Heart As Big As Liverpool

I always thought of myself as clever for saving my money by not being a smoker, or going tanning, or getting my hair professionally done. But I now have a far more expensive habit: football.

Cost of driving to Minneapolis to watch games in Brits Pub: $50 per trip.
Cost of Liverpool Jersey: $50.
Cost of You'll Never Walk Alone Tattoo: $60.
Cost of getting to Liverpool: $120.
Cost of ticket to Liverpool-Man City Match: $274.
Never Walking Alone: priceless????

Wir Haben Alles Verloren

"I was born in a country which no longer exists."


When the wall fell, an entire cultural identity fell with it.

Out of Practice, Episode Two

Wow, this is problem is getting serious. I hemmed and hawed all day over the purchase of an official Liverpool Jersey. Elverys didn't sell one with Steven Gerrard's name across the back, which was what I really wanted. But it was for quite a decent price compared with what I've seen at Planet Soccer in the States. They've only ever got away jerseys anyway. At the end of the day I decided it was a worthwhile purchase (what if Gerrard's groin never recovers? Better to support the whole team than one player) and carried my brand new shirt down O'Connell St with a spring in my step and a smile on my face. I stopped at the General Post Office to buy some postcard stamps to the US and opted to write a few postcards there to get them sent off as quickly as possible. Postage stamps, you see, are cheaper in Ireland than in Germany. After popping them in the post box I continued homeward. It wasn't until I passed by the third Carrol's Gifts (And Cheap Tourist Crap) that an Irish Rugby jersey in the window reminded me of my new Liverpool shirt. To my horror, I realized the bag was not in my hand. I was, ironically, walking very much alone. This produced, I'm somewhat ashamed to admit, a much more severe reaction than the missing wallet had. I panicked, and praying I'd left it at the GPO ran the length of O'Connell back to the place where I'd written my postcards. The only thought on my mind: "Well thank God I can't lose the tattoo! At least that's not going anywhere!"


I arrived at the GPO out of breath. There it sat, Elverys Sports bag alone on the counter top, Liverpool jersey safe inside. Lucky girl, indeed. This better not become a pattern!

Out of Practice

Apparently traveling on one's own is a skill that requires some practice, and I'm a bit rusty after a year. Just one hour after touching down in Dublin I went to put down a deposit on a locker key in my hostel only to realize I did not have my wallet on me. I had quite a lot of cash in a back-up wallet, but no bank cards or ID, or the 100 Euro that was in the wallet. The only place I'd had my wallet out was to pay for the 16C bus from Dublin Airport. I was exhausted, wet, and had my hands full with luggage when I paid the fare, and truth be told I didn't recall ever putting the wallet back into my purse. But a seasoned traveler doesn't panic. A seasoned traveler is resourceful. I spoke with the ladies at the hostel front desk and they connected me to Bus Eireann who connected me to Dublin Bus who transferred me to Summerhill Garage on Mount Joy Square. "What color is the wallet?" said the man on the other end of the phone in a thick Dublin accent. "Red." "What on earth were you tinkin'?" he laughed.

I followed his typically Irish directions. Walk to the top of O'Connell, right down Parnell, left up Gardiner St until you see a pub called Hill 16. Follow the laneway up past the pub into the garage. It sounded sketchy. But sure enough, there was an office full of uniformed and friendly transit folk. "I've come to collect my wallet," I said.

"Oh its you, is it!" said the man from the phone. He turned to his colleagues. "Little Red Riding Hood's come to collect her little red wallet!" He opened the wallet and looked at the ID to verify I was the owner. "Wisconsin, eh?" he said, attempting an American accent. It sounded far more Boston than Midwest but my smile was massive. "Thanks a million," I said.

"You're a lucky lucky girl."

Twaiku

In the same vein as Twitterature (http://www.twitterature.us/) LFCTV hosted a Twitter Haiku contest. Mine was actually two haikus melded into one, but I still made it in under 140 characters.

"Pray for us sinners"
Rosary tight in my hand.
Gerard takes the kick,

Big and fucking hard.
Keeper hesitates too long.
Thine is the kingdom!

Office Zombie

I audited payroll all day today. I sat in the office, purple pen in hand, and added up times worked, corrected errors, and signed off on time cards for 8 hours. Every time I signed and dated a time card, every time I made the 2 ones after the 9, I would pause and be reminded of all the people eight years ago today who were working in their offices, doing mundane office tasks like zombies, no different than any other day at any other office. Until a plane came smashing through their building and the payroll drifted down from the sky, turning to ash as it fell to the streets stories below. And the office zombies were no more.

