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Boxing day

Friday, August 29, 2003

It’s amazing that you can get a whole house worth of stuff into a 15’ by 12’ storage unit (including a giant 9’ couch), but you can.

With much effort. Turns out the SO is great at driving a big truck (complete with a very handy ramp so you don’t have to lift the heaviest stuff up into it), and with willing helpers plied with beer and pizza, we got everything out of this place save for the bags we’re taking on the plane, the cat and the bed (which we definitely need after a day carting boxes around).

The road trip to LA beckons. Back in dear old dirty Dublin Monday morning.

Posted by David in • Life

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Accidental Autobiography

Monday, February 19, 2001

Should you keep five year-old email messages? I’m currently tidying up the contents of various hard drives and floppy disks (remember them?) to prepare for the arrival of a new machine. But how much to throw out is proving a difficult question.

You keep photographs to remind of the things you’ve done, and the people you were with. To remind you never to grow your hair like that again, or for many other reasons. And it feels right to keep them. 

Maybe emails are in the same category, and by this I don’t mean every purely administrative work-related mail, or the newsletters you subscribed to, but the notes to your friends, the jokes, the abuse. 

Photographs and emails are part of your personal history. Every day you’re making memories, and this stuff marks the paths you’ve been down. Maybe burning old mail onto a CD is the equivalent of sticking stuff up in the attic. You don’t need it around every day, but you’re not going to throw it out either. 

And it’s the ephemeral nature of emails that makes them such good markers. It’s a truism in historical study that you get much better information when your primary source isn’t trying to tell you what happened than if you’re reading a considered history from the period. Documents that were written not with a view to posterity ironically live a longer life. 

So the stuff you dashed off to your mate when you were bored in the office one day catches you like a candid photograph. You might acknowledge at the time that this mail could be preserved, but you don’t write it like that. And unlike real letters, you get to keep the mail you send too. It’s an unmediated account of your preoccupations, your worries, your day to day life. An accidental autobiography. 

Some people might argue that you shouldn’t keep carrying this baggage around with you, that you are yourself only in the present, and all that stuff happened to someone else.  It’s certainly true that you can dwell too much on your former self. But if you maintain the right attitude to this personal detritus – a good-natured distance seems about right – then having it around is surely a good idea. 

But why, exactly? You keep all your photos, but you don’t look at them very often. And even when you do, it’s hard to explain what’s going on. 

Wordsworth argued that poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility. Scrolling through ASCII email archives is also recalling your old emotions and feelings at one remove. We can’t say why poetry matters but we do it anyway, and maybe the same is true of keeping and looking through our personal archives. 

So I won’t worry about all this crap I’m pouring on to CD, because in some way it’s poetry. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, February 2001)

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Under Construction – raising a tipi

Sunday, March 19, 2000

Last weekend I helped raise a tipi with some friends near Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

On a flat step above a bend in a river we camped out the previous night, sitting round the campfire making s’mores and drinking wine from mugs.  The stars were out above us, and as the moon set behind the hill opposite we picked our way down the steep path to the river.

Lying on our backs on the flat-topped boulder on the bank, a shooting star traced a stitch of light above, and we heard the freezing water slide by beside us. If you really listened, you could almost catch a tiny whisper of the world’s quiet roar. A place for everything, and everything in its place. 

The next day, with snow nestling amongst the cacti on the north-facing slope across the river, we set to work on the tipi. None of us quite knew what we were doing, but with instructions printed from a Welsh tipi website, we lashed the first three poles together, and raised the tripod against the azure sky. 

I sat whittling sticks for the pegs (which don’t work well in sandy soil, it turned out – metal pegs are a much better if less romantic choice), and as my friends placed the other poles in place it seemed as if the frame had somehow always been there, on that step above the river. 

There were certain customs to be observed in the building. The opening faced eastwards – away from the prevailing winds, and towards the morning sun – and when all the poles were in place, they were secured with rope that was walked clockwise four times around the frame – one revolution for each of the seasons. 

