WHERE I live suits me. It is a flat, as people used to call one-floor accommodation, writes John McNamee.
Nowadays the domicile cave is more often christened "ah-purtment". Whether a rent or a mortgage is being paid on the "ah-purtment" is another story; whether there is any food in the fridge of the "ah-purtment" is not my business.
I've been living here for three years and, thanks to a city council rent, have survived quite well on a modest budget. The living room has a kitchen snugly in built and a cosy fireplace. A globe balances on a semi-circle curved stand on the TV. Very often fresh flowers in water with healthy brimming shoots are a regular part of the landscape, like a farewell kiss I've been saving up to all the past dives that I've lived in. Sheets of A4 paper litter the living room, like losing betting slips in any self-respecting bookie's office - clues to my progress as a literary gent with an inky story to tell.
There are four windows, one in the living-room, one in a small hallway, and two in the bedroom. One window opens up into what is a real gift - a balcony. And while I have not quite become a farmer with wellingtons and a tractor, last year I planted a generous helping of bulbs in large pots. When the shoots appeared, it was for me like the dawning of creation on the first day of planet earth. Now, in spite of all my worst fears about myself, I am quite likely to suffer from green fingers.
The bedroom and bathroom have just been painted a fresh mint colour. This week it is the turn of the living room and hallway to get a fresh complexion. Green tiles in the kitchen replace the lino.
A recent acquisition, a CD holder, waits to be filled. The bookcase in the living room contains my recent poetry acquisitions: Collected Mahon, Selected Longley, Collected Laurence Durell, John Berryman and William Carlos Williams. But how do I get hold of the out-of-print selected poems of Padraic Fiacc?
On a small table stands a desert plant from Phoenix, Arizona with eight shoots of leaves reaching for the walls and ceiling. Two recently acquired blue lampshades make a welcome contrast to the desolation of naked light-bulbs. The net curtains, rejuvenated from the laundry on Patrick Street, give an air of comfortable, sealed-in security.
Over the years I have enjoyed a number of less conventional residences. In Reykjavik, Iceland, in a dim, dinghy attic in the heart of a dark arctic winter, meals for three were cooked on a Primus stove and I tried to write poetry by candlelight - but oh, what happy days! Then there was a ramshackle kitchen and bedroom north of Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, circa Christmas 1968. The poor landlord called continually for the rent, without success. Eventually I felt sorry for him and his dilemma; I took the honourable course of action and vacated the apartment, making him a happier man, if not a wealthier one.
On the beach in Las Palomas, Gran Canaria, in January 1967, I and my companions from London and Yorkshire made a makeshift dwelling from branches and palm leaves and oddments of salvaged wood. The wind blowing in from the Atlantic became excessive, so we blew it too. This staging post was rent-free, of course, which was a big help because everybody in the group was more or less broke.
Outside Memphis, Tennessee, a vacant car lot provided a bed as comfortable as a night in the Hilton with highly-sprung back-seat cushions, easy on the spine.
On a freight-train in the stockyards of Portland, Oregon, I fell asleep , later to be jolted into wakefulness as the front wagons of the train snaked forward to Canada and my humble bedroom - that is, the wagon I was in - was left behind.
During my travels I saw members of my family only as fleeting images which telephones floated into my mind. Now they are neatly arranged in a line of photographs on my mantelpiece as if lining up to remind me that this is home, sweet home.
But the streets outside my door in south inner-city Dublin are as desolate in their way as anywhere I saw on my travels. They have more than their share of poverty, homelessness, debt, and dependency on drugs, drink and gambling. As waves of deprivation make the shoreline of safe ground less visible, too many people flounder and drown. But side-by-side with defeat and despair there is also nobility and inspiration.
Walking daily through these streets, near Dublin's two great medieval cathedrals, I think often of the lines spoken in T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral by the poor of medieval Canterbury:
"And meanwhile we have
gone on living,
Living and partly living,
Picking together the pieces,
Gathering faggots at nightfall,
Building a partial shelter,
For sleeping and eating and
drinking and laughter."
John McNamee is the presenter and organiser of the Out to Lunch series of free poetry readings held twice monthly at the Bank of Ireland Arts Centre, Foster Place, Dublin 2. The next reading, at 1.15 p.m. on Friday May 28th, features Sinead Morrissey. Further information from 01-671 1488.