Dear Memory: Overlap

It's been a while since I wrote here... A lot has happened.

I mean, a LOT has happened now that I look back on it. Three short weeks later, and so much has happened after these long, stretching months of seemingly so little... I have finished my diploma. I was a bit worried about Tax, so I studied it purposefully and did well enough on the exam for a solid pass, although still not a great grade overall. I have moved out of the house with the loud and inconsiderate roommates I didn't feel I could talk to. Moved right next door, to another room managed by the same landlord, with different roommates. These ones don't bother me much. The walls are thicker and the room is further away from main flows of traffic. I've been sleeping full nights again, at long last. I even have access to quite a large downstairs den which I can reshape to my heart's contentment. I cleaned off and rearranged the furniture, populated some neglected shelves and a mantlepiece with books, knicknacks and an assortment of tasty snacks. I actually set up my round table, which has had no space to be useful in for over a year and was just in the way at my last house. It is so pretty now, a comfortable and happy place into which to invite my few local friends. Including a special new addition...

My asexual girlfriend finally moved to London! I had been forgetting this was even a thing, but a few days before I moved (which was a few days before the end of the month) she was landed and local. The night before the move, unable to sleep and stressed, I called her up to go walk the London night streets together and we hugged and kissed and chatted about all sorts of wonderful things. I've been showing her the markets on the weekends. It gives me an excellent excuse to go out to them myself, and there's a great budget stall at Gibraltar that sells non-perishable foodstuffs that are past their expiry date. I've found some pretty great things there (like sunflower seed butter and some delicious little cookies) and also some not great things there (like protein bars and Welch's fruit snacks which become very tough as they go stale), but the prices are certainly right for experimentation.

I got another three offers from Irish colleges, and am currently trying to decide between Sligo IT, Carlow IT and IT Tralee. I also got mail from Waterford, but to be honest their letter wasn't even a conditional letter of offer like the other three were and I was very unimpressed, so I'm not seriously considering it. I'm currently leaning towards Carlow because it's the closest by transit to Athlone.

I booked my plane ticket. Five hundred dollars or so, including baggage allowance. I'm bringing a real suitcase this time, bringing more with me; since I'm leaving nothing behind to wait for me.

And I broke the silence. I wrote you an email on the first of May. Brief and simple and somewhat formal, but contact has been made. I got a response the very next day, which was even shorter and simpler, but although little is said and although you did not take me up on the offer to talk more by starting a further conversation, there is enough confirmation there to make my heart sing. Misspelled and humble is a simple message that validates all the work I have done to get back across the sea. "Of coarse I'll meet with you".

Now my next big task is to choose between these three colleges and get access to enough money to pay my confirming deposit before May 30th. I'll probably need a student line of credit. And for that, I'll need a co-signer. Probably my father, if he'll agree to do it. Otherwise, I might reach out to Iris. Or Ashlynn. Or maybe even Brian, possibly. I'm willing to have some really awkward conversations about finances in order to make this happen. I will find a way.

As I was heading out to the bank today to discuss this, I paused and wanted to hear a specific Ani DiFranco song. This happens often enough, but this time... I didn't have the version I wanted to hear. I have the song, somewhere in my discograpy, but... it was too loose and whispery. I remembered a different rhythm. The search for the correct earworm involved a flustered overturning of YouTube to no avail and my purchasing a single track for 99c of the other non-live recording that was made of it... only to be sent the wrong song. They sent me "Shameless" instead, so I called the support line to have them fix it and ask questions about the song I was looking for.

It's been sorted. I have it now. The lighter and jazzier, more rhythm-tight 2007 recording, from the album 'Canon', of Ani DiFranco's song "Overlap":

...I know there is strength in the differences between us
and I know there is comfort, where we overlap;
Come here; stand in front of the light.
Stand still, so I can see your silhouette.
I hope... that you have got all night,
because I am not done looking at you yet.

I love this song. This version of this song. It prompted me to draw an analogy between communication and light that I built up so thoroughly I drew a colourful diagram of it years ago. And thinking those lyrics brings tears of intensity to my eyes. I feel this so much. I feel this about you. Not just you... So many of my friends. But also about you.

I have started taking firm steps in the process of job searching. There are postings on a student website. There are agencies in town that might be able to find me a temp position; maybe even one related to my accounting studies. I had an intake interview with one of the recruiters at one of those agencies on Tuesday (two days ago).

But I think I may be pushing myself a bit too hard. I came home feeling somewhat dizzied today, my mind full of blades and violence. I've had a particular propensity within the last week and a half or so to imagine stabbing myself through the left eye with my biggest, sharpest, favourite kitchen knife. It has been making me very twitchy, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of it. It may be... I hope... just down to a high intensity of stress, which is natural as the school term is ending and one is looking for a summer job. And preparing to go back to school. And adapting to changes in romantic relationships. And a move into a new house. And finances... So all told, I mean, I don't think I have a reason to be all that worried, but it's still a particularly unpleasant symptom of stress and I hope it goes away soon.

I hope I will hear from my dad. I hope he will be willing to co-sign a line of credit for me. I hope I can find a summer job that pays enough that I can do some saving for Ireland. I hope so many things, really... And I look forward to seeing you, sometime in my first few days of being back on the isle. I want to get to know you again, Fish. I hope you want that too. I really do.

Dear Memory: The Games You Play

Hi, Eoin.

I feel very close to you today, dear memory. I have been listening to your voice. It has been... over five months, I think... since the last time I listened to your voice, and that sound, so familiar, carries an amazing weight of nostalgia now.

