Silly sprout exampleWe were evacuated via emergency slides. A fleet of fire trucks had assembled on the runway to hose down the burning engine. Firemen hoisted us off the base of the slide and sent us reeling towards the flashing lights and coaches waiting beyond.‘Keep moving, keep moving,’ they ordered us as we were hustled along. A sign over the terminal building shone yellow in the distance.Dublin Airport, it said. There was an uncomfortable silence. I thanked them and smiled for them. I almost told them that we’d be seeing each other soon. Who? “The fact of you sitting there like that, like I said before.” 2. You wouldn’t know by looking at me, but my mother was raised in another country and spoke with an accent. One effect of the accent was that she pronouncedp’s asb’s. When I was a child, this seemed inconsequential to me — my sister and I heard the correct pronunciations from our dad, and were rarely thrown by Mom orderingbineabble on the pizza, or asking if we’d prefer black, green, orbebbermint tea. Naturally, we don’t live in the same luxury as in Australia, where you can drive around the wide expanses for days on end and meet nothing but marsupials and Aborigines until the most beautiful place on earth appears before your eyes in perfect simplicity. I looked around. Remarkably little had changed since the house had last been occupied. Same furniture, same carpets, same books on the shelves— the same photographs, even, displayed in the same photograph frames. The place still even smelled the same, for the love of God. It was as if the owners had just popped out and might return at any moment. Or as if we might happen upon them in another part of the house, two interlopers barging in on top of them as they read the morning papers. Hickey was back out on the corridor blundering through the darkness, throwing open doors, a man working his way through the carriages of a train in search of an empty seat. He went at everything in that manner: bullishly, and in haste, and he was heading, by the sounds of it, for the French doors. I felt completely safe. No one knew I was there. There were no cameras or oversize erections on muscular men in the next room waiting to rip off my clothes and fuck me from every angle, in every orifice; there were no gaffers or hot lights, smells of lubricants or alcohol. Ciara was struggling to force shut the door of the Sales Suite. People were clamouring for entry. Tired people, thwarted people, demoralised people, panicked people, people shouting that they’d been queuing for days. That’s okay. We’ve certainly got enough food for him. It took Gabriel a moment to realize the vow had come from Tanaqua, still tethered in front of him. He raised his whip, then froze as an ungodly din rose from across the field. “A fast horse east to the Delaware coast, I reckon, then catch one of the packets that run up the river.” As they reached the gangway to the dock, the mate put a knuckle to his forehead and dipped his head.“Give Mr. Lloyd our best, sir. Tell him we look forward to his showing us a step or two at the great ball.” Conservationists are always protesting the planting of foliage in the black sands. They say the sands are a natural wonder, existing nowhere else. Leise flehen: A reference to Franz Schubert’s (1797–1828)St?ndchen (Serenade), with the lyrics“Leise flehen meine Lieder / Durch die Nacht zu dir” (“Gently goes my song’s entreaty / through the night to you”) by lyricist Ludwig Rellstab (1799–1860). You should hurry and go. It can do nothing but good. Yves puts his hand on mine and says: You should have been a poet. The here and now is uncontrollable, the moment is past before it began. Life is one continuous follow-up, processing and then preparing for the future, the next moment.. |