Fly

Ireland.

One night a Donegal fly arrives while I’m typing.

It lands on the lampshade.

A muse watchdog fly, one eye, many eyes.

It rubs its feelers together in anticipation of finishing off someone’s meal. Flies have lived on Earth for 93 million years. They symbolize death and decay.

There is no food lying around, only papers, magnifiers, books and clothing.

The fly’s aware of magic power and pure intention drawing it to the writer. The lamp is hot. The wind is cold. The fly reads my mirror mind, sees bleeding fingers, feeling the loneliness and freedom.

Fly appreciates and comprehends this must go down just as it must land to rub it’s feelers together sitting on the precipice of light beams with wonder, fury, delight, ramifications, responsibility and repose. Karmic fate.

-I saw you from a foreign window, said fly. -You were on a path.

-True. Suffering is an illusion. It’s a grand precious adventure. The road is made by walking. It’s a long walk.

-Seems full of fools, dead ends, bookends, trails, trials, tribal ramifications and tribulations. Where is the beauty and truth in this tale? Where is the narrative structure? Where is the plot of formless form?

-We live in a world of forms. It’s in the exposition. The big show. It’s in the thread of fates’ fabric. How do I know where it will go? Part of my job is to gather material, get out of the way and allow a writer to organize it. I’m lucky to get it down and figure it out later. I’m a conduit. I’m a figment of your imagination.

-So it would appear, said fly, -who lives it, writes it, rewrites it, polishes it, reads it, kills it, ignores it, abandons it. I am a drop of water on your mirror. Feed wild birds daily crumbs. Water flies from sky. It explodes into earth. I disappear into dust. Burn baby burn. Cry baby cry.

-You’re a fly. An insect. Short attention span, like some humans I’ve met. No attention span? No problem.

-Hey. Take it easy. Listen. Stay focused. Stay on task. You were in the jungle, the real deal amigo. You were dazed and confused, stupid, naive, dressed in green, following blind orders. Blind led the blind. You were the willing doing the ridiculous for the ungrateful. You survived to tell the tale. Give me a break. Start with one true declarative sentence. Punctuation is a nail. Write what you know. Write the ending and work backwards. Center ripples out. Use verbs and nouns. Murder adjectives and adverbs. Use active tense. Give me dirty realism. Surface. Write with passion. Keep it simple. Seduce the reader.

-It was hot and humid. It was November. I was a climatic cinematic spotlight-floodlight focus. I was a thick stream of gracious fear, healthy doubt, glorious uncertainty, wild adventure and unlimited surprise. 

-How did you feel?

-Shit, I was young and scared. Apprehensive. We were all young and petrified & naive packed into a tin can flying low over green jungles. I smelled the green lieutenant’s shit next to me skimming jungles before they opened the doors, before some sergeant got on yelling at us to get out and get going. We walked down the stairs into heat exploding off pavement. A brown and white striped tent waved in the distance. We walked toward it. There were hundreds of guys yelling and screaming at us.

-So what. Kinda Blue by Miles Davis

-Man it was weird, I gotta tell ya. All these guys in earth  brown uniforms, caked with dirt laughing, smiling, yelling, crying, taunting us, thanking us for bringing in their plane, yelling “man we’re going home, what’s your honey’s name jack and I’ll take good care of her, man am I short,” all kinds of verbal incantations.

-So what. (take 2)

-You don’t get it do you? Man we were just getting there and I said, shit here I am at 19 and I’ve got 365 days to go. These guys are done, finished, out of here and it was the biggest longest looking instant of future time in the immediate present tense sense you could imagine. I couldn’t even begin to see it, 365 what? Are you kidding me? Others went into shock knowing they had no idea what was in front of them, only seeing 365 days staring them in the face. You knew life expectancies disappeared fast being a numbers game maybe, at the most six months if you were lucky and then after surviving 180 days you stayed on edge trying to make it through the rest. We swallowed salt pills three times a day. The weak dropped like flies.

-Not funny.

Weaving A Life V1

Director of Brooms

John Lennon

This didn’t scare the old woman. She was from the ancient school.

“Hmm. Well then, I shall make a small gift for you. Take this.”  She handed him a piece of cloth. It was a coarse, mottled, brown and white checkered wool with faded symbols running the edge.

“Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

“Carry it with you and only use it to clean the mirrors,” she said. “It’s older than sand.” She rolled it up and gave it to him.

“One kindness deserves another,” I said. I rummaged into my pack and pulled out a piece of kamben gringsing cloth.

“Here, this is for you. It is a magic cloth woven on another island. They use bark and roots to make the dye and the cloth is for all their social rituals from birth to death. It will protect you from evil vibrations and, if you ever get sick, soak an edge in water and drink the moisture. It will cure you.”

“Wonderful. Many thanks. Travel safe and look after yourself. Before you go I will reveal a small future to you,” she said. “After Tiglin you will ramble across country to the Killarney hostel where, sadly and unfortunately, you will be awake in the predawn morning of December 8 hearing a BBC news announcer tell the world about John Lennon being shot in New York.