We threaded the lifting pole into the canvas cover on the ground, and then lifted it into place at the back of the tipi and unfolded the cloth, wrapping it round the poles like putting a coat on an impatient five year-old. 

OK, so the cover didn’t quite match up at the front at first – there’s lots of room for misadjustment in an 18’ tipi – but after moving some poles forward and some back, we were done. 

The smoke flaps, the oval opening, the tops of the poles criss-crossing, the soft light inside as we all stepped in and stood there, splintered, scratched and happy – marvelling at what we’d made. 

Made? Or revealed? It was as if the tipi knew how and where it should be built, and we’d simply helped it along. More like archaeology than construction. From a pile of sun-bleached wood and a mildewed bundle of cloth we’d uncovered something noble and determinedly right. A place for everything, and everything in its place. 

And my modest point? My extrapolation from the specific to the general?  My thought to leave you with? None, really. I just wanted to tell you. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, March 2000)

Posted by David in • Modest Proposals • Life • USA

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Cabin Fever

Saturday, June 19, 1999

In the last 15 months I’ve been on over 70 aeroplanes. Since this January, from my base in Kansas, the list of cities I’ve been in seems ridiculous – Atlanta, DC, Chicago, Dallas, Tucson, San Francisco (twice), Dublin (twice), Galway, Cincinnati, Denver, Santa Fe (three times). 

You can spin this unlikely itinerary in a number of ways. Either it’s a fact of modern day business life, and something that an increasing number of people do all the time.

The dystopian version of this points to the grind of long distances, the soullessness of airport hotels, the grim-faced grey acceptance of the folks at the gates in business attire carrying bulging laptop bags. 

Or it’s a glamorous jet-set lifestyle of expense account living, a new shiny city every week and a year-round tan. 

My truth lies somewhere in the middle. I have little enough luxury on the business trips – I fly coach and eat as many Burger Kings as lobster bisques on the road – but I get treated pretty well (big hand for the deeply stylish W Hotel in San Francisco) and I appreciate the opportunities it gives me to see all kinds of stuff I wouldn’t otherwise know about. 

Reading the local papers and watching the local news wherever I am is crucial – to read the unctious USA Today (the calling card of the travelling salesperson) placed outside your hotel room door is to participate in the pretence that where you are is exactly the same as where you’ve been. 

This is so bad because the one thing that can never be forgotten is how completely unnatural this all is. No matter how many times you get in a metal tube in one city and get out of it 400 miles away, or ring your kids on your calling card from an airport telephone, you should never once think that this is what you’re meant to be doing. 

Your body knows how weird it is. You can rationally understand jumping continents at your employer’s bidding, can justify your astronomical travel expenditure with a convincing business argument and can even develop tips and techniques to make it all seem a bit more normal, but all the stress of this time travel is building up in you somewhere or other. 

People aren’t designed to do such bizarre things as fly across the Atlantic, go to work the day they arrive, go out drinking that night, put in another couple of days’ work, then fly back home like it was an hour’s drive up the motorway. 

Human’s flexibility is at once our great strength and our fatal weakness. We can adapt to all kinds of things we didn’t ought to get used to, and can overcome by force of will the nagging reminders that we’re not designed to do this. 

This is not to say that I’m not enjoying myself – I’ve been able to do some amazing things through all this travel, and have learned a great deal along the way. But I can only see myself doing this for a limited time – it’s an adventure, not a way of life. It doesn’t take too long doing this before the losses more than outweigh the gains. 

This is last time I’ll write from Manhattan, Kansas, which between my travels has been my home for the last 15 months. I’m going to rest up back in Ireland and England for a couple of months, before moving to San Francisco. A pause before the adventure begins again. 

