Mid Spring's Cailín Aerach

We've just returned (well, Friday) from a two-week trip home for my sister-in-law's wedding.
Hurricane-force winds. Summerlike sun. Salt air. Moss. Bog. Burning turf. Mountain climbs. Hot whiskey and familiar language. More wrens making appearances than in any of my previous stays. My heart feels whole and full for the first time in a year or so. Jack and I may still be a bit home-drunk off the whole thing seeing as we're now trying to scheme a way to either buy a house or renovate one of the ruins on his dad's property so we can stay for longer periods; both desperate for the fresh air and ghosts and quiet, longing to be cradled by the craggy hills. Walking onto the porch yesterday morning to the sound of traffic, sirens, and motors rather than cattle, lamb, and lark was more jarring than I expected. Funny how deep roots can grow in two weeks.

I have a few new creative ideas floating around in the attic for the first time in a year - visiting home always has that effect. It stirs awake something that is all-too-readily buried under the normal monotonous, anxious, busy-body drone of existing far away from the soil that coughed me and those before me up. Fear has me worried that they'll slink away soon, like the remaining bits of coastal air still lingering in my lungs, or the smell of turf still clinging to my sweater. Coaxing them out requires great sensitivity and attention.

This tune was stuck in my head the length of the trip; RnaG had played it sometime during the delirious three hour drive from Dublin to Portnoo (after having spent 24 sleepless hours on planes and in terminals courtesy of spring's stormy mood swings) and it decided to stay put there, hiding in the shadows during the day and coming into my consciousness during the quiet moments. Nell Ní Chróinín is one of my favourites. I felt the need to toss it here:

Conversations (12/23)

Things I said to Tipper today:
"Did you REALLY pee on the dog's bed? Again? I was gone for two minutes!"
"If you would simply stop jumping over the gate to harass him, you wouldn't find yourself in these predicaments."
"Tipplet, get back over the gate."
"Ok then have it your way - I'm not saving you this time."
"Fine fine I'm coming - I gotcha - but fucks sake would you stop bopping the dog on his arse"
"No you cannot eat Malachy's puppy food. This is why you're getting fat."
"No you cannot eat Jack's tacos."
"Ara would you get out of the dog food bag now!"
"You're smothering my hands and I can't work but I forgive you because you're cute."

Things I said to Malachy today:
"You should go pee on the cat's sleeping spot."
"Ok, you can sit in the driver's seat, but I don't know how quickly we'll get to the store this way."
"No, the woman at the window does not have whipped cream for you. This is the bank, not the coffee shop."
"Leave it, leave the cat - no no, you're too big for her."
"Really you're going to smush her. I know she's asking for it but Jack will be very mad."
"OK, fine, she's a wee shit and you can smush her. G'wan then so."
"Oh shoot I lied - c'mon away - good boy - she's a bad cat, I know, I know."
"I promise the rubbish bin is still eight houses back and is not following us home."
"If I let you sit on the chair with me will you give me more than two minutes to eat dinner?"
"Aw pal I'm sorry I keep trying to pat your head. I don't know what makes you duck away sometimes but I'll keep trying to figure it out."

Things I said to Brógan today:
"A chara I still don't know what I'm doing wrong and could use a hint or two if you've got time between swimming and fetch one of these days."
"Why on earth did you leave us with this tyrantcat."

Candy Canes

I feel compelled to share my favorite Christmastime memory.

Brógan was always very instant on being in the bedroom with me at night. If he were sleeping and I didn't ask him to come along, or he didn't respond to my nudges and calls and simply went without him, there would always be frustrated sighs on the other side of my door 5 minutes later expecting entrance. I remember one particularly baltic February night when he was sound asleep on the big cozy dog bed in front of the fireplace and I hadn't the heart to wake him and herd him up to our subarctic sleeping quarters, so I'd gone to bed without him. 15 minutes later he'd broken the door's latch by shoving his big head into it to get in after I hadn't heard his quiet sighs through the five blankets my head was buried under. Aside from when I was traveling, there was never a night he didn't sleep by my side, even if I went to bed while there was still company downstairs, and he never left that room unless I did, for any reason.

For our first Christmas in our own house, Jack and I hung candy canes on our tree. Simple, traditional decorations. I knew to hang them quite high because Brógan was very fond of them, so our tree was mostly decorated on the top 3rd and looked funny but who cares? I always took a few off for him throughout the season, or shared any of the ones I ate with him of course. Most things are infinitely better when shared with your dog anyway.

At this point we slept with the door open because our bedroom in this house is also subarctic so keeping the door open helped get heat from the rest of it in (this is a running theme in my life - bedrooms so cold the insides of the windows frost over and you can often see your breath in the morning despite the rest of the house being very balmy). In our new living situation, Brógan headed to the bedroom as soon as he heard me brushing my teeth and, again, didn't get up until I did, even if Jack woke up and offered him walks, or the neighbor came to the door.

