it do to my career?  This selfish consideration to be soothed by the thought that Besides, they wouldn't want me anyway. I don't have the skills. 

Our choices are based on our imagined humanity. Poverty is real, it is killing people, it is causing disease, it is propagating itself. Much like we are. Perhaps we've imagined Poverty, made it in our own image. Perhaps our morality is impoverished; perhaps our imagination. 

Imagining ourselves differently - who we are, what we're doing here, what we should do next (I owe Alasdair Gray for that formulation of the imagined self) is what is required. With the morality and courage to see ourselves sharing this humanity (not just as West, East or Developed and Developing, but as Humanity, globally) will be a start. After that, we will be guided by actions informed by a better self. It is the making of that self, the imagining of what we are and can do, that makes me realise why Blog Action Day is so important. 

"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation" (Alasdair Gray).

Hmph. Perhaps I am a socialist after all.

'Breath' by Samuel Beckett, dir: Damien Hirst

Love this. 'Breath' by Beckett, directed by Damien Hirst (he who made headlines auctioning his work). This works for me by its sheer visual power, and the breath itself; what sounds like a final, desperate breath. I also love the fact that the credits take up more time than the actual "Breath". Seriously. I bet they did that on purpose. Because to eplain anything takes longer than to experience it.

From The Fundament

The rain came down

So the worms came up

Wriggling their way

From the fundament.

Through the clay, soil and shit

Through dazzling grass

To a moon bathed garden growing

From the fundament.

The rain came down

And then it came up

And surrounded them with what they'd escaped

From the fundament.

Diamonds on the way down

Death when it comes back up

From the fundament.

In The Central Margin

7.57
Driving into the station for the 7.57 train. Pedestrian struggling, lumbering up to the station. Won't make it. Pass parked and abandoned cars... no space. No spaces. Maybe a space. Turn; try again. Try and try again.

7.59
The train pulls into the station, people get on. Then it goes. They go. Turn past the parked and abandoned cars. Now what? There's an ad on the radio for property somewhere a long way away. Have to get to work; there's all this stuff to pay for.
Options?
Drive? Traffic, stops. Motorway. Badtime to head to the city.
Wait for the next train? Thirty minutes before it arrives. Stops on the way. Crowd. Pushing. Hundreds of private worlds, shoving each others shoulders. Hundreds of private worlds ignoring each other. Hundreds of private worlds with their too-public gasses.
Drive.

8.00
Driving out of the station. No sign of the pedestrian. Must have got the train. Tortoise and hare. Newsreader reading the same-olds and usuals. Seemingly, people in Iraq are having the worst time ever; bombs going off everywhere, tribal and international war, repressed women and whatnot. They're looking for something that's not there. Raging about it. Keep going. Bonnie Goodbody, teen pop sensation, thinks they'll find them, these weapons of mass destruction. These reasons for war. Tim Badboy, youth actor and spokesperson for teen celibacy thinks it's a hoax. Thinks it's all proper-gander. That's how he says it. Like something people just want to have a good look at. But then what, once they find them?
Seemingly, some property developer wants everybody to be miserable. Passing brown envelopes to build boxes with big windows for the affluent; small windows for the government-sponsored. It's all about how you see the world. A politician on the phone - a crackling line as fragile as his morality. "...a travesty this should be on the news... upstanding member of society being blackguarded by a media with nothing better to do..."
Pull onto the windy roads leading to the motorway.

8.06
Ads. Credit facilities to pay for the kinds of property in faraway places that one simply must have. Get in there before the neighbours. Get it, then pay for it; all this stuff. Pick up something quick to eat, drink, read, watch, hear, smell. Feel like a coffee. Stop at the petrol station.

8.09
Back to today's main story.... No, not again. All this repetition turning human misery into a cliché.
No
NO
Scan channels..."...let me know.../...if you wanna touch my body.../...last chance!/...in the central margin?"
What's in the central margin?
"Yes, the central margin. He's just walking around there"

8.10
"Well. If anyone out there has seen this guy. He's walking in a circle in teh central margin of one of the city's - the countries! - busiest motorways. Someone should call the Guards. Has anyone? What do you think? Give us a call on the usual number!" Coffee!

8.11
Petrol station!

8.20
Running (running?) late. Driving late. Shit. Down into motorway traffic. Injected, with the rest of the addictive souls feeding this habit. Poetic eh? Someone still strolling round the central margin. DJ still thinks someone should call the cops. Overtake one-two-three cars. Pushing it. Pull back in. Can't let them pass. Got to get ahead.
82.

8.26
Step on it. 80, OK. Cars hurtling toward their destination; people toward their desinties. God help anyone who gets in the way.
"Well, I can tell you one thing now. This guy is selfish! SELFISH! How do I know? because walking round like that... what's he trying to do? Kill himslef?"
"Or others..."
"Yes, YES! Or OTHERS! You're right! Jesus, what's he trying to do at all? Is he foreign?"
"Time for another caller... Frank!"
"He must be foreign!"
"Aah"
"Well, why else is he doing this? Does he even care that hundreds or thousands of people will be late now?"
"Late?"
"Lookit - what happens the traffic anytime a drop of rain falls? What about someone causing this big spectacle like this while people have to get to work? No Irishman would do something like that. No. Foreign. Or a woman, you know, with her MPH or whatever it is..."
"Errr... thanks. Think it's time for a break..."

8.32
Ads. Buy a car. Get a credit card. Buy a holiday. Smell good, fuck more people. Listen to this, be loved.
78

8.35
Still more talking. Endless talking. "Has anyone called the guards yet? Someone should call the guards! This guy is posing huge danger to everyone!" Weapon of mass destruction? More talking.
70

8.40
News: Teen sensation in rehab shocker. Middle aged teen-dream in plastic surgery shocker. Paedophile in paedophile shocker. Motorway backed up, as man walks in circles in the central margin.
62. Slowing down too quickly. Signal, move manouver. 72.

8.47
Brake!
Stop. Start. 40.

8.48
Not far enough along to make it. Can't be late.
For what?
Meeting
For what?
Project. Get it back on track.
For what?
Meet or beat deadline.
For what?
Bonus. Paycheck. Money
For what?
Bills
For what?
Living
For what?
I don't know.
30.

8.52
Full stop. Traffic backed up to here. Never make it now.

8.53
Stop-start. Two steps forward, thirty seconds stopped. Someone walking in the central margin. In circles. Round and round.
"He's obviously a lunatic, Gerry..."
"I'm not Gerry. Gerry's on 2FM"
"But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about this guy in the central margin. Obviously a lunatic. Needs locking up before he gets near kids or women or something. Who knows what he's capable of!"
"Gerry?"
"I'm not Gerry! He's on 2FM! But go ahead anyway?"
"Is he a foreigner? Do we know?"
Radio off.
Stop-start.

8.57
There he is! Walking in a circle. Car abandoned at the edge of the margin. He's just walking round. What's he got going on there? What is it? I have to know!

9.00
"And here is the news at nine AM. Gardai have issued a traffic alert in Dublin's suburbs as a number of people have abandoned their cars on the motorway and are walking in circles in the central margin. No demand has been made as yet..."

?
He won't talk to me. I look around. I tried first to ask him about... something. But he won't talk to me, so I gave up. I look around. A breeze brushes the grass in the central margin here. There's others here too, in the fresh air. Looking around. Cars pass. I can let them. I have some things to figure out.