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Chimwala

2012-01-29T11:23:00.000-08:00

Ligwangwa Njobvu village, Liwonde.

Chimwala shows me the interior of her house. Inside a cane fence, there are four small constructions built with bamboo and a framework of rods and twigs packed with clay. One is for storing dry wood. Another is where they keep their two goats. There is also a “kitchen”; a round space with a fire in the middle, two pots and a shelter to keep the fire lit in rainy weather and to store the beans where the smoke keeps the bugs away. The last building, slightly bigger with a thatched roof, is the sleeping area. She invites me in to have a look. There’s not much to see. A tiny and gloomy room no more than 3 metres long, with a small flash light connected to some rusty batteries, a calendar from a few years ago hung on the mud wall, and a straw mat with some blankets on the floor. I ask how many people sleep there. She answers that her five kids and her, and then says “my husband sleeps outside, in the garden” I get a bit surprised and dare to ask “did you have a fight or something?” “No” she says laughing, “It’s because of the elephants. They come at night and eat all our vegetables. My husband sleeps there and if they come near, he tries to scare them by shouting and making noises with a tin bucket”

Since farming started in Africa, humans and elephants have been in direct competition; both needing fertile land and plenty of fresh water. The balance didn’t start to drastically tilt until well into the 20th century with the massive introduction of the rifle in Africa. Elephants are nowadays protected, but even if they could shoot them, Chimwala’s family, like most of the population of Malawi, are subsistence farmers, depending entirely on what they produce to survive and too poor to buy any commodity, let alone a rifle. So at the end of the dry season, when hunger drives elephants to villages, Chimwala’s husband has to face the biggest animal that walks on the earth armed just with a stick and a bucket.

2011-12-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas

Dublin, Henry Street. The little girl skips and jumps through the street, full of joy, dancing under the Christmas lights. Her parents follow behind carrying shopping bags of all sizes. She’s eating strawberry bootlaces and singing Christmas songs. Maybe she’ll be seeing Santa in one of the shopping malls this evening, maybe she’ll give him a letter with all the presents she’s expecting, or perhaps she’ll whisper them to the old man’s ear. It’s without any doubt the best time of the year. It’s Christmas, it’s the time for family, presents, happiness, lights, joy and candies. The little girl walks towards one of the big window displays full of teddies and cotton snow. The cuddly toys are so fluffy and pretty that she doesn’t have eyes for anything else. She gets so close to the glass that her warm breath makes a tiny circle of steam. Suddenly something moves right beside her. It´s a big, dark, staggering shape that bends down. The little girl turns her head but everything happens so fast. The first thing she recognises is Santa’s hat. Then she hears the retch, the sound of the lumpy liquid falling on the ground, the splash on her little shoes, the disgusting sour smell of the vomit. The face under Santa’s hat rises and looks at her little eyes. The dirty white pompom hangs to one side of his dripping face. His features are deformed by the excess of alcohol, his eyes try to focus. Opening his fetid mouth slowly and, gargling, the drunken Santa greets the shocked little girl.

“Merry Christmas!”

The little girl burst into tears. Her father appears quickly and the circus starts. Shouts, pushing and threats. Ironically, the aggressive way he tries to protect his daughter just scares her even more and her whimpering turns to loud crying. A big crowd gathers, two security guards approach. The show keeps going on, but I had had enough and walked away. On my way I wondered if this stupid incident would in some way shape the character of the impressionable girl. Maybe Charles Manson also got his little shoes puked when he was a kid… Who knows…

2011-12-03T12:17:00.001-08:00

Gin Lady

Dublin, Ireland.

Thursday evening. Bored, I push the shopping trolley through the aisles of the Tesco’s hidden in the Jervis centre’s arse. I keep walking around putting Tesco’s “value” products in the trolley because all the counters have long queues. I hope to find one half empty but it seems impossible; the queues grow like fungus in public showers. I choose the one that I think will be quicker, but once there I realize all the other queues are advancing substantially more.

I grow impatient. The cashier is a Polish girl. She has the same face my auntie used to have after being constipated for two weeks: a mixture between mute grief and existential emptiness. She scans the products slowly, looking at them like cows watch passing clouds. I would feel sorry for her if she’d be a little bit faster but I’m tired and I want to go home.

