A Break in the Rain

And then, with customary abruptness, the rain stopped. Turning the corner onto Oliver Plunkett Street, I was blinded as the autumn sun made the street a mirror; a harsh glare turning the people into living silhouettes. The film in my camera was full of photos of women binding and embossing books and my darling digital SLR lay idle at home. So I had to rely on my phone, though I could barely make out the screen, so blinded was I by the footpath.

A birthday blog.

A hastily written, rambling blog; a small birthday token for a friend.

This friend tells me I don’t blog enough. I think she checks in daily – perhaps the only one who does – to see if I’ve posted something and she’s usually disappointed. There are reasons for my spasmodic blogging. Life, college and more than a little procrastination get in the way, certainly.But I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to writing. It can take me days, even weeks to work on a post until I’m satisfied with it. I craft the posts, attempting to make them solid pieces of writing. I like to think I want to be a writer “when I grow up.” But I’m 24 now, I’m not going to get much more grown up than this I suppose. But for now I put my energy, when I’m not distracted by photography or art, into perfecting blog posts that only a handful of people read. Maybe I need to start trying to work on something a bit more substantial.

This friend has told me too that my blog isn’t personal enough, that there isn’t enough of me in the writing. I seem to reveal next to nothing about myself. I realised, of course, that this was true and it annoyed me. Every writer, every artist (not that I could ever call myself either of those things), has to put themselves into their work if it’s ever to connect with others. But I’ve never been one for the confessional blogging really. Even at my most open, I conceal much of the emotions in language and abstraction. This friend has a blog that almost no one she knows has read. She pours out her feelings and thoughts with a raw candidness that I like. But her blog, as she’ll readily admit, is full of spelling mistakes and errors in syntax. This is fine; emotions don’t care much for spelling and grammer when they’re pouring down fingers, through keyboards and onto the internet. But for me this blog isn’t about catharsis or emotional release. It’s about creating something. But I suppose I should try to put myself in the writing more, to create a more emotional connection. A little more substance and a little less style maybe.

I haven’t finished writing about Thailand yet. There’s a lot more left to cover. I have it planned out, I know what I want to write. But I’ve been stuck on this one post for the last few weeks, trying to wrestle all I want to say and describe into something I’d be happy to let people read. Hopefully I’ll manage it soon. Once I have all the Thai blogs written and the photos of the trip up on Flickr, I can move on in my head, because a part of me is still there. I feel homesickness for a place that isn’t my home.

I’ve been 24 for just over two weeks now. It’s easy to forget how fast time moves. A year since my last birthday. Over a year since The Teacher left. It’s been a year of adjustments, of learning things about myself that I didn’t know and frustration at the things about myself I haven’t fixed. I’m not happy with my life right now. It’s true that I’m surrounded by great friends who love me. I’m back in college, learning more of a craft than a subject, something that challenges but excites me too. But there’s an uneasiness. I feel like I should have achieved something more by now. I wasted much of 2008 and 2009, I don’t want to do that again. And, truth be told, I’m lonely. I want to have fixed this things by next year. I just need two things – courage and discipline. Easy peasy.

There, I’ve blogged. Happy now?

Happy birthday.

The Thailand Trip – Part 2: Into The City

(Sorry it’s so fragmented.)

The heat hangs in the air, semi-solid. Stepping from the cool sterility of the airport into the Bangkok morning, I suddenly feel submerged, enveloped by the atmosphere. Like diving under slept-in covers or hiding in a hot-press of damp linen.

Kicker and I are brought to a taxi, a spacious air-conditioned relief after only minutes of thick heat and for a moment I consider spending the rest of the holiday here.

The billboards crowd the sides of the highway from the airport, mammoth wire-framed constructions screaming consumerism and gadgetry. They seem as long as football fields and maybe eight stories tall. I’ve never seen any so big and I stare at them with a mixture of awe and disgust as they loom over us.

Almost obscured by these commercial monuments lie clusters of squat red-roofed houses surrounded by fields marked out by clumps and lines of palm trees, long ponds and small lakes; fitful agriculture suggesting the outer edges of the sprawling city. I watch the fields get smaller and the houses multiply and grow as we tear along the road.

