The sky above is pale blue, paler than eyes. The clouds cirrus is it or no cumulus are wispy and blown across the corners of the sky. I was going to say: it is always sunny on Bloomsday - but no: two years agao the rain tipping down as Spain's penalties put the Republic out and the barmen started removing their leprechaun hats; sheets of rain down the quays to O'Conell Bridge, festivities cancelled. Cirrus it is after all. Monday night: roygbiv is that all the colours it is on the edge of the air at Sandymount. Dogs live and liver chasing each others' tails across the packed sand. Cocklerpickers, ghost ships. Bailey light comes on in the distance, too far and fast flashing for a photograph. The next day from St Stephen's, that is, Trouss�'s, Green, wander South hardly knowing a destination: Leeson Street South, Morehampton Road, Donnybrook Road. Trees line avenues: concrete banks like old fortified police stations of 1919: pubs, estate agents and takeaways declare their location, like the Drumcondra Laundry. A dacent bookshop here, all this way out in nowhere, somewhere, Dublin visitors don't seek, beyond the slow jet of the canal, up to the crooked line of the Dodder. Follow that to the coast? No - I am on a trek now: head south again, up to a bus stop where the advert for sausages depicts JJ and the schoolgirls turn out to be holidaying Americans. Endless roads of grey matter down south into anonymity: Stillorgan feels like a trellis of highways. 1960s modernization Ireland. The bus heads off the map, takes in every available permutation of the posters for European election candidates with their warm real phoney gas man TD smiles. Dun Laoghaire and south with little fuel in me own tank. Scent of the rocks below the tower where I clambered the day after two years gone, the day after Robbie Keane hit two pens on target and went out. I ask the curator if he remembers me. - Struggling to remember... the context. I don't tell him it was the Kaiser's school we spoke at. Busy? - Rushed off my feet. - Literally. - Literally. Like you-know-who. Heading out again I declare, - I'll be back. One day. Pints below the stained glass of Fitzgerald's where the oldsters aggressively ask each other, - Would you like a drink? and the curate brings me mine and offers a merely approximate charge at first. The clouds grow, come together, drift off. May today the streets take you where you or they will. Be light lucky and lovely. __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+