But the brightest moments of the last few months have all involved doing very grounded things – riding horses on the prairies, or mountain bikes in the Rockies, walking the hills of San Francisco or the beaches of County Clare, going for brunch in Santa Fe or pints in Dublin. And of course, in all of these activities, it’s been the friends and family that I’ve been with that have made the most sense in this unlikely life. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, June 1999)

Posted by David in • Modest Proposals • USA • Life

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Natural Technology

Friday, March 19, 1999

Over the weekend, while snow fell outside, I made a unilatleral decision that it was spring, and went shopping online for outdoors stuff. 

The technology was a great help. I trawled through reviews from people who already had the gear I was looking at, and discussion board questions from people going through the same process as me (incidentally, if anyone here has anything good or bad to say about the Specialized Stumpjumper or the Gary Fisher Ziggurat, drop me a line).

In retrospect, using the Internet to research this stuff says a good deal about our attitude to what used to be termed Nature. At least from the Romantic period (although Irish language scholars would point to much earlier nature poetry in medieval manuscripts), the great outdoors was seen as a place of simple beauty, away from the strictures and straight lines of cities and industry. 

Time spent among the woods and mountains allowed us to feel part of Creation again, soothing our furrowed brows after our toil in the dark satannic mills. 

If forced to explain what they get out of a weekend in the sticks, most people would probably end up with some version of that argument today. 

Which is fine, but let’s look at what they do when they get to lands of natural wonder. The idea used to be to live simply, in harmony with nature, to strip away the artifice and excess of urban living; now people drive to the Grand Canyon in their RVs, shut the door and watch Melrose Place on the TV. 

Younger people might scoff at this approach, before communing with nature in their 3-layer Gore-Tex jackets, or zooming down mountain singletracks on their $1500 bikes that look like pieces of alien technology. 

Instead of sitting under a tree and watching the daffodils, we use nature as a testing ground (and excuse) for all our cool gear. Forget William Wordsworth – this is more like James Bond: ‘Ah, Q, I see you’ve improved the metal matrix composite aluminium oxide ceramic particulate in my bike frame so it now weighs only 3 pounds’. 

We still dream of a remote log cabin beside a lake, but an increasing number of us would picture it complete with leased line Internet access so we could mail our friends the pictures from the day’s excitement, and keep up with the NASDAQ. 

In some ways this is very positive. If people are getting out there and enjoying what nature has to offer, then maybe they’ll be more environmentally aware when they’re back at home. But as I order another piece of hi-tech kit, I do wonder sometimes if we’re missing the point. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, March 1999)

Posted by David in • Modest Proposals • Life

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Essential Ephemera – should you keep old emails?

Sunday, November 08, 1998

As I write, John Glenn and his fellow astronauts are getting used to gravity again with the completion of their Shuttle mission. 

Amidst the discussion of Glenn’s return to space – take your pick:  heroic adventure, science experiment or publicity stunt – a small detail caught my eye.

It seems that Glenn was keeping in touch with his wife by email. On the one hand this shows how pervasive a form of communication email has become (forget ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ now it’s ‘Fwd: Top Ten things we want Samuel Jackson to say as a Jedi Knight’).

But it also raises a question about the lifespan of an email message.  What’s Mrs Glenn going to do with her extraterrestrial missives? They’ll likely sit in her inbox for ages, and then she’ll either delete them with a whole pile of junk when her mail program slows to a crawl, or she’ll put them in their own special folder, and lose them when she gets a new machine. 

We use email to keep in touch with old and distant friends, to flirt with people we hardly know, to send notes to our beloved to brighten their day at work . . .  to carry on any number of relationships that make us who we are. 

But when it comes to keeping the messages, we’re in a bind. Physical letters somehow demand preservation, and even if we don’t read them for years, we’re glad we’ve still got them. 

The same should be the case with emails. When I left my previous job, and again when I gave an old computer to my sister, I was faced with the task of removing any signs of my existence from the machines. The work-related stuff was easily deleted (who keeps memos from a former boss?), but the hundreds of useless jokes, website references and bits of trivia I’d collected seemed at once hugely useless and very important. 