 However, one night during this first Christmas season, I had been lying in bed for about 30 minutes reading "The Chimes" when he'd suddenly gotten up and, very slowly and quietly, walked out. I put the book down, puzzled, and listened carefully as nervousness settled in - surely something was wrong. After waiting for a moment to hear retching or whines, I bounced out of bed and shuffled into the sitting room to find he had merely migrated to his sitting-room-bed. I checked his eyes and gums, his belly and everything else for any sign of dis-ease like any neurotic owner of a slightly-older dog who is known to eat things that can kill him does, but nothing was unusual.

I gave him a few nudges and clicked my tongue, "c'mon bogey, bedtime", but he just looked at me with his head laid between his forearms. Hm. Puzzling indeed.

So I shuffled back into bed, picked "The Chimes"  back up and waited for him to return, still nervously listening for any sounds. How unusual - in all his 8 years up to that point never once did he leave the bedroom without me.

About a solid 20 minutes or so later, I heard a very familiar sound - the unmistakable ring of a porcelain bell ornament that belonged to my grandmother, which was hanging lower on the tree as I knew it to be safe from his interests (not smelly, organic, or tasty enough). I'm sure I audibly gasped in amusement (and probably relief) as I realized what was happening. Ambling back out of bed and into the arctic air I found him, again, curled up on his bed just as he had been before, but now with a small shred of thin plastic in front of his nose and the scent of mint in the air, while the small bell still clinked on the tree. His tail began to wag wildly as he knew then that I knew what game he was playing.

That clever, clever creature.

I curled up on that stinky dog bed and hugged him tight and laughed and scratched his belly, telling him how goofy he was while his tail wagged and he smiled at me knowing be had done something he wasn't supposed to (and been caught).

He didn't get in trouble (of course he didn't, how could I be anything other than positively tickled by this well thought out attempt at sneaking a highly-prized treat?), but he never left the room for candy canes, or anything else, again. Something about that makes it all the more special, and amusing.


To say I miss him is an understatement. It's not as jarring or debilitating as it was; more of a quiet but constant presence. 

------------

3 months is the longest I've gone in my whole 30 years without sharing life and home with a dog. That stretch was between my childhood chesapeake Buster (who my dad insisted was our last dog because it was so heartbreaking for him to say goodbye) and the black lab pup my mam showed up with one day three months later named Jake (because she can't stand not having a dog). 

As it so happens, that record is still the longest, and I seem to have finally found a gene my mother and I share.

5-month-old Malachy isn't Brógan. He never will be (for crying out loud, the wee fella doesn't even like bananas - and it's hard to get him to eat enough - Brógan, what kind of weird creature is this?). We've had a bumpy start - he had kennel cough and was very standoffish - we speak different languages, we smell and sound funny to each other, and I'm learning that I have far more adjusting to do than he does (Brógan, why on earth does he not not turn into a wiggly mess like you did when I'd merely look at you a certain way, let alone pat your head, and why does that sting a little bit?)

Unexpected. Probably too soon. Probably not the best time. But here we are. Because he needed a home and I needed a reason.
He has helped me find a reason to get on that I've missed over the last few months. An excuse to actually get dressed and leave the studio, to get back into the woods again despite the cold and wet and muck and mud or how I feel or whether or not I want to. To put my own feelings and thoughts and excuses and life-garbage aside and simply be present and patient because he needs me to.

And there's such great joy in watching a puppy be a puppy. It's been a long time.

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.

Winter's Tail End and the Mouse Saga pt.2

Winter's death grip is finally loosening. Though we woke up to snow this morning, the temperature has quickly risen from face-and-nostril-stinging to can-go-out-in-a-jumper-and-be-perfectly-comfortable. It already feels like a small weight has been lifted from the shoulders.

Update on the fireplace-mystery-visitor. My dad came over this afternoon with his inspection mirror and various tools to prod around. We removed the foil tape covering the flue and discovered a whole bunch of old newspaper packed into the cavity. When we removed that, out came a whole mess of mouse scat followed by a bundle of fur and miscellany, like chewed up paper and dried grass - clearly someone's humble abode. They picked a good spot anyway - no hawks, cats, or snakes would be getting them from in there.

The landlord joined us to assess the situation and decide what to do. My suggestion was to get a small double-door cage type trap to place either on the sort of shelf of the cavity up in the chimney, or down on the ground of the hearth which we would block off from the living room with the panel I use for stretching paper. Much to my dismay, he didn't like that idea, and instead took a trip up the road to the hardware store. He returned with a small arsenal of wretched traps - mainly two trays full of some ridiculously sticky substance, and two clamp traps. I made an uncomfortable attempt at talking him out of these and into something else but it wasn't any use; he's the type of person who sticks to a thing once his mind is set on it.

So now I'm sitting in my studio, which is also the living room, awaiting either the sound of a clamp snapping shut or the creature screaming as it tries to get out of the wretched sticky shit. I don't want to be here at all. The landlord will be back in a few hours tonight to check the traps, and again tomorrow morning. I want to remove everything at once and try something else - but I also don't want to piss off the landlord (who is also my uncle, and lives just upstairs) even more than he is at having a mouse in his house. The tension between my moral code (don't hurt anything, not even spiders or ants) and the need to maintain a good relationship with family / landlord is terrible. Thus my desire to flee from the situation altogether (out of sight out of mind, right?)

