exploring our boundaries

Coffee with the Mammy at the Chat And Chew in Newbridge.
We are surrounded by the plain people of Ireland.
Not a single good looking one.
But why should I complain bold readers?
I'm no oil painting myself.
(Heelers is a watercolour. - Divyavibha Sharma note.)
Around us the cafe cacaphones with life.
Teenagers streel among the tables exuding that perfect nonchalence.
The sun bounces on the pavement.
All is right with the world.
Abruptly my mobile phone beeps.
And lo.
There is a text message on it from my feminist cousin Pauline.
The message says:
"Cousin, we're having a poetry reading on the Summer solstice. There's no money. But will you do a reading? P."
It is the work of a moment to text back.
My text back says:
"Pauline. There is nobody left to save art except us. We are the publishers. We are the Irish Times. We are the Oscar ceremonies. If you and I do not respect artists enough to pay them, then the whole thing is finished. Yours a hundred poundsily, James."
I sent the message.
"What's going on?" wondered the Mammy.
I told her what Pauline had said and what I had replied.
"Do you think she'll mind?" I asked.
The Mammy's eyes widened.
"Son," quoth she, "there's got to be easier ways to commit suicide."

complex theological questions

Coffee with the Malteaser.
We're at a window table in the Foodcourt looking down on Stephens Green.
Privya the Muslim waitress scowls prettily at me from behind her counter.
"I'd convert to Islam for her in a second," I whisper to the Malteaser. "No, in half a second."
The Malteaser casts a glance Privyawards.
"What's wrong with her?" she asks. "Why does she hate you?"
I take a sip of warm milk.
"Long story," I grin. "I suspect part of her is in love with me if only she could admit it. But clearly the part of her that serves coffee here wants to kill me. In which case she can jolly well join the queue."
(The cops, the mob, the broads, Grinny Ahmadinejad, the Jihadi's, the pornographers, certain UN spooks, Johnston Press, the aliens, etc etc. - Ed note.)
"By the way," I continued after a moment's pause to contemplate the Ed note, "there's something I've been wondering about women in the Muslim religion. Do they get the same perks as their menfolk for committing culpable homicide? You know the way the men are supposed to be waited on by virgins for all eternity if they die while committing Jihad terror, murder, mayhem, whatever. Well what I want to know is, do the women get the same deal? Will Privya be waited on by a male virgin in heaven if she does away with me? Say if I die of a burst blood vessel from frustration some day I order a caffe latte and she serves me warm milk. Does she get a male virgin in paradise for that? I mean what's in it for her?"
The Malteaser groaned.
"James," she said, "just stop."
My eyes rested on Privya.
"No need to commit mass murder today baby," I murmured. "I'm all yours."
And at that very moment the ghost of Sigmund Freud wandered past our table.
"Heelers," he murmured, "I vould haff ein field day vith ziss one."

three great irishmen speak out on international affairs

Bob Geldoff: Loike it's amazing. Loike it's great loike that cluster bombs loike are being banned. Loike I'm thrilled. It's loike a step forward loike for human civilisation loike.

Bono (Paul Hewson): This is an amazing accomplishment. Cluster bombs are a hideously cruel weapon, truly a weapon of mass destruction, and we must all unite to stop their use. The decision by a hundred nations at our international conference in Dublin to ban cluster bombs will be remembered as a great day in human history.

