In a (New) World of My Own

This will be what you will find gracing my wall upon my return to Ireland.

Return to Ireland? Yeah.

After two years of marriage, two years of laughs, tears, hugs and fears Mariah and I have decided that our relationship just cannot go on as it is. To use that favourite term of celebrities, we have ‘irreconcilable differences.’ Our relationship has devolved to the point that there is no middle ground. There is silence or there is arguments. Nothing in-between us that is positive, not even the kids. And it’s sad to me. I’ve watched our marriage slowly erode away, one gesture or harsh word at a time. But it’s done, it is over.

Practically, I am returning to Ireland early on Wednesday morning coming. With immediate effect, (New) World Photography is no longer accepting bookings. Inquires will be politely referred back to this post. For those who wish to remain in contact with me personally, bhalash@gmail.com is my primary personal email address, and I am still active on Facebook. My Google Voice contact number, 702-473-0907 will remain active, but it will no longer connect to a live phone. You can leave a voicemail or SMS, which I will reply to, or if you feel up to dialing internationally, I can be reached at home in Ireland on 0 11 353 91 569128. This blog will remain active too.

Otherwise, thank you and good night.

My week has been all drama, headaches, tears and, yes, crying babies.

If you are reading this on MySpace, or followed the tweet from Twitter, thank Wordpress’ Socialite plugin. It sends out Tweets, it gives alerts, and in the case of MySpace lets me completely cross-post my blog entries. This level of laziness only took uh, oh god, two days of dawn to dusk tinkering? Two days, yeah. I had to update my Wordpress, update my backend, make changes to configuration files I barely remembered existed and maybe sacrifice the odd chicken or two. It fucking PETA comes around asking, tell them it was a rubber chicken and flip them off just because. Wordpress tosses out a few weird errors when I publish a post, but It Works. I can iron out the quirks later.

Fucking typical (Linux) geek mindset. Spend days tinkering and tweaking something to perfection for the sake of avoiding five minutes of copying, pasting and checking code.

But all this free time is courtesy of two things: Mariah is out of town (see here),, and I gave up my job purely through my own means. Over the last few months we’ve all gone from one lower notch after another, at least from where I stand (see here). All of those feelings came to a head about four weeks ago when I tried to leave. I had given work notice, had my bags packed, money acquired and was just waiting for the right time to take the flight. Until Mariah noticed that I had a bunch of missed calls from my family in Ireland, checked my voicemail in case someone was dead, made the connection, and confronted me while I was in the shower.

O capricious fate!

This wasn’t my proudest moment, but we sat down, talked through it. Really talked, heart to heart, for what felt like the first time in months. We confronted ugly facts, proverbially held hands and maybe improved our marriage for the next thirty-odd hours.

At that point I lied to my family. I could bear to admit that after all that was said I was backing out of leaving and wanted to stay here, so I lied about why I wasn’t on the plane. I should have foreseen them panicking, making their own phone calls, calling in connections and stirring up a shitstorm out of fear that I was in danger. Ah well. They called here, words were said and everything came to light. I wound up hated, discredited and out of work. Some things improved over the next few weeks and now Mariah and I back to where we started. We bicker, upset each other on a daily basis, and occasionally have moments where we act like a couple in love again.

Where did it all go? Our love and passion and interest for and in each other has turned into (for me) stir-craziness. Wanderlust is a terrible beast. Outside of two trips to San Diego, a few day trips to Boulder City and Pahrump, and one trip out to St. George in Utah to shoot a wedding, all I’ve seen of the ten million-odd square kilometres of the United States of America are the four sides of the Las Vegas Valley. Gass Peak to the north, Frenchman Mountain to the east, La Madre Mountain to the west and Black Mountain away to the south. I have this horrible, burning urge to go anywhere, see anything, just so long as I’m moving. Any direction, any speed, as long as I’m going. It’s unfair to you, Mariah, but this is what has been pushing me. And I also know I’ve put us into a catch 22 bind: You will not move with me because I’m a flight risk, and I’m a flight risk because you will not move.

It runs in the males of my family. Dad always had to be walking somewhere. He was the only person who knew more about Galway city from the perspective of being on foot than I ever did, because I had to always walk too. I got up in the middle of last night and walked five or six miles just because it felt good. Frank is the same, but he finds his outlet in airshows. He’s always on a plane to an airshow or from one. He’ll tell you it’s for the planes.

Going to new places: It’s better than any alcohol, more of a addictive than World of Warcraft and more of a kick than sex. I’m a novelty-junkie.

The knights on their silver chargers were well-fortified with alcohol, with a company of archers on the wall to cover their charge they were loud and brash, but their dark-eyed enemy was fierce and grim. All too soon were the knights forced to retreat from the field in disarray with their dead and wounded left behind to be cloven by the cruel weapons of the heathens.

Oh, no doubt tales will be sung in years to come of that cold morning’s deeds. An epic poem brave Sir Decatur’s charge into the enemy’s midst to hew down the fork-tongue captain before he was felled by a stray arrow will be sung to the chorus of a roaring toast from the men-at-arms in the mead-hall.

Or Sir Paradise’s brave sacrifice to give his brother knights a chance to retreat becomes an example of how to comport yourself as a knight. So, they tell squires, all that crap you spout about being chaste, dedicated, poetic and a lady’s man? Managing estates books and leading men from the rear? That’s bullshit. This, this Sir Paradise is how a real knight behaves.

