Under My Bed

What's under your bed? We used to have an airline pilot stay at the hotel who would open his room door and leave his flight bag down proping the door open while he then rolled an orange under the bed. He said he travelled all over the world and this was his safety routine. If you go to a bad hotel you may find an uneaten Kentucky Fried Chicken still in its box, under your bed. Normally its an odd shoe or sock, if the housekeeping crew are trained well you will never ever find any of these things. Having cleaned a few rooms myself when I was at a 4star deluxe hotel for 3 years, I can say it is hard work and you have to be fast and furious. But so long as the hotel gets 6 quid or 10 dollars for the room then they are in profit.

But all of this is an aside, what's under your bed? We decorated a few years ago and I had hundreds and hundreds of photos in photo albums. We took down a couple of shelves while we decorated, but then we had a problem, one of them broke. The one which had all my photo albums on. I hadn't really looked at all these photos in years, so the bin beckoned. However I decided I'd keep them. So where to put them. Under the bed was the solution, we had an old suitcase so I put all my photos away. It must have weighted 25 kilos, or 55 pounds or 4stones in English terminology, which is as much as my big daughter weights, talking of weight my wife only weights 6 stones, light enought to be a jockey. Now there's an idea, my uncle Patrick used to keep a donkey just to cut the grass around the house in County Kerry. My wife could have become a jockey, if only my uncle and the donkey were still around. Life is all about timing after all.

So grunting and groaning I carried the old suitcase upstairs and slid it under my bed. There it remained for years. Two children later and today our smallest one wanted to look at all the photo albums, the ones we  keep in the pantry. Though technology has moved  on now and we have maybe 1000 photos on the computer and in cyperspace on our family site. But our smallest likes to see herself when she was even smaller. So I decided to drag out the suitcase and show both our girls photos of me from 25years ago and so. We had snaps from when my sister did her year abroad, from when my brother lived in Paris. There were lots of photos, 10 small albums of County Kerry, donkey included. All my cousins, my dad's brother had 10 children after all, my mum had 5 surviving  brothers and sisters. There were photos of the beach at Cromane , my cousin's son measured the distance from the corner of the house to the sea, just over 7 metres he said, or about 23feet in old  money. I remembered the Love my aunty showed to all of us, she was always the driver, 1000miles in 2 weeks seeing all the clan, she is truely blessed. From the base in Killarney to all points North/South/East/West you could put on a stone,or 14pounds in 2 weeks, 3 relatives a day, 3 meals a day. All my cousins were always so generous and welcoming, there was always so much gossip and stories to be heard.

All this lived in suspended animation in a suitcase under my bed. They all awoke like a Princess in a Fairytale story when I dragged out the old suitcase today. My girls said I looked so cool with my sunglasses and my moustache. I told them I was younger than mummy is when the photo was taken. Why did everybody have a moustache in them days?

I also found my copy of The Outline Of History By H.G.Wells ,  signed by Mr Lester the headteacher from my Primary school. It was a leaving present, believe it or not I was Head Boy at Primary school, it was a bit like being a jailer really, as I had the keys to the building and I locked up at dinner time. I also found a certificate from 1969 because I wrote a story for a competition, Junior Free Handwriting Story something. This impressed my big daughter.

I found my mothers prayerbook with lots of religious pictures inserted into the pages. Mrs Murphy in my novel, The Butcher The Baker and The Undertaker is based on my mum, but not just her but my Aunty in Killarney and the 2 other sisters. So my fictional Mrs Murphy is to the power of 4. While I'm thinking of it, I deliberately did not write about my dad in my book, however after I finished it I realised that Big Sid the butcher  he was my dad. Not because of any similarities whatsoever, but, the Love Sid has is the same Love that my dad had for all of us. Love is how you judge people, anything else is s*&%.

