Dalkey, Northbound
- I am embarking upon a ‘poetry month,’ or that’s what I’m calling it. I posted my first poem of the month yesterday, and I want to post one a day for the entire month of June. This obviously means I will be posting consistently, unrefined verse, and a lot of it will be rubbish that I’ll work on further in the future. So this is number two.
Dalkey, Northbound
It clicks heavily but steadily
and just as this murky holy water
offers to protect me,
the carriage physically shelters me
from a raw, wet gale
that would not fill but
tear away the vast sails
of the proudest colonial tale
but we clock clicks at a clip clop
only for, astride God’s cliffs,
a lonely and momentary stop,
when all I can hear is the violence of the sea.
June 2, 2011 | Categories: Alcohol, Poetry, Poetry Month, Travel, Waiting | Tags: DART poems, Poetry Month | Leave A Comment »
Cultural Consumption No. 2: Martha and Steve eat out in Berlin
- I’ve spent the last two weeks travelling through a few different countries. Berlin was one city I visited. For better or worse, it struck me that to best display my feelings about my time in the city, I would have to revisit Martha and Steve.
“Oh my God, did you see what is on this menu?” Steve looks down at the unintelligible syllables in sheer disbelief. On the page in front of him there are combinations of letters that he has never seen before, gibberish that he could never have previously imagined. There are even letters with pairs of dots above them. The English translation of each dish is underneath.
“I know, I know! It’s crazy.” Martha hasn’t yet looked at the menu. Her rubber neck is surveying the environment that surrounds her. Her face is wretchedly contorted in jubilant disbelief. She smiles like a little boy who has found himself in a giant warehouse full of ketchup, crayons and valuable paintings. To all intents and purposes, it is a restaurant. Martha’s roving gaze is disrupted as a waitress places a large beer in front of Steve and a small one in front of her.
“Thank you! No, I mean, danke!” The waitress, Emily according to the golden script of her nametag, is blessed with a shower of Steve’s finest saliva as the entire restaurant is blessed with Steve’s voice. His boisterous laugh, coming from deep in his chest, signals that he finds world languages incredibly amusing, and the idea that he should endeavour to use one all the more hilarious. Emily The Waitress does not seem to be able to grasp that Steve’s struggle to use a simple German word is highly entertaining. To Emily The Waitress, the incident is unfortunate at worst. At best, it is unremarkable. She just doesn’t get it.
“Bitte,” she says politely before engaging with those at the next table.
“Well, the German’s aren’t famous for their sense of humour, and now I know why!” Steve is hilarious. He has drawn upon a broad generalisation of a culture, consumed it, and then congratulated himself for that process by making an hilarious joke about it. He fails to see the sad irony that lies in his being the embodiment of a stereotypical world consumer, consuming a stereotype that he himself has decided to apply to a person.
Martha beckons Emily The Waitress once again.
“Okay, Steve.” Martha’s speech dribbles out of her maw. She glances between her husband, the menu and Emily The Waitress. “Steve, I will… Steeeeeeve. I, am, going, to, haaaaave. Em, your The Berlin Wall please. Yes, I think I’ll have some The Berlin Wall, with french fries. And some, no, yeah, that’s good for me. Dankey.” Martha closes her menu on the table and looks at Steve, imploring him to order. He responds with almost German efficiency, swinging his head between his wife and Emily The Waitress as if looking for approval of his decision.
“Yeah, you know what, I’ll have some Sachsenhausen, the large portion. And I’ll have some fries too… Wait, you know what, could I get a side of Holocaust Memorial maybe? Instead of the fries?” Emily The Waitress nods and smiles, signaling in the affirmative. “Thanks.” Martha nods and smiles like their host did previously, only with some kind of pride in achievement across her face, as if she made some sort of fantastic cultural leap by ordering a meal in English in Berlin, albeit from a waitress who speaks English. The girls in the book club will be delighted to hear how she ordered the entire meal in German, in the process saving Steve from his cultural ignorance.
“So,” starts Emily The Waitress in near perfect English, “one The Berlin Wall, with fries for you? One large Sachsenhausen with some Holocaust Memorial for you?” Steve smiles benignly.
“Sounds good. Your English is great. How did you pick that up?”
“Oh, thank you.” She smiles humbly. “I studied it in school and just kept using it. Most people here speak at least a little bit of English, maybe some other languages too.”
“Really. That is just, wow. Well, you’re very good for learning it.” Steve belittles her unintentionally, with a massive grin on his massive face. He pushes his glasses up his nose. Emily The Waitress exits stage left.
