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A Poem for Michael and Christopher, Act Two, Door into the Dark, Postscript, Seamus Heaney, The Underground
Dear Seamus Heaney,
Whether it be a matter of personal relations within a marriage or political initiatives within a peace process, there is no sure-fire do-it-yourself kit. There is risk and truth to yourselves and the world before you. And so, my fellow graduates, make the world before you a better one by going into it with all boldness. You are up to it and you are fit for it; you deserve it and if you make your own best contribution, the world before you will become a bit more deserving of you. ~ From his remarks to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduates, May 12, 1996 Dear Seamus Heaney, Six years…
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Ajijic, Chapala, Irish Diaspora, Jalisco, James Taylor, Lake Chapala, Mexico, Mexico, Paula Meehan, You're So Vain
Mexico ~ With My Own Ones
“I am the blind woman finding her way home by a map of tune. When the song that is in me is the song I hear from the world I’ll be home. It’s not written down and I don’t remember the words. I know when I hear it I’ll have made it myself. I’ll be home.“ ~ Paula Meehan, Irish poet Vibrant, foreign, and far away, Mexico was once nothing more than a James Taylor song on my first radio. It was too far beyond my reach to present an alternative to the Northern Ireland of my childhood, a grey and divided place, its capital city, a ‘no-go’ area in…
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Birthdays, bombing, IRA, John Hewitt, Loughinisland, Memoir, Northern Ireland, Omagh, Peace, Sectarianism, The Good Friday Agreement, The Peace Process, The Troubles, Themes of childhood, UVF, W.B. Yeats
At this moment, bear in mind Omagh.
As we plan to mark the 20th anniversary of the Omagh bombing, I am drawn back to the summer of 1998. A new mother, I had taken my baby daughter back home to Northern Ireland, my lovely, tragic Northern Ireland. Between my father, my brother, and a handful of relatives who could keep a secret (an impressive trait in rural County Derry) we had planned a “This is Your Life” style surprise for my mother’s sixtieth birthday. It was delicious, knowing we had all swallowed the same secret, and that my all-knowing mother was completely in the dark. The Troubles had tainted previous visits home, but this time would be different…
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Addiction, Dead Poet's Society, Death and dying, Depression, Good Morning Vietnam, Good Will Hunting, Loneliness, Loss, Love, Mental Health, Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams, saying goodbye, Self-medicating, widowed
out of this world – robin williams
You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it. I first encountered Robin Williams on the TV in our living room in Antrim. Remembering his death four years ago, I am a teenager in Northern Ireland once more, and Robin Williams is an alien from outer space on the Mork and Mindy show. Brilliantly, he was Mork from Ork. Pam Dawber, as Mindy, was the perfect foil. Easy to like, she shared my taste in music with the cover of Jackson Browne’s “Running on Empty” album hanging on her apartment wall. Naturally, when I went to college in Belfast, living away from home for the first time, the “Running on