I also found a nice little book about Saint Martin de Porres, I'll try and get my daughter to read it, it must be 30 years old. All in all a lot of memories came flooding outjust because I looked under my bed. The suitcase I threw away, the history book is back on the remaining  bookshelf just beside me. I found a large strong plastic sack  and I put my photos back in the bag. The only thing I had to decide was where to put it. You know what I thing I'll put it back under my bed. Memories to sleep on 

Wrapping Paper

I was in Aldi and I spotted Winnie the Pooh wrapping paper, my smallest girl just loves all things Winnie the Pooh, so I got the paper. I wasn't sure whether to wrap her Birthday present in it or just let her have the paper. In the end I gave her the paper to play with. She was delighted, immediately she wanted to use the wrapping paper to wallpaper the walls with. As I've said before she once said she liked Winnie the Pooh because his belly reminded her of my belly. Such is a child's love, unflattering but love.

It did get me thinking though, why do we need wrapping paper? Packaging is part and parcel of ordinary life.  Easter eggs are the thing with the most packaging, so much packaging and then so little chocolate. My mother gave up on Easter Eggs because of the cost, there were so many of us Caseys after all. So we had bars of Cadburys chocolate instead, the Cadburys  factory is just a couple of miles from where I'm sitting. Easter came and we devoured the Cadburys bars, cheaper than the Easter Eggs but so very tasty.

People have wrapping paper or layers all around them,we can all remember what Donkey said to Shrek, so many layers like an onion. At the moment I'm dressing up in the wrapping paper called a "suit", so that I can get a new job. So people can see me at my best, hide my tummy and hope they forgive my premature white head of hair, as for my bushy eyebrows God alone knows what they may think. You can judge for yourselves by clicking on the photos on this site. How much do you reveal, how much do you hide as you have an unnatural experience that is called an interview. Perhaps interviews should take place in a coffee shop, as you may know LLoyds of London started in a London coffee shop 100s of years ago. Even better interviews could be held in a bar. You have two pints to prove your worth, so don't spill the peanuts over the interviewer's haut couture dress. Perhaps then at the 2nd interview you have to sing karoki with the 2 interviewers, and IF you can sing My Way word perfect then you get the job. It sure would be more fun.

More wrapping paper is used when we are embarrassed or too shy to explain things to our doctor, we waste 5 mins talking about the weather and the Fall leaves before we finally blurt out that its a boil on the bum ort something below the waistline. And why is it that on these occasions the doctor on call is one of the opposite sex, why cann't it be your usual doctor.

Wrapping paper is used an awful lot in Faith, we lie to ourselfs and our God/Gods by thinking we don't have to do this or we don't have to do that. Faith can become a Buffet, we lie to ourselves and God, this bit does not matter, so we'll show God only so much of ourselves. A bit like cheating in an exam. I'm sure  God's smiling as he watches us, perhaps the Saints place bets on who will finally come clean, clean being the opperative word. The Saints queue up ready to interven, which 999 or 911 call will come though so that a Saint can be dispatched. I know in1996 when my mum had died suddenly and then 8 bare weeks later my dad was given 1 week to live, we actually picked the hymns for his funeral he was so bad. Then all the layers, all the wrapping paper was off, Padre Pio came to the rescue. So that I met my wife in the old peoples' home, 3 years after my dad came back from the dead. Dad lived long enough to hold his granddaugher in his arms, 5.5 years after that massive heart attack.

The ultimate wrapping paper is love, its hard to say you love somebody when your heart has been broken so many times before. Its hard to take a chance when somebody might laugh in your face. Slowly you reveal one thing, then another, then another, yes I can see  the idea of a Monty Python joke as I write this. I do write comedy after all. But when 2 strangers become friends, when 2 become one, then all the wrapping paper is off. She may not mind your hairy back or fat stomach, he may not mind her big feet or whatever she feared. It can turn out that  what one thinks is ugly your Love may find attractive. Love is Blind after all, Love conquers All, Love is all you need. Together naked, the wrapping paper is discarded.

 

Attachment: Padre Pio and Me.doc

The White Door

The White Door, or the dirty white door to be exact. I had a dream last night and I  saw a door,  a dirty white door. There were two nails driven into it in the top left hand corner of it. That's all I remembered, we do have 2 white doors in our house but neither are like that.

