Into “the vastness” / Summer Stories.
“... he was longing to be lost in the vastness of infinity….” writes Goethe The Sorrows of Young Werther, tracing age old struggles with life, love and feelings of the infinite.
I know that feeling.
It's with me, in the past and the future.
I knew it when I was a kid, falling in love every week, feeling as Werther felt:
”I have so much in me, and the feeling for her absorbs it all; I have so much, and without her it all comes to nothing.”
To make sense of it all, we turn to stories of our days.
All summer long, we tell different stories, hot New York stories. Nora asked us about the water and we told stories about the sea, about the water, sitting at Brighton Beach. On I rode up to see Rev. Billy, who told stories about a vanishing bookstore in the West Village. Mermaids told stories about queer bodies meeting in the water. Kevin told stories about people dancing to Honkey Tonk music at Jalpy. Andrew told stories about a trip to Ireland on kids day at Judson, when he starred in Playboys of the Western World. And traveled to Cork and the Donegal Cliffs (see below).
Our city is always changing, that was the story Jack Riccobono told about the Gowanus Rezone and the mutual aid corner, where people shared goods, the post now lost to the rezone:
“Downstream community impacts from development… No more Sharing Corner due to construction plans.”
All week, we listened to the Kinks and their stories of the village green preservation society, ever ready to fight for, “Vaudeville and Variety We are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society God save strawberry jam and all the different varieties Preserving the old ways from being abused Protecting the new ways for me and for you What more can we do?”
What more can we do?
That was the story Billy shared at Earth Church, declaring an independent bookstore owner a saint in the church of stop shopping, forests of ideas and poetry books ever dueling with those wearing earbuds in a sea of monoculture and identical details....
All the while, I sat scribbling notes.
“A forest wants to be thick,” says Billy, peaching in a former bank lobby on Ave C, turned into ‘Earth Church’ quoting John Berger, referring to the trees being chopped down in the name of progress in East River Park.
“That’s what a bookstore on Carmine Street does. Jim is exalting our souls as we gravitate to the poetry section, maybe some beat poetry, or Lao Tzu and the Art of War, Bob Dylan over there, 100 Chinese Poets anthologized by Kenneth Rexroth. He’s a curator. In the bookshop, we feel the complexity of a healthy forest, these trees are showing us something at the end, around the door. We are complexified; they are inviting us into public space. We have new hellos. That's what is happening in a forest with a symbiotic interaction and we grow. That's what we’ve been doing on Carmine Street. Before you know it, we have a community. And now this monoculture is coming in, not like a forest. The investors want us to be consumers, to be trends, marketers, Ready to take the soul out of our neighborhoods. That bookstore will not leave us. He will continue to curate our experience. He makes us revolutionaries. So we can change the monoculture back into the humanity it was. What is a healthy neighborhood? It does not oppress us. It gives us bargains. Can I help, it asks. Right now we are at a tipping point. So much repetitive details, depressed complexity drying up. John Coltrane will not have that 5 Am soup down the street. That infectious feeling is something we can carry forward. We can recomplexify our community, beyond earbuds. The bookstore is our soul. It's in us now, we are grateful to you. We want to convey to you sainthood. Let us know how we can help.
“To the forest, to the mountains,” Jim says, “Thank you. This is the best ever. This is so sweet… We are going to continue. So we are moving. We are going to be neighbors.”
Everyone has a story this summer.
Mel and I talked about Tim and their lives together at Sheridan Square. I saw him every week last year, last spring, fall, winter, till Tim departed. The ALS story is hard to tell.
Later that night, we met the teenager at Laguardia, where the students shared stories with paintbrushes, image of theirs works and lives, subway journeys and dreams screaming from the canvases.
Saturday, people at the March for Our Lives made me wonder…
why are we so afraid of the NRA?
All summer we vacillate between mass shootings and worries the supreme court will gut our gun laws.
That afternoon,
Al and Caroline chatt about June 1969, when they first met, snacking on French fries.
