Maybe there won’t be a blog from Listowel
If I can’t find easy access to wireless, I won’t blog.
Blogging might distract me from the moment. I’m going to meet strangers and unknown people: it would be wise to be alert for their influence.
So, dear readers, I offer you a break from the flurry of posts, until say Tuesday, after the bank holiday in Ireland.
The author of this blog keeps newspaper clippings.
He is attached to them. Five minutes ago, he had a clear-out. In his office, he found archives going back to February 2007. Collectively, the clippings, most of which were underlined, made a pile a yard high. Recycling next…
It’s time to let go. I’m not a politician. All those issues which have cleaved to me, which have called out ‘think about me, hold me, fight for me, be here for me…’ they belong to others too. They are not mine to care for. I am not here to do their bidding.
I have another purpose and need to focus on that rather than invest my life in politics, social reform, clean water and the health of the Irish people.
There is always a time to let go.
You can tell this is for serious writers: the apostrophe is in the right place.
I’ve enrolled for a workshop, "Advanced Poetry" with Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill.
I might be a bit of a fraud in such company. What will the others be like, in the group of 15? Will they scoff at my poems? Everyone was asked to send Nuala two poems in advance, so that she might see who was coming.
Next… I got a phonecall asking me to bring three long poems, or six short ones, for discussion at the workshop - and 16 copies of each. The workshop is over three days, Thursday to Saturday. For me, this is a real journey into the unknown. Nuala is well-known and successful. I imagine all the others will be familiar with her work.
So far, I’ve read: Feis Radharc o Chaban tSile Titim i nGra An Bhatrail Four poems from her collection "The Astrakhan Cloak". But it’s Paul Muldoon’s translations into English I’ve read. So, you might say, I’ve never read a poem by Nuala. (Peculiarly, the collection title is in English, without an Irish translation.)
I expect this workshop will change me irrevocably. If it doesn’t, I’ll have paid a lot for a little: three days of my time are worth a lot to me. (The fee isn’t that much.)
What follows is mainly for those of you who are interested in poetry. I’m going to take one short poem and comment on it, as I go down through it. This is my way of engaging with Nuala’s work before meeting her. I’m putting down a marker, so that I’ll have something to look back on after the workshop, something to help me see how far I’ve moved.
So I’ll pick a poem which is no more than sonnet length: "My Two Lughs"
It begins: "My two latterday charioteers… my mercurial" and I’m hooked. Normally I hate multi-syllabled words; I look for short ones with punch. But ‘latterday’ conjures up the church of latterday saints. ‘charioteer’ and ‘mercurial’ go well together; all the classical world in a couple of words. I feel I’m about to be taken on a journey.
What’s coming next? "airline pilots… you’ve come to find the dark dancing girl" I wasn’t expecting such a rapid tranfer back to the modern world of airlines. ‘dark dancing girl’: is the girl dark? is the dancing dark? I thought poets were meant to make it clear what they meant? But, no. I didn’t think that. I think the poet is there to open up the reader to new worlds: what the poet means is one thing, what the poet achieves is another. Of course, there’s a Rosheen Dubh hanging round here.
Read on… "who was snatched from you by cruel Chinese, by a gloomy band" I wonder if this is on two lines because the page is too short for it? And there is no full stop so there must be more to this. Are we in the world of triads and transportation of women round the world for sex? This is getting rather political, a long way now from the classical - although, wasn’t the story of Troy all about the abduction of Helen?
a new stanza begins. This is something I’d like to develop my thinking about: how you decide when one stanza stops and another begins. How you determine the form of the poem: whether it is best in cuplets, quatraines (four liners, I think), 8-liners or whatever? I think this is an inexact science and it all depends on what the poet wants the reader to see on the page. I like thinking about the physicality of the poem, its ruddy appearance.