So what was I dreaming about? Years ago I had a dream dictionary, I would have eagerly read that to find out. So instead I'll have to use the Internet, google will have an answer  no doubt.

I've said for years that I'd only get a real publisher IF somebody opened the door for me. A negative friend always says you have to make your own opportunities. I take the view that its not ability but knowing somebody, the old saying, its not what you know but who you know.

I knocked on loads of  doors via emails, but still after 20 years no publisher for my novel. A friend said its not just a door but maybe a window  I'd may have to sneak my talent through  a window before I finally got my chance, before my boat comes in.

My smallest daughter said she had a dream last night too, she dreamt we moved house to the big white house we walk past  daily on the school run, and that we had a cat and a dog. The dog will be called Subway. She was all excited as she told me. Children just love animals, but I've said no animals till we get a bigger house. Somebody somewhere has to find me and like me, and then publish me before our dreams can come true. Or my 32 year old lottery ticket could finally come up trumps, thought I doubt it.

You never know whats around a corner my old boss once told me a long time ago, she was right, I met the wife in a most unbelieveable way. Its all in Padre Pio and Me and my Literary Criticism essays. Doors can be opened and closed, closed in your face. For 3 years I stood by a door when I worked at a 4star deluxe hotel, the whole world passed through as I was a 30 second living commercial for the hotel. Best 3 years of my life in  a way.

Doors in the mind are the best doors to open, because they free you to experience more, I'm not talking about taking pills or whatever, just in case any Old Hippies are out there and reading this. Just open your heart and you will open a door to experience more, to remove barriers that leave you in a box, full of your own prejudices. Think of it as food, we always have this and we always have that. Because thats the way we have always done things. Then we meet somebody different and our food world changes, our doors are open. Imagine me meeting a Shanghai girl 10 years ago , I told her fish and chips was haute cuisine. Now you need a degree in oriental languages to know what's what in our fridge. The kids love going to Subway as its a change from daily Chinese food. Thats why if ever we move house the dog will be called Subway.

I'll leave it at that now, though I can say that Fear opened one door for me. I was so affraid of my Primary school teacher when I was 8 that I started to read books, and it changed my life. Getting an old Bush radio from one of our lodgers also opened another door for me, expanding your mind is a great adventure. If you are lucky it leads to a corridor full of doors and opportunities. I suppose writing these blogs as well as the essays and plays and the comic novel is a door too, you the reader are seeing into my mind, I just hope you like the view.

 

 

 

Attachment: Padre Pio and Me.doc

Where do the tears go when they are shed

Where do the tears go when they are shed ©
By
Michael Casey

Where do the tears go when they are shed
While I lie here crying on my bed
Do the tears drip drip away and seep though
The  floorboards and head for the sea.
Do my tears join an ocean that rises and falls
Do the tears yell and scream but only sea farers
Hear them, do whales moan as they crash through them
Only whales know of my distress as my tears groan
In deep deep oceans in the unknown dark deep seas.

Do my tears head north to the North Pole and Santa
Does Santa Ho Ho Ho so much because he is trying to drown out
The cries and sobs and tears held back for so many years.
Do tears form ice shelves and become icebergs, silent and majestic
Like giant cathedrals of ice. Is this the way to silent the voice of tears.
Frozen in Time for 100s of years, the fears of today and yesterday are merged
As one, gagged for eternity in an ice cathedral.
Will everything be forgot, deep freezed, quick frozen like garden peas.

Do my tears evaporate and head for the sky, joining the clouds as they pass by.
Are my tears blown this way and that, are they taken far away over the ocean.
As planes pass through the clouds that are my tears, can the passengers hear
Can the passengers hear my tears, all my hopes and fears, or are my tears
Drowned out by the in flight movie, 007 killing my prayers to heaven.

