Oil on Canvas

 

I am restless. I don’t know why. It’s the night from Monday to Tuesday and I haven’t put anything useful on paper in regards to the assignment for today. Write either six haikus or a pro or anti Valentine’s day story. Sounds pretty straight forward, I’d say.

But what I’ve come up with so far is utterly pathetic and unentertainingly boring. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at it again. Is this writer’s block? It definitely feels like something I haven’t felt in a very long time. And even back then, when I did, I didn’t know what it was. A word like constipation then came to mind. Creatively constipated, I thought, I was.

Even if I left the whole assignment thing aside and try to write about anything that comes to mind, I don’t succeed. It’s almost like my creative channels have been glued shut.

It usually works like this: I just pick some random first lines to start with. Something that is catchy and draws the reader in. I like to think of myself as being particularly good at this.

Once I have the first sentences, which I rarely change as the story develops, the ideas spread like a wildfire. Everywhere in my brain the synapses go crazy.

Just imagine a calm surface of a random body of water. And then use an ordinary pipette and set one single drop of oil carefully somewhere on top. You can see how quickly the oily rainbow colours spread all over the water. That’s also the speed my ideas for the stories tend to grow.

Sometimes, if my thoughts run wild, it’s like you haven’t set the drop of oil gently onto the surface but let it fall down from a distance, the oily rainbow spreads in ripples, stirring the creativity up even more.

But at the moment, nothing like this is happening. Far from that. It is more like having a huge bathtub full of oil and a single drop of water tries very hard to merge with the oil. It’s simply not going to happen. Physics, pure and simple. Or chemistry for that matter. The drop of water will be sliding across the surface of the oil without any effect at all. Nothing, niente, nada, nix.

 

While I was trying to put my current dilemma into words here, some thoughts got caught in my frontal lobes’ selective attention department. One of the thoughts was about how unfortunate an institution this Valentine’s day actually is.

Come the first of February, a big cloud is approaching. It gets heavier and darker with every day it comes closer to the fourteenth. Romantic relationship’s judgement day. The performance of this particular day is a measure of how successful your relationship skills are. At least it feels like this.

Did you manage to get a reservation for the best restaurant in town, or are you taking her out for pizza at Napoli’s? What’s her favourite food, anyway? Maybe take her on a short city trip over the long weekend? But where to on this short a notice? Admit it, you weren’t paying much attention when she had her hint dropping day in late January, am I right?! How about roses then? How many did you get for her last year? Does she even like them? Or was it lilies? A fucking booby trap of a day!

And it is even worse for singles. So, what do you do? Probably call up your last mistake and see if she is available and desperate enough to do this. Then you have another awkward date. It doesn’t matter where you take her, but make sure the booze is cheap. So, you get drunk and have bad sex. Then you sneak out of her apartment as soon as she’s fallen asleep, delete her number and go home. At least you haven’t spent Valentine’s alone watching a film on your laptop; that would have been depressing, wouldn’t it?!

And if you nevertheless feel a little bit weary on the morning of the fifteenth, you still have the option of calling in sick or hope that Pancake day on the twenty-eighth will be more successful.

De-escalation is everything

Eoin went to Sheridans Cheesemongers last weekend. On Saturday, he had decided that it was time for a treat – delicious cheese and good wine. And so it happened that he ran into Saoirse. Eoin was just talking to the woman behind the counter – a decision regarding the compatibility between wine and cheese had to be made – when Saoirse tapped him on the shoulder. They had been working together for quite some time, but then Saoirse had left for a better position somewhere else. They hadn’t been that close back then, but close enough to share a funny anecdote. Saoirse started to talk about the Christmas party two years ago, and Eoin asked her if she remembered the girl from HR, the little one that was dancing like crazy. He told Saoirse that he had hocked up with her that night, and how they ended up in the girl’s apartment.

