fallowfield

In praise of laziness and effortless superiority

2011-03-22T18:20:00.003Z

A poet was once described by a critic as being 'effortlessly superior'. On telling this story, a priest I knew shrugged his shoulders and said with great mirth, 'well, isn't that the only kind of superiority worth having?!'

Atoms are made of 99.99 percent empty space, and we are made of atoms, so why do we have so little empty space in our lives? Maybe we should learn from the structure of the universe. What is life for, if we have no 'time to stand and stare'? Perhaps this is the requirement and the secret of genius. We grow up being taught to read, a very important element in our learning, but who teaches us not to read, but to day dream instead? We learn alot about the facts of the physical universe, but who is there to teach us to value the stars? We even learn that beauty can be measured in golden sections and fractal equations, but who will encourage us to stop and properly appreciate the beauty of the human form. Well, I suppose there is Oscar Wilde for one. We should learn by looking at the lilies of the valley and the birds of the air.

But we go about as if there is something great to do in life. We dress in ties and jackets, power suits and sensible shoes as if we are the ones in charge, or at least the 00.01 percent of us which isn't simply void. But what is there to be done? Survive, yes, thrive, preferably, but nothing really apart from being. We just have to consent to be. When we are lazy we recognise this great truth and let the goodness of not doing but simply being flood our minds. However, this is not as easy as you might think. Every time, I try to do nothing, I end up doing something. I sit, see, reflect, eat, watch tv. I always end up doing until in the end I realise it doesn't matter what it is I am doing, so long as I don't try to do it as much as possible. In this way, my thoughts come without self consciousness; I see the beauty of the tree, not of me; I see the existence of the other person.

We are so superior to the rest of creation we don't even have to try. The flowers and the birds are beautiful but they cannot see beauty. The truth is knowable but it cannot know. The moral life is good but it cannot live well. Only we can do these and we do them best when we don't even try. This is the lazy poetry of life, that its power is in weakness.

Well and truly giving the goose

2010-08-05T19:17:00.002+01:00

Allora, so here goes with the curious incident of 'the goose in the kitchen with the microwave'. - (How about that for an interesting game of cluedo?) Mon frere, Pierre - (pretentious, moi?) - was coming down for a visit so I thought I'd go all french cooking on his ass, but in a lot less a gay way than that sounds. So I was going to cook duck a la something, the only problem being not only the something but also the duck - it couldn't be got for love or money within three miles of the Maynooth environs. So I had to settle for a rather large Lidl goose, frozen et avec ses giblettes. My first decision or rather pure guess was could the duck fit my microwave, not having a full 24 hours at my disposal to wait for it to warm up all by itself? I cogitated and imagined, measured and inwardly digested the possibilities and struck the deal. Off I went carrying a frozen goose all the way home, trying desperately to look like I was carrying duck.

In the house neither of my two microwaves seemed up to the challenge. One stopped working altogether, and the other went round - bop against the door - back round - bop against the back. This went on for some time, perhaps too much time, for when I reopened the door the legs were tinged with a golden brown, doing nicely, but the rest of the bird was quite simply frigid. Thus began my hour vigil at the microwave manually turning Miss Goose. (I say Miss but I could quite as easily say 'Goosey' for by now we were becoming on quite intimate terms, directing as I was her rear end towards the microwaves at opportune moments, feeling much as a fake tan artiste must do in similar delicate situations.

To make a long adventure slightly less long, I'll cut to the highlights. I had said defrosted goosey sitting in the sink all ready for the next ignomious part of the struggle. I checked for giblets and not finding any I put her in the oven and sat down fagged out. Ten minutes later the old grey cells starting working again and I had what you might call an epiphany. I took the already cooking bird out of the oven and tried the other end, and sure enough - bob's your uncle but only on Tuesdays - there they were ... still frozen to the rest of the insides. More delicate microwave positioning followed even more ignominious than before. I'll leave that to your own healthy imagination.

Cook for 2 and a half hours breast down to ensure tenderness. The goose fat came out and in went the potatoes and things seemed to at last have come together like a good plan. I presented the bird to my brother and friends and carved with all the pride of one who has survived much to give something of beauty to the world. The carving wasn't easy, but I presented the first piece to my brother, encouraging him to eat it. The second breast was even harder to cut, at which my brother inquired softly if the breast might not possibly be on the other side. And true enough that side was deep and by now quite tough, but much more acceptable as an offering to a guest than the remains of Goosey's behind. With this is mind, I realise than I've still got a belt or two to go before I can get that illustrious cordon bleu, but still Goosey did not die in vain, as the meal was made with love, and I think you could taste that.

Voyvodina in January

2010-05-09T23:08:00.003+01:00

2010-01-21T07:14:00.002Z

It´s the morning of the 21st and I´m about to go to Bilbao for the first time. We´re seeing a band called Capsula there tonight, not sure whether they´re Basque or Spanish. Goren and I had a great night with a friend of his at the festival for San Sebastian, so much so we had to stay in a darkened atmosphere for most of Wednesday, and then we had a lovely - you´ll remember Liam - dinner with his mother, and brother.
Tomorrow we´re going to a place where they make cider to see it and sample along with eating apparently very bloody steaks cooked over a fire. Two more firsts. I´m having a good time, if a little tired. But i´ll no doubt sleep on the bus journey too.
On the down side, there´s some strikes by air traffic controllers at Dublin airport which i understand, but hope won´t spill over to Saturday and leave me stranded in London.
The view from Goren´s patio is of mountains and at the moment we seem higher than the clouds, at least one rolling in as mist. It is to be mild today and hopefully a good day for walking. That´s all from my postcard from the edge for now.

En route

2010-01-19T10:50:00.003Z

On the road again, after a period of mild panic wondering whether the flights I booked really were booked or not. I'm in London Stansted on the way to the Basque country to see Goren and experience the festivities surrounding Sab Sebastian Day from midnight tonight. I only got two hours sleep last night with all the excitement, but I think the adrenaline will kick back in to keep me going ... Now just three hours in my stop over to learn some Basque words, ba means yes, which explains why they tend to sound like sheep alot when deep in conversation. On Thursday I visit Bilbao, which will be a first for me. That's it for the first installment, as my sterling ends in about one and a half minutes. Off to the irish pub with my little yellow dictionary and a sleepy, drowsy song in my heart. Ba ba humbug.

Dreaming my dreams

2009-11-30T15:56:00.005Z

Two acapella troupes doing 'dreams' by the cranberries in two pretty different ways.

I like the quirky asian girl in this first one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqChs4gasds

In this one, watch out for the 'ring, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding - namenum, namenum, namenum'!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6SG6jnhN_I

And the real thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ZbStShI2o

Lisa Mitchell from Australia

2009-09-29T15:12:00.004+01:00

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid23356125001?bclid=23279385001&bctid=23554783001

Hightailing

2009-03-11T15:44:00.001Z

She twists and turns along the airs of time
Seeks out anew a place of memory
From which she won’t recall the stench of crime
The smell of blood amidst the chicory.
A bird of dawn; she flies away unseen
Shoots up to greet and grieve the breaking sun
Soars back on wings to what she once had been
Demurs, escapes, from what was then begun.
For feathertails will flee this field and bog
With willow fires she burns her way through fog

The Gilmore Girls

2009-03-06T20:54:00.004Z

Flicking around the 'reality' programmes of a night can eventually disillusion the hardiest of souls. If it's not ice dancing, karaoke singing, jungle surviving, rock climbing, it'll be something equally absurd, but perhaps nothing is less absurd than the reality 'soaps'. Whatever happened to writing by one person than actually meant something, was warm, funny, sad and perhaps even quaint? Whatever happened to acting? Ironically, it's reality shows that seem the most like artifice. So that's why it's a breath of fresh air to see old episodes of The Gilmore Girls, which couldn't be seen over here at the time they were first aired in America.

The show was created by Amy Sherman-Palladino, who is married to one of the fellow writers of the show Daniel Palladino. It charts the life of Lorelai and Rory Gilmore, mother (who runs a small inn) and daughter, living in a somewhat idealised Connecticut village called Stars Hollow. There they live a strange combination of a pastoral idyll crossed with Woody Allen sensibilities as they quick talk their way through all the ups and downs of their and the townspeople's lives. Central to the show is the relationships the two main characters have with the men in the show, and the problematic relationship Lorelai has with her rich overbearing parents. It's a vignette of what life might be like for those who find themselves born into relative privilege, and for all that who aspire towards a kind of egalitarianism epitomised by Stars Hollow, with its town hall discussion, local elections for councilmen and even the existence of a (supposedly financially supported) town troubadour there to deliver entertainment to the townsfolk. Rory eventually attends Yale and this further contrasts the world of privilege in the guise of Logan, her millionaire boyfriend, with the desire for justice-making Rory conceives her journalism will contribute to. Without involving myself in storyline spoilers, it is enough to say that there is much here that is thought provoking as well as entertaining, while the Lorelai - Luke friendloveship would be worth the entrance fee alone.

It's unfortunate then than it's only shown on E4 at times when most people are working, which explains my knowledge and devotion to it! More unfortunate too that the creator was not given the assurances she needed with respect to the future of the show from the producers in what became its penultimate year in 2006, after which she and her husband left the show, much to the regret of themselves and their fans. We will perhaps never know how Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino might have ended the series, which continued for just one more year without their guidance. But even with such an ultimately cruel injustice to its creator, we can still look back to her achievement and revel in the quirky, quaint, quickfire world of Stars Hollow with an affection rivalled only perhaps by the one we may already retain for the residents and goings on of another small town idyll, one existing forever in the memory as Cicely, Alaska.

Spontaneous poem too

2009-02-24T17:09:00.003Z

Hi viewer, this one's for you. Again, not prepared (thereby decoding the mystery of the use of the word spontaneous), so don't be too critical. Ah be critical, see if I care.

A good one two

Leaves surround the silence of the forest with a rustling hush
As if the trees have a secret they give away as their leaves fall
And on settling on the ground take their secrets back and give
Them to the earth as nutrition, food for the great Secret of Nature

But at this time of year the secret grows up as sap and gives life
Once more leading the trees to life and silent action, living, quiet
For they will not give any secrets away again for a season or two
Will not make any noise until they are in the process of dying

A piano flying through the air is an image borrowed from art
Which while flying remians unerringly still in motion, silently falling
But which bangs on landing into a hundred pieces, pieces
Of sound and death, noise and chips, dead trees and music, life

Funny Moment

2009-02-18T16:19:00.002Z

A part of humour is surprise. We were celebrating my sister Ann Marie's birthday last month and I was drunkly dancing with her, twirling her and dipping her and what not, whenever she exclaimed, 'look at us, just like Will and Grace!' My manly pride recoiled at such an allusion - 'What am I meant to be Will in this scenario?' But Ann narie retorted, 'well, it's better than being Jack!' And Peter, quick as a cat, jumped in, 'yes, Stephen, it's always better to give than to receive'.

Also, check out the great video, whatever about the music, attached here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

Spontaneous poem

2009-02-16T16:20:00.002Z

I thought I'd have a go at spontaneous writing a la Kerouac, and to keep it fresh I'll just write it here which takes it out of my hands straight away. Theme: Love (blaaah, blaaaah, I hear you cry)

Love

If love had a colour what would it be
Would it be the red glow of fire in the heart
Or the blue afterglow of disappointment
Would it pale grey the face of floom
Or fill it again with the pink blush of pleasure

If love had a sound what would it be
Would it sound sharp like the piercing cry of separation
Or would it be the whisper of lovers met
Would it be the pleading voice in need of understanding
Or the purr of satisfaction at the evenings end

What can you give for love or sacrifice
What can bring it to you
If love could be derived from the senses
Which sense would it be

Can you taste love or feel it
It cannot have a smell
But then if it does not appear to us
Is there love at all?

Simone Weil – In Celebration of her Centenary

2009-02-03T00:31:00.001Z

Philosophers are like angels. We might believe in them abstractly, but no one really expects to meet one in real life. Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya understood that it was easy to be a philosopher on paper. Paper philosophers number in the thousands, but their ideas often die before they do, proven dead by the inconsistency of their lives. Simone Weil, the centenary of whose birth is celebrated this week, was no paper philosopher. Susan Sontag went so far as to describe her as ‘excruciatingly identical with her ideas’. Within the context of a century in which truth officially became a relative term, a philosopher who actually loved truth more than life appears a rare species of miracle indeed.

Simone Weil was as a philosopher, teacher and activist. She was to die at the age of thirty-four from tuberculosis, while working for the Free French in London during the Second World War. Weil refused to eat more than was rationed in France in solidarity with her compatriots in the French underground. This was not enough to sustain her through her illness, and she collapsed at her desk, dying a few months later on the 24th of August 1943. In her last weeks, keeping her grave situation from her parents in America, Weil wrote them a final letter. In it, she described a ‘deposit of pure gold’ which she felt lay undiscovered within her, and which no-one seemed ready to receive. It is perhaps tragic that almost everything we have of her philosophy was published posthumously.

Simone Weil was born to secular Jewish parents in Paris on 3 February, 1909, a precocious child of an intellectual family, and yet one who could only feel inferior to her older brother, André, who was himself a mathematical prodigy and would became one of the foremost mathematicians of the century. Her education began at the age of three when her brother, all of six, decided to teach her to read (surreptitiously, using newspapers) as a surprise for their mother's birthday. By the time she was six, she would often talk with André in nothing but famous literary quotes, which to other children no doubt resembled a foreign language.

She was equally precocious when it came to learning about suffering and beginning to philosophize. During the First World War, she corresponded with a soldier on the frontline whom her family had adopted, being the tradition, and she soon was faced with the harsh reality of death as the soldier was killed shortly before the end of the war. This was to have a deep affect on the future philosopher, who showed from this point a remarkable ability to empathize with the oppressed. Later in Weil’s childhood her family would often holiday around France, and it was here that she first got the chance to observe social inequality first-hand. She was moved at the injustice of the class divide and the busy, downtrodden lives of the staff. Once on seeing their unjust working conditions she urged them to strike. The young radical was ten. Weil experienced suffering too in her own person through her fragile health, the roots of which were in an illness in infancy when she nearly died. Later, from her teenage years, Weil would also suffer almost continually from migraines without significant remission until the end of her life.

After her education, Weil became a professor and taught philosophy at various French lycées. Shortly after beginning her professional career in Le Puy, she learnt of the plight of the unemployed of the town through her involvement in the syndicalist movement of the region, and she led a procession of unemployed workers to a meeting of the council in the town hall demanding aid. Her concern for the plight of the workers grew, and she decided to take a sabbatical from the lycée of Roanne during the academic year of 1934-35, so that she could do what she criticized all other leftist intellectuals of her era for not doing, namely to experience what the lives of the workers were actually like by sharing industrial and peasant working conditions. Without such experiences Weil considered any such political views philosophically suspect.

If the workers experiencing such hardship in France in the thirties were to be helped, their actual experience had to be understood. As Weil commented, ‘When I think that the great Bolchevik leaders claimed to be creating a free working class and probably not one of them - surely not Trotsky, and I don't think Lenin did either - ever set foot in a factory … politics seems a sinister farce indeed.’ She recorded her daily experiences in her Factory Journal and wrote more extensively about what she learnt in Oppression and Liberty. Unfortunately, Weil’s weak constitution meant that the experience was tortuous. She reflected that the factory experience had created in her not the spirit of revolution that might be expected of the oppressed, but rather ‘the docility of a resigned animal’. This helped her understand that the oppressed cannot be expected to free themselves from their constraints, and needed new structures to ensure their freedom.

This led Weil to consider further the notions of necessity and individual freedom. Weil had earlier made a study of Descartes in her university dissertation (Science and Perception in Descartes) largely accepting that the blind mechanism of physical reality was in opposition to the independent reality of mind. She wished to attempt to understand evil within such a mechanistic universe, but in a way which still allowed for the intellectual realities Plato understood. This bore fruit in Weil’s most difficult and most profound book - a collection of aphorisms, posthumously entitled Gravity and Grace. The spiritual reality of the transcendental Forms of Plato, such as Justice and Beauty, which she holds as true and ideal, can be seen here to contrast and even compete with the mechanistic ideas of Descartes on the universe. The book is a paradox-laden search for philosophical harmony between the concepts of deterministic necessity and intellectual and moral freedom. For Weil, the laws of nature, symbolised by gravity, are simply necessary, and yet in a sense absurd without God. At the same time, the platonic forms are for her seemingly impossible and yet really, if mystically, experienced. The result is a dramatic masterpiece of what arguably may be called poetic philosophy. For her, true philosophy requires an ‘effort of detachment which surpasses the intelligence’, and in Gravity and Grace we may often find it surpassing our own, and yet it may still remain strangely persuasive. It is notable that this was written after she had herself a religious experience, which converted her from agnosticism to belief in God a few years before she would die.

By the time of the Second World War, Weil became practically obsessed with the philosophical and practical problems of evil more generally. Philosophically, she wrote the essay ‘The Love of God and Affliction’, to be found in her book Waiting for God, which discusses the problem evil poses for faith, and how only a concept of love as transcendental and yet foundational to reality allows us to accept the mystery of evil.

The practical problem of the evil of the war forced Weil to leave France to escort her parents to America, after which she travelled to England to join De Gaulle’s Free French forces in London at the end of 1942, keen to share in the burden of the war effort. Weil had long wished to lead a force of frontline nurses to more effectively treat the wounded on the battlefield, but her proposal was turned done, considered by De Gaulle as foolhardy to put women in such a perilous situation. Weil’s thinking was of course sound and now seen as indispensable. But Weil had to content herself with reviewing the plans of attack of other resistance fighters, as well as preparing her own thoughts for the rebuilding of the country after its liberation.

Her principal writing of this period and the apotheosis of her political thought is The Need for Roots. The book is in two parts, the first part conceived as a prelude to a bill of obligations and rights, and the second as proposals for the reinvigoration of the French democratic and socio-economic system. Weil insists on a mystical origin not only for human rights, but more fundamentally for human obligations. It is moral obligations that are primary and imperative, while human rights are simply ways of expressing these from the other’s point of view. It is because we have duties to others, that they have a right to expect those duties to be fulfilled by us. Weil’s position then contradicts any relativist approach to human rights, while giving a basic test for the definition of rights. Rights are not possible courses of action an individual may insist upon if they wish, but duties for the state as a whole conscientiously and equitably to provide.

More generally, The Need for Roots proposes an overhaul of the industrial system by putting the needs of the individual at the heart of work in a way which respects his essentially rational nature. She calls for an overhaul of the modes of production which instrumentalize the labour force, and for a re-evaluation of the spiritual value of work. She imagines a return to craft-based enterprises, where skills are developed and the contribution to the common good the paramount concern. The picture painted is nothing less than a country and worldwide rejuvenation, without state monopoly, where each citizen experiences themselves as playing a productive and rational part in the good of all.

It was when writing The Need for Roots that Weil was suffering from her then undiagnosed tuberculosis. But undaunted by her ill-health, Weil forced herself to write literally day and night with little nutrition. While this helped occasion her death sooner than would otherwise have been the case, it would perhaps be more tragic to imagine a world where there was simply nothing worth dying for. Perhaps not all truth is worth that, but Weil decided that the truth of empathic solidarity was. Perhaps at this distance from her tragic death, time has worn away the soil of death enough to expose for us anew the rich vein of her thought, discovered and gleaming.

Very much undercover in the Balkans

2009-01-15T17:47:00.003Z

Always sensitive to a specific request, I'll post a little blog. I've been enjoying my visit to Serbia to see my good friend Zeljka. It's has been a particularly cold winter here, but it has been nice to walk around and see Subotica, just south of the Hungarian border. We also travelled to Novi Sad yesterday, and it was a white scene providing for a few nice pictures, and as I just bought a digital camera for a reasonable price here, I'll be able to put them up on the facebook! It was a bit funny though on the first day, as it was required that I went to show myself to the police and tell them where I was staying. But it wasn't actually that onorous, just strange to think of yourself as so 'controlled'. I came via a flight to Budapest and the train then down to Subotica. The train was in old carriage style and reminded me of a few films, and when I walked along to find the toilet I felt like Cary Grant as some spy being chased as I bounced from one side of the fast moving corridor to the other.

The Serbians are very nice, though in fact there are so many cultures here, it would be impossible to know who was Serb or Hungarian or Croat. But it feels very safe walking around, much more so than Paris. I tried a local dish this morning at breakfast called Borek - i think - which was a sort of chou pastry pie with ham and cheese inside, but which can have various fillings. It was very nice and especially filling, so I could't finish it. I doubt I will go to Belgrade, as I don't want to be travelling all the time, being just here to see my friend in her natural habitat!

Before I came away, I made great preparations so as to keep the cold at bay, and thought I was overdoing it. But now that I'm here I thank my stars as it's colder than I've ever experienced, but it's strange that once you're well wrapped up it's almost more pleasant (almost!) because the air is so dry and refreshing. Every day I put back on my body suit of thermals like I'm about to be blasted into space. Actually, a thermal facemask wouldn't be so bad! The only down side is that I have to continually stoop to pick up my hat which seems to want to belong to someone else. So as the Golden Girls used to say - picture it, Serbia, 2009, down the street comes Stephen looking like the marshmallow giant from Ghostbusters to keep warm, walking as slow as the terminator to avoid falling on the ice. All I can say is, it's a sight the girls go crazy for. But there will be no photographic evidence of this. And this message will self-destruct in five seconds.

Bread Love

2008-12-04T13:45:00.004Z

I've been sick in the last few days, puking et al, and so sometimes it feels good to speak to my void. I had a visitation from my muse to deposit the following words, but I haven't got the energy to make it into a sonnet yet. But here it is:

Loves lie loose around the cherry blossom
Smiling tears wash away with the morning dew
Spring up and descend with the rising sun
For supper meat; but for breakfast, eat love

Peter Cook

2008-09-25T11:34:00.010+01:00

What is it about the English public school, that makes for such intelligent, but sad, comic geniuses. Is it being dragged away from the maternal apron strings at too tender an age that forces the more sensitive souls to hide behind the invisible cloak of wit. Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie are two such geniuses(or genii?) that belong to such a category. Eric idle on being asked of his motivation for performing immediately answered with the words "maternal abandonment". We might think P.G. Wodehouse escaped from such a fate until we realise how completely absent mothers and fathers are from his writing. And yet, he hides it well. Monty Python were too well adjusted to be entirely hilarious, and too occupied with refuting the existential angst of death with humour to see the tragedy of life even before death. The father of modern English comedy, who has nothing in common with Wodehouse other than his journalistic leaning and complete command of the English language, is Peter Cook.

It is true that Milligan came before with the Goon show, and he fathered many children in English comedy, but when it was not surreal, his comedy lampooned himself and his own. It was left to the English to do the same to their own culture and Cook was the first to explicitly name it satire with the creation of his 'satirical nightclub' pithily entitled 'The Establishment'. Having written his best sketch 'One leg too few' at the age of eighteen, his talent never waned but took different targets throughout his life. From the 'Beyond the Fringe' show which was the hit of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1960, he developed his unique brand of comedy of skits involving scenes with seemingly serious but actually absurd dialogue, but also with some monolgues. His monologue style was to look out at the audience in character and to speak in a slightly high but monotonical voice in the most banal way he could. It was almost as if the comedy had to live on its own without the intrusion of personality, but also he seems to have known, like Keaton, that comedy is more funny when presented with a serious face.