Now Sir Rainbow’s squire, a learned lad, was beaten down and captured in the midst of a fierce melee. He learned the heathen’s tongue from the hours he’d wasted learning from his books. While being ransomed by the heathens he discoursed at length with one of their lords. Eventually his impassioned debates convinced the heathen King Summerlin to withdraw his armies from the besieged castle and sue for peace. He was eventually sainted for his pious work and earned himself a pretty stained-glass window in a church somewhere.

But, you know, those fancily embroidered tales aren’t half of the story. The real story.

Take Sir Decatur. It turns out that he was a right bastard who had a young wife at home with an inheritance of almost a thousand hectares of prime farmland… and a younger brother who’d been vigorously courting her while Decatur Sr. was away. Lonely and unhappy wife; dedicated and charming suitor. A tale as old as Cain and Abel. Decatur Jr. gave a pouch of gold coins to a bowman known to have gambling problems, in order to take care of any niggling technicalities. Nothing was explicitly asked, nothing was explicitly promised. Everyone walked away happy.

Or poor Sir Paradise, a man who has issues with the adage love thy brother. His love for his brother knights went a little farther than some others and when his father found out…oh dear. De-facto disowned by his family, left almost destitute, and with his fathers last words of you’re no knight ringing in his (admittedly pretty) ears, Sir Paradise was determined to go out with a last fuck you, world! that would be sung about for decades to come. What the fuck did that doddering old bastard with his thirteen-year old second wife know? Fuck him. So Sir Paradise was the first to volunteer for the sally and knew that his moment had come when his brothers started to run for the walls. He pulled out his sword and beat those little woodsie fucks down until corpses were piled five deep by his feet before a captain with half a brain just called for someone with a crossbow.

Thunk.

And Sir Rainbow’s squire? He didn’t want to be there, shouldn’t have been there. Rainbow’s lord knight was an old man on his last procession around the kingdom before he hung up his gauntlets for good. Misfortune caught them both at the castle when the siege began. The old cock just had to go out in a blaze of glory and volunteered them both for the sally. A woodsie pikeman caught Rainbow in stomach during the first twenty seconds of the sally and spilled his guts in a gorily spectacular manner. The squire was left standing there facing a mounted knight and three woodsie men-at-arms. After considered the pretty girl waiting for him at home, his future inheritance and his current odds of getting either, the squire literally shit his pants, threw down his sword and begged for mercy. They smirked at him and moved in for the skill. Shit. Think! I’m a merchant’s son, what do I know? Money. Je suis riche et peut être racheté pour l’or. Prenez-moi en vie! he cried in the heathens uncouth language. I am rich and can be ransomed for gold. Take me alive! After a moment of their own consideration the heathens took the squire to the rear of their camp, sluiced off the shit and kept him in a tent with a man who was ordered to slit the squire’s throat if he so much as gave anyone a funny look. This was while they verified through their sources that he really was worth a lot of money. You can consider this a medieval credit check. When word came back that his credit was good, the squire was offered a better tent, more wine and even a pretty wench to warm his bed, in exchange for a promise of good conduct. How fucking awesome!

But while kicked his heels, the thought about, and talked about, money. How everyone involved could make a ridiculous amount of the golden stuff if they just stopped killing each other for a while. Eventually word of these gilt-ledged monologues worked its way up to the ear of King Summerlin and ordered the squire brought to his pavilion. There they talked. The squire spent ten minutes listening (politely) to the king’s listing of grievances against his heathen people and then embarked on a six hour presentation of Why Trade Routes Make More Sense. Those farmers who desecrated your family graves? They’re someone’s tenants. Buy their landlord out and cast the fuckers out on their arses. Make a lasting example of them. Eventually, convinced that he will be bathing in gold before year’s end and have more concubines that any decently decadent man would know what to do with, King Summerlin ends the siege with an apology to the squire for any rough treatment. It’s just business, you know? No hard feelings? Great!

Such was yesterday’s post. I spoke a few (arguably pretty) words that ultimately didn’t convey on the fact that my marriage, while it includes two very imperfect people, can occasionally be very interesting, have strange consequences and features real flesh and blood people who do things like shit themselves when faced with stiff opposition or bribe the enemy commander to call off his soldiers. I also hate using this blog for extended Evil Villain-style internal monologues.

And no, I’m not gay. It was an analogy.

Bah.

I’ve been told by some that the last post doesn’t count.

So.

I hate talking about myself on my blog, which is ironic. I’ve always considered it too easy to turn your blog into a self-aggrandizing or self-justifying platform. When you’re a small blog like mine whose regular readership I can literally count on two hands it becomes an even more pathetic act…and it’s not beyond the reach reasonable assumption that I’m doing just this right now:

Nothing in this universe is perfect or permanent. One of the most beautiful objects in the sky, the Pillars of Creation within the Eagle Nebula was ultimately created by – and is believe to have been destroyed by – a supernova, an explosion of such raw power that it is almost incomprehensible. And what causes a supernova? A star running out of fuel and dying.

Nothing can be perfect, and yet it can be beautiful still.

My marriage wasn’t brought about (rarely, for an Irishman!) by an explosion-related death, but it is still an imperfect creation by imperfect people. We fight, we mis-communicate, we deliberately misconstrue each other, we sulk and we ignore each other, but we still wake up each morning as a couple and muddle our way through another day hack our way through another day with dull and blood-soaked machetes. My real shock is that we don’t wake up each morning screaming through the shock of realization that it wasn’t a dream.