“Quartering the topmost branches of one of the tall trees, an invisible bird was striving to make the day seem shorter, exploring with a long-drawn note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility, that one felt it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more quickly.”
~ Swann's Way (1913) by Marcel Proust
The narrator and her boyfriend didn't fully feel comfortable living in Kenny and Anna's home. There was friction, of course. They started drifting in and out of people's homes, seemingly without any plans to get one of their own. They worked, but nothing very permanently or paid decently. They busked, pulled shifts at various cafes. Work was scarce, money was tight, and often they had nothing much to eat because they couldn't afford to buy food.
Sometimes somebody would go off for a while and you’d get to stay in their place cheaply. This happened a couple of times in fact. Once it was a friend of Anna’s, then another time friends of Kenny’s went to California for a whole month. They had a very nice flat on Leinster Square with steps up to the front door, which was big and bright yellow. I don’t remember the name of the woman whose room we stayed in—we never met her. She had a lot of stuff, old things mostly. There was a record-player and quite a few records to go with it—I was very pleased to find the soundtrack to “Last Tango in Paris” and played it every day. I liked the way it made me feel. I discovered early on in life that the right music can lend a glamorous edge to even the most dismal circumstances. I paid a lot of attention to the things around me but more or less resisted prying into them too much. There was however a Chanel primer in the bathroom that I used sparingly now and then because it smelt wonderfully chic and proficient. She also owned a burgundy feather boa which I borrowed several times—it became a vital part of my costume. For a little while my boyfriend and I busked in Temple Bar. He’d returned to the flat one day pleased as punch with a tailcoat he’d picked up for very little in a charity shop, and I’d brought an evening dress from England with me, since I’ve always felt it’s a good idea to be prepared for the life that you’d like, as well as for the one that you have.
I suppose that at twenty years old, we all have different ideas of what a home is. I think most of us have fairly sheltered lives growing up in Singapore or even overseas. We don't struggle in the way many people do. I have most certainly not slept rough on the streets.
When the young couple finally found a house and could afford the deposit, their relationship dynamic changed. The humdrum of mundane day-to-day living got to them, I guess. In an interview with the same magazine for the essay, the author responded to the question of the physical settings mentioned, if there was any significance in those places.
The narrator and her boyfriend start spending less time with Kenny and Anna. Some nights they’ll sleep in a hostel, and at other times out on the street. The idea of what a home might be runs through the story. The narrator describes many of the places she stays in with precision, including one particular street, Dawson Street, an entranceway on it. Did you know from the outset that the physical setting of each place would be so significant?
I’ve lived in Ireland for more than twenty years now. When I first arrived here, I slept rough on and off for several months. This story is very much a fictional piece, but it draws upon that experience. When you are on the street, the way you look at and experience a city alters. You are not participating in it in the way that it’s been designed to be participated in—cities are transactional environments, and if you are physically in the midst of one but aren’t consuming or trading anything it becomes abstract very quickly. This abstraction emphasizes the city’s physicality—its geometry, its structural features, its aesthetic particularities, and so on. And obviously I was scoping out its environs and assessing them in practical terms, often looking for a quiet spot that offered a modicum of privacy. The lack of privacy is awful. When you’re on the street, it feels like you’re on the world’s stage all the time, because there’s never a moment when you can’t be seen. That level of visibility is exhausting, but, as we discover toward the end of the story, it can also make one feel integral to the urban fabric and watched over in a peculiarly comforting way.
No comments:
Post a Comment