Not Lost E-Book

Sarah Maria Griffin

• Herausgeber: New Island
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

At once brazen and terrified, Sarah Maria Griffin's beautifully written memoir, Not Lost: A Story About Leaving Home, opens a doorway into the interior life of the Celtic Tiger Cubs who have left Ireland to escape the recession and in search of prosperity. Thrown into life 5,000 miles away from home, Sarah's tale echoes that of many of her generation forced to forge new lives and build new homes on distant shores. She describes in open, honest, detail her experience of her first year in San Francisco, a year of struggle and strife, of newness and oddness of adventure and excitement, of loneliness and despair, but also of incredible happiness and joy. Not Lost is a book about growing up, about friendship, about love, about life and living it well. It is by turns heartbreaking, funny, tender and gutsy, it is assured but never cocky and marks Sarah Maria Griffin as one of the major voices of her generation.

Leseprobe

NOT LOST

NOTLOST

A STORY ABOUT LEAVING HOME

SARAH MARIA GRIFFIN

NOT LOST

First published 2013

by New Island

2 Brookside

Dundrum Road

Dublin 14

www.newisland.ie

Copyright © Sarah Maria Griffin, 2013

Sarah Maria Griffin has asserted her moral rights.

PRINT ISBN: 978-1-84840-302-4

EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84840-303-1

MOBI ISBN: 978-1-84840-304-8

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

New Island received financial assistance from

The Arts Council (An Comhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland

For Ceri – without whom there would be no adventure and no book. You’re, like, the coolest person I ever met. Thank you for taking me with you.

‘There’s a whole world off this island. It just takes onelong swim to get there. Tell my mother I love her.’

– Joey Comeau, A Softer World 18: Go, Emily, Go!

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Introduction

Summer

All This Is True (I Think)

This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things or Cat

My Very First Burrito or Hunger,

Four Lies and a Truth or Let Me Tell You a Thing about Raccoons

Autumn

Hot October or Pumpkin

A Handful of Stories about the Sea and Also I Nearly Drowned Once

Shiny

Nobody Told Me an Arts Degree Would Make Me Unemployable or The Cover Letter I Never Sent

Winter

Festive Word Association or I MISS YOU

Conversations with My Father about Emigrating or Twenty Minutes up the Road or Love

Only Bad Guys Smoke in America or Press Reset

Spring

Scenes and Notes from an Elopement

Other Irish People or Tarot or The World

Two Letters

Postscript: Scenes and Notes from a Road Trip (San Francisco, CA–Portland, OR)

Acknowledgements

Because this book is mostly true (except the parts that are tremendous, blatant lies) the people who appear in it, even for a moment, are all real. Tenderest thanks to all of you who agreed to let me tell the stories you appeared in. You were a terrific ensemble. You make being a grown-up way more fun than I could ask for.

Cast (In No Particular Order)

Ceri Bevan

as

CB

Evan Karp

as

The Scarecrow

Matthew DeCoster

as

The Tin Man

S.B. Stokes

as

The Sweetest Lion

Erin Fornoff

as

The Oracle

Ria Flom

as

The Only One Who Said Don’t Look Back

Helena Egri

as

The Ruby Slippers

Patricia Kiernan

as

The Sea

Sean Griffin

as

The Sky

Katie Griffin

as

The Moon

Christina Duff

as

Evelyn

Damon Blake

as

The Imaginary Friend

Tom Rowley

as

The Bard

Gráinne Clear

as

The Sound of Glasses Clinking on Dawson Street

Dave Rudden

as

The Destroyer of Worlds

Belinda McKeon

as

Wisdom

Jenn Rugolo

as

The Warrior Woman

Jess O’Connor

as

The Sound of Home

Stephen Doyle

as

The Best Whiskey

Dee McKernan

as

The Silversmith

Deirdre Sullivan

as

The Earth

Matt Cahart

as

The Noblest Heart

Wonder Dave

as

The Plainest in All the Land

Des Bridgette

as

The Best Denim Jacket in Donaghmede

Tadhg O’Sullivan

as

The Friendliest Face for Miles

Kathleen Hale

as

The Breath of Fresh Air

Kerrie O’Brien

as

The Composer (as He Steps into Fire)

