...reading and writing....

The great thing about the internet is it's ability to suddenly make you travel back in time.
As a kid, I didn't just read the Narnia books, I devoured them. Every old house I was in, I checked out the back of the wardrobe, hoping beyond hope that amongst the ordinary clothes of great-aunts and uncles, lay some furs, some furs that I could push through and past and into that snowy land, toward that lampost that somehow seemed to mark the boundary between the two worlds.

Alas, it was never that wardobe. There was no Narnia, no Edmund, no Lucy, no Susan, no Peter. There was no Mr. Tumnus, no Evil White Witch, and no Aslan. But there was something about the power of the writing, that even though I knew the stories couldn't be anything but fantasy, another part of me thought it was so beautifully written, so true to life, that it could just be true.

That's the power and beauty of a good author, no matter how unfeasible something may be, if it's written powerfully or eloquently enough, it can leave an impression on you that drifts into your everyday world. I was a bookworm as a kid-when I wasn't outside playing, I was tucked up in some corner of the house, reading. From the simplistic and surreal Famous Five and Secret Seven series, to the slightly more thoughtprovoking Narnia, and Lord of The Rings, I absolutely ate up the words in front of me. I could picture every nook and cranny of the wilds of Narnia and Mordor. I felt I had been in Smeagol's cave trying to fathom his riddles as his slithery voice echoed around the dank walls (What has it gotssssss in it'sssss pockets my precioussssss....?) and every time I was in Slish Wood traisping round, I felt I might stumble into a mythical world, with faeries and demons hiding behind each tree. Such was the power of the words I read, and the imagination those words endowed me with.

It's only recently that I've come back to reading (curse you adult life with your busy-ness and distractions!) and I've really began to appreciate the power of a well written eloquent piece. What inspired all this ramblement this evening was spotting this picture on twitter.

I read those words as an adult with virtually no regrets in my life thus far. Part of me would love to be able to remember what I made of them as a kid. Although as I write these words, I'm thinking I was probably too busy grieving for those about to be lost in the battle than thinking about my own short life!

As an adult, the writings of C.S. Lewis still enthrall and fascinate me, particularly his writings on faith, both his opinion, and his fictional presentation of faith through The Screwtape Letters. He has such a beauty, such an eloquence that even just a simple sentence like the one above, stops me in my tracks and makes me think. Some people think a short story is the perfect vessel for a message. Others think it takes a novel to get a message across, while others percieve that poetry is the only way to impart something important.

One of my most favourite pieces of poetry is "Instructions" by Neil Gaiman. It appeals to all aspects of my nature-adventure, curiousity, fear, caring, nature, fantasy, reality, and comfort. The idea behind it is a list of instructions of what to do if you find yourself in a faerytale. The beauty of poetry is that everyone takes something different from the same words. I don't just see it as that-I see it almost as a journey through life. Sometimes things that should help will hinder, sometimes unexpected things will cross your path and bear your crosses for you. Those you love may vanish but are never truly gone, and while things change along your life path, some time, you will make it to your final home.

Or y'know, you could just take it as a what-to-do-if-you-get-stuck-in-a-faerytale-list. Your call tbh....

The first time I heard this piece of poetry was a few hours ago and I cannot, literally, can not get it out of my head. It just blew me away. I genuinely felt like I'd been punched in the stomach whilst listening to it....the tears came the second time I watched, the first time I was genuinely too stunned. Just....unreal. The power behind his words, they felt like weapons....the visceral brutal reality of life and the simplicity behind the opening lines.....people say all kinds of things to one another without thinking of how they'll impact on those around them. Take a watch and a listen to it.....

...old friends....

"Old friends, old friends sat on their parkbench like bookends..." "Old friends, memory brushes the same years, silently sharing the same fears..."

"Time it was, and what a time it was, it was
A time of innocence, a time of confidences
Long ago, it must be, I have a photograph
Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you"

This song was running through my head today, reflecting on some short but quality time spent with one of my oldest friends. We've been friends since we were 12, and we have literally gone through the best of times and the worst of times together.

We haven't really seen each other properly in a long long time. I was over to herself and himself earlier on this year, but it was a rushed visit, less than 24hours, in the middle of house renovations and while it was lovely to see them, it didn't feel like we'd spent any proper time together.

The short time we spent together was lovely.....chilling out together over food-a nice breakfast in BonBon in the village, then over to the campus to show them round the old buildings. I'd wanted to show them The Gunn Chapel, as it's a beautiful chapel, hidden behind the dull grey exterior is this stunning ornate interior. As we entered, I met one of the staff who told me there was something on, and it should be over in ten minutes.

So we wandered off to the graveyard (ghost stories were told...and disproved!) and meandered back to discover that "something" was graduates from St. Patrick's! All the fancy robes and fancy certificates were on show, as was the chapel, which remained open with lights on for all it's carved and hand-worked splendour to be shown.

