CC 57: Devils and Details

I had no use for religion or philosophy at that point in the chugging along, but chug along I did, gladly rifling through the grand old volumes while slightly embittered by the lack of a Kate the librarian to enrich the experience.  Perhaps I was all the time kidding myself with these books.  It was just Kate the librarian I was here to see maybe?  No, that wasn’t the case.  I’d always loved books, but spent more time watching old kung-fu videos nowadays, truth be told.  Literature always had a bit of a hold over me nevertheless.  Big mysterious books and the lunatics who wrote them in-between being lunatics.   So libraries were hallowed ground for me (they happened to have a bit more going for them if there was a Kate the librarian there).  The only place in town I hadn’t observed the scrawls of Da McNamee was the library.  Maybe he stayed away from it because it was too civilised, bourgeois; maybe he didn’t scribble on the walls as a mark of respect for literature as a whole; maybe they just wouldn’t let him in.

I said goodbye to John Stuart Mill (for private humour, I dropped it on top of the revolving case containing the Mills & Boon), slid The Most Distressful Country back into its rightful slot amongst other distressful happenings in Irish history (I didn’t want the children to have a distorted recall of the distress in our history, so count this my little contribution to the education of the nation), and strolled around for a while, keeping the Kingfisher Guide to Birds in my possession (I had a mind to borrowing it).  I began a closer search for Da McNamee’s presence in the library; maybe there was something here, but he’d hidden it very well, maybe tiny writing on a panel or something.  Along the shelves, I revisited occasional highs of my life in reading - Treasure Island, C.S Lewis, A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, Lipstick Traces, J.D Salinger, The Golden Bough, and the Brothers Grimm.  I scrolled past every category in the library, lifting wide and heavy hardbacks to see if there was anything written on the wood underneath, but it was to no avail.  Found fuck-all.  But it was nice to have a little spin through the ages all the same. 

I went to the counter to borrow the book about birds, but the birds wouldn’t be leaving their nest today - I’d forgotten my library card and nearly swore very loudly until I remembered the rules of libraries.  Even with Kate the librarian not there, I wasn’t going to let myself down.  Not in the library.  Respect the library, I thought to myself as I made my way to the exit.  Respect the library.  Da McNamee, legendary anarchist, poet, and probable Satan-worshipper – he for one did.  Respect your library.      

devils and details and snoring snails are this bookhouse this jokebook this hornbook of lies and the shit of bulls made god by gobshite are gimmicks and skin flicks and the disease of yesterdays the wounds open and puss in your boots in your books in your houses and your devils and your details are your diamonds and your drugs squishing all these sleeping slugs

reportedly the work of Da McNamee, found on the title page of a copy of Thomas Kinsella’s translation of Tain Bo Cuailgne at Louth County Library, Dundalk