"You will turn your head to the wall and cry. Later you will take the black push bike down narrow wet twisted streets and meet a nun opening heavy steel black church gates and you will tell her what happened. You will push open the heavy wooden doors, genuflect, cross yourself, walk the length of a cold aisle and light votive candles in silence.

"Then you will ride into town and go to every news agent to buy every Irish paper with the screaming black tabloid headlines full of desperate black ink and grainy images of death personified before retiring to a pub to sit by a peat fire drinking, reading, and sadly, quietly remembering John’s creativity and his words Imagine and Give Peace a Chance.”

A Century is Nothing

Pollatomish, Ireland

The view from the one-story grey stone hostel in County Mayo was exquisite, the Atlantic Ocean all blue-green opening up its long voyage.

A terrible sad beauty recognized the spirit of the young girl who killed herself in a room upstairs years ago.

She visited often, looking for her love, looking for meaning. It took a long time for us to trust each other.

She visited at night, her spirit roaming upstairs.

It took courage for her to trust me.

I practiced silence. Listening.

She told me stories.

She opened her windows to let darkness invade her privacy. She took comfort in the stillness. Her heart was pure but her spirit was restless.

She told me what happened in this dark place when she was a child. She grew up fast and sure of herself before they took the key away. She was a prisoner of memories, dreams, and reflections.

She had few if any friends. Her school was Nature. She was trapped in time, a circle of guilt, punishment, suspicion and neglect. Her mother died of a broken heart.

She was the daughter of a priest. He wouldn’t let her out. He locked her up. He taught her fear. He carried a big black heavy book full of fire and brimstone with him forever and ever and ever.

She died for his sins or so he wanted to believe. He wanted the scared primitive narrow-minded simple village people to believe. He ordered them to believe he sacrificed his love for her out of anger at his wife because she was weak. He taught her to be weak and when she became weak he loved her. She was vulnerable and he worshiped a book of prayer. The Word.

His daughter’s silver eyes were chained to her destiny, her fate. Her heart was stained with blood.

Local people had a real fear about the house. You can feel it when they see you coming up the narrow road. They think they know who you are, who you might be, but they are not sure. They know you are not one of them. This fact ensures they remain suspicious and guarded. You are an outsider. They remain uncertain about you being here in this sad, lonely desperate place.

They are blind in one eye. They want to live in your pocket and know your past, present and future.

Knowing and understanding are two different things.

Suicide was not a viable option in their cloistered world of saints, superstar nova and bursts of gamma rays. They were illuminated manuscripts on vellum.

They congratulated themselves with a real superstition about her death. It carried them through hard times. It gave them the will to live, the will to accept their destiny without questioning autocratic authority. They kneaded, rolled, basted, baked, sliced, and buttered hope.

After the girl vanished they huddled around peat fires wrapped in her death late at night speaking in mute whispers. Her death became their perpetual source of gossip and innuendo. Her iconic free spiirit confused their sanity, sense of purpose and sacrifice.

The house was a heavy stone fortress in the middle of nowhere facing east. No trees, no flowers, shrubs. Living, growing thing were cut down, burned down, and destroyed by hysterical madness.

Estranged distant provincial neighbors still talked about her in hushed quiet scared tones. She was the young vagabond spirit and cheated old age with her eternal restless way. She saw through their hypocrisy, mediocrity, piety and failures.

They never figured her out. Her father was the command and control module in their economically and geographically distant distinct world. They were lost sheep wandering heather ridges and he was given the mandate to drive out imaginary snakes.

The small cemetery off the path of lonely planets was overgrown with wild waving weeds, tall Timothy grass and broken purple heather in harsh winds. Gray stones whispered hand chiseled names, ages, dates. The rusty iron gate hung on a broken hinge at a precarious angle.

400 million year-old orb weaving spiders created their magic. Dew diamonds danced and sang along strong supple silver amino acids mixed with protein in wind rushing from the sea.

Two mute men dug a new grave on the gentle sloping hill surrounded by heather and wild flowers. Their tools bit hard soil. They’d finish their labors and retire to the warmth of a peat fire, cold whiskey and gossip. They’d toast the passing of another soul gone to the greater glory as tongue flames leaped and danced.

Dance and melancholy music, a common ancestor, integrated the community. The keener wailed her banshee oral tradition and they blessed themselves in the silence of accepting what they couldn't see.

“A shudder passing through your body means someone has walked over your grave,” I said.

“Grief for the dead was the origin of poetry,” said the girl's spirit.

Weaving A Life (V3)

Writing in Burma

silence, exile, cunning

I reached Downings in wild northern Donegal on the shore of Sheephaven Bay. Downings had a population of a few hundred, an ideal place for camping in a caravan, golfing, dancing, and vacations from urban life during short summer months. There was a tweed factory, a grocery store with bottled gas for residents and visitors, pubs, small hotels, a sweater and scarf shop. 