Summer Transfer Window

Yesterday caused a bit of emotional turmoil for two major reasons.

In the early hours of the morning, shortly after I awoke from the sound of rain on the skylight, I received a text message from the LFC Twitter page saying that today, finally, Liverpool Football Club would be announcing the fate of Xabi Alonso. This put me at great unease, and I drifted back into unsettling dreams in which I received a dizzying multitude of Twitter update texts.

It was day two of training for my new job, in which I would be a traveling photographer. After being laid off from Job 1, as a clerk for a poorly planned government project, nearly a month ago, I was lucky enough to get Job 2 just days later. Though I wasn't thrilled about the travel or hours of Job 2, beggars can't be choosers and the job itself was interesting and exciting. Midway through the day I got a call from my old boss at Job 1. Rumors that had been circulating around the laid-off staff were confirmed. They're hiring again. Emotional turmoil ensued, and the crushing necessity of making a fast decision on such a huge matter as one's job and livelihood.

I am often rash in my decision making, opting to think things over shortly and on surface level, make my choice, and only later suffer the agony of all the what-ifs and why-thens. Often things do work out for the best, or, if not the best (for one can never really know how the option one didn't pick would have turned out) than for the acceptable. But I loathe the prospect of being cornered by two major choices, two future paths, and knowing no progress can be made until a decision is reached.

The summer transfer dealings of soccer teams are similar, yet vastly different. Teams buy, sell, and loan players across oceans and cultures. There is much waiting, deliberating, negotiating, planning, agonizing, hoping, and praying. Fans, players, teams, managers are cornered in an endless cycle of rumors, training, deals, and contracts.

Alonso has been waiting for quite some time for his transfer from Liverpool to Real Madrid to go through. Myself, I was waiting for that call from Job 1 for nearly a month. When it came and I made my decision to go back to Job 1 and run the (admittedly high) risk of being again jerked around and possibly re-laid off by corporate in exchange for a job I'm good at in a place I like, an extreme sense of relief came over me. I am sure Xabi felt the same upon the announcement that he will be sold to Madrid for 30 million Euro. I am selling myself for far less: A bit above minimum wage with the potential for unemployment this time around, minus the mileage check Job 2 would have provided but with the knowledge that my sad little car (which would never have survived a collision with a deer on a narrow Wisconsin backroad) is that much safer for the time being.

The summer transfer windows for Xabi and me have been closed, the drapes drawn. We are where we want to be, the next season is rapidly approaching, and relief is in the air. Still, I must admit that despite the drama of having to choose between Job 1 and 2 after four short hours of stressed deliberation, I was more emotionally drained by the mid-afternoon text confirming Alonso's departure. It's lonely round the fields of Anfield Road.

Not a Scholar

"I am not a scholar. I'm just a writer who loves to write and will always write. Scholars are very hard workers. I think I'm rather lazy... If I get excited about something, or if something happens out in the street... I want to report it and record it. I will go inside myself, bring out what I feel, put it on paper, look at it, pull out all of the cliches and nuttiness... I will work on those things. I will work hard in that way. But scholarship--pooh, pooh." -Gwendolyn Brooks

The Vast Spoils of America Pt. II

Morning came early in the cabin in East Glacier. A bizarre accident involving a pair of jeans and a spilled bottle of NyQuil had led to the bathroom light being shattered the night before, which in turn led to a very clumsy morning shower. I opened the curtains to reveal a dull rain dripping from the cabin's roof. The cabin was actually a backpacker's hostel, located in the back garden of a Mexican restaurant, one of the few businesses open at this time of year. It was early May, and though elsewhere the rain may have been a typical sign of spring giving way to summer, this drizzle may have been the first rain of the season, falling softly on dirty snowbanks. East Glacier, Montana was the picture of a ghost town in this weather. Muddy puddles filled the earthen streets like oil-glazed lakes and not a sound was heard on the morning air. We stopped for breakfast at the only open place in town-- a greasy spoon diner with good tea and better English muffins. Then we waited for the train to come. Katherine was staying, settling down in the mountains of Glacier National Park for the approaching summer. I was going, taking the 20 hour trip back East via Empire Builder. Away from the meth labs, casinos, and gun cabinets of Montana. Back to the meth labs, casinos, and gun cabinets of Wisconsin.

