Ireland 2009 pg 107

Ireland 2009 pg 107


At 8 after 10 I have left the country of Ireland and now we are over the pure blue of the Atlantic Ocean.
Gone the coasts of Erinn as we passed out I think over the Burran south of Galway.
Bay and town and the last vestage of land the eye of a great gull its beak pointed in flight across the westbound sea.
I think this eye is a cairne.

The Shannon was crossed at its great lake Loch Derg I believe and to the north cliffs being made out that I thought might be Benbulben orBenGullion but that is in Doengal and theses clffs were probably Mohair.

I got the window seat by accident of love.
The young spoiled amrercan girl ocupying it wanted me to give her my seat so she could be with her boyfriend in the center.
She offered me 20 euros to move. I would not. tThn she offered me 40 euros.
I told her go to her friend and in the end she did as that passenger did not show up and they kissing and hugging side by side.
They are contented to be there together and I am moved to the window seat to get the goodby view of central Ireland.

The fluffy white loft of clouds are still there the just that covered Ireland as I came over in April
But now floating along up there
White luxury like little sheep delited for this milky protection side and on into the sky themselves ,alone or a group of them just like the Irish people.
The team and thd drifters .
The bogs stood out but not the mts and those to stand out sprawled from a center hub with their roads too.
We might have flown over Tara.
It was not recognizable as Delta 764 climbed serenely nortt along the Irish sea coast before it turned westwardacross what is probaly Meath and Leitrim.

Connact is big. It is the biggest and the province streaches all along the Shannon estuary to the sea.
The great stone fence landmarks hardly visable from the air.

The Islands off the coast drift out like puzzle peices waiting to be fitted in and the great yellow brown cut mountains of plowed fields now to bear a cut line of different sizes and cutouts throughout the landscape .
the biggest rectangles on a plumline.
The now mined bogs
Cutout by orderly markers.
I did not see these from the ground.

However would not have sold my chance to say goodbye to Erinn for all the 40 E or 50 E or any E at all.
The land being far more precious than the printed paper.

Nor so controlling of the greedy International mind and so useless a corrupted as to live off this spoiled blond american with pockets full of it to convert back into Dollars at NYC.

So hurt that, and angry that I would not give her her way that she could not sell me ,after all my recent loss of time and knowledge because of lack of the Euro.
And so for the 3 of us having distained the Euro for true values of life.
This her love a skinny blackhaired, blue eyes fellow with a dirty basebal cap and me
My final view of this land of my ancestors and my mothers birth a better view by far than she had at 10 in 1922 and Denis bringing down the 90 euros for the good sisters.
The duty of Shane his own good future with his unknown cousin much more valuable than this printed paper means of exchange and so all 3 of us got our way.
All 3 humans discovered the power of money and kept our own values.

I tried to call Denis re his channels- his wife- yesteday.
However Ericom doesnt know how much it cost to call the UK in coin or collect.
It says 50 cents a minute on this phone but it also says no calls without 1 euro so I will wait.
Denis will figure it out.

I spoiled his and his brothers goodbye wake as I leave never to retun But next year or so he may get Kathya nd Mary and Isabel more good use to them all here.
I will be gone with my rambling about Carrowkeel a nd quarter days and restarting the fairs.
Eire will survie.
She will proper in her own way Indian and Chinese ,Burmese and Paki, American and French tourist and of course, the Students.

The Republic has done well in only 90 years.
Roads built. Schools operating.
Goverment in disaray and wasetful that it is still funtioning.
The past is accepted and the future blowing onthe wind tangled light, swirling this way a nd aaht.
Hoepful and progressive.

Ireland is a nest and its people the fleglings.

Little hungry birds with open gap screaming to be fed by the great soaring parent sea bird.
The nest cannot be disturbed. All the little nests within the island.

It is sad for me to leave this island of saints and sinners and scholars as well.
Poets and engineers, farmers and egotists and sailors.
Dreamers who are soldiers and camp followers.

Their mentor the soverenty of Ireland which they may or may not recognize. This Queen of the sea her body shouded in the mossy green mantle.
Her moutains purple and ever present in the distant folds always to be scanned for carns and ancient monuments.

Her seas forgotten and her words unrecognizable as you pass this by on the roadsign timapeal as no one speaks the Gaelic but they do the English .
This speech is the gaelic inflection slurring the gaelic idea.

Its childen express this instinctively like the fledgling in the nest ever pure every together ever hppeful and laughing into t he future.

They are forgotten but they survive and slowly this will suddenly flower into one country again ,one people ,the Irish .
Not by birds of prey that they are, and the long necked stone with the eye pointed out to the ocean and that this Gael itself, son of Cean or the head.

The sea the forgotten surrounding sea.
And so Slan abar Erireann. Beanactha ort and an ferr a tu.

And so this jouranl of a Travaler ends as this bird of the modern world points its long neck westbound under Captain Metcalf steady in her course as the Burren stone points to the future or the new world.
Land of the emigrant and the tired and the poor and the down troden and I lift up my lamp beside the golden shore.

As the woters of the Abair Sionann are in this nestles gold jar awaiting this testof their solid kernels sent to the bottom of the golden water of Carrick on Shannon so too we return to our own part of our own future and our own nest.

What part of America are you from?

Why did you come to Ireland?

Which way is Ireland?

And so ceann cursa.

judi Donenelly
copryright
3 june 2009