Carrigart, a mile away was larger with a church, post office and small shops. I thumbed a ride with Pat driving a weekly Friday minivan to and from Melmore Head into Carrigart so local people could get in for shopping. He’d never seen someone standing along the road with a fire engine red word machine.

I climbed aboard, thanked him for stopping and we climbed high along the Atlantic Drive with exquisite views of bays and shorelines unfolding like perpetual flowers.

Women passengers rattled away in Gaelic. I processed new language.

“Is he a warlock?” Deirdre of the Sorrows whispered.

“I’m not sure we want to find out,” Mary, a virgin, said. “Maybe a Druid. Let him be.”

“Just as well. Well, I never,” said Deirdre. Mary nodded with a solemn expression across her deeply lined face. They studied their sturdy shoes. Built for comfort, not for speed. They were disinfected against English hoof and mouth viruses. They left attachments alone.

They remarked how isolated Donegal was in winter and asked was I alone? “Oh,” one said, when the conversation turned to my portable machine, “Is it a book you’re working on and how is it coming along?”

“It’s a process. I’m incorporating various Irish themes, like isolation, violence, hatred, anger and fear. I include gaiety, laughter, love for music, verse, a good craic, witty erudite conversation, the ability to laugh at oneself, self deprecation, and finding pleasure in small simple things, small simple elegant ways of life.”

“Yes,” said one woman. “That’s a mouthful. How grand!”

“So it is,” I replied pulling out yellow lined paper.

“This is Empirical Evidence. I use it for a first draft making notes as I go along. It’s perfect for this kind of job.”

I showed them the bold blue word 'Evidence.'

“It collects source material, because we remain open. We acknowledge we are the source, in a sense, beyond sense really, we are the fundamental shift, each of us possesses the innate universal capability to create and embrace metta, the loving kindness that permeates through the various meridians - we tap into the source, we transmute through fields of energy, resolving, flowing toward the source, the infinite vibrations of love.”

The women were stoned. Dolmans.

I rattled on, “Some authors prefer to use these yellow papers when they create stories, characters and the motivation which carries them from scene to scene. It flows. I write with a cloud pen on mirrors. Creating amnesia. The clouds should know me by now. It’s a strange mixture of life and death, so it is.”

They stared in amazement listening to my blue streak. They’d swear I was on fire.

“I’m reminded of a journal I purchased in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. Lovely place, that. Primitive, rice paddies, jungle, magical mysterious light. Ambient. Gentle people. Every day is a celebration. Nine levels of language depending on their caste system.”

I switched back to varieties of paper products.

“Yes, it’s a tight, flat, hard rough paper, badly stitched and all, and while it is useful and shaking in laughter it is not as free as this evidence. Two more journals are filled. One sits empty & blank.

“You cannot tear out the pages in a journal unless you want to upset the balance, the conformity, but with this, yes, you must remove each yellow bird call from its throat. My goals are to freely develop and strengthen my creative identity. I accept my playful personality and cultivate an inner attitude of strength. I will destroy old myths, preconceptions and false lies. My path will toughen my skin while leaving my interior soft and pliable.”

The women had never heard anything like this before.

“Enjoyment is Puer Aeternus or ‘eternal youth’ and, in a sense, that’s what I’ve been doing, living and being for God knows how long as an arrested adolescent. I was crystallized at an early age.

“I finally confronted my perceived laziness and stalling. They are buzzwords, you know what I mean, buzzwords of an autocratic, punishing consciousness. That’s the price I pay for being raised a Catholic. Way too much emotional and physical abuse and suffering in my family if you know what I mean.”

The women rolled their eyes toward heaven and blessed themselves with the speed of an illusionist. The hand - a tool with opposable thumbs, quite remarkable grasping anything of value an age old dilemma for masses. Faster than the eye.

Their dancing hands revealed stories. Stories about waiting and patience, patience enlarging, expanding space creating the illusion of grandeur, opulence and distance.

“Yes,” I said. “If you can hold it in your hand it’s not important. An open hand holds everything.”

I almost started telling the women about the wild monkey mind construct from an Eastern point of view - one of those ancient stories they’d never heard of - and then I remembered, speaking of monkeys, while taking care of Eoin on the edge of Dublin, when we passed an elementary school one afternoon and went in. The doors were unlocked and the hallways empty and no one around. The two of us wandered into a classroom. On a wall was a poster of a monkey.

The caption said, “Do you know why monkeys can’t talk?” Underneath it said, “Because they are afraid humans will put them to work!” I laughed. We found an exit, walked across an empty playground, down an alley and back to the mean old street.

The Donegal bus rolled past sheep wearing long white coats grazing on miles of green leading to the wild sea, to the edge of the unknown waiting for spring’s shearing, fighting fear receiving disinfectants from laughing, cursing men in black Wellington boots spraying abstract splashes of red paint on white coats indicating they were disease free.

