BAGGAGE (Continued)
Gary Dwyer
ISBN 978-0-9849639-9-7 Published by Angstrom Uniit Works All photographs and text © Gary C. Dwyer 2013
I learned three things today: 1. 2. 3.
Each type of stone makes its own sound. I forgot the other two things. I am working on remembering and have some possibilities.
There was a time when I wanted to make a catalogue of deities. But because I had never seen one I couldn’t do it. But I thought about some possibilities. The Grand Canyon came to mind New Zealand loomed into view And the moon. But then I decided these places were only bishops or cardinals and I was after the king. The last one in the rank was the Nile. And then I began to consider how vast was the Sea and a strange calm came over me.
...and considering what is more much more grave that in the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman it appears what is more much more grave that in the light the light the light of the labors lost of Steinweg and Peterman that in the plains in the mountains by the seas by the rivers running water running fire the air is the same and then the earth namely the air and then the earth in the great cold the great dark the air and the earth abode of stones in the great cold alas alas in the year of their Lord six hundred and something the air the earth the sea the earth abode of stones in the great deeps the great cold on sea on land and in the air I resume for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis the facts are there but time will tell I resume alas alas on on in short in fine on on abode of stones who can doubt it I resume but not so fast I resume the skull to shrink and waste fading fading fading and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasons unknown in spite of the tennis on on the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard tennis ... the stones ... so calm ... Cunard ... unfinished ...
Conclusion of Lucky’s speech Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett
At the PAX house B&B in Dingle, our host, John, was also a brilliant chef. I asked him how he came to be doing this kind of work, he said, “Just light a candle to St. Anthony.� And then John turned his back and walked away. When I looked up Saint Anthony, the most poetic thing I found was that he is the patron of Lost Things and Missing Persons. John answered my question, but it was rather indirect.
(What we saw during our visit.)
Gaelic dreamers and hippie stragglers. Fitness Nazis and new age healers. Stumbling on old stones with more silence than prayers. All hoping this old place, and these old stones will show them whatever might be, next.
Gallarus Oratory - County Kerry UNESCO World Heritage Site
Half the houses were abandoned during the famine. Dingle
They tell me that because some monks, sometime in the dark ages, hid and reproduced books on islands like that distant pointy island,Western Civilization was kept alive. Even though at times, I am not sure it was a good idea, I think I am grateful.
“When the Irishman is found outside of Ireland in another environment, he very often becomes a respected man. The economic and intellectual conditions that prevail in his own country do not permit the development of individuality. No one who has any self-respect stays in Ireland, but flees afar as though from a country that has undergone the visitation of an angered Jove�. James Joyce
The argument has been made that Africa has failed to evolve because it has no manufacturing and hence nothing to export. Perhaps this is where Ireland is on thin ice. In the past Ireland exported the Irish. What Ireland has to export at the moment is Irishness. American tourism, with real or imagined connections to Ireland, come looking for, and finding, sweaters, Guinness, American connections to recent Irish history, (read famine), and nothing of what there is to come except more tourists looking for more sweaters and more Guinness. Impressive characters with humorous and engaging friendly conversation but precious little content. Joyce, regardless of what he said, goes unread while Beckett is not only dead but spent much of his life in France. Lots of talk, some Jamison’s, mixed with a heap of green scenery and covered with laughter that is a skintight layer on thin ice. Oh, and religion still gets in the way of everything.
Every night as I gazed up at the window I said to myself softly the word paralysis. The Sisters James Joyce
It’s so nice to know where you’re going, in the early stages. It almost rids you of the wish to go there. There is man in his entirety, blaming his shoe when his foot is guilty. Don’t wait to be hunted to hide. What a joy to know where one is, and where one will stay, without being there. You wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser. I don’t understand how it can be endured. Waiting for Godot Samuel Beckett
“I’m troubled, I’m dissatisfied. I’m Irish! “ Marianne Moore
“I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid- and I wish from my heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come- the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us.� The Dead, James Joyce
Five thousand years ago we Irish were huddling in this building, in the damp and dark, waiting for the end of winter. Just like today. SĂ an BhrĂş County Meath
The standing stone was erected from superstition and fear. Fifteen hundred years later, the wall on the right was built because of jealousy and spite. We have come a long way haven’t we?
“I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use — silence, exile and cunning. “ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man James Joyce
Cashel 2000
Cashel 2013
“His soul swooned softly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” The Dead James Joyce
“A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.” A Modest Proposal Jonathan Swift
If you see this, you better run. Run like hell.
Outside and down slivers of white wander while blue black borders quietly announce Fir, Spruce and Char having a real reign. While above we have had a headwind most of this trip blowing shuddering and spilling wind from loosened sails There is less wind now high in the muffled quiet. No one knows how long it will last. The video map for outside this plane just shows green and blue nameless gloom while my window side seat sends the drafts that old people avoid while I half eavesdrop on the conversation in front of me. Husband 50, wife 30. Counting now, like I so often do, how many times this or that thing happened. Atlantic crossings, as of this time. Forty-four. If memory serves, and it usually doesn’t. Why all this numerical work as things never seem to add up?
Just watching this misplaced effort continue knowing, not very full well, the numbers eventually run out and not wanting to be around when they do. I seem to be focusing on the amount of effort it takes to accomplish something rather than the result. Is this where my long time delight in reflections begins to reflect on me? The video monitor of our progress shows a very symmetrical circular ring of lakes. West and a little south of Labrador City. My guess: a giant erratic or something volcanic and Pre-Cambrian. (Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian, Mesozoic, and on and on.) (Why ever did I learn that?) Or, perhaps the swift and indelible punch of a little meteorite, resting now, in what we mistakenly called the Boreal forest. Having given all it had, all in one go.
It’s just a distant crumbling pile of rocks.
A little of the last one in the next. Yes, we do have Expectations and we know how Great those are. One after another, as though sequence was going to lead us someplace. So finally we get to what’s next and are somehow surprised it isn’t like what just was. So time after time turns out to be unpredictable after all. After all what? After all time? After all time, happens to be right now. And there is nothing to indicate that what comes next will be anything like what was before. Except, I liked what was before and I would like some more, and really, I just want to get by. Get by? How far is that? It’s to what’s next, that’s how far it is.
BAGGAGE A man who leaves home to mend himself and others is a philosopher; but he who goes from country to country, guided by the blind impulse of curiosity, is a vagabond. Oliver Goldsmith 1728-1774
Gary Dwyer