These messages were snapshots of my life at various times (both the mails I’d received and the ones I’d sent), and I couldn’t throw them away. I toyed with the idea of printing them all out and storing them that way – somehow they seemed more permanent when given physical form even on fragile paper. 

But in the end I saved them onto a Zip disk, and have them still. Except I don’t feel sure that they’re really there. Not because I fear the data will be corrupted (although that’s a possibility), or that the format in which they’re saved will be unreadable to later programs (just as likely), but because it’s hard to feel nostalgic about the contents of Zip disk, however valuable its content. 

A friend of mine recently left his job, and another friend designed a spoof movie poster for his departure. The electronic version of this poster was soon bouncing round the planet as it was forwarded to people, and put up on the Web. But it was a framed printout of the file that somehow turned all the work into a real gift. 

It’s a similar problen with other images. I bought a digital camera on my arrival in America, thinking it would be a very practical way of showing people what I was up to. And so it’s proved, with rough and ready Web pages allowing me to share my experiences with my friends and family back home. But I still find it easier to think in terms of a shoebox stuffed full of photographic memories than a portion of my current hard disk (or a bit of space on a server somewhere). 

Maybe it’s just a question of adaptation, and we’ll soon come to treasure hi-tech storage media in the way we do family photo albums and collections of old letters tied with ribbons. But I’m certainly not there yet, and I doubt Mrs Glenn is either. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, November 8th, 1998)

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To David, with fear and loathing

Thursday, May 28, 1998

Not so long ago, I went to a public reading given by Hunter Thompson and Johnny Depp, promoting the new film of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

The whole thing was a surreal experience – a hero of the counter-culture appearing at a media event in the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, New York – but one of the strangest parts about it was the realisation that the audience weren’t really there to see either Hunter or Johnny. They were there to get their books signed.

They were only politely interested during the readings, but as soon as someone mentioned forming a queue for the signing session, everyone was suddenly awake and rushing to take their places. 

Of course, the process of having your book signed gets you close to your hero, and allows you engange in some personal communication (always assuming you can think of something more original to say than, ‘Could you make it out to Biff, please?’). 

But I’m not sure that was what got people excited. As far as I could tell, their main concern was just getting that name in the book. (Or, in this case, those names, since Johnny Depp signed them as well, which struck me as a bit of a cheek.)

What makes us want to own signed copies of books? If we’re personally known to the author, and the book is a gift from them, there’s an obvious and special attraction – a friend of mine recently did the Nobel Prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney some small service, and received a couple of signed hardcover first editions, inscribed with thanks.  Brilliant. But if you’ve merely waited in line after a reading, then what real value has been added? 

In the same was as records, books are measures of your life, your changing situations and your developing interests. There’s a great moment in Nick Hornby’s novel High Fidelity, where the narrator arranges his record collection in chronological order of purchase. It’s a chart of his own history, and only he can tell you how he went from Deep Purple to Sam Cooke (or some such) in seven records. 

So in the same way, inscriptions in books help to fix a moment in time, and it’s certainly worth remembering that you met the author, however briefly. 

But what to do if the author is nowhere to be found, or the book’s not a gift inscribed by a friend? I’d argue for putting your own name and a date at the front. And add the place too; even if it’s not special to you now, you future self might be very grateful of the reminder that you spent some time in Shrewsbury. 

While writing this, I pulled out my copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (purchased primarily to gain admittance to the reading), and scribbled my own inscription on the first page. Would I have been better to wait in line for Hunter Thompson? I don’t think so – I’m still making memories without his John Hancock. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, May 28th, 1998)

Posted by David in • Modest Proposals • Life • Books

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Advent adventures

Thursday, December 04, 1997

When I was very young my sister and I would both have advent calendars on the mantelpiece. The idea of sharing one was unthinkable, and so every December morning between the toast and Marmite, the tea and the Today programme on Radio 4, we’d dash into the living room and each open another window.