“My antidote is patience, acceptance and trust which is part of the mystery of creativity and creation. My active patient skills allow a strong bond of trust between the ego and creative child,” I whispered to the women.

We rattled around curves, passing stoned fields lying fallow, cold, hard soil where generations dug potatoes before they starved or escaped famines in 1840 sailing toward England or Boston with a few scarce pence in ragged pockets dreaming of better futures trying to stay alive long enough to begin to forget to remember those who didn’t make it and wouldn’t make it.

They ate grass crawling miles finding nothing remembering all the harvests sitting in English warehouses stolen by absentee landlords. Fat British rats ate corn and wheat, and those who managed to scrape enough together got off the island as best they could from Cork or Belfast or Galway, in thick rolling seas with no idea, absolutely no way of knowing, when or where they would finally land, holding a foreign address scrawled on a scrap of paper if they had the luck of the Irish; telling, sharing gentle histories, legends, myths, fabrications and stories to their children through generations easing hunger, memory, remembering everything and as we rolled along I knew it was still hard and not much easier now even with money coming back from across the water knowing the women might never see their children again, for their sons and daughters had left the soil, sky and water on their diaspora, became wild geese and it was all a metaphor in my mind’s restless eye.

“I sing,” I shouted toward land’s end where water smashed rocks, “Long live the creative child!”

“Oh, I see,” one matriarch said. “I like the God part. Don’t you, Mary?” she said, gesturing to her friend who was in a state of shock.

“To be sure, to be sure,” Mary said. And they let it go.

“Yes,” I agreed, pulling a mirror out of my pocket, wrapped in brown and red gringsing. It was long enough to be a scarf, very thin in places with frayed threads. It had a rough coarse texture, smelling of jungle, vats of water and wood ash.

“This is a magic cloth from Bali. It is woven in a process called ikat. The word ikat means to tie or bind and protects this talisman I carry with me as I travel inner and outer worlds. This mirror was a gift from a woman down in Dublin. It manifests Beauty. The universe gives us what we need whether or not we know we need it.”

I turned the mirror toward them. The women looked into gleaming glass. They saw their past, present and future lives all rolled into one powerful flash of light. It was a vision reflecting their joy, sadness, regrets, hope, charity, wisdom and love. The looking glass showed them their birth, middle age and death.

They saw An Gort a Mor, the great hunger and sat back sucking air.

Carrigart was the edge of their world.

“I see,” Mary said, looking up and straight into my blue eyes. They reminded her of a snow leopard, a wild, sharply focused nocturnal predator comfortable at higher elevations existing in an independent, solitary way.

“Then,” I said smiling, pointing to the red machine on the seat, “I download the images into this,” sliding the talisman mirror into my pocket.

“Of course, it’s a manual. They don’t make them like that anymore. Better than staring at a small screen full of radioactive electrons and clicking on a mouse.”

“I should say not,” Mary said. She preferred lead sharpened to a point.

I was trapped on an endless ride to the edge of my life. More questions. Where was I from, what’s America like, why did I leave the land of milk and honey as locals so well put it. On and on. Was I married? No. Did I miss my family?

“No, not really. My grandfather, named Malarkey, immigrated from Sligo during the famine, married Hanna Haley in St. Louis, ended up in Colorado Springs where my folks were born and my rudimentary research at Dublin Castle indicated genealogical records burned in a Sligo church fire years back.”

So much for hard circular factual data.

“My family, while emotionally cold, distant and abusive yet well-intentioned, kind and loving were rather dysfunctional, trying to understand my vagabond spirit nature. They had no choice in the matter and by now they’re used to receiving strange word-strings full of mysterious symbolism and tragic truths from diverse twilight zones. I transmit between crystals and gringsing decorated with universal binary codes.”

“Really now?” said Mary.

“Yes, I gave my folks a world map for their anniversary. They loved it, inviting friends, neighbors and strangers over for trivia games using postmarks, stamps, decals, flotsam, thread, needles, bark, cactus fiber, beads, charts of tributaries, topographical maps, animal skins, hieroglyphics, and Tibetan prayer wheels with Sanskrit characters.

“They caressed burned broken shards of Turkish pottery, Chinese bamboo brushes dripping blood, torn out pages from esoteric Runes, Paleolithic fertility symbols, vitreous unusual writing, and one of my favorites, a Quetzalcoatl image full of written narration based on the oral performances of Central American myths.

“Fascinating,” said Deirdre.

“Yes, I gave them Olmec nahuales shamans containing animal powers dating back to 1200 B.C. speaking their wisdom. They blended the spirituality and intellect of man with the ferocity and strength of the Jaguar to create their nahuales. Their soul required an animal medium to travel from the earth to the heavens and into the underworld.

“Additional cultural reminders were beautiful blank black mirrors. Some displayed faces, others contained scripts written backwards with stories of people, geographies, forbidden objects, and a box called Pandora.

