Was it Pascal who said “Almost all our misery has come from not being able to remain alone in our rooms”? Baudelaire thought it might have been, but was not sure. And let’s take a look at that “almost” which I’m very glad is there. I can think of lots of misery that had nothing to do with my not having been alone in my room. When I get a rejection email on a train for a piece of work I had high hopes for is one example. Or to go way back, when I returned home to find my white mouse dead when I was eleven or twelve. Or to take a mundane example, when a plane I’m booked on is twelve hours delayed, while I hang about the airport. …
Matthew Sweeney
the lonely …
What stopped her bawling was the doorbell …
After the murder, I called a meeting …
This is an old apartment and therefore the mirrors are huge and ornate. They go with the high ornate ceilings. There’s one such mirror in the living room and another in the bedroom. Both have intricately carved borders and a leafy crest on top. In the living room these have been painted over in white, but in the bedroom it’s still the original gilt rococo. Both mirrors sit on top of fireplaces and are as big as tombs. I think the descriptive term for them is French Regency Baroque. …
I was walking from the Louvre to Place Saint-Michel along the Seine when I noticed a crowd gathered under a large linden tree. As I approached I thought how much I’d liked to walk down Unter den Linden when I’d lived in Berlin, and now I saw again how attractive the light green seeds of the linden tree were against the darker green of the leaves. I was also agog to see what had caused the crowd to gather. …
As I walked up the Rue des Martyrs with my bag of small, perfect, waxy potatoes I doffed my imaginary hat to Monsieur Parmentier. Well, I do have a hat and wore it a lot not so long ago to cover a healing wound on my forehead but this wasn’t necessary anymore, and anyway the hat wasn’t with me now in Paris. Nor was Monsieur Parmentier, though any remains of him lie in a plot in Père Lachaise ringed by potato plants. …
I walked along Rue du Faubourg du Temple on the way to Belleville and I stopped at a shop selling rat poison. To my astonishment and my amusement they had a window full of stuffed rats, including four small rats standing round a table, playing cards. I liked that very much. Paris was full of weird turnarounds, it seemed — poisoning and elevating the rats to art at the same time. I nearly went in and asked how much the four rats and the tiny table would cost, but I remembered I’d be going back to Ireland pretty soon, and the people at airport security might not see the joke. …
“Bottle gatherer, what do you hope to gain from this gathering of the discards of other people’s merrymaking, beyond the few cents you’ll accrue?” …
I used to be a dog. What kind? Oh, a mongrel. Nothing poncy like the black cocker spaniel called Bonzo I had as a child. And certainly not one of those four-footed, aloof snakes that go by the name of greyhound. I remember each and every one of the lice that lived on me. …
Outside the igloo he waited …
No one knows where I’m going, …