We never say goodbye. Its been too often we've been headed different directions. The train didn't waste time chugging in and chugging out. A hug and a wave and I was off. I found my seat and settled in with a long ride ahead. It was not my first time on the Empire Builder. But I had never seen the Great America West by train, a captive audience to the purple mountain majesty and amber waves of grain. There would be no stopping along the way for a staged photo with the World's Largest Buffalo or Concrete Sandhill Crane, no roadside cafes or bars from which to observe the locals. Just a widescreen view of the sky for hours and hours and hours. This is a long ride for someone with nothing to think about.

There are always interesting characters on trains, always have been. Trains seem to attract a certain type of person. On past Amtrak experiences, I've come across a Buffalo Bill impersonator with a nasty racist streak about him, drunkenly ordering a black man out of "his seat", though he was clearly in the wrong car. I've encountered a Welsh backpacker in his mid-50s who knew a great deal about emergency preparedness. On this particular journey, there was a man on the train who walked with an exaggerated limp, as if one foot was at least 6 inches shorter than the other. Everything about his persona suggested he was at home on trains, and had it been a different era he would have made a perfectly decent hobo. He had the general appearance of a straggler, with long greasy hair and beard, dirtied clothing, heavy work boots, poor teeth, and a gruff slurring voice. The stench of alcohol drifted after him wherever he limped, permeating the air. He was accompanied by a younger woman who seemed, except for her travel companion, to be rather normal. She would assist him down the stairs to take his smoke breaks at every designated smoking stop, and walk him to the bar car for his next drink. When his slurring voice got louder, she would shush him. When his steps became less steady, she would guide him through the aisles of the car with patience. It was a strange relationship, as far as I could tell.

As the train rolled on I tried to read, but could not keep my eyes from the window. The earth and sky lay before me with such beauty and imperfection that I found I had to attempt to capture it on film. But my camera could not recreate those colors and textures, the blurring of the movement.


I watched the sun set over North Dakota knowing the sun had never set for me in such a gorgeous way. As it met the flaming hills of the badlands and disappeared to twilight it brought to mind something my neighbor's father had once said as we all watched the sun set over the Chippewa Valley years ago.

"Just before the sun goes down, if you look closely, you can actually see the world turn."



When night came I lost consciousness, awakening as the train would roll through tiny towns, letting its whistle blow through the lonesome darkness of the night. The carcasses of empty trucks and cars lined the farmyards like a deserted drive-in cinema. A veritable graveyard of decades of former vehicles of the residents of that land. Beneath the soil lay the bones of buffaloes, horses, and Indians, rust leeching into the dirt until they mingled there, past and greater past decaying and settling together. One day we will all be just like dinosaurs.


In the early morning hours the sound of running footsteps down the train car startled me awake. The train had come to a halt, and outside was an unidentifiable platform lit with just one light. For a brief moment my disorientation placed me first at Limerick Junction, where maintenance concerns once left me waiting in darkness for a train back home to Castletroy, and then at a town near Heidelberg where a suicide on the tracks had forced me and my fellow passengers to disembark and wait for hours in the night for a bus that never came. But as my surroundings became clear I realized we must be in northern Minnesota.

"Where is he? Oh my God, where the hell is he?" a woman was hissing under her breath. It was the woman who had been accompanying the hobo man. Her tone was frantic, and she was bumping a large suitcase through the aisle toward the stairs. I gathered that her stop had approached sooner than she'd thought, and she was now hurrying off the train. But she reappeared, pacing the train car and running her hands through her hair, looking ever so tired and very worried indeed. A porter soon joined her, talking in hushed tones and sweeping the car with a flashlight. The hobo man, as it appeared, had gone missing at the most inopportune time. The train began to move again, and the woman yelled. A crackle of a walky-talky halted the motion and soon the conductor was in our car, hurrying through the aisles with his own flashlight. A suitcase was recovered, belonging to the missing man. Then a pair of boots. His only boots.

Naturally, my thoughts went straight to murder. Could the man be stuffed into an overhead compartment somewhere? Thrown from the train by some faceless enemy? Had he wandered off the train at a previous stop and failed to hobble back in time? Or had he simply passed out in a toilet somewhere? I felt the train jerk to a start, though I had already drifted into slumber, and I presumed the issue had been resolved. But several hours later, as the first light of dawn turned the sky to a pinkish grey, I heard a voice. A gruff, slurring voice, loud and unpleasant.

