Dating after long relationshipI had just pulled out of Kip’s driveway when I decided to drive off the road and crash my car down the cliff and into the Pacific. It wasn’t a difficult choice; nor was it a judgment or verdict. It was like deciding to listen to jazz after five years of rock and roll, like changing the radio station after renting a car ina different city. “What position?” he repeated. “You mean of seeing me again?” Sponer caught up with her at Karlsplatz Gardens. If you look in the mirror, you’ll come a bit closer to knowing. I pull up three stalks just for show, though I really want none of this abominable plant that gave me stomachaches when I was young. Besides that, it’s deeply unaesthetic to walk while dangling rhubarb stalks. ‘Yes.’ “Does it matter?” So much can happen over time, I said. Many things change unexpectedly. If she were to live, maybe we’d come to understand each other, somehow. SO MUCH MIGHT BE POSSIBLE AFTER TEN YEARS THAT WOULD BE UNTHINKABLE NOW. When we were little, it wasn’t possible to drive here without taking the Ring Road the other direction. A well-known manufacturer of Lyonnais fabrics grabbed hold of me on my way through Lyon. The African boy replied with a worried nod. I can tell Edda’s afraid I’ll do something stupid again, like when I stuck out my tongue at Gerti. To tell the truth, this pleases me to no end. No wonder Alli found it funny. But he could have skipped reading it to the drunks from Gaukur, bursting with so much laughter that he could hardly get out the words and sputtering over his drinking buddies. Then he asked who wrote this through me, and I said it was the sister of the man who drank through him. I’ll join you in breathing “Are you a therapist?” he asked. The pine coffin reminded me of Queequeg’s coffin inMoby Dick— the passage of death that also made room for life. From now on he lived part of the time in Palm Beach and part of the time in New York and Paris. The much heralded‘Sonora’ was a flop. The man was standing not far from the domed building, tall and slim and very dark, in light-colored clothing, a camera around his neck. I was on my way to Dock Wood on the warm day about which the stories were spun. I’d planned to go straight over the plank bridging the little ditch, but I had a feeling that the man with the camera wanted to talk to me, so I walked toward him. Then he came over to me and smiled a radiant, sad smile that’s haunted me ever since. The jade city gave way to the hazy blue of the coast road. Hickey blessed himself at the church in Clontarf and inclined his head towards Bull Island.‘Do you remember they’d all be there on Dollymount Strand? Grown men wandering up an down for hours with the buzzin yoke that looked like a strimmer. Fucken eejits, the lot a them. I suppose it was that or the bookies. But when one a them yokes went off, you dropped what you were doing to keep an eye on the digging because for a moment it could of been the next Tara Brooch or Ardagh Chalice that got pulled out a the sand. People were desperate back then. Jaysus, we had nothing. I mean, at the end a the day it was always a supermarket trolley or car axle or some shite like that because youwon’t find many archaeological artefacts on an island that only silted up a hundred years ago. But you can’t help hoping, can you? That’s what happens when you rear a nation to chase after leprechauns an crocks a gold. Then the Lotto came in an we all chased after that instead so it was curtains for metal detectors. Anyway.’. |