Do my tears wash away my pain, my guilt, are they like mothers’ milk?
For tears touch us all, they are like a morning mist that shrouds us.
For tears are the dark dark night of the soul, a cold coat that covers us.
In the morning we remember we fell asleep crying, but what of now?
Now we’ve looked at our dead mum’s photo and think of what she would have said.
We smile as we remember, her fight, her love, her spirit, her smile.
But never tears, she shed no tears for us, she shed no tears for us.
Tears will come, tears will come again, but they are just water, we are stronger
Than mere water, we have a boat and that boat is Love.

**** I had this poem in my head so tonight I tried to a nail it down

A Famous Life, an Expired Life, Words from Beyond The Grave

I did my best, I tried to live a holy life, thinking of the next life and not tied to this. But now I'm gone you turn me into an icon, I get 15minutes of fame, after I'm dead, but those 15minutes last forever. I wanted a humble grave, a quiet send off, only a brass band turned up. People spoke kind words about me, some even meaning them, but for what? For vanity, for care, for compassion to those I left behind, or to make themselves important by association. I'm just a signpost pointing the way, go higher, don't stop at me, the signpost, go higher. Go to heaven itself, not this ornate graveyard, with people selling tee shirts with my name on. Go higher.

I'm just a mother so remember me well, don't fight with one another, love one another and help each other, if you want to remember me then remember those words of mine. And I'm not angry with you any more, for that joke about Thomas being the ideal name for an aethist. Breath the fresh air, sit on the grass in our small garden and remember how as kids we all cut that grass by using small pairs of sissors because we couldn't afford a lawn mower. Life goes on without me, I never saw those pretty girls of yours, but God lets us see things sometimes, and yes you are right I would have spoilt them if only I had lived to see them. But my passing led to dad going into the old folks home, and it was there where you met you wife, at least he held the 1st girl in his eyes before he was called into Paradise. And do you know they have a beautiful garden there, and for fun we are allowed to cut the grass with sissors, one blade at a time. So enjoy your life and enjoy your family. Those prayers you said for years brought tears to Heaven, and then by chance at a letter box she met a man who ran the home, and that’s why she was there waiting for you, waiting for you all the time, love is no crime. Hope and Tears and love, and I did give cupid a push from above, and I'm so glad you didn't call anybody Thomas.

Attachment: Padre Pio and Me.doc

Pink Floyd, Music and Me

I've just watched a biography  about Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon. It was very good, music really is the soundtrack to our lives. Compared to Music, Writing is rubbish, Photography is better than Writing too. The old saying a picture is worth 1000 words rings true. I used to be surgically attached to a camera as my old boss used to say. Any company event and I was there with my camera. Thats no longer true, but I use it to illustrate the fact that I like photos, taking them and composing them. Straight boring photos were people line up, like in 1950s school photos are terrible. Photos should have energy, I did enter a competition to win a nice new Nicon. but I don't think I've won. They wanted a cycle shot, like in Tour de France. I sent in a photo of my daughter, then aged 3, riding a plastic trycical in our back yard, she was wearing her pink pyjamas and some pearls she'd stolen from my wife. If Nicon have a sense of humour then perhaps I'll win after all. Anyways I hope that proves photos are more powerful than words. Going back to music though, my brother used to have a reel to reel tape recorder and a speaker through which he played music  at high volume,  to drown out the sound of the rest of us while he was studying. Using this method he got into the best  university. So it was then 40years agro that my Love of Music began, at the time it was Cream music, which featured a young Eric Clapton. I still have that speaker in my house. And as for Eric Clapton, I almost carried his bags. Going back to my point though, Music touches us in seconds, a Clapton riff, the first few notes of a piece played by a pianist on a piano, a phrase by Michael Bulee. Musicians have power over us. So much power. Perhaps the caveman who drummed on a skull with a bone from other caveman he'd just eaten; perhaps he, perhaps he excited the cavewoman enough so he could mate with her, and  that led to us, and me writing here in Birmingham England and with a press of the button sharing my thoughts with the entire world. So a drumbeat on a skull was the beginning of music, and sex and the continuation of our species. As for writing, thousands of years had to pass before it began and could be used to pass on stories. Storytelling started straight away, as the cavewoman told he sister to get some of the action from the drummer. But the writer as such did not start until thousands of years later. Perhaps that is why Music is deeper within us, and why we hum and whistle or tap tap tap on the steering wheel while we are stuck in traffic. If there are 3 words that can be writtern to compare with the speed of Music's power, perhaps its " I Love You" , "I want you", "Come here...." Words like that, spoken, do have power, but  words have to be backed up with better words, stronger words, the words on the page have to ignite to get the reader to read more, to touch the reader. A poem or two of mine can touch people when my poetry is on form, but, but it takes 30seconds for my words to go from the page through somebody's eyes and then finally touch their heart. And that's why I'll always be  jealous of drummers, even if the drums are made of leftover skulls from dinner.

