When I got off the plane in Dublin airport I was quite excited to see my fiancée Regina, not entirely because there had been a nine month absence which we’d both endured although that was the lion’s share of the excitement. But while on the plane I had learned a new fact, apparently the long held belief that the Irish are descendants of the ancient people known as the Celts is in fact erroneous. Recent, or so I was lead to believe by the in-flight entertainment, developments have used modern science to tie the DNA of the Irish to similar strains found by peoples native to the northern region of Spain; the Basques.
So upon my arrival in Ireland and after a thorough amount of time spent kissing and holding my beloved I shared with her my revelation. Yeah, she replied, of course. She explained to me that it was widely known that the Milesians ventured out from the Iberian peninsula and settled in Ireland after a series of clashes with the indigenous people. It is at this juncture that I would like to point out that the ‘indigenous people’ were not exactly people but rather gods, goddesses, and beings of the spirit world. Reg explains this all to me in the same manner in which one would explain the American revolution or Napoleon’s conquest of Europe.
Over the years Regina has told me many stories in this same manner, The Táin, the Faye, Cuchulian and the salmon of knowledge, all of which may fall into the realm of ‘myth’ when it comes to black and white history books but to the Irish hold as much truth as successions of kings, the English rule under Cromwell, and Michael Collins as the first president. The concept may be a bit foreign to us domesticated yanks but the idea of a shared history including impossible exploits by fantastic actors is not so strange to native Americans, Africans, Australian aborigines, and a myriad of cultures around the globe. Maybe we didn’t have to give up the history of Coyote as the trickster god when we settled for Columbus discovering America.
We have our figures of mixed lineage as well, Davy Crocket was a real person even if his exploits were exaggerated in song, the same goes for Billy the Kid or Buffalo Bill Cody, from there it’s only a small walk to Wyatt Earp and the OK corral shootout, Wild Bill Hickok shot in the back of the head during a saloon poker game holding black aces and eights, forever to be called the dead man’s hand. So why not throw in John Henry, Pecos bill, and Johnny Appleseed? Perhaps in a few more centuries the line distinguishing myth and truth will blur to the point where it cannot be discerned, given millennia of social and cultural upheaval like the Gaelic people have survived those differences are not worth debating.
Perhaps it is because of this, or vise versa, or chicken and egg not withstanding, the Irish seem to have a unique attitude towards their view of legends. Take for example our flat-mate Jack, over the course of several conversations and with the aide of liquid tongue loosener I’ve elicited a tale from his childhood; the Ennis field wars. It seems that when he was growing up the children of his town, Ennis, came into conflict with the adolescents of neighboring towns over possession of the local woods, streams, swamps, and of course fields in which they were want to play. This all sounds innocent enough as young kids are often prone to imagining their exploits as something grandiose, in fact there is a movie which follows a similar plot involving Irish youths called “the War of the Buttons.”
Mention this to Jack and he’ll get a slightly insulted look on his face and explain how it was kind of like that only they didn’t battle with buttons salvoed form slingshots, “we had rocks, and spears, proper spears with metal blades.” He’ll explain how his housing estate held some key advantages, since it was the most recently built there was a rich resource of construction materials which could be repurposed into armaments, their fort was located in the midst of a massive hedge, impenetrable save for one heavily guarded entrance, most importantly they had a navy. He’ll explain, in that same matter of fact tone as Regina employs when explaining how the recruitment test of the Fianna (a fearsome warrior class) included evading a band of hunters through a forest without breaking a twig or disturbing a leaf, that they had a navy because his older brother (a general) helped to develop raft building technology thus enabling them to navigate the swamps and ponds with ease.
They built the rafts with a fatal flaw, however, which could be exploited were the vessels ever captured. Rapt with his oratory I asked what the flaw was, ‘well they would get stuck in shallow water and we could pelt them with rocks.’ he replied. Hardly the sinking of the Bismarck but still, other impressive include the environmental hazard suit, built of polystyrene tubing and bits of metal sheeting, again foraged from a construction site, it was able to protect the wearer from a fall of great height or more accurately, off of a local bridge. That was the second version though, the prototype was apparently not as sturdy. Similarly was their simultaneously best and worst invention, the catapult; literally, a siege weapon in the medieval vein although perhaps scaled down a bit. It worked, by god, although not very well apparently for as Jack put it, you can only use it to hit so many cows before you start trying to improve it. Improve is a loose term since by ‘improving’ it the small soldiers overclocked it to point where the torsion caused the catapult to explode sending boulders hurtling in all directions, no one was hurt by the test run, of course because they had a safety tunnel and the aforementioned environmental hazard suit.