Jim Fouratt told a story about Hunter:
·
“Hunter Reynolds transitioned at 3:21 AM. He finally, naturally and on his own terms, was gone from here. I was with him until midnight playing Krishna Das near his ear. Doing energy work to move his spirit to the top of his head while singing to him and chanting with the Dali Lama the soul release mantra. It was intense for me. Conrad, Carl, his cousin Diane, and his two cats were with him when I left. It has been a long journey to this moment for Hunter. Now his Bardo journey will last 40 days. Our job is to help him complete his Bardo journey by sharing with each other our memories. I will start with what comes first to mind: On the darkest days of the AIDS plague, Hunter and other HIV/AIDS artists grouped together as ART POSITIVE to be visible and, in the best tradition of ACT UP, in your face. He reached deep inside and asked the question: "Why can't a man be beautiful?" Patina emerged .. not as a drag but as male glamour. Patina was provocative and an essential, binary challenge. Hunter's query was both an artist statement and an activist's political challenge. Your turn.”
I remembered Hunter dying at Stop the Church, dragged through the street by the police:
“I was not able to be in the die in so the police arrested me on the street,” Hunter explained. “I told them I want to die,” he continued, directing the police about where he wanted to lay down for his arrest.
RIP Hunter,
RIP Tim,
RIP Elizabeth.
Iconic AIDS activists gone too soon, poets passing.
TAZs ever ascending, disappearing in the distance.
Later that night, the teenager’s jet plane arrived from Los Angeles.
Off she walked, ready to tell more stories about a first year in college, exploring skate parks and surrealistic histories of time.
That Sunday,
@jaywwalker told a story about guns, pointing out...There have been 15 mass shooting massacres with 10 or more deaths in the 6 years since the Pulse Orlando shooting on June 12, 2016. This Sunday at 3:30pm, GAG will remember and honor all these victims and DEMAND congressional action on common sense gun control at Little Island on the Hudson River Greenway at 13th Street. Join us as we #HonorThemWithAction.
Get National Grid out of our energy future, said activists in the rain, outside their sham Equity Energy summit, the following morning!!!
National Grid, no pipeline, you won't build it on our dime.
We passed out flyers outside.
Activists screamed inside.
The Con Ed folks are not so happy with our flyers.
Ted Voltaire actually sent a note complimenting us on the flyers.
“Re: Notice and Demand to Cease and Desist
Dear Sirs:
We are counsel to National Grid USA (“National Grid”). It has come to National
Grid’s attention that you have been distributing materials containing false and misleading
statements that appear intended to confuse our client’s key stakeholders and disrupt its business.
National Grid demands that you immediately cease and desist from further distribution of these materials.
The most recent example of this activity occurred today, June 16, 2022. This
morning, National Grid employees were scheduled to speak at the City & State Equity in Energy
Summit, sponsored by National Grid at the New York Marriot Brooklyn. NY Renews and other
environmental advocacy groups were invited to attend for a comprehensive discussion on
environmental justice and energy policy. Mr. Weiss, a registered participant, was observed
distributing hard copies of the document attached as Exhibit 1. The document is not a National
Grid document, but it contains an image that looks nearly identical to National Grid’s registered
mark in its header1 and is presented as a purported National Grid press release.”
Ha ha, i chuckle.
Kevin and I talked it through at Gowanus Yacht club, as the bartender played punk rock records. Ari Up now and forever.
And we made our way uptown to Summer Stage, through Central Park, past the Dakota and Strawberry Fields.
RIP John,
RIP George, twenty years gone.
Belle and Sebastian began their show with lyrics nobody's empire:
“We are out of practice we're out of sight
On the edge of nobody's empire
And if we live by books and we live by hope
Does that make us targets for gunfire?
Now I look at you, you're a mother of two
You're a quiet revolution
Marching with the crowd, singing dirty and loud
For the people's emancipation..”
We’re all singing for that emancipation.
Friends from everywhere, singing along along, Bell and Sebastian for the third time with so many brooklyn friends... from everywhere. In 2003, the little one joined us for a not so great show in Prospect Park. Fifteen years later, we saw them in Queens and danced along Last night, they were wonderful, quite a glow up for Stuart,
Pride Months here. It's useful to remember that 40% of the homeless kids in NYC are homeless. 100% of donations go to direct services, case management, food, housing referrals, survival services. Join new alts.... support them.
Each day I run into a different friend.
