Sudden singing

I'm sitting in a bar in the University of Limerick, and some people have just showed up and started to sing (check out the mini-movie I've just made, scroll to the bottom).

It's kind of great, just wandering around all these buildings of activity, you never know what you might run into. They started to build a marquee in the front square a few days ago, a big production involving cement blocks, prefabricated sturdy walls and very carefully laid carpet (I watched him unroll it very carefully, today). Nobody seems to know what it's about. I've overheard conversations that go a bit like this:
"I wonder what it's for?"
"Probably some ball or something."
They peer in the window.
"It looks nice."
"Yeah."

I've wondered the same thing. My first guess was some kind of graduation ceremony, but they've probably got somewhere fancier for that. So it's a mystery. And we walk closer together now, as we navigate the small path around the large white marquee of mystery.

I haven't been to the Olympic-sized pool yet. Not since my first time there, about 2 years ago, when I wore goggles and got a fright when I actually looked through them. 50 metres can look more intimidating than the ocean, to me. But I love saunas, and steam baths, ever since I fell in love with the Scandinavian model of hot and cold, in Denmark. Of course it's the Finns that invented the sauna (cool fact: there are three million humans in Finland, and one and a half million saunas.. everyone's got a sauna in their house/flat/dorm). But there are some old institutions in Denmark, some old art deco places that I loved deeply, profoundly, as often as I could. The Badanstalt (a gender separated old bath house from the turn of the 19th century, featuring a gorgeous large old wooden sauna in three tiers, and a mint green tiled changing area, with little curtained cubicles, and shredded wood slivers to exfoliate, and always a thermos of tea for whoever is hanging out naked in the lounging area, all for 25 kroner, or a little over 3 euros) was my version of a local pub. People smoke very heavily still, in Denmark, and pubs are very smokey, so I didn't spend much time in bars while I lived there. But I did spend lots of time in the Badanstalt.

The Badanstalt reaches back into the time when private houses and flats (mostly flats in Copenhagen, industrial living goes back a long way there) didn't have any private bathrooms. A block of housing units inhabited by several hundred people might have had a couple of jacks round the back, in an outhouse (an enticing prospect, in the Danish winter) much as things were in many western european countries, except for the fact that as recently as the seventies, these outhouse toilets still existed. I have been in flats there that had a toilet, but no bath or shower. And Danish showers are of course, uber functional anyway, the shower is commonly taken on the bathroom floor itself, which is tiled, and excess water wiped away. New York city bathrooms, even with their expert compression, could learn something from the amazingly minuscule yet innately beautiful, Danish bathrooms.

So what did people do to bathe? Well, they went to their local badanstalt, where they bathed communally, men with men, women with women. Children probably went with women, but I would imagine small boys sneaking upstairs to the men's section at the earliest opportunity, only to be trying to sneak down to the women's just a few years later... oh the fickleness of the human organism. There was a badanstalt in each of the city's main neighbourhoods, or bydeler, as they're called over there. And people went to bathe, to use the sturdy lovely saunas, and to socialise. Well, all of Copenhagen's badanstalter are gone, except for the one on Sjællandsgade, in Nørrebro, traditionally the working class neighbourhood of Copenhagen, recently become trendified and gentrified, of course... and the badanstalt struggles to survive. Every two years or so, some government officials try to close it down. Its faithful clients battle back. I remember hearing about one such threat, there was some kind of an image that came to mind under a cold shower moment (which were always my favourite moments) to consider chaining myself to the door of the Badanstalt, naked, mud covered, Irish. Twas not to be. Not yet, anyway. But this week I have asked all the major institutions of official bureaucracy in Denmark, to recognise that I have truly and actually, left the building. Hurrah!

So yes, perhaps I'll make it to the swimming pool of scary bigness one of these days, while I'm on campus. Small sauna, mixed gender, considerably chattier, bathing suits required (it's just not the same). It had better be before monday, though. For on monday morning, I fly to Barcelona, for a week and a half.

The dog that ate my dinner

I went to get some dinner, in the student bar of this university that I'm spending my days hanging out in, lately, working on these projects I'm really excited about, these projects I'm busy breathing life into, lately.

So I'm feeling kind of antsy and I go to the student bar to get some food, and all they've got left is this stuff called "chicken goujons" and you know, these badly processed chip things, and I turn from the counter and realise that there are about six hundred eighteen year olds in flouncy dresses and suits, and the chip lady tells me that it's some kind of first year ball. There's nowhere for me to sit and eat my chicken goujons, so I go outside to the outdoor courtyard, and the rain is pelting down on the roof above where I sit, eat, and watch the parade of loud satin and umbrellas, running for cover and madly text messaging.

