Essays

Liscannor, Ireland

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Ireland beckons

Liscannor, Ireland: rest, rainbows, and rejuvenation.

Liscannor. A tiny town on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. There’s Lahinch across the horseshoe bay, with white houses pebbled along the hazy kelly hills. I ask a local how to pronounce it.

“To the English, it’s pronounced Lis-CANN-or. To the Irish, it’s Liscannoooor,” she says with a ghostly purse of the lips and a brogue roll of the tongue.

Night.

Travelers, weary from a month on the road, we settle into a cozy beach cottage and light a fire in the black stove. A previous dash to the country store has rewarded us with a crisp wine, and we clink our glasses. As the room warms, we peel off our layers of coats and scarves and finally sweaters, our socked toes curling to the heat as we bask in the embers.

Afternoon.

A strategically placed Irish novella beckons from a bay window—first him, then me, and then we chat about secrets hidden between delicious words.

A tumult hurls rain sideways, loud as breaking glass. The lap blanket gets pulled to the chin with a smile.

A season in a day here, soon the sun gleams and glistens, turning grass the famous emerald, and gray stone to a true gold. And, yes, a rainbow, its full arch so clear that if we each run to a side, we swear we’ll be soaked in its paint.

In the past, the village folk got together and created a park with lovely stone benches. Not facing each other, but each facing the sea. There is no sitting across for such a view—Ireland is for holding hands and silence and stirring of souls.

The Atlantic is a raging, smashing, crushing giant bull, stomping and snorting, tossing the spray straight up with such a mighty blow, that the water is momentarily suspended there, afraid to come down again. And soon, with a season in a day, it whispers and laps and shimmers gently to lovers and sleeping babies over smoothed rocks and boulders, and seabirds can tiptoe on its shores once more.

Morning.

He is now making breakfast—our last before we leave. And I am on a stone bench, pondering, then simply being. The stone is chilly through my jeans. And it’s time to go. The sun filters glowing ribbons down on me, whispering stay. But that’s the beauty of Ireland. You never really leave, once you’ve been here.

Liscannor Ireland
Stone benches for pondering and just being

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Crossing Bridges

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Bridges to each other
Building bridges for peace, because that’s who we are.

Bridges are everywhere, all across the world.

You may see ancient stone bridges standing a thousand years. If you listen for ghosts, you can hear the march of soldiers, the creak of wagons, the clip-clop of horses.

Turn a verdant country corner.

Just there, between the poplars, you will see a quaint bridge with playful wrought iron, a hundred years ‘young.’ A tell-tale pink ribbon hints at a recent wedding and life’s warm, wonderful continuity.

From deafening swollen rivers to the smallest giggling brook, we build bridges to connect to each other—to family, neighbors, strangers, foreigners… enemies.

The waters divide; we join. We do. We build those bridges because we hope. We are always hoping, we have always hoped to join together. The human spirit is more powerful than a raging river.

We panic sometimes. We get suspicious. We suddenly fear the other side. We knock our bridges down.

Sometimes.

A storm blackens the sky, and we forget the sun ever shone.

For a while.

But that is not the definition of “us.” We are better than our fear.

The river shimmers from a tiny crack in the desolate clouds, that first glimmer of light, and we suddenly remember. Curiosity returns, as constant as the flow of the river.

And, like our ancient ancestors everywhere—our mutual family carrying our shared DNA in their blood, we pick up that first stone and drop it in the water. Because THAT is who we are. And, with childlike innocence, wobbling and precarious and full of dreams, we take that first step to the other side.

 

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Patchwork Muses in Umbria, Italy

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Patchwork Views and Cobble Strolls

Follow the cobble to find your muse!

I walk down an ancient cobbled path, to a view of vast rolling hills, like a quilt draped over a pile of sleeping cats. Squares of green tufted candlewick trees, a plain beige patch here, a striped green and brown vineyard there, a golden plowed field with mustard peeking through in vivid yellow.

Descending steep stone steps, I see a grotto with a statue of Mary to the right, and a marble bare-breasted maiden to the left. Viva l’Italia!

The wind is soft as the sky, with its gentle haze muting the colors—just a little. Italy doesn’t do ‘muted’ for long.

I arrived in the dark, delivered to the tip-top via a treacherous drive up, up, up, inches away from the craggy crumbling bluff, the driver confident and nonchalant.

The thing is, that’s how to do it. Perceived danger is a funny thing. Like the light mist, it can be gently dismissed by a calm confidence that all will be well.

A surprise gust of wind catches my attention and hair. Yes? I ask the sky as if it will answer. I often open my ears to the possibilities, the avant-garde, and the muses skipping and floating, invisible and playful.

“You see me?” I ask out loud as my dark tresses flail about. “I see you, too.”

Talking to the wind is not crazy. It is connecting to all that is, not just the plain old atoms and molecules and facts and the concrete.

What is wind, anyway? Molecules, tossed about wildly, carrying the atoms of people and trees and dinosaurs and stars. That’s the real circle of life. Oh, the stories an atom could tell.

A cat, its coat patched in shabby gray, meanders, nonchalant as the driver, and is on her merry way after a rather royal sniff to my offered hand. A queen walking among the common folk in disguise, her cloak didn’t fool me—the flitting tail was a dead giveaway.

Silver-edged clouds glow uncannily, stealing the scenery—they want their moment, too.

Patchwork clouds and patchwork fields and patchwork cats; patchwork atoms and patchwork me. We’re all just pieces of each other, really—we people, animals, earth, sky… cats.

I smile.

I’m no philosopher, but that sits well with me, as I sit, well, in Umbria.