"of guerrillas or some such terrorist-troop. I’ll do my level best to ferry her out of the theatre to you: you’ll once again loop the loop"
Why the ’some such’: what’d the role of those words. They seem to be a timing devise, a way of controlling the pace of the poem and maybe also linking to colloquial speech. Someone would say ’some such…’
I love the phrase: ‘I’ll do my level best to ferry her out of the theatre to you’. I immediately was transported into the world of the arts theatre which seemed completely out of place, until I got the association with theatre of war and then I was in two theatres at the same time: this is what I love about poetry.
"through the highest reaches of the stratosphere" end of stanza two. A full stop. A resting place, a ledge on which I can sit and look back over the poem so far and also look out into the rest of the journey the poem offers.
It is time for a rest and I am not going to do the last stanza because this is already too long and I have got just what I want already. To go on would be overkill.
Nuala has taken me on a journey through my memory of the classical world that I read about as a young boy. I remember reading some book about Mars and Mercury, Venus and Apollo and all the gangs of gods..The classical world has never left me. Just as the Tain has never gone far: all that blood in the river and the two bulls.
She has taken me to the jungles of VietNam where I first found the word guerrilla and now I know how to spell it, at last. Onwards to the modern time of people trafficking. And all the time the association with the theatrical live is there, reminding me that I was on the stage myself last week and I haven’t yet written about that.
The last stanza probably contains the revelation, the punch lines, but I don’t need those lines now. I have enough for this morning.
The questions I get from this expotition…
what is the balance to be struck between the exact and the colloquial?
isn’t timing everything?
isn’t the poet responsible for everything in the same way the painter and photographer is?
Isn’t a poem a constructed image? an essay into the collective unconsciousness and the particular unconsciousness of the mercurial reader?
Isn’t poetry a wonderful excuse for a journey over rich lands both outside the body and within the mind?
Isn’t it a great excuse for practising the art of thinking in images, including the impression on the page of the lain-down words.
How many associations does the poet want running at the same time?
Given that the poet has no control over the reader, how should this influence the poet and the poem?
What is the difference between the poet and the poem?
Has Nuala changed so much as a writer since 1992, that the one book I have of her stuff is hopelessly out of date with her current ideas?
I wonder what the others at the workshop will say?
I wonder if anyone has read down this far because we are now in the entrails. You’ll have to find you own way back Omaniblog.
You’ve led yourself down here.
Blogging the personal and the business
A certain Irish blogger runs two blogs: one for the personal, one for business. She is multi-talented and recognised as such. I couldn’t manage two blogs. I’m a man. So there’s personal, political, whimsical and economical to be found here. This is about business. I’m looking for work and I’m designing a training course. This is what I’ve written so far: Writing for Success Overview These days everything is written. If you can’t write well, you better get someone to do it for you, or get another job. People are fed up with bad writing – they are surrounded by it. No one wants to be bored, confused or irritated. Readers are too busy to figure out what bad writing means. Career prospects depend on being able to write well. Unless proposals, reports, emails impress others, the writer (and the ideas), is going nowhere. Anyone can write to a friend in shorthand, or code. (’B4Utxtink’) A friend will put up with messy prose. It’s completely different in business, or in any complex organisation: you need to put your point across - impressively. The best writers are journalists, novelists, short story writers and poets. But their methods can be used in business. Whether it is emails, reports, inter-net or intra-net copy - or even a business blog - this course shows how to write with the sharpness of a seasoned writer. How to write “un-put-down-able” words… This post is a blatant appeal for help: any chance you’d help me write a blurb that will bring in the punters… Will you be my editor, please. ps the entire overview mustn’t be any longer than this first draft.