From this was born his partnership with Dudley Moore, on whom he would rely for his foil, even though Moore was funny in his own right. And in this relationship we can see something of the reason for Cook greatness, and the reason why he became more reclusive, though not less funny, in his later life. Cook's greatness was in the wit of the moment, even while working with a script. The script was the baseline that was always come back to, but it was in the comedy of the moment that Cook's genius came to the fore even more. When Moore was creasing with laughter at the line he was trying to get through, Cook would go in for the kill predatorily trying to make Moore go entirely with some improvisation on the subject. This was Cook at his best because it was to humour the other (in this case Moore) not the audience that he was going for. The audience were being let in on comedians at play who were delighting the audience through their own delight.

This focus on delighting the other seems to have motivated Cook. Whenever he was without a vehicle for this he did not do so well. When Dudley Moore went off to make films and millions in Hollywood, Cook was not so much jealous as heartbroken, or so it seems. In the most profound sense, he had lost his comedy partner. What can be worse to a comedian who finds joy in making the other laugh. He was offered much money himself for going to Las Vegas with a one-man show, with the guarantee that it didn't matter so much what he said, as the people probably wouldn't be listening too much anyway. But this was hell to him. Life for him was sometimes despair, and frustration at the way of the world. When he had someone with whom to meet it head-on with biting humour he was more than fine - a delight and a profound social commentator. Even though from a privileged background himself, he hated the way the law was weighted in favour of the rich. His nightclub was really designed to attack the real establishment and the status quo. But without this way of being responsive and spontaneous that Moore provided, standing alone he could not do what he wanted to do.

This may have been one of the factors that led to his alcoholism. His wife of the last few years of his life said that when once asked why he drank he responded, 'Despair, mostly'. Drink could defend him in the way that humour normally could, but was no longer available in the same way. Though, of course, he did drink even when he was with Moore, and was probably contributory to Moore's departure for America by himself. After Moore left, Cook did appear in various programmes, including the first episode of Blackadder as Richard the Third. But he only really got back to his own humour when periodically asked on to interview programmes. Here once again he had his old structure of two people talking, which was the basis of all his best scripts. But here, with Parkinson and Clive James he was at liberty to extemporise to his heart's content, which he did with a twinkle, smoking and drinking often as he spoke. He also appeared on the 'improvisational' 'Whose line is it anyway?', but complained sardonically that it did really suit him because they only gave him one week to learn his lines. It seems that even this imitation of spontaneity was not alive enough for his conception of wit. Then in 1993 the host of that programme, Clive Anderson, invited his friend to give four interviews on his show in quick succession. Cook did each in character, a different one each time, and was back to his best. But just look, if you get the chance at the look of pleasure in his eye at the end of each interview, and where it is directed. He is not taking the applause of the audience. It was not then for this that he was despairing. It is to his interlocutor that he beams, delighting in the delight he has caused there. This is as good an example of what it means to 'be in the moment', and also an eloquent argument in its favour.

Often carrying his bundle of almost every newspaper around with him, he never gave up on being interested in life, but it must have been too much at times. Two years after these in-character interviews he died from too much drink. We might wonder what it was he found in those dialogues that he could not find elsewhere. Just perhaps it was the way in which to truly connect with another on an emotional, as well as intellectual, level in a way that he felt he was understood. It was through comedy that he tried to right the wrongs as he saw them, and in so doing showed us that only by attempting to do so can we find an antedote to despair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnNWbTlucl0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emfq1I11BAc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOe1ywCEMtI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOe1ywCEMtI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Vi2sqVEhKU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fY-M41FGzI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngOIXdF538A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J56-ekFUlg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_X6VNKN4Us&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQrTnhkQo5k

Some light relief

2008-05-08T21:05:00.003+01:00

Here's a few clips from a new comedy hero, Fred Armisen, a comedian off Saturday Night Live, doing a few bits on his political commentator, Dan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7RoLe2doNk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDFkjPU024g

a new poem

2008-05-07T12:42:00.000+01:00

God’s love

The sun shone on his back like
the warm hand of a brother who comforts
or congratulates

It warmed him through to his chest
Surrounding, but not enervating
A pervasive presence like an emotion

Lying on the grass he speculated on fate
On the bittersweet fate that could
surround him with love

While others on the other side of the world
Were literally weather beaten
Or city, metaphorically

The sun shines on the good and bad indiscriminately
In the way that we should love
But life does not love us so

Some it cushions and protects,
With grass and sun, and daisies
While others die below

But it is only a day in the sun
When it is over the memory of it
Barely exists

And yet the feeling of the sun on my back
Is like the gentleness of a brother
Comforting and congratulating

The Rathlin Dog - Part I

2008-04-23T17:05:00.010+01:00

We just had a Mass today commemorating Prof. Kelly in the College Chapel that was well attended, after about two months have passed since his death. It's been about a month now since we had our Easter break and our trip to Ballycastle for a few days, and to Rathlin for one of the days. It was a good time we spent there, even though it was an early Easter and not really into the season yet. Peter, Liam and I went to the pub on the first night and almost ruined the rest of the trip by getting too drunk that one night. But it was a good night! Even though there weren't really many out, we met a lovely guy as he sat in holy isolation watching the football. As he had a beard and hippyish clothes on, and the match was France vs England I tried a 'Vous etes francais?', to which he replied in English, 'no I'm Italian'! A real eurolingual moment. And that broke the ice, and he soon became part of our melée. He was taking a holiday without his fiancée as she had just started a new job and couldn't come! He turned out to be a bit of a globe-trotter, and his next adventure is going to be a visit to Mongolia. It happened he was also going over to Rathlin Island the next day, an island where a tiny community of eighty people live, so we agreed to meet at the boat at ten in the morning and go together.

However, we had not planned on the inevitable effects of the guinness that we proceeded to consume. Like all Italians, he had to be pressed to accept the normal Irish hospitality as we got him to drink up. But our hospitality was to come back to bite our sorry asses - as the americans might say! (What do you think, Emily?) For we had three great ulster fries to eat the next morning, which were a cause more of fear than delight, given that they were to be quickly followed by a trip on the cutting-up ocean. Peter had a regular date with the toilet, Liam held his forehead and I smiled through my headache, contemplating in my mind's eye the joyous absurdity, not to say stupidity, of life's rich pageant. The boat trip was enough to knock the philosophical out of me, leaving only the bileousness of regret. I held my stomach in a somewhat pitiful gesture of supplication to Neptune to relent and make still the storm. It was seemed no longer within my power to commune with the birds.

On Rathlin we began our day of communion, however. The stomach was restored to its rightful place and heaven was once more steady above our heads. We went to look for the visitors centre, which was very well signposted, only when you went where the signs told you to go, there was nothing there. Apparently, it consisted of some boat or other than was only used in season, which was not yet. But some of the other ten tourists who had come over on the same boat were able to tell us that the woman in the only shop on the island told them that the man in the only pub on the island was the person to drive a bus around the island. When would the bus go? Oh if you go there and ask him, he might take us. So in to the pub we went at ten thirty in the morning, hoping that the smell of alcohol would not awaken in me unwanted emotion and viscous bodily fluids. Eventually we found the man who was being asked the same thing by other tourists. He said that the bus would go at about a quarter to one! But then realising that all the people who would take the bus were actually all standing around him at the same time, he thought that it was a good enough time for the bus tour to start. And off we went on what would affectionately be called the tractor.

We drove up to the bird sanctuary, to get to which we had to drive along a cliff road. Almost at the very top there was a break in the metal fence just at a corner of the cliffroad (more like a path), looking for all the world like there was a bus shaped hole in the fence. Our driver spoke about the rocks below us, making up comic legends about them as he went along in good Irish tradition. At one stage he looked back at us to do this, as if to emphasis a point, during which action he verved close to this hole in the fence. He turned around again just in time, hastily putting us back on course. By now my fists were fusing with the metal bars on top of the seat in front of me, and I came close to prayer. But eventually we were there, only to be told there weren't any puffins there this early in the season. But the volunteer for the RSPB was interested to hear that we had seen two already down near the harbour. Apparently the mating season for them is from May to July, especially June, so I might return again then. (Mental note - suggest the adoption of a human mating season to the government, much like the arrangements for British Summer Time.) But we did get to see a multitude of Kitiwakes. We could also see Scottish islands from our vantage point, and even the snowtop of a Scottish mountain, when we used the proffered binoculars. (Liam used these for profligate purposes that we'll not go into here, let's just say it was a different kind of bird-watching, of the Ballycastle variety!)

(continued soon)

Remember when

2008-03-11T19:06:00.003Z

Remember when
Elvis did not have to watch his weight
And I had no name for turning up late

(please feel free to add your own triplet as a comment to continue the poem!)

Something beautiful, something good

2008-03-11T18:37:00.001Z

There must be something good to be done
There must be a good race to be run
For this collection of periodical sinning
Knows nothing of all the graces within

It doesn’t have to be taut, nor deadpan
It doesn’t even have to rhyme, though it can
It just needs to be beautiful somehow
So charmed, let it rise, and may it not bow

It doesn’t have to put on airs, nor a face
It doesn’t have to be timed, nor encased
It just needs to flow straight to the heart
So let it be shared, and let it restart

Don’t think of me as one you’re to save
Don’t think of how your duty enslaves
For a soul compelled to sing-along
Believes nothing of the birds’ sweeter song

I could create something beautiful, though I know
Not the day or the hour it should come
Manifesting from nowhere something good, to show
Heaven’s eyes behind a loving artist’s thumb

Don’t think of me out of pity, in misery
Don’t think I’ll have trouble spelling ‘usury’
For I want to perform some beautiful good thing
Feeling with good heart the poor freeman sing

It doesn’t have to rant, doesn’t have to rave
It doesn’t have to be mimed, nor engraved
It just needs to thrill the air with its breath
So let it be said, and let it cheat death

It doesn’t have to be bought, nor planned
It doesn’t have to reward, though it can
It just needs to be good somehow
So trusted, arise from the blocks, and allow

There must be some beautiful race to be run
There must be a beautiful face in the sun
For this message the preacher’s been spinning
Loves nothing of me, but only of winning

Professor Kelly's passing

2008-03-04T14:27:00.004Z

It's been a strange and difficult time for most of the people in my department here in Maynooth. We had the shock of discovering the news of the accidental death of the Head of Philosophy, just about two weeks ago. He sadly fell into the canal on a short cut walk home at night, when it was blowing a gale, although no one knows the ins and outs of it exactly. He was my supervisor in my first year, although that didn't work out so well. But he was a good man, and I hope he is at peace.

Due to the circumstances, it's been a very shocked community on campus. There was talk of nothing else really for about a week, and there was the mark of respect of cancellation of lectures on both sides of our bridge, which divides the two colleges that once were one. He wished to be buried in the College graveyard, and so he is the first lay person to be buried there, which is considered a mark of respect as well. I wasn't close with him, but those I work with were, and it is heart-breaking for a couple of people in particular.

People came from all over for the funeral, alot from the West as his wife is from there. He actually had this job I'm presently doing twenty odd years ago, from 1982 to 1999, then gaining his lectureship 'across the bridge'. He even stayed over on occasion in the house I'm presently living in. So that compounds the thought that many of us have, that that could be me. No one knows their end, and as my father says, it's probably a good thing they don't. Life goes by so fast, and hopefully when it does pass, we might have people speak as well of us as they certainly did, and with love, of Professor Kelly.

Fao Fionnuala

2007-12-17T16:13:00.001Z

Just a few words from the front over tea and biscuits. So I have entered the hallowed demense of you and Damian, Fionnuala - thirtyfiefdom. A horse, a horse, my fiefdom for a horse to escape from such a demesne! Yes, I feel as if I missed the growing up stage. I've been pretty prepubescent most of my life I think! I was just about getting use to hair on my face, and now thirty-five?! Ah well, that was a nice life. Maybe get it right the next time round. What, no next time around? Uh oh. But I suppose it's never too late to grow up. Though I'm starting to wonder if anyone ever does. Perhaps they just begin to have more responsibilities andor problems and stop being able to play football and stuff. (That's a new word by the way, and I'm thinking of aspirating the beginning to be proper English - Hhandor.) Yes, the more I think about it the more I think psychological development is over-rated. I heard these children running around at the train station and I felt jealous! Then again, two seconds later they were crying the bit out, as was prédictable. Is life just a series of getting the wind knocked out of us, and us getting back up again a little slower than before until we finally, just say - ah well, I'll just stay here then, might even lie back this way? I think I'm having a mid-life Crisis, but with a small c.

Anyway, just to fill you in on what you were sadly absent for. Peter and Liam, Damian, Sarah and I went to The Wok and a good meal was had by all but for Pepe le Peu, aka Liam. I asked him not to get Chicken Fried Rice for the fiftieth time in a row as it was my birthday and a time for festivity and merriment and speciality. So he went for the soup noodle, as did I, but he got the thick noodles and couldn't pick them up with the spoon or the fork. He had chopsticks, but he wouldn't even try them - which I put down to cultural racism. Anyway, I showed how to twirl the noodle, but he insisted eating after I twirled and it looked to the restaurant and the world like I was feeding him my child. And he was wearing a napkin like a bib at the time, I shiit you not. Anyway, it was good otherwise, and Liam, for Liam, was not too bad for one whose spirit normally lives and dies with the quality, and more importantly the amount, of food he eats! (Only joking, Monsieur Pepe, if you're reading.)

Then we went down towards a quietish pub, if such were possible on a Saturday night before Christmas, but then my wish was granted, and the wheel was still open and the famous five were having their adventure two hundred feet in the air in the Belfast night. We saw the lights in every dircetion and the nearby skyscape. I did enjoy it. We eventually got in the Duke of York - very crowded getting in, but eventually a table did transpire before we expired. Then, we went to meet Bernadette's son Emmet at Laverys; he was just back from England that night. We danced to the Charlatans, Stone Roses, The Cure and The Smiths and I relived university first time around, but it's a really mixed crowd there now. We left Sarah to get home with Emmet, and Damian kindly drove us home. Home? Yes, home. Geraldine and Jerome had been out from about five and then went to Bruce Springsteen's for some some drinks and craic, and by that time they were wasted to their collars, had they but had the sense to wear collars. So we didn't see them or stay over that night.

There we are, and that's all she wrote, as the saying is. I hope you are feeling a bit better again, and eating. Don't go back too soon, and we'll hope to see you this weekend, if you're well.

The real heros

2007-11-08T14:22:00.000Z

It was a weekend of meeting my heros last weekend. About twenty years ago there was a documentary about a lawyer who defended death row inmates in Louisiana. I think it was called 'Two weeks in May', in which it followed the lawyer's involvement with one of his cases. The appeal he had been mounting didn't succeed, and his client was put to death. We were able to see the man's last meeting with his family, which was very shocking to my young mind. Evidence came forward two weeks later that exonerated the man involved. This played on my mind alot as a teenager, and I thought about becoming a lawyer - a thought that was unceremoniously dumped though after I spent a week in a local solicitor's office when I was seventeen, where all the solicitor did was execute divorces or attend to traffic accidents. He even pushed 110 mph with me in the car on the way to one of the trials! So much for the law.

Anyway, the original, the inspiring lawyer of the first example came to Belfast last Friday and gave the annual Amnesty International lecture, coinciding with the publication of his book on Guantanamo Bay called 'Bad Men', aping the way Pres. Bush talks about them there. He volunteered his aid to the inmates, even though they are not allowed representation, and miraculously is being allowed some access. He does his best through his organisation to highlight the plight of the hundreds there, only four of whom were taken from a battlefield. He hightlights the torture methods they use, such as waterboarding - forcing water into the men to make them feel that they are drowning. Sleep deprivation is another technique used, which can lead to death. But quirkily, his lecture was filled with a great sense of indefatigable humour, through which you could easily see his zeal, and it was hard not to be caught by it. His name is Clive Stafford Smith and the website of the death row defense organisation he set up is http://www.reprieve.org/ i think. Well worth checking out.

So that was Friday. Then on Saturday I had the honour of meeting John Hume. I was at the SDLP conference in Armagh just to see if it is true that they are doing a deal to merge with Fianna Fáil, and sure enough it seems it is, so I suppose I'll be leaving the party now! But anyway, my local politician heard that I wanted to meet him and kindly introduced me. So another childhood hero met and I was able to give him something of my thanks for his self-sacrificing work for peace in our country. It is sad to say that many in the party seem to be downplaying or turning their back on his achievement by playing politics with the institutions he helped to set up. People seem to blame him for bringing the party's popularity down, which had to happen if Sinn Féin came out from the cold of their armed struggle. But when the history books are written in a few years time, and without the narrow bias of personal interest, he'll remain head and shoulders above the petty squabbling that we find presently passing for criticism.

Another bloody year begins

2007-10-15T13:29:00.000+01:00

It's that time of the year again in which people like Meg Ryan go all goey eyed for 'bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils' and other such school supplies. My summer of discontent is over. The days of sleep and sloth have come to their end, and I haven’t even taking the trouble to rebel against their demise. For I am happy for it to be October again. I feel the nip in the night air once more, see the gentle pale light in the evening, pull my duvet to my neck and think of Halloween and Christmas. This is my favourite time of year, the time of death on the trees but life in the soul. But I like the autumnal evening and winter night not for themselves, but for what happens then. Like ritual and mystery and comically tortured poetry. The handwriting in the first page of my books in school always used to be immaculate. Then on the second a little less so. Flicked through, by the end it might have been a hurried scrawl. What a image of life, and yet not one to be bemoaned. Things fall apart. Entropy just is. But there are always new books and new pages, new pens and choices. We can always take a deep breath and start again. In this way, we live already a renewed life. It is another new academic year and there is another self to come out, another skin to shed to make way for the clean and new. Bears hibernate and waken up for the spring. But I tend to sleep during the summer. But without sleep, there would be no waking up. So I'm glad to be back at work, to have come awake again.

The End of the Affair

2007-07-30T13:46:00.000+01:00

OK, so I'll tell you what really happened, Fionnuala! James our cousin was kind enough to give us a lift down on the first Sunday. Galway were playing Sligo in Roscommon, and we hit Roscommon just as the fans were letting out. This slowed us down no end for the last leg of the trip. We came across a very Irish policeman just about there. He was, I presume, meant to be directing traffic, but he just sort of stood in the way half way round a roundabout (don't ask me how I know it was halfway!). There was a woman driving up from another direction looking at him, us looking at him, and the woman and ourselves looking at each other. After a moment of suspended animation Liam and she both went for it, Liam being that bit quicker and narrowly missing a bump. The Gard just kept on standing there quite happy to do nothing. Just a few hundred yards later we met another who got Liam to roll down his window to ask 'Where are you headed, sir?', 'oh, this way here, that we're sort of headed', 'Right, well, go ahead, take it easy, you'll get there in the end'. And we did.

Monday was a bit rained out. We spent it trying to recover from a night of heady gay abandon the night before. Peter was once more transformed into the caped crusader after a few pints and whirled around the dance floor talking to all the girls, doggedly, one after the other. Once he got two to take the bait and he franctically waved me over. I had been busy dancing by myself (and I mean by myself, no one else there at all, I'm not even sure it was a dance floor, more a gap between tables) to the Killers singing with gusto 'I've got soul, but I'm not a sold-y-a'. So I sheepishly make my way over, we chat the legs off the girls and walk them home just to give us time to work out where we're staying, and yes, so I gave a goodnight kiss to an English girl called Emma. Just because of Jane Austen, I think ... Liam spent the evening talking to an irish girl and a 'spanish' girl with an irish accent, who I thought was having us on so I avoided them. Apparently, the spanish girl really liked me, says Liam, crying wolf. So. Monday was spent, by me at least, dropping things, bumping into things and knocking over a milk jug in a cafe in front of a frightened family and feeling thoroughly ashamed. Nice kiss though, lipstick of autumnal sunset with strawberry if I'm not mistaken.

On Tuseday we went to Aran and got pretty badly burned after riding our bikes for about six or seven hours straight. The island we went to was Inis mor, big island. It was great. We even saw a seal at one point, bobbing up every couple of minutes for a breath and a look around. They speak Irish there, so it was a bit problematic trying to ask this woman for directions, whose English was hard for me to decipher. We stopped off at the Church which is made of stone and wood, and all its 'furniture' are likewise. There is a font sculpted out of the trunk of a tree, with the likeness of two hands cupped carved into it. The cross is also a sculpted tree. Every thing maintained as much of their original essences as possible. It was a lovely statement.

We hired a car and went even further south to Kerry for two nights. We stayed in a small place found by Peter, situated in the Gap of Dunloe that goes through the mountains. Only walkers, pony traps, or bicylces are normally allowed there, but we could take the car as we were staying there. It was very tight to drive through and we had to reverse regularly to allow the traps past. It really was beautiful. The valley contained various small lakes which had waterlilies growing in their still water. It was also a comic experience. We found a house with no external sign of it being a hostel, but we thought we might be at the right place. We ended up walking into the visitors dining room and were told we needed to book in in the shop besides, which must be close to having the world record for being the smallest shop in the world. It was the size of a bedroom, and walking into it we found no one behind the counter. However, presently this small girl of no more nine came out from a side door and walked behind the counter. Liam and I did a double take, but Peter just started straight into 'Excuse me, but I wonder if it is possible for you to check our booking that we made yesterday over the internet?'. More comically, the girl proceeded to answer all Peter's enquiries and to book us in, taking our money and giving us the right change, giving us fresh sheets, selling me toothpaste and telling us the number of our room in the space of about three minutes flat. Off we went to make our beds without even so much as seeing an adult! And the hostel was good. It was back to the conditions our parents had, of boiling the kettle on a gas ring - taking ages - and only having four tv channels, only the irish ones! Peter and Liam even wanted me to go for a walk that night. I thought I'd entered the twilight zone.

Anyway, we drove around the ring of Kerry the next day and had a great time, meeting an ass or too along the way (not the american kind). We bumped into some Cork tourists who did their best to run Kerry down - the loyalities run deep down there. But we found some of the most picturesque sights yet found in Ireland. That night we had a pint in Katie Kearney's which is into the Gap a bit and had a good chat with one of the local hillsmen who argued against the rambler's right of way with me. But then he offered to drive us back to our hostel! We saw him the next day driving his trap for the tourists and we waved hello on passing. That's one thing which becomes clear down there, people are scarce and roads are thin, so if you are passing someone you just cannot not look at them and offer an hello. Life, while becoming more isolated from the mass, becomes more social in the individuals, if that makes sense to say it like that.

Then we were up to Ennis in Co. Clare for the last night, where we had to get a bed and breakfast, which was greast for bed and terrible for breakfast. We met a couple of Canadian sisters in the pub that night, who were travelling to Ireland for the first time. They were funny and it was nice to meet them. Then home on Saturday, in time for saturday night live.

