May all beings everywhere be happy and free.
Since I’ll be on a plane this time tomorrow, here’s an early new year’s thought. It’s a Chinese proverb.

‘Happiness is having something to do, something to hope for and someone to love.’

We are all individuals
Doing the dishes after Christmas dinner, I caught glimpses of Antz on the kitchen tv. I’d seen it at Lincoln Plaza when it first came out. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a whiny little worker ant (voiced by Woody Allen) who dreams of being an individual in the colony, where everyone is either a drone, a soldier or a queen.

Computer animation leaves me cold, excepting the Toy Story films, where it’s in the service of wonderful storylines. Even with those movies, I wish they hadn’t tried to do humans—it broke the spell to find the nasty kid Sid as shiny and plasticky as the toys themselves. At Monsters, Inc. my inner child sat above the action and noted dispassionately that they’d now figured out fur—wet fur, fur rippling in the breeze, fur being stroked…enough with the fur! I always found Pinocchio’s quest to be a real boy tedious, and this slavish CGI stuff makes me long for the economy of a Chuck Jones line.

Watching Antz, especially the scenes of bazillions of ants trudging through their tasks in the colony, I realized what makes me uncomfortable about being back in Ireland. We all look the same. We dress the same. We think the same. Like a child who takes the wrong Mammy’s hand in Tesco’s, I managed to follow three different women around Dublin, thinking they were my mother. I see my own face on strangers every day. It panics me, this vast weight of genetics and assumptions. It’s hard enough to shake off assumptions when they’re challenged; what chance do we have when they’re shared?

Doing the Vatican rag
Santy brought me a laptop—score! It’s waiting for me in New York. My preciousssss.

When I was a child I could barely contain Santy-related excitement through midnight mass. We used to go to the Jesuit mass at Crescent, where my father teaches, and I fretted about how to drag my parents away from tea and biscuits afterwards. I hadn’t been to Christmas mass since I was nineteen or so, when being a drunk in a midnight choir lost its appeal. The last mass I’d sat through was Arlene’s wedding in Connecticut, where the double nooses placed over the heads of the new couple (a Filipino tradition, apparently) distracted me from the rest of the ceremony. That Cliff is a foot and a half taller than Arlene only added to the drama.

Went back to Crescent this year out of curiosity. Midnight mass is now 9pm, for convenience. Crowds once spilled out of the octagonal assembly hall, but this year there were a sparse 200 seats. No choir, and the school orchestra’s skill has not increased since I laid down my screeching violin. People mumbled along to Angels we have heard on high like surly teenagers—why are Catholics dreadful hymn-singers? Or were we just thrown by the entirely made-up extra verse printed on our programmes?

Fr. O’Connor gave a tortuous sermon linking September 11th to the Nativity. It seems the attacks were caused by our crass, image-conscious society, which had lost its way, but with the birth of Christ we had a chance to regain purity. Or something. He talked about the visual beauty of the flaming towers, all orange and red and glinting steel, how hard it was to remember that it wasn’t a movie. Not if you saw it live, I thought.

And yet the mass was lovely, somehow. Usually I let the words drone overhead. This year, I spoke them all, and they came fluently after ten years. How delightful to stand up with your neighbours and list out your beliefs in ringing prose: “We believe in one God, the father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, of all that Is, Seen and Unseen…” This is the stuff corporate missions statements grope towards in their clammy way.

I envy the people who believe these words. But still, it was good to voice formless thanks and pleadings, even if no one is listening.

Buddy, can you spare a dime?
There were nine in Grandad Mackey’s family, and in the end only Winnie, May and Peg were left to be next-door neighbours in a Tipperary nursing home. They were all in their nineties, and fiercely jealous. If you visited May, she would draw you close and confide that Winnie was asleep and ‘twas better not to disturb her. Later on, she would play the innocent: “They’re looking well, aren’t they? Oh, did they not drop in to see you at all?”

Winnie had gone to New York on a passenger ship in 1927. She got married on 57th and Lex—“Not to the fella I went over with, mind. Sure, he was only building castles in the air.“—and opened a deli in Hell’s Kitchen. In 1932, they came back to Tipperary.

“They had a spot of bother with the stock market, and things got very bad,” she said. “Are they over that now?”

Winnie had five children, and was a widow for longer than she was married. The polio that crippled her didn’t stop her running Talbot’s pub in Nenagh for fifty years, presiding from her chair like FDR. Her New York stint was a blip; a bare five per cent of her life.

Dave’s grandmother is 102. He flew home for her birthday last autumn, and she wanted to know all about the growing recession in New York. It wasn’t really so bad, he explained, nothing compared to the real crash of ’29. Worst that could happen was that a few people might have to move back in with their parents.

“Son,” she said, and patted his arm, “At your age, that is the worst that could happen.”

I’m glad she thinks so. These days I take comfort in the notion that life is long.

Why I now write ‘favourite’.
Read a Jonathan Franzen piece last week on his Oprah woes. Apparently, people had two kinds of reaction to the news that she had chosen The Corrections for her book club—delighted congratulations, or outraged sympathy. Franzen confessed that, being the type who immediately picks up a Texas accent in Texas, he agreed with each with complete conviction. This got him into all sorts of trouble.

I’m sympathetic. Haven’t been able to keep my accent straight since I’ve been home. I veer across several counties (and states) in a single sentence, much like Tom Cruise in Far and Away. At Christmas dinner, my irritating American tones disappeared completely for a moment and I channelled another being, who said:
“But sure, how did Grandad fodder the cattle?”
Only I actually said “foddher”, in flawless takeoff of my grandfather’s Tipperary accent. My sophisticate sisters were baffled.
“How did he father the cattle? Jesus, what are you talking about now?”