Some years we’d re-use them from the previous year, and so when we opened the doors, we’d have to be careful not to tear them off, as other more reckless friends did. That way, we could push them all flat again for next year.

Why was it so good to open the doors? Not because of the pictures behind, that’s for sure, as I hardly glanced at the Christmas tree, or snowscape, or Santa Claus. Re-using the calendars made no odds, because the enjoyment wasn’t in the richness of the images in the first place.

Part of the attraction was the ritual of the whole affair – this was the authorised countdown to the big day. Opening the first few doors, you felt the expanse of the weeks stretch out in front of you, but slowly the days passed.

But part of the appeal was also in the self-discipline. I spent hours in the build-up to Christmas searching for my presents, managing to find a 3’ snooker table between the mattress and base of a bed, and a bicycle in a box in my neighbour’s attic. I was indignant when Mum took the presents to work with her and left them there until Christmas Eve. 

Even when they were wrapped up, I’d still gingerly peel off Sellotape and peek inside. People started labeling my presents as if they were for someone else, but I still smelt them out. So when it came to presents, I felt like everything I did was fair game.

With advent calendars, however, I was much more self-controlled. It would have been so easy to open a few doors ahead (especially when they were being reused, and the flush machined fit of the door on the card had been loosened already), but I never did. I think the reason for this is that I didn’t have anything to gain from cheating. Because the picture didn’t matter, the only enjoyment was in resisting the temptation to spoil the fun. The suspense had to be self-imposed.

So the Internet advent calendars that don’t let you open the doors for future days might be technologically advanced, but they miss the point. Those that allow you to cheat (and then hope that you don’t) more accurately reflect the feel of the originals.

Most people seem to have grown out of advent calendars long before I did (but then again, I was still desperately searching for my presents when I was at college). Even though the holiday season itself might have lost something of its sparkle, the beginning of December (especially when the weather is as crisply glorious as it’s been in Dublin for the last 2 days) always makes me think of picking open little paper doors. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, 4th December 1997)

Posted by David in • Modest Proposals • Life

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Postcards from the edge

Thursday, November 13, 1997

As attentive readers will recall, I’ve just taken a holiday, and as I sat in the Broome St Bar in New York City one evening I was moved to ponder the future of postcards.

It’s become an obligation to devote some of your time while away to writing two paragraphs of banality on the back of a cheesy picture of the area’s most famous landmark, and then mail it home. You will, of course, arrive back before the card.

Writing the words (known clumsily in the web world as the ‘content’), can be a real problem. I have nothing but praise for the long, thoughtful letter home from abroad, but when facing the back of a card, I can’t really summon any enthusiasm. It’s hard to avoid sneakily writing the same thing on all the cards.

Majella, via the discussion group, wonders why people bother.  ‘Their close friends know where they have been and take the ‘wish you were here’ factor for granted. Not so close friends really don’t need to have it shoved in their faces that they are at work while others are on the sunny beaches of the Costa del Sol.’

It’s as if you have to go through the hassle of writing the cards to apologise for enjoying yourself abroad.

Paul, also via the discussion group, makes a strong case for the existence of postcards, if not their sending to innocent bystanders:  ‘Postcards save me the hassle of taking snapshots. Why bother with the pursuit of legalized gambling, also known as photography, when some expert has already done the work? Why worry about exposing film to airport scanners? Why worry about old camera batteries leaking acid into landfills? Why worry about having my Minolta nicked from my motorcycle’s tankbag? No, postcards are fine with me.’

This is fine, except that heavily doctored images (John Hinde Limited, take a bow ) look nothing like real places I’ve ever been.