One last cautionary tale to be told. The first morning we woke in Galway we found that we were sharing the room with a young american couple. They looked about seventeen, but unfortunately they got on like they were an old married couple or something worse. For example, the girl sat in her seat very prim and proper looking imploring at the guy while we were busying ourselves for the day. She wanted him to get up and get going - it was nearly check out time - but he lay on the bed and through dismissives at her. Then she went over on his bed. The next I see is that he is brushing his teeth lying horizontal on the bed. During this Peter was off to the washroom leaving the door open as is his wont. I was shouting at hime not to use the water as it is contaminated there. He turned on the tap, I shout again, then out he comes to get the bottle of water toothpaste all over the outside of his mouth. I crack that he looks like a rabid dog, and this breaks the tension in the room. The girl stars to talk to us and we chat with them for a few minutes before leaving. As we leave we discuss what we'd like to have done to the guy. Then ... a few days later ... there they were getting on to our bus for the Aran islands and they come to sit behind us. Then it starts again. This was the guy. 'Hey, why do you complain all the time? Why don't you just live in the present. I live in the present. But you can't. You just always look into the future, and you know what that does - that spoils the present. If you only stopped complaining so much you would enjoy things more. Why do you always have to? Why?' And more and at greater length and even more condescendingly, complaining about her complaining for what seemed about ten minutes. Then she responded, 'Yes, you're right, I'm sorry, I'll try not to in the future, I'm sorry.' Him again, 'If you didn't do it we wouldn't have to talk like this; we could just talk about what's happening in the present.' And her, 'You're right, I'll try to do that in the future.' I felt like punching him and shaking her. Then on the island we saw them again as we were about to board back onto the boat. I said to Liam let's stay here to avoid them. I couldn't stand the guy. And true enough, from a distance we could see him gesticulating in front of here and then coming away from the dock again past us. Liam didn't think I could beat him, but when the chips are down my scrawny body gets infused with the fighting spirit of dead ancestors and, you know, kicks some ass (in the american sense). However, this time I let him pass.

And then if that wasn't enough, as we made our way to our new hostel that night who was following us but the dynamic duo coming to stay there too. I left the door open for the girl and she smiled and I could see she was very sweet and I just felt sorry for her. So let this be a warning to any girls out there, be sweet but as Shakespeare says 'Be good and let those who want be fair' - I interpret this as - don't allow yourself any coquettish nonsense which accepts you being beat up physically or verbally on a regular basis. And a warning to any Salt Lake City type men, having about ten wives as servants, the caped Stephen wont stand for it any longer. But I have to admit, the caped Stephen does bruise quite easily.

Sitting on a wall in Aran

2007-07-22T21:36:00.000+01:00

You have to choose the place carefully
Test the rock first with your foot
Stones which are overlaid
Are the ones to take your weight

I wedge myself in a V
Let my thighs take the burden
The upright cradles the base of my back
My body shows me how to fit in

Content to be nothing for a while
Finding my place in the structure
Not wishing to place, only to be placed
To remain wedded here

Rocks protruding that way, there the bay
The new windmills
Like lighthouses in the distance
I observe from my vantage-point

Stonewalls stretch up
To where the sheep don’t even graze
Like an overextension of order
A construction of hope

You have to choose your place carefully
Now here my legs are resting
They droop down suspended at the knee
Feeling no pain from gravity

My back relaxes and I feel the wall
Sturdy against my back
The others trust my absence
And my silence

It is hard to sit and stare
To be a sky of reflected blue
Something still desires
My ceasing to desire

This place will do me well
I sit without design
But by trying to be all gravity
I hope to feel the difference

The Beginning of the Expedition

2007-07-22T18:32:00.000+01:00

The expedition was not something the three adventurers took lightly. It was a trip that would not be easy, but the significiant scientific interest was deemed to outweigh the risk to life and limb, and the three decided that they could not in all conscience fail to attempt it. The two brothers (one smoker, one non) awoke one early, misty Sunday morning and descended the stairs and found that a fry was already in conflagration in their kitchen. 'So you got up then, after being called for the third time?', came the words from the familiar, though as yet still indistinct, voice from that culinary vicinity. The fat of the sizzling fry that lay before them would have been enough to put off the most intrepid explorer, but it did not deter our protagonists, who had by now received the back-up of Liam, fry-eater extraordinaire. The first dragon of their journey lying slain, it was but the work of a moment for the trio to decant themselves into the coach of a fellow voyager, known to the group as James the cousin.

The first day was spent in the various vicissitudes that plague a journey of such length, and yet which tend to lend its passage something approaching the name of interest. Firstly, there was the hilarious event of getting lost when the companion riding post forgot that maps had edges and other sides. While the humour was not shared by the whole group, the team of horses were soon riding along the beaten track once more. At this time, within the coach the travellers were entertaining themselves with many ingenious games of wit. Notable amongst such games was what has famously become known as The Non-Smoker's Dilemma. It intrigued in its deceptive simplicity, for it simply consisted in asking 'what would you rather be, a sheep or a cow?' The full gamut of the frivolous and the serious followed forthwith, one humourous conjecture being that being a cow would be the safer option with the fry-eater around. It was believed that sheep were moreover simply stupid as chips. But at this point the delegates split as to which was the more stupid, even at one point intimating that it was the framer of the question himself! (ah, childlike fun and mirthmaking, who can fault you?)

The coach, at length, reached the end of its final stage, a coastal village of the name of Glaway, at which point there was a great deal of discussion as to the next step. The mechanised money-seller, the open house and the hostelry all beckoned, but when the fry-eater made plain the logic of the order he suggested, it was hard to argue with him (for the complementary reason of his physical girth, as much as anything else). Then on entering the hostelry and depositing their luggage, it was deciding to avoid a quick change by a simple application in the entrance of the hostelry of a tres masculin eau de toilette. Malheuresement, la manageure de cet établissement n'aime pas le sent de cet eau de toilette, et dit quelque chose que n'était pas tres drole. Entre vous et moi, la manageure était un vrai ... je m'excuse, mais je me semble etre parlant en francais, mais pour quelle raison, ... ahh l'eau de toilette! Oui, c'était un peu fort peut-etre.

Alors, the group which had by now met James the cousin's sister, who is know to the group as Teresa the cousine, and her husband John, known to the group as John, decided to go and find nourishment for both the body and the soul without further ado. The non-smoker collected the order and ordered it at the bar of a local open house. Unfortunately, he forgot to order the smoker's dinner, as the smoker had been out smoking, and so when the dinner came the non-smoker had to offer his dinner to the smoker, which the smoker duly and without discussion received. The fry-eater offered the non-smoker a taste of his dinner, once it he had consumed the greater part. And so it was with a heavy heart and a light stomach that the non-smoker began to drink his well-earned pint of guinness. The rest of the evening has been censored due to the lack of supportable evidence.

Tiny brush working on a small broach

2007-07-19T18:25:00.000+01:00

It was the 190th anniversary of Jane Austen's death yesterday. I'm still reading Mansfield park and revelling over the the elegance of the language and pining for the story to end well, as of course it must. Jane Austen is meant to have loved her characters so much that she had constructed 'after lives' for them, holding in her mind details that she didn't happen to include in the book, such as what really happened afterwards. This seems excessive and yet it is perhaps the kind of dedication that gives her characters the authenticity that they have. It seems wrong to love fictional charcaters and yet it seems that this is what is required to flesh them out in their full humanity as she does. She is as astute a psychologist as she is loving a friend to her characters. And the philosophy that may be read in her books is all the more beautiful and penetrative for being implied, and rather than being dogmatic is demonstrated through the various responses of her characters to events. What is most distinctive about the expression of her thoughts, even the most noble and abstract, is that they are all shown through the particular goings on of individual lives. Perhaps no writer other than Chechov comes close to expressing such entirely applied wisdom, rather than soliloquising philosophically.

And to think she did most if not all of her writing in snatched moments of privacy, in such a way as didn't interefere with the rest of her household duties. If a member of her family was to enter into the same room, she would put her writing away and get on with her needlepoint. She was humble about her acomplishment. To a relative who wrote great epic stories, she responded that she could not compete with this grandness, for she was describing a scene of domesticity so small that, instead of an expansive picture, it was like painting a design on a broach. It is consoling to know that whatever happens throughout life, I will always have these books of hers to fall back on for pleasure, for wisdom and, though in a strange way, for companionship - not with her characters, but with her. I remember once thinking after reading one of her novels that only a saint could have written anything that was so beautiful and so moral at the same time. I think this is the proper test for anything that treats of moral themes. It never seems she is moralising, and yet her stories are exercises in the belief that virtue is its own reward, but still is otherwise rewarded.

In a sense, her books are about what we all have to some extent or another - a small life. No matter how important we think we are, how much money we make, how much power or prestige we pretend to have, at the end of the day (and life) we are always living this individual life here and now and there is the smallness of the particular that must come with that. Rather than laughing this off and pretending to a worldly greatness, Jane Austen was happy to dwell where she was, with the people she had and love them in that littleness of the moment. What someone trying to trace the great political and sociological movements of an age would have missed she saw, such as the way one silence symbolised indifference, while another symbolised love. But if Jane Austen was here she might wish that I didn't just look back and love her, but that I might also think about her characters, and wonder what they're doing now.

To be or not to be

2007-07-05T18:42:00.000+01:00

That is the question, or for the sake of Ms Patty Pravo, questo est la dilemma. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or ... you get the picture. What has brought on this recent naval-gazing, you may ask? Oh one and a hundred things, but principally the fact of waiting expectantly on the promise of a full-time job here in the universitát (for acute read umlaut). Not only will i not get the job, but no-one will as they are happy to keep paying us all part-time. As I had waited for this one, time ran out on the others which I (stupidly) did not apply for. Ah well, loyalty smoyalty. So here goes for another year of trying to make enough money to live on with part-time teaching. Subsequently, all urgency in my studies has gone. I may as well apply for a grant for another year and take longer to finish.

Anyway, comme ci, comme c,a (for comma read cedilla), can't miss what you never had, oh bla dee, oh bla daa. So, at the minute, I have one student I'm tutoring in logic, but apart from that I'm just taking the love/contraception train from dublin to belfast every week, doing most of my study on the train (I'm not joking). Anyway, and now for better news. It is young Fionnuala's birthday today, which one it is not chivalrous to mention. Anyway, age is but a number, and nobody of any worth cares about numbers. So I wish you a good day F, and i hope to see you on Saturday. I hope someone has a cake for you.

If Ciaran is reading, you might not know that Nina is giving birth by ceasarian section next Tuesday, so you might wish to think of her then or be in touch. She seems in good form and not too worried. She sent a few pictures of her having put on 17kg, but she still didn't seem that big! So that's good news and to be thankful for, and hopefully there won't be any problems for them. With such real problems around, it seems very indulgent of me to be sorry for myself for not getting the job, but still there it is as a fact. A fact I know capable of self-change. But whereas for normal people in full-time work, they look forward to the summer, for someone who only gets paid per hour, it signals relative inactivity and being broke! Anyway, I'm going to shut up now and count my blessings.

Marilyn Monroe, not me

2007-05-30T21:17:00.000+01:00

Take her picture off and less light can I see
My own face replaced where an Icon should be
My mother the Truth stands behind with a plea
Speak this, my son, ‘Marilyn Monroe, not me’

With the icon gone, there’s an image of me
My eyes, the eyes of God, peer back in 2-D
On a celestial window glinting with sheen
Instead of the eyes of the true beauty queen

Back and forth, the reflected face in lamplight
Of Arthur Miller, Japanese, at night
Stars in the eyes, I’m rocking, movement mocking
I sit still, a watching thrill, without talking.

It's DiMaggio with an eye for the girls
Watching madness unfurled in a mixed up world
Crowds of the mind follow every spit and twitch
Holding the pitcher aloft over his pitch

Marilyn Monroe, shrouded in her white sheets
Is betrayed, a friend's kiss enough to defeat
A rug present for the Kennedy’s to win?
We absquatulate and find thoughts to hide in

I’m Lemmon in drag, breaking another heel
While she floats over a street vent as the real deal
Curtis can stop trying to be Josephine
Replace her face where it should always have been

It is her place to breeze, with grace, calmly by
It was not me amidst the stars of the sky
I settle down to rest and sleep till I wake
My pillow’s her breast, not a legend, nor lake

She picks at my ice, steams up my glasses
Walks on air vents and smells of molasses
Now I remember, easily see why
Her face was amidst the stars of the sky

I start to whisper and I’m happy to see,
That it is Marilyn Monroe, and not me.

Letter to my General

2007-05-30T20:55:00.000+01:00

This is the will of David, holy King
Chosen of God to wear the royal ring
Attend to my commands this warring day
And choose not which bids that you may obey
For a soldier’s duty lies in the deed
Commanded beforehand of regal seed

Uriah the Hittite raise to the front
His own Goliath he then must confront
I here ordain at the height of attack
Of sudden, in haste, as a man, draw back
But leave there this Hittite, spy of Koresh
In glory to follow the way of all flesh

The future of the SDLP

2007-05-28T15:11:00.000+01:00

The present political difficulty of the SDLP is that it comes as a result of its own success. The party’s draft proposals of September 1971 have been acted upon in large measure. Unionists have accepted the principle that the north-south dimension is a necessary constituent of political progress, epitomising the nationalist aspiration of Irish unity. At the same time the Republic has given up any constitutional claim of jurisdiction over the north. There is influence of northerners in the south, both in the Senate and in the office of the President. Sinn Fein has accepted the principle of consent, albeit under a suspicion of pragmatism. Most importantly, there is a fully inclusive assembly operating with a non-oppositional model of joint government. The present electoral difficulty may be due to this success for two reasons. One, as other parties accept our policies, they become more acceptable to our voters. Two, since just such a transformation of the political environment was the focus of the party for so long, and is now achieved, the question is: has the party fulfilled its function?

The simple answer is yes. The SDLP have shown Sinn Fein the political power of persuasion, of argument and international pressure. They have shown how the mechanisms of government, local, national and international, and media, can operate to highlight favourably a political cause. Through the Hume/Adams dialogue, John Hume helped Gerry Adams join the debate from a point of due respectability. Having persuaded the British government of the need for an inclusive agreement, the unionists were persuaded in stages. Now we are at the logical terminus of this journey. The police are being depoliticised, and the British army are being removed. The parties have come together in complex inclusive democratic institutions, but without any military threat. With peace, is there any longer a need for a peacemaker?

The argument might run: If you want a unionist party, accept the unionist party of greatest electoral strength; those who are actually most powerful in government; and who have the best negotiating clout. If you want a nationalist party, accept the one who used to advocate violence, unlike yourself, but who now have the best organised political machine, because it used to be an army; those who have the most single-minded determination to get what you want; and who are also the most powerful nationalist party in government. Why weaken the position when all there is left is negotiation? Grant support to the extremists of your side, even as a reward for agreeing with you and turning away from violence. But there is another argument based on realities independent from political pay-off.

The less obvious, more complex answer is no, the party has not fulfilled its purpose. A political party is a collectivity with a specific philosophy. As Simone Weil has said, collectivities are unique and cannot be traded or merged with that which it stands principally against. A political party is living only in the sense that it has a goal assented to by its members, without which it dies and passes into history. But it is also a compact with those who have peopled the party in the past, and those who wish to be fed by its values in the future. Sinn Fein’s life as a political entity is secure as its purpose is based simply on the goal of Irish unity. As this seems along way from being realised, they shouldn’t suffer any similar sense of identity crisis soon.

Conversely, the SDLP must recognise that their mission will never actually be terminal. The concepts of peace and justice always open up the future. The SDLP is needed as the genuinely socialist, humanist party of plural democracy. It is needed to promote the philosophy of social justice and to promote the belief in the beauty of diversity. It is needed to profess genuine respect for the principle of democratic consent, a principle which entails that there is not simply one preordained future of our country, but many possible ones. The SDLP has lessened the atmosphere of violence, while helping to raise living standards; they have shown patience in the face of outrage, while passionately pursuing justice for families; they have worked tirelessly in parliament and waited for peace. They know that governing is a duty, not a reward; and that without the moderate plural democrats on both sides, an inclusive government may not survive many political storms. Without its voice, certain truths go unspoken and many people unrepresented.

The Virtue of Idling

2007-05-23T17:00:00.000+01:00

I suppose I should write in here at least once a month or there's not much point having it, so here we are. One reason I haven't written is that I'm a bit browbeaten from the anonymous comments that keep on coming. Please cease and desist, as my ego is a fragile flower than only blooms with care and loving attention. If you don't like it don't read it, Liam, or else I'll tell everyone you like the scissor sisters, and by everyone I mean Fionnuala and Emily. I've been terribly lazy recently, watching lots of tv addictively - west wing mostly, which has by now become my religion - and contemplating when the earth will move off its axis to shake this lethargy and rouse me long enough to get my thesis finished. That really should read 'middled' instead of 'finished', but I indulge myself. But I like to think of all this tv watching as a necessary training for the day that I will become a well-loved writer of touching cometragedy myself. I have chapter one completed, roughly, and the guts of chapter two in situe. Nice how that rhymes.

Tonight we have the spectacle (spoken with proper French accent) of Liverpool vs Milano, the repeat of the European final of two years ago. From halfway through the afternoon the great and the good Liverpool supporters are tying up all the best chairs in the pub, which you must come down to sometime, F. Tonight would not be the night though, if it were possible, for there will be sweaty males growling and cheering with zeal in their eyes and fire in their bellies, being either glorious in victory, or far from gracious in defeat. I will be there and I will be numbered amongst them. Unfortunately, if I'm not mistaken, Liam will be explaining how the hypotenuse squared is equal to the total of x squared and y squared. No true fan, no true red him. Red arse, yes.

So, anyway I'm just hanging out, checking emails, tapping time, whistling the breeze, till then. I've been so lazy that I think I could write a book about idling, but you know, I can't be bothered. I'm waiting for something to give, for the stars to allign, for jupiter to bump into uranus, before I make the plunge headlong back into my studies again. Oh, procrastination ... how do I love thee. But I'm glad I waited. I had a good idea today for my studies and I don't think it would have crystallised so, if I hadn't waited doing nothing but tv. This is how I rationalise my vice.

Some pomes

2007-04-27T14:07:00.000+01:00

Advice

(a philosopher’s disclaimer)

Take my advice and don’t
Do as I say;
I won’t be able to
Be blamed that way.
Or do do what I say,
Imperfectly though;
Then you’ll be unfit to
Upcast me so.
Or follow completely
Just if you must -
It won’t be my fault if
Formulae bust.

Keeping the ball

Come in, be still, and know
Life kills with a ruthless equality
Come in, be still, and know
In my divine justice I don’t give back

In the gutter

May hopeless heartbreak flow in the rain
Without a rainbow into that hallowed drain.

Inspiration

a touch
tastes and sounds eternally new
the soul’s entire capacity
appears too beautiful to me

the world
too huge for an eye to contain
too much for a mind to conceive
too hard to look upon and leave

Your eyes
blue windows of your soul and sight
what remains after fears are stripped?
the purest smile on angel lips?

true art
magnificent beauty in relief
the love of beauty grows in art
humanity’s God’s beating heart

Eponymous Anonymous

2007-04-20T14:48:00.000+01:00

I've held fire for just so long! But here is a little story from my clumsy life. At the sprightly age of thirty-four I have begun to take learning to drive more seriously. I still haven't taken a formal lesson but my old friends Damian and 'anonymous' each gave me a lesson last week, on Monday and Tuesday respectively. Anonymous likes to think of himself as the tutor of everything par excellence, and was for a time last year driving instructor sine qua non. (I'm not sure what that latin means, but it is good to throw some around when you want to sound educated and aerodite.) Anyway, Damian usurped his position on the Monday and so in a fit of jealousy anonymouse said he'd let me drive his car on the Tuesday night.

So there I was indicating right when I wanted to turn right, flashing the lights from dim to full on to dim at leisure around the deserted car park. As anonymous was out of the car inhaling a well-needed nerve calmer, I thought I'd impress him with what I'd learnt from my other teacher the day before. So off I went slowly in reverse. As he puffed away I imagine he was suitably impressed, but I'm not one hundred percent sure as I had my eyes fixed firmly on my feet at the time. But as I braked I got that loving feeling that told me the car was going to stall. This was not quite the denouement to my stunt that I had envisaged. I was aiming at something with more aplomb, anything after which I could say 'ta da!' But ta da was not to be. As I didn't want to cunk out, I put my foot back on the accelerater, but then to resist getting too far away once more the brake was once more applied, repeating the manoeuvre after the fashion of the best recipes. This manoeuvre was however repeated at great length, you could almost say it was developing into a habit, with no way of breaking off from it presenting itself to the imagination.

At this stage, anonymous friend A decided that either the well-being of his friend or the value of his car was worth running for. He began to chase after it at a speed not usual for his frame. Einstein would have said that to the earth he was running fast, but relative to his car he was not moving at all. The more he ran the more the car trundled on. The driver, quick thinking as ever, reached over to the passenger side and swung the door open in the hope that this would encourage the runner, whom we may not name, to quicken sufficiently to save the day heroically, like a Starsky or Hutch or a Duke of Hazzard. This nighttime scene was complicately by the fact that the reversing car was by now passing two young observing girls, who just at this moment had accidentally set off the car alarm of their father's car, at which fact he was exercsing himself. The scene which they were then to witness served to lessen their burdens, I like to think, causing them as it did to look on compassionately at a situation much more problematic than their own. Where God locks a door, and sets off an alarm, he invariably opens a window.

Anyway, eventually the exhausted anonymee eventually rallied his blamangical obesity into the passenger seat and imparted the knowledge that the clutch was needed first; and well, that solved that. When I stopped laughing, I comforted my passenger with the thought that soon I could be helping him drive around Ireland.

A little love poetry to blow away the cobwebs!

2007-03-21T20:40:00.000Z

Love Hemlock

Memory now sees her
without a body, in whose eyes I see
a glimpse of her, mixed in the glass of me.

A bottle of pure love
quite suddenly, being poured out in my head,
becomes poison, hurting, in streams of red.

What is truth?

2007-03-12T21:40:00.000Z

Hi and goodbye, and dry. It's been an interesting time of late, getting back into things down here and get into some sort of routine. I haven't quite managed the routine thing though. I'm pluggin away with the french lessons and hopefully someday it will be naturally for me to say ladee dee instead of ladee die. Some di soon.

I met a teacher of mathematics at a conference on saturday who actually knew of Simone Weil and could even pronounce her name, as her brother André was - according to this teacher - the mathematical genius of the century. We got into some abstract discussions about infinity and uncountable series, and to misquote a line from Jerry Maguire 'He lost me at infinity ...' I told him I found it a problematic concept, especially to base an argument for the existence of God on, as it didn't seem genuinely quantifiable, which to me is its point, but he thought that it sort of was. At least, to mis quote Morrisey, of 'The Smiths' fame, 'some infinities are bigger than others' so they have to have some 'quantifiability'. Then we got on to the problem of evil and ... with a glass of wine in my hand, it was hard to be convincing about affliction.

But on the Thursday before, to be anti-chronological, I had a set-to at a public seminar given by a new lecturer in our department. I had never even met him or shaken his hand. I don't think that will happen now, as we had a right royal fight over the right to freedom of thought and expression. He was some strange species of conformist, but to God knows what - he was keeping all this quiet, but it seems to be the Church. I asked him about Socrates, and he said Socrates philosophised himself to death! No danger of that with him, I fear. It all went a bit ad hominem, and best not to dwell on it too much. But it is saddening to know he will be teaching students ... not to think!

Computers closing down. I'll continue anon.

Shit

2007-02-19T14:19:00.000Z

I've got a bloody cold.

Cold avoidance techniques

2007-02-18T15:34:00.000Z

Every now and then the spirit takes hold of the body and walks it to the computer cafe, sure in it's own sense of its need for expression and thereby release. Such a time ... and I sit happed up with my parents' gift of my Woody Allen beige jacket, my aunt Bernadette's gift of a padded overcoat, with Fionnuala's mother's grey knitted scarf around my neck, (feeling love in it's most practical manifestation) and sitting in the only local internet cafe with heating, I feel I am not being remiss to my health to indulge myself with this sabbatical reflection and relief. I like writing like this, constructing sentences which such unnecessary length, hell, just to do it.