That's when the pooch shows up. The one pictured. He just showed up, quietly sat at my table, sat and looked at me. His eyes watery, sad looking, old, he looked dirty, neglected, not malnourished. Matter of fact begging. No bullshit about it. No tricks, no fancy stuff, no cuteness, no smooth moves. So I gave him some of my chips, the crispy ones, the ones I don't like. He ate them. I gave him more. I took pictures of the girls in their vehement coloured satin, some with quite elaborately positioned cleavage, some in frou frou meringue style, all with spindly heeled sandals and their toes squidging around in the rain, as they ran across the courtyard, through the downpour.

Later I got to thinking about the Trinity Ball, the satin-fest of my own extreme youth. I never wore satin: went only, I think, to two of them, though it could have been more, and I certainly have many vivid memories from them. To the first one I wore very short scarlet velvet, bought a ticket off someone on the day, having resisted the whole affair for a full year before that. And the second one I worked at, as hospitality chica. That night was notable for being offered a line of cocaine for the first time (aw..) and some London rapper tried to bribe my t-shirt from me (for the t-shirt's sake, I think, not the be-bra'd female underneath it). The Buzzcocks played that year, some reunion gig, I don't know if any of us youngsters really knew who they were. They seemed to have fun, though, and trashed the sound system, middle aged rebels that they were.

Back in the Stables courtyard, the pooch kept looking at me. He wasn't aggressive, but it was intense. I gave him more chips, then some chicken, then decided to buy him some kind of food in the shop. So off I went, and found a can of sardines, and got looked at sadly by the boy behind the counter with the large auburn eyes, and went out again in the rain, looking for sad pooch amongst the legs of the suited boys and the satinned girls, but sad pooch had disappeared. I felt wretched.

Reminded me of a horribly mangey, very sick and suspicious, terrified and starving dog I met in New Orleans one hot august evening. I followed him into some midtown ghettoes trying to give him some can of dog food I had bought in a petrol station. He didn't want it, kept running from me, suspicious of what I was up to. Followed him all the way to Basin street, or Perdido, some street once full of hookers, now famous from a song that came from that seething time in the life of that city. He fucked off, finally, after giving chase to me in a small park, and I walked back through those ghettoes, with street dudes sleeping on benches, and tears pouring down my face, all the way to the St. Charles streetcar, feeling a place in my heart that was sucking from the inside.

Sometimes your help is not wanted and that is hard.

A boy tried to say something witty and friendly to me last night. I responded with ueber-caginess. He apologised for freaking me out. I responded with polite ueber-caginess. Oh I prefer when life is not so serious.

These tiny stories are important. Important to tell, sometimes. I don't know why.

Some images of Ireland from this past week

I know of some Irish painters who have devoted most of their productive lives to painting Irish cloud formations. I don't expect you can see why, by this primitive photograph, but I've always found clouds in Ireland to exert tremendous influence on the mood of the people. I've heard my dad describe a sombre mood a number of times, by saying, the clouds are low in the sky today. It's something you'll recognise, if you live here, and are sensitive to these things.

A detail from the entry port of Glenstal Abbey, in county Limerick, where I went to witness the sung passion play the monks perform there every good friday. This is the first year for a while that I went there, with Dad, and probably the first time I've really paid attention to the text. The Abbey is a beautiful place, on many acres of lush, rich land, and as a child, I used to love the solitude and the freedom of running about and playing in the grounds, while all the adults were locked in the chapel, being very serious. This time I was one of the adults. The Jesus story at this easter week stage of the telling, is a devastating one. It's a terrible story, really, of injustice and fear and constricted hearts and treachery. The monks sing it so tenderly, in madrigals, with latin hymns sung at the end. The crescendo of the event itself happens after the story is sung, and left hanging, at the point where the man's body is taken down from the cross, and wrapped carefully in delicately scented cloths, and laid to rest in an unused tomb. The congregation files up to the simple wooden hand made cross that the monks have made, and wait in line, kissing the cross, each in turn, some symbolic gesture that struck me as deeply human, deeply animal. Profoundly moving.

A very modern bridge, in the University of Limerick campus. This is a somewhat winding, curved, foot and cycle bridge, with seated areas built into it, which I have seen used by students every time I've cycled over it. Under the bridge is a beautiful river, with trees growing in it, and small waterfalls, it's quite a gorgeous contrast, especially at night. Beyond the bridge on one side is one of the most dynamic, largely technological, campuses in Ireland, and on the other, tiny little country lanes with a pub nearby that has on most days got a big fire blazing in the hearth, and little formica tables and chairs, and you can get a large pot of tea there for two euro (about ten thousand dollars, granted) which will yield at least four and a dribble cups of decent and strongly brewed tea, and they'll put a fox's creme biscuit bar on the side of your cup too.