The players stop mid-chew and mid-chat. The lights all go out. That is, except for one. A single spotlight impales Emily The Waitress to one side of the action. She closes her eyes for a second. She contemplates her pending soliloquy, brushing back her beautiful blonde hair, tucking some strays behind the fashionably thick black glasses that let her big blue eyes see the world. Her voice is so small.
“This place is so sad. Please don’t do it. Why do you do it? Why do we do it? Do we have some duty to talk, as if it’s okay? If I acknowledge it and sell it, is that really dealing with some kind of identity crisis? Is that dealing with a mass of history?”
Emily The Waitress lifts her glasses and wipes tears from her eyes. She bows her little blonde head towards the floor. Light returns to the restaurant. A second waitress places plates in front of Martha and Steve who chuckle and chat quietly, a manner completely alien to them. All of the lights go out and there is silence.
Two spotlights now penetrate the black. One is trained upon Emily The Waitress, who stands knock-kneed with her head bowed, in the same position that the light had previously speared her. The second circular shaft of light illuminates Martha and Steve at their table.
“Please don’t,” Emily The Waitress pleads towards her guests. “I don’t want this. I feel ill. It hurts.” Emily drops to her knees. Her voice does not seem to reach Martha and Steve through the darkness. In her throat, her whimpering struggles against her desperate wailing, choking her voice.
“Enjoy your meal.”
Martha breaks off little chunks of wall with her fingers and stuffs them into her mouth. She moans in satisfaction, communicating the pleasure of her meal. She savours every morsel, tasting the cultural, social and political weight of what she is consuming. Similarly, Steve sucks on an old shoelace, nodding his head like a dashboard dog. He understands Sachsenhausen as Martha understands The Berlin Wall. Contemporary consumption seems to square it all historically for everyone involved in the transaction. Meanwhile, Emily The Waitress has crumpled to a horizontal position.
“We hope everything is okay for you,” she screams through tears. Her body flaps about on the ground like a helpless fish on cement, with arms writhing and legs kicking out. She wails in agony, as if her fingernails are slowly being torn from her extremities by a crazed torturer. Her hair is wild and covers some of her face.
“Can I get you anything else? Is it good? I am happy that the German people, all people in fact, can now move on from the history of these things and just eat them.”
Steve pours ketchup all over a stripped shirtsleeve.
Emily The Waitress curls into a fetal position. She ceases to move. The tears of the world are a constant quantity. Her heavy breathing and sobbing soaks the room.
Martha belches and laughs. Steve laughs too, having also finished his meal. He then belches even louder than his wife had done. Steve wins the belching contest. They both laugh. They both enjoyed their German cuisine. Their wonderful waitress stands up and takes a deep breath. Everything is illuminated once again.
“My friends, was everything good?”
“It was wonderful, Emily, dankey.” Martha grins.
“I’m glad you enjoyed it. Can I get you anything else? Or just the bill?”
“The bill would be great, please.” Steve hands his American Express card to Emily The Waitress. She smiles and limps away.
August 16, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Nations, Political, Social, Travel | Tags: Berlin, Berlin Tourism, History of Germany, Martha and Steve, The Berlin Wall, The Holocaust, The Holocaust Memorial, Waitressing | 1 Comment »
Cultural Consumption No. 1: Martha and Steve (and Gerry and Sarah)
- Cultural consumption, the commodification of the world, of experience, Spectacle.
Martha and Steve are a single entity. They met through mutual friends, or at work, or during college, or something. They are in their mid-fifties. Martha formerly worked in administration for the New Jersey school board but has been happily unemployed since Noah, the youngest of their three children, started high school back in Hoboken, New Jersey. Steve, a New Yorker by birth, is now semi-retired. Back in 2006 he took a very lucrative pension from the accounting firm he was a partner in as the company downsized. He is now a respected freelance accounting consultant, working at his own leisure, not really needing the money. With their children embarking on their own adult lives, Martha and Steve now spend a lot of their time travelling, using their free time to experience the world, taking in what the world can offer them.
“How about we share the crab claws to start, Martha?”
“Sure.” Martha scans the first page of the menu slowly and deliberately with her finger. “Crab claws sound good… And will we get some garlic bread? Or the mussels? Some garlic bread?”
“Well yeah, but is that too much? I’m thinking of…”
The waiter smiles politely. Several minutes ago these people had hailed him. They were ready to order or, at least, that was what they intimated to him through their animated signals in his direction. Apparently they were merely looking for his presence while they came to a decision. A drop of sweat trickles down his forehead, scaling his cheek and rushing down to the chaffing collar of his shirt. While his still musing charges are clad in khaki shorts, light t-shirts and sandals (the heaviest items of clothing they sport are matching fanny packs), he is standing before them, clad in black shirt, tie, trousers and shoes, wishing he were somewhere else entirely. Martha engages his absent gaze.