I am reading Mansfield Park at the minute and deriving great sympathetic sustaince from the fact that poor old (young) Fanny Price is so slight in her make-up and health that she has to take as much care as I do when going out. It seems quaint to hear her cousin Edmund fly off the handle after hearing that she has been out 'walking!' How could such a think be countenanced?! And yet it has a much more receptive and sympathetic audience in me now that it ever would have done before. How early people died then, and how damaging if not fatal must have been what would today appear innocuous. It seems that it could only have made every day a much more concerning and precarious adventure. Family members and friends must have been all the more solicitous for the care a loved one should take, must take! It could only have made, I think, for closer attachments and nearer relationships, with other things being equal. It is chastening to realise that Jane Austen only had another ten years of life than I've already had, and after all the beauty of her stories, she never found her romantic dream fulfilled in her own life. I wonder if she ever did have it, would she have run out of creative inspiration, too lost in the enjoyment of the real thing to wish to write for it? Anyway, I'm glad Valentine's day is over, as it resembles Jane Austen's type of romantic ideal as forced laughter does happiness.

I made a few trips into the village of Maynooth and found it quite tiring, but rewarding as well. I'm moving back next Thursday, so it would be to there you must repair if you wish to sojourn south, Fer. I'll be fulltime housekeeper, and can show you the house and grounds anytime apart from next weekend, as we're in Ballycastle for Robert's stag do-es. If you have an hour in the afternoon of Friday we could have a coffee in Belfast though? That's only if you have recovered sufficiently. The flu is going around down here too. Anyway, the little cooking I've been doing has tired me out this week, so I'm glad I didn't move back before now. And I'm very glad that I didn't start back to teach this week! That would have been a mistake. I suppose I've changed from being someone who was quite lax with his own health - only at times, because at other times I was supposed to be quite hypochondriacal - to being quite quite careful about the cold. I still find almost everywhere but my own super heated room cold, as it is a big drafty cold house I am presently living in, but also generally out of doors, and so I am now turning up 'my collar to the cold and damp' at times, just to be safe. I find food and rest much more important now that I ever have, and even the good of a little air and a little walking is more present to me now and occupies my thinking in a way it never really has! I was always too warm at home, always wanting the windows opened to let air in, now I ration the times of window opening very strictly! But I'm sure this is all very dull to every one outside of my own particular skin, but of course of deep interest to my few good friends - the sainted, the patient.

Sensible shoes

2007-02-09T17:54:00.000Z

I've decided to be a supersensible and retire from the teaching profession for this semester. I am still going south to stay with a few friends, but it'll just be me and the books from here on in this term. After three and a half years of working through my PhD, I have the reward (achieved through a rather circuitous route!) of a semester of pure study alone. At least, all being well, I might finish it this way this year. I'm happier with this decision, so I'll be reasonable for once and go with that.

If you're reading F, sorry I didn't get a chance to pop up before I return down. I was speeding up my departure a bit to fit in with the course, but as it's set now I'll just stick with the date. I hope to see you soon though, good friend, and if you want a trip down, that could be arranged! Clothes and books and computer to pack, so I'll away. I just wanted to relieve those who were thinking I was a bit crazy for starting back to teach. I think you were right. I must have picked up the vibes. My supervisor and mother are much happier too!

Kant was right

2007-02-07T00:51:00.000Z

This is just an update for the sake of the oversea-ers. I've been pretty sick woth pneumonia and I'm only now really getting what I'd call up-for-going-outside fitness. I'm returning south this weekend and will begin to teach again next week, but i'll be gentle with myself. Fionnuala, to pre-empt your tut-tut, I can tell you that I'll be staying for a week or two with friends Rosemarie and Henry - the Peace People - in Phibsborough, so don't worry too much. Once I'm fully at myself, I'll move back to Maynooth in earnest.

But anyway, just in passing I'd like to note that when i was at the moment of worst fever when I really couldn't help myself much, it brought it home to me how much nothing we think we control we actually do. Obviously we control our bodies everyday, but the only thing which is ultimately ours is our free decision, our choice, our 'will'. I felt such a moment then where it was like I was just holding on with little more than my will to live; other than that we are as babies. Compulsions, psychological and biological may be said to affect the effectiveness of carrying out our decisions, but I have never been more convinced that that moment of initial decision, in whatever direction, is ultimately and absolutely free and ours; mine. The only thing there is to do in life is to want to live, to want to live well, to will good. An alcoholic who drinks but doesn't want to is purer than someone who doesn't and is proud. I'm convinced of that now.

p.s. I have watched the first three series of 'Only Fools and Horses', the first series of 'House', the fifth series of '24' and have discovered why thesauri were invented by doing the irish news crossword daily. Expect me to litter my sentences with unusual choice words from now on. My weight is coming back, and I'm even beginning to tap these keys again, so, I seem to be on the way up.

Orange Crush

2006-12-07T13:45:00.000Z

I feel as if I should say something to my adoring public. Life has been a river that flows and it has pulled me this way and that over the last little rivulet of life. The latest thing to pull is about twenty hours of marking that I have to do over the next three days, but heh ho - serves me right for being so lazy. I think I'll wear a hair-shirt as I mark ... and maybe my slippers that are that little bit too tight! Nothing like a bit of self-mortification to lighten the load. But before I launch myself once more into the breach, dear friends, I thought I would address my dear friends, such as are who read this, my inner stream of consciousness that runs its full course of creative expression, giving out into the mouth of my little enwalled harbour of cyberspace.

So on the physical level, I have two hospital appointments in quick succession, the first one next Wednesday morning in Belfast. I was wondering could Mademoiselle F. put me up on Tuesday night, and it would have the extra good effect of us being able to meet up again at long last?! Then I'm back down to Maynooth for just one more day of lecturing (no, not leching) around before I return to where God intended my body to rest, in the good old demesne of the northern clans, where they were so happily joined by the Scottish lairds four hundred years ago, who liked the Irish so much they wanted to share their very same earth, once upon a time. What about that for revisionist history? Anyway, F'er, are you free to see and be seen that night?

It is a relief to have a place to think and move and be ... silly. Not that I've been able to be too serious with study recently either. I've just been following my tail getting the courses sort of finished up this week, so as to revise them next - the last - week before the break. Therein lies the reason for the twenty hours of communing with the minds of my students this weekend through the media of their essays; I procrastinate until the very last moment of ripeness, until the old mental fruit just has to squeeze itself dry through the tedious business of marking. Oh marking, I hate you, let me count the ways ... Yes, I know this is just a work avoidance technique and I should bite the bullet and begin at the beginning, shut up, and sort of wade my way through. By the way, I'm trying to use as many idioms in this piece as possible, just in case there are any foreign english language students tuning in who want to improve their colloquisms! So to for the metaphors.

So please, F, is there room in your homely inn on Tuesday? Also, if anybody else has read this, I forbid you to read again unless you say hello this time. That goes for you too E (especially), and you B, the other F, even C, even the other C, one more C please Bob, very unlikely but maybe L, almost impossibly S, it would be lovely if G, I think I can depend upon A, there's no way R, not forgetting Z. P is not a theoretical impossibility. You all know who you are, so say something or I herenow curse the horse you rode in on. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ, just in case.

Shit, I have to go and do some marking now.

Steak and Guinness - healthy eating in Dublin

2006-11-23T13:27:00.000Z

Here I am back again to my public baying for more of my humourous meanderings on life, with that checky-chappy knowing nonchalance that is mine at certain specific moments punctuating an otherwise pretty hectic stress-filled existence. Aah, the joys of fiction. No, well the reason I haven't been blogging so much is that my life has been pretty full of the living-stuff recently with both Barbara, and then Goren!, coming over to visit in quick succession - just like buses. But now the old s.l. is cooling down again, so here goes with my surragette form of communication, my old friend Dear Kitty, the blog. This picture is evidence of the fact that I do sometimes do the young nubile man about town thing (I hope nubile isn't entirely feminine). Here I am eating a guinness pie, while drinking guinness, in what I like to think of as a mood of careless abandon. Then Barbara and I went somewhere and had a guinness. So too when Goren arrived. Guinness seems to be the glue that God uses to keep our friendships stick-stuck, and I say cheers to that.

Supping What

2006-10-21T15:58:00.000+01:00

Hello again, for the sake of the one righteous man the Lord turns away his wrath, so for the sake of the one righteous woman I will continue to blog! And even for myself, for I do enjoy pontificating in a way that doesn't hurt anybody. The big news is that I have passed my mid-way evaluation or progress report for my PhD, and so now I'm allowed to write it up and offer it for perusal and passing. One more year should do it, i just have to dig around the fig tree a bit more and shove in lots of good manure to help it grow! Bear fruit or die ...

I'll not go on, as I've got five minutes before I'm supping up the cappuccino and off to the train. Suffice it to say, I'm inspired enough to start writing again and not worry that no one reads other than you Fionnuala! and one or two people who keep their identity a closely guarded secret, being beautiful and delicate wall flowers that only bloom unseen at night. But I believe in their existence, much like the sprites of a Mid Summer's Night Dream. Anyway, time's up so sup up!

the good die young

2006-08-19T16:00:00.000+01:00

i think i'll close down the old bloggerooney. it seems like the right time. here's one last poem, which i wrote six years ago when i was more overtly religious.

calling time

god is conspicuous by his absence
the absence of a smile
the presence of a loved one
walking a lonely mile

he is sought by the eyes of the dying
no energy to cry
the lethargy of a son
blinking, wondering why

he’s not found in the cries of the prophets
screaming divinity
but in an infant’s laughter
redeems humanity

so, hanging in front of the door of my old shop,
the sign, which creaks as it swings,

'after 42 years of business,
we're closing.
we have loved being part
of your lives.'

Belle and Sebastian - Another Sunny Day

2006-08-08T18:48:00.000+01:00

Irish proverb:
It is for its own good that the cat purrs

http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/window/media/player/listen/0,,3556118,00.html

The Poet's Art

2006-06-26T15:11:00.000+01:00

art

Art is the practise of concealment
over
misbegotten dreams.

Art flatters the ordinary;
it makes a drama out of drudge, that is,
it points us all in the right direction.

I am writing things now which will never
be made perfect
sense of; that is what I mean when I mention ‘Art’ .

pink pales into blue nights
of philosophers stating there is little to state definitively ...

poetry

The tree of life will grow itself
Another line in time
All we need do is strike our lives
And listen to hear them chime

Inspiration’s an open egg
Whose yoke survives not long
Words thrown together lovingly
Re-write the rights and wrong

We need to let it germinate
Learn to take our time
We need to learn to live our lives
And listen to hear them rhyme

Á la Recherche du Temps Perdu

2006-06-20T19:31:00.000+01:00

My mother found an old poem of mine today. She said she thought it must have been one of mine, as it didn't make any sense! She had been reading an old book of mine that I got about nine years ago, when I was young, free, innocent and suprareligious in a real way. I had been down visiting a guy I had just been to the Philippines with, and he left me to sleep on a sofa in a room in his house. As I was going to sleep I could see this elegant set of four pictures placed vertically over one another personifying the four seasons as women, much like the French do with Liberté - if I'm not wrong. This was a time when I would get inspired and have to write things done on a whim. A poem slowly brewed in my mind, but I had no paper, and couldn't exactly look for any at that time of night. The only thing I had was my photograph print of St. Therese, which I was using as a bookmark and had a white back, so what I wrote had to be my only draft. But the photo seems to suit it. Here it is below unedited by my older, sadder and wiser self. By the way, I also found a piece of tissue in the book containing a four leaf clover. It was given to me by a dominican nun I'd sat beside on a bus. That the sort of thing that happens to you when you're suprareligious, I suppose. Not many clovers in the offing these days ...

A Woman for All Seasons

Voluptuous and buxom
Spring burgeons forth
Flowers of the Revolution
Spilling over holding arms

Demise is Summer's glory
Green swathes the haymaking grass
Parasol of drying plants
Blond hair and sensitive skin

Orange girl serving Harvest Time
Autumn's ceremonial dress
Crowned with beads' pearl
Fruits plattered before their crush

Winter's White Wonders
David's Star hangs on Christmas Trees
Wrapt figure hugging demurement
Growing lines decorated by snow.

Love in a cup

2006-06-03T00:44:00.000+01:00

Hi all. I have Audrey to thank for this striking resemblance of some devilshly handsome fella. He looks somewhat like Bono, methinks (my {and Descartes'} favourite word). Thanks Audrey, i especially like the pink smile (spoken like a real dandy). That's caffé espresso in my hand by the way, ma certo.

So by way of catch up, I should say that I've been luxuriating at home this past week, supposedly looking after the dog and the house while my parents sunned themselves in the sunny climes of Magaluf, but that didn't stop me sleeping in to the pm every day. After a week of such luxury, the guilt becomes too much, and so I'm soon to return deep south again. My brother exudes the pleasure of having our father's cooking back again, and I exude a bit myself (... but never on a Sunday!) We had a barbeque today and the day was truly summer. Then our uncle, his brother, drove us to the races at Down Royal after it. We proceeded to pick horses based on how good they looked in the paddock, and it wasn't the worst idea in the world. It worked for me in the sixth, where there was a fine looking animal that went by the name of 'Ask Carol'. She walked around looking at everyone like she was quite enjoying the attention, even as if she could have fielded a question or two. I focused on the wrong pair of (no, not trousers, Fionnuala!) yellow arms, and so thought she was trailing, but then I saw her storming through. I won twenty-five english pounds which left me only ten down, while Peter won sixty. My father lost (and now doesn't really fancy the sport) and my mother was minorly down, having hatched the choose-the-best-looking-one plan earlier and winning a ten-to-one shot in the first.

That was us, tonight.

I was asked to write a little piece a few days ago on Etty Hillesum for the 'instruments of peace' website, if anyone fancies taking a look. I had to write it more or less blind at short notice, so it's not the best but I'll try not to worry so much about that, breaking free of my obsessive perfectionism a little; though if there is anywhere that it's useful, it's in articles. There's also a much longer 'proper' article, more broadly based, on the NUIM website, for anyone sufficiently interested to go on treasure hunt to find it by themselves.

Friends, for I still have some and they are good, Note Bene, I'm staying down south this summer, apart from the regular sojourns back home, so anyone around and needing a bed/sofa for the night on a visit to my good self may send forth their credentials for my perusal. But I'm also hoping (not hopping) the enforced solitude may also pay some dividends study-wise - for I, the son of man, am freaking lazy, I shit you not. (I recline and imagine what the world might be like if I could only get auff me eerrse!) But loving friends will know whenever all is well and possible for Stephen, for that will be the time when he is writing here. It seems whenever the juices flow for me, they just keep going here, there and everywhere; but when they don't, which is much more common, nothing - and I mean nothing - gets done. But I'm looking forward to this summer for this reason, which is the beginning of a recommitment.

Anyway, shit-shite, here's the fillet of the small piece on Etty. Forgive, you know, like, all the things that are wrong with it.
'[Etty Hillesum] believed that most of what happens in our lives is beyond our control, beyond our freedom to choose. What wasn’t beyond our control, however, was how we decided to respond to it. We could respond to hatred with vengeance, or with an attempt to understand and love. It was obvious to her that God could not stop all ... evil from occurring, or else he would, so we had to help God by doing our part. She describes how she had the realisation of what would come after the war. “‘After this war, two torrents will be unleashed on the world: a torrent of loving-kindness and a torrent of hatred.’ And then I knew: I should take the field against hatred.”'

Poland - Part the Third

2006-05-30T02:53:00.000+01:00

I'm having trouble sleeping due to my asthma, so i thought if i was going to snuff it i'd go out fighting. This is the last installment of the Polish trilogy that no doubt doesn't quite amount to a Joseph Conrad, but it'll have to do. I'll rehearse the plot so far. We flew into Wroclaw, spent the day and night quietly sight-seeing and meeting up with Ciaran, and Richard. Then off to Czestochowa, casing the joint out before the Pope's recent visit there, much like an Irish Catholic FBI. Through in a plunge to the death with Ciaran, and our nerves couldn't take anymore. I'll skirt over what happened on the Tuesday night ... other than to say up to a point a great night was had by all, after which point all hell broke loose - those damn gypsy Irish!

On Wednesday, we journeyed to Oswiecim (Auschwitz), spoken as if there's an 'n' after the 'e', and stayed in the Glob hostel to prepare ourselves for the tour of the camps the next day. More of that in a more reverent place than this. Then we took to the hills, or the mountains in the south to be exact. We checked into a log cabin half way up a hill when we finally arrived after about four hours on a slow train. Then on Friday a friendly student of English we met at the bus stop - Ola - directed us in getting up Kasprowy, the biggest snow-capped mountain there. We then ascended from this mortal coil, carried on Agamemnon's chariot through tree-tops to a white, heavenly domain. (Peter: (shaking his head and tutting) Just say 'A cable car took us to the top'. Stephen: (smiling to himself selfishly) No this is my story, get your own blog!)

That would have been enough pleasure for anyone for one day, but no, Liam and Peter wanted to trip the light fantastic into the wee small hours of the morning, but our hostel had a curfew for eleven. So I let myself be persuaded we should take a three star hotel for our second night in Zakopane, for that is where we were. As it turned out, Peter and Liam weren't all that wrong as it appears the normally reserved Polish women like nothing more than to express themselves via the artistic medium of dance. Peter having had his requisite one too many promptly got the two old foggies sheepishly up to dance, whereupon he proceeded to dance (Editor: for 'dance' hereafter read 'stumble') into the middle of a group of six nubile women, each in their own way not unattractive. Being in Poland I didn't quite know what the law was regarding asking girls to dance, so out of habit I drove to the left. I had the Polish for 'Can you speak English at all, Madam, I do so inquire?' down to a tee, and she responded with a 'yes, a little, I'm an English teacher you see, kind sir'. However, after which decorous language she proceeded to dirty dance me up and down like a whirling dervish on heat.

Peter at this stage was trying to remember which girl he had been dancing with first, as he had just completed quite a spin designed to impress, but which had the undesirable effect of confusing him somewhat. I looked on in some pain as he went from female to female seeking his first partner back again. Liam by now was even dancing, pretending to enjoy it and everything, glancing a knowing glance at me that communicated - 'My God, in Poland, we're the thing ladies go for! I'm moving here!' I, not having dirty danced before, was a bit slow in knowing what goes where and what-not. So I tried to get the girl to calm down and tell me her name. Unfortunately, this was only grist to the mill!

Anyway, it turns out that Polish girls are much more reserved off the dance floor. Liam's girl said she would kiss him later, in the future, but would he first buy her a drink. After the third, Liam checked his change and lost all respect for the girl and his desire to kiss her. I was talking to Sylwia - for that is her name - about literature or Politics or religion or something similarly sexy. At which stage she was the archetypal wallflower, being circumspect about her person. But then a bloddy madonna version of an Abba song came on and she dragged me up to dance and she was off again, worse than before! By this stage, Peter had given up all hope of remembering who he had begun with, and tried to dance artfully with three girls at once, which sort of worked up to a point - the point at which the girls realised he was sort of dancing with them. For my part, I said my goodbyes to Sylwia with a disdainful kiss. I told her I expected more independence from the female of the species, especially on the dance floor. I think, according to Polish feudal law, we might be engaged. (Editor: she actually was a nice girl, albeit having an american twang to her English.)

There it is, not much of it was true, but some. In that case, it's exactly like life.

Bad News and Poland Two

2006-05-08T17:35:00.000+01:00

That was a long day between the last entry and this ... but as Morissey would say, some days are bigger than others. The eponymous news of sad report is that on tuesday night last my house was broken into. I think I distrubed the burglars when I returned very late at night, as the back window looked like it had been gone out of at great speed. Fortunately, I have nothing that anyone else thinks is of any worth and nothing was taken. Evidently, they were looking for money, not metaphysics. The front window was broken in their attempts at entry, which was a bit breezy for a few days till it got fixed. The police came out the next day, but as Donal - the owner, my boss - had told me to put everything back as best I could, there were certainly no usable fingerprints when surfaces were dusted. As things stood, I was just glad they decided to go out the back and not through me out the front. For that reason alone, I'm glad i left the keys in the back door which one guy evidently used to get out. I learnt alot from the policewoman as to what is and is not good for getting prints off. Apparently keys are crap. But here I am, no harm done, sipping warm echinacea brew from a kind Fionnuala, listening to Belle and Sebastian (of Franscesca fame) on a headset - which even has its own microphone if I want to sing along! - and so as Bono would say, 'don't let the bastards get you down'. Donal, the home owner, or like God the absent landlord, was very calm about the whole thing. Apparently, it's happened twice before in the house and he understood that they were probably just lashing out at the capitalist property owning system when one of them peed in my bedroom! The carpet I'm glad to say, not the bed. Anyway, that's my bad experience exorcised! Now on to the much expected second installment of the days of Poland.

The second day began with a struggle for consciousness that sleeping beauty knew all too well. Ciaran and Richard were up from the crack of dawn, but Liam, Peter and your good narrator were lost to the world in the land of dreams and forgetful things and wanted to stay so till at least our toes were nibbled upon by a mischievous spring squirrel. But no, the intrepid Ciaran, Irish explorer used to temperatures of 32 below zero wanted us up, dressed and ready to go or else he would enter Neverland and get us. I distracted him with what is traditionally known as 'tea's gambit'. 'Get me a cup of tea and I'll get up, Ciaran. Good man.' I could see from the confusion on his face that my ruse was beginning to work. 'Ok, and then you'll get up ...?' 'Yes' and I turned over on the clean and comfy bed with a secret smile of vistory as I once again entered the magical wardrobe of Narnia. Then after the 'that tea tastes terrible', the 'you go in, i'll be in a minute' and the 'i'm stinking, I'm waiting for the shower' I finally arrived at consciousness with something of the semblance of decency, and found that Ciaran, Richard, Peter and Liam were already there welcoming me with looks of disdain. This was bread and jam to me, as indeed was the bread and jam which I proceeded to eat, and then off we went on our second day of our adventures in Winnie the Poohland.

We had lunch in the square, sampling more of Polish cuisine. I had borsch, which is beetroot consumé soup which it takes a good actor to eat without showing obvious displeasure. But as a mother would say, 'it's good for you'. Not our particular mother - she regularly feeds me buns and thinks deep-fat fried battered fish is the healthy option - but the general mother. By the way, talking about displeasure, if you are stuck for a syllable sound in Polish try the s sound from pleasure, as nearly everything dubious has the s sound from pleasure. Back to the food. Peter had Zurek, soup which has a boiled egg and fatty bacon in it but he didn't like it. I did like the Zurek and generally enjoyed most of the Polish food, especially the Rushkie Pierigos, pasta parcels full of a potato, cheese and onion paste mix, topped with fried onions. The fried cabbage was particularly tasty, and the Polish salad was lovely - very fresh, but softened by some oil which takes the edge of the sharper flavours. Then we went by way of the Cathedral and had a good look this time. We travelled to Czestochowa in the late afternoon and needed to do so with three trains and two changes, each change requiring quite a sharp movement from one 'Pelon' to another as we followed English Richard (of Rodomsky, named after his location by Ciaran as it turns out there are two English Richards in Poland and Ciaran knows both of them.)

