WEDNESDAY
13/02/02
Fear and Loathing in the Botanic Gardens
Today is Wednesday. Today was a long day.
I woke intermittently, sleeping restlessly from 7am to 8.46am when my alarm went off. I lay kind of dazed for a while, drifting out and in of being in that blear-eyed early morning way. And then I got up; did a few stretches, touched toes, sort of thing; got tired of that soon enough and spent the next fifteen minutes fumbling with my clothes trying to put them on.
I staggered towards the door, headed down to the canteen to get some cereal, toast, coffee. I ate (some orange juice too) and returned to my room packed my bag and left.
At class (philosophy class) I sat down, late, yawned, then listened. Hegel followed Schelling, followed Fichte, followed Kant. Feuerbach listened to Schelling’s criticism of Hegel’s philosophy. Engels, Bakunin, and Kierkegaard all attended the same lectures in Berlin, Schelling’s public lectures. I listened sometimes attentively. Sometimes my mind wandered. I yawned. We talked about self-consciousness and the infinite regress of trying to immediately ‘know’ yourself. I went home.
By 11.22am I had turned on my mobile and received Levin’s text message. He’d sent it at 10.28am. It said: ‘Dude whats happenin 2day’. We had planned to visit Narnia by taking tea (special tea) and visiting the botanic gardens. I phoned him and said I’d come over about half twelve after lunch and he said ok and that he’d be going to the museum at four. I said cool and hung up.
I ate my lunch – pasta – and got my stuff and went. Levin lives down Eglantine Avenue so I went there and, just before reaching the house, looked up at the ground floor window and who could I see there but young Hamish staring out with a huge grin on his face. I knocked and the door was opened. The floor was all clean. Now Emmett might not kill us all. Which was good.
So I sat down and said ‘so?’ and Levin said ‘uh?’ and I went ‘muh?’ ‘Botanic and tea,’ I said, as a question, and he said ‘yes,’ after a while.
‘Weak tea.’
‘Yes, weak.’
‘Not too weak.’
‘No, not too weak.’
I went off to make it and came back looking for a lighter. I found one (Chris’) and crumbled the drugs into the saucepan, and made tea. We drunk the tea, and I had that foul lumpy bit that hasn’t dissolved at the bottom uhhrghh. So off we went back into the living room.
In the living room we sat down and talked crap. We talked of that bobsleigh thing on TV and all sorts of silly nonsense. Emmett came down and said ‘this place is clean’ and we said ‘muh’, and then Chris went off with the TV into a cab to fix it for us because his TV is being used at the moment. I mused on the logic of this situation.
We decided to get rid of all the TVs and just have a pool table, which would inevitably lead us to converting the place into a brothel and opium parlour.
Barry and James were back from playing racquetball at this stage. We all sat down to watch neighbours. (“I’m feeling fierce neighbourly.”) We’d obviously slipped into a parallel universe as in this world Woody was still alive and Australia was called aussieland. That was Master Emmett’s contribution. Anyway, myself and young McCochall headed out as Neighbours was right shite, and we couldn’t watch any more of its shiteness.
It was warm outside, for a while. Then it got cold. We shuddered our way down towards where we were going and wondered when the gear would kick in.
When did it kick in? It was sometime between us reaching the garden gates and us entering (or being in) the big white greenhouse. No it didn’t. We went to the museum after the brief tour of the greenhouse and bought some chocolate thing in the cafe, and then visited the turtles, and then it kicked in, as we were there, looking at the fish and the turtles. Then we went out.
We went into the tropical ravine. And out again. There was paranoia, I fear, in the ravine. We had to leave. We went for a walk. Around the same place as last time. We found the entrance and entered Narnia again.
We found the same bridge as last time. This time it was different, different somehow, there were too many people. We did very odd and stoney things and talked weird stoney talk. Then what happened? More greenhouse, more ravine, a bogland (where was that?), an attempted destruction of fossils (don’t ask), a fleeing from the museum, into the greenhouse again, out of that again quite quickly, up to the ravine, out of there quite quickly, then … waiting for Meabh. She came soon enough and we went into the museum. We went to look at the fish and turtles again.
I was thirsty and went and got some water. We walked around, various exhibits, looked at Spencer paintings (again. The flyer claims it is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We have seen it four times in a lifetime so far) and so forth. I decided to leave at about half four, and so did. Levin and Meabh remained in the museum as I went home.
Dinner was odd. I thought it odd, how all the Christians had divided themselves up into two groups. It was not nice; there was an oppressive atmosphere. One group had decorated themselves with an ashen forehead, and everyone who didn’t have that was clearly in the other group. I was not in either group. What could I do? I went back to my room.
I reflected on memory and myself. It had been a long day and I was tired. I have stayed up, however, until now, and it is now early Thursday morning, and though I am tired I cannot sleep. For I wish to express something but I cannot. I wrote this, but didn’t write what I had wanted to write. Perhaps with time, it will come.
AFTER
No records remain of what happened on Thursday. On Friday Levin took up his first job since dropping out. He worked in the Mace on Botanic Avenue and had to stack boxes and put rubbish away and work the till. The tedium was only partially relieved by Alex Higgins walking in and personally insulting him.
Later on Friday Levin quit. On Saturday Barry Mitchell went drinking in Lavery’s bar. On Sunday Levin, Neil and Hamish walked down to the Boucher Road and purchased two boards from B&Q and black paint.
The Big Pink Page 17