There are more stories of course, such as the lad who wrong in his belief that adults would not have left that bulldozer accessible to children if it could be easily turned on, or the pen-knife accords which had to be implemented after one lad was captured by the enemy and “Stabbed up a bit”, but they are best explained by the veteran who saw it all first hand. If you will, however, imagine my astonishment and awe at hearing these stories of youth presented so flippantly, so naturally as to never have questioned the plausibility of a children’s crusade which lasted longer than hostilities in WWII or for that matter the lack of parental oversight which allowed it all to happen. Again, it must be the Irish sensibility that places such epic events so close to home, so accessible that legends are just a touch beyond commonplace, the word ‘legend’ itself in the form of phrase ’A legend of a…’ is employed to describe interesting individuals, nights out, and even dogs.
Yapper was a legend of a dog, as often I hear when gathered around the kitchen table at the Finan homestead in Laragh. To be fair I met Yapper when he was still alive, a scruffy little Jack-Russell terrier who stood no higher than the laces of a good boot he would seem to the casual eye that he was in all ways ordinary. This was, however, at an advanced age when I interacted with him, and as stories would have it when in his youth Yapper killed everything. He would hunt mice and other small game no bother and this is not of special note, what is exemplary was first his ability to catch wild birds, sparrows and thrushes could not escape his jaws as he snatched them from the air mid flight, if they roosted he would climb a tree and pluck them from the nest, more often than once his ability to climb ladders would place him on the roof of the house or even on a small second story window sill where he was occasionally stuck for the night.
In these ways he was as much cat as dog, but when his prey became more dangerous he proved the adage that it is not the size of the dog in the fight which matters. There were the minks, the stoats and other weasels which he would ferret out and extinguish, he was also seen to drag off and hide the bodies of tom cats three times his size which he’d dispatched handily. Yapper would win fights against the family guard dog, a nimble and determined collie, as well as any other canines who thought the terrier was easy pickings, but his most lauded feat was the fact that he had killed a badger.
Most of you reading this will never have come face to face with a badger before, nor have I, but by tales passed on to me I say that with a decided note of relief. ‘Don’t turn your back on one.’ I’m told, ‘unless it charges you, in which case, run.’ A badger is like a wolverine, if that helps at all, only thicker, more dense, better able to hug the ground, if you face one while holding a shotgun you’d better hope both barrels are loaded, that’s your only chance since their skin is so think, if you’re driving and one’s out in the road it will do more damage to your car than a deer. In my time I’ve faced raccoons, possums, skunks, groundhogs and coyotes just to name a few, but when there’s a rustling in the undergrowth here I just pray that it’s not a badger. Still, Yapper, the wire-haired terrier I knew to beg for food sitting bolt upright on his haunches, killed one in cold blood escaping with all four paws intact to tell the tale, or rather, to have his legend grow and live well beyond his years.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Coming home again
Home is where your Wifi connects automatically.
To me this is an infinitely ironic statement because my home, the one where I was born, raised, taught, etc. never had Wifi. So instead, my Wifi connects automatically when I’m on the road. Places like Pittsburgh where I’ve over-nighted with friends again and again over the years and my laptop is welcome on their network. Coffee shops I used to write at habitually, taking advantage of their bandwidth to abuse Pandora remorselessly. Even out here in good old Ireland my browsing is enabled on a couple of foreign yet familiar hubs. The Finan family plot in the country knows me well, I just have to open up FireFox and away we go. Finally, here in Galway where I write from currently, I am registered perennially.