"Goddamn missed the last stop and now I'm gonna miss this stop too!" I jerked awake, knowing that voice could belong to none other but the hobo man. Peering out the window onto another lonely train platform somewhere in Minnesota, I saw the man hobble off the train rubbing his eyes. He stood there in his socks, with no baggage to speak of, looked around in confusion, and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. He sat down on the pavement outside the tiny station and lit up, seemingly unconcerned that his wife was hundreds of miles away, worried sick and reporting him missing, while he was here, shoeless, in God-knows-where with nothing but the clothes on his back and a dwindling pack of cigs. I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he was never seen nor heard from again, traveling the tracks and living out of boxcars, swapping stories for whiskey and wearing his socks thin on the dusty road so kind.

I went back to the city then, back to where the lay-ups are covered in graffiti and the mills crumble while the condos rise high. I went back home to my life as a flatlander where trees break the horizon and the mountains stay buried beneath the earth waiting to be born. But I can still hear that lonesome whistle call.

The Vast Spoils of America

The best way to see this country is on a Greyhound Bus. I boarded one early in the morning in Chicago, rode it through the South Side and looked out at the streets, the power lines, the houses, if you can call them that. Boarded up businesses, broken down cars, little kids walking to school. Tired quiet people waiting for their trains to come, still at the station with lanes of traffic blurring past on either side. We picked up two kids at Dan Ryan and 95th, they headed toward the back rows, pulling up their pants. They fell asleep almost immediately, sprawled out across the seats with their legs in the aisle. The man across from me told his story, though no one had asked him. His daughter had nearly been killed in a crash with a semi, she was clinging to life in Indianapolis. He'd nearly reached Omaha when he got the news, turned his own semi around and grabbed the first Greyhound home to Indiana. He lapsed into the details of the trucking world, I turned my head toward the window.

I could see the city fly past, the parts no one ever takes time to look at, the most interesting parts. I could see the face of the man in front of me reflected in the window, dark eyelashes and calm skin, and we watched the world and pondered our separate thoughts. Then he began to cry, and at first I wondered if he was crying for the neighborhoods, for the people who used to live here and work in meat packing plants, for the people who live here and have no jobs, for the babies crying and the old people dying. It was finally summer, and things were green, but this part of town would look better in winter, more in place with the sooty snow and grey skies than under the hazy May sun. He cried all the way to Calumet, sobs that shook his large shoulders. He covered his mouth with his hands and faced forward, his reflection gone from the window. I sat in silence and turned my music down, out of respect. I wanted to tell him to keep his lip stiff, keep his fists clenched, that sometimes you gotta kick your way through this bitch. But I couldn't say it like Brother Ali.

The truck driver was repeating his story to another uninterested listener, giving the gory details of the way they found his daughter with all four limbs broken. Nearly everyone else was out, the blacktop singing them to sleep. In Calumet a family got on. They talked in Spanish, too fast for me to understand, and their voices hurt my ears. They talked about Chicago, and I looked back down the highway toward the city we had left behind. Indiana welcomed us with black smoke blocking out the sunshine. Downtown Gary, likely the saddest city in America, was void of life and grim. The weeds and smog seem to choke out all happiness. Then the rain came. It didn't let up until we got to Indianapolis. Behind me I heard someone ask "Estamos en Chicago?" After much confusion the Spanish-speaking family realized that they were not on the bus to Chicago, that they were now miles away from their destination. They were silent for a while, as the feeling of lostness settled in.

In Indianapolis I sat on the church pew benches of the station and ate my lunch. I read. I waited. A florescent light buzzed. An old man in a hat offered me a religious flier. I shook my head. I didn't need to find God. I went back to my book, passing the time til I made it to Cincinnati, wondering just what this thing they call the Midwest really is.

Rag Week

These two poems, inspired by the goings-on of Rag Week 2007 while I attended the University of Limerick in Ireland, were published by my study abroad program's newsletter, winning me 20 Euro. A small reparation for putting up with rag week, but wonderful nonetheless.

Rag Week, Day One

Awakened by the sound of falsetto singing
I open the blinds to the early morning sun.
It is Aidan, drunk and having stayed up all night
Off to play tennis at 8am with a beer in each hand.
So this is Rag Week.

Rag Week, Day Five

On my walk to class amongst the broken glass
I stumble upon a trail of blood.
I follow it down the sidewalk to its source:
A lone tooth, abandoned on the pavement.
The price one pays for Rag Week.

Update

I have decided to make this blog more about my writings, so I will henceforth periodically be posting poems, essays, or stories that I have written or am in the process of writing.