While Eoin talked away, bragging in rich detail about that night, Saoirse had a good view at the door and froze when suddenly Donald Trump entered the shop. With one of his little hands he was dragging the aforementioned Christmas party HR girl along. It wasn’t so much the presence of the POTUS himself in Sheridans Galway that struck her, but the fact that she recognised her and that the HR girl herself seemed to recognise Eoin.

“That’s him, Donald! I told you about him! That’s the offender!” the HR girl screamed, pointing at Eoin. When Eoin saw the fuming girl, it took him almost a full round of sixty seconds to put the pieces together. The one piece that really wouldn’t want to fit was: What the fuck was the Don doing here? When the penny eventually dropped and Eoin was able to connect the girl with the just shared and bragged about event from the past, the blood in his veins started congealing.

“What did that freak do to you, my darling?” the POTUS asked the HR girl. The girl took Donald Trump’s red tie and pulled him down to her level. Her narrowed eyes fixed on Eoin, she whispered something into Trump’s ear. The President’s face lit up and a mischievous smile flashed briefly over his face. When the girl was finished, Trump went over to Eoin and patted him on his back.

“That was terrific! Good boy! Well done! That’s how you handle those situations! Want some more advice on these matters, my boy?” Trump asked him beaming. But Eoin just shook his head and looked down at his feet. “Well,” the Don said “suit yourself then, you loser.”

This scene had made the HR girl so furious that she jumped at the POTUS and slapped him a couple of times right across his smirking face. Although her hand was hurting quite a lot, it didn’t seem to have done any harm to Trump’s face, which remained orange and bloated. When she kicked him right in the Trumpian crown jewels, though, his face turned crimson and for a couple of seconds his hair piece seemed to hover quite a few inches above his head.

“Security! Take this fucking bitch off me! Immediately!” the President barked. The men from the Secret Service removed the fuming and clawing bundle of rage and carried her outside. “If something like this happens again, I’ll have the troops send to this godforsaken place! I’ll have it wiped off the face of the earth! Mark my words! Mark! My! Words!”

“Mr. President, I strongly advise against this rather premature approach of yours.” From behind a huge pile of cheese rolls, Kellyanne Conway stepped forward.

“You are right, Mrs. Conway.” said a man who had just entered the shop, coming in from the weekend market. And turned to Trump, he went on, “I can’t but agree with your formidable advisor’s words, my dear Mr. President. There is no need to take this drastic an action.”

“Who are you?” the POTUS asked, but without waiting for the man’s answer, he turned to his counsellor. “Conway, who is this fool?”

“Mr President, my name is Enda …”

“Shut up! I didn’t ask to you, did I?” and to his advisor, “Who is this clown here, Conway?”

“This, Mr. President, is Enda Kenny, their Taoiseach.”

“Their what? And who are they?”

“Their chieftain or Prime Minister, if you will. We are in Ireland here, Mr. President. Two hours to the south from here, there is your Golf Course.”

“Ah yeah, I remember, Doonbeg. But Ireland, wasn’t their leader this horrible … wait … Theresa May woman? The one that came over for a visit just a few weeks ago?”

“No, Mr. President. She is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

“Ireland, there you go again.” Trump said.

“Same, same but different.” Enda Kenny commented.

“Shut the fuck up, will you!” Donald Trump said to Enda Kenny “Or do you need an executive order to get the gist? Conway, if he does this again, we should get the troops ready and bomb the shit out of them!”

“Mr. President, I strongly advise …”

“… against this approach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But why not? I am the President of the U.S. of A., I can do things like that, can I not?”

“Yes, you can, but you shouldn’t, Mr. President. First of all, this might jeopardise your Golf Course business down in County Clare. And secondly, they don’t have any barrel of oil to their name here anymore. The oil they had, they have already bartered away for little money to the highest bidder years ago.”

“Yes, she is right. The oil was sold off in the eighties and nineties.”

