For a whole host of reasons, only some of them financial, I didn’t get a vacation this year. The last time I took so much as a weekend away for pure pleasure was June 2009, and I could lie and say that I’m not looking for sympathy, but if I weren’t looking for at least a little, would I bother saying so? Would I bother even referencing the nearly THIRTEEN MONTHS since I actually got to go anywhere for fun?

I would not.

But it’s not my point.

No. In light of my inability to afford even a few days away (and now it’s time as much as it is money), I’ve been doing a lot more aimless wandering closer to home. The directionless, plan-free wander, the long sits and stops for snacks, and extended, meandering conversations — they are all things I require to be happy, and I’m not that bothered where I do them, as long as I’m fed, exercised and conversed.

I used to be a bit of a checklist-traveller. I’d see every major sight, archaeological site, and any minor attraction that related even tangentially to one of my interests, until I realised that my best days, at home or abroad, involved walking and loitering like a proper flaneuse. I like the mental productivity brought on by bouts of mobile laziness.

Turns out that silly-season experts agree, not with my excuse for laziness, but that it’s not that important how long your holiday is. The intensity and quality of experience is more important than where you go or how long you stay.

While in some ways I’ve had the most traumatic summer since the one where I cashed in the savings bonds I got when I was born in order to have an utterly terrible time in South America with someone who didn’t love me even in the slightest (the story behind ‘Anus and Andes’, which I’m not telling anytime soon, primarily because it’s kind of a shit story), it’s also been the best in years. I’ve worked harder, been through more, and have not left Dublin except for work, but I feel like I’ve been on holiday for months.

I’ve spent a lot of time wandering aimlessly with friends, collecting people along the way, inventing schemes that may or may not come to fruition, swapping stories of our own failures, eating ice cream for dinner, starting bands that never find a drummer, living at the pace of thought. Or according to this dude, the pace of community. There’s even a prototype of a walking house, although I’m not sure that would focus my mind in the way that it should. I’d probably just get drunk on my own power and try to destroy the city.

I’ve always said that Dublin is like your neediest friend. You can’t love it, you can only exist in an uneasy codependence with it. It comes to your party uninvited and stays on your couch for three weeks. It gets your dog drunk, it breaks your mom’s good china, and perpetually owes you fifty bucks. It’s off the scale for neediness, and nowhere near as funny, attractive, important, or interesting as it thinks, and yet there’s something about the place, something fundamentally but endearingly dysfunctional that prevents me from ever fulfilling my promise that I’m definitely, absolutely, totally fucking moving home as soon as I get the chance. It’s got some kind of complex pathology that leaves it always on the brink of fucking collapse, and yet I just cain’t quit it.

Yesterday my friend Aoife and I ran/cycled/walked to the South Wall, picking and eating blackberries along the way, then talked shite as I poked at the ground, picking up bits of broken crockery and oxidised metal, and accidentally unearthing the spine and claw of an animal. Then we sat on the concrete in the sun and talked more shite that ended up turning productive.

I had every intention this summer of visiting a friend in Vienna, going to see my dad in Italy, getting back to Boston, maybe a trip to London (which I’ve still only seen in fleeting glimpses on flying visits). But this summer hasn’t been so bad after all.

Urban wandering rules. If you haven’t done any aimless wanders in the city yet this summer, why not? Leave your camera at home. It only makes you postpone the experience. Get ice cream for dinner. Start a band or join the Go-Gos cover band I’ve been trying to start since 1988.

That post had a totally different point when I started it. Or actually had a point. But it’s a nice morning for a run and I’ve been sitting here in the dark (if I open my blinds, everyone will know I’m a slob), and I have far more to say than you’ve got the patience to read.

But I want to know this: why is Belinda Carlisle wearing pajamas in that video?

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