These are the little things that let me know I am welcome here. In other ways I have to work at it, like the coffee pot. Tea is the national drink here, do not be fooled by Guinness advertisements, and it is ubiquitous in Irish homes. Not that it comes naturally to me but I do acclimate to the leafy brew once a bit of milk makes it way into the equation and on the down low a spoonful of sugar every now and then when I’m feeling feisty. And sure, I get offered a cup of ‘coffee’ every now and then in a home, but I use the parenthesis because in truth freeze dried coffee is like artificial flowers in your apology bouquet, a fine gesture but not winning you any points. So I got myself a little red French press and while it does lack the full bodied roasted perfection of my old counter-top percolation unit it still achieves the effect of filling a boy up and doing a body good in the morning.
Secondly there is the wardrobe, which, I admit, is too big for the room and was kind of a pain in the hole when it came to arranging effectively. But it was a good price on ‘Done Deal’ Erin’s equivalent of Craigslist and everything of mine does fit inside. I don’t think Reg is quite gone on it and I don’t blame her for it was better in concept than it is in practice. But all the same I am fond of it, admiring the veneer and running my hand over the finials with their carved flower petals, when I look upon it I’m reminded of a great sarcophagus, it looms and entombs with its great swinging doors adorned in a grand old style. I’m not particularly looking forward to moving it again when we find a better apartment, an upgrade that has to come after we find work and get me driving, but some day I see it finding a place in our mud room at the house in Laragh, Filled with wellies and overcoats, shelves stacked with mismatched gloves and random scarves, rain hats hanging from the hooks and maybe an old shotgun leaning in the back. Every time I open it there’s the potential for an adventure across the country, some day.
Back to the driving though. I’ve been allowed to drive properly once so far. Not too far but actually interacting with other cars and navigating the tarmac like a real adult. Other than that I’ve moved the car in and out of its parking spot a few times when the weather is too inclement for Reg to venture out and do it herself. Every time she hands me the keys a little giddy smile creeps up from my belly, over our years we’ve never quite copped to driving in each other’s countries becoming permanent passengers on foreign soil. The process of getting me used to driving is equal parts acclimating me to the stick shift being on the left, looking the other direction before pulling out, passing in the right lane, and getting Regina comfortable with letting me pilot her beloved, and sometimes accursed, Ford; Isaac. We’ll get there eventually, I have patience and she has the watchful eye of an older sister telling me when to shift gears and checking my blind spot.
Galway city hasn’t changed all that much, most all of the old pubs are still standing, institutions like Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop seem to be eternal, I don’t have much reason to go to the University anymore but I walked by the other day and it hadn’t fallen over. I know I can get a good haircut at the same salon Regina uses for a fair price, I know which off licenses will have what booze at approximately what price, I know where the Garda station is and soon I’ll be familiar with the social services office when I go in to get my PPS number, the cousin of our SSN. We found a nice local butcher and the kitchen is starting to serve my needs now that we have a few cutting boards enough knives to fill a wood block. I know which busses will bring me in to town and how long it takes to walk from here to the bay. In short I’m starting to function like a normal human being again and it feels good.
I still pine for a few things, some musical instrument to occupy my time, the wall of books, the cabinet of DVDs, just the way my butt fit into the old couch, all of the ephemera of a life lived for a quarter century which gleams in my future like a sunset’s promise to rise again on a new day. Lacking all of that I have the thing that makes me feel most at home, my wife. We spent nine months apart, as you may know, and in all honesty it was a bit frightening to come together after such a long break. As much as you can skype and chat and plan away your days of bliss together through emails it’s a whole different bag of ferrets to go down that road hand in hand in real terms. Added to the calamity of it was a wedding we had to pull off in just one month’s time, there was a great potential for our romance, our personalities, our love to fall through the cracks. But then there was the first day, the first hours, the first minutes, that first kiss. Somehow in the midst of your life being tossed into chaos, of great upheaval and turmoil, sound and the fury, that kiss was coming home.
To me this is an infinitely ironic statement because my home, the one where I was born, raised, taught, etc. never had Wifi. So instead, my Wifi connects automatically when I’m on the road. Places like Pittsburgh where I’ve over-nighted with friends again and again over the years and my laptop is welcome on their network. Coffee shops I used to write at habitually, taking advantage of their bandwidth to abuse Pandora remorselessly. Even out here in good old Ireland my browsing is enabled on a couple of foreign yet familiar hubs. The Finan family plot in the country knows me well, I just have to open up FireFox and away we go. Finally, here in Galway where I write from currently, I am registered perennially.