 

Attachment: Crawling Like a Worm in The Dirt.doc
Attachment: Padre Pio and Me.doc

A Winter's Day

As I look from my window I see the blue blue sky. Birds dive and soar better than any circus acrobat, they are painting a picture with their wings. Tiny tiny whisps of white cloud remain, like left over candy floss on a childs face, like white whiskers on a very old woman's face.
Curtains are pulled open and windows are  inched open too, daylight and fresh air to bedrooms shuttered down against a cold winters night. People stand  and yarn and scratch too as they struggle to wake up fully. Then one or two realise they don't wear any pyjamas so they hurry away from their windows, their wives, their husbands, their lovers laughing at their stupidity. At least old Mrs Jones may have had a thrill.
The sounds of morning, of daylight rise. Slowly the sound of the milk float, the sounds of milk bottles clinking together as the milkman does his rounds, this way and that. The sound of of Mrs Murphy walking her dog, the dog panting in the cold winters air. He doesn't have a sheepskin coat to keep him warm. He has his own fur coat but this winter is a cold one, so Goldie the dog could do with an extra coat too.
People dance down their door steps to  their car, nagging children to hurry up as its cold. Children write their name in the frost on their neighbours' cars before being told off. John the neigbourhood jogger rushes past, the kids stick their tongue out at him, he does the same, they all laugh, only for John to miss his stride slip on an icy patch and fall to the ground hurting his elbow as he does so. Still laughing the kids get inthe car and are taken off to see grandpa, John is rubbing his elbow and his bum as he gets ups gingerly.
The lads, we are so hard, appear from their homes to noisily attack the day, Sunday is for shouting, but not too loud, as they have headaches and hangovers, did they really chat up that ugly fat girl, but they gave her his brother's mobile number and not his own. They stride off to the news agent for The News Of The World, just for the sports pages, their mums can read the scandal section and the horoscopes.
One or two black people wearing their Sunday best pass by on their way to church, a throwback to decades before when people still went to church and when people still wore their Sunday best. People used to dress up to go to the theatre too, but now, but now.
I reach for the kettle and have my first coffee of the day, coffee with milk and no sugar, the way English people have coffee, not the American way, just the soft English way. My kids want toast and peanut butter, or cheese on toast, so my 3 slices of toast become one slice of toast as I feed my girls. I nag them to put slippers and socks on, yes we have nice carpet but in the winter's weather they are always getting colds, so I nag them, I nag them. My wife nags them in Chinese too, or Shanghai dialect. The phone rings, its Germany calling, or rather my wife's best friend who's calling from  Germany, the cackle or hens, of chickens clucking is the noise these 2 Shanghai girls make, as they talk in Shanghai, when are we coming back to Germany is the message. Cluck cluck cluck.
The sky has changed the blue has changed to grey, will the snow return, its been a snowy winter over here in Birmingham, some parts of the country have had the worse weather in 20years. The children have quietened down, my wife has relented and put a nature program on the tv for them. As for me I was going to try and write a poem but instead you see what's before you. I'm half listening to Mike and The Mechanics a cd I've loaded to the computer, "give me the simple life" he sings, I suppose my life is a simple life too. But if we can see  the poetry in life then we enjoy the simple things which make up all are lives. All our lives are  poetry if only we take the time to watch and listen, while we're making toast for the kids

p.s. This piece was from last Winter.