Another Paul on the discussion group has a more optimistic view of the worth of cards: ‘It may not be a la mode but I like receiving snail mail, and an unexpected picture on my doormat first thing in the morning always lights up my child-eyes. I like the idea of sending postcards to friends I see around anyway. It’s a good disposable way of giving someone a picture that’s interesting or funny, or just hoping to influence the direction of their thoughts temporarily . . .  ‘Postcards aren’t restricted to the ordinary four scene, greetings from Weymouth, a ‘cheeky’ girls on the beach in Marbella, or the endless XXX at night (ho ho). People should send more postcards, there should be random pictures floating about between people. Just get a good photo, stick a stamp on the back and you’ve made someone’s journey to work more interesting.’

This gets us into the right territory. Cards as a necessary part of a holiday may have had their day, but they have a much greater value as a well-chosen greeting when you’re at home and just want to say something.  The idea of little bundles of goodwill ‘floating between people’ is very attractive.

This works because you’re actually given the freedom to choose to send the cards – that you’ve taken the trouble to surprise the recipient is great. With holiday cards you have no choice as the sender, and in most cases, the recipient is not at all surprised to get the card.

So my vote is to boycott the sending of postcards from holiday locations (except for children, who probably still deserve them). And if this goes well, maybe we should move on to Christmas cards as well – reserving them only for people that we don’t see very often. The struggle starts here. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, 13th November 1997)

Posted by David in • Modest Proposals • Life

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The High Life – what’s wrong with flying

Thursday, October 23, 1997

Much of contemporary life would be hard to explain to earlier generations (it’s hard enough explaining what I do to my parents), but air travel is so spectacular that sometimes it’s difficult even for us to cope with. 

You get on a metal tube in London, sit down, have something to eat, maybe watch a movie, snooze for a while, and then when you wake up you’re in (say) Tokyo. 

In the face of this miracle, we have become so blas? about things that all we do is moan about the plastic food and the lack of leg room.

If you wanted to be grand about it, you could reflect that you are among the first set of people ever to travel so far so fast, and that this privilege is hard to quantify. 

However, if you wanted to be practical about it, you could consider techniques to fill the time available on board. The Australian cricket team, for example, hone their competitive edge on the flight to England by seeing how many cans of lager they can drink. I don’t have the exact figures in front of me, but we’re certainly talking dozens of tinnies each. 

Alternatively, you could try the film, but there are usually two problems – you?ve either seen it before, or the sound is so bad you can’t follow it. 

The famous exception to this is Virgin Atlantic, who give you your own screen with a wide choice of films and comedies, but then they also provide video games for those in first class. A nice idea, but those people who can afford to travel expensively are just the sort who wouldn?t know what to do with a PlayStation. Networked Quake throughout the plane would be better – ideally us plebs travelling economy against the fat cats up at the front. 

Another technique to pass the time that is more honoured in the breach than the observance is talking to your fellow passengers. Like most people, I harbour a devout hope that the person sitting next to me on the longest flights will turn out to be that attractive art history PhD and part-time model we feel we deserve. 

Until this happens, though, I have a different approach. Air travel is so artificial and preposterous that any attempt to distract yourself from it just doesn’t work. It’s the ultimate man-made environment – timeless, placeless and completely enclosed – you’re doing something the human body was definitely not designed for (unless you’re extremely lucky in who you get sitting next to you). 

In the face of this assault, I switch myself off for the duration of the flight. Propped up against the window, I doze and wake up, day dream and drink water, and not much else. Like your PowerBook screen dimming to save power, you?re still ticking over but you don’t look it. 

This may sound like wimping out, but I’m just giving the abnormal experience the respect it deserves. The English travel writer and novelist Bruce Chatwin tells the story of native bearers who after a few days of constant travel refused to carry some Victorian English explorer?s stuff any further. 

The explorer demanded to know why they’d stopped. They calmly said that they were waiting for their souls to catch up. How much more time does it take for ourselves to recover after we?ve crossed the Atlantic? We’re not jet-lagged, we’re soul-lagged. 

(first published as a Modest Proposals newsletter, 23rd October 1997)

Posted by David in • Modest Proposals • Life

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