Well it appears the layout of this contraption has changed since I last visited, and if I didn't feel foreign given how dreadfully bad my habit of self-reflection-through-writing has become over the last few years, I certainly do now.
It goes without saying that this year has been an interesting one. I have never ridden a rollercoaster, but that analogy seems to pop up every now and then in the collective cacophony and, if a rollercoaster is really anything remotely like this year has been, I will be glad if I never experience its likes. My family are alive and healthy and staying afloat and that's all I can ask for (touching about 40 pieces of wood as I type this).
Despite the lack of writing in here (and elsewhere) it has been one of the more introspective years I've had in recent memory - which is a good thing. Somewhere between graduating college and being cast adrift into adulthood I lost some important values. Or rather, they were buried under piles of nonsense, and my attempts at finding them amidst the rubble over the last while have admittedly been half-hearted, or shortly abandoned in favor of slinking into the easier, newer, not-so-great nooks of comfort and habit. But I managed to dig out a few earlier in the year, and have been holding on to them very cautiously - a bit unsure as to whether, perhaps, I'd grabbed the tail of a ghost instead, but that familiar, soul-warming feeling of an old true friend is pretty unmistakeable.
I cannot say that much has been outwardly accomplished this year. Earlier on in March, all gallery shows I had slated for the year were quickly (and rightly) cancelled. Disposable income is harder to come by for many, and existence these days is laden with uncertainty, so it wasn't too long after the the galleries gave notice of the cancellations that commissions and contract work started to dry up as well. With work at a slow trickle (and personal-creativity having taken a major hit simply due to The Constant Tumult), a lack of places to go and people to see, and a desperate need to peel as far back from the news, social media, the cacophony, the endlessly depressing storm of society.... well...I had naught to do but to visit some old 'friends' (in which I rediscovered those buried values).
Namely, after years of the saying to myself "I wish I could...I should...." in respect to picking certain things back up, I have finally re-devoted myself to matters of importance; Irish, folklore and mythology, reading, making my own (non-commission, not-for-any-audience-in-particular work), unplugging almost entirely, and simply hanging out with our Creatures and the plants and bugs and birds in the garden (though our garden still looked pretty desperate this year, thanks to said devotion coming a little later than would've been optimal....nevertheless I enjoyed it more than I have since moving here), and being present with the people I love.
This little raft has been sailing for a few months now and I think we're far enough away from the land that I can pat its rickety side and say "Ah sure we've done it at last - sure that wasn't so hard now was it? Now we just gotta keep going...."
The next habit on the list to reclaim is introspective writing/journaling so here we are. This has been the hardest for me as I feel my language has significantly weakened over the last few years from a lack of reading and, well, existing / allowing myself to feel and think and be introspective. Coupled with hating "hearing" myself talk and self-consciousness about all of the "I, me, my" involved....but that's also the point so....sigh...here we are.
At any rate, among other good things currently, I'm in the midst of reading Ireland's Immortals by Mark Williams, which is a fairly academic but exciting read - every page is covered in little gems that are new to me, and getting breakdowns of some of the etymology or minute details of these stories is riveting - I think poor Jack has heard quite enough about the Dagda's comically disturbing misadventures over the weekend. These stories and their folkloric counterparts are perpetually on my mind in some shape or form but each year when September, October, November come around - Meán Fómhair, Deireadh Fómhair, and Samhain, respectively - all of it seems to reverberate at a different level. Memories wash up abundantly; walking in a dark country lane at night with chills up my spine from the shadows of the ancient mountains towering over me, the vibrant orange of the montbretia blooming against the eternal blue of the booming November tide, the intensity of the stars on Inis Oírr while the wind howled down through the maze of ever-enduring walls laid by so many hands, and the grey stones of monastic Glendalough sitting quietly against the blaring russet curtain of An Fómhair. Some folks say "the veil is thin" - maybe there is something to that, after all. Wasn't it Tolkien who believed Ireland was some manner of gateway to the otherworld? (this was meant in a less-than complimentary sense, as I recall anyway). Perhaps it is that; 'the veil' is always thin there - the history, the stories, evident like scars upon the landscape, swallowing you as you move through it; all-encompassing, utterly immutable. And so when the days grow darker here, when the cold touch of autumn tucks in the plants and sends the birds south, the skies turn grey and the ground is wet and the wind howls, and only then that "veil" thins here - it begins to feel a little familiar....
I'm sure I'm going to turn into a broken record on this subject if I do keep at this. Apologies in advance, but ye've been warned.