“This was one of their favorite things. They never knew, from one exploration to the next, what they’d find in the box I sent them from the journey. One realization they experienced with Pandora was how they behaved differently, listened more, spoke less, almost as if they were communicating via telepathy or kinesthetic dimensions, within the exotic flow of spirit energies bathing them in a crystal light. They slowed down.

“Yes, they didn’t know what to make of it whenever something mysterious, fascinating, and totally intriguing reached them from General Delivery far away from their daily existence working to pay for a house mortgage, car, food, terrorism insurance and child care.

“You don’t say,” said Mary.

“Oh my yes. They were very busy paying for old age retirement mutual fund investments, 401K plans, nursing home deposits, energy supplies, basic utilities, telephones, cable service and clothing. They were busy buying firewood, utensils, making down payments on memorial cemetery plots up at Olivet, contraceptives, gardening supplies, and various used useful tools on clearance at Goodwill and Thrift stores to make ends meet. They pleaded for some rational, scientific explanation trying to understand what a diamond and thread had in common.”

He’d lost the dear ladies.

I changed the subject and mentioned Leonardo Da Vinci. “He wrote backwards on glass to eliminate thieves and kings from stealing his ideas. He was persecuted for his beliefs. Being left handed, his writing is called mirror writing so it wouldn’t smudge. It’s an art to write in the reverse direction. Writing is directly connected to the heart.”

“Aye,” Deirdre said, crossing herself. “Such a hard life.”

They understood this concept and blessed themselves.

“Mother Mary,” one said, imagining snakes supporting turtles and elephants in gardens full of tempting fruit and rapacious Sermons on the Mount of Venus. Visions of angels danced in her head like sugar plum Irish fairies near Catholic confessionals full of hard wired guilt at that, remorse, and abject self pity.

“Yes,” I suggested, “It’s about gratitude, forgiveness, and abundance.”

I found the courage to inform the highly inquisitive women I am/was/will be a fili - a poet - which explained everything they’d ever need to know, care to know or dream of knowing in their own unique dying tongue. Muttering between themselves in Gaelic they didn’t assault me with any more questions.

I knew the value of not talking the material out. I'd learned that lesson the hard way. I’d realized the inherent magic power of spoken tongues, how stories became distilled through the telling, how they became shape shifters. How they manifested new winged flight. How they lost their magic through the telling.

I knew Omar would murder more of his darlings through the unfolding process. They’d be sentenced.

The bus passed two gravediggers turning soil high on purple heather hills. Digging as a metaphor for poetry.

Pat dropped Mary and Deirdre off near stony paths lined with moss leading to small isolated whitewashed homes tucked into seaside bluffs next to verdant green hills full of grazing sheep on rocky outcrops winding through winter fields at the edge of the Atlantic.

“Slan go foill,” I sang, bidding them fare-thee-well. They waved in amazement hearing my perfect Gaelic accent float into perpetual rain on a soft day. The sky was crying.

“Mind yourself. God Bless.”

They walked home on a narrow path in a hard simple life of blessings. Blessings in the small things they treasured, small ways they stayed connected to the ground, intimate rocky soil, nurturing their children, supporting their husbands through difficult economic times, waiting for their arrival from the sea or fields from the night of their desire and longing, from the edge of their darkness; crying farewell to immigrants, welcoming children now approaching middle age with their wives, husbands, grandchildren from far flung journeys to a world’s end, living in bright lights, big cities with unpronounceable names, sailing past a lighthouse spinning incandescent beams, dancing in lonely isolated whitewashed Donegal community centers hanging on the edge of the sea surrounded by laughter, hearing men and women gossip, playing tin whistles, pipes and reed instruments of eternal sadness and gaiety as seasons spun their magic past worn callused fingers breaking hard brown blocks of tea crumbling fragments into boiling water, pouring their lives into chipped delicate cups, genuflecting and blessing their faith on Sundays hearing sermons about redemption, hope, promise and charity.

They lived good simple uncomplicated lessons in determinism and survival versus free will, facing tests of spiritual blessings, cherishing the testing of their spirit on their looms spinning flax, treadles providing a gentle musical rhythm with shelter, solace, a place of gathering making it happen in their lives. 

A Century is Nothing

Sidi Ifni, Morocco

It was high noon.

He yelled out, “Sidi Ifni.”

The lot director deserted his friends in the shade of a solitary tree gesturing to a battered car in the throng of vehicles. The “grand taxi” in the hot, dry, dusty sand choked Tiznit parking lot was an old blue and yellow Benz. Dreaming drivers waited for passengers.

“Thanks.”

The driver was crashed in the back.

Knowing it might be hours, days, weeks, months, years, or centuries until they had a full load, he wandered off for bottled water and bananas. Yellow peels raised dust as he released skin from a fresh skeleton. Locals did not eat bananas in public and he wasn’t interested in dietary protocol. 

They departed Tiznit when the car was full of smiling toothless Berbers returning to stone homes far away. They zoomed through barren scrub desert past rocky hills and distant menacing adobe fortresses.