In between the photos and the scenery, the three of us talked about so many different things, life, our experiences thus far, hopes for the future, friends, family, funny moments we'd shared, sad moments we'd shared. And we realised just how lucky we were to make it this far (yes, as teenagers we were all that cynical!) and how much experience we'd crammed into our short lives.

This time a decade ago, both she and I were manageresses of two established places in Carlisle, both in what we viewed as steady relationships with amazing guys, seeing each other almost every second day for drinks and catchups-and we thought we were fairly sorted...neither of us were considering leaving the border city for a long time. Fast forward a decade, we're both in totally different careers in totally different places and only physically see each other to catch up once, maybe twice a year .....and yet, just as close as we were a decade ago, despite the many horrible things that have happened us both since those days.

I can indeed, as the song says, "imagine us years from today, sharing a parkbench quietly ....How terribly strange to be seventy...." Old friends usually make the best friends, and I'm very, very lucky to be able to count herself (and himself through her!) as one of mine.

Life moves so fast, and it's very easy to lose touch with people, especially if you're someone like me who misses calls or texts and keeps meaning to return them but forgets. Weeks turn into months which turn into years and you suddenly realise it's actually years since you last spoke or sat with someone you used to see daily. But if the friendship was strong enough, time makes no odds, those bonds reconnect instantly.

I consider myself very lucky not only to have one, but several friends with whom I've shared over two decades worth of friendship. Friendship is an amazing gift to have in life. Your friends are the family you choose for yourself, and in that respect, I'm lucky to have accidentally chosen the most amazing sisters and brothers over the decades, and luckier still to have had them choose me. Life can be pretty damn amazing sometimes!

...the inevitable look back...

I spent today trying to keep busy. Trying to pretend it was any normal day off, I bought the paper, I did some shopping, I played guitar, I sketched and doodled, I fed and coaxed our new (and still slightly wild) cat into the house for a while. Yet still, when I'd note the time, my mind would wander back to where I was this day three years ago. Today, I've been awake since just before 6am. 3 years ago at that time, I was just after leaving his room to make a cuppa with my friends. We sat and talked on the couches in the hospice, took turns sleeping in armchairs and on the bedcouch in there, and listened to the world coming alive outside our window as our friend greeted his final morning.

Some moments spoke louder than others, his parents insisting we all get to spend a few minutes alone with him throughout the day....a drizzly dreary Thursday around the town....Stephen & I having a meal in the garavogue just to get out of the hospice for a little while and being amazed at the normality of the world around us....being in the room with him less than 1/2hr before he passed, as the Foo Fighters played quietly on his ipod....his raspy gasping stuttered breathing....Cathy's slow headshaking walk towards us as the Cathedral bells tolled the Angelus and we knew he was gone...and his amazing Uncle Tommy coming out to us a few minutes later to tell us everything about his final moments.
It's tough. And even though I've told myself it's getting easier as the years pass, it's not. I still miss him. I miss the way life used to be for all of us, especially Ger. I miss the knowledge that someone could crack the sickest joke, and McGarry would manage to top it off with something worse. I miss the random sincerity and beauty that would suddenly fly into rage and then back to quietly beautiful in his songs, I miss the effortless quips he'd make, and I miss him.

This night three years ago, I was sitting in Fureys, sipping a mug of tea whilst my friends sipped their pints. We could barely speak, all we could do was catch each other's eyes as Aoife Grennan sang every fucking sad song it was possible to sing. And yet, the one song that ran through my mind, from the moment I'd reached the hospice the night before was one that had comforted me when another friend passed away 12 years before that.

"time...is never time at all, you can never ever leave, without leaving a piece of youth....
and our lives are forever changed, we will never be the same...."

and the final verse...

"We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight...The indescribable moments of your life tonight...The impossible is possible tonight....
Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight "

We all believed he'd somehow beat the odds once he was diagnosed, and even in those final few hours, we hoped for the impossible. He was 6 hours short of his 30th birthday when he took his last breaths, and so tonight, I raise a cuppa in honour of him, his anniversary, his birthday and his general awesomeness. I miss my buddy.

 

I

....new beginnings and old memories....

A new blog begins...well over a decade since the first one. This will just be ramblings of sorts, sometimes about things that make sense, things that may or may not make you think. Sometimes it may just be a word or few, or a picture or two. We'll see.

This first entry will be rather nonsensical I suspect, given that I have no real idea why I wanted to write this evening. 

Firstly, the name....a play on the word "deinterlace" which is something in editing that seems to give me a mental block. For a long time when editing, I would meet footage that needed to be deinterlaced, and I could not for the life of me remember what setting it was in Final Cut that I need to go to "to remove the lines".  So after the umpteenth (thanks Noel King) time of forgetting it, I thought....why don't I think of it as deitalacing. And so, a blog title was born.