Then we got to Czestochowa, and I found it more attractive than Wroclaw. I like the way it has its long central avenue lined with trees, and has the Jasna Gora monastery at the end of this, right in the centre of town. I found this most unusual, and probably says something about the religiousness of Poles. (I'm giggling because I know what's coming in a few days, and I'm already trying out that Poles Dancing joke in my head!) But as Ciaran said on his blog (which I think should be viewed as the Gospel according to Mark, and mine as the Gospel according to John, his being much more brute factual and mine being much more philosophical and made up) then in the evening we retired to Ciaran's two girl love shack, Peter went to sleep and Liam and I ganged up on Ciaran in a debate about why Ciaran should realise that Fawlty Towers is comic genius and that he is just wrong. This being a matter of dogma, it was of course a bad choice for disputation. So this entry was more like the characters of a play in transit, while the next entry will be more like the second act of the play, which I will entitle 'Ciaran and the streaming snotter'. Of this, more the next 'day', but the following is what is known in the business as a teaser.

Nina led us on down the other side of the hill, but then as I loooked back round to where Ciaran had been, I found him gone and in full flight half way down the hill. Nina and I looked at each other silently inquiring if this was a normal phenomenon, the first with respect to Ireland, the second with respect to Poland, and then we looked back to Jesse Owens. By this time, Ciaran was doing about the 100-metres-in-ten-seconds speed and not looking like stopping. (For the benefit of anyone who does not know Ciaran, not only is this not normal, but normally it's not possible.) He avoided a massive rock slab on his left and a smaller one on his right, and just kept going. There was nothing any of us could do, much like one generation looking on the exploits of the next. All we could do was pray. At which point an Irish prayer came to mind. There is an Irish prayer on Ciaran's kitchen wall that reads in its beginning 'May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back'. Just earlier that morning I had asked Ciaran what he thought this really meant, and he confessed he also didn't know. But then in a split second I had the realisation that Ciaran was in the process of showing me its meaning. And true enough, the grassy road inclined towards him and met him and enabled him to slowly slow, and then stop. Nina and I were already half way down the hill towards him and as he turned I could see his poor face drawn and ashen pale, his hand grabbing his chest in evident discomfort and a great snotter hanging off the end of his nose. This was a moment that doesn't happen often in the life of Ciaran, so moved by great sympathy and friendship, I reached for my camera. But by the time I got the snap, the snotter had passed.

Happy News and Poland One

2006-04-26T13:17:00.000+01:00

The very happy event to have happened just prior to the Easter holidays was the birth of Lisa Hailey, daughter of Robert and Janet, happy parents of Carrickfergus fame. I got to see her just before Peter, Liam and i went off on our Poland adventure and she is very cute. My father thinks she looks like his mother, and I can see what he means. Robert is delighted and settling in to his parental responsibilities well it seems. I got to nurse Lisa while she was asleep, and managed not to wake her for a while. It is my second experience of such a thing and no less daunting, nor less a privilege. The utter vulnerability of a child is a source of wonder. It is hard not to believe in God with a child in your arms.

Now on to my Polish (mis)adventures. I feel that to do justice to them I will have to document them on a day by day basis and may not get done till this time next week, but after having so little, and little time, to write it's not a bad thing to put a bit of a stint in now.

To begin at the beginning, we went to the airport at three o'clock in the morning, after a rude awakening from about one hours sleep. Liam didn't have hardly any sleep, so I stayed away from his corns most of the morning as I knew what this does to people. We had a hasty breakfast of inflated price at the airport, and then it was up, up and away. I feverishly tried to digest some of the polish 'everyday phrases' that I found in Peter's book, and while this is quite possible to do in some languages quickly and without too much fuss, with Polish I found it a bigger mountain to climb due to the transformations of sounds involved in some of the syllables. In the sublime words of Peter, to speak Polish you'd need a bloody enigma machine.

Anyway, about two and half hours later we were descending into Polska, footloose and all at sea. We managed to get on the bus for Wroclaw (pronounced Vrotswaf) and hoped that what we had understood the bus driver to understand of what we had said would take us into the centre somewhere near the train station. As it turned out on alighting, we were very close to the station indeed. Then 'The Stranger Hostel'. From the outside, and as we went up its inside stairs, it would remind you of a dingy set from Starsky and Hutch - just before someone gets stabbed and the incidental music comes in loudly on the wah-wah guitar. Peter and I wanted to turn back, but after conflab with Liam, Liam volunteered to brave it. Inside it was another story, there were running streams of milk and honey, not to mention clean comfy beds and computer with internet access. We relaxed and booked in properly. Then we went off on the trail of the mysterious case of the house of Edith Stein, one of the philosophers I am studying for my thesis, who died in Auschwitz with her sister.

The reception girl didn't know of her, neither did anyone at the restaurant where we got our wind back, and I wondered whether I would find it after all. We walked around, and seeing a priest talking in the street I thought I'd try my luck. He looked like a priest that only exists in the imagination of Waugh or Chesterton, for he had flowing garb and black beret, and when presented with a map he was reluctant to draw on it with a pen. Eventually, we found the street named after Edyty Stein - which the priest had said was close to the Stein house - and finally after much searching we found the house that was actually quite big and obvious. Isn't it always the way? What had complicated things was that I had the address from the time that Wroclaw was still Breslau and German. So I thought I had the right number of the street, but the street could now have been anything. As it turned out, i misremembered the number a bit as well. But anyway, we got there!

As it was Easter Sunday it wasn't open, though Peter said he had seen a man go inside just before and I could see the gate was slightly ajar. The great big wooden door was not however, but i thought I'd give it a go, and happily it opened. Then followed the most bizarre conversation I have ever had. I was met by a kind faced woman who came out into the big cold stone entrance hall and who spoke in what I presume was perfect Polish. Not having any Polish (to speak of!) I began speaking in perfect English. Neither of us could understand a word of the other, but by some strange osmosis (if that is the word for which I search) she offered to let me see round. Peter and Liam followed me round, probably wondering what the hell was happening, but room after room and up winding stairs I was allowed to make my way through Edith Stein's old family home. It is now being used for an exhibition centre and bears the names of hers sisters and mother on their own bedroom doors. I snapped a few quick photographs, touched a piece of furniture or two, and saw the tree out of a window that she may have seen whilst working. I also nearly came a cropper by trying to sit on a new kind of curved desk table to take a photograph, only to find that it didn't have any legs at that particular corner! Anyway, after that I made my thanks, which I could just about do in Polish, I waved goodbye to the woman's two lovely children who had been following her around - one of whom was a redheaded boy who looked decided Irish! - and off we went. As it turned out, we had to return about ten minutes later as i had left Peter's phrase book there, and we were quickly realising that we would be entirely lost without it. The second time the woman was as gracious as the first.

The afternoon and evening was taken up with sightseeing in the Catherdal, meeting up with my friend Ciaran - now resident in Czestochowa - and his English friend Richard, and catching up a bit. Liam and I heard Mass at a Dominican Church that had beautiful, bright and modern stained-glass windows, though both of us were drifting in and out of consciousness due to tiredness by that point. Then we meet up with the drunkards again, and drank a bit ourselves (well, i did). And so to an internet connection and a clean and comfy bed.

Meditating

2006-04-06T11:47:00.000+01:00

MARY: Did you notice the way he looked at me when I sat and listened to him?
MARTHA: Milk it, why don’t you?
MARY: Oh, don’t be like that. Can’t you see what he meant? Here we are cooking and cleaning all day long … so tired and anxious all the time about doing our duty … making sure Lazarus is comfortable and can receive all his Pharisee friends without shame. It really is a miracle how, for we have but little. Well, little compared to the most of them. But our rabbi wasn’t like any of them.
MARTHA: (with sarcasm) Not any of them?
MARY: Oh, be quiet – you know I can’t abide your gibes.
MARTHA: You just make yourself such any easy target. (she laughs, then loses the heart) … I worry about you whenever you’re with him.
MARY: Please Martha, not this again. You know we can’t agree.
MARTHA: That doesn’t mean I’m not right!
MARY: I don’t actually care who’s right anymore. This is how it is. I am who I am.
(Silence.)
MARY: But then you’ve always known about me … even whenever we were young. (Pause.)
MARTHA: Let’s not fight.
MARY: That was my point.
(Silence.)
MARY: But didn’t you see how he looked at me, sitting there by his knees. What must he have thought of me? But I was so … I don’t know … comfortable close to him … there was no timidity in me then; nor any arrogance.
MARTHA: What’s left?
MARY: Peace. I just felt peace. (Pause.) Whenever he said that my sitting there doing nothing was the only thing I needed I suddenly felt myself lifted inside, as if life was all so ridiculously simple all of a sudden.
MARTHA: If it was simple, there would be no need of that other Pharisee of yours.
MARY: Maybe not … but if his simple words are true, why haven’t we heard them before?
MARTHA: You do talk nonsense sometimes. What are you saying? And I don’t see that it was at all fair of him to single you out for praise, whenever I had been running around tending to you and him. I suppose nothing else is needed if you have a servant waiting on you hand and foot. What about my backache? Why don’t I just lie in tomorrow and you can be the one who brings Lazarus his breakfast? I can lie in and really deserve our rabbi’s praise!
MARY: Oh, don’t be like that, sister. (Tickling her) He wasn’t criticising you; you mustn’t think that. It was just some point he was making in the way he has. I’ve heard him many times before. He says the most peculiar things in public … really forthright things, as if completely certain about what he’s saying. The only problem is that the things he says aren’t possible to prove. We have to believe in what the traditions teach; but he says things that seem to come from nowhere. (Pause.) Well, maybe you’re right … for what would happen to our lives if we all wanted to stop and muse as I do. The world would stop! But you didn’t see the look in his eyes, and you didn’t know my feeling, when he said those words.

Writing Couplets

2006-03-24T19:12:00.000Z

we are a couple
because you don’t always
repeat my words
back to me

we don’t cancel each other out

we are equal and opposite
but our lines of action do not
coincide

our union is strong
stronger the more
we are separate

the further away
whilst joined
the more our love
is of moment

newton would like us
for we follow his laws
i remain at rest
unless you act upon me
our love changes depending on the
weight of what each says

to each and every action
we react

ours is not a physical love
but a dynamic situation
in which an object moves
we throw it between ourselves
like an imaginary ball
a delivery that makes us smile
when we catch it

Spring is slowly settling upon the son of man's heart

2006-03-24T17:42:00.000Z

Again I'm not quite sure what it is that I'm here to write, but I sort of know when I should be writing, and it's now. Low with the cold for a few weeks saps the creative juices and I sort of nod my way through the days. But now I'm coming back to myself again, so here I am. I'm beginning to enjoy poetry more. I always liked writing it, conjuring something beautiful that transcended the beauty of the individual words; but now I'm also getting into reading poetry more. I came across this book of poetry that a woman had self-published and had left in a coffee shop for sale. I bought one and was pleased to find a few that were quite good. But more than that, there was a feeling that this person believed in what they were saying, and had taken the pains to produce the well turned out booklet on pure white sheets covered with an original worked up illustration. There was so much white space left free on the sheets, words being used sparingly by the poet, and the whole effect was to pacify. The themes that were touched on were 'big', perhaps this is why so few words were used to treat of them - out of humility for their grandeur. Anyway, it seems a little bit like as I tried to wrap the duvet around me enough to keep out the cold, I was also becoming wrapped up in a moment of faith, faith that the world could be met with something other than hostility, and perhaps even a receptive and understanding placidity of spirit.

I'm also having great fun getting into Little Women by Lousia May Allcott for the first time. I've seen the film and a bit of the earlier one, but have never read the book. It is also a testament to the spiritual (if I can use that word that has been so abused) and I smile as I think of the pure goodness of Beth. I also smile when I think of Jo struggling with the fact that she was not born male, especially when Jo is modelled on the writer herself. What Allcott does is something all great literature should do, which is give wonderful pleasure.

Apart from that I'm a chessaholic. My brother Robert got me started on the internet chess, playing him in a game and now I can have up to six games on the go simultaneously. I'm in nerdy heaven, and being very competitive I am seeing enemies in the undergrowth everwhere. I even have a number rating which I view with a passion as I hope it will make up for my low self esteem!

There's a peace that's over taking me, and I hope it continues. For a while I've been unsettled, but I think my studies are paying off and are giving me some of the answers that I have been looking for. I've a renewed appreciation of the people I am studying, and I can even say that I've worked well this week. just need to read for a while now, which is always my fall down. I'm muchmore interested in what I'm going to say that than anyone else, and this isn't always the healthiest for a what-not wishing to get a job as a you-hoo. People always need you to know stuff, so I'll put down my quill and go back to the page; well, I might just write a poem first.

Longing for the Land

2006-03-16T02:16:00.000Z

Here are the lyrics I set to a piece of traditional music that Fionnuala's sister wrote entitled Longing for the Land. I didn't really do justice to the lovely title or the music, but it's what came out on my listening to it. And the piece of music is so evocative that it really deserves some words. Anyway, these are mine.

Longing for the Land

I
working
together
we would save the hay
and in our joy we’d spend the day

laughing
together
we would pick blossoms
and knew that life could
never hush our love’s softer say

now what i said, i leave you
and what you said, i hold

harvest in that
field of lovers’ joy
didn’t you ever guess
what it was
that i daren’t ever say?

‘i’ll love you
forever,
truly, come what may
my life will support you
gainst the rage of time and tide’

(so i said)
i’ll hold you
together
when we wake in the
beginning of the day
i will be by your side

II
lying
together
we’d talk of the child
of the home we still had to build

trying
together
to solve life’s puzzle
we’d ensure this earth would
ever find our love fulfilled

now what i’ve said, i leave you
and what you said, i hold

whilst sowing seeds
for family of our own
couldn't you ever see
what it was
my words would never say?

'i'll love you
forever
deeply, without a tear
my love will sustain you
and all that we hold dear

(so i said)
i’ll hold you
together
when we lie in the
evening of the day
i will be by your side

III
living
together
we've shared a whole life
and made our loving hearts our home

being
together
we've grown up and old
and wintered out our storms
and kept our course all these years

now all i said, i leave you
and all you said, i hold

soft you Shone
it's dark now you're gone
so i now must speak
what I was
once so afraid to say

‘i’ll lose you
forever
and no amount of
tears will bring you
back to my arms again’

(so i pray)
i’ll hold you
together
when we wake in the
morning of forever
i will be by your side

Like a bad penny

2006-02-23T19:31:00.000Z

I'm a bit busy thesedays, but I felt the need, the need for speed - no, creativity - otherwise known as the blogsuperhighway. My life continues its meandering journey, and I've a few things to declare, but I'll do that with yous face to face. Other than those things, of which the keyboard must not speak, here are the rest of my sins. I've taken up snooker once more with a new friend, Robert, down here in Maynooth. He himself was doing a Phd for a while there, but discontinued it, so now we can play a few frames while discussing the contingency rather than the necessity of the pots going where they are supposed to. Robert's a lovely guy of my age, married, whose wife is a theology student, and who himself has his feet very much placed firmly and squarely on the ground, which is a very useful trait in a snooker player.

One thing I've found out in Maynooth over the last week is, amongst other things, the time and place that a student Irish music group play a traditional session in one of the local pubs - I can't publicise that either, as it's strictly on a nod, nod, wink, wink, need to know basis. But Fionnuala, there is uillean pipe player amongst them. I was playing the 'if I could play any instrument instantly without any effort whatsoever, what would it be' game, and I decided either fiddle or Cello. So I suppose I haven't decided yet. Another find to register was that i found out where the college washing machines are situated - no, I didn't think they would have their own machines either, but evidently ... So no more carrying my rucksack to a costly laundrette and dumping it on their counter with a nod, and a wink, a tap on the nose and a friendly fingerpoint, and then a slow, silent, aristocratic retreat as one's hired help did their servile thing. Nope, back to socialism and soap suds for me. As for the trad. session, it was good craic last week, and Cliona visited last night so I took her there letting on I was a man about Maynooth town and knew these things. I guess by now the sheen will have worn off that veneer, eh Cliona?

My supervisor found an email I had sent her a couple of months ago quite by accident recently. She was meaning to be letting me know what she thought of another piece I had written more recently, and as it turned out she liked the first one especially. So the errant sheet has been salvaged and is now the backbone of my whole thesis - good old twist of fate that puts me on the right track. I suppose no one else will appreciate much of this without more details, details which would probably also be details too many for our present purposes. So, on faith, it was an important moment for my research.

To put a cap on this theme of finding what was previously unfound, or taking up again a previously put down baton, I started to play football again last Friday (soccer to you, Emily). I wasn't as unfit as I thought I'd be and got to see an African seminarian threaten to do something resembling killing a brother student from Palestine. I stood in the middle of the pitch and shouted at people without running too much, doing my best Roy Keane impersonation - you looking at me, sucka? Oh no, that was Mr. T wasn't it?! Anyway, spring just around the corner, but it's still bloody cold here in the Irish plains. By the way, Ms F, don't think I've forgotten about you. I haven't gone away, you know.

My Bloody Valentine

2006-02-14T13:38:00.000Z

Every since I got dumped on St. Valentine's Day a few years ago the occasion has sort of lost its sheen. I had even given the girl a silver bracelet earlier than evening at dinner, which she then proceeded to keep! So I think I had a narrow escape there anyway. Anyway, I'm now sort of against having a day when you're supposed to tell someone you love them, as if anyone should be told when to do that. Keeps the old money-train in greeting cards rolling along ... Bah, humbug!

Last week at the Belle and Sebastian concert it was the best time. If you don't 'know their work', they are a sort of hippy blend of fazed out pop, with the odd foray into cha-cha-cha, followed by a bit of the old hoopla. Get what I mean? On the Valentino theme, at the end the lead singer, Stuart, was taking requests and I couldn't hear what he heard and then decided to do, but the one I was rooting for was played, much to my delight, last of all - 'If you find yourself caught in love', cha cha, say a prayer to the man above, shez sam. And the old dancing shoes came into their own and I followed them by necessity about the floor. But the best moment of the night was the comedy of this big lanky part of the string section who came out to the front microphones, I think of his own accord, to join in the harmonising. He only stayed for one Ah-ha and then left again like 'all my work here is done'! But then he reprised his role, by coming out the next song stagedown once more. There he was all six foot four of him, thin as a pencil, and all of a sudden holding up what seemed like an egg. Then ... sha-cha-sha it went at high harmonious frequency fitting into the song like you wouldn't believe, played with barely controlled seriousness. So, 'if you find yourself out of love, say a prayer to the man above, down tools till another day, go and take a holiday.'

Insights from Simone Weil

2006-02-06T18:46:00.000Z

All sins are attempts to fill voids.

An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.

Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening. Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, "What are you going through?"

The payment of debts is necessary for social order. The non-payment is quite equally necessary for social order. For centuries humanity has oscillated, serenely unaware, between these two contradictory necessities.

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

One cannot imagine St. Francis of Assisi talking about rights.

Purity is the power to contemplate defilement.

Real genius is nothing else but the supernatural virtue of humility in the domain of thought.

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes.

Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link.

For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation.

Whatever debases the intelligence degrades the entire human being.

To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.

Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.

We must prefer real hell to an imaginary paradise.

Marilyn Monroe, not me

2006-02-03T17:03:00.000Z

This is a poem that has been around for you wouldn't believe how long. I still haven't been able to do much with it, but I think this is as much as I can do with it. It's from a night in Belfast when I was sitting in front of my desk avoiding doing Physics. My brother had this picture of Marilyn Monroe that I inherited with his room, which I had thought I would discard for a while. This poem is the result of my decision. If you don't know about her marriages or her films, this will probably not make much sense to you. I said all this about a poem (which I never do) just in case you thought I'd competely lost it this time. I'm sort of exorcising this poem by putting it up here, never to be worked at again ... unless you have any suggestions.

Marilyn Monroe, not me

I take her picture off my windowsill
Now my face reflects where I’m sitting still
A voice from my mind wisely utters the plea
It’s better to say, ‘Marilyn, not me’

But her icon’s gone, there is only me
The eyes of a God reflect in 2-D
A heavenly glass with small paint splashed stars
No sexy posing on Cadillac cars

I hold my desk lamp and play with its light
And write Japanese left-handed at night
Simulate rocking, audience mocking
I sit still and thrill, watch without talking

I’m a ball player, a wink for the girls
I play to madness in a crazy world
Where crowds in my mind cheer any old twitch
Carry the pitcher all over the pitch

But I’m just in drag breaking fingernails
Just digging for dirt and bringing up snails
So I replace her and let her remain
Reflected in me, in my window pane

She picks at my ice, steams up my glasses
Walks on air vents and smells of molasses
Easy to remember, easy to see why
Her face was amidst the stars of the sky

I’ll settle down to rest, if she’ll do the same
My pillow’s a breast, not fortune or fame
I’ll whisper in low, confess that I see,
‘Marilyn Monroe’, happily, not me.

Crazy stuff

2006-02-01T18:54:00.000Z

No more takers for the concert? I've just finished half of my marking, but the whole of one set, so I feel like punching something, probably the air. I've the cold again. No change there. I can't shake bloody bad health, but that's how it crumbles, I suppose, cookiewise. Apart from all this, I'm just stumbling along on my lonely way again, down the only road I've ever known, much like the littlest hobo - or was it Whitesnake?

Are there any books or films that'd you'd really like to see produced, but doubt that they ever will. Here are some of mine ...

1. Everything you ever wanted to know about Woody Allen but were too afraid to ask
2. When I fall in love (comedy inspire by real life events)
3. The meaning of life according to Columbo: Just one more thing
4. World War II - The Bloopers
5. What makes Liam's face so pinchable? (dramatic reconstruction featuring Tom Hanks in the title role)
7. Man United: the story of their relegation (ghost written by Damian Furey)
8. How to speak Dolphin in clickety-click easy lessons
9. How to be religious without hating lots of people (major anthology, edited by Dr. Rev. Ian Paisley, Fantasy Books, The Moon, Never)
9. How to be effortlessly superior at everything and still stay humble (a popular psychology written by me)
10. Square peg in a round hole: the life and loves of Liam McAuley (a romantic comedy starring himself on a desert island, with only a mecanno set for company and conversation; based on his best selling autobiography)

Work avoidance techniques

2006-01-29T14:11:00.000Z

Anybody want to go to see Belle and Sebastian? Francesca is really into them, as well as myself, so we're going north on 7th February to see them in Belfast - at least, I hope I've booked the tickets right over the internet or else I'm in for a kicking from one angry Italiana. I attach the beautiful cover of their recent single, and the band's website address.
http://www.belleandsebastian.com/

Today, I sort of felt like I wanted to write a little, without having anything much particularly to say - no change there, says Liam, chiming in over my ear in the eye of my imagination. Bro Peter (not a monk, you understand; though he is a celibate ...) and Uncle Sean visited Maynooth and my morally ambiguous self last night, as they were going to Leopardstown races today - is that a real town for Leopards? says Francesca over my other ear. They made it down in the mid-afternoon, and Peter and I spent the afternoon watching Sean attempt to do the Telegraph crossword. My dictionary came into its own - I could say yes to the question, 'Would you have such a thing as a dictionary here?' (Good for the ego; I felt more like a student as I handed over my Encarta Student edition, almost a thousand pages by the looks of it; I myself having used it once to check up on the word 'banal'.) We answered a clue with a word that's doesn't exist in any dictionary I have, for I have several and in many tongues, and we are convinced it must be right. Not quite sure what it means though, but it fitted like a pair of leather trousers on a cold day.