He sat smashed between the window and a friendly French speaking young Gendarme en route to his garrison in Sidi Ifni. The gendarme protected a worn crumpled green canvas satchel.

It was empty - however - the stories inside were real.

It’d survived invasions, standing orders, foreign legions, armed bandits and salt and slave caravans moving north across the Sahara returning south with gold. It held letters to mistresses locked in harems, declarations of intrigue, suspense, tension, conflict, and treaties.

It revealed bilingual conversations about moral ambiguities between characters in comedies and dramas. It divulged wild tales about distant mirages, instruction manuals for training hunting falcons, intentions, motivations, meditations, aqueduct plans, mosaic fountain designs, and extensive agricultural necessities inside tiled adobe fortresses on hilltop positions overlooking a vast emptiness of silence.

The gendarme dozed off and the stranger peeked into the bag of tricks.

It contained irrefutable empirical evidence.

Dear Commanding Officer of the Garrison,

My first secret hostel was buried deep in Wicklow Mountains, an old bare bones mountain hut without running water or electricity tucked up a long canyon at the base of Lugnaquilla Mountain.

The two-story house was built in 1955 and donated to An Oige by a woman doctor. The view is excellent, down a long sloping valley surrounded by mountains. To the left is a roaring 10-15’ wide river suitable for drinking and bathing, full of trout with wild water rushing and roaring downhill gathering speed trailing moss, polishing stones, nourishing ferns, wild hedges and rock walled paths, remaining from glaciers and the gravitational forces of time and pressure.

It’s a small hostel catering to travelers on foot or bike with a warden sleeping room upstairs and ladies room suitable for six. Gentlemen sleep out back with sixteen bunk beds and outdoor toilets. We have plenty of extra blankets and mattresses. The small intimate common room has an old fireplace and kitchen with gas cookers. Refined elegance.

It’s a mixed bag of students, city workers, mercenaries, poets, playwrights, hardy hikers, orphans and a mishmash of European and Arabic languages. I keep it open all day long, register arrivals at 5 p.m., making sure there are enough beds to go around, manage cookers, gas, and toilet paper supply.

It’s the perfect repository for extended day hikes. I explore high glens in thick forests with dark brown pine floors and trickling brooks, rivers and streams cascading from the mountain. Feeding deer flash soft golden rust brown with white markings bounding away as I stumble through soaked green moss. I traverse to Glendalough through fields and pastures way back and beyond.

I fish the river in solitude, peel potatoes and carrots for stews, paint, write, share road adventures with vagabonds and play chess by firelight.

Pawn takes pawn as players attempt to control the middle of the board attacking and defending positions simultaneously. It’s about position and material. We make necessary sacrifices from the beginning game through the middle game to the end game.

Andy, a German visitor said, “Chess provides an outlet for hostile impulses in a non-retaliatory way. The therapeutic value is enormous.”

“Chess gives me discipline, direction and power,” I said.

“That’s the price of creativity. I have recoiled from the emotional discomfort of my life through transference and make myself master of the situation through games,” he said.

“Yes, it’s a drive for perfection and it’s irrationality.”

“Every game is a challenge I must meet.”

“Do you know Capablanca?” I asked.

“Yes, of course. His accuracy was pure position and logic. His play was accurate, tenacious, patient, with a disciplined imagination.”

“Jose Raul Capablanca once won 168 games in a row during an exhibition tour. He said, ‘I see only one move ahead, but it always the correct one.’”

“His knowledge-guided perception or apperception was excellent because of his training. He’s regarded as the greatest ‘natural’ chess player of all time.”

 “Your move.”

I reminded Andy of Queen Isabella’s passion for conquest.

“She was responsible for giving the queen piece more power during her reign. They say she was playing one night in Cordoba when Christopher asked for ships and supplies intending to find India. She initially declined but her Abbot convinced her to reconsider.”

We played in the illuminated dark of night as peat fires roared up the flue. Quick moving violent storms pummeled the place.

“That’s a dangerous move,” he said as my knight escaped a pin.

“Yes, but it’s elegant.”

“We destroy ourselves eventually,” he said.

“Yes, as long as we enjoy the process. Your move.”

One clear day while sitting near the river doing her nails Susan related a literary dream from a poem by Brian Merriman she was reading.

“Have you heard about The Midnight Court?”

 “No,” someone said. “Tell us.”

“It’s about a fellow who falls asleep and has a dream where he’s taken before a court of women who condemn him to be punished for all the men in their knowledge. How women should have the right to marriage and sex but often meet with disappointment and rejection by men who could easily have become their lovers and husbands.”

“Sounds like a Greek tragedy,” someone said before jumping into the wild river grabbing a fish fighting on a hook, line and sinker.

Another traveler remarked, “Yes, for those who think, life is a comedy and for those who feel, it is a tragedy.”

Fish blood flowed downstream.

Every misty morning I dragged a table outside and rolled thin parchment paper into and through the Smith Corona portable. The irony and simple joy working under the table and on a table at the Smithy was pure simultaneous rapture.