James Healy: "It's most amazing that Bonio and the gallant little Belgian (Geldoff) should be trying to ban cluster bombs rather than suicide vests, or plane hijackings, or beheadings, or katyusha rockets, or roadside bombs, or any of the favoured instruments of Muslim terrorist psychopathy. Most amazing. So, they want to ban cluster bombs, the one weapon the Jihadis really don't like meeting on the rare occasions when they pause long enough, from slaughtering air hostesses and Dutch film makers, to actually find their way to a battle field. In the past Bonio and Geldoff have done more than any others to prolong the misery of the Third World. I mean that by obtaining debt cancellations for murderous African and Arab dictatorships, they have prolonged the lifespan of regimes that otherwise would have collapsed long ago. Debt cancellation has meant only that Arab and African murderers can now run up new debts in financing their permanent civil wars, and wars of aggression against the west. Thanks to the faux humanitarianism of Bonio and Geldoff et al (particularly al, he's a real scummer), thanks to them I say, a generation of African and Arab dictatorships have been given new life. As for banning cluster bombs, what is the purpose of such a measure? Is it possible that Bonio and Geldoff, and their cheerleaders in the BBC, and CNN, and Channel Four, and The Irish Times, and Le Monde, and the Brit tabloids, and ABC, and NBC, and CBS, and Skybollah, and the Nazi channel Al Jazeera, and the Associated Press, and Reuters, and all the rest of the quisling media, is it possible that these idiots actually want Al Qaeda to win this war?

expostulation and reply

This in my inbox unsigned:

"It is God who splits the seed from the fruit stone. He brings forth the living from the dead. And the dead from the living."

Ah yes. Charming. I recognised the words and their provenance. Sura 6 from Mein Kampf.
When thugs from the peaceloving religion of Islam wish to threaten someone's life, occasionally they will do so with just such a quotation.
The really classy Irish poet whose life has just been so threatened, will often reply in like manner with a quotation of his own from Mein Kampf.
This is said to freak out the Jihadi's no end.
This morning, I was inclined to reply:

"For them there are gardens beneath which rivers flow."

My quote from Mein Kampf is meant to imply that there is an underground river somewhere with the recipient's name on it.
On mature reflection I concluded such a suggestion might be a little rarified for my anonymous threatener.
Also every Black Jacket worth his suicide vest knows I can't kill.
So instead I replied:

"Ah go blow it out your Muslim ass holes."

I hope they understand the irony.

This also in the inbox:

"James, a question. Is it ever right to show someone a diary? I have always thought that a diary cannot be honest, unless you intend never to show it to anyone.
Frances."

My reply:

"Frances, I can only speak for myself. Everything I write is meant to be seen. Even the unpublished diaries. Yes, I'm acquainted with the notion that a diary cannot be true if it's written for publication. There are those who think a public diary will by its nature almost certainly contain lies or diplomatic evasions. But someone burning their diary, or hiding it forever, may also be guilty of lying. To themselves. I try to be honest. There's no guarantee of course that I'm not fooling myself, or that the private diarist isn't fooling his or her self. It's better not to sweat it. Each of us can aspire to truth. I would be appalled at the contemplation of the destruction of any diary. In fifty years time they'll all be fascinating. In a hundred years, priceless.
J"

And then this:

"Heelz.
A letter by the great scientist Albert Einstein, in which he rubbishes God, is about to be auctioned in Britain. He doesn't seem to be too fond of your much vaunted Catholic Church either. Your comments please.
Mark Baines."

I answered thusly:

"Mark.
I'm not a big fan of Einstein. The atheistic wing of the scientific community is a bit too slavish towards him for my liking. They tend to deify him a tad.
Einstein's major theory is unproven.
The scientific community, atheists and believers among them, tend to accept that Einstein's Relativity Theory and its rival Quantum Theory, (the only other scientifically respected postulation about the nature of the universe), cannot both be true.
I would go further.
Neither may be true.
They are both intricate mathematical speculations based on massive proofs by induction.
Proofs by induction?
If we assume one thing is true, and then assume another, and then another, then we can assume the whole lot.
I am suggesting both theories are works of the imagination.
They are utterly untested and largely untestable.
Useful as perspectives on reality.
But by no means the summation of truth.
Perhaps I am not an objective judge.
My own scientific theories have been largely ignored by the scientific community and this might have coloured my attitude to Einstein.
Heelers Proposal On Wave Forms sank without trace in the halls of academe.
This classic dissent from Einstein's theory had advanced the proposition that light has no speed.
It has no mass so it has no speed.
Therefore e does not equal mc squared anywhere in the universe outside of popular music.
Ah.
They called me mad.
Mad.
Mad, I tells ee.
Nyah, ha, ha, ha.
Sorry.
Lost it there for a minute.
Anyhoo.
Einstein's reputation as a scientist doesn't impress me much.
I am more impressed by the persistent anecdotal evidence that he may have been that human rarity, a genuinely nice guy.
As for the letter currently being auctioned.
I haven't been able to obtain proof that it is genuine.
I have however obtained a statement by Einstein on the Catholic Church which does appear to be genuine.
That is to say, Time Magazine claims he made the statement to them in 1940.
Einstein's statement about the Catholic Church is below.
All the best.
James."