Then last night we were off out to the Roost to aperitif, dine, digestivo, notice glittering things along the way, all in the company of the admirable Ann, then off home by the way of all feet. By the way, Piedino is the italian for footsie, Ann informed me mischieviously last night as she sat across the table from Uncle Sean with a certain glint in her eye. Sorry, Ann, one should not bandy a lady's what-not in public, sorry. Anyway, now it's today and they're off, they're away, and here I am in the office on a Sunday trying to drag the old consciousness to order and do some bloody marking. Fate worse than death. I avoid it like the plague. I even went as far as writing a lecture in the process of my avoidance technique today. If I keep this up, I'll have all my notes for the semester done in no time. It was a lecture on Buddhism, which said all is suffering and illusion - so what's the bloody point anyway? I may as well slack off a bit. Maybe start smoking. I think the alcohol's still in my system from last night, not to mention bacon and egg from this morning - always brings out the carnivorous aggressive in me. Rrrrrrrr. Ah well, I can't keep that up for ever. I'll have to put the kettle on and have a nice stirring cup of coffee ... Maybe I'll just prepare another lecture before getting started in earnest on the marking. Or I could whitewash the outside of the house instead ... No, that would be taking things a little far. I'll just get off my demure derriere and get to work, no holds barred, no provaricating, no hedging the issue, no unnecessary hesitation, no dilly-dallying, no kicking along the cobblestones, no feeling-groovy, none of your put off to the morrow stuff, none of that more haste less speed; no, just down to earth, honest to goodness, pure as the driven snow, hard work. Arbeit macht frei! No, that tears it, I'm definitely not doing it now. I'll prepare that lecture on Yoga instead ... now how do you begin the standing on your head ruse? Well, I suppose taking the shoes off would be a good start ...

Overhyped Englishness Full of its Own Virtue

2006-01-27T15:58:00.000Z

I went to the pictures last night to see 'A Cock and Bull Story' with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. They were in it, you understand, not sitting beside me. It was disappointing and I don't recommend it. It was about him and his cronies making a film about Tristram Shandy. None of the story of the novel came across that well, and I know that wasn't meant to be the purpose. It was meant to be about this egotistical man making a film about a novel he's never read just to satisfy his own need for fame, and that that's meant to be a sardonic and critical swipe at himself. If it was the labour party making the movie, the 'message' that they'd want you to get is "what a smart and self-effacing guy setting himself up as the 'cock of all his own jests', and who is so humble that he can even play himself as not very funny and pretty self-obsessed". This intention is the best evidence that Steve Coogan really is the guy he seems to be taking off. Rob Brydon is employed in the film seemingly because he can do a good Steve Coogan impersonation, as well as other funny voices, and it is his sporadic conversations with Coogan that provide the humour that the film does have. At one stage, in a 'behind the scenes' script meeting, Steve Coogan is asked why they are spending a year making this film about 'The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy' anyway, and he says to make something that's funny. He declares that this is enough of a justification if it is very, very funny. Given that criterion, this film was a waste of a year. It'll not kill you to go to see it. It is pleasant in parts. But at the end, I had the feeling that it hadn't really started yet, which I suppose is one thing that it had in common with the Life of Tristram Shandy.

Visiting Poland

2006-01-24T01:16:00.000Z

Lots of people seem to have come down with something, sometimes similar to what I have had over the last week - my cousin Sarah, niece Josephine, friends Fionnuala, Sharon, and I wouldn't put it past Liam to get in on the action. I wish all a speedy recovery. I'm getting there, no sore throat anymore just a lingering temperature which I guess will go in a day or two. The news we happy to report is that Peter, Liam and myself are going to Poland during Easter week, even if Ciarán who is presently there happens to come home. We're not sure if he will yet. If he stays, it'll be us four making our way around the old cities of Poland by car. It will even be good for my research as I'll get to visit Lodz where the Jewish ghetto was, and of course, Auschwitz. These kinds of visits I'll only inflict upon the others for at most a day or so, but they'll have an interest themselves anyway. I'll get to visit the place where the author of these noble words (Etty Hillesum) met her death.

‘… I still suffer from the old complaint. I cannot stop searching for the greatest redeeming formula. For the one word that sums up everything within me, the overflowing and rich sense of life. … I shall wait patiently until the words have grown inside me, the words that proclaim how good and beautiful it is to live in Your world, oh God, despite everything we human beings do to one another.’

27 FEBRUARY, FRIDAY MORNING, 10 O’CLOCK.
'[…] How rash to assert that man shapes his own destiny. All he can do is determine his inner responses. You cannot know another’s inner life from his circumstances. To know that you must know his dreams, his relationships, his moods, his disappointments, his sickness and his death.
Something else about this morning: the perception, very strongly borne in, that despite all the suffering and injustice I cannot hate others. All the appalling things that happen are no mysterious threats from afar, but arise from fellow beings very close to us. That makes these happenings more familiar, then, and not so frightening. The terrifying thing is that systems grow too big for men and hold them in a satanic grip, much as large edifices and spires, created by men’s hands, tower high above us, dominate us, yet may collapse over our heads and bury us.'

3 JULY 1942, FRIDAY EVENING, 8.30.
'Living and dying, sorrow and joy, the blisters on my feet and the jasmine behind the house, the persecution, the unspeakable horrors – it is all one in me and I accept it all as one mighty whole and begin to grasp it better if only for myself, without being able to explain to anyone else how it all hangs together. … And we have to take everything that comes: the bad with the good, which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the bad. But we must begin with ourselves, every day anew.'

‘After this war, two torrents will be unleashed on the world: a torrent of loving –kindness and a torrent of hatred.’ And then I knew: I should take the field against hatred.’

A word from our sponsor

2006-01-22T01:59:00.000Z

Some words of wisdom I got in exams from secondary school pupils.

God wants us to do things out of love, care and happiness not just because it is our duty. (3rd year girl)

That was what tears were made for, for people to cry. God created tears to be used and if your not aloud to use them it hurts them but it most hurts God too as he created each & every one of us. (2nd year girl)

men and wemon are - the same but have difren't bodies (2nd year boy)

There are loads of clogs in a clock. We are the clogs and God is the display. (3rd year boy)

Fighting fit and ready for academic work

2006-01-19T17:07:00.000Z

I have felt lulled and enbalmed, cooed and indulged by you all, but now kicked in the arse by conscience to get back to the cruel but necessary old world again. Of course, I won't quite do that yet. I don't respond well to violence. I resolutely do the other thing. It's a moral position. So now my morality is fighting my conscience and I'm not sure which virulent strain will win. I mean physical problems are hard enough, but when they become metaphysical - 'hello?', as Monica from Friends would say. But for now I'm taking another para(trooper)cetamol to quell the recent disturbance. Today's weather report is 'sore throat still, but going south; painfall in the right ear subsided, leaving sporadic outbursts in the west.' I think I'll just lie down again, and put ... one ... more ... pillow ... there we go.

So enough about me, what about me? Oh no, that's not how it goes? What is it? ... How are ...? No ... I know it begins with a yeu ... no, it's gone. Ah well. I just remembered this dirty joke about a goat. Want to hear it? Aah ... something about a sticky goat, was it? ... no, it was a bitch goat who got stuck somewhere ... ah no ... what was it?! Uhu! That's how it went. Youhoo. No, now I remember - what about youhoo? No wait a minute, I'm getting confused, that wasn't the joke. Who's the silly goat who always gets into sticky situations? Yahoo! Hmmm. These paratroopers seem to be reducing the old grey cells a watt or two. Anyway, what about you? I'm feeling a bit better thanks. Who said that? Who's on first? No, Watts on first, Whos on second. Yes, I think i better put my watts on first and post again later. I'm nearly better.

Sick as a parrot

2006-01-16T16:58:00.000Z

Hi guys and gals, I'm signing on to let you feel sorry for me, one of the finer feelings. I'm sick again only worse. I have a viral infection in my throat and it's painful to swallow, so I've come home to watch old comedy programmes and look pretty eating cooling ice-cream, one of the few things I could manage to get down over the last day. Paracetamol keeps the fever down and the more severe pain away from the door. It's also the reason I have this attitude of universal benevolence as I write. Still you should feel sorry for me. But I suppose it does serve me right for being all pretentious (moi?) about democracy and all. The viri don't like that. Talk to you, in a sexy gravelly voice, again sometime soon. I enclose a picture to give you an idea of the love and affection I'm expecting ...

'The trouble with Socialism is that it would take up too many evenings' - Oscar the grouch

2006-01-09T21:06:00.000Z

Here's an edited rant on the general need for democracy, but not of the flagwaving Bu-shite kind.

The desirability of democracy

People are always in danger from those in power. Politicians mostly treat democracy as some sort of an ideal good, while acting as if people need a lot of guidance on how to be democratic. Most, if not all, are part of a ruling class. Whether a ruling class is based on money, nobility, popularity, or even intelligence does nothing to make it any the more justified.

It is immoral to expect people to maintain law and order, if they all do not have a role in making the law. If people just obey a ruling class with servility, they give up recognising themselves as moral persons. In the kingdoms, aristocracies and military juntas of history, people have been justified in rising up to change the political state and establish a civilised democratic situation. The means by which this was brought about is more of a moral dilemma.

Any other form of government than democracy is political rape, being inflicted on people without their explicit consent. Any political arrangement whatsoever which does not accept the principle of consent is essentially violent, even if the people subject to it have been dulled into political apathy by gluttonness consumerism. Such an arrangement would never result in a peaceful and just society, for there is no justice where people abdicate their responsibility to choose. The freedom to choose is what most distinquishes society as human.

The difficulty with democracy

There is of course an obvious difficulty with democracy in that majority-rule can become a ‘tyranny of the majority’ over minorities, as has been evident in the North. However, there is no reason to assume that minorities would act any differently if they were the ones in power. A tyranny of the minority is no more of a solution. If there is to be law at all and society not exist in a daily civil war, then we have to have some trust in the possibility of a good government, even if there is none actually present at the moment.

If we were to believe that good government was just not possible in practice, then civil war would be preferable to a tyrannical system of government. At least, we would be acting freely, acting in defence of our rights. But we’d often be infringing on the rights of others who hold conscientiously different beliefs. The right of a person to believe and to choose for themselves in life is the principle on which everyone’s rights are based. On a purely pragmatic level, even if we did pursue force to gain our ideals, as well as acting freely we’d also be dying freely. This being far from ideal, it forces us to strive for a good government peacefully for as long as possible for the sake of protecting and respecting the dignity of life.

We should use a genuinely peaceful process to develop a proper government, for creating a just consenus across political divisions is always morally preferable to simply getting your own way. A government must aspire to function with the consent of all, even if dissent is always systematically present, and good besides. An ideal state must allow for the possibility of disagreement, or it is not the ideal. It is one where we allow for the free will and aspirations of others, which are often very different to our own.

The drudgery of democracy

Government should be performed by ordinary human beings just like ourselves, and not any king, general, religious leader, or even some celebrity seen as being in some way special. Decisions and actions are our own individual moral responsibility or else life is robotic and meaningless, and so leaders should not be looked up to as idols to whom we submit our rational consent. They should be recognised to be limited human beings as capable of error as we are.

When the will of the majority is not actually reflected in the result of elections, a leader should be the more humble and cautious. The mismanagement of leaders is not the moral responsibility of a whole nation, but the nation has a responsibility to try to put good people into power and to ensure that power is shared out and is used in ways which people can accept. Liberal democracy operated on the principles of an inclusive utilitarianism is the desirable state. Such a society begins with what all people most need and want, but aspires to serve everyone equitably.

Universal democracy is the political situation worthy of human beings, as anything else does not respect the freedom that each individual possesses. Democracy should be as close as possible to being the expression of the collective will, even when this brings its own problems. These will no longer be problems with the system, but will be the problems associated with human nature itself; among which are the problems of identifying the moral thing, and wanting to do it.

A pupil plea for poetry

2005-12-30T02:40:00.000Z

There must be something good to be done
There must be a good race to be run
For this lesson the teacher’s been giving
Knows nothing of all the graces within.

This doesn’t have to be taut, nor deadpan
It doesn’t even have to rhyme, though it can
It just needs to be beautiful somehow
So let us arise, no longer to bow.

We don’t have to put on airs, nor face
Our words need not be timed, nor encased
They simply flow between your heart and mine
Thus let them be shared, without underline.

Don’t think of me as one you’re to save
Don’t think of how your ‘duty enslaves’
For I want to perform some beautiful good thing
Feeling with good heart the poor freeman sing.

Reason is too cosy in the bed
Is able to see itself bleed red
And says this, still leaving all else unsaid,
‘Just explicate what it is to be dead’.

Beauty, princely kissed, wakes from her grave
‘Resurrect Love! Come out from your cave!’
The Truth lies behind her smile, tear and stare -
With words encapsulate what is not there.

We do not have to rant, nor to rave
Our words need not be mimed, nor engraved
They thrill the air with sweet simple rejoice
So long as we’re spared, and in healthy voice.

This doesn’t have to be bought, nor panned
It doesn’t have to keep time, though it can
We just need to show our beauty somehow
Starting from the blocks, let’s always allow

There must be a good race to be run
There must be something beautiful done
For this message the preacher’s been spinning
Loves nothing of me, only of winning

Home for these holidays

2005-12-20T02:43:00.000Z

I got up early - for me - to pay the oil man after he made his delivery. By the way, I felt like a diary type entry today. Then I spent all day today trying to finish the article I had promised last Friday on the metaphysics of evil - a pretentious title? Moi?! I thought it would take me a couple of hours and then I could get back to bed for some proper kip, but lo and behold if the son of man didn't take till eight o' clock to get it finished. See what I did there with the son of man pseudo-blasphemy. Apparently, the son of man was a typical Jewish way of rather humbly refering to oneself, rather than anything wildly significant christologically. That's still a controversial thesis of course, but one I'm open to. I like to think of Jesus being deferential about himself rather than adopting the Johannine it's-my-way-or-the-highway attitude. But I digress; it took me to eight, that was fitting in a doctor's appointment in between.

I visited my old doctor's partner, as the old doctor thinks I'm a hypocondriac and doesn't even look at me anymore when I walk into her surgery. The partner was much better, treated me much like a real human being and thinks I might have a low level infection in my sinouses from a long time ago that was never picked up on. She thinks it no wonder that I haven't the full quota of energy, not to mention the fact that I can get drunk on 1.4 pints of guinness - well, in fact I didn't mention that last part. Not quite the thing to impress the intellectual classes, that one. If the anti-biotics don't work I may need to get the old sinouses washed out, which sounds curious from the practical point of view. I have to stop the decongestants I've been taking for the last three or four months which her partner - the horse doctor - had told me 'Yeah, just go on taking them'. And the new doctor did it all with a smile and a whizz in about three minutes flat where she also met my eyes on several occasions, even managing a few smiles, establishing both of us as human beings in one fell swoop. She told me not to work too hard - some chance thinks every one else who knows me, who yet fail to apprceiate that Descartes couldn't get up before twelve either - and I feel now that the only way is up, energywise, as Jack Lemmon in 'The Apartment' would say.

So here I am taking it easy in the middle of the night, resisting sleep with the ardour of a benny addict, but just semi-reeling in a sort of Jack Kerouac beat way that I got the article finished even if it was a bit long and 'windy', as is my wont. But nothing soothes the heart and brings balm to the soul like writing, especially writing this stupid nonsense on this blog. It lets the bird of the imagination flap its wings quite ridiculously, and it is just happy to be there and to do it. There, I've tired myself out enough, so now I'll slope off to interlope with a few nymphs into the bejeweled land of make-believe known as dreams, to sleep in tomorrow, as the oil is already in and paid for, and all my washing is done and dried. If you didn't realise it yet, I'm home for these holidays.

And I'm looking forward to seeing you Fionnuala now I'm back, and I'm wishing Barbara well in Milan, Goren well in the Basque, Carlo - thanks for remembering my birthday - well in Ferrara, Francesca well in Turin (there is an Italian theme here), Paul in Sveden (haven't forgotten you, me old spud), Cliona in Dublin if she ever returns from Spain, Ann in St. Catherine's - the place that will live in infamy, right Goren?! - James 'just visiting' Elena in Verona (hey you guys!), Zeljka in Subotica, and Emily wherever she's at just about now. Ciaran (Hanna not Downey), the wild man from Polski, has returned to the motherland and will be interviewed in subsequent days about his adventures teaching English to the yokels - that wasn't meant prejoratively. While Deirdre and her own Ciaran will be tying the knot soon in Rome, how rosemantic! In short, we're all here, there and everywhere, but mostly at home. Even big bro, Robert, and lil sis, Geraldine, are striking out for themselves this year with their own Christmases to make, but meeting up with them and spending time with the rest of the infamly is what the feast of the home and heart is all about. Enjoy yours and don't forget, you forgot my birthday! Should old acquaintance be forgot ... (everybody now).

Christmas is coming, turkeys are getting fat

2005-12-12T16:30:00.000Z

'Christmas is coming, they're cutting down trees' - a Joni Mitchell number quoted in another Nora Ephron movie, 'Sleepless in Seattle'. Always a good one for this time of year to blow away the cobwebs and limber up the lower lip a bit. 'She died. There's no reason, no answer why ... and if we start asking why we'd just go crazy.' One of the best beginnings of a film ever.

So 'this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over. A new one begun.' Good old John Lennon knew how to twist the light back on the interviewer/consumer/fan, and ironic that one of his fans took his life so close to this season. 'War is over ... if you want it, war is over ... now! And so this is Christmas.' There's a lot in that passage alone. There's pain, suffering, there's conflict, and depression; but there's also choice and love, 'if you want it', because 'Love is all you need'.

Ally McBeal once said that she could never marry a Jew if it meant converting as she wouldn't want to give up Christmas. It makes me wonder how they do spend the time waiting for Hanukkah whenever a lot of the world are spending quality family time together. I'm pretty sure Nora Ephron is Jewish herself, though there is the recurring theme of Christmas in her films, and also the New Year celebration. The latter, I suppose, is not so atraditional. Aaron Sorkin of the 'West Wing' and the creators of 'Friends' are Jewish but they always did Christmas well. Better often than the way it is sentimentalised and socialised away from all religious meaning in other series.

'Walking in a winter wonderland.' Snow is such a potent image. It is so beautiful to see it blanketing a landscape with trees and telephone poles piercing through, and yet it chills and freezes its viewer who insists on first-hand knowledge. It conjures up the thought of cosiness within, when it is freezing without; and justifies the analogy of fire with love, for no snowy scene is too cold to walk in for those who are in love. And walking in a winterwonderland with another is tantamount to an avowal of affection, as one could walk in the sun with anyone; but you do not walk with just anyone in the snow. 'Serendipity', the Ephronesque with John Cusack, invokes this to good effect, with a healthy dose of stars and ice for good measure.

Homecomings and goings are what occupy much of the emotional soundtracks of our lives, and especially so at Chrsitmas. Even though 'Love Actually' doesn't actually approach the proper balance of 'When Harry met Sally', being too smaltzy a Christmas film - if we can allow the attribution of a Yiddishism to such a thing, which seems appropriate - but its airport moments make the point. Classic though is Rowan Atkinson's portrayal of what I think is the most unrecognised Angel motive in film history, where he shows up first at the department store taking an age to wrap the cheating husband's gift for his to-be mistress, in its package of lavender and rose petals, admiring the aroma as he conspires to delay the sale. He then shows up mysteriously at the airport towards the end, making the young boy's airport kiss a possibility. Ok, even that was still a bit smaltzy. But you can't be too cynical about these things your whole life.

The motive of the angel brings us along towards the piece de resistance, 'It's aWonderful Life'. Originally sent round as a Christmas story, because no one would buy it for publication, now it has become the second most popular Christmas story of them all. How it never fails to work its magic, and normally it gets seen at this time of year as is of course its right mental and emotional slot. Angels are absent-minded but good-natured just like us, and we're reminded it is not what a man owns that makes him rich in truth. 'No man who has friends will ever be poor.' Good old George Bailey struggling away, putting his family and other people's lives first, trying to better their lot, being left behind on account of his deaf ear, flat feet and reluctance to get into plastic! But whenever he sees the effect he's had around him, knows the people who love him and for whom he wants and needs to live, he realises that it really is a wonderful life, and 'When a bell rings' teacher says 'an angel gets her wings'.

Windswept and Interesting

2005-12-05T17:00:00.000Z

I feel a sense of duty, like the light hand of friendship resting gently on my shoulder, suggesting to me it was high time I added a few words to my online whatever-this-is. November has come and gone and the winter is truly with us. My noisy central heating is my background music and my constant companion during these nights. I see Christmas trees line the one main street of Maynooth and have a sort of pining (get it!) for a Sally to help my Harry drag home a Christmas tree and watch it molt. But living alone, it doesn't seen quite right to go to the expense of killing and buying a tree just for one's own aesthetic pleasure. And as I won't be here for Christmas, there'd be something unusual in me taking the time to dress it. So I pick up on the yuletide what-nots by popping in and out of a shop every now and then, hearing the odd Christmas song. They have enough festivity to go around.

The last time I blogged I was just beginning to come down from the stress of preparing for my evaluation, all creativity being choked out of me by the weight of demand. Now the creative juices are flowing again and hopefully by the end of January I'll have the ideas graciously received and skillfully knocked into shape. What they want to see essentially is evidence that you can research. I just need to give them some.

Today, I just wanted to relate something that I find funny and to share it with you in the hope that you might as well. I think those who know the gentlemen I'm going to speak about, namely our friends Fionnuala and Cliona, may see the humour even more. It involves Peter and Liam.

For the uninitiated Peter and Liam are my brother and good friend respectively, not that my brother isn't also my good friend - well, I don't know, I did beat him up quite badly in my dream last night, as is occasionally necessary from the therapeutic perspective. Anyway, cutting a long story short, they are the Butch Cassidy and Sundance kid of Ballymena, the Morecambe and Wise, the Tom and Jerry, the Bonnie and Clyde, the Dick Dastardly and Muttley, the veritable Laurel and Hardy, of the northern sector of town. Peter comes up with the places to go and the people to see all bright and busytailed, and Liam drives him with the laconic humour of the hen-pecked, long suffering husband. Inevitably about halfway through the night the wheels come off and Peter is seen in headlong search after thrills, spills and those romantic hills, while Liam is playing the wallflower trying to play it cool while unruffling the tie he is wearing which Peter has just scrunched up. Either that or he will be off employing the subtle means of meeting women known as Salsa dancing, which Peter rightly spurns as so much white meat thrown to the naturally bloodthirsty Lion. Neither techniques being successful, the heros return home at the end of their night; Peter dead drunk, Liam dead sober. Liam, thinking that at the very least life owes him some laughs at the end of the hard working week, work-crazed librarian that he is, invokes his standard ruse.
'Peter, is my passport still in the glove compartment, check will you?'
And when Peter approaches just about to the right place, thwack - Liam puts on the hotblower full blast into Peter's face. 'Ah ha, very funny Liam.'
'Peter, is my phone still in the glove compartment, check will you?'
And Peter's face approaches the danger zone once more, to twack - 'Ah ha, very funny Liam.'
'Peter, is there a chocolate bar underneath the glove compartment there?'
'Where?' 'There?' 'Where, Liam?' 'There, look, just there?'
And Peter's head comes in between the crosshairs, and twack! - 'Ah ha, very funny. Right, goodnight.'
So scientific is the study into this phenomenon that third parties can often join in from the back whenever the approach to home is almost complete.'
'Liam, do you know where your passport is at the minute, just in case we do go on that trip?'
'I'm not sure, Stephen, I think it might be in the glove compartment but I'm not too sure; check will you, Peter?' - Twack, blast, very funny, (sometimes curse) and then goodnight.