Amanda Simpson

as

The Light Refracted

Nate Waggoner

as

The Absolute Worst Person in the World

Sam Sax

as

A String of Pearls

Tatyana Brown

as

A Venti Iced Sea-Salt Caramel Mocha

Michelle Fang

as

Moriarty’s Gaurdian

Sara Nelson

as

The Only Sane One There

Jamie Lundy

as

The First to Say Hello

Steo Fagan

as

The Artist Formerly Known as Prince

Cathy Boylan

as

The Smell of Sea Air at Dawn after a Bottle of Wine

Bob Birrell

as

The Smoking Box in Front of the Atrium

Lisa Keegan

as

The Skull in My Back

L.J. Quirk

as

The Pear Fairy Cakes in Your Mother’s Bed

Laura O’Reilly

as

The Heart

Caitlin O’Mahony

as

Queen of the Netherlands

Catherina Behan

as

The Faraway Star

Natalie Woods

as

The Best Laughs I Had in Six Years of Schooling

Stephanie O’Toole

as

The Topshop Christmas Sale

Louise Mooney

as

Jim Morrison

Sheila Kiernan

as

Judy Garland

Paula Kiernan

as

Julie Andrews

Diarmuid O’Brien

as

The Badger

Zoe D. Tuck

as

The Quietest Encouragement

Rioghnach Ní Ghrioghair

as

Betty Draper

Baruch Porras-Hernandez

as

The Stage

Tim Toaster Henderson

as

The Enchanted Conch

Adrian Todd Zuniga

as

The Instigator

Pierpaolo Abbatiello

as

The Fellow Traveller

Ciaran Spencer Barter

as

The Dearest Old Friend

Alia Volz

as

The Hostess with the Mostess

Kevin Hunsanger

as

The Keeper of the Sweetest Rabbits

Katie Porter

as

The Sprigs of Lavender on The Altar

Roe McDermott

as

The Woman at the Front Line

Lauren Boyle

as

The Girl down the Road

Ian Keegan

as

The Friend of a Friend You Always, Always Bump Into

and

Moriarty Shitebag Casablanca as The Cat

This book would not have existed if it had not been for the support and belief and hard work of Vanessa O’Loughlin, Eoin Purcell and all at New Island. Thank you for everything. I still kind of can’t believe it.

Thanks to Justin Corfield and Emma Dunne for their tender, clear edits, for pulling sense out of broken paragraphs and for being patient and encouraging. It means a lot.

I would also like to extend warm thanks to Ciara Kenny, Yalie Kamara, Anna Kemmer, James Kiernan, Rebecca Ford (for pieces of a nest), Colm Keegan, The Leporines, all at Quiet Lightning, Nic Alea (for Friday afternoons, for all of spring, for everything), Blythe Baldwin (for soda bread and crystals), 826 Valencia, Orla Tinsley, Joey Comeau for the epigraph, Dave Eggers for the chat and the advice, and Rebecca Gimblett: this book is titled after the tattoo on your wrist. Thanks to everyone who had me come and read on their stage or at their venue in the last year (bonus shiny hearts to the Booksmith) and who published things I wrote. Thank you everyone who has rooted for me, who rooted for this. It takes a village to build something that looks like this. There are so many people whose tenderness contributed to the composition and completion of this book. You know who you are.

Last of all, thank you, Ceri. I will never stop being grateful for you. You’re, like, almost as amazing as Beyoncé. I love you.

Preface

So, here is a list of some things you should know before we start:

•This is not a book in which there is any great tragedy. I assume people expect tragedy from a memoir. There is none here. Something terrible almost happens in the autumn section. Almost.

•Most of this book is true. The bits that aren’t true are very obviously outrageous lies. All of the dialogue is recalled from memory, so some of it is kind of made up. I do my best to be a reliable narrator – look, just come with me. It’ll be fine.

•This is a book about a single year. May to May. I moved from my home in Dublin, Ireland, to a new home in San Francisco, California. I’m a statistic, really. Another postgrad who left because there wasn’t enough work, who left because there was some weird, potentially fictitious promise of work and security elsewhere, who left because, well, adventure, I suppose. That’s why a lot of us leave, isn’t it? I arrived in America on the first of May 2012; I received the first contract for this book on the first of May 2013. It is a book about a year. It does not presume to be about anything other than that, I promise.

•When I was a teenage girl I loved relentlessly and without critique. This is when I started writing. I loved everything about every boy, every girl, every experience, wholly forgave awfulness and missing parts and cruelty because love then was all-consuming. It was fifty violins in a major crescendo, it was the crest of a wave, all day, all night, all the cells in my gawky body. Now I can love better, I can love with critique, with curiosity, with argument – dear God, I love an argument. I have grown-up eyes now and I like them. They are still capable of wonder, but also now able to question. This is why I talk like I do about San Francisco and Dublin. Such flawed, strange worlds, but still, so shiny, so beautiful, both. I don’t like looking at perfection – I like running my hands through the guts of things, the guts of places, all imperfection. All chaos, some sapphires, some needles, all stories.

•There are two principal characters: me and CB. We’re both in our mid-twenties. Usually protagonists are moderately attractive, but still relatable looking – crooked and ordinary enough to remind you of a cousin or an old boyfriend or someone you sat beside in Geography for six years but never really spoke to, while somehow still being handsome or pretty or cute enough to keep your attention through an entire journey. Imagine us as those half-strangers. There are photos of us in here somewhere too.