Kevin Myers today, John of Dublin on Michael McDowell metamorphosis
"It might well be that the historic duty of the PDs is similarly over…" Kevin Myers is in fine form today (Irish Independent). In a piece entitled "Fur will surely fly again when the big cat returns to the jungle" he writes about his personal experience of Michael McDowell as an interrogator. It wouldn’t be right to quote from such a good piece: find it and enjoy it for yourself. The esteemed blogger, John of Dublin, has also written well of McDowell.
as opposed to the chattering classes The intellect of the non-intellectuals versus the insight of excited minds… This is the sort of thing I find myself thinking about. It was the butcher in Douglas shopping centre. Yesterday, I bought some lamb’s liver for Grace. 39 cents it cost for her main course. So I said: "You know you can live well on next to nothing if you put your mind to it… "Ah, you know social welfare payments are scientifically worked out…" he responded "You mean… "Yes, but you know you need the Protestant Ethic to live on it… "Oh … " says I, with Max Weber’s "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" flooding back into my head. All those years studying sociology in UCD, and now I find the butcher has read the same book. "But that’s the problem. Can they live the Protestant Ethic way? That’s the problem…" I don’t have to go far to have my mind-juices stimulated. Grace ate all the liver with broccoli and a bit of soup for moisture. _________________ ps: the proper name for the essay is "The Protestant Ethic and the Rise of Capitalism".
"Good god. There are people working on that house…" "What?" "Wiffe, there are two men on the roof of that extension. It’s only 7.15" "Ah, go on. They’re Polish…" "And what time did you start work?" - snippet from this morning’s conversation.
I’m putting this up here so that I can easily find it. It’s a link to a post by Dave Snowden (author of Cognitive Edge): he’s found something really good.
Another David Gurteen sourced quotation
I like this one:
If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in
danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a
speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time,
he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no
interest in its forests but to cut them down!
*** Henry David Thoreau (1817 - 1862) American Author ***
Disappointment: bloggers coping with it
A lot of blogger people seem to have been disappointed by the election result.
Over on Twenty Major, and even here and here, you can find many people saying things like
‘you have no right to complain in future…
‘you have let yourselves down…
and many have used hyperbolic language to express their emotions.
In the blogging world, “a lot” and “many” translates into a tiny minority of early adopters of new technology: in other words, complaining bloggers are miles away from being representative of the average point of view.
Often when people are disappointed, even frustrated and angry, they strike out and attack others. It’s a human trait, a habit, a bad habit in my view.
I used to be a conscientious objector to voting.
Then I was a Marxist revolutionary who regarded parliamentary politics as ‘bourgeois’, designed to oppress the working class. I remember pouring scorn on the whole system. I certainly felt that I had the right to complain even though I hadn’t voted.
I still feel that people who don’t vote are fully entitled to complain about what elected representatives do.
I strongly defend the ‘right’ of everyone to complain, no matter who they voted for.
Without complaints there is no engine for change in the body politic.
Even if FG&L had been elected, and FF ousted, we would have needed complainers.
One complainer denying others the right to complain, that makes me smile.
I’ve been a bit guilty of doing that myself: I was so incensed at the dirty water in Galway that I struck out at the people there. I said I wouldn’t talk to any Galway person who re-elected the last shower. (Sorry, couldn’t resist that one…)
The vision of Irish identity revealed during this election
I’m exhausted after the election.
I’m finding it hard to pick myself up and resume blogging with gusto.
There has been some sort of watershed, and I can’t put my finger on it. Something big has happened. It’s not the election of Fianna Fail, or the impressive revival of Fine Gael. It’s much bigger than that.
I got a letter on election day.
My friend MR sent me a letter from Spain. He’s the only person I know who writes snailmail in longhand, with a fountain pen. I have a six-pager from him on the kichen table in front of me, written on May 21st 2007.
He’s probably out there in the sun, without a postal vote, even though his usual home is west Clare.
He’s been watching satellite TV. He wrote:
“I have avoided the General Election at home. Very dull. The level of debate is poor and there seems to be little of no vision. Maybe the overwhelming power of multinationals and corporate influences have made placid puppets out of all of us, but especially of the politicians…”
This made me think.
I don’t agree with him.
This has been a visionary election, an election during which one of the greatest Irish visions was put to bed. (Otherwise, I found the whole campaign to be interesting ‘managerial’ rather than ideological.)
