Holistic Insanity: I Sit and I Look At Traffic

By Niamh O'Donovan

I almost died. I had been insane for a long time before then. I was just more insane after my brush with death. Now I like to sit and look at traffic, when I'm not busy going mad.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Niamh O'Donovan
• Release date: Aug 9, 2015
• ISBN: 9781516384037

Niamh O'Donovan

Niamh O'Donovan lives in Cork City in Ireland. After working in marketing for years she realised it wasn't for her (and shouldn't really be for anyone, if she's going to be honest.) With too many works-in-progress novels about witches and vampires sitting on her hard drive, Beyond Night's Dawn is the first urban fantasy novel she decided to take to the stores.

Book preview

Chapter 1

I sometimes wonder what I’m going to do with my life. What I’ve done with my life plays no part in these dreams, or hopes; I would never call them aspirations, those are things you have to work for; something you envisage for yourself. It’s hard to envisage things for yourself when you don’t have control of your life. I do dream. I know it’s bad when I have to dream, when I play the lottery.

I play the lottery on occasion, to escape. I won’t win, but to win, it’s a dream. I play the Euromillions because that’s €15 million. Really I want to win the €90 million rollover Euromillions. That’s when you stop worrying about things.

With two million euros you have a lot less to worry about. With fifteen million euros you worry about your lavish lifestyle catching up with you and spending the last days of your hardened arteried fifties in a council house. Not that you’d get a council house, you used to be a millionaire. That precludes you from be gifted the luxury of a roof over your head, especially if you previously had two roofs both of which you lost after your solicitor refused to work pro-bono.

One of the roofs was in your hometown, another in a European city. Not Paris or London, you wouldn’t get much for the million or so Euros (or Pound Sterling) you could afford to spend there. You only won €15 million.

I scratch my ear but realise it’s actually the part of my cheek that doesn’t quite reach to my nose that’s itching. And that’s where the fantasy begins.

Chapter 2

I head out with my camera. I’m not too sure if it’s 2am or 2pm. It actually is 2am, it’s dark and the day’s warmth is losing its grip on the night. I’ll wear a sweatshirt with a vest beneath. I want to feel the coolness on my skin, but not the bitter sting of actual cold. 2am means I should really be shooting with a high ISO film. To capture the night. But I don’t have a high ISO film. Only the 200 ASA cheapo colour negative rolls a friend gave me. He didn’t store them in a freezer so I wonder what artefacts or effects will be on the developed negative.

I bring my point and shoot. Perfect for me. It could ruin shots but I like the P&S camera because it absolves me photographic fartistry. That’s artistry with a whiff of bullshit. I’ve rarely seen art, but I’ve been in the presence of many fartists, and a few artists if they could presume to call themselves that.

I could have been an artist. I could have worked long and hard, and slaved away telling people how great I am. That’s what a fartist does though, really. I couldn’t have been an artist. Or maybe I could. I don’t know. I didn’t try. I like my photographs.

That was the best thing some photographers I used to admire did for me.

Are you proud of that photo? They’d ask.

I dunno, I’d say. It might be a trick question.

If you don’t know then why the fuck are you showing it to us?

That made me wake up to one of the many delusions