#117: the water is wide

The two half-drunk Irish boys were playing their violins and stomping in the snow and ice in a circle measured by light from a hotel lobby and a border guard of people tight around them. The words stumbled steam-heavy, breathed into the cold. It was somewhere below zero and we were all in New York City the night before St. Patrick's Day. This was after Sam and I had lost our way five times on the Subway, but before the bagpipe band marched into the hotel lobby at 10 a.m. to warm up for the parade, setting the walls shaking with that specific Irish fervor that sounds remarkably like a cat getting wrung through a loom sideways while being devoured by fire ants.

But, right now, we were outside and in the snow and the ice and a few days before it had been 70 degrees Fahrenheit and a man wearing only a towel had brushed by me in the street. But this day before St.Patrick's Day it was cold and night was even colder. All of us strangers leaving a bit of room for the singers, pressed close together and blew into our hands.

I don't even remember what they sang. Traditional Irish songs usually go along the same lines every time though: "Lord I was a drunk 'un that night so long ago in the spring, when o'er the hill a trippin' away, I spied a fair colleen. But afore I could ask if she wanted to dance the great war bells were ringin' and I must go to die for the land while my only love stands singin'." And then everyone dies in a fit of glory, whiskey, love and general down-trodden-ness.

There was a feeling of togetherness and community in what's a slick modern world where everyone walks double triple-time down the sidewalks, not even noticing the man who's slowly freezing to death nearby or the woman suddenly hurled in front blazing taxis or the raping, mugging, child-abusing, life-destroying going on next door underneath the laundry and behind each quiet window.

It's my favorite memory of New York. One of the only times that trip I didn't feel like someone I couldn't see was patiently screaming into my ear.

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Oh St.Patrick's Day. The day when everyone who isn't Irish pretends they are and everyone who's 1/4 of a teaspoon Irish is obnoxious as all damnation, flitting about saying absurd bro-ish things about Ireland, but mostly about "The Boondock Saints." (I suppose they're being honest in a way...how much of St.Patrick's Day is actually about Ireland anymore? Now that we have this global economy/global culture stuff floating around like wind shaking the barley.) Meanwhile, all the true Irish get uproariously drunk and speak in tongues...although this depends on where you live. In New York, I discovered, St.P's is a Big Deal. In Astoria, not so much. They're too Scandinavian here.

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I am not Irish nor will I ever be.

Beer is for everyone, as are potatoes. I will consume both in absolute Polish/American mutt peace. And there will be no forthright wearing o' the green, no matter what Napper Tandy says regarding Ireland's state in the grand scheme of things.

Now.

Follow this link. John Wayne movies! In Ireland! With Maureen O'Hara! Watch it!