Shorter than me

Tag: nature

  • Made in Dublin: semblance

    Last week, at dusk, on the Llangynidr Moors, the view of Llangorse Lake seemed like a semblance of a dream.  Its ancient sunset sauntered over the horizon and into eternity. 

    It’s beauty reminiscent of a memory from before.

    The mystery of it all, is that it was made so beautiful:  it didn’t have to be so symmetrical, and so pleasing to look at.

    Sometimes, it’s easier to remember the purest of all loves.  We are alive right now, and this feeling is joy. 

    All is thank you.

    You remember not why, or how, but when. 

    When the songbirds bathe before sundown, and the river otters prepare their food.  Foxes and owls, respond to the light of the salmon-coloured sunset, and they too are nostalgic for their dreams.

    When at other times, on the Llangynidr Moors, looking over at LLangorse Lake, the view is obliterated by clouds so low down, that they feel like fog.  When even the Anfanc, from the deep waters of the lake, is too tired to move.  When the Anfanc growls and scowls it does so with vanity and pointlessness and greed!  Its ugliness terrorises the twilight, until it sinks to the bottom of the lake again.

    When it’s all rain and no view at all, the density and magnitude of the time makes us afraid and sad.

    Sometimes, looking at Llangorse Lake from the Llangynidr Moors, we see where the magic lives and how the mystery is yet part of the medicine.  The softness whispers to us that the earth is here to hold us.  A fox makes a cradle from the ground, and as he turns to the earth to rest, he is a guardian of the soil.  Waiting for him to wake again, and letting the world be marvellously unfixable, as it drifts between day and night, dusk and sunset.

  • Made in Dublin: sun of spring

    The sun shone again in Dublin.

    There was a time, in February, when the sun didn’t shine for 11 whole days. 

    Met Éireann kept a day count of how long it had been without the sight of sun rays, and everyone collectively sighed.  Most Dubliners didn’t even notice for a week, such is the greyness of winter, in this city. 

    But as a longer time came, people felt ill at ease.

    The lack of light, and endless dense foggy cloud made the Dubliners less chirpy and less able to demonstrate the famous craic agus resilience.  But the sun did come back, and now all the daffodils are sitting up straight, while the birds busily make their nests and there’s enough heat in the day, for the humans to go about their business.

    In Dublin, at the first sight of the spring sun, it’s common for people to throw off their clothing, as though following an ancient form of ritual.

    “I have no need for these hats, scarves, gloves and other garments,” those people say.  “Indeed, I have no need for socks or tights, or long-sleeved tops!  Let me celebrate the sun by wearing shorts and t.shirts and opened toed shoes!  I AM SPRING”.

    Watch them standing tall like the daffodils, the people, in the sunshine.

    Others have come back to the city:  the short-term tourists, and the English language students, and the swallows.  You see the students with their bewildered expressions and matching language school rucksacks.  They have no more interest in learning the language than the man in the moon, but they like shopping at Penny’s and kissing people from other schools.  They complain about Irish food and the weather.  Their exhausted looking, anxious teachers chaperone them around the streets and try telling them about the Irish revolution, Molly Malone and Bono.  

    The students are not interested in this content, currently.

    If the students come from the Mediterranean, they struggle all the more when they see Dubliners walking down O’Connell Street without much clothing. They take photos of the anomaly to show friends and family back home.  They caption the photo with the phrase:  just look at them!

    Meanwhile some daffodils came up too soon this year:  they popped up out of the ground in the first week of January, and now they are all gone.  They were frozen over in January or blown away in February.  But the spring daffs, the ones that waited for the sun, they are the ones on full display now.  The patient ones, the ones with an end game. 

    The daffodils are of no use to birds or the pollinators, but they make the humans happy.  Humans love how the flowers reflect the sun, and nod their heads, and respond to light.

    The daffodils reply, “look at us!  Here we are again!  Aren’t we beautiful and a little bit divine!  Admire us please!”

    Meanwhile, the sun watches over it all again, another hustle spring, another season of growth.

    Everything is waking up again.

    And in the quiet of spring, the sun replies, “it was always me”. 

    This is the way that it is.

  • Iridescent scattered reflections

    Did you see our rainbow cloud? 

    On the day before the shortest day of the year.  When we went sea swimming at sunrise.  We went into the darkest and deepest part of the water, that was so cold we couldn’t even feel how cold it was, for the first few moments.

    That was the day after we saw Robert de Niro in the doorway of Boots.  We laughed about it after dinner, and we pretended to be serious people.

    Later, when we saw the nacreous clouds, we didn’t realise that we were looking straight at tiny ice particles of reflected light, high above in the stratosphere.  We just called them rainbow clouds and we enjoyed them from the sea.

    Of course, it wasn’t really Robert de Niro standing in the doorway of Boots.  Just someone who looked like him on one of those grey cloud days, that make you sigh. When the streetlights need to stay on all the time, and 2 o’clock feels like 9.

    What time is it now, you wonder?

    The day clock on the windowsill tells you it’s Tuesday.

    He was wearing a long cloak, like a cape.

    Earlier that day, before seeing the nacreous clouds, with their iridescent scattered reflections, I spent time with an angry woman.  The type of woman who keeps her snakes of contradictions and unkind prejudices in a basket that she carries under her arm.  The everlasting greyness was making her angrier, more frightening because it was real.

    Hey Bob, I wanted to say, nonchalantly.  Are you here researching a role?  But now Eurythmics is playing, and the unmistakable voice of Annie Lennox disturbs your thoughts, so you don’t ask Bob anything at all.

    Sometimes at this time of year, Dublin looks like steam is coming out of it. 

    The early mist evaporates back into clouds and the sky is enchanting.  The bus into town drives past Glasnevin cemetery, where it’s hard not to think of the dead, as more than a million of them, are buried there.

    I don’t mind getting messages, signs, and musings from them.

    Let your prejudices lie back in the field, don’t hold them close.

    What if you’re wrong, have you thought about that?

    Don’t spend too much time talking to me, enjoy the rainbow clouds.

    But before Robert de Niro, and the boat ride home, and watching the ballet, and that everlasting tango between the sun and the moon, some gentle hours passed.  Not even nacreous clouds can change that.

    All the people were laughing so much, so much that we felt like we were waking up from a nap all the time.  Now the scene changes and we’re moving up the mountain so slowly and using all our might.  We’re walking against the wind, and except now it’s the stairs, not a hill.  Why are we carrying a torch inside?

    Did we forget the light?

    No, says the nice girl who comes to visit sometimes.  We saw the rainbow clouds and they are so beautiful and serene. 

    She says, the rainbow clouds will guide us, through time and days in this room; through it all.