Albert Einstein said:
"Being a lover of freedom when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom; but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler's campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly."
(Albert Einstein, quoted in Time Magazine, December 23rd 1940.)

sunset heelavard

Afternoon coffee with the Perfect Fit.
She is saying: "You really blew it with your blog. It was just starting to get popular. The lefties and the journos were reading it again. You had a chance of making some money from the syndication offer. But oh no. You had to save the world from evil Muslims. You couldn't leave well enough alone. Now no one is reading you. They all think you're a psycho."
"President Ahmadinejad and the Black Jackets still read me," I murmured innocently.
The Perfect Fit scowled.
"The Jihadi demographic is not going to keep you in business or preserve your literary reputation," she expostulated firmly. "I don't think your poems are ever going to be taught in universities in the Islamic Republic of Iran, do you? You need a few fans who aren't trying to kill you. But you've driven all those away."
I savoured her analysis briefly.
"Lawyers for the Johnston Press still drop by," I mused delicately.
"Scum don't count," she shot back incisively.
I am a man of simple pleasures and I thought I could steer this conversation somewhere positive.
"So how popular do you think the blog was?" I ventured subtly.
"Everyone I know was reading it," she replied bluntly.
"Yeah but they all know me," I opined reasonably.
"People who didn't know you were reading it too," she insisted de rigeurly.
There was a pause while we both adjusted our adverbs.
"Ah it wasn't that popular," sez I modestly.
Her eyes widened.
There was fondness in them and bemusement in equal measure.
"Really Heelers you've no idea," she said. "You were genuinely getting big there, right before you blew it."
There was a pulse in the universe.
I leaned across the table.
For a moment, in the half light of the cafe my normally rugged features seemed to have taken on the lineaments of a 1920's matinee idol.
"I'm still big," I proclaimed fiercely. "It's the internet got small."

on a june evening

Stuck in traffic on the outskirts of Dublin.
Trust me to get caught in the annual moron migration in honour of ephin Jon Bon Jovi.
The window of Esmerelda is wound down.
An Arab girl strolls along the pavement in a white trouser suit.
She is wearing an amber coloured shawl over her hair.
Two Dublin girls pass her pushing a baby in a trolley.
Teenagers.
They are fairly ragged looking.
Tough kids.
They make a pejorative remark to the Arab girl as they pass her.
She turns towards them.
She gazes at them.
Her face is not so much beautiful as noble.
But beautiful too.
I drive into town sick at heart.

poetry as sex trap

(dedicated to the one i love)

make me immortal with a kiss
william shakespeare used to say this
when himself and francis bacon were on the piss
or maybe just hanging out at sir walter raleigh's place in the sticks
it was a highly efficacious line for pulling chicks
in those innocent days of 1586

thy beauty it has brought me home
to the grandeur that was greece and the glory that was rome
thus spoke the bold sir edgar allen poe
the critics applauded and his mistress wasn't slow
to favour him with a smile of purest joy
and mutter something about come up and see me big boy

girl i'm going to be more subtle
than shakespeare poe or simon tuttle
who's he you cry and i don't know
he rhymes with subtle so in he goes
i give you only a time and place
my house tonight half past eight