It was Gerry Adams that won it for Fianna Fail.
He was so poor at connecting to the detail of 26 county politics that he persuaded people a vote for Sinn Fein was a wasted vote. Adams and his ideas were not relevant to the future of the 26 counties. They were a throwback.
Contrast that with the Taoiseach’s speech to the Houses of Commons and Lords in Westminister. Every thing he said was a great pointer forward. (I’ve written a post about this. And Fence, author of “Susan Hated Literature” blog wrote interesting comments.)
Gerry Adams went round saying ‘we will put preparations in place for the re-unification of Ireland’. Birtie said ‘we will look beyond old aspirations to new shared horizons.’ Gerry thinks he’s on the same page as the Irish government. The rest of us know, Sinn Fein is last year’s chapter.
I think that’s what’s been going on, on a visionary level. The end of the wake for the ‘united Ireland’ ambition. The universal acceptance of the need to move forward in partnership with a staunchly unionist community.
I’m sure I could explain my thinking better. I bet there are more precise words to express this perception, but I bet this has been the unconscious realisation of many people.
I’m confident some historian will make the same point in fifty years time.
ps Now that I’ve written this, I hope my energy level will pick up.
I turned off my wireless router last night.
Just before going to bed, I flipped the switch on the black box which sits on a cabinet in the hall. All the lights went out.
Yesterday I heard about an executive who works for a business that develops wireless technology : he turns off his system every night.
He tells people it’s a security habit - ensuring his system isn’t too vulnerable to overnight shenanigans.
But the real reason : “I’ve got children in the house.”
If an industry insider does that, who am I to go to sleep with my system on?
Irish politics & the Galway Question
No one reads this blog for the politics.
So I’ll refrain from giving my analysis of the Irish general election.
Except for one point: if it turns out that the people of Galway have re-elected all the same politicians, I will boycott the city, or town or whatever it calls itself :
I will not appear at its festivals.
I will not accept offers of work there.
I will not eat its food, nor drink its drink.
I won’t speak to Galway people, unless they prove they have done something effective about their water.
I will not turn a blind eye to disgraceful carelessness. (If I knew more I’d call it mass corruption.)
I won’t write a single poem about the place.
I don’t know.
All my numbers are on it. So if you’re waiting for me to phone you back, I can’t.
Maybe I left it in the ballot box? I don’t often go there.
It’s good to re-discover what life’s like without a phone.
Now I’ll be forced to look around me.
And stop practising my spelling.
Maybe the mobile went after the bracelet?
An American blog about mental health
Worth knowing about this blog, I think…
Rather than voting I wrote this
How do poets vote?
Early and often with pens raised
poets have made their choice
Undecided and half-committed
poets belong to no party
Torn between worlds of competing words
poets spoil their drafts with sweat
I am a flustering poet
a voter on my way to the ballot box.
And without any more ado, the poet put down his pen, boarded the carriage and set off into the unknown…
Simon McGarr on what I should do today
Omaniblog is honoured to present a guest blog post from Simon McGarr. Simon authors a fine blog. He is the first of many guests whom I hope to publish here, if I can find a way to persuade them. This post came, like the weather, as a complete surprise and has made my day.
Simon McGarr writes :
It’s voting day today. The sun is shining in Dublin. All over the country people are going to find time to put ones, twos and threes and so on down the list of names who want to represent them.
The last few days of the Election campaign have seen almost a complete breakdown of argument. We’ve been left with bluster and wind.
So let’s ignore it. The poor souls have to do something to try and convince themselves they can control their fate. Imagine the insecurity of knowing that at the end of the week the entire country was going to let you know what they thought of how you were doing in your job.
Away from the frenzy of the election-stepping back for a moment- things get much clearer. We’ve had a government led by Fianna Fáil for 17.5 of the last 20 years. There have been great achievements in that time. It would be churlish to deny that.