It was not a job it was a joy because I did it in an artistic way. It was a new day, new paper, new energy, new and improved attitude with imagination and discipline.

Late one fall day while strolling down the valley enjoying moist air and kicking a rock past waterfalls in the rain with Andy on our way to check mail and have a pint two miles away, Joe Murphy, the area manager, arrived in his little dark blue Morris Minor chugging along the narrow road.

“We’re closing you down for the winter.”

“Fine. Gotta new place?”

“Yeah.”

It took thirty minutes to get the pack, word machine and Evidence sheets together. We slammed the wooden shutters closed from the inside, bolted them, turned off the gas cookers, locked the door and left. Quick and painless, like love.

“We need you to go to Donegal.” Murphy said driving the rocky road to Dublin one, two, three. “We’re having a problem up there with the locals.”

“What kind of problem?”

“It’s a big place, gets a lot of visitors. Mr. Johnson, the warden, is from somewhere in England and married to a girl from the south. The locals don’t take kindly to him being from across the water if you know what I mean, so there’s been some trouble.”

“What kind of trouble? Is it spelled with a capital T?”

“Well, I heard someone may have spray painted some words on the house,” he said. “You’ll have to see for yourself and if so get it cleaned up will ya? Besides, you may want to pay a visit to the neighbors. Smooth things out ya’ know.”

“Sure. My specialty is smoothing things out. What happened to the manager?”

“They left after almost three years. She has family in Mayo although I heard they went to Glasgow or Iceland.”

Floating images.

We evolved out of Wicklow mist covered mountains leaving the river’s long song behind us, melting our perception of primitive nature as humming tires reflecting sound exchanged high wild rivers and mountains for overgrown suburbs of estate houses, manicured lawns, chip shops, pubs, and oppressive church steeples humming humanity’s guilt.

Bless me father for I have traveled.

We passed Sandymount and Martello Tower where Joyce wrote, staring at his unknown future exile in Italy with silence and cunning. He realized the exile’s holy Trinity: language, culture and friends.

“There’s Martello,” I said.

“Aye, Joyce was a strange bird,” Joe said shifting gears and hitting the gas.

“Yes. But man could he write. He said, ‘Wipe your glasses with what you know.’”

“There’s some truth in that,” Joe replied.

“Do you know what an epiphany is?”

“Sure. Isn’t it some kind of insight?”

“It’s something quickly revealed. Joyce wrote tight short scenes where something happened to a person.”

“Maybe it’s like getting hit by lightning.”

“He once commented to a friend when they asked him about his daily writing after seeing Joyce was agitated. 'I wrote seven words today,' Joyce said and his friend replied, “What’s the problem then?” and James said, “but I don’t know what order they are supposed to be in.” I laughed.

“I never heard that,” Joe said.

How’s that for troubled? I thought.

“I thought it rather clever of him to have a character named Daedalus,” I said. “Figured it out he did. Broke it down into the heroic manifestation of human frailty he did, Daedalus.

“You know what I imagine?” as the Mini blasted around corners plowing an asphalt path, “Joyce was a wonderful word trickster he was, he loved language with playful passion, he invented new language. He made it up. It was consciousness without the editors, minus the critic. He left them stewing in Ireland. You know the name Daedalus? Well, if you pronounce it really slowly and enunciate it out it sounds like die day lie us, or some such thing. We die day by day. Fascinating. What do you think?” 

Joe gripped his small black wheel. “It’s possible. Joyce said a lot of things.” 

“Yes!” I shouted sticking my head out the window feeling sharp Irish sea winds slash my face.

I turned to Joe, changing the subject. “Yes, Chief Joseph of the Nez Pierce tribe said, “My heart is sick and tired. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.”

“I never heard of him,” Joe said.

“White people discovered gold on their territory in 1863 and moved them off their land. It’s everybody’s land. That’s what the Native Americans told them. We’re only caretakers of Mother Earth.

“In 1877 he tried to lead his people to a reservation in Idaho. Seven hundred warriors battled 2,000 U.S. soldiers across 1,400 miles in a beautiful tactical retreat. They were massacred by  palefaces.  His people froze to death near the Canadian border. They took survivors to a concentration camp in Oklahoma. It was pure genocide. On the reservations soldiers gave the Indians corn to eat and they fed it to their meager livestock. Chief Joseph was finally allowed to return to the Pacific Northwest in 1885 where he died of a broken heart.”

 “I see.”

We traveled along the rocky road to Dublin in silence. One, two, three, four, five down the rocky road all the way to Dublin leaving them all broken hearted.

The gendarme shifted in his sleep.

The stranger slipped the papers into the green satchel.

Outside the dirty taxi window in an endless hazy future of rocky dune hills, black shrouded women on donkeys balancing large ceramic brown jugs plodded miles to a shallow well inside circular stones.

The city may move but the well remains.

