‘Manhattan’s sinking like a rock
Into the filthy Hudson
What a shock
They wrote a book about it
They said it was like Ancient Rome’

Ten years ago, I listened to Lou Reed’s New York over and over. He spat out lyrics about pre-Giuliani Manhattan and scared the bejesus out of me. He also made me want to live nowhere else.

Crossing the bridge this morning, I realized he got it wrong. On a sunny day, Manhattan rises from the East River like lost Atlantis. It shimmers, it’s impossibly glamorous, and I love it like a person. Even though I spend all day fretting about my taxes and plodding through a death-march project at work, I found myself skipping uncontrollably as I walked down to 23rd Street for lunch. It was provoked by the bebop playing loudly at the street vendor’s table next to the office. Every few steps, my right foot would shuffle into a small hop. I tried to disguise it as a peculiar limp, but no—definitely skipping. This hasn’t been cute on me for about 27 years, but there it was, nonetheless.

I can’t resist my city in spring.

Don’t do anything sexual to Q-tip!
I’m tempted to name my bike, as Dervla Murphy does in all her travel books. It’s getting cranky about sleeping rough these days and is making me pay with rusty, creaking chains, slipping gears, and blown tires. On the Lower East Side, I looked up a bike shop in Vindigo to fix it up. That’s how I found one of New York’s greats, John’s Mini Bike & Bicycle Store, on East Houston at Eldridge St. It’s a combined bike shop and pet store, with pet cages balanced on top of electric scooter boxes.

    ‘Got any tyre repair kits?’ I asked, trying not to look too closely at the cage full of live Madagascar cockroaches with the cardboard sign ‘Great on a Ritz cracker!!!’ An albino snake reminded me I needed an inner tube, too.

‘Tyre kits? Nah.’ said Linda, the owner, as if wondering why the hell I would ask for a puncture repair kit in a bike store. But her husband found one in the back, behind the iguanas and the piebald rats. While I paid, the mynah birds squawked, pecking at the sign that said ‘Don’t tap on the glass…and if you’re ugly, cover your face.’

I asked about the chameleons that scuttled up and down a driftwood branch.
    ‘The color change is all mood. 90%. See that guy, his grandfather, he was born black and stayed black all the time except when he was getting it on. And the female, she’s only 75% of the size of the male, but if she gets the spots on her back, he better make himself scarce, I’m telling you. See, this guy, he’s turning brown. He’s getting aggressive.’

A brown gecko with amber eyes lazed on another branch.
    ‘That’s his wife down there. They had the little baby in the window. I just sold the baby to a guy who has two others; I think they’re adopting.’
    ‘How do you know it’s his wife? It could be his girlfriend.’
    ‘Oh no, they’re very committed. She was in the Tiffany’s catalog this year. And this guy, he was in the Tiffany’s catalog last fall. They’re celebrity geckos.’

    ‘Q-tip, that’s the chameleon, was on Comedy Central. They were doing this skit of Sally Jessica Raphael, and they had all these dogs dressed up as prostitutes. And they wanted Q-tip to be a girl chameleon brought on as a date for this chameleon puppet! So they said ‘Can we put lipstick on him?’ I said no, no way! They said ‘Can we color him pink?’ Ab-solutely not. Then they said, ‘Well, can we put a bow on his crest?’ That was okay. A bow, just the bow.
But then I went down there and they had these puppets, and they wanted Q-tip to be draped across this one puppet like they were making out. I said ‘You better not do anything sexual to Q-tip!’ And they said, don’t worry, we won’t do anything sexual to Q-tip. We just want him to walk sexy across the floor to the puppet and then just, you know, hang out.’

She handed me a video tape. ‘Here, if I give this to you, will you bring it back? It’s a scream. This is Q-tip on Comedy Central.’

We shook hands, introduced ourselves, and I took Q-tip’s big moment and my inner tube home. I may call my bike Q-tip.

From the excellent The New Buddhism by James William Coleman, a study of the history and the dominant trends of the Americanization of Buddhism:

‘Buddhism challenges Western society’s deepest cultural assumptions about the nature of reality. The mere fact that a respected religious group would reject the existence of a separate independent self is bound to force some people to think long and hard about the way they look at their lives.
[...]

Despite it’s gentle mien, Buddhism is a profoundly subversive force in postmodern consumer society. The structure of our economy, our psychology, our whole social reality is built around the unquestioned assumption that we are each of us separate, autonomous selves. Selves with endless appetites for consumer goods to set us off from the crowd, make us feel good about who we are, and give us a sense of identity. Selves that identify with a particular ethnic group, political party, or ideology. Selves driven by a sense of inadequacy, driven by the desire to be better, richer, or wiser people, driven by the need to prove their worth, driven by dark fears about the future and the fate that awaits us. What would happen if enough people saw through all that? If there was a critical mass for change?’

His research demonstrates that American Buddhism draws practitioners who are wealthy, extremely well-educated, and white. They are often looking to explore the self more deeply, and may have come from traditional psychotherapy. What a great cosmic joke to tell these self-seekers that they don’t, in fact, exist.