Aside from that, I may borrow a line from a song or few throughout my time here, as well as a photo or two. Writing of photos, here is a photo of a place I'd love to be right now, sitting in the sand and listening to the wind and the waves of the Atlantic crashing upon Streedagh's shoreline. 

It's the first beach at Streedagh, in north Sligo, and it is, to me, one of the most soul-soothing spots in the world. The beach is a mixture of small stones, soft sinking sand and hard sand as you get closer to the sea's shore. You can walk to the end of it in ten minutes, and, if the tide is out, you can clamber across the rocks to a point where all you can see is the sea stretching out in front of you. It almost feels like....if you had a boat, you could set sail for America without a soul knowing.

It's where I go when I'm home to refresh my soul somewhat. After my friend Neill passed, I went there. After my brother's cancer diagnosis, I went there. When my niece Eibhe was born, I went there. When life gets too much, when I feel I need both a physical and a spiritual recharge, I go there. I can't explain why I feel so connected with that one spot-the other beach at Streedagh is the one everyone else knows and loves and raves about; but this....this is mine..

It's also a spot with some history....in 1588, some of the Spanish Armada were shipwrecked there. (http://www.sligotown.net/streedagh-and-the-spanish-armada.shtml) There are varying reports of how many drowned in those wrecks, with numbers varying from 700 up 1800. (a rather large margin of error...) However, there is a rather sobering account from The DeCuellar letters about the conditions that a survivor met with were they lucky enough to survive the storm and the shipwreck (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Cuellar)

I don't know if something remains in a place that seen such large scale tragedy. I do know that of the few places I have been that have borne witness to the large loss of human lives have left me inexplicably saddened and reflective (often without knowing their history...Talbot St. in Dublin being one.) Often knowing a place's history changes it for you, it exacerbates the feelings you think you should feel and hides the ones you feel shouldn't be shown. 

Yet Streedagh does something for, and to me. I often arrive there in tears, and leave refreshed. I often arrive there happy, and leave happy, yet also having cried my heart out. That's one of the reasons I like the beach-you have that freedom to be yourself, to walk, to run, to swim, to be happy, to be upset....you can take in nature at her finest, on a beautiful crisp clear sunny day, with the Atlantic's waves tamed and lapping along the shoreline, you can take nature at her worst, where no matter how far away from the shore you are, the wind carries the spray of the waves, and makes it almost impossible to walk without being blown over. 

On those days, I often wonder how a bird feels when it tries to fly into the wind....it's futile, yet the bird keeps trying, dropping down with the wind, flying low, and on some occasions, walking and hopping forward just to make progress. You can view it as a metaphor for life, that, no matter what happens to us, whatever the weather, we can always find a way to keep moving forward.

Or you can just view it as a bird trying to get to where it's going.

Birds symbolise a lot to people sometimes, and there's a notion amongst some folks that birds continuously coming to visit you mean that either a death is on the way, or a loved one who has passed has come back to visit. Personally, I just see them as often beautiful calming creatures who glide and soar and sing and squawk, and who can add so much to a scenic walk. (Aside from crows. They just look like they should be an evil sidekick in a movie. Evil feckers.)

I'm often dubious of "symbols" in life. Sometimes I think it's easy to connect coincidences, to make something out to be what you want it to be. And other times, I feel I've experienced too many serendipitous moments, where the stars have aligned, where things have happened "just right" for me, the right place, the right time....they've happened too often for me to discount them completely.

And that's why I love Streedagh. Streedagh gives the time, the space, the place to contemplate things, to reflect upon the scenes of horror it once saw, to wonder about the future, who else will walk these sands when I'm centuries gone, what will nature bring next-maybe these sands will be buried beneath the waves in the future and the folk walking the shoreline will never know that once, others walked upon what is now their seabed. 

Nature, much like time, is awesome force, and one that cannot now, nor ever, be reckoned with. Long after these words disappear into the ether of the internet, long after you and I have taken our last breaths, nature will still be creating beautiful soul soothing environs such as Streedagh, and time will keep passing in those environs....

As I write these words, I am listening to the beautiful music of Ennio Morricone, and the track "Ecstasy of Gold" has begun. It has me thinking of beautiful Streedagh sunsets, and the power of music, and reminds me of this amazing gig I saw the night before I got my kneecap replaced. (another ramblement for another time.) 

Suffice to say, Streedagh is amazing. Even keeping in mind that wonderful quote "...sand is over-rated. it's just tiny little rocks..." those little (and large rocks) are amazing. As is this piece of music. ...
Enjoy.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbMYEbkue1Q