I call this one @kenschles and the cat food. Thanks for the chat mate.
We chat about Monday’s action.
Ken and Jerry and Gene and Babs…, chatting about the civil wars and our hope for peace.
The teenager and I watched the January 6th hearings.
And wondered why we continue to refight the civil war.
What if the left had killed the cops?
Imagine.
And ride bikes out to the Mermaid Parade.
Working hard or hardly working drinking lemonade, watching the mermaids as our friends blew kisses.
For one day a year, everyone is a mermaid.... @virgvitz @yanaland @andrewboyd2550
On Father’s day, I thought of dad, stumbling upon a black and white picture.
Dad John and I in Rome a half century ago. Happy Father's day pop. Miss u. Cheers to the Dads and their partners in crime , their friends, the kids learning from them, the therapy bill's, the generational crazy we inherit , we pass on and on. Still miss you dad.
And ran out to Rockaway Beach with the teenager.
Beach days, reading and skating at Rock Rock Rockaway Beach!!!!!
Monday, a mass shooting in Harlem left one dead, others injured.
Another day, another shooting, days before the supreme court says we don’t have enough guns on the streets.
And rode down Bedford, past Sophies on Ditmas, off to the beach,
Hanging out at @norasays' swimming assessment in Brighton Beach thinking about public spaces ever expanding and contracting, cycles of bodies, of communities, ever forming and shifting, transforming, swimmers and birds making their way along with the mermaids and marissa and @savitrid.nyc taking a dip in the ocean water. The ocean feeling invited us into a conversation with the unknown, the darkness, the water, ourselves, opening and closing, ever transforming, waves rolling, high tides here, riptides there, pulling at us. Two swimmers died here ... and it's only June, said a lifeguard. Respect the water.
I try to go to the watch as much as I can.
It calls to me.
Later that day, the teenager and I made our way to Tompkins SquarePark, chatting with the birds.
In Ft Greene, LA,
Wendy, Elissa and Virginia chatted about the world, the monument and friends of summer, and the imminent supreme court case.
Back home, Shannon greeted me.
Happiness is a warm friend.
The next afternoon, I met with Jerry, still at it, fighting off the three R's, right wingers, religionists, and red necks chatting about the history of friendship and squatting, war and peace in the lower east side.
Back home, I met Caroline getting out of a cab.
Welcome home mon amour.... back from touring the Baltic Sea, from Stockholm to Danzig... gdansk to helsinki... and countless seedy ports and points of demarcation in between with @seashipsailing
The beauty is there. So is the violence of summer.
‘A Car-Free Broadway Would Have Prevented This Crash’ says the Statement from Transportation Alternatives After Taxi Crash Injures Bike Rider, Numerous Pedestrians on Broadway
Traffic violence continues citywide with crashes killing 45 pedestrians so far this year.
In Manhattan, crashes have killed six pedestrians, up 50 percent over 2018, the safest year of the Vision Zero era
MANHATTAN, NY — Yesterday, a taxi driver of an SUV struck a cyclist on Broadway and 29th Street before accelerating into multiple tourists eating bagels. Today, the four victims on the street and the person riding a bike are recovering from gruesome, life-altering injuries.
Statement from Executive Director Danny Harris
“We extend our deepest sympathies to the victims of yesterday’s horrific car crash on Broadway. Visiting New York City, going to lunch or biking across town should not lead to gruesome, permanent injury.”
“This was no accident. This crash was entirely preventable. This crash occurred adjacent to a part of Broadway where the bike lane is only marked by paint. The taxi driven in this crash had amassed eight speed safety camera violations and two red light violations since November 2019. This block was also an Open Street last year, when the threat of gruesome car crashes was eliminated entirely.”
“Whether it’s building truly protected bike lanes, cracking down on reckless drivers, or building car-free streets, New York City has the tools to keep our streets safe. But when elected leaders hold back these tools or lack the political will to get these done, the consequences on our streets are horrific.”
“A car-free Broadway would have prevented this heinous crash.”
“We know that prioritizing people over cars on our streets is good for our climate, economy, and safety. This can become a reality by taking concrete steps to implement NYC 25x25. We just need political courage to make it happen.”