“Yeah, okay. So we’re going to share the crab claws and an order of garlic bread to start. And then –“
“Then I’m going to have the lamb shank,” interjects Steve, “with french fries I think, yeah french fries. And Martha, what do you…”
“I will have,” she slows again. “I think I’ll go with the traditional Italian homemade baked lasagne. And can I get a side salad with that?”
The waiter knows that this is not a question.
“Thank you, my friends. That’s great. That’ll be down shortly.” The waiter goes for a cigarette.
Slurping her glass of Guinness, Martha stops. While his wife chokes on her tipple, Steve immediately realises what has caught her attention and exerts his voice upon the quiet seaside town.
“Hey! Gerry! Sarah! Get over here guys, how are ya?”
Earlier in the day, Martha and Steve met Gerry and Sarah in one of the quaint little souvenir shops along the beach. Having disturbed the entire patio area of the restaurant, Martha and Steve beckon their friends over. Gerry and Sarah oblige with smiles, taking a passing waitress with them to service their needs. The waitress departs to retrieve a bottle of Prosecco, a pint of Guinness and eight packets of bacon fries.
Gerry and Sarah are in their early sixties. Gerry is a former building contractor from Newcastle, Northern England. He met Sarah, a former nurse, also from Newcastle, when he was hospitalised after an on-site accident involving his testicles and a cement mixer. They have been married for almost thirty years. Nearly ten years ago they retired to Godalming, a beautiful town in Surrey, in the South East of England. Gerry’s contracting business is now run by his only son, Dave, who qualified as a civil engineer before taking on the family enterprise. Like Martha and Steve, Gerry and Sarah now love to travel, enjoying their very comfortable financial situation.
These two couples have a lot in common. However, ahead of family, friends, business, music, sports and politics, their shared lust for worldly experience and their similar indulgence in cultural exploration are their primary focus. We rejoin the scene with Steve chewing a mix of his own words and lamb. As he gurgitates, he nods his giant spectacled face up and down, using his fork as a gavel, indicating that he is about to speak of something extraordinary, perhaps about to emphasise just how great it is to have visited numerous locations. It is grotesque.
“You really haven’t lived…” he pauses to swallow, thankfully. “You really haven’t lived until you’ve been to Sirmione and seen the sights; you absolutely have to go at some point. Martha took wonderful pictures of Lake Garda in the late evening, during the magical hours.”
“Gosh, yes!” Martha almost explodes with delight. “I’ll email them to you!” Steve had created an opportunity for them to show off just how culturally enlightened they are. Wonderful. Sarah glances towards Gerry and then forms a friendly, vampiric grin as she turns back towards Martha and Steve who are sitting across from them. Fondling the stem of her empty flute – that friendly waiter hasn’t returned with her second bottle of Prosecco yet – she takes up the challenge. Because it is a challenge. It is always a challenge with these people.
“Well, when we cycled around Lake Garda –“
“You cycled?” Steve sneaks a quick glance at Gerry’s venerable girth.
“A good few years ago, yeah, we did, when Gerry was a little fitter. Didn’t we, Gerry?” Gerry makes some kind of vague gesture corroborating Sarah’s words, and then goes back to munching bacon fries feverishly. “You really get a feel for the area,” Sarah goes on, “I mean, the culture, the people, the food, the wine, everything. I took one fantastic picture, I’ll have to email you this one. It’s of Gerry crushing grapes with his bare feet at a local vineyard with some children. We were immersed in the culture, really.”
Sarah throws her head back and has a little chuckle. The waiter pours a fresh glass of fizzy wine juice for her and leaves the bottle in the cooler on the table before laying a pint of creamy Guinness in front of her husband. Sarah watches the young man walk back towards the bar, her cheeks still taught in victory, her whispy blonde hair bobbing in the warm breeze.
Mopping up the last of his gravy with the last of his french fries, Steve decides that round two will begin straight away. He feels that his consumption of the world and its treasures needs more of a voice.
“Speaking of cultural immersion,” he starts, stepping up the action, “remember South Eastern Australia, honey?”
“Yes, yes, that was such an experience! Remember the two native boys?”
“Lord, the native boys! Now that was something so many people never get to do.”
Martha looks at Steve lovingly and then turns back to their well-traveled friends to tell of what will obviously be a brilliant memory of something brilliant.
“We’ve seen a lot in our time,” she begins with a humble sigh, “but our three months in Australia really opened our eyes to just how enchanting different parts of the world can be.”
Steve adjusts his shorts, ruffles his neat accountant hair with his fingers, and then takes on the story. Martha simply smiles like a stuffed animal. Gerry and Sarah both sit up to listen.