In Dublin

Dervala’s Ashes
This time 15 years ago I was standing outside Friar Tuck’s in Limerick, wrestling my first underage pints into submission with a curry chip¹ and watching the fights on the steps of the Redemptorist Fathers church opposite.

Life in Limerick in the 80s was nasty, brutish, and far too long. Please please please can I have a Green Card?

[1] An order of soggy fries topped with a huge dollop of curry sauce. Fondly known as ‘babyshit on chips’.

The Celts strolled up to Ireland from North Africa, and they were not blond or even red-headed as people like to think. They used quicklime to stiffen their hair into white spikes before battle, and their terrified enemies spread stories of fierce blond giants. The real fierce blonds arrived much later, marauders from the North with names like Leif and Erik. Irish monks built high round towers with entrances seven floors up, but it didn’t stop the Vikings getting at our women in the villages below. A second wave of Norsemen arrived a few centuries later, more peacefully, via France. They intermarried with the natives, and in a double-edged phrase from our childhood history books, became more Irish than the Irish themselves.

So some of the Irish ended up with the Vikings’ light hair and eyes (though most are bog-standard brunettes, like me). In Ireland, the most privileged, the luckiest one, is referred to as ‘the white-haired boy’. It’s the exact opposite of the unfortunate red-haired stepchild, and it’s often a jealous, disparaging term. Got a promotion?
 “Well, aren’t you the white-haired boy.”

Oddly, our blond-worship focuses more on men than women. The great mythical hero, Fionn McCumhaill, has a name that translates literally as ‘fair-haired’, but the classic standard of female beauty is raven hair. This may spring more from identification with our strapping Viking conquerors than from American-style glorification of sunny youth. We all want to imagine ourselves on the winning side.

“The first stages of meditation should be simply observation of breath. Concentrate on the nostrils where the breath flows in… out… in… out. Be aware of the touch of air as it strikes the passage through the nostrils. In fact be aware of everything and nothing. This sounds contradictory. Yet it is really not. For this is no time to daydream, to entertain vagrant and migratory thoughts. You are aware of your physical posture. Then you forget that also. You are aware that the past is dead, that it is gone. Yet specific consciousness of your whole preceding life is absent. The future does not yet exist. All you have is “right now”… the in… out… in… out rhythm of the breath of life.”—from Beginning Insight Mediation by Dorothy Figen

At meditation class last night, we sat nervously cross-legged and tried not to fidget. The teacher asked us to choose our seat, commit to our seat, and then follow the breath. Observe it—just normal breathing, in and out. Whenever our minds began to chatter, we were to acknowlege it with the word ‘Thinking’ in our minds, and then bring our attention back to the breath.

We practised for five minutes. I call my meditating side Mary, after saintly Mary in the Little House in the Prairie books. My other side is pert, chattering Laura.

In. Out. In. Out.

    ‘I should get these cushions. They’re kind of cool. I could make a whole little meditation corner in my apartment. Maybe with a little plastic Buddha statue like Paul had on FTrain. And some screens.’ said Laura.
   ‘Thinking,’ Mary reproved.

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

   ‘Wow. I’m doing well. I bet I’ll turn into someone really serene and centered. Shit, wait, does this count as spiritual materialism?’
   ‘Thinking,’ said Mary.

In. Out. In. Out. In.

   ‘My back hurts. I should do more yoga. Like Christy Turlington. She sings so badly in that Calvin Klein ad. I should get some of that new Calvin Klein lipgloss.’
   ‘Thinking.’ said Mary, sterner now.

In. Out. In. Out. In. Out. In. Out.

   ‘I wonder if I should be counting the breaths? Or saying some kind of mantra?’
   ’Thinking. Jesus.’

On the way home, I basked in serenity until a big-ass SUV roared into my path and cut me off.
   ‘Hey! FUCKFACE!’ said Laura.
   ‘Thinking.’ said Mary, sweetly.

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.—Byron

We are all selfish and I no more trust myself than others with a good motive.—Byron

“My nose itched, and I knew I should drink wine or kiss a fool.” —Jonathan Swift.
For one night a year, New York turns into London. By eleven o’clock, the streets are full of grown-ups staggering, snogging, and spoiling for a fight. No wonder people throw up.

1. Do not arrive at an Irish bar at 10 p.m. on St. Patrick’s Day, raw with sobriety, brain buzzing with office to-do lists.
2. You ignored # 1. Okay, do not make eye contact with any drunk in the guard of honor that lines your path to the bar/bathroom.
3. Don’t you listen to a word of my advice? Do not respond to the slurred ‘Iri’ girlsh all’ve boo’ful eyesh’. They think you have four booful eyesh.
4. Will you never learn? They’ve been here for 14 hours. Anyone who hasn’t scored by now thinks spilling Amstel Lite down your front is foreplay. That’s why they’re still here.
5. Grasshopper, be tolerant. Do not expect drunk frat boys to express interest in your inner life. And stop asking if they’ve read Atonement yet.
6. No, that boy with the glittery shamrock on his forehead is not cute. Go home.