“We are also extremely alarmed by numerous reports that have victim-blamed the bike rider for causing this crash. A cyclist did not hit and severely injure pedestrians. This heinous incident was caused by a driver, and made worse by an unsafe street without a concrete-protected bike lane. This bike rider, along with four pedestrians, now face life-altering injuries because the driver of a multi-ton vehicle barreled into them. These reports retraumatize victims and distract from the root cause of traffic violence on our streets.”
“Our streets are in crisis. We are demanding aggressive efforts to make New York City streets safe. Don’t waste time and resources with more studies. Use the proven tools that work now.”
###
Al and I chatted in the rain.
And we ate dinner outside.
Plaid skirt and the hoola hoop!
And Kevin and I danced at Jalopy.
And Andy told a story at Judson:
Clíodhna’s Wave
by
Andy Frantz
Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses – past the headlands –
Into deep Eternity –
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
“Exultation is the going” by Emily Dickinson
Later this summer, on August 1st, to be exact, I will celebrate my thirtieth anniversary as Grand Poobah of All Things Judson Sunday School. Thirty years, that is a long time to be concerned with not just your children’s spiritual condition, but the spiritual condition of all of you as well. After all, Judson pays me the big bucks, she might as well get her money’s worth.
Some of you may recall from my past Kids Day speeches that being a Grand Poobah is just a part-time job. Since July of 1987, I have worked full-time as a proofreader for a Wall Street law firm, which means that I have actually been silently judging your grammar for much longer than I have been judging your spiritual condition. Let me just say that I’ve found some of you wanting. Whether that be because of your sin or your syntax, I’ll leave it for you to worry over.
In those past Kids Day speeches, I’ve mentioned some of the people I work with as a proofreader, word processors, most of whom hail from Staten Island or New Jersey. Having worked together for decades, we consider ourselves family, there’s a lot of love in the room, and we have certainly grown used to one another’s personalities and idiosyncrasies.
One of those co-workers, my good friend Connie, who lives in New Jersey, has trouble pronouncing consonants on the ends of her words, particularly “l’s” and “d’s.” So, for example, at lunch time, Connie will say that she’s going out for “foo,” or at the end of a long day, she talks about how “tire” she is. Just last week, Connie was complaining about how the rest of us weren’t letting her get a “wor” in the discussion we were having. This has long since become accepted office language, and none of us would ever dream of correcting Connie, except for those times when she announces that her weekend plans include swimming in her backyard “poo.” That’s when everyone in the office yells out, “‘Pool,’ Connie, ‘pool!’ You have got to put an ‘l’ on the end of that word!” The most endearing of these malapropisms, if that is indeed what we call these things, happens every time one of us in the office has a birthday and Connie inevitably says, “we are all getting so ‘oh.’” Truer sentiments were never expressed because with every passing birthday, I find myself feeling more and more “Ohhhhh.” Say it with me: Ohhhhh.
I’m turning 65 next month – Ohhhhh – and if you should find Bethene Trexel and myself huddled together somewhere during coffee hour, just know that we are talking about Medicare supplemental insurance plans.
I got shingles last year. Ohhhhh, although that’s really more of an Owwwww. I still have them, by the way, so PSA, if you haven’t done it yet, get your shingles shots.
Lastly, because of today’s phone-centric lifestyle, everything we do is recorded and put on display for the entire world to see, but I am Ohhhhh enough to remember a time when no one wanted to see your damn home movies. A time when vacation for your family meant a trip to grandma’s house, but vacation for your neighbor’s family meant a trip to Hawaii. And the only thing worse than your vacation as compared to your neighbor’s vacation was the inevitable invitation to their home later that summer, where once everyone had been stuffed with meatloaf, their dad would break out the old Kodak Instamatic movie projector so that we might all view – in Super 8mm – just how crappy your life was as compared to theirs.
Well, guess what? I’m not serving any meatloaf this morning, and there’s no Super 8, but I am here today with a few stories to share with you about a summer vacation I took a number of years ago to Ireland.