“What did I tell you, Kennedy?! You stupid fuck! Conway, call Tillerson! I am pretty sure Rex can do something about this. We! Need! This! Oil!”

“Mr. President, it’s not Kennedy, his name is Kenny.” said Kellyanne Conway.

“Kenny or Kennedy, all the same to me! But this one over there,” Donald Trump points with his little fingers at Enda Kenny, “really pisses me off! We should get the troops ready!”

“If you are really planning to teach the Ayatollahs a lesson soon, Mr. President, we should conserve our energies here. No troops necessary, anyway. This Enda Kenny person is only the same calibre as that Theresa May woman. Just another kissass. Although, they both might come in handy some day in the future. Just keep that in mind. Because you are not exactly making friends at the moment.”

“That’s fake news! I say, fake news! Fake news everywhere!”

“Mr. President, mind your blood pressure and calm down, please. Let’s just call it an alternative fact, shall we?”

 

Meanwhile, Eoin had made a choice regarding the combination of cheese and wine, paid for it and took Saoirse home for a nice cup of hot tea.

 

The next day, Eoin and Saoirse were still in bed and watching the news on RTÉ, when they saw how the Don announced that he was going to bring hundreds of American jobs to Doonbeg in Ireland by building a huge wall around his Trump International Golf Links and Hotel Ireland estate. Right after the announcement, but still on the podium, he went on Twitter, promising his followers that he would make the Irish pay for that wall. Bigly, he said.

To Open a Door

 

I am in the hallway when I hear them coming. I just came in from the back garden to get something warm against the evening chill. The sun is setting quicker these days, closer to autumn; but it is still nice outside. I quite enjoy those days of being disconnected from a frantic world. I am out here on the farm in the middle of nowhere. Only me, the dog and nobody else to bother us.

And then there are at least three big cars pulling up in front of the house. A woman gets out first. Her gait looks somewhat familiar, she is dragging her left leg a bit. But I can’t really place her right now. Some indistinct flashback from a distant past only. Her entourage, some big guys in black suits and sunglasses, gets out of the cars as well, but keeps outside the little fence in front of the house. The woman approaches the front door alone.

They don’t look like they are here for the child support, which I still owe to my ex-wife in full amount for the last fifteen years, or was it even longer?! I don’t really remember. Anyhow, single mothers have never had this kind of a lobby that drives around in big black cars. Then there is the anticipated knock at the front door.

The orange-red sunset behind her makes it difficult for me to look at her. There is a halo around her, and the woman’s face is left in a shadow cast by herself. Her dark brown hair has been ruffled up by the breeze on the way from the car to the porch. The fiery setting of the sun adds a reddish glow to it now. She looks hard at me through her dark shades. I can almost feel her stare physically.

She shifts her weight to her right leg, giving the left one some rest. Her right hand rests relaxed on the door frame, but she withdraws it eventually after a little while. Now she smiles at me while she brushes some flakes of dry white paint off her hand. Her smile stirs up some more memories that were buried in time by many other events from the past.

The air is fresh and clean out here. The scent of late summer evenings is lingering in the air, and mingles beautifully with the perfume the woman is wearing. Apart from the crickets chirping, there is no sound other than the rustling wind, coming from the little grove further down the road by the little pond. The meditative spell of silence is suddenly broken by a phone ringing over by the cars. One of the men in black answers the call and walks down the road, away from the others. The dog starts barking on the veranda behind the house. He is probably wondering what takes me so long to get the cardigan.

Other than her escort, the woman doesn’t look formal at all. Quite casual even. Her bare feet seem to enjoy the soft carpet of grass underneath. Her toes curl around it, grabbing and playing with the stalks. Then I see it, and all seems to be coming back rather quickly. There is this long scar on her left foot stretching out up to the lower shin. Now I remember clearly her little mangled foot and the pain this had caused for all three of us back then. I have a closer look at her and eventually give her a smile.

She simply says “Are you going to invite me in, Dad?”