Last year we had a rat burrowing in the flowerbed beneath our porch. He was going to put rat poison out but I managed to talk him out of that (there are far far too many stray cats, dogs, pets that get loose, birds, raccoons, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, coyotes, wildlife in general in our neighborhood- anything at all could get into it and would suffer horribly) and into one of the door-closing cage traps. I asked him to let me know when he caught it, so I could take it down into the valley and release it, far away from the house and into the woods. To my dismay, when he did catch it, he filled a barrel of water in the back garden and shoved the cage, rat and all, into it for half a day. I didn't talk to him for two weeks afterwards (but never did tell him why).

I feel an incredible moral duty to remove the traps.
The sticky ones sound particularly bad. At least the snappy ones would, at best, be quick...to think of the thing suffering and struggling in that goo...(although I wonder whether there'd be some way for me to help the creature out should it fall victim to it...)
But at the same time I feel obliged to listen to the 'rules' of the person who owns the house.
At the price of a living creature's life though? ("Oh but it's just a mouse.") That guilt will weigh heavier on me than any winter day.

Stay tuned.

Edit: Moral compass wins. The shop has a catch-and-release trap specifically for mice that's small enough for the hearth. I hope the landlord doesn't get upset - I can't imagine why he would other than he spent $10 on his cruel traps - but, well, I won't budge of he does.

Endless Winter - Tipper Knows.

There’s not much I miss more in cold or wet weather than an open fire. The continuation of a seemingly endless, depressing winter has found me gazing longingly at our cold and barren hearth wishing we could bring it back from the dead. It’s illegal to have functional fireplaces in multi-family housing in our city, but most landlords have kept the original hearths in the units for decorative purposes. Such is the case for ours. 

The brick around it has been whitewashed, but the muddy-red tiles on the floor of it are original, or so they look. It was gas-powered, so the old pipe head, now disconnected from the main, still sticks up in the back. The top, where I assume some manner of exhaust duct or ventilation would have been, has been covered, curiously, by foil tape. It’s not much more than a good-looking, cold little nook in the wall. 

About a week ago Tipper started a nightly ritual of sitting in front of this scene with Seán Mhicí Ted Beag (our hearth gnome), and his candle, and staring at the foil-tape-roof.  She’d set herself down square in front, bright eye’d, tall ear’d, and with her tail twitching and swishing in that way it does when she watches the birds or squirrels or when I tease her with a toy. For a few nights I’d wondered whether a spider of some kind had come out of hibernation and sought solace in some corner, but there was nothing to be found - and surely she’d have pounced within seconds had it been a spider. Yet she continued every night to sit there, with some “crouching tiger” stalk poses mixed in, and a few moments of getting in the space and standing up to sniff the foil-y roof. Since none of my scrutiny returned the slightest hints of anything interesting, I could only guess that it was her reflection in the tape that she was amused by. 

I must admit to painting her as a simpler creature than she is. 

Jack and I were getting ready to tuck ourselves in for the night when I heard a little sound unlike all the little sounds I’ve grown used to hearing. At first it sounded like rain, or some sort of particles, falling on the back side of the tape. But sure it wasn’t raining - and didn’t it just rain yesterday, and a million times before that, and we never heard water getting in (does the ‘exhaust’ for the thing even go straight up and out anyway?) Sure enough there was Tipper the whole while - sitting there as was her wont each night, staring up, tail swishing vigorously back and forth. We both got down close, sticking our ears in Seán Mhící Ted Beag’s whitewashed cove, and sure enough - gnawing sounds, the sounds of little feet and claws moving, scratching and chewing at something, right there above us, separated by no more than a few layers of old foil tape. It sounded as though they were chewing the tape itself. But what WAS it and how on earth did it get in there?

Tipper knew the whole time. She must have heard it making its way there from wherever it came, whatever it is. Sitting and waiting patiently for the arrival of this curiosity. 

It being 1am we were not about to walk upstairs and ask my uncle, our landlord, for help. Nor were we about to try and cut the tape out for a peek. No indeed, with it being past Brógan’s working hours (10pm at the latest), and Tipper being only twice the size of a proper rat (if it wasn’t a mouse, or squirrel, or opossum, or mutant Cleveland sewer creatuirín), and Seán Mhicí Ted Beag having had no time to clear out. We’ve boarded it up with the panel I use to stretch paper and some cardboard, abutted by the coffee table, and are hoping for the best for the night.

I wonder what we will find in the morning. 

And right now I cannot possibly get “The Waterford Boys” our of my head;

“Well I wasn't long sleeping when I heard something creeping,

And gnawing and chawing around the bed post,

My breath I suspended but the noise never ended,

Thinks I you have damnable claws for a ghost,

Now to make myself easy for I felt rather lazy,

Well over my head I again pulled the clothes,

When Moses what's that, sure a great big jack-rat,

With one leap from the floor jumped right up to my nose."