I suppose sobriety has to have some benefits, Liam, especially if all that Salsa stuff of yours was gone through to no avail. But hopefully, it will pay off before too long for all of us, before Peter begins to develop that Billy Connolly-style 'windswept and interesting' look. Whoever that girl may be for you ... what patience she will need and what pain she will have to endure! But at least if she ever comes to read this she will be able to take comfort in the fact that she is sparing Peter a few humiliating blasts in the face. Then the immediate pleasure of a few discreet slaps and tickles can replace the vicarious pleasure presently derived at at poor Peter's expense. The sooner your Salsa stuff starts paying dividends the better. Are you sure you are doing it right? Check the box.

L'esistenzialisme da Etty Hillesum

2005-11-18T17:34:00.000Z

My progress evaluation looms and that is why I have gone awol from this blog for the last little while. Now that i have the money for the work, i have to justify my project which is hard to do when you are trying to catch up with the reading you should have done already. And now my head hurts ... so I am grateful to my considerate superviosr who has put it back till the end of January. But now that I am getting up to speed with the reading research as opposed to the thinking research, I find that I have more and more thinking research to do all over again. But I'm glad I started with my own perspective and my own thoughts, and now they are been fertilised by those who I choose to read and whose books I touch with a respect that is reverent. But I'm sure you didn't need to hear that; I just needed to say it.

With all this thought I've discovered the need to be physical a little. I constructed a bookshelf when I really couldn't think anymore, which I know still sounds a bit of a nerdily intellectual think to do. But today I had a short game of football, getting a slightly injured knee for my trouble, which brings me back to my body again with a bump. And also bumping into an old friend around the campus, being James, we're just about to hit the pub and talk of times old and new, while I can offer him the guest room - a thing I haven't been able to do for many a year. He's in transit to and fro his supervisor and it was serendipitous that we met as we did. His topic of research has been partially completed already by a group of eight other people woking as a group, so he has to work quickly on the rest of his idea before it gets done as well. He's a geneticist.

Anyway, an extension means I can live and move and have my being a bit more while I distill this drama of love and suffering which I have in my mind and read about in Etty Hillesum's diary until it takes on its own form. Simone Weil says to stay with the ambiguity of a problem until a solution organically presents itself. My problem is that I have the solution, but am not sure what the question is! But little by little I'll discern the way. I've found secondary sources on Etty in Italian, thank God, as Dutch would be out of the question. [Maybe you can give me a hand some summer, Barbara!] Anyway, i have till the end of January, which news alone deserves a pint.

Shakespeare's need for friendship

2005-11-01T17:51:00.000Z

a sonnet from the Bard on the happiness of 'coupling'

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly?
Sweet with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov’st thou that which thou receiv’st not gladly,
Or else receiv’st with pleasure thine annoy?
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,
By unions married, do offend thine ear,
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering;
Resembling sire and child and happy mother,
Who, all in one, one pleasing note do sing:
Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
Sings this to thee, ‘Thou single wilt prove none.’

Good news

2005-10-21T13:22:00.000+01:00

This is what I wrote at the end of April:

'I managed to make a big decision in the last day which has repercussions. I decided not to accept a job in Saudi Arabia that was looking mine for the asking. It would have provided me with enough to finish the PhD comfortably. By staying I risk not being able to manage it, though the probability is still fifty fifty.'

And now I can say that what I would have had by working in Saudi Arabia for the year, that is the financial capability to pay for the rest of my PhD, I can now do without having to have made that compromise. At the start of September my boss in the college allowed me to occupy his house for the price of merely covering the running costs, and now - yessterday - I have heard word that I will receive a full maintenance grant (including fees paid). And I'm delighted. Now I can see the 'way through the woods', so to speak. I got happily drunk in the pub, talking philosophy all evening with a ex-student of mine who is passionate about Heidegger and who had just driven me back from an open lecture in UCD on the problem of evil that we both attended. And there was a fittingness about that being the time that I received my letter, delivered to the pub(!) as it was by my good friend Ann who helped me to celebrate. As Oscar Wilde says 'Anyone can sympathise with the sufferings of a friend, but it takes a very fine nature to sympathise with a friend's success.' So thank God, and now I can work.

Can God exist alongside evil?

2005-10-17T15:49:00.000+01:00

This is a very little snippet of my argument. There's a debate on this question down here on Wednesday. Comments gratefully received.

It is indisputable that there is much real evil in this world. We know this fact. But it is a matter of rational belief whether or not God exists. Therefore a belief about God, whether positive or negative, will be less certain than our knowledge of evil. Therefore the conclusion of this argument in either direction never has quite the same immediacy as the reality of evil. This is why it presents such an emotional obstacle to faith.

If God exists, then either God is unable to stop evil, or else He is unwilling. God cannot be unwilling to stop evil or else He is bad. Therefore God is unable to stop evil. Why? Etty Hillesum believed that God is in some way unable to create a world which is different from the one we find ourselves in. This is not to flatly deny God's providence. It is only to say that, for some very good reason, God must limit himself. Humans do this alot of the time, for example a black belt fighter who is forced to fight must limit the use of his skill. As humans can limit themselves, it would be very strange if a God couldn't. God must be at least capable of doing whatever he has allowed his creatures to do.

But what reason could a God have that would be good enough to allow for all the terrifying evil that exists? The reason must be something that is quite necessary. It wouldn't be good for a God to allow evil, unless there was no alternative that was desirable for Him to choose. But what could that be? It is possible that he could have made it an easier life within an easier world, with fewer diseases and less intense pain; but He didn't allow himself to. He could have created humans who always chose what was good out of pure love. But He couldn't bring himself to do it. Why not?

The simple argument of the Free Will Defence is that, as Chesterton says, 'a man has always been free to ruin himself if he chose', that life is like a blank canvas waiting for people to fill it in through their own choices. God could make all our choices for us, but only at the expense of changing what humanity is. But if God wants to have humanity just as it presently is, free and capable of evil, then he has to allow us to make our mistakes. As Etty Hillesum has put it, 'how good and beautiful it is to live in Your world, oh God, despite everything we human beings do to one another.’ It will be argued that God is ultimately responsible for giving us this ability to choose evil, and is therefore ultimately to blame. This is true. This is not like blaming the father for the sins of the son, because it really is God who has made us free, which is something no parent can do. The only defence of God in this situation is if we actually use that gift of freedom wisely. When we act well God is justified, when we are evil God stands condemned. In this sense God's fate is linked to ours, because the goodness in the world is completely dependent upon us.

But even if this defence can explain something of why God allows human evil, why might He allow such physical pain as exists, with all the indiscriminate suffering of our world that takes no account of the merit of individuals. There doesn't seem to be an easy answer to this question. One point that can be made is that the necessity of the physical universe, it's terrible power and impersonal destructiveness, is in complete contrast with the nature of the moral freedom of the individual. The experience of physical necessity seems necessary for the revelation of our inner freedom over and above experience. Humans are unique in being normally free to choose even against what our genes are 'programmed' to make us do. Without the background of this physical universe, moral freedom does not seem to be possible. Certainly, if it was not possible to die, it would not be possible to murder. And if it is not possible to hurt another in any way, it is not possible meaningfully to choose to please them. Without a universe where good and bad are materially possible, even God cannot be actively good. Again Etty Hillesum proposes that we should accept the reality of life just as it is, and then do what we can about it. She says, 'we have to take everything that comes: the bad with the good, which does not mean we cannot devote our life to curing the bad. But we must begin with ourselves, every day anew.'

These points do not give a definitive conclusion, and it is doubtful whether an answer can be found. But how we choose to respond to reality reveals our attitude to the possibility of finding meaning to life. No-one normally wants loved ones to suffer or die, even if an after-life is believed in. But if it was a choice, as it is, between caring for them with all the future suffering that that implies, or to detach oneself from them anaesthetising oneself as much as possible from that pain, which one would you choose? The reality that is pain and love, or the anodyned illusion that leaves us comfortably numb? If the first is chosen, then love is seen as being in some way 'worth it'. If the second is chosen, what greater evil is there in the world than this indifference? We are left either to choose to accept evil as the cost of the goodness of the life we share with our loved ones, or to give up.

If we have chosen to stay alive, then we must view that the existence of love justifies our acceptance of the reality of evil. Indeed, to love is to become exposed, to open yourself up to trust another. It is at this point of openness that humanity is both most vulnerable and most uniquely human. It is in freely limiting our power to protect ourselves that enables another to get close enough to love us, but also thereby to hurt us. If God strictly controlled everything and allowed no evil, this God could only theoretically be said to be lovable, as no one would be free to love except Him. It is when evil is allowed that we receive the ability to love, but ironically it may seem that God is no longer worthy of our love. But this is not true. If evil is necessary for love, then God cannot destroy one without destroying the other. Indeed, as God is Himself free, and is not 'forced' to love us, then He must also be at least capable of a great deal of evil, even if it is believed in faith that he doesn't exercise this power in reality.

This is not a conclusive proof in favour of the existence of God. It is an argument in favour of the possibility of the existence of God given the reality of evil. The argument is hypothetical. It says: If one chooses to believe that love makes life worth while, then it is not unreasonable to believe in a being who is ultimately responsible for creating that worthwhile life, and who is powerful and good, but who freely limits himself in allowing evil to exist because he loves us just as we are, free and capable of compassionate love.

Ecco mi

2005-10-12T11:40:00.000+01:00

Ecco mi. Here I am, ready to take on the full weight of my vocation. So sounded the voice of Carlo whenever he had to respond to being 'called' in his ordaination ceremony. Like the prophet Samuel, scared that his nerves would reduce his voice to nothing, he belted out his 'Ecco mi' to the profoundest corner of the cavernous cathedral.

He hasn't change a bit, I hope you don't mind me saying so, Carlo, if you are reading. A little less hair ... a little more pinchability in his cheek ... perhaps even a little more confidence in his own competence ... but essentially the same Carlo as the one who bade me farewell those ten years ago. As I was the only one coming by myself he sort of spoiled me, putting me up in the Archbishop's house which houses rooms and rooms of centuries-old works of art. It could have felt like being locked up in an art gallery as in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'. Fionnuala will know what I'm talking about. I spent hours the first full day there just walking around and looking at room after room of paintings. Eventually I came to a square room whose acoustics made it an echo chamber. I discovered this by slowly walking across it and hearing my footsteps magnified as I approached the middle spot. Then my whisper was carried about the room as if by microphone. The wonders of geometrical proportion. It taught me that to be heard one must only deign to step out into the middle of things, and just speak as one normally does. Then Carlo came to show me the bedrrom where the Pope had stayed in 1990 when he visited Ferrara, which made for an affecting moment for me.

But I almost didn't get that far. As our Ryanair plane was approaching Forli it travelled through a horrendous mist, which turned out to be a thunder storm, lightening et al. The pilot tried to descend but we had a shaky shaky experience much like you would see on some disaster movie, before the plane then banked sharply up. We circled Forli for half an hour before the pilot came on to say that we would have to go to Treviso, fecking miles away. It was where David and all of us had stayed in my last visit quirkily, but hardly the place where I would need to go twice. And no way to contact Carlo while in the plane, and when descended no number to ring except his work number. But he managed to pick up my message by calling his work phone, and he then proceeded to sleep for three or four hours, as did the Bishop's driver who had come with him to pick me up. See what I mean, first class treatment for which I didn't even feel guilty. So a three hour bus journey later from Treviso to Forli and I was there and reacquainted with don Carlo again.

His English was better than my Italian, but I just about survived talking with his relations in a smidgeon come splattering come smidgeon of pidgeon Italian. He looked every inch the priest and after the festivities of his ordaination and first mass, we had time to walk and talk around the lovely old cobblestoned Ferrara, the city of bicycles. It seemed an idyllic, slower pace at which to live one's life. I was acquainted for the first time with the wonder of hot chocolate in the morning with Zambucca which a smiling octaganarian sister of the Bishop had made for me. She seemed at least ten years younger than that. She held my cheeks and then gave me a book on why Ferrara is a beautiful city. Later she asked me my age and when I said trenta-due she shook my hand. I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but I think it was something like I had the rest of my life in front of me.

Seeing Carlo so in his place and vocation made me weigh up where I am in relation with mine. I definitely know two things about it - philosophy and now teaching. Philosophy was there first and I thought teaching would get in the way to an extent. But now I would miss something without the teaching. Starting to tutor 'real' philosophy students again, and not just seminarians or social science students who have to be there, reminds me how much I have missed that and the joy reminds me that it's part of who I'm meant to be. But what I sort of finalised over the time away was the importance of writing to me. It allows me to exercise the imagination muscle and flex out the boundaries of me. The need for this blog is enough of a testament to that fact. The plays and poetry are the more serious reflections of my soul, but as I and the world are serious enough, I think it is now time for me to write comedy. Ecco mi.

Leaving on a jet plane

2005-10-05T17:32:00.000+01:00

Ok so I'll not stop writing after all, even though to the naked eye it would appear that here I am deserted on this desert island blog. I've had a message in a bottle offline that there's someone out there, really, listening. As Woody Allen says, the heart is a resilient little muscle, and as all I needed was the merest hint that there was someone listening to my drivel to awaken my sleeping giant, to rehydrate my decaying flesh, to dust off my gathering cobwebs, and to make me pull on my bootlaces, I'll get up and start again. So instead of stopping, I'll write this like there's no tomorrow for all those people who enjoy listening to what I have to say ... a select bunch indeed. And I'll include that person I've never met, who thinks I don't know they're reading, and who never leaves a comment - but I know you're there.

It seems I'm always going somewhere or coming back whenever I blog. Tomorrow, I'm off again to Ferrara in Italy to attend my friend Carlo's ordination. I haven't seen him in just under ten years, though we have talked on the phone in the intervening time a little, the story to be found in the archives, but the gist being I wonder what he'll look like now. Then he was a nineteen year old Italian who had the maturity of someone in his mid-twenties and who was distinguished amongst his nationality in that he was quietly reserved, but otherwise typical in that in himself he had passion and poetry. But enough about that. He collects me at the airport tomorrow and I hope his English and my Italian will cope.

I saw a 'Rocky Road to Dublin' last night at the Irish Film Institute which is a documentary from the sixties by Peter Lennon and photographed by Coutard, the French new wave cameraman. It pictures the state of the south of Ireland at that time from a personal point of view and was a real education for me. It depicts Ireland as a country where the real government was the Church and where the amount of censorship was staggering, as one example. This film, the only Irish film to be made in a period of about thirty years, was turned down by most theatres due to its anti-Irish content. It became championed in French universities after it was closed down along with others at the Cannes Film Festival by Godard in 1968 in solidarity with the students' revolution. It was excellent and we still haven't had the chance to see it on Irish tv. It has got some great moments recorded for posterity, which now become valuable, of how the women used to wait in the tennis club disco for the men to arrive once the pubs closed down for the night! If only it was that easy now, eh Liam?! And it is good to see how similar a session then is to one now. There is a great shot of kids running through a housing estate after the quickly tracking camera - on the back of some lorry - where all of the kids were falling over each other to try to make it on to the big screen, probably not having many tvs amongst them all. I don't think that shot would be possible in the same estate today, where a camera would more often mean tv news after some crime or other.

But the appeals censor whom the filmakers interview, while definitely being old school, comes across as one who is watching and presiding over a changing of the guard. A Trinity student made the best comment that walls don't have to go up for people to protect and value what they have. And so from this I can learn that liberalism isn't the end of values as such but simply the result of them due to their origin in the freedom of individuals. So whatever role the Church may have within a society, it should not be one of force or control, but should be one of religious and moral example. And as a curious connection, Carlo would definitely be this second, my kind of priest.

Beauty Sleep

2005-10-03T19:28:00.000+01:00

(why I need some)

My mind’s complex lucidity
dries up with regularity,
so I ask with sensitivity
‘excuse my nonfluidity!’
My body’s old corporeity
degrades temporarily,
so I say with sensibility
‘postpone all luminousity!’
My heart’s tender ability
is undone without a harmony,
so I require humanity
‘develop musicality!’
My soul’s entire capacity
corrodes to dust unhappily,
so I implore divinity
‘exhaust all creativity!’

Broken Holy Love Poem

2005-09-28T18:39:00.000+01:00

Like birds with broken wings
We approach the other in timidity
Our feathers brushing past
As we communicate about our pains

Sitting still in silence
We imagine St. Francis preaching to us
Of poverty and peace
We rest in pews of white, of fledgling flight

Mother serenity
To whom we’re carrying an innocent trust
Under her brooding wings
We warm her up with our loving embrace

Rainy days and Mondays

2005-09-26T18:53:00.000+01:00

Sitting on a cold and rainy Monday in September in my room in college, where the heat has not been turned on yet for this academic year! Needless to say I'll keep this brief. The central heating has just begun its useful life, and it is to the cosy nook of my house to which I will soon hereby depart. It's the time for colds and other illnesses. I have one, a fact which entertains most of the family, as I'm very prone - not hypochondriacal, but prone I say! We had an early get together for Robert's birthday in his house and got duely sossled, out of pure family loyalty. Liam had to go home from work today sick after drinking a dodgey orange last night; I suspect foul play on Peter's part, probably trying to get the arm around ... And a friend, Shane, has a bad throat infection he's just about getting over.

Having enjoyed my morning shower I descended to be greeted with a puddle in the kitchen, the ceiling winking water at me. No sooner has one workman been, but the services of another are required. I'm glad I'm not paying for it. Though, much against the details of the weather, I'm sunny enough. I'm really glad to have a place to hang my hat and call my home, as a ceratin Paul once sang, a song though I carely avoided on the karaoke circuit on Saturday night's get together. Though I did rock singing David Gray's 'Babylon'. I found a whole new upper range mid-song, which was a bit embarrassing but effective all the same. Then I drank gin and felt like a singing star. Good what these drugs can do. So, after the organic stuff with pasta, it's off into bed and lemsipping it away till unconsciousness. But happy enough with it, so I mustn't be too bad, hypochondria and wet shoes considered.

St. Narcissus strikes again

2005-09-20T18:43:00.000+01:00

Looking in the mirror, trimming down a eyebrow with a finger, and taking the food from between my teeth, here I am again for a brief word. I hope someone is still reading ... I'm just about getting back into a morning time mentality, but it is not without a fight, as the term begins properly. One cause of this is due to the quandary 'why do they put on all the best films on at about 12 o'clock at night?' My habitual keeping of late hours yields under the pressure of necessity, and the human orange becomes clockwork and clockwise once more.

I am now a fully fledged Irish citizen, if there was ever any doubt, as I received my passport to that effect last Thursday. I need it as I prepare for the trip to visit Ferrara, in Italy next month for Carlo's ordination. Due to this, or otherwise, I have begun to think again about my Irishness and about being Northern. When I got it I felt sort of properly Irish, able to vote even, whereas before it was more in the ether or the collective cultural imagination that I was Irish. People in the south do attribute nationality to Northerners, but in a way that seems almost charitable. The situation has moved on so much since the institution of the state that to be a citizen of the south almost puts me a little outside the northern context. So I am reflecting on what identity means to me, and will not make any rash decisions.

Talking about this with Mette, my supervisor, and Ann over a cup of tea last night, raised the idea of ourselves, any northerners who might be reading - that's you Fionnuala - as sort of caught between two stools in terms of our sense of belonging. Not between Britain and Ireland, no-one really feels this too much, I think. But between being Irish and being Northern Irish on the one hand. And on the unionist side, between being British and Northern Irish. Just being Northern Irish by itself doesn't seem to exist, but also I'm not sure it would mean anything in a collective cultural sense. If we are to have any reconciliation in the north, this question of identity has itself to be reconciled satisfactorily. At the moment there is a certain amount of limbo on both sides, but primarily on the unionist, as there doesn't seem any way back to purely British domination, and so something is felt as lost in that community. To get beyond this, a gain must be experienced in that community too, but what is unionism without a union? I am tempted to say that possibly economic relationships can help where political ones have been impossible, but this would be to simplify and artificially treat the essential difficulty of diversity of traditions. So while commercial links can break down some barriers, for example in the working class areas, fundamental hatreds have to be broken down through inspecting the prevailing notions of identity to see what still makes sense and what has to be cut away on both sides.

And doesn't the problem seem as intractable as ever?

The Flowers

2005-09-18T12:49:00.000+01:00

I must go and water the flowers;
You should stay and tend to your weeds.
We’ll meet up, our daily chores done,
And drink lemonade in the summer breeze.

I must go and water the flowers,
Flowers being wont to wane and to wilt.
You should stay amidst blowing trees
And lie for a while at rest and at ease.

I must go and water the flowers -
Blowing, flailing, they bend and kneel -
All will need care and attention;
But you should remain, develop the field.

I must go and water the flowers,
Giving life to things that I touch,
As they need, some little, some much,
A flood, a measure, a tear or some such;

Where are you amidst my labours?
Out of sight, untouched by my aim;
Out to seed, asleep underneath;
How can I still hope to shoulder my pain?

I must go and water the flowers?
I would stay if you would return -
Like a bud, pushing though the frost,
You now could return and make good my loss.

I must go and water the flowers
And not fret that age leaves its rings.
As leaves fade forgotten to pale
On knees I will search for the hidden spring ...

I must go and water the flowers -
Flowers by you; in bloom at your feet.
Looking up, I see by the hour
That it is midday and you are replete.

O Danny Boy

2005-09-18T02:21:00.000+01:00

Today has been the second anniversary of the death of my Great (in every sense) Uncle Dan, my grandmother's brother. So to remember him I thought I'd spend a moment with a few reminiscences. Being the youngest of my grandmother's family of orphans whom she looked after from about the age of twelve, he was also the last to die, having lived through the others' deaths, with Uncle Paddy in Wales preceeding him just by a brief period. From the church school he imbibed a strong hatred of false religion, reacting against the piousness being beaten into him by the teacher. He served in the second world war in Burma and saw enough not to want to discuss it much, contrary to the cliché of the ever reminiscing survivor. He lived in Scotland for many years on his own, eventually returning home to the bossom of his two sisters as they saw out their latter days in each others company. Now he lies with one, a few plots away from the other, my grandmother. His brothers are in the lands they made their home, with their own descendents to mourn them. Though a batchelor, he was always a part of our family, and lived with us in his decling years. Though he had many problems towards the end, it was most likely as a result of the MRSA superbug caught in the hospital that he finally went.

My memory of him is of an incredibly active man who never went a day 'out of circulation', greatly aided as he was by the bikes he would salvage from the council yard, and, if necessary, restore. I think it was from him that I received my first bike this way. He would bring each of us boys fishing one at a time as a sort of rite of passage, and brought us in rods periodically, but his passion never took with any of us. There was never a day that he didn't pop in at least for a few minutes, normally bringing a wheaten or a Ballymena biscuit with him, or a few buns. He had a wicked sense of humour which delighted in riling one of us into exasperation while others felt sorry but laughed anyway. I remember the time he sent me to the butchers whenever we were staying together alone whenever I was a teenager, as the rest of the family were away on holiday together. With great seriousness he sent me there to ask for a chicken leg, but be sure to ask for a left one. Only with the spoken word and the inquiry of the butcher did I realise the set-up and experience the comedy and the exasperation. He was never happy unless there was one person to pick on, and towards the end it was always the one who had the duty of care. Cooking for him became an exercise in patience and a progress towards sainthood as he spotted things to talk about. He knew exactly how a steak should be cooked slowly in the oven, and holy moment if there was nothing found to say about it negatively. But with Dan it was less of a drama and more of a game. And now I know the importance of quality, and appreciating when something is just right.

