Coffee makes clenched fists all down my arms – little knots of muscle and stress. I want to do some punching. But that’s all right. My fingers burst and reform, burst and reform. I should stop drinking coffee. It finds my twitches and sets them going, and it makes me jumpy, and it makes my thoughts into a chorus. And that’s all right too.

I am not scared of coffee.

I am scared of drink.

At the moment I am scared of drink and of what it does to me. For example, this.

I went home after a few drinks and though my tiny flat was empty I was convinced nevertheless that there was someone else in it. Not many drinks. Four or five perhaps. At a social event of some sort, I cannot now remember the details, probably a gig, probably something like that. Perhaps three pints, a couple of shorts. Maybe I had a whiskey. Maybe I had a whiskey when I got home as well. It was not a lot of drink. I was not, in any conventional sense, very drunk. To look at me you would not have noticed. To talk to me, maybe you would have noticed something, but not very much. And yet. And yet, when I got home, I was convinced that there was someone else there.

So I walked from room to room for hours until dawn, chasing this other person from room to room, unsure who it was, but not feeling particularly threatened. Annoyed, perhaps, a little, after a while. The sort of mild, frustrated but more or less cheerful impatience that you experience with children who insist that the game goes on. The game must go on. Such troopers, children. I thought it might be a friend, or a friendly ghost. It never crossed my mind that it might be an intruder or a bad thing. Or did it? I don’t know. Maybe it did. Room to room I went (there are four rooms, I suppose), looking for her, or him, and every room I entered this person had just that second left, flitting out somehow, into one of the other rooms, where I then proceeded, only to have her, or him, flit past me again, into the kitchen or the bedroom or the living room or the bathroom. And the only time during all this pacing and walking in and out of rooms, the only time when I felt at all spooked, was when it occurred to me to look inside the press in the bathroom where the water tanks and the complicated pipes are. No one could fit in there. No ordinary thing. No person. No child. And looking in there rattled me a little, because I had the same feeling about that little cupboard as I had about the other, full size rooms – that someone had just left it. Which was not possible, and I knew then that none of this was possible, and it bewildered me that it was not possible, yet here it was, taking place.

There is something there. So you look there. And there is nothing there. But that does not mean that there is nothing. It means that there is not the right there anymore, but is another there. So you look for the other there. Which is not the correct there either, now, because your eyes and your brain are too slow for this. So you chase the there. There is something there. There is always something there. And it becomes a matter of alighting not on the something, but on the there. Of all the theres there are, the there you’re aware of is only one. And there is nothing there. So the something must be somewhere else. In one of the other theres.

After that night I took a break from drinking. Not because it was under drink that I realised the problem of there, but because the natural slowness and stupidity of the human is exaggerated by drink. With coffee I can switch faster between the theres. I can scan more theres than I otherwise would. I am also taking Ritalin and, when I can afford it, some amphetamines. And let me tell you, let me assure you, that there are more theres than you can fathom, and in most of them, most of them, in most of them, let me assure you, in most of them, the vast majority of them, there is someone there.

And it was one of those rare pieces that lots of people responded to. I got a lot of emails about it. It seemed to affect people. And I love when that happens. So, you can imagine how I felt when someone recently wrote to me asking would I mind if they had a sentence from Do Make Say Think Show tattooed onto their body.

Would I mind?

I know nothing at all about this person. They wrote a lovely email explaining how much the story meant to them, and they asked me would I mind. Of course I don’t mind I said – it’s your body, are you sure you don’t mind? And I became a little parental. It’s permanent you know, I said. What if you change your mind? It’s not a short sentence. It’ll hurt. All that. But this person seemed to know what they were doing and what they wanted, and so … they did it.

I will probably never meet this person. I asked would it be okay if I posted the photograph, and they said it would. It’s good isn’t it? The whole thing is just good. And I know that from now on I’ll never be that impressed when I get the first copy of a new book of mine. Somewhere in the world I am published on somebody’s skin.

Enrolment is now open, and you can read about the course at the Some Blind Alleys website. Places are limited, so if you’re interested, don’t leave it too long.

I have moved back to my home city after nearly 13 years abroad, almost all of it in the UK. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. A few months in any case. My life has taken on something of a chaotic nature lately, some of which has been difficult and worrying for me, but some of which has felt exhilarating and strange. The move is mostly a pragmatic thing. But there are undercurrents of love and lost love and joy and sorrow. There are always undercurrents, what am I talking about?