These are the little things that let me know I am welcome here. In other ways I have to work at it, like the coffee pot. Tea is the national drink here, do not be fooled by Guinness advertisements, and it is ubiquitous in Irish homes. Not that it comes naturally to me but I do acclimate to the leafy brew once a bit of milk makes it way into the equation and on the down low a spoonful of sugar every now and then when I’m feeling feisty. And sure, I get offered a cup of ‘coffee’ every now and then in a home, but I use the parenthesis because in truth freeze dried coffee is like artificial flowers in your apology bouquet, a fine gesture but not winning you any points. So I got myself a little red French press and while it does lack the full bodied roasted perfection of my old counter-top percolation unit it still achieves the effect of filling a boy up and doing a body good in the morning.
Secondly there is the wardrobe, which, I admit, is too big for the room and was kind of a pain in the hole when it came to arranging effectively. But it was a good price on ‘Done Deal’ Erin’s equivalent of Craigslist and everything of mine does fit inside. I don’t think Reg is quite gone on it and I don’t blame her for it was better in concept than it is in practice. But all the same I am fond of it, admiring the veneer and running my hand over the finials with their carved flower petals, when I look upon it I’m reminded of a great sarcophagus, it looms and entombs with its great swinging doors adorned in a grand old style. I’m not particularly looking forward to moving it again when we find a better apartment, an upgrade that has to come after we find work and get me driving, but some day I see it finding a place in our mud room at the house in Laragh, Filled with wellies and overcoats, shelves stacked with mismatched gloves and random scarves, rain hats hanging from the hooks and maybe an old shotgun leaning in the back. Every time I open it there’s the potential for an adventure across the country, some day.
Back to the driving though. I’ve been allowed to drive properly once so far. Not too far but actually interacting with other cars and navigating the tarmac like a real adult. Other than that I’ve moved the car in and out of its parking spot a few times when the weather is too inclement for Reg to venture out and do it herself. Every time she hands me the keys a little giddy smile creeps up from my belly, over our years we’ve never quite copped to driving in each other’s countries becoming permanent passengers on foreign soil. The process of getting me used to driving is equal parts acclimating me to the stick shift being on the left, looking the other direction before pulling out, passing in the right lane, and getting Regina comfortable with letting me pilot her beloved, and sometimes accursed, Ford; Isaac. We’ll get there eventually, I have patience and she has the watchful eye of an older sister telling me when to shift gears and checking my blind spot.
Galway city hasn’t changed all that much, most all of the old pubs are still standing, institutions like Charlie Byrne’s Bookshop seem to be eternal, I don’t have much reason to go to the University anymore but I walked by the other day and it hadn’t fallen over. I know I can get a good haircut at the same salon Regina uses for a fair price, I know which off licenses will have what booze at approximately what price, I know where the Garda station is and soon I’ll be familiar with the social services office when I go in to get my PPS number, the cousin of our SSN. We found a nice local butcher and the kitchen is starting to serve my needs now that we have a few cutting boards enough knives to fill a wood block. I know which busses will bring me in to town and how long it takes to walk from here to the bay. In short I’m starting to function like a normal human being again and it feels good.
I still pine for a few things, some musical instrument to occupy my time, the wall of books, the cabinet of DVDs, just the way my butt fit into the old couch, all of the ephemera of a life lived for a quarter century which gleams in my future like a sunset’s promise to rise again on a new day. Lacking all of that I have the thing that makes me feel most at home, my wife. We spent nine months apart, as you may know, and in all honesty it was a bit frightening to come together after such a long break. As much as you can skype and chat and plan away your days of bliss together through emails it’s a whole different bag of ferrets to go down that road hand in hand in real terms. Added to the calamity of it was a wedding we had to pull off in just one month’s time, there was a great potential for our romance, our personalities, our love to fall through the cracks. But then there was the first day, the first hours, the first minutes, that first kiss. Somehow in the midst of your life being tossed into chaos, of great upheaval and turmoil, sound and the fury, that kiss was coming home.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
I miss you
“I don’t know how you guys do it.” We get that a lot, I mean A LOT from people when they hear we’re doing this long-long distance relationship thing. Especially when we tell them that it’s been going on for five years. Sometimes it sounds like a compliment and other it seems like a disbelieving challenge. No matter how it’s intended it always hits our ears with a tinge of pain for in those days when we are together, those fleeting moments that come sparsely through the year the last thing we want to think about is the times that we spend apart.