But there have been terrible blind spots as well- areas which didn’t get the attention they ought to have. And if the same faces come back, they still won’t see the people standing in those blind spots. We have to correct our course- put things right in planning, health and transport. I’ve a son now. It’s important to take the long view.
By definition the opposition have focussed on the areas where the government has failed. Those issues will be to the forefront of their minds when they get in. For the risk adverse, there is the comforting thought that all the experience of the day to day running of the government resides in the Civil Service. Believe me, they could keep the state ticking over for years.
But ticking over isn’t enough. We need those new eyes. We need the new voices. And we need a new government
Vote today.
___________________
Hello Omani,
On foot of your standing offer to would be contributors, feel free to post, extract or ignore my final thoughts (trying to sway undecideds such as yourself) on the election.
Hello Simon,
I wouldn’t dream of altering a single word. You got to me just in time. I’m about to go out the door and walk to the polling booth. I am still undecided… and I have your words to chew over…
In preparation for this evening’s performance for Mike Hegarty and Aware,
I’m taking this poem to the Munster Writer’s Centre at 1100,
to the imaginative writing workshop led by James Harper and the bearded wonder…
To Mike Hegarty in his haven
(with acknowledgement to Seamus Heaney)
Pig-sty to cattle track, anenomies to fountain-pen,
you sat in yellowed armchair, among psychiatric alumni
released into a fighting street-scape,
where burnt-out cars took place of bicycles.
Your warrior- self listened to every voice
with the greeting of a saint
who wrote with a sun-lit plume.
Prince of the messengers,
carrier of connections,
pointing companions around wild flowers,
through the thicket of everyday life,
out into a clearing, ever shadowed,
ever dappled,
your painterly hand ever active,
you spoke of trees in a family field,
the feed from bonamhs that licked your fingertips,
the rub of the beast that reminded you of animated conversations,
the rough warm blanket into which you were born.
You walked every inch of the lane that led from farm house,
past copulating ragwort to a table strewn with words
drawn together for the sake of safe passage.
In that armchair, you smiled through dark-rimmed spectacles,
turned a tongue around considered thoughts
that vied for voice.
In a flash, you held back
eager sperm-like phrases
in favour of a diamond-eyed glint,
before you spoke the timbre of imagined rest.
I wondered who you were in that evening circle -
just as I wonder now.
You just came to me -
as if I were high in a mountain stream, surrounded by parakeets,
and the echo of flowers talking to the wind -
as if you put a hand in the pocket of your overcoat,
and produced a map for me to read.
_______________________
I expect nothing from you dear readers, but if you feel like saying anything (even ‘that’s a load of bollocks…’) I would treasure your response.
__________________________
ps : The Independent on Sunday, Stephen Knight, wrote, in review of Heaney’s latest collection, District And Circle:
“Characteristically, Heaney balances violence with healing. The fifth poem, “To Mick Joyce in Heaven”, affectionately recalls a demobbed soldier who served as a stretcher-bearer….
This is the poem that inspired me to try my hand at writing a poem for Mike. It was Auden who started me thinking about such a poem: read his poem on the death of Yeats…
Overcoming depression: A quote from John Steinbeck
Sent to me by my good friend Miriam this evening… "When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages a sick sense of failure falls on me and I know I can never do it. This happens every time. Then gradually I write one page and then another. One day’s work is all I can permit myself to contemplate and I eliminate the possibility of never finishing." John Steinbeck, Travels with Charlie.
Fabulous tool for the undecided voter
Fabulous website here. From the author of the blog of Elly Parker
My special thanks to her for commenting on my issue.
It seems I support the Greens, Labour, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael & PDs. Always knew I was complex.