I still have five people in front of me. Two full trolleys, and three shopping baskets. Everyone is looking at their feet with the same bored face. Dressed in Sunday clothes, we could be at mass. I’m getting a little bit nervous. The guy in the head of the queue has been watching the cashier slowly scanning all his products without moving a muscle. After paying he asks for bags. He has to pay again, and we watch how he and the cashier put all the shopping in the bags. There’s nothing else in the world I would like to be doing right now. I look around; the other queues seem to advance even faster, lubricated with “finest” melted butter. I can’t help thinking how different the divine comedy would be if the Italians had had shopping centres in the Renaissance. I’m sure Dante would have placed a huge Tesco in the seventh circle of hell with a never-ending queue… maybe a Lidl.

While I still have one trolley and three baskets in front of me, the mesmerized cashier is trying to scan one rebel product without any success. Not even the trick of introducing the code by hand works. The system failed, and the anarchist packet of cookies has won. Now she looks around, someone has to go and change it before revolution starts. We keep waiting. I’m getting a foul feeling growing in my guts. I know this line is cursed. I’m sure the next thing will be changing the roll of paper in the cash machine. In my desperation, I look around. The sterile lights of the building mould the shapes in a sordid way. They make the meaninglessness of existence something tangible. It’s like living a “Tesco value” life. I’m sure Kafka would love to shop here. Suddenly I start to feel anxious. I need to get out of here, I need fresh air.

I look at the queue on my right. There’s a substantial amount of people waiting there but at least they’re advancing. Before I change positions I better check how many people are now behind me just in case once I’m in the other queue, this one gets quicker and I have to return in order to get the fuck out of here as soon as possible. Then I turn back and I see her. An old lady, with big seventies square glasses. Grey hair, big fallen ears and a pair of tired blue eyes. Her hands are shaking. She’s holding an almost empty shopping basket. Inside, just two bottles of cheap gin. I’m not the only one having a bad day. Suddenly that stupid feeling of measuring yourself against something worse triggers a balm of relief and calms me down. Life is beautiful, we just need enough misery around to remind us of it.

2011-12-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

Smithfield Luas Man

Dublin, Ireland.
I was sitting in the Smithfield Luas stop and it was very difficult not to notice him. He was an old man, with long silver hair and long white beard. His face was carved with the passage of time and his eyes contained that hollow sight found frequently in mystics, castaways and the demented.
He was seated on the Luas bench but soon stood up and walked a couple of meters to grab a roach that was lying in the pavement. Instead of smoking the rest of the tobacco as I was expecting, he slowly walked to the bin and delicately let the roach fall into its morally acceptable place. Then he went back to sit down on the bench. A few seconds later, he spotted a little bit of plastic slowly carried by the wind. He went, picked it up, placed it into the bin and returned to the bench again. Once seated, he let his eyes drop to the pavement only to find another small piece of rubbish. So he returned to bend his back, grab it and bin it. And he kept doing that operation over and over, one piece of rubbish at a time. It looked more like a ritual than a simple clean up act. I was amazed with that mans’ determination, and the fact that he conceived his binning as a single mission involving a single piece of litter, forgetting all the others in his ritual journeys from bench to bin and condemned to repeat it over and over again. There was something honourable and tragic in it. It reminded me of the myth of Sisyphus, cursed to roll a big rock up to a mountain only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity.

The Luas came and I jumped aboard. Though the window I could see him a few moments more, cleaning up the now empty Luas stop.

The second time I saw him was in the same place. It was one of those extremely windy days. As I arrived at the Smithfield stop I saw him grabbing something from the floor, walking to the bin and returning to the bench. Slowly cleaning the place bit by bit. On one occasion, someone arrived and sat down at his starting point, leaving no free place on the Luas bench, so his cycle got broken. He became doubtful for a moment as if he had awakened from a trance, but finally he went and sat on a doorstep nearby. I was looking at him, expectant, waiting for the beginning of his cleaning ritual around his new area. But this time he didn’t look for litter. The violent wind slapped us from time to time with autumnal anger. His long hair waved in front of his eyes. He put one hand on his pocket and took a comb out. Slowly, he started to comb down his silver hair immersing himself in another vicious circle. Soon the wind turned, messing up his hair again, and he, with the same serenity as the priest lifting the blessed host, took the comb and drove it down. Over and over again.

I wondered if I was in front of a lunatic or a genius. If his mind was accidentally falling into vicious circles or if his consciousness had reached a superior state of mind that confronts every little detail of this world with total resolution and immense patience.

2011-11-20T10:33:00.000-08:00

Homeless man, Infirmary Road, Dublin.

2011-11-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

Ronnie Drew

2011-11-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

The old lady in Dorset st

Dublin, Ireland.

It was a grey day, and I was walking along a dirty street battered by the restless grunt of the passing cars when I saw her. She was a lovely old lady with grey hair, creased face and numb legs.
“Sorry son, could you help me?”