•As the book progresses more people, and a black-and-white cat, arrive and become part of the story, as they became part of our lives. I don’t always explain where these people came from as they appear. When I found my feet, I threw myself into the literary community in San Francisco, because writing is what I always wanted to do when I grew up. I am a reluctant grown-up now, so I figured I had better pursue it now, or else it would disappear at the hands the fresh responsibilities that have cropped up everywhere these last few years. So, once I got the courage to step out alone, I attended readings and poetry slams in bookstores, speakeasies, sex shops, barber shops, bars upon bars upon bars – I met other writers and new friends by the dozen. Myself and CB started volunteering at a reading series called Quiet Lighting, and at the first show we attended we met almost all the people who would be our dearest friends and guides through this new city. This is where all the other characters come from, the audiences or stages of places where people go to read things to one another.

•I keep every business card that is handed to me, just in case. One was handed to me in Dublin back in 2010, and it was the butterfly wing that caused the hurricane, the storm of new friendships I was to gain in 2013. It was the key to the house, it is the first character in this book, that business card. (Thanks, Adrian.)

•So I used to write poems, a lot of them. I wrote them to figure things out and to connect to other people. But the way I look at the world now, as a result of living in America, brought about thoughts and ideas that were too big for me to fit into poems. America is much, much harder to figure out than anything I had experienced before. Poems got fatter on the page, and I realized I had started writing essays. Letters I knew I’d never send. Lists. Confessions. Scenes. Notes. Lies about raccoons. I couldn’t stop writing these new things.

•At some point one of the weird things I wrote, due to somewhere between hard work and remarkable luck, ended up on the cover of TheIrish Times. This was an essay about me crying in public due to hay fever, which transformed into being homesick, but then kind of getting over myself and moving on. That essay was the first murmuring of this book.

•I am not sure how I feel about the word ‘memoir’. It feels like a word that is used for the work of people who have achieved a lot, who have been through wars, seen great sights, discovered things, survived things, made music, changed the world. This book really isn’t a memoir because I am not one of those people. This is a book about a single year in which I did something that many, many people just like me do every single day. I left home. So memoir is not what this thing is. It is just a true story. Except for the parts that are enormous, staggering lies.

•Because I am a young person writing about being an emigrant, older people often ask me (with a smug, wannabe-private-investigator glint in their eye and the number of homeland security already potentially dialled into their phones) if I am here legally. Yes, I am (sorry if that makes me less exciting). My first visa was a postgraduate twelve-month internship visa; my current one is an extension of CB’s employment visa. These are really boring details, but I am including them because you’d be surprised how quick people are to try and get other people deported.

•Look, every emigrant’s experience is different. Hundreds of thousands of us have fled Ireland in the last few years. I can only tell you how it has been for me so far (it has been really weird). I am comforted constantly by the knowledge that many people have taken this journey in the past. Many are starting it right now. Still more will take flight tomorrow. We’re all so different, but we’re all together, too.

•I have had safe passage to America. I have learned a lot about what it means to be an Irish person here – or, to be more frank, a white person. Whiteness means a lot for an immigrant in this country: it means invisibility. Nobody has ever stopped me in the street to ask for my visa or my proof of residency; no security guard has ever followed me around a store suspiciously. There are hundreds of thousands of people for whom moving to America has not been as more-or-less smooth as it has been for me. I have been extremely fortunate. I pay close attention to this, and I am still trying to figure out what it means, how to place myself in the context of immigration here. I am still learning.

•I didn’t wait thirty years to write this book, because by then this story would be so rose-tinted with nostalgia that it wouldn’t be true at all. That tint of imagined tenderness is present when I write about Ireland because I can’t help it: all this distance brings out fondness in me. Faraway mountains behind you look more gorgeous when you stop to look back over them than they did when you were dragging yourself up their cliffs. I didn’t want the first year of living here to become that – all ‘wasn’t it great’, when in reality it was ‘Jesus Christ, this is so hard and so strange’. I needed to write it now, while it was close to me, while it was immediate and real. I did my best to capture it as it was happening. I took over two thousand photographs, you know. Really. I am still figuring a lot of things out.

What else? Oh, just a few last bits:

•There was way more swearing in real life than there is in this book.

•While I was writing the book I acquired two repetitive strain injuries, a two-week toothache and thirty-four mosquito bites exclusively on my feet. If you squint, you can tell by the sentence structure what I wrote while I was in pain. Once, the cat stood on the Off button of my second-hand 2008 Mac Notebook and I lost an entire day’s work and rewrote it really, really angrily. If you can guess what part of the book that is and tell me in person, I’ll buy you a pint.

•This is just a story about leaving home. I am not an authority on anything other than doing my best and hoping for the best.

•My name is Sarah. I am twenty-five. I have green eyes and am left-handed.

•I have a little sister who turned eighteen and graduated from school and got her Leaving Cert results and had her debs and started college while I was gone, and that is something I think about every day.

Look, I just need you to know, if I didn’t write this book now, I’d forget what all this felt like and I think that would be the real tragedy, forgetting. Imagine forgetting all this love and all this terror. All this growing up.