This next bit is for political nerds…
____________________________________________
“
Irish Elections 2007
Below are the results for each issue and, at the bottom of the page, are the overall results
Issue 1 Taxes and Spending (20= Cutting Spending to Cut Taxes)
Party Party’s Position How far parties are from your position
Fianna Fáil 13.8 4.8
Fine Gael 12.5 3.5
Labour Party 6.6 2.4
Progressive Democrats 17.4 8.4
Green Party 5.8 3.2
Sinn Féin 4.9 4.1
Your Position on this issue was: 9
The party closest to your choice is: Labour Party
Issue 2 Social Policy (20= Opposed to Liberal Policies on Abortion and Homosexuality)
Party Party’s Position How far parties are from your position
Fianna Fáil 14.8 13.8
Fine Gael 11.5 10.5
Labour Party 6 5.0
Progressive Democrats 7 6.0
Green Party 5.6 4.6
Sinn Féin 9.6 8.6
Your Position on this issue was: 1
The party closest to your choice is: Green Party
Issue 3 EU Enlargement (20= Opposed)
Party Party’s Position How far parties are from your position
Fianna Fáil 7 0.0
Fine Gael 5.2 1.8
Labour Party 5.6 1.4
Progressive Democrats 6.4 0.6
Green Party 9.8 2.8
Sinn Féin 12 5.0
Your Position on this issue was: 7
The party closest to your choice is: Fianna Fáil
Issue 4 EU Strenghtening (20= Opposed to more powerful EU)
Party Party’s Position How far parties are from your position
Fianna Fáil 12.7 6.7
Fine Gael 8.3 2.3
Labour Party 10.2 4.2
Progressive Democrats 13.2 7.2
Green Party 17.1 11.1
Sinn Féin 17 11.0
Your Position on this issue was: 6
The party closest to your choice is: Fine Gael
Issue 5 Environment (20= Economic growth at cost of Environment)
Party Party’s Position How far parties are from your position
Fianna Fáil 16 11.0
Fine Gael 13.8 8.8
Labour Party 9.5 4.5
Progressive Democrats 15.5 10.5
Green Party 2.3 2.7
Sinn Féin 10.1 5.1
Your Position on this issue was: 5
The party closest to your choice is: Green Party
Issue 6 Immigration (20= In favour of policies to help immigrants return to their countries)
Party Party’s Position How far parties are from your position
Fianna Fáil 14.7 10.7
Fine Gael 12.9 8.9
Labour Party 6.7 2.7
Progressive Democrats 14.1 10.1
Green Party 5.8 1.8
Sinn Féin 8.6 4.6
Your Position on this issue was: 4
The party closest to your choice is: Green Party
Issue 7 Northern Ireland (20= In favour of UK presence in NI)
Party Party’s Position How far parties are from your position
Fianna Fáil 6.4 13.6
Fine Gael 11 9.0
Labour Party 9.1 10.9
Progressive Democrats 11 9.0
Green Party 8.7 11.3
Sinn Féin 1.5 18.5
Your Position on this issue was: 20
The party closest to your choice is: Fine Gael or Progressive Democrats
Summary of your choices
The three most important issues for you were:
Social Policy
Environment
Immigration
Based ONLY on average distance of your position on the 3 most important issues to that of the parties, the party closest to you is
Green Party
Performing for Mike Hegarty & Aware
Tomorrow evening @ 2000 @ Cork Arts Theatre (CAT Club), a fundraising event of magical proportions… I’m going on the stage, across the river from the Opera House. Together with about 15 others, we are going to perform a show of work in honour of Mike, and as a record of Mike. We had a rehearsal yesterday afternoon. This is the programme: Two parts: first, performance of our own stuff, second half Mike’s stuff. - a short extract from a play by Edward Albee, by Nathan & Padraig - Pauline Jackson reciting Yeats - ‘Norwegian Wood’ sung by Gerry - Poems by Paul O’Mahony - Mary O’Connell reading her poems - a monologue from Midsummer Night’s Dream by Nathan - the Wall performed by Padraig - Antoinette the poet - Luvious (a theatre company) perform a 5 person monologue written by Mike Hegarty Interval, during which there will be a fundraising raffle Part 2: Poems, prose and reflections written by Mike, performed by the cast "Long long winding road" (one of Mike’s favourite’s sung by Gerry) Lighting by Garry Stage Management by John Kidney, who made this happen MC role by Don Daly
An undecided voter struggles to decide
I met Gerry Buttimer (FG condidate for Cork South Central) this morning.