He used to say that when he won the pools he'd buy a new statue of Mary for the Church in Harryville, even though he didn't attend it. He would say that religion has caused most of the bloodshed in the world, just looking at the wars. He had the rapier wit, and the habit of telling truth just like it is, a gift that children have but lose as they become older and more guarded. American comedies never reached a level of humour to satisfy him. And he liked to sing and especially liked the voice of Karen Carpenter. His array of navy songs were only for the kids whenever my mother had the kitchen door closed. Once he told us about the old women he was stuck with in the residential home towards the end, and of his predicament there. It was so funny the way he described it that we were all laughing, and he looked at me and said 'It's ok for you, I'm dying here', to which - God forgive me - I laughed, but I knew he understood how I meant it. Now his old room is mine, and his picture is in front of me. But he'll have his own back on me one day.

Up to speed on me

2005-09-15T18:53:00.000+01:00

True to my word, and at the request of dozens of my most loyal, imaginary readers, here is the next installment of the great adventure that is the life of the lesser spotted great tit otherwise known by its Latin name Stabilitas Tremulous Epidemicus Phiphiscus Hardibilitas Eventus Nonentitas, which fanciers will often read acronymised. Reqular viewers will recall that the last we heard of our intrepid bird was of its return from Germany to the Irish shores where it seemed to be musing on its next move. Recent reports from the wire allow this reporter to report that the tit was last seen in and around the Maynooth district, much to the chagrin of many bird-fanciers who expected the species to be found among the more northerly regions. Two weeks having elapsed, the sport pundits are laying odds that the tit will be homing north once more this weekend, taking the bus on Friday.

Things have been fine for me as I settled back into my life here around these parts. Indeed in some ways, the story has improved appreciably. I am now living on my own in a house at the discretion and gift of my boss here in the seminary. I have my courses coming together for next week, and the class websites I'm creating will be useful tools for the students and myself. I have my timetable, which now looks ok, and will allow me enough time to study as well. I still haven't heard about my grant from either source which I have applied for it from, but one girl is all you need, so they say. Hopefully, love and financial assistance will find me, preferably not coming one with the other. I need to know the girl really loves me, not just doing it out of a sense of charity! I have not been starved for company. Peter was down for three days, Cliona visited, James has made a couple of visits and Elena and he invited me out for a night, and tonight Ann is coming over for some lovingly-made pasta and a break from her presently heavy workload. I just walk about the house doing different things in each room and realising I can. In the kitchen I cook, in the study I write, in the lounge I lounge, in the bathroom I do lots of things, in the hall I talk on the phone and find things on the floor in the morning, and in the bedroom I do horizontal starjumps on my big fat double more-comfortable-than-anything-since-childhood bed. Life is relatively good, in the short term, spoken advisedly.

The News

2005-09-14T18:16:00.000+01:00

There's always something new happening. With all the trouble in the north and the lack of any leadership to address it from the unionist side we could be back to square one if we're not careful, so new news but old news there I suppose. The massive number of casualties in Iraq today just becomes hard to comprehend. We still hear about and experience the fall out of the fourteen who were killed by the paras on Bloody Sunday over thirty years ago, though grantedly that was all the more shocking as it was state violence, but how must people living in Baghdad even get through the day? Jon Snow says that the United Nations get together in New York is another fudge, so the news there is no new beginning for that institution again. And most news becomes old by this time next week, and then the analysts come out. It is hard to be able to justify keeping a sense of contentment and a sense of humour about life generally through all this, but the alternative is worse, so long as the serious is not downplayed. So hopefully my next installment of this much-awaited regular slot will be a bit gayer, in the old-fashioned sense.

By the way ...

2005-09-05T01:57:00.000+01:00

I just posted 'Softly' as Bob Dylan reminded me of it today with his use of the word 'gently', and I love the poem. I'm not dying or anything.

Softly (A poem for dead people)

2005-09-05T01:53:00.000+01:00

Softly we cry, and so softly I beat
In time with the sorrow, helping us weep;
But is there a need for music so sweet
When sorrow’s worn out, while joy is a sleep?

Don’t despair of me, for death hasn’t won;
Our hearts now broken will always be one.
So take comfort and be soft as a dove;
We will survive by giving-in to love.

Hold on to the hand that crosses your brow,
Please give me your hand, sit down and rest now;
For there is no more that you need to know
Than the certainty of my love aglow.

Do cry for me, you will need a good cry!
For if you do not, I’ll want reasons why.
Cry for a day, then be blue for a year;
After that, I don’t want another tear.

And please comfort me as I will do you:
Let us re-name the universe anew;
Look, there’s uranus and this is my bum,
De dum de dum, de dum de dum dum.

Softly, come softly, don’t trouble the air
With exhausted breath, or out and out stare.
Dry your dear eyes, and let your nerves fall still.
Love the love inside; dispense it at will.

So softly, and gently, welcome that night
Which augurs the season’s change into light.
As my body turns cold, my heart burns anew
Though my soul’s comfort is a torture too

But do not rebel, though rebellion is rife -
Death is to be loved, because it is life;
So soft in my death, be soft in this strife -
Go hard into tackles, but soft into life.

September is coming soon, pining for the moon - Sing a new song

2005-09-03T19:05:00.000+01:00

The body's biorythyms mirror the world's sometimes, and sometimes not. There are times at the moment when 'i can't relate to joy', being the inevitable down after a full and rewarding summer which had so much to take in. I can accept this as part of the ebb and flow of the life i wish to live. So I go like an addict to the music store and the bookshop to dose up on Bob Dylan and P.G. Wodehouse and receive my 'shelter from the storm'. This suggests to me that a certain ring of hell must be defined by those who live for 'pure amusement' alone. There is nothing so soul-destroying as living for yourself and your own leisure. The heart designed to love frustrates itself when it is without an object, which explains why cooking for one seems so unfulfilling, as cooking should be done with love. This reminds me of a Polish nun who was directing our 'small choir' of about a hundred in Taizé, and after a good enough rendition of a song said - now, sing it again with love. Afterwards, she said - now, did you hear the difference? And we did.

So after a summer of the music and landscape of the West of Ireland, the endless photographic scenes of Venice, the emotional moments of Germany, I've received enough and need to go back to giving again. That which I can give anyway. Most people have too much work to do, and a minority have not enough, while a few strike the right balance. Most pitiful of all is the rich Gentleman of old, whom I laugh lovingly at in P.G. Wodehouse's stories, but even Bertie Wooster has a Jeeves to love and be responsive to. The rich person with no life other than their own individual amusement is the most to be pitied, even if s/he be the most fat. So I am ready to go back to the realms of academia, and make another circle in the sand of shifting time, wiped away though it may be with the next lap of the coming tide. Life keeps asking us to try again, like some benevolent teacher who already knows the answer but wants us to get it for ourselves through our own efforts. Time to sing the same song again, this time with love.

The African disease hits home

2005-09-02T20:30:00.000+01:00

The tragedy of New Orleans has brought to America the disaster that is happening daily in Africa, and it is seen as all the more tragic as it is happening to people who, while they were the poor of America, always had enough to survive before now. The staggering facility of George Bush in the face of the crisis is nothing short of the greatest evil of indifference. His holiday continued for two days after the disaster, and only in the last day were more National Guard drafted in. And instead of widescale evacuation, there is draconian policing of dying people. We are witnessing a holocaust of indifference while we watch in our security, for no-one would dare to suggest, surely, that the superpower of America could need our assistance. So what can we do, but watch and read of dead bodies littering streets and new rivers, and of people who wait in a Sports Arena for a slow death or last minute help, as we opine on all forms of media about the irony of the situation? God forgive us all.

Advice

2005-09-01T19:19:00.000+01:00

(a philosopher’s disclaimer)

Take my advice and don’t
Do as I say;
I won’t be able to
Be blamed that way.
Or do do what I say,
Imperfectly though;
Then you’ll be unfit to
Upcast me so.
Or follow completely
Just if you must -
It won’t be my fault if
Formulae bust.

Travelling blind

2005-08-25T15:47:00.000+01:00

I'll not try to record the last few weeks, because for a variety of reasons I'd have to conceal what really happened to the point of lying. Instead, here's a vignette encapsulating something of what I discovered through my travels. We shared about four days with a group of people with disabilities with whom we did various workshops depending on our choice. I chose the 'story theatre' workshop which involved using action to overcome the language barrier. I was a pretty feisty cat at one stage, but my finest hour was waving as a tree in the dramatisation of the healing of the blind man gospel story. A native Canadian flitted around me the tree, she the busy bird. During our getting into the story exercise, we had to entrust ourselves into the care of another, being led around the room with eyes closed. I was paired up with a young German guy called Max who travelled around the large hall at a fair pace, up and down ramps and round corners with confident aplomb. I had to resist the urge to open my eyes on at least three occasions, each moment of resistance becoming a deepening of the trust that I was giving him. I was a bit concerned that I was twice his normal height and that he might forget that. As it turned out, he guided me perfectly.

Most impressively, there was a moment that I will never forget. It involved one of the Polish group, a guy whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell, roughly 'Bezek', who hadn't been paired off yet to do the exercise possibly because of his difficulty controlling his own movements which were jerky and unpredictable. I believe he may have had cerebal palsy. Finally, the leader of the 'theatre' asked Bezek to pair off with him. He closed his eyes and Bezek began to lead the leader around the room. His movements jerked into life and through the seemingly aimless gesticulations his direction became apparent. He pulled the leader with him. Soon, I feared that he was leading him straight into a small brick wall on which the leader would bash his shin. But, like a little miracle, Bezek stopped, went around the other side, and physically forced him away from that direction, just enough to get him past the wall. This continued for the several minutes with Bezek managing, through his own confused movements, to control successfully the path of the leader back to the centre of the group again. Bezek smiled broadly and we clapped. How my preconceptions, so little known to me, were challenged and changed at that moment.

Another of the group who was in a wheelchair had the responsibility for driving around a man called Teo, who had almost no motor activity at all. She would control his chair from the back and, holding on, his chair's motor would take both of them around. But rather than being treated with pity, Teo was treated just like any other person, and during our dramatisation of Hansel and Gretal, Teo played the house who would be cleaned dutifully by the wicked stepmother. And he smiled when it was his turn to be praised. Later, we played Snow White, and I had to tell a girl in a wheelchair that Snow White was a thousand times more beautiful than she would ever be. She semi-smiled with philosophic patience, seeming to know that it was really nothing personal, even though it was a line that had to be translated into two other languages. We gave a performance at a party to close our time together, and as well as Hansel and Gretal, we sang Freres Jacques in four languages.

Other workshops included a Circus, painting, music and sculpture. The day after our workshops we walked to a Way of the Cross. We took turns pushing those in wheelchairs through a forest and about four hours later we arrived and had lunch. In the afternoon, we did the Stations in a specially designed outdoor walk. The most impressive thing for me was the contentment with going slow. I had decided that everyone would naturally want to keep pace with the others, but Max was content to travel slowly, and safely, and reflect upon the way that he would never normally get to see. Normally, this annual pilgrimage to the outdoor Stations had to be done by bus as there wouldn't have been such helpers. From this whole experience, the concluding idea that I personally received was to: slow down and be content to carry my cross.

Funeral of Brother Roger

2005-08-23T17:10:00.000+01:00

Fionnuala and Cliona, here is a link to an archive video of the funeral of Brother Roger. It isn't posted there yet at the time of writing, but i trust it soon will be. There is also an article (in French) on what the pope had to say about him last Wednesday after receiving the news. Take care. This is also for Zeljka, if she can access my site.

http://www.ktotv.com/video_data.php3?numero=1052

Sleepy-eyed

2005-08-22T12:14:00.000+01:00

Exhausted. Here we are the day after the big day and struggling to stay awake. We had a ridiculous amount of trouble last night getting sorted out with a section of a multistorey car park's floor to sleep on. We were in a little alcove but were forced to move out into the middle of the floor. When we returned from having a drink, we saw that the massive section we were in was deserted apart from us, Italians having filled up the section next door, and that all the discussion about where we should sleep was completely unnecessary. I didn't get any sleep anyway, and now we're just filling time till we can sleep on the plane. I hope all are well, and I hope to be in touch individually soon after our return.

Brother Roger's passing

2005-08-17T17:12:00.000+01:00

Such terrible news greeted us as we reached Cologne Cathedral today, that Brother Roger of Taize had been killed last night by a woman during evening prayer. Such impossible news can only be disbelieved for so long, before it has to sink in. How could anyone have any hatred for such a man of peace, prayer and God? Of course there is no way, and the person who did it must have been ill. We were at the Cathedral for our scheduled pilgrimage and tour, but I no longer felt like seeing the beauty within. As I toured inside, groups from various countries sat around in silent circles, or listened to the serious speech of one solemn leader. People kneeled at the huge cross and prayed silently, one with a hankerchief in her hand. Outside, the normal fever pitch of these days had dulled down to merely sporadic moments of singing, and Taize music filled the air for the pilgrims who walked along their way to the Cathedral.
It was three years ago that I had experience of Brother Roger speaking with such soft tones into the hushed Taize atmosphere, speaking with such a tenderness that could give the impression that he was side by side with Jesus. He talked of love, unity, peace amongst people and the peace of God. His prayer was one of simplicity and profundity, silence, song and the word of God. It was easy for young people to love him, hungry as they are for sincerity in a world of soundbites and selfishness.

Hoching the Aachen, tchusttt.

2005-08-11T13:51:00.000+01:00

We're in Aachen fitting in a bit of blogmeistering into the very full schedule organised for us by the sterotypically accurate efficient Germans. The flight for Liam was an experience of 'Kann ich hier sheiBein, bitte?' on the plane, at least for the first ten minutes, as it was his first flight. I resisted using any sort of virgin analogy in that last sentence, as I don't do things like that anymore. The experience so far has been a very rich one. The travel was quite short, although the short periods of walking felt long with a ridiculously overpacked rucksack on my back. I had a sore back one day, and a sore knee the next. The first new morning in Aachen I trashed everything I had worn the day before, including my shoes, in disgust and the hope that my load would be lightened. I found it therapeutic spiritually!

We came through Liege on the way from Brussels to Aachen, as in Liege the majority of our group will remain for the most of this week. Liam, myself, a guy called Brian and a girl Breda - both Corconians - followed the laid back lead of our Jesuit meister Fr. Leon, soon to be dubbed by Liam our Siesta Leon. As we speak he's testing the quality of Liam's lie-low, which I could have told him was very comfortable. Liam took pity on me on the first night as I was padding Peter's roll mat with my own clothes to try to ease the back. Then the shining, though unshaven, dark knight weighed in with 'give me that here, son; you take mine'. No greater love has a man than ... . Liege was quite ordinary and run down, though the Church of St. Paul was nice, whereas Aachen is quite lovely and the Octagonal Cathedral just incredible. Some of the others in Liege are trekking about 15 - 20 kilometres per day, so I'm glad I'm not there. I needed a few days to get my breath and health back after Italy. It was so low that I had decided to eat meat again, also realising the limitations that would prevail on the arrangements. However the food in Aachen has been really first class. But I realise now, comparing my reactions to all others, that I've let myself go too low and will now give up any hope of vegetarianism for good. I can't seem to take enough care about my diet to balance it properly. So I'm a reluctant meat-eater from now on. I suppose that's one thing I've learnt about myself on this pilgrimage.

Liam is a hit with all the girls. He wears the aftershave I got him for his thirtieth birthday and all the eastern european girls, not to mention our own Breda, literally sniff around him all the time. I have a photo to prove it, and he just looks at me and then raises his eyes and hands to heaven in thanksgiving. One of then wanted to take him his tea, but he had nipped to the loo, so he missed out on that one. Brian shone a light in his eyes as he was dropping off to sleep on Tuesday night, and Liam for a second thought that he had entered heaven. Then he saw a room of males and dropped back off to sleep again.

The experience with the handicapped people has been amazing. But that calls for a new entry, so hopefully I'll do the same again tomorrow, or sometime soon. I hope someone is reading this. It'll be my jotting journal anyway. Bye for now. Bis Später.

Mooooourning

2005-08-08T06:22:00.000+01:00

Here we are standing in the early morn in Dublin airport, Liam drinking coffee at my ear tying to stay awake. It's actually tea, he chimes in. I'm going to try to chroncile this German aventure of the World Youth Day, dedicated to Fionnuala who is not with us this time. After a short night's sleep in the peace centre we're here trying to be civil at an ungodly hour. But at least we won't have to do the daily trekking each day, as we're off to Aachen in the first week to work with people with special needs. I'll weigh in later hopefully.

From Clare to Here

2005-07-22T01:13:00.000+01:00

It's a long, long way from Clare to here, it's a long, long way, and it gets further day by day, it's a long, long way from Clare to here. Tell that to Liam, as he did all the driving. We've had our excursion all around the fair isle of Eireann, or Ireland to the foreigners, and the blood is just about coming back into my nether regions, just around the corner of my hip. I suggested we go down to Clare and this intuition was confirmed for the inspiration that it was whenever a waitress in Belleek, Fermanagh, asked us where we were thinking of going. She asked this as I was wearing my pink top and plaid suncap doing my best to look like an American tourist. I said we were like just coasting man, catching the admiration in her eye as I spoke these words, and she said she had been in Ennis, Clare, a while before and she had thought it lovely. Good enough for me, words from heaven straight from the horses mouth - if the waitress would forgive such an analogy - and off to Clare we were. By the time we got there we had seen some of the rocky Ox mountains in Sligo and visited Cong, of The Quiet Man fame. Liam did his best John Wayne impression by remaining silent most of the time. Peter was just glad to get back in the car out of the mid-afternoon sun. Onwards and southwards and by jimminy if it wasn't Ennis before we knew where we were, just a mere 10 hours after our leaving of Baile Menach, or Ballymena to the English in the audience. Liam was sad to stop, but I said no, enough's enough, and practically had to force him to stop ... hitting me.

I did my thing with the Spanish receptionist of the Hotel California and before we had decided whom she liked best she had shown us to our hostel quarters in a room with several other nationalities. We seized the moment for international cultural exchange by popping off for a wee siesta, uniting an irish word and a Spanish word in a blessed action. We horserode the next morning, me getting the right pony as always! Peter's one didn't want him to fall off so it provided him with a back the size of a sofa to sit on. Liam's was male and didn't take orders well. Liam had his little boy lost look, the boy that Santa Claus forgot, the boy with a sore thumb that no one could ever kiss better, and the horse duly threw Liam's head against a leafy branch on the way down a stoney path. He held on for dear life, but at least this time the safety hat he was wearing fitted him. There was that time last year in Carlingford ... but that's another story. Thank God I didn't kill him then ... it was close. This time he stayed on the vehicle of choice.

We spent a few nights cruising the local bars looking for the best Irish music, and I had the pleasure of a number of moments of solitude as the dynamic duo left me to go outside to smoke de temps en temps, much in a sophisticated continental sort of way. Then on up through The Burren in Clare, through the wonder that is Connemara, and settling, for a night, in Ballyshannon. We had intended to go up as far as Carndonagh, but Liam got to Castlebar, took a look at where Carndonagh was on the map and began to cry. A waitress in a pub in Castlebar came over and maternally gave him and me extra coffee and we looked at her like lambs who had just been rounded up. But by Ballyshannon we were back in the saddle again, ready to kiss or fight dependent on the sex. I put up the tent, Peter put the tea on, both the liquid and solid varieties, by gas, and Liam was given a well earned rest. He complained at a three year old child who threw a rock at his car; he was happy. Some more alone time for me in the pub ensued and then we played hard to get for five nice girls who joined our table, but one. They didn't understand our game and hardly got us. Then we went to Glencolmcille up around the coast of Dun na Gall, or Donegal for everyone I know, and we were allowed to pitch our tent behind a hotel. They also let us recharge our phones. We paid them back by getting horribly drunk, except the driver. We listened to a lovely couple playing songs, who seemed married - we look out for these things - and who sat with us at the interval. During the second half they sang 'From Clare to Here', Liam looked at me, I looked at him, and I felt his pain. But their consideration made up for his efforts and he's thinking of retiring there any day now.

We got home and I went into an oxygen tent for a night to get over the smokey ride we'd been on, smoke machines copyright of P and L. Ash actually flew into my mouth at one stage! So there it is, we're still alive after travelling the country and falling in love with three girls each as per normal. None of them stuck, so we kept on our merry way, loosening our load, easying our road, can't re-mem-ber the rest ... But the road took us away and brought us home again. What more can you want? But the scenery was awefull, spelt appropriately, but tonight it is my bed that seems wonderful tonight.

We'll get there in the end

2005-07-06T17:09:00.000+01:00

Hi I was just in mid flow there and the computer went on the blink, so, in Mother Teresian form, I'll take that as a sign from God that I shouldn't go on about certain things in public! So here I am in holy solitude at home while my parents are away for a few days and Peter works. Buffy and I are having a race to see who can be the more laconic. She's just about winning by a drooping head. It was Peter's and my father's birthday on Friday and Sunday repectively. On Friday, Liam and I took Peter out for a pizza nearby, and then on to see 'War of the Worlds' which was universally panned, by us three. And then for a drink. We had a barbeque on Sunday as a joint celebration, with new gazebo and second barbeque et al. It promptly rained, but faired off a bit before the time of eating and digesting.

It is soon to be the twelfth week, when all good men come to the aid either of the party! or of a trip out of the province, which is our case, and we're off to the west of Ireland sometime around then, at least for a few days. The yearly intimidation gets under way, and we once again know our place. But one ray of hope is that the orangemen in Derry came to an agreement with the local residents and can march without fear of conflict. Hopefully, the example might be repeated elsewhere, of what dialogue can accomplish. But all the same, it seems along way to go to imagine the twelfth being carried out in a way which isn't triumphalistic, but simply cultural. The very drums announce we beat you, we beat you, we can beat you.

Independence day saw Bush go on about the War and how apparently there is only one outcome acceptable ... victory, just in case we were in any doubt. And the supporters cheered like cheerleaders at a high school basketball match where all the kids have to pray for winners. It doesn't matter how many dirty commies we have to kill, so long as we win and protect our own native soil from the onset of the evil empire ... oh no that was another war, wasn't it? Tell that to those killed in the 'precision' bombing. And once again bringing up September the eleventh. As if one act of mad genocide justifies any imaginable action now in any country whatever. And on to the G8 to talk down Kyoto, smile nervously while talking about protecting the american economy while millions starve in Africa and Asia and S. America, and end with God bless America, wherever you are. I watched a documentary on Robert Kennedy last night. What price wouldn't be paid for another Kennedy in the White House? The world needs one now.

I'm feeling very frustrated just now. I think I have to take up either political activism or else boxing, but my nose has already been broken once, so I better take up the boxing! Hopefully, the Live 8 will inspire more of the young to become involved in some small way. When Mandela spoke in Johannesburg it felt, but not completely convincingly so, that our generation could do something comparable or even more important than the sixties generation. But they really believed it then, and we need to have that belief as well now, just as Bob Geldof himself did show on Saturday. It's just a matter of finding that little - or even great - thing that only you can do, and to do it co-operatively. A nice motto i heard once was 'We'll get there in the end'.