A Swarm of Childhood

It floated down Pana, a conflagration of violent colour, a horde of cartoon characters shifting, contracting and expanding. A helium fueled swarm of childhood gliding through an adult world.

The Thailand Trip – Part 1: The Airport

After splashing cold water from the tap on my face, I straighten up and inspect myself in the mirror. I look like I haven’t slept in over 40 hours. It’s probably more like 45. To my left and right, about 10 other men are doing the same. A lanky ginger haired guy in a black hoody brushes his teeth noisily, joining the weary drone of several electric razors that fills the grey tiled bathroom. Despite the drowsy fog of my mind, I’m struck by the moment. A crossroads, a pit-stop for each of us, the particles of countless countries cling to our clothes. I smile at the idea that we’ve each come from places far-off and are gathered here now, in front of the long streaked mirror of a Bangkok airport mens room before continuing on in different directions.

Mortified

It could not have gone worse for the poor guy. A heavy black backpack pulled on his shoulders and he juggled a newspaper, phone and brown leather jacket in his hands as he struggled his way through the heavy door of the cafe. ‘Clumsy’ was written all over his shaved bald head. I watched him over my shoulder as he asked for a coffee and maneuvered his possessions again to accommodate the saucer and mug. Staring intently at his coffee, he inched his way to the table by the window. Under his left arm, he had clamped the newspaper and held both his phone and the saucer with his left hand. His leather jacket was slung over his right arm and the hand kept the mug steady. The entire cafe held its breath.

Blog Writer. Nope…doesn’t have the same ring as Paperback Writer.

Every once in a while, it’s good to be reminded how great the music of The Beatles is. Especially if a piece of animation like this is doing the reminding. I keep coming back to watch this again and again and various Beatles songs have been stuck in my head over the last few days. But this animation is just stunning; the style is fantastic and the sheer amount of detail and sly visual references is amazing. Watch this on full screen in HD if you can, it’s totally worth it.

Doing Pana

JFK doing Pana

Older people are always talking about how this little city has changed. They say we came into money and forgot ourselves. They miss the sense of community that they say was there. Buildings of steel and metal are built over the bones of their memories; the streets, like European boulevards with coloured lighting, replacing the narrow foot-paths they walked with friends long since past.

Shadow of an Icon

So he dies of cardiac arrest? Such a mundane and common end to an extraordinary life. It doesn’t fit the story; it’s not how I’d write it. That’s what I find depressing. Not that he’s dead but how he died. It’s going to make for such a shitty ending when the movie comes out. The world left holding their popcorn, going, “Is that it? Just like that?”

I don’t feel sad or upset. I don’t feel like we’ve lost a legend or an icon. That Michael Jackson disappeared over 10 years ago. He became Wacko Jacko, a once-great-not-anymore plastic-faced kiddy-fiddling freakshow recluse. That’s who he was in the media of the 21st Century; that was the framework into which they fit their stories. He was the butt of jokes and an object of scorn. A car crash that made Britney Spears pale in comparison. Humans have always been attracted to celebrities but in the past decade, that attraction has become a fetish, an addiction and an obsession. People like to see the rise, but what they really want to see is the fall. We’re consumed by the fall. That’s what Jackson’s life had become: a never ending downward spiral. One thing after another. The world was transfixed.

The Spencer Tunick Photos

Spencer Tunick Ireland

It’s pretty hard to believe that the whole Spencer Tunick adventure was around a year ago now. I’m not saying it feels like it was just yesterday, but a year? Christ, that’s as disturbing a reminder of the unrelenting passage of time as having an adult conversation with someone who wasn’t even born in the 80’s.

So a year later, the photos are finally released and it’s about bloody time. My memories of it are faded now; I had to go back and read the post on my old blog about it. (It was actually the most viewed post on that blog, bringing in numbers I should have taken advantage of but I was too lazy to do anything about it. Oh well.) I actually went back and read some other people’s blogs from the time too in an attempt to remind myself of the buzz and excitement it generated. I was reminded of how liberating it was; how bizarre an experience it was to be naked with over 1000 people, including a hero of my televisual youth. Most of all though, I remember it as being perhaps the most fun I’ve ever had in my adult life. Nothing else has ever come close to the tingle I remember from the summers of my childhood. Despite (or maybe because of) the nudity, I remember this feeling of innocent fun, as strange as it sounds.