In Douglas Shopping Centre, the Olive Tree cafe, where I was taking coffee with my good friend Garry after leaving Grace to her creche…
A be-suited man, in a power tie, flanked by a minder who wore a teeshirt urging “Vote Buttimer Number 1“, arrived for breakfast.
He was going off-duty. He looked tired (a good sign that he’s been working hard), so I called him over. He’s a lot shorter than I imagined. I probably think of politicians as colossi striding about on long legs (from which they often fall hard).
I told him we were both undecided.
He was up-front about looking for both our votes. And it turned out Garry has a gra for the Green guy, which I didn’t know about (so that was good to find out). I remained unprepared to commit myself.
I showed him the photo of his leader, Enda, on The Irish Times today. I contrasted it with the rather triumphalism photo (the out-stretched arms one) that appeared a few days ago - the one that reminded me of Neil Kinnock’s disastrous pre-mature celebratory photo. Gerry Buttimer had no interest in his leader. He was after our votes, and not after a waffling discussion about how political leaders project themselves. I admired his focus. I had something he wanted and I intended to make him work for it.
“So what do you think of that John McCarthy guy (who is standing in Cork North Central)?
“Ah, he’s a good guy. Good ideas and articulate. I think we need to improve mental health services. Especially for young people, young men… I think this is an important area…”
The politician had no clue what I thought of John McCarthy’s independent campaign for better mental health services. For all he know, I might have detested McCarthy, an auctioneer. I might have had no time for mentally ill people… But he said what he thought, and didn’t check out what I thought first. I admired that. He felt a bit more real than a normal politician (who first finds out what you think and then panders to it - that’s what Deirdre Clune, FG, did when she came to my house ages ago.).
I still don’t know who I’ll vote for. There is time yet for me to be persuaded.
Now, if FF are reading their Cork Blogs, and pick this up, I’d welcome a visit from your most hungry candidate.
As I’ve said on someone’s blog (probably John of Dublin) I’m a first-time Irish voter.
I share this honour with many people, especially prisoners in Irish jails. and 22 patients at the Central Mental Hospital in Dublin.
Carl O’Brien (22 May) had a short piece in The Irish Times, entitled “22 people vote at mental hospital”.
22 out of 29 eligible voters did so last Friday.
“It is the first time patients… have been allowed to vote following a European Court of Human Rights ruling in 2005. The patients were registered to vote in Dublin South constituency…
“Prof Harry Kennedy, clinical director… said it was an important reminder that people with mental illnesses were as entitled to vote as other citizens…”
Actually, I’ve had it for a while, but today’s the day I found out about it.
Went to my consultant, first time in ages, and he really treated me well.
We did a tiny bit of catching up about how I recovered from depression. Then I took down my trousers.
He examined me, and straightaway declared I had a lipoma.
It was like hearing you had a rare quality you’d never perceived. I went to the doctor wondering whether I had a cancerous lump, part-expecting the GP to refer me on to an expert. Instead he had me looking over his shoulder at a web-site from New Zealand (’the best one on skin conditions…‘). He showed me photos I didn’t like, and emailed the link to me.
I was mainly interested in the possession of a new word: lipoma. That’s the kind of thing poets drool over - certainly my kind of poet loves finding a new word he can play with, after he’s pulled up his trousers.
“A lipoma is a non-cancerous tumour that is made up of fat cells. It slowly grows under the skin in the subcutaneous tissue. A person may have a single lipoma or may have many lipomas. They are very common.”
I can’t wait to put it in a haiku, and, if it won’t fit there, I’ll stuff it into a sonnet.
ps I wonder will this post get picked by googlers looking for their next car?
