Diary of an Irish Summer: Reflections on the Final Act.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT TODAY’S PIECE WITH A COFFEE ☕️

REVOLUT DONATIONS to 085 1214347

Upgrade your subscription to paid by clicking below.

I’m conscious of a pause in me. A peaceful hesitation that has lasted the summer. The chores and music of the season have hummed along to the rhythm of this lay-by lullaby—a pause neither ignored nor examined too deeply.

With the arrival of August, summer is over in my mind’s eye—whatever pleasant winds or rains lie in store. Most evenings, the mirror reflects back a proposition for my consideration: This play of life has elbow room and sufficient vitality for a final, determined act—and that will be it. So, make the most of it.

Ripples of movement begin to stir within, though. Rehearsing lines of a script unknown to me. I’ll be in motion soon, refreshed and somewhat certain work has been completed—despite the lack of evidence, intermittent sleeping patterns and over-thinking at two in the morning. It seems a fool’s errand to fret too much so best just amble on stage walking from the hips instead of the lips and get on with fucking things.

Earlier, sheets of lightning illuminated the dark morning sky along with misty but heavy rain. An unusual scene. The car chugged along between hedgerows indifferent to the shift towards autumn. Green grass growth is still abundant on both sides of the country laneways but patches of withering yellows and decaying browns spot the lushness here and there—as the heads of some tall grasses, nettles and dock leaves drift towards gentle sleep.

The home-house is empty all week and I potter about in the strangeness. Looking in dusty cupboards and cabinet presses for evidence of childhood pieces of me I’ve casually forgotten over the years. Or a hidden trap-door between the bathroom and Uncle John’s bedroom where I might have fallen and damaged myself. But, I can’t find it. The house sits with itself comfortably in silence and so do I. On clear nights the moon traces a path over the trees on Clashaganny road and follows the curve of the road. I wait up for it at the kitchen table and turn off the lights. Then follow its graceful glide across the darkness until it lands above Myles Cruise’s place. Then, just let it go in case I quietly smoke myself to sleep. Once more, an oath is made to give them up one day but it’s a promise uncertain of whether it’s the fags or the moon I’m talking about.

These lands and this townland within the village were once stocked with a people comfortable at the extremities. A century and a half ago the same moon smiled down on homesteads packed with litters of eights and tens and twelve alongside a healthy dose of bachelors. Ribbon-men all, of course. A learning from the school house across the road.

“ Ah, the Carrowreaghs’ were mighty faction-fighters but the drink let ye down “ she used to occasionally warn during forays into local history.

Nevertheless, we all stood a little taller come lunch-time. In layman’s terms a Ribbon-man was a poor Catholic partial to a little oath-taking in the dead of night, railing against high tithes, landlord evictions and if there was clenched fist to spare between illicit slugs of porter—a couple of slaps at the Protestant Orange Order. All of it seems present still in the night time air but I imagine the moonlight is lonesome for a few extra bachelors to convene with on matters.

The energy in the kitchen and beyond is surprisingly easy and unchoked with history but rather at present with the past when you need to sup from a glass or two of it. I’ve hardly moved onto the road all week and yet I have. The masses flocking to Galway for the races and the holiday season holds no attraction. Abundance eludes me but an element of pauperism dawns on me and is on slow release. Poverty is proximity to herds of people I don’t know or care to know.

Mikey arrives into the pause and uneasy peace. He’s eight weeks old, black as the ace of spades and soon gets busy chewing the shoelace on my shoe to commence lessons on attention. I outsource attention cheaply and Mikey seems to sense this flakiness immediately and is intent on setting the historical record straight by charting a new course. In return, I’ve shown him all the landmark sites around his new home, all the nooks and crannies where a man or a baby labrador might take a sneaky piss or hideout behind the nettle forest—where no-one in the annals of time has ever been overheard coughing on stolen, filterless Sweet Afton.

Mikey was located high up in the Slieve Aughty hills thanks to a tip off from a friend. A hope springs from the eternal well that his mother cross bred with a druid or a high ranking faerie at the very least. A fitting companion for a final act, perhaps.

I’m generally unnoticed to the noticing world and determine to keep it as such. Distraction is the invisible assassin, though. Distracting the brain pathways with hyper movement, motions that stall actual get up and go—stealthily stealing diamonds of crystal clear attention, while looping and looping in cycles endlessly. Weirdly, the helpless, innocent yaps of Mikey liberate an understanding here that a lecture series on the subject might not. Mikey needs love and food and shelter, and I’ll need to find a constant way of providing a conveyor belt of these goods and services.

Hmmm.

There’s no such thing as a free puppy is there…

A couple of months ago I dropped into Knock Shrine for one of my occasional confessions. At the end, the elderly priest counselled that an investigation of the holy gospels might yield some fruit. So, soon after I purchased a copy of the New Testament which contains some additional bonus material, you might say. At night, I flick it open on the table and randomly read short passages and try to sit with them. It works at distracting me back into attention more often than not. A recent line struck me from Corinthians 13.

Or, for any wandering Ribbon-men out there—anam croí is a cunt to embody inwardly, basically.

It requires a filing down of some jagged edges, patience and then some more. The way a pup demands it from the end of my shoelace. Constant, ever present and yet never without obvious and sometimes immediate reward.

Is the outer anything other than a projection of the mass dysfunctional experience of the inner ?

In recent weeks, the number of spontaneous and undirected driving expeditions into nature and the great Irish outdoors has slowed significantly. Maybe a plan is not napalm in all instances. On the tobacco runs to Tuam and Ballindine Mikey sits snugly in the lap for the moment, repeating the zen master’s mantra:

I just like chewing on things.

Over and over,

Until it’s time to take a shite on them.

A Carrowreagh druid in the making. No doubt about it.

The bog season and saved turf, the birds and buzzing bees, even the two flies riding on the keyboard point to the extravagant beauty of this rural everywhere, slowing everything down. The open shed door offers access to a deeper tunnel within. Maybe I want to access it and maybe I don’t but I can see that an opening exists and a warm summer is drawing to a close.

The pot of stew has a couple of days feeding in it and after a helping, I gaze outside at the blossoming, imperfect apple tree. The apples under attack as nature’s bird and insect kingdoms scar, pick and pull on them before they are ready to fall perfectly to the ground. Not many will be edible this year, I fear. I remember the imperfect planter who planted it long ago. There was hope, and faith and feeling. But an apple tree needs protection and long before the height of the summer’s harvest.

But then, I remember something in a new fashion by observing the apples from the back wall over a cup of tea. The planting of the tree wasn’t about the eating of the apples but about the beauty and wonder of watching them grow.

An easy thing to miss without the pause and the paws.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT TODAY’S PIECE WITH A COFFEE ☕️

REVOLUT DONATIONS to 085 1214347

Upgrade your subscription to paid by clicking below.