That is unfortunately how we spend the vast majority of our time, often eight months out of a year we are six time zones away from one another, a greater distance than opposite coasts of the United States. Even just saying that we’re an ocean apart does not do it justice since there is still a great deal my continent left to travel once we cross the waves. As one might expect such a vast span of separation makes for a great number of difficulties which must be overcome to make our relationship work, we, in fact, concede that without certain marvels of the modern age we would not be in love, not be engaged, not be the reasonably happy and healthy individuals we are. Still, it sucks, big time.
Take the last couple of days, Reg tells me she’s going to be home on Friday night and that she’ll call me. It matters that she’s at home for this short duration because she cannot ring me on her cell phone without incurring a large surcharge as I can’t call her from my mobile, even our landlines require phone cards to not break our banks. So while she is home for a day or so she has to catch me at an hour when she’s free as well as myself which is difficult when I work 7.30 am ( 1:30pm in Ireland ) until 5pm ( 11pm there). On this particular Friday I ended up working until 6 and in the moments when my phone is buzzing and buzzing in my pocket around 5:30 I’m unable to break away from my business for even a moment to answer it. She leaves me a message, a long and sleepy one that makes me feel her love and longing drip over me like warm honey.
Saturday I have to work too and as things just happen to turn out I’m in the shower in the morning when she calls again. This time she doesn’t leave a message. I don’t have time or a card to call her back but I do check my face book to see if she’s messaged me there. She did, it reads; “Hi, please be online.” When you’ve communicated so many intimacies over text as we have you can pick up on subtext like it’s spelled out in big bold capital letters. Knowing that she’s hurting and that it’s probably somehow related to the wedding dress fitting she had scheduled, doesn’t make my already assuredly shitty day any better. Throughout all of the yelling and insults I endure I want only to hear her voice even if it’s crying or venting or hurting. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow when we plan to have our weekly skype date-her good idea- and actually see each other’s faces, the emotions and look into each other’s eyes while saying the sweet things that are in our hearts.
It’s not the same though, it never is. It has been said the I love the best in the littlest ways. In the grasp of a hand or a heartfelt hug and just the same nothing comforts me like her head on my chest and the feel of her lips on mine. These are the hallmarks of a relationship that so many take for granted when they are but a phone call and a short drive away, the reinforcements of love which we fall back on when we are unsure of our worth. But these times apart are what make us a strong couple, because we cannot be there for one another at every moment of weakness and doubt we find the resilience in ourselves to carry on and keep our individual identities strong. In fact all of our relationship is a practice in personal endurance that we chose to put ourselves through for the virtue of true love.
Love is my faith in god replaced with something not quite tangible but still there for me to experience, to enjoy and to be elated by when I give myself wholly to it. True faith takes a commitment beyond the desire for rewards, it asks you to hurt so that it can comfort you in those times of darkness and emptiness. You have to be willing to embrace the pain of separation to make it through a long distance relationship such as this. That’s where the phrase ‘I miss you’ comes into it. ‘I miss you’ takes on the same meaning as ‘I love you’ when we cannot express that love like we mean to, as we yearn to, as we hope to some day be fortunate enough do on a daily basis. ‘I miss you’ is an acknowledgement that we experience the same sense of being incomplete when we are away from one another, it is a confession of that weak feeling that overcomes us in the absence of each other, that very weakness that we feel we must keep contained from the world at large. ‘I miss you’ is what we share, the tie that binds us over the miles and hours which technology can only try to overcome because ‘I miss you’ means ‘you’re worth it and you make it better’ in the cryptography of our communications.
But don’t get me wrong, there is nothing that will make me happier than to forget what it’s like to miss her, to wake up every day next holding her and tell her that I love her every night while she falls asleep. But still there will be times when we are separated by life and the pulls of responsibility, in those times I will call or text Reg my wife and with a silly little smile I will say that I miss her. I know she’ll understand just what that means because she’s been through everything that I have. She understands me down to my heartbeat from one quarter of the world away.