I know you must be doing okay, for now, because you're part of a podcast now. Maybe later, I will come back and add a hyperlink to it into this post, but not yet. Not today. I'm a little afraid that you'd see the back-link somehow, and find me here, watching you, and that that would make you uncomfortable. So as much as I would love for you, for this person you are now, your voice still familiar, your jokes told with the same friendly sass... but not to me... As much as I might love to see you turn and see me watching you, I do not rustle the branches. I stay quiet and hidden and permit you not to be any more likely to notice me than you already are, for I've posted links to my blog sometimes on Facebook and I think once, the preview line visible from there held your name.

It's so good to hear you laughing again. And Gearoid and Troy, too. I miss hanging out at your house, listening to you banter with them like this, at home and happy and comfortable. I miss listening to you talk about the games you love, and shows you love, and things you do. I hope I will one day be welcome again to stand awkwardly at hand, listening. Trying sometimes to find something to contribute by saying. Even feeling self-consciously out of place there, but still allowed to be there, listening, enjoying the stories... and talking to you about them afterwards.

Maybe someday I will play games with you again. I hope so. You're so fun-loving. It's... relaxing just being around that, sometimes. It... was, I mean.

While looking through Steam today after nabbing a game which was released for free as an anniversary promotion, I stumbled across something I had remembered only dimly for some time. The Beginner's Guide... And I remember, like vision, like the physical world coming back as a dream fades. I remember sitting and laying on your bed and exploring it, rapt with attention. I remember the prison cell which ostensibly would originally have trapped the player for hours. I remember the trick-door which kept coming back or something, although I'm not sure I remember the trick to it. I remember three figures with blank faces, asking questions about how I got there, and how to move forward. I remember a huge room full of bubbles with comments in them. I remember a combination lock without any clues to the combination. I remember a man standing at a podium. I remember a red curtain around a stage, and a gun which shattered the scenery into blank whiteness... I remember a house full of little things to fix. Little chores to keep up, maintenance to be done. I remember liking that part. It seemed... peaceful.

I remember sitting with you and speaking aloud back at the narrator about the point I thought he'd missed. I remember... rising above the maze. Do you know, Fish...? I still keep that screenshot among my wallpapers. And whenever I see it, I think of you.

I listened to your podcast while I took a long walk today, and bought some ramen. Many times, I laughed at your jokes. Not just yours, Eoin, I mean Troy's and Gearoid's too. I'm glad you're okay. I'm glad you're talking about things that you love. I'm glad that I can listen to your voice without getting in your way. If you keep doing this, then there may be a way that I can have your good humour and your cheeky cleverness in my life even if you don't want to talk again when I land.

When I land. Dear memory... I haven't written this here yet. But last week, I got my first offer of placement back from an Irish college. Dear memory, the only condition set out in that offer is that I successfully finish my diploma and hand in my transcript by May 30th. Dear memory, I don't even have to get good marks in my classes, I only have to pass them. Dear memory...

I am coming.

I hope I will get more than one offer. I hope I will have a reason to contact you and ask which one I ought to choose, a lapse in the silence that's existed between us for more than five months. But even if this is the only choice I am given... I am coming. It's gone from "hope" and "maybe" and "trying" to something more solid.

The day after I received the email, I woke up in my bed, and squirmed gradually to consciousness, and my first conscious thought was to repeat, in my mind, I could buy my plane ticket today. I'm going to Ireland. Where to head after I land may not be set in stone, but I have my confirmation now. There is at least one answer available to that question. I'm going to Ireland. Coming to Ireland. I'm coming back, and I'm coming for you. It sings in my heart so intensely it turns almost to a shriek when I think about it. Like a perfect tone, sweet and high and pure and so loud it could shatter glass.

There is still much to be done first, but the greatest hurdle, the most doubtful issue has been cleared. The rest is details. Details which will fill my days, my nights, my schedule, until mid-August.

And this is why I felt it was now an acceptable time to look through your Facebook page again, and see a couple sorta recent pictures. And I found your new podcast there, and I've been listening to it. It's close enough now, somehow. It doesn't feel distant and stalkery the same way it did once before, because I expect I may have cause to actually be in touch within just another two weeks.

It all comes down to this... and now I hear you laughing and joking with your friends, just like you used to. And something in me that had worried that you might be somehow a very changed person now, someone less likely to like me... something of that fear melts away. You will very likely have changed somehow... but you laugh the same. In your most recent pictures on Facebook, your smile is as I knew it before I left. That's Eoin alright. And that's something right about the world. Something happy. Right now, it must be night time in Ireland, though it's yet early evening here. Goodnight, Eoin. May you rest healthfully and wake happy. I love you.

The Old Storyteller Barney McCaffrey

I've been watching a sort of mini-documentary on old stories from the valley where I grew up, presented by a man I remember from my childhood, Barney McCaffrey. He's dead now, but I remember him as one of the things that I think contributed to my feeling so attached to my own Irish heritage. He was a great local character, a story-teller. Half-Irish and half-Polish, so he adopted the area by Killaloe and Wilno as his home. Whenever there was a party or a significant social gathering about Wilno, he'd be there. Playing his accordion and singing songs and telling all manner of stories.

My father would take me to those sorts of things often enough, and sometimes my mother would too, when I was young. So much so that the sound of people playing live music some distance away or old classic rock through a radio makes me a little sleepy even to this day, because it reminds me of falling asleep in my mother's or father's car after I'd got tired, but they still wanted to stay and keep having fun.

I wonder now how much my love of stories and the tradition of telling them in songs and poems may've been shaped by Barney McCaffrey and characters like him.