She was sitting on a street bench the with a zimmer frame in front.
“I’m old and I can barely walk”

I got closer ready to grab her by the arm and help her get to wherever, as any good citizen would do.
“Do you see that corner over there?”

My compassion was opening like a perfumed spring rose, I was going to encompass urban kindness, to help an old lady to cross the street. I ticked a box in my mental catalogue of good urban deeds; all that was left was to meet a blind man in a public toilet and help to point him towards the urinal.
“Can you see the pub behind?”
“Yes, of course...”
“Could you go there and buy me some cans of Guinness?”

The old lady held out her trembling hand to me with some cash while she looked at me with beseeching eyes. Needless to say I went to the pub, I bought her four cans of beer, and I brought them to her with a smile on my face. Then she said
“God bless you son, God bless you”

2011-11-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

Dirty Bertie

2011-11-20T10:14:00.000-08:00

Train Lady

Killarney to Dublin, Ireland.

In the surprisingly hot summer of 2006, I was returning from Killarney, sitting in the train, watching sheep and cows passing by on the green sea of the Irish midlands. At one of the stops, she got on the train, dragging her feet looking around for a free space and finally sat down beside me with a muttered complaint. She had that look of uncertain age, when you really can’t tell whether that person is very old or life has treated her so badly that she looks much older that she really is. Her hair was short and quite greasy. Her face bloomed with crevasses. Her mouth was surrounded by facial hair and held less teeth that it should have. She was wearing a pale top that perfectly displayed her hanging breasts. Her arms were defaced with DIY tattoos. From a plastic bag she took a pack of six cans of Dutch Gold, and started drinking. I couldn’t help resting my eyes on the text tattooed around her arms. There where a couple of indecipherable drawings, few names (one of them crossed out) but the prominent one was a tombstone cross with R.I.P. on it above a banner which held the name “Patrick”. She caught me looking at, and started talking

“Me Patrick… de nicest boy ye ever seen”

She took one of her Dutch Gold and offered it to me. Then she kept going

“Was me first kid, a lovely little boy… always laughin´”

She was looking at me, but her sight was lost in her memories.

“I was young ya know… didn’t really know wha´ was doin´…”

She kept telling her story as if I was a priest in confession, having the power to redeem all her sins.

“I really didn’t know how to mind a child… I had serious problems wit´ de booze”

Even though I didn’t want to hear the monologue of her miseries and I couldn’t understand much of what she was saying, I got hooked up, like when you’re watching one of those South American soaps.

“He never wanted us, all the time fuckin´ around… but I was mad fer him… I was young and stupeh”

Patrick’s father suddenly appeared in the story. Apparently, not a very responsible lad. She opened the third Duchie and kept talking

“I knew he was stealin´ me money … couldn’t even pay de baby’s food…”

A bitter flavour ran from my throat to my stomach. She was describing a terrible picture; I kept listening with morbid attention.

“We had a fierce row, an´ he lef´ me. Didn’ care about me or the baby annymore… den I lost it… was always drunk”

Her eyes were trembling, the hand holding the can was shaking, her voice turned bitter

“I found him dead in the cradle one morning; I´d been too drunk to take care of him”

She graved her last Dutch Gold, opened and gave a long sip.

“Since then I quit de booze forever”

2011-11-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

Guinness man

Dublin, Ireland.

For quite a while, my workplace was located in the Guinness enterprise centre. The building was an old storehouse remodelled as an office building, situated in front of the actual storehouse. So every day I use to walk that road full of tourists and all those who try to get their living offering services to them: tour buses, taxis, horse carriages etc. As the Guinness brewery lies in an area far from the centre and any other tourist attractions, transport is the main service offered. But there’s someone else who offers another kind of service. He is an old man, always wearing the same ragged dirty clothes and the typical Irish woolly hat. In wind or rain, he stands there with an old horse and an empty cart, waiting for the flow of tourists. What he has to offer to all those rushed people who came to Ireland for few days is the visible recreation of an idea, the exhibition of a stereotype, the display of a traditional character portrayed in thousands of tales and carved for centuries on the collective memory: The “drunken Paddy”

Every time a passing tourist tries to take a photo of him, he raises his hand showing the price of capturing the folkloric essence of Ireland: one euro.

I never knew how lucrative or not his business was, or how real an image of himself he was selling. Whether if after his working day, he went home, had a shower and changed into his Armani smoking suit, or if he went straight to the pub to get drunk and ended up sleeping on the hay beside his horse.

