The Emerald Lie

I got back to Galway — not a month later but nigh on two. Booze costs you time as well as just about everything else. Last lingering days in London, what I most spent my time at, apart from attempting to beat hangovers and fret about dwindling money, was, get this,

Watching YouTube.

One clip.

Titled “Wet Dog.”

Featured a Brussels griffon pup who was as weird and wretched as I felt. He was having what seemed to be a very human nervous breakdown and was flat-out funny and touching. Of course it reminded me of my pup, Storm, and how he was. I’m not claiming I returned because of him but it was in the mix. The only consolation was I missed Christmas and New Year shabby resolutions. If you want the very rock bottom of festivities, in all its naked misery and squalor, try a bedsit in Camden Town.

During my final London weeks, I’d watched Wolf Hall and marveled at the absolute stillness of Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. In an era of all things Kardashian, it was quite astonishing to see such major talent and with such little movement. In some ways, I’d have killed for stillness and perhaps only being killed would still me.

Still.