“Obviously we did all the cliché tourist stuff; Sydney and its Opera house, Uluru, or Ayers Rock as the Indians call it. We did it all, like real amateurs. But one day we really stepped out of the comfort zone of tourism. As we hiked through some of the outback, we came across these two little native boys playing with some kind of little rabbit or something. It doesn’t really matter what it was. Anyway, we knew straight away that this was so real, no travel agent could have brought us this moment.
“So without really hesitating, I took Martha’s hand in mine and, with my free hand, took out my pocket knife. I then kicked the nearest boy onto the ground, who could only have been ten or eleven, and jumped on him. That kick really must have knocked the wind out of him, boy oh boy, because he barely even struggled when I got down on top of him. With the blade at his throat, I shouted at the second kid and told him to take off his clothes. He clearly understood, although it never occurred to me what language Australian Indians really speak. It was probably because I would have killed his little buddy, you know, that’s probably why he was so compliant.”
Both Martha and Sarah shake their heads. Martha does so with delight, as if vividly recasting the memories in her mind, while Sarah is simply in sheer disbelief, trying to hide her jealousy. Their new friends had experienced something they hadn’t. They would have to make sure to go to Australia. Steve continues.
“But yeah, whimpering, with tears streaming down his face, the boy took off the rags that he was wearing. He was filthy really, hands and feet covered in dust –“
“And that’s when I grabbed him,” Martha jumps in vigorously, smiling from ear to ear, making the actions of grabbing a small child like a twig.
“You sure did, honey! So, from there it was just so fulfilling. I really fucked that first kid, real good, with the knife up to his throat, while his friend watched. He didn’t move or scream or nothing, the whole time. He was tight as a lock at first but, well, he loosened up. The second kid put up more of a struggle, and I kinda had to hit him a bit to calm him down. Martha really enjoyed it, didn’t you, honey? I mean, you really haven’t lived until you’ve raped native Australian youths.”
Gerry looks calmly out towards the evening sun with an incredulous smile on his face, silently communicating his kudos to the man opposite him. He hastily racks his brains, trying to think of what their travels had given them, something that could compete with raping two small aboriginal boys. All he could think of was when he and his wife fed a poor Thai man to his goat on their honeymoon. Martha chuckles, rubbing it in politely.
“Unfortunately it was all a bit spur of the moment, you know when culture just slaps you in the face like that. We only got a couple of pictures in the end, the first kid never got up so we took some of him. Pity the second boy ran away, he was such a sweet boy. And we brought home a real life didgeridoo too!”
“And,” laughs Gerry, “and people say that Australia is a cultural black hole? Well, not, ah, you know what I mean!”
Keeping up her happy façade, necking Prosecco like milk of magnesia, Sarah sighs with delight for their luck. She concedes.
“Oh my goodness, that is crazy! You have to email me those pictures! I would love to see them.”
Raising his pint of stout, Gerry salutes his friends.
“Steve, you truly are the king of kings! What do you say to a cheers for that? Everyone have a glass?”
The waiter passes by and jokingly congratulates his customers on whatever the occasion is. Sarah pinches his gooch lovingly, as only someone else’s mother can, while the rest raise their glasses.
“Sláinte,” says the waiter, complicit in their consumption, struggling with his own mauvais fois, hoping they tip well, wondering if his mates would think it was funny if he had the English woman. She looks really well for her age.
“Sláinte,” they chorus. They all rummage around for change for their host’s tip. The waiter accepts and walks over to another customer.
* * *
Back at Notre Dame, Carly sucks off a freshman business student, some guy two years her junior, a cousin of somebody on the football team. Noah, Carly’s youngest brother, rolls a fat one and lights up his first day at college with some friends. He looks at his phone. Jason, his older brother, the middle child, has sent him a text message to say his friend is getting his dick wet with some drunk senior at a frat party they’re at. He doesn’t know who she is yet he says, but that he can hear her slurping in the next room. Lol.
* * *
Dave drops his two kids, six and eight, back home. They’ve just finished after school football training. He kisses his wife and tells her that he’s off to the gym. He’ll be back at about 8pm. Ten minutes later he is on the phone to a Polish employee telling him that he doesn’t care how sick his wife is; if he doesn’t come to work tomorrow he shouldn’t bother coming in any other day either.
Five minutes after that he pulls into a neat suburban driveway like his own. The door opens before he gets there. He smiles at the girl and goes inside. She closes the door.
July 12, 2010 | Categories: Cultural, Fiction, Nations, Observation, Political, Social, Travel | Tags: Cultural Consumption, Holidays, Rape, Tourism, Travel | Leave A Comment »
