Failte!

I'm excited to share my adventures with all of you! I want your first taste of my life in Ireland to be this poem that I wrote very late one night when I was a Junior in College. Its meaning seems eerily prophetic now. More than anything, I've created this blog to make the actualization of this life-long dream of mine visible to those I love: my friends who are my foundation, my endlessly supportive family, my mentors and co-workers who inspire me, and my former students who have given me enough satisfaction and fulfillment to last two lifetimes... Have the courage to believe that your wildest dreams can come true.

Is fhearr fheuchainn na bhith san duil, (It is better to try than to hope)

e
Mourn (A Seaside Peak in Southern Ireland)

The dark, earthen sod saturates her fair feet,
but briefly since she frolics fast in knee high
blades of greenest grass that blow dizzily in the Celtic-sea air.

Her wool skirt, stiffened by ware of evenings past
is splashed by cresting waves that break
against a beach blacker than her hair.
Those once stiffer fibers were loosed by nights upon nights
of hanging perfectly on his line before being wildly blown dry
by the crisp Hibernian salt air.

The pair sits to rest a while instead of dodging
breakers or skipping paler stones.

"Indian summer's here," he says softly,
but all of summer here feels like the edge
of autumn to her, even though she grins in agreement
as she dangles her pale, soft feet off Achilles' peak,
where Erin's vermillion-gold sky meets
an ocean that is grey with years.

She sleeps with her eyes closed tight most nights.
He asks her if she believes in Tier-Nan-Og,
and she asks him if he believes in anything eternal.
Outside the tide is rising, or it's receding—
She never can tell but for the strengthened smell of
salty freshness strained through his light, lace curtains.
She thinks to herself that he is like trying to hold the sea 
and she imagines the water running between her fingers--
clenched so tight.

And so, the night calls her out of her sleeping,
like daytime chides her into dreaming.
She slips her white fingers through the holes of an old loose scarf
that affords her more company than warmth
on these newborn autumn evenings. She is off-- 
Night clouds reflect emerald from land to sea,
And the tara that she never eyes from long hours of
staring too far into star blanketed skies,
feels cool against the thickening pads of her pallid feet.

Elisabeth Lewis (2005)

10 October 2011

Love + Digging up the Past

I don't want to do this right now, but I feel like I have to. I'm compelled. This is what composers and [real] playwrights must feel like. I've become some deranged Carrie Bradshaw or something--except for the cigarettes and the friends and the sex-- so I'm a poor man's Carrie Bradshaw, just talking into my computer and asking no one rhetorical questions about love and relationships as I gaze out my apartment window in a quirky outfit.The truth is, I was quite enjoying my article on spacial representation in Iron Age houses on the Orkney Islands. Did you know 80% of them have a Northwest/Southeast axis? I smell a cosmology reveal coming....
Anyway, "Today I got to thinking about relationship baggage," that is... all we carry with us from the past into the present. Reasons are two-fold:
Reason 1:  I'm reading The Path to Love* by Deepak Chopra. I bought it off an old lady for 2 euro, and if you know me, you know I scrounge for spiritual guidance lit like an addict. It's sort of embarrassing to read this sort of thing, I know. When I was eating lunch at school on Friday, I hid the cover from my German friend, Indra, because I figured her uber-rational people wouldn't get my people [Carrborites = earthy, yoga-practicing, spiritual enlightenment seekers]. Anyway, I burned through this 350 page book in a week. I'm pretty sure Deepak is the only person I could actually be in a relationship with. He just gets my desperate need for control and acceptance, which I appreciate.
He harps on two major points, the first being that love isn't earned, it just is, and we all deserve it, so our constant desire to be smart enough or beautiful enough or successful enough to attract a certain person is null because it's our birthright to experience the most complete love this planet has to offer:  Romantic Partnership! The only relationship that can bring us to spiritual ecstasy. The second thing Deepak really focuses on is fear. 1 John 4:18 tells us that "There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts our fear." Deepak tells us this too. While I think John was reminding us that Jesus's death took away the need to be fearful in order to properly worship, Deepak cautions us about bringing old fears into new relationships. He continues explaining that our universal desperate desire for love as adults comes from a need for healing of our past, so we are all drawn to something about our beloved that will heal an old wound or repair a loss from our childhood or adolescence. [My sister and I skyped about this last weekend!] So herein lies my question: Either we check our baggage at the door because in love there is no fear, and there is no need to carry the hurt anymore OR we come-a-load-bearing, knowing that real love will relieve us of the burden. Which is it? I need help!

Reason 2: I found this song today. Dela says that it is neither my tattoos, nor vintage clothing that first give me away as a Carrboro Hipster, but my awful taste in music. But Florence says everything I feel!
This is Florence + The Machine singing Shake it Out.

It sure is hard to dance with a devil on your back. I think that being able to let go of the past might be my biggest road block to happiness in the future. Funny that I am now building my life and career out of "digging up the past." My career is in "Ruins!" Haha, oh... I kill me. But seriously, it seems to be a real obsession of mine, but one that I think I might just be able to shake off. Perhaps I will next weekend in a little pagan earth dance around one of the megalithic stone circles I'm writing about? I'll let you know how it goes! But I'm ready to leave it all behind me. So if there are readers out there who feel as though I have held on to some hurt in my past or mistake in yours... forgive me?
[John taught me that last part is a question and not a statement]

Shake It Out
by Florence Welch

Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues strong
It's always darkest before the dawn

And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around

And our love is pastured such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues strong
But it's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaah
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh woaaaah

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
Cause I like to keep my issues strong

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh woah

And given half the chance would I take any of it back?
It's a fine romance but it's left me so empty
It's always darkest before the dawn

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my rope
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark and right at my throat
Cause looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Looking for heaven, for the devil in me
Well what the hell, I'm gonna let it happen to me

Postcards to those who find TWO of the allusions in the text. Why isn't anyone competing for postcards anymore?!

* I recommend this so HIGHLY for anyone in a relationship--marriage or dating! I've already plugged it to friends and family. Great Read!
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1 comment:

  1. Samantha Jane12 October, 2011 00:08

    I want a postcard.

    Pound of Flesh = MoV, by the bard himself
    A Fine Romance = Fred Astaire at his snarkiest

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