Where Does This Evening Find You?
And back to my breadbox hovel in Drumcondra, following an afternoon at the Irish Writers' Centre. Back to the smoke–yellowed walls, carpeting of no distinguishable color, single bed in the corner; broken mirror hanging on the wall—from which the bad luck has surely run out long ago. Back to the tortured blare of Lorkan's TV in the next room, screeching and crackling, seething through the painted–shut double doors separating our rooms.
It's going on five days I've been in Dublin. Found this bedsit the first evening—a genuine feat in late–August, with a student population topping one hundred thousand. It's located on the Northside; number one St. Alphonsus Road, in a section of town called Drumcondra; a good, old–time Viking name.
Set my leather writing folder on the small table by the double doors. Boil some potatoes in the meager kitchen. Take a turkey sandwich, bought earlier at a deli, from the refrigerator—the smallest fridge I have ever seen; holds six cans of beer and sandwich, and not much else. Doesn't matter; this place is just a temporary stop, an address, a place to sleep—inarguable incentive to find work and move on.
Once the potatoes have boiled I drain the water and pour in can of vegetable soup. Leave it on the burner another minute or two, then clear a space at the table. And I eat, listening to the news from the next room. Something unnerving living next to a man whose senses are so blunted that the news must be screamed in his face.
Some strange things I've heard in this house.
My second night I woke around midnight. Outside my door the landlady and her handyman boyfriend argued about his drinking—her staccato denunciations bandied back and forth with his lethargic, pitiable repetition, "Now wait a moment… just wait a moment now." They argued for twenty minutes before he slunk away, but I was up for hours afterward listening to the wind in the trees.
The next night I heard wailing. Not screaming or crying, but wailing. When I asked the landlady about it the next day, she said, "Oh, that was probably poor Sean, upstairs. He's deaf and dumb. What a yoke to bear. He sometimes gets frustrated not being able to speak, so he wails. He can't hear himself, doesn't know how loud it is." Then her eyes widened, she put her hand on my forearm. "He didn't disturb you, did he?"
I said no. "Just curious."
Having spent much of the morning seeing some of the old sights around town—St. Stephen's Green, Trinity College, Sinnot's pub, the Dublin Writers' Museum—then a few hours at the Irish Writers' Centre, I am exhausted. And famished. I finish my dinner in minutes.
I wash the dishes as the daylight fades beyond the security bars at my window. And feel the first shivering strands of homesickness unfurl. Always at the quiet moments. Leaving me to weigh this hovel against my parents' home; my dingy single bed to the futon and stereo and computer I left behind. Being here alone to being with my friends.
For Christ's sake, it's not like I'm going to be here forever. Just a temporary situation.
As I put away the dishes, hang the dishtowel over the oven door handle, I feel the pang, igniting the faces of my friends and family.
I sit down with a novel, knowing I won't finish the page.
Thinking of home—Windsor, Ontario—feeling this pang that has always been with me, double–edged and incorrigible. A swelling ache bellowing through my nerves the ancient words God probably used banishing Adam and Eve, "Gird your loins and get the fuck out!"