2011-11-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

Samuel Beckett

The wet dream of a portrait maker

2011-11-20T10:02:00.000-08:00

The Living Dead.

Dublin, Ireland.

It was a cold October’s evening embraced by the howling Atlantic wind. A photographer friend of mine had come from Spain in order to do a report about surfing in Ireland and it was his last day on the island. Even dragging around a hangover accumulated over many days, he decided to go outside and take his last shots of the city. I reckoned that the area around the Guinness storehouse was interesting and close enough to my home. I thought the old brick hangars, the brewery tubes and the cobblestoned narrow streets would be perfect for his purpose. But first we walked around Meath Street, passing butcher shops, street vendors offering smuggled tobacco, and pound shops selling out of date groceries. We turned towards Saint James Gate, and we came across a tiny park surrounded by buildings and a metal fence. It’s the backyard of Catherine’s Church, a small green area with trees, one sculpture and some old graves. The rainy Irish weather had created a delicate layer of different green mossy colours around the grave stones. The trees were crying their leaves away; the place had that gothic look that makes death romantic. We walked inside; my friend took his camera out, crouched and started to focus on the graves. Suddenly, we heard some noises confused with the howling wind. It came directly from some graves by the corner against a brick wall. When we turned our heads in that direction, a hunched creature emerged from the graves, dragging his feet through dead leaves and pointing with his black nails towards us. He was spitting incoherent words full of anger and looking us with dead eyes. From between the tombstones, another creature showed up his head, creeping through the ground, staring with lifeless eyes.

It took us a while to realize the true nature of that abominable apparition. It wasn’t any phantom, any zombie, or undead returned from hell’s guts, but was as close as you can get. A couple of junkies had found the perfect place to shoot up - a graveyard. They where quite pissed off with our presence, disturbing their determination to dig their own resting place with syringes. We skipped any kind of argument with those two gentlemen and got the hell out of there. We were thrilled with that vision, addicts injecting filth into their blood, embracing death in the cradle of a grave. That strong image of desolation and misery was almost poetical.

Maybe junkies get the same compulsion, buried deep in the subconscious, that old elephants have, who leave the pack and wander guided by the angel of death until they find rest in the same place other elephants have gone to die for generations. Maybe a sixth junkie sense drove them to that old cemetery like suicidal whales swim to shallow shores to beach themselves and die.

2011-11-20T09:57:00.000-08:00

Pub Man

Dublin, Ireland

Time ago, in a Sunday mourning -quite sunny for a change- I was trying to find my way to a friend’s house. I found myself lost and walking in circles trying to get to a poorly handwritten address. I decided to ask someone. I went straight the first person I found, but in the precise moment I stopped the old man I realized it was a mistake. His silver hair was matted, his long beard had an unhealthy yellowy colour. His nose had a granulated texture and was decorated with burst veins, clear signal of a passionate love for alcohol. His eyes, his movements, his voice, his breath, everything was orchestrated by a deep ethylic intoxication.

I asked him if he knew where was that missing street, and took him a while to process the information and understand me. Shaking his head, dragging sounds to complete almost indecipherable words, he told me he had no idea, he was also lost. “I don´t know where me house is” he pad me on the back (I don't know if was a sympathy signal or was done for balance purposes) and told me pointing a nearby pub:

“let’s find it over there”

Exhibition at the Shaw Space

2009-06-04T02:42:00.000-07:00

Next exhibition at the Shaw Space

Bernard Shaw (11 - 12 South Richmond Street, Portobello, Dublin 2)
From Friday 19th June until Thursday 16th July 2009
Opening night on Friday 19th

2009-06-04T02:24:00.000-07:00

The scumbag and the ornithology

Dublin, Ireland
I was walking home dodging the open bin bags and dog shit that bloomed on the pavement. It was then that I saw her sitting on a doorstep. She was a chubby knacker, pachyderm style. Her face was rounded, pink colour splashed with freckles. Her spare tyres (big, white, flaccid) escaped from the elastic of a hysterically coloured tracksuit faded by dirt and stains. One of her legs was in plaster and two mucky crunches lay by her side. In front of her some chips had spilled on the ground beside a crumpled and oily brown bag. I could sense the acrid smell of the malt vinegar from far away. Some shy pigeons where jumping around pecking the further chips. When some more came around to share the feast, the scumbag seemed to awake from her lethargy. Her face, even redder than usual, frowned in an anger grimace. She leaned on her left spare tyre swinging her fat to one side. With her right hand grabbed one crunch and she tried to hit the pigeons, shouting with a leathery voice (please read with north side accent)

…Oooooh!!! I hate those fucking seagulls!!!!!!!