Shorter than me

Tag: photography

  • 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.

  • 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.