About

Someone asked me who I was last week.

1. I am Irish. My accent is kinda mid-atlantic by now, though.
2. ‘Dervala’ is my Ellis Island name. It’s really spelled ‘Dearbhaile’.
3. I am 29.
4. I moved to Brooklyn this year, following a wave of Manhattan soldier ants.
5. I like poetry. I recite it to myself while riding my bike to work. (Sometimes I sing, if it’s windy enough to really warble.)
6. I was born in Zambia. I’ve been too lazy to organize a trip back there so far.
7. I work for a company called Vindigo.

One of the nice things about not being a US citizen is the lack of family obligations on Turkey Day. I got to spend Thanksgiving on a beach in the Bahamas instead. Felt very decadent. I’d never had a beach vacation before, but I liked it. The Carribbean is very different to the gray Atlantic I grew up with. Induces fewer goosepimples, for one thing. Also nicer fish. Slinky rays instead of frozen cod and stunned mullet.

It was a good week for books. I finished The Moral Animal, then read The Corrections, The Poisonwood Bible, Guns, Germs and Steel, and a Studs Terkel. Everything I read got filtered through the prism of the evolutionary psychology stuff I’ve been learning about lately. I gave knowing little smirks at the adultery in The Corrections, and nodded wisely at the family conflict in The Poisonwood Bible. Insufferable, really.