Grace found the bracelet in the house
She went rummaging in a bed-side locker and pulled out a black bag.
Inside was a gold bracelet and four gold charms:
a horse’s head
a handbag
a high-heeled shoe
a horse-shoe.
Yesterday morning the sun came out again in Cork.
(ps for those of you who don’t know the background to this, it doesn’t matter. I’m so pleased I can’t remember what happened around the time of the Wiffe’s 40th birthday. I’m thrilled to blot out the memory of one of the worst times of my married life. The only saint I didn’t pray to was St Anthony.)
Quote of the day from David Gurteen
“Gurteen Knowledge Quote of the Day - Monday May 21, 2007
To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent
people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation
of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends;
To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the
world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch,
or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has
breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have
succeeded.
*** Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882) American Essayist & Poet *
I love this… I offer it on to you…
Blank Paige made me think. She wrote that Omaniblog was one of her nominees for the Thinking Blogger Award.
http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/5020/thinkingbloggerpf8.jpg
She took her drugs and wrote that Omani is :
“Passionate, opinionated, persistent, questioning and brave. Every day Omani lights a
candle that illuminates my ignorance. He knows so much yet generously listens to uninformed opinion.”
She made me ask myself ‘why has she picked this blog? Do I want this blog to make people think? Do I not want this blog to make people feel?…‘
And by the time I’d half-processed all this, I knew Blank Paige made me think.
(2) Inter-actions makes me think.
I’ve just come off that blog full of thoughts about my internal saboteur and how many times I have held back from moving forwards into the great unknown - just for the sake of security. Actually, if I ever want to think, and can’t think what to think about, I log on to Annette Clancy the author.
(3) John of Dublin makes me think it’s wonderful to find someone who seems to be so comfortable in his own skin. Whenever I read his blog (and he doesn’t write often enough for my taste) I marvel at the underlying assurance, totally without arrogance, that permeates the writing. I find myself thinking: ‘how did he ever get into that frame of mind?’
(4) Grandad makes me think: ‘how come that crotchety git appeals to me so much.?’ I think: ‘how could I shut him up about cigarette smokers? How could I persuade him that it’s ok to speak about smokers as drug addicts?’ He’s the kind of blogger I love to oppose with ideas I’m testing out. Also he wrote some wonderful stuff about his ancestors.
(5) Sinead Gleeson makes me think. Even when she’s not blogging, she makes me think because I find myself thinking: ‘what would Sinead say about this?’ I’ve been a bit lazy: I’ve not found her replacement. I don’t know any alternative blog from which I could get my keep-up-to-date fix.
(6) David Gurteen & David Snowdon make me think. I lump them together, as if they were twins Pollux and Castor (twin brothers sons of the mortal woman Leda by different fathers. Pollux was a son of the god Zeus, and thus he was immortal. On the other hand, Castor was the son of a mortal father. Thus he could die…. ) I turn to them when I want to think about work and conversations at work.
The rules of this meme/award are simple.
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (There is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).
ps I’m so technically clueless that I can’t figure out how to properly display the image of the Award sticker
Armed Detective commits suicide in National Bureau of Criminal Investigation
Detective Garda Paul Gilten (1959 -2007) was found dead in Harcourt Square police station at 0630 on last Thursday. It seems he shot himself with his personal-issue handgun. I was shocked to think that a garda would still have a gun while suffering acute depression. I wondered whether any of his workmates realised he was feeling so low. There was very little publicity in newspapers. I found one piece by Jim Cusack in the Sunday Independent yesterday. (But that article was mainly about the new Garda Ombudsman.) Every job has its difficulties and I’m sure a garda’s job can be hard. But anyone can become vulnerable to depression. What support is in place for garda who get depressed? What mechanism is in place to ensure that gardai with guns are not left in possession of them when they are suffering from depression? Why hasn’t there been a lot more in the media about this? I have a terrible thought: what if an armed garda were to become seriously troubled? I know this isn’t America but …