That is unfortunately how we spend the vast majority of our time, often eight months out of a year we are six time zones away from one another, a greater distance than opposite coasts of the United States. Even just saying that we’re an ocean apart does not do it justice since there is still a great deal my continent left to travel once we cross the waves. As one might expect such a vast span of separation makes for a great number of difficulties which must be overcome to make our relationship work, we, in fact, concede that without certain marvels of the modern age we would not be in love, not be engaged, not be the reasonably happy and healthy individuals we are. Still, it sucks, big time.
Take the last couple of days, Reg tells me she’s going to be home on Friday night and that she’ll call me. It matters that she’s at home for this short duration because she cannot ring me on her cell phone without incurring a large surcharge as I can’t call her from my mobile, even our landlines require phone cards to not break our banks. So while she is home for a day or so she has to catch me at an hour when she’s free as well as myself which is difficult when I work 7.30 am ( 1:30pm in Ireland ) until 5pm ( 11pm there). On this particular Friday I ended up working until 6 and in the moments when my phone is buzzing and buzzing in my pocket around 5:30 I’m unable to break away from my business for even a moment to answer it. She leaves me a message, a long and sleepy one that makes me feel her love and longing drip over me like warm honey.
Saturday I have to work too and as things just happen to turn out I’m in the shower in the morning when she calls again. This time she doesn’t leave a message. I don’t have time or a card to call her back but I do check my face book to see if she’s messaged me there. She did, it reads; “Hi, please be online.” When you’ve communicated so many intimacies over text as we have you can pick up on subtext like it’s spelled out in big bold capital letters. Knowing that she’s hurting and that it’s probably somehow related to the wedding dress fitting she had scheduled, doesn’t make my already assuredly shitty day any better. Throughout all of the yelling and insults I endure I want only to hear her voice even if it’s crying or venting or hurting. We’ll have to wait until tomorrow when we plan to have our weekly skype date-her good idea- and actually see each other’s faces, the emotions and look into each other’s eyes while saying the sweet things that are in our hearts.
It’s not the same though, it never is. It has been said the I love the best in the littlest ways. In the grasp of a hand or a heartfelt hug and just the same nothing comforts me like her head on my chest and the feel of her lips on mine. These are the hallmarks of a relationship that so many take for granted when they are but a phone call and a short drive away, the reinforcements of love which we fall back on when we are unsure of our worth. But these times apart are what make us a strong couple, because we cannot be there for one another at every moment of weakness and doubt we find the resilience in ourselves to carry on and keep our individual identities strong. In fact all of our relationship is a practice in personal endurance that we chose to put ourselves through for the virtue of true love.
Love is my faith in god replaced with something not quite tangible but still there for me to experience, to enjoy and to be elated by when I give myself wholly to it. True faith takes a commitment beyond the desire for rewards, it asks you to hurt so that it can comfort you in those times of darkness and emptiness. You have to be willing to embrace the pain of separation to make it through a long distance relationship such as this. That’s where the phrase ‘I miss you’ comes into it. ‘I miss you’ takes on the same meaning as ‘I love you’ when we cannot express that love like we mean to, as we yearn to, as we hope to some day be fortunate enough do on a daily basis. ‘I miss you’ is an acknowledgement that we experience the same sense of being incomplete when we are away from one another, it is a confession of that weak feeling that overcomes us in the absence of each other, that very weakness that we feel we must keep contained from the world at large. ‘I miss you’ is what we share, the tie that binds us over the miles and hours which technology can only try to overcome because ‘I miss you’ means ‘you’re worth it and you make it better’ in the cryptography of our communications.
But don’t get me wrong, there is nothing that will make me happier than to forget what it’s like to miss her, to wake up every day next holding her and tell her that I love her every night while she falls asleep. But still there will be times when we are separated by life and the pulls of responsibility, in those times I will call or text Reg my wife and with a silly little smile I will say that I miss her. I know she’ll understand just what that means because she’s been through everything that I have. She understands me down to my heartbeat from one quarter of the world away.
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