This, of course, is a different city to the one I left. But it’s recognisable, and I know my way around, and I know people here, and the atmosphere is better than it has been for some time. The stupid years seem to be over. Most people – certainly most people I know – are more or less broke. And Dublin is not the worst place in the world in which to be broke.

Inevitably there is a rush of memories for me almost every time I turn a corner. Enough time has passed for these to be relatively painless – more recent memories, from other places, cause me more pain. But I am acutely aware just now of myself and my history, and of the scattered details of my life and the people who’ve been in it, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. There is a sadness and I don’t enjoy it. On the other hand, I am busy here. People are open and friendly and glad to see me. They know how to smile and talk and laugh. They are funny, and peculiar, and I love all of that. I feel a lot of happiness, sometimes, I do.

In the past when people asked me would I ever move back to Dublin I would joke “only to die”. And there is that sense when we go back to where we came from that we have somehow not returned so much as failed, given up. I don’t know why we should think that. I reassure my friends that it isn’t true in their cases. But in mine I know no certainty. I feel this morning that I am in Dublin and Dublin is in me and that’s all there is to it. And that I feel what I feel and that’s all there is to it. And that the sadness and the joy will always be there – and that’s really all there is to anything. And I miss London. I miss some people – I miss them badly, heart-wrenchingly so. And there are things I want that I can never have. And there are things I want to be that I never will be. And there are people I miss with a searing pain and I want them back but they don’t exist anymore. They have died or they have changed or maybe I made them up. But still, I love them and they are not – one way or another – here.

All you can really hope for is that the love you feel is not wasted. And you can tell yourself that even if it is – even if it is wasted – it is still love.

More info here.

This started as a bit of a joke on Twitter (that sentence-opening is increasingly becoming the “I’d had a couple of drinks” qualifier of our era) but it has now been taken up by several people and so I need to do it properly or I will be made to look like a liar or some other sort of eejit.

Online books retailers like this one have already got Hawthorn & Child on their systems. Almost six months before its actual publication. So, the deal is that if you pre-order the book from any retailer, you can claim from me … a signed photograph of my Bare Left Knee, which I will send to you (IN DUE COURSE) in a nice little envelope, along with other unpredictable assorted detritus associated with the book (a page from the proofs for example, or from the original manuscript, or an egg, or a vintage car, or  some sort of threatening letter … who knows? I certainly don’t.)

In order to claim this munificence, all you need do is send me proof-of-purchase. If you pre-order online the easiest thing is to forward me a copy of the email receipt. If you pre-order from an actual shop, ask them for a printed receipt and scan it or something and then send it to me – I don’t know, you work it out. And make sure you include the address where you want the envelope-of-misunderstandings sent.

The address to send to is : HAWTHORN [DOT] CHILD [AT] GMAIL [DOT] COM

I hope that’s clear. I will try to send nice things, interesting things, and not just my ugly knee. But be warned, as time goes on and I get bored with my knee, other body parts may feature.

K

More and more I find that life is a series of disappearances followed usually but not always by reappearances; you disappear from your morning self and reappear as your afternoon self; you disappear from feeling good and reappear feeling bad. And people, even face to face and clasped in each other’s arms, disappear from each other.

Fremder, Russell Hoban

]]> http://KEITHRIDGWAY.COM/2011/12/14/russell-hoban-1925-2011/feed/ 1 http://KEITHRIDGWAY.COM/2011/11/30/the-unfolded-man/ http://KEITHRIDGWAY.COM/2011/11/30/the-unfolded-man/#comments Wed, 30 Nov 2011 12:25:02 +0000 KR http://KEITHRIDGWAY.COM/?p=824 Continue reading →]]>

You are an unfolded man. You are open in the world like a door. And you wake beside others and they fold you into their warmth but you are the unfolded man. And they press against you and they find a way in and there is no gap between you for you are the unfolded man. The open man.

And the people who love you just love you. And they look at you and look at you and they look at you in the light of the world and they see what you are and they love you. And you are unfolded and you laugh. And curiosity is an endless engine and it hums in you and you see it in others and you sing when you’re with them and you weep when you’re not because you are the unfolded man.

And they come back. Or you set out to find them. And they are somewhere, all the time. And they know you.

You are loved and held and thought of and there are people in the world who would want to find you if you disappeared, and they are unfolded towards you, naked by your side, lovers and friends who are there in the mornings. Open. And your only fear is that this openness will admit more love and what sort of fear is that? You worry too much. And you look at them and look at them and you could look at them forever and never close your eyes.

And you are always only one. But you are unfolded like a page. Opened and read and read again, and there are other pages.

And you will be for love.