Casadh an tSugáin

The dearest friend I've ever had parted ways with the world on Friday.

It's impossible for me to describe the feelings left in his wake. I won't even attempt it. The ghosts that sit in all the corners and ambush me now, the strange volleying between bursting with gratitude and thankfulness and love, as light as a feather, and feeling completely empty and lost, heavier than lead. No language could ever describe how much he meant to me, nor how thankful I am for his existence - for being able to be a part of his life, for everything he gave. I was the absolute luckiest human.

At some point, maybe I will find words close enough to my feelings to put them down on here. But for the time being, I can't find them.

But I do feel the need to put this somewhere tonight:

There's this old song in Irish I've always loved - Casadh an tSugáin (Twisting the Hayrope). It's about a man courting a woman, and the woman's mother finds out about it. While he's in the house, she sets him to helping her twist a rope, and as the rope gets longer, he inevitably ends up outside, and the mother closes the door on him. So he's all kinds of upset that he can't have the lady of his heart's desire.

I used to sing this to Brógan. Nobody in the world knows this. I spoke to him in Irish all the time because he never cared, or said he didn't understand, or give me funny looks for it - every 'command' he knew was in Irish, which frustrated the daylights out of my mother because he wouldn't listen to her English pleas for him to "sit" and it was too difficult for her to say "suigh síos" (even after nearly 11 years of trying). This tune would often get stuck in my head. Only...I changed the lyrics to be about when I'd met him as a puppy and was going to bring him home. It was even sillier (though I was quite proud of the fact that I managed to keep it mostly rhyming in Irish, and with the right number of syllables), and half the time I couldn't get through it without laughing, but I'd sing it when we were alone (in other words, when nobody else was around to hear me sing it), or if I were feeling bad and he were comforting me, and quite often in the car as well - he hated car rides.

It's been stuck in my head perpetually since last week.

I'll leave my version here:

Do casadh maidrín deas orm in uaigneas an pháirc

Ar lúb na coille glaise uair bheag roimh dorcha
Sin an fhreagar’ ó a thug sé liom go chiúin agus go tláth
“Is orm eachtra mór a théann leat roimh an lá”

’S bheidh mé leat, beidh leat, a stóirín mo chroí

’S bheidh mé leat, beidh leat, os comhair a’ tí

’S bheidh mé leat, ’s gur leat gach órlach dem’ chroí

’Sé mo mhíle sásta go bheidh mé leat Dé Cheadaoin mar mnaoi!

-

(A nice little pup met me in the loneliness of the field,

At the bend of the green wood, an hour before dark

This was the answer he gave me quietly and gently;

'Let's take a great adventure together before the day'

I'll be with you, be with you, oh love of my heart

I'll be with you, be with you, in front of the house

I'll be with you, and every inch of my heart is yours

It's my great happiness that on Wednesday I'll be your girl")

Iarla Ó Líonáird is here singing it far better than I could ever hope to. He starts 50 seconds in and is so very very worth a listen to:

I'll probably be humming this around the house for weeks. Music and fiddle-practice have been life savers the past two days.

Airím uaim leat mo chara; feicfidh mé thú san tsaol is geise. Thank you thank you thank you thank you <3

Summer Chaff

Solidity. The earth beneath my feet, pushing up against them. Grounding. Firm.

It feels like a past life. 

Damp, cool soil, rich in worms and minerals, covered in moss, crawling with the smallest forms of life, tiny lungs breathing in and out for centuries, living and dying over and over again in perpetuity - I cupped it in my hands and saw my own reflection staring back through the dense black dirt. I saw myself in the roots, the stones, the lichens and ants. They saw themselves in me. 

Where did it go? Where did it wander to late at night, when it slipped out during my sleep? 

My ghost looks out at the parts of itself that were once unmovable, now scattered like chaff to the wind. I chase them, I grab greedily, hungrily - but they slip through my hands and laugh. 

I tell myself it wasn't a dream,  but I can't see the ground.

Four years ago something happened to me and caused a fissure. I haven't figured out what that something was, where the cracks started, or how they managed to expand so vastly while I wasn't looking. Each time I think I've stitched the seams back together they burst wide open again and all these parts of myself flee like moths into the night. It seems to take eons to gather them back up again.

Still, there are moments. There are times when I can feel the sun on my skin and and the grass under my feet and I know us each to be one and the same. There are moments when my pulse feels aflame with something that is much larger and deeper and older than me and any sense of understanding I have - this same thing that grounds me to the earth, unmovable, whole, and frees me into a limitless and timeless scape that I cannot fathom yet know to be true because I can feel it.

------

Being human is hard. Biologically, socially. 

I crave meaning while at the same time I know it to be a Sisyphean pursuit. I crave purpose and acceptance despite wanting freedom and solitude. This silly social part of our biology won't let go no matter how hard I try to push it away.

I remember my first trip to our home in Achill. I remember the tears falling down my face while I stood alone in our overgrown property, amidst the 300 year old stone ruins and fallen walls and lichen-covered boulders. I remember how I slowly lowered myself to my knees and sank my hands into the thick wet grass while I cried silently -  the realization that this was home, that this soil and I were one and the same thing, that this place had fed and watered and given birth to everything that was within me, was so powerful - I was overcome with complex emotions and a sense of connection to a patch of the earth that was so strong and so primal it could never exist in language alone.

I remember feeling a purpose in life in the years immediately after that. The path wasn't solid, and there were no financial or social gains to be found in the things I was doing, but the endeavours I was making were the most worthwhile things in the world. 

At some point I became disillusioned, perhaps after being told over and over that those things were insignificant, pointless, that I couldn't survive on them.. Words like "401K" "savings account" "insurance" "loans" "career" "salary" "job security" "retirement" "investments" "student loan repayment" "benefits" kept showing up on my plate, the lingua franca of the adult western world coupled with my worst nightmares. They'd say I needed to grow up and be responsible. My heart would race, acknowledging the severing blade to everything that meant anything to me. But I tried - I tried and I tried.

Then the earth beneath my feet disappeared.

I'm going to get it back.