The two-lane road ran forty kilometers south to Sidi Ifni, a Spanish enclave with 15,000 people on cliffs over the Atlantic. In a lush valley beneath old Moorish castles were two cinder block construction enterprises, wadi oasis palms, gardens, and tributaries running to the sea. Thin men sifted sand and gravel through wire screens. Belching machines pressed out bricks. Another man hauled them to trucks.

Part of Spain until 1969, facades suffered from emptiness, wind, and water. Sharp white cubist block homes scattered on hills broke light. It was an old art deco town full of decayed deserted buildings from an elegant forgotten history. European expats bought holiday apartments for $2,000-10,000.

He found a room in a cheap hotel overlooking the Atlantic and rested for three days.

Mosque masters called five times a day. Trick or treat. Sleep deprivation became the norm. Late to bed and early to rise makes a man crazy.

He walked on a beach with an unemployed Internet worker from North Carolina. Bill had never been out of the states before. He was shocked and fascinated by Morocco. 

“The poverty levels are amazing,” he said.

“You get used to economic realities, touts and price gouging. It’s a poor country. The people are kind and hospitable.”

“Fez was amazing, then I got sick for three days in Meknes. Had to rest.”

“It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth. Why did you pick Morocco?”

“My partner, Sam, a world traveler, had it in mind and then we were laid off. He asked me if I wanted to come along. I had three weeks to get it together; shots, pack and stuff. It was pretty crazy but I made it.”

Sam was a savvy cynical traveler. He told people he was Australian. A well rehearsed diversion after 9/11.

“The Greek islands are cheap, specifically Santorin,” he said one night over bad fish and rice in the hotel restaurant. “Thailand and Laos are good bargains as well.”

Deserted Sidi Ifni beaches stretched for miles. Renegade surfers relishing excellent conditions camped to the north.

“North Carolina is somewhere over there,” Bill said, pointing west. “Imagine that. I’ve never been away from home before.”

“You either adapt or get back where you feel comfortable.”

I shared ideas about writing goals and publishing.

“You need a hook, a marketing platform, be willing to fail, rejections are part of the process, murder your darlings, overcome the fear of making it perfect and be passionate about your work. I've learned this through trial and error. Publishing is a business, a casino. The bottom line for an agent is, can they make 15% on your book? The shelf life of a book is maybe six months. It’s about the joy of creating, writing for your self and not worrying about the market. Keep it real.”

“What’s real?”

“Give your characters desire and conflict in the first five pages. Let them show and tell. Take them on some kind of journey with character arc. It’s about dialogue and action and using all your senses. Have fun with it. Nobody in 200 years will want to read it.”

“Well, knowing that takes the pressure off.”

“No fear. Finally, make your query letters human, don’t kill your query in the synopsis, reduce the synopsis to a single sentence for your pitch, and establish your marketing platform.”

“Thanks. I’ll give it a shot when I get back.”

“My pleasure. Enjoying your trip?”

“Yes, it’s been very interesting. I rode a camel out into the dunes south of Zamora. It was really the only thing I wanted to do on the trip.”

“He paid way too much,” Sam said. “They ripped him off. He went out at 4 p.m. they rode for an hour, camped overnight, had breakfast and returned to the hotel. It’s strictly for tourists. He could have found something cheaper.”

“It was really cold out there,” Bill said. “I couldn’t sleep and stayed awake almost all night. The stars were amazing. They were so close I stayed awake staring at them until dawn.”

It was a place of truth and beauty for him.

Bill and Sam were nervous about returning to states coping with terrorist siege mentalities and media produced fear.

Their days in an old Moorish civilization were numbered. They faced the unknown like getting their stuff out of storage when they returned and finding new jobs.

In their country of birth people loved storage facilities. Through history they accumulated tons of stuff and needed a place for it. It was precious to them. They were attached to it. They birthed it, raised it, and married it, dragging it around behind them for years, lugging it into and out of new apartments and homes, before burying it in caves filled with a deep fear of loss. They stored it someplace else because their palatial homes, caves, hovels and shopping carts were filled to the brim. They consigned it to cement storage facilities hidden behind mazes of security gates, security fences, and secure double-padlocked doors in run down industrial zones trapped in the bowels of decaying cities. Where it collected dust. Buried memories, artifacts, time capsules and all the forgotten stuff.

In The Red City after Sidi Ifni, he packed light. He was ready, willing, able, and well prepared for invasions and grounded Special Forces with the latest killing technology. Exploring general theories of relativity he assembled his Zone II medical kit, dehydration packets, emergency space blanket, climbing boots, Swiss army knife, short-wave radio, R-11 telephone jack, energy adapters, battery charger and a zippy drive for backups.

He carried phrase books, geographical maps, a water purifier, modems, lip balm, chopsticks, dental and mental floss, a sarong, Honer blues harp, immunization record, watercolors, a resume of seasons, fountain pen, ink bottles, blank Moleskine, a warm heart and cool mind.

A Century is Nothing