lying in my throat

Me. Moved.

So, um, this should have gone up long ago.

You can now find me over at samuelwood.wordpress.com.

She doesn't live here anymore

She doesn't live here any more, but you can still feel her, the combination of inertia with a vague nervousness. After her husband died she kept the house by the sea for the sake of her children; she wanted to provide them with its stability as they had none in their lives. Besides, with the vision of retirement in the city gone, she found herself adrift in choices as wide and empty as the views she spent her days staring at. Soon after her husband, her mother died, and, unable to make the necessary decisions, she moved much of the furniture from that house north to her ex-husband's house. Her children were no help; they had lives of their own. And so, although big the house by the sea, became crowded with heavy furniture which was not at all to her taste and the very weight of which overwhelmed and defeated her.  

A friend recently remarked that I must love that house by the sea. "It must be full of memories," she had said.

£1.55

£1.55? To cross town? An unjustifiable amount for a small town. For a pound you got access to all that lay in zones one and two of London. One euro made all Paris intra-muros available.  But £1.55 for a journey that would take him half an hour to walk was ridiculous. With the driver change it would take just as long on the bus. And it wasn't coming for another twenty minutes. Fifty minutes and £1.55 to cross a crappy town in the north of England. The only thing he would avoid was the rain.

This is not a public transit system, he thought, but a network of mobile shelters that might take you somewhere slightly more interesting than the place from which you started.

And of this, at least, he was assured; a chat and a coffee waited at the other end. Paris and London could not offer him that. The price of the coffee? £1.55.

A million dollars

It's been an age since I posted anything, at least six months. Reasons will be forthcoming, but one resolution has been to include a 10 minute writing exercise into my day. The (quickly) edited results shall be posted here with the tag 10 Minutes of Writing. Here's the first.

“I had been feeling like a million dollars,” he said.

At the age of thirty-four, James Reader had found himself in a hotel room in the west end of Glasgow, alone and unemployed. At noon, check-out had long past and yet he still clutched to the bedclothes and the trapped warmth of his body. Inadequacy and loathing were his fastest qualities, there from waking and not leaving until the opening of a second bottle of wine, and so he clung to the trapped warmth. In the inert silence of the hotel room, it was all he could expect from himself.   

“Definitely,” he insisted, “a million dollars.”

Video Games, the Missing Backstory and Neo-Historicism

With the release of Electronic Art’s Dante’s Inferno, a video game based on the Italian poet’s trip to the underworld, it is inevitable that other classic authors are looked to as sources for gaming inspiration. Indeed, as Jessica reported on The Standard earlier this week, Shakespeare has already had the video game treatment with the surprisingly addictive Romeo, Wherefore Art Thou Romeo, an initiative from the Shakespeare County tourist authority in the UK.

More at The Shakespeare Standard.

Paris, une ville qui dort

It would seem that the rumours are true: Paris is the most boring capital in Europe. They were confirmed last night after dinner with friends from London by a Parisian contingent that spoke enviously of the opportunities for revelry offered by the British capital.

The assertion, first seen in A Nous in November, the free weekly magazine aimed at Paris's young and salaried, that bars and clubs are moving wholesale to Berlin, Barcelona and London, was repeated by Le Monde, which, the following month, proclaimed, "Paris, capitale européenne de l'ennui" [pay archive]. Most recently, the NY Times covered the exodus, which is blamed on draconian noise abatement orders, high fines, and ban that forces smokers (just about everyone) into the streets of this most residential of cities. 

It has to be said that Parisian envy of London was displayed after the second round of cocktails in a bar which seemed to be doing a roaring trade well after midnight. All very urbane and civilized; just what Paris is about. "It nice to be able to have a conversation and not have to shout," commented the visitors. Which is just where the problem lies for the Parisians, where every other business is a café there is plenty of opportunity to talk. What there is far less of are places for music, the dj's and bands that keep other cities more happily awake through the night.

All that said, Paris, or at least Parisians, don't have it as bad as New Yorkers.

Othello and the 21st Century Economy

Is Othello the Shakespearean tragedy of our times? It all seems to be there: precarious employment, mobility, and the hand-to-mouth existence of a globalized world.

The Rememberance of Things Fast (July to December 2009)

14th July 2009: On this day, of all days, I burn my boats and storm the Bastille. When there's nothing left to burn you have to set yourself on fire so, sans appartement, sans emploi, I am moving to Paris.

14th August 2009: I am dispossessed. My worldly goods are variously at my mother's, with friends, and with strangers, courtesy of Oxfam. I think of Marcus Aurelius, Erasmus and Vladimir Nabokov. I have two suitcases and a wedding in Ireland to attend.

18th August 2009: I am in Paris. Just. I have slept for two hours and have dragged myself and two suitcases to Dublin airport. On the plane I try to die. I succeed. It is 35 degrees and I am sweating champagne. I am in a youth hostel. I am not in Paris. I am in hell.