I’ve decided to use Hiberno-English spelling for the duration of my stay. It reflects my shifting loyalties.

Under the weather
Dad and I went for a bike ride to Patrickswell this morning. Round the block, he calls it, but it’s six miles, with the wind in front for three. Ireland is blustery and ‘threatening to rain’ since we’ve been here, but sometimes the changing light is enough to make me want to lie on my back in a wet field and stare. When I lived in Spain, I used to puzzle why Ireland produced fine writers but no painters worth talking about. It occurs to me now that the Spanish sky is an endlessly patient model, but no paintbrush is fast enough to catch Irish light. When we got back, Dad rushed inside for the camera to get the full double rainbows that framed our house. By the time we got outside again, they’d gone.

Jason does not like this climate. Tonight he announced: “I am going home to America and I intend to invent the electric hat.”

The last Rolo
News comes that Rolo MacMahon died in August. Rolo was the dwarf Labrador from down the road who used to finish our dinner scraps. He was a good friend to three finicky sisters, and a great favourite of my father’s. Because he never grew tall or sensible, we thought of him as a pup well into his seventies.

When he grew too old and blind to visit the neighbours, MacMahons arranged for him to be put to sleep. Michael is arthritic, so Dad went down to dig the grave. Rolo recognized Dad’s voice—treats! roast beef!—and bounded over as best as he was able. He landed prematurely in the fresh grave and had to be helped out so the vet could finish him off. My father considered a swift shovel blow to save the trouble but decided that Rolo deserved a gentle, city dog’s end. This was, after all, the sweet Labrador we once saw backing away from a dominant young rabbit.

Blogging in a winter wonderland
Half the population of Ireland is under 30. That makes me a crumbly all of a sudden. Brown Thomas sells Prada and Creme de la Mer, and there are skinflicks in the newsagents. Girls clatter across the damp cobblestones in high heels and glittery boob tubes. Mobiles ring everywhere like Salvation Army Santa bells in New York. The girls sign off with ‘Bye-bye-bye, hon!”

I am mystified. Like Richard E. Grant in Withnail and I I want to roll down the car window and yell: ‘Scrubbers! Scrubbers!’ at this young trollop of a country.

On the bus out to Stillorgan I sat opposite a pair of twenty-year-old part-time barmen.

“D’you mean you don’t have to stock the bar at your place? Or do your own till at the end of the night? Are you serious? You just have to pull pints? Jesus, you lucky bastard. I’d love that. I have to go down to the cellar five times a night, and haul the boxes up, and carry them through three sets of doors, and wipe off the bottles, and stock the shelves, and move the furniture and clean the floors at the end of the night, and count up the takings, and on top of that I’m servin’ miserable old Guards all night long.

“D’you know when they put the money down on the counter instead of into your hand? And you have to pick it up out of the wet? I hate that. I always put their change back down into the wet but they never cop on.

“Some of them get so gone you can say anything to them, though. ‘Now, two pints of Guinness, sir, you old fucker.’ And they say thanks.”

“I don’t know what to get for Mam and Dad. I thought theatre tickets would be good, but it seems a bit…I don’t know. What d’you think? Is it weird to get theatre tickets for your parents?”

“I got this shirt. I don’t know if I can carry it off. Is it a bit E for me?”
They were so sweet and young and good that I had tears in my eyes when I got off the bus. Being home for Christmas has turned me into a sap.

Hello Boys
On the Dock Road roundabout in Limerick, the County Council has put up a ‘with-it’ road safety sign.
SLOW DOWN BOYS it says in big black letters. I love it. Makes me picture an eldery local politician in a Wonderbra.

What the world needs now
Is love, sweet love
It’s the only thing that there’s just
Too little of

If I could pick a talent, it would be for making pop songs of a certain type. Ray Davies, Elvis Costello, Shane McGowan, Burt Bacharach songs. There are some Jarvis Cocker songs I’d claim too. Epiphanies; perfected novels; stories with a beat you can’t get rid of. Waterloo Sunset. Lola.

Three Wise Men: if you visit my boudoir, now you know what to bring.

Cast a cold eye on life, on death
Horseman, pass by!

The Sacred Heart : An Atlas of the Body Seen Through Invasive Surgery.
Mark showed me this grisly, beautiful book of photographs last week. The title drew me, recovering Catholic that I am, but beyond that our differing visceral reactions were interesting. Popped-out eyeballs made Mark shudder, whereas I groaned at nipple re-siting. Peeled-back scalps were rubbery and creepy, but the inside of a knee looked like nothing more than pretty, ruby-colored meat.

I’ve had training for this book. When I was five or six, my aunt’s spare bedroom had a picture of pale, reproving Jesus holding his freshly eviscerated heart. A little lightbulb behind the heart made it pulse redly all night long. Jesus chased me in my dreams.

I am compiling a list of things I wish they taught in schools. It’s limited to Irish schools because that is what I know.

1. How to drive
2. How to walk on your hands
3. How to breathe and meditate
4. How to manage money
5. How to cook five dishes really well (which five? hmm)
6. How to type
7. How to deliver and receive criticism
8. How to camp

I need help with my new curriculum. Send prescriptions to dervala@vindigo.com.

Update: the Yanks and Canadians tell me that they already learn all of this at school, so there.

Explains why they’re so good at taking criticism.