I think my fascination with Ireland goes all the way back to my college years when I was cast in a production of J. M. Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. Our guest director, who was from County Cork, filled our heads with tales of the “auld” country and introduced me to the music of that seminal Irish Trad band, the Chieftains. Whether it was the lyricism in those old tunes or the poetic language of Synge’s play, something primal was unleashed in me and I have been feeding that fire ever since.
And so, in the summer of 2007, on the occasion of a rather momentous F-word birthday, I ran away to Ireland, and for the next two weeks, I drove from one end of the country to the other and back. From Dublin in the east with its museums and the Abbey Theatre, to the sheer Bunglass Cliffs up north near Donegal, to the magnolias, red fuchsia bells, palm trees – palm trees! – and ten-foot-high hedgerows lining the winding roads of Ireland’s Garden of Eden, the Dingle Peninsula on the far western shore, and, incidentally, the site of the greatest night of my life, where I got felt up by a bunch of women who were on holiday. Maybe I’ll explain more about that night later.
I did the usual tourist things, the Cliffs of Moher, the Ring of Kerry, and I rode a horse trap, grinning like a stewed Barry Fitzgerald in The Quiet Man (“Homeric!”). I tried to get off the beaten path, wandering the lunar topography of the Burren, where the landscape changes from green to white and where a farmer invited me to walk his property as long as I “minded the cows and the holy well.”
As for that green landscape – OH, MY GOD! Emerald green, Kelly green, forest green, viridian, chartreuse, Kermit the Frog green, Mr. Green Jeans green! There I was, driving through all that green – driving stick shift, I might add, which I’d done many times before, but never left-handed, while sitting on the right-hand side of a car, all the while trying to remember to stay on the left-hand side of the road.
And while I carried a cell phone, it was as stupid as its owner – there was no GPS. But who cared, for my intention was to lose myself in that evergreen world of those places about which I had grown up singing, places whose very names are songs: “The Rose of Tralee” or “The Fields of Athenry” or “The Isle of Innisfree” or “I wish I was in Carrickfergus, only for nights in Ballygrand.”[1]
Or here’s one I know you know. In your best Bing Crosby, sing along with me:
If you ever go across the sea to Ireland
Be it only at the closing of your day
You can sit and watch the moonrise over Claddagh
And see the sun go down on Galway Bay[2]
That was grand, but Bing Crosby? We are all getting so Ohhhhh.
Always there was music, everywhere I went, nightly seisiuns with highly skilled local musicians in pubs, accompanied by good food, tall stories, lots of laughter and plenty of drink, although in the interest of full disclosure, I am not much of a drinker (despite my constant margarita Facebook postings), and I have never developed a hankering for Guinness, the national drink of Ireland. To my tastebuds, Guinness has all the desirability (and viscosity) of motor oil. But I did develop a taste for Ireland’s second most popular drink, a hard cider called Bulmers Irish Cider. Now, at that time, I had never heard of hard cider. To my mind, cider was cider, as in “let’s all go to Vermont this weekend, stare at the leaves and drink some good ol’ apple cider.” I didn’t find out Bulmers contained alcohol – and it’s loaded – until my last day in Ireland. I had been drinking that stuff like water around the clock for two weeks, which might account for some of my enthusiasm over the course of my Irish sojourn. I thought I had just been happy to be in Ireland. Apparently, I’d also been a little pickled!
Now you may have noticed earlier that I said my intention was “to lose myself in that evergreen world.” I did not say my intention was to get lost, which I will admit to having done so on several occasions, particularly in Connemara, Gaeltacht country, where all the signs are in Irish. But there is a difference between losing oneself and getting lost.
Rebecca Solnit, in her book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, says getting lost “requires ignorance – nothing more,”[3] but to lose oneself is “a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away.”[4]
Doesn’t that sound lovely? To lose oneself in love or in charity or just in a good book. “Oh, the summertime is comin’,” and surely somewhere there is a porch and a fat book with your name on it. To lose oneself, to give all of your attention to a garden or a night sky filled with stars. To abandon all your worries for a walk in the woods or simply disappear inside a classic movie you have seen a thousand times, maybe pull up a chair at Rick’s Café in Casablanca – surely Bogie and Bergman can figure out a way to stay together this time.
In her book, Ms. Solnit says, “The things we want are transformative, and we don’t know or only think we know what is on the other side of that transformation. Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration – how do you go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory.”[5]
Speaking of books, I love reading Irish mythology, especially the stories of the Tuatha Dé Danaan, who are the gods and goddesses said to have ruled pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland. One such tale I’m particularly fond of is set in “the little harbor town of Glandore in West Cork,”[6] and concerns Clíodhna – spelled, as only the Irish can spell it, C-l-í-o-d-h-n-a – Clíodhna, “the mythical Queen of the Banshees, [those] female spirits of the Tuatha Dé Danaan.”[7] Clíodhna, “one of the daughters of the sea god Manannán mac Lir,”[8] “was a Goddess of love and beauty[,] and [was] surrounded by three [brightly colored] birds whose fabulous songs could cure all ills. Those who heard the songs were lulled into a deep sleep and when they awoke found that their sickness had been cured.”[9] Oh, Clíodhna, where have you and your birds been these past few years?
Clíodhna was described as the most beautiful woman in the world and was known to have lured mortals to the sea where they would drown, but being a goddess, little did she care, until, that is, she fell in love with a mortal by the name of Ciabhán (Keevan of the Curling Locks).[10] (Some of us have had more interesting past lives than others.) Clíodhna left her island home in Tir Tairngire [Teer Tahn-geer-ah], the “land of promise,” in the Otherworld, for the mortal home of her lover Ciabhán. One day, with Ciabhán off hunting and Clíodhna asleep at the seashore, a giant wave, “encanted by Manannán mac Lir,”[11] rose up and swept Clíodhna out to sea, back to the Otherworld, and away from her lover forever. To this day, Clíodhna can be heard mourning her lover in the tide off Glandore. Irish legend has it “that every ninth wave in a sequence is the strongest, and is known as [‘Tonn Clíodhna,’] ‘Clíodhna’s Wave.’”[12]
While Clíodhna’s Wave might be limited to Glandore Bay in County Cork, this concept of a “Ninth Wave” is prevalent throughout Irish mythology, particularly as it relates to the west coast of Ireland, what J. M. Synge referred to as “the edge of the western world.” The Ninth Wave was thought to be “the ocean boundary between the mortal world and the Otherworld.”[13] In fact, the Ninth Wave was also known as the “Wave of Transformation.”[14] “To voyage [out] beyond the Ninth Wave [was] to leave all that is [known, all that is] familiar.”[15] For some, that meant punishment, “[s]et adrift in a small boat without oars or sail, and with only a limited supply of fresh water, you were at the mercy of the gods, who would decide what should be done with you.”[16] For others, to venture beyond the Ninth Wave “was to go on a journey of discovery and mystery,”[17] and perhaps transformation.
Earlier, I quoted Rebecca Solnit, who said, “The things we want are transformative . . . Love, wisdom, grace, inspiration” – to that list, may I include the word faith? Ms. Solnit asks, “how do [we] go about finding these things that are in some ways about extending the boundaries of the self into unknown territory.”
Well, indulge me if I sound as if I have already been indulging in one too many Bulmers this morning, but I’d like to suggest that we answer Ms. Solnit’s question by setting our sails for Clíodhna’s Wave, and that you and I lose ourselves in voluptuous surrender to those waters found far beyond the Ninth Wave. For me, this is where faith lives, far beyond all the tenets of our religions, far beyond all of our self-imposed limitations, the present order, the established rules, what has always been. For me, faith is all about that journey of discovery beyond borders and into the great mystery. Now for some, this idea of a “borderless faith” is as much a punishment as those poor souls of Irish yesteryear being “set adrift in a boat without oars or sail.” But for those willing to venture out beyond the ninth wave, toward new possibilities, toward new impossibilities, there are “Otherworlds” – Tir Tairngire – lands of promise – waiting to be discovered. How does Rilke put it? God speaks to each of us, sending us out beyond our recall, asks that we go to the limits of our longing, that we flare up like flames, making big shadows that she can move around in.[18] Let us do just that. And let us take comfort in the knowledge that no matter where the limits of our longing may be, no matter where those waves may take us, we are never truly lost. For as Theo and Owen and Sebastian and Esfahan reminded us earlier this morning with the words of the ancient psalmist, “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence?[19] . . . If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”[20] Indeed, “such knowledge is too wonderful for me.”[21]
I thank you so much for listening to my Irish travelogue this morning, captive audience though you may be. At least I spared you the meatloaf. Or did I?
Before I conclude, I have a feeling that for some of you, the last thing you heard me say this morning was the part of my speech about “getting felt up by a bunch of women who were on holiday.” It is quite the arresting image. To put your minds at ease, or perhaps your stomachs, I’ll share one last story with you. I swear to God this story is true, but in telling parts of the story, I’m afraid I will need to revive the absolute worst Irish brogue you have ever heard, left over from my bygone days as an actor – definitive proof that when it comes to my career as an actor, I make a helluva Grand Poobah. So with deepest apologies to you, to all of my Irish friends, not to mention the entire Republic of Ireland:
The Night I Got Felt Up In Ireland
Twas a soft Saturday night in Dingle town and I had the great fortune to hear one of my favorite Irish trad bands in the whole wide world, Gráda, who by lucky coincidence just happened to be passing through town, performing that evening at the little St James’ Church on Main Street. After the concert was over, and with my head still in the clouds from the lovely tunes, I decided to drop on over to the An Droichead Beag, a local pub, to wet me whistle as they say and catch another seisiun of music from some players up from County Cork. As I was standin’ by the bar, drinkin’ my Bulmers, listenin’ to the tunes and mindin’ my own business, four women on holiday from Cork, Waterford and Dublin asked me to join them at their table. After much talk about where we were all from and what we were all doing in Dingle, not to mention a few more pints, one of the women asked me if she could feel my hair. “Feel my hair? Why, sure,” says I, and why wouldn’t I? And so this stranger woman proceeded to run her fingers through my hair! “Ah,” she says, “it’s as soft as a baby’s. Mary Kate, feel Andrew’s hair. It’s like touchin’ a lamb.” And so this woman named Mary Kate reaches over and begins running her fingers through my hair. “Tis soft,” said Mary Kate. “Is it naturally curly, Andrew?” “Aye,” says I, “tis.” Pretty soon no one was listenin’ to the tunes being played by those seisiun boys from County Cork, because not only was every woman at my table feelin’ my hair, but soon, more women from the next table came over and started feelin’ my hair as well. That’s two tables full of women feelin’ me hair! Is it any wonder why I would stand here today and proclaim that I believe God lives off the coast of Ireland? Keevan of the Curling Locks, eat your heart out! And that’s the story of the greatest night of my life, as I remember it anyway. Like I said, I’d had a few pints.
Sláinte! (Cheers!)
[1] Traditional, “Carrickfergus,” Folksongs and Ballads Popular in Ireland, Vol. 1 (Cork, Ireland: Ossian Publications, 1979), 17.
[2] Dr. Arthur Colahan, “Galway Bay” (London: Box and Cox Publications, 1947).
[3] “‘Not to find one’s way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance – nothing more,’ says the twentieth-century philosopher-essayist Walter Benjamin.” Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), 6.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., 5.
[6] Jo Kerrigan, Old Ways, Old Secrets: Pagan Ireland (Dublin: The O’Brien Press Ltd., 2015), 137.
[7] “Clíodhna of the Banshees,” Ireland-Information.com, https://www.ireland-information.com/irish-mythology/cliodhna-irish-legend.html#:~:text=Cl%C3%ADodhna%20was%20the%20mythical%20Queen,songs%20could%20cure%20all%20ills.
[8] Jo Kerrigan, Old Ways, Old Secrets, 137.
[9] “Clíodhna of the Banshees,” Ireland-Information.com.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Trifonic, Facebook, November 25, 2012.
[14] Ali Isaac, “The Power of Water in Irish Myth,” May 12, 2021, https://www.aliisaacstoryteller.com/post/the-power-of-water-in-irish-mythology.
[15] Jo Kerrigan, Old Ways, Old Secrets, 138.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Trifonic.
[18] Rainer Maria Rilke, “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, Vol.1. Translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows.
[19] Psalm 139:7 (NRSV).
[20] Psalm 139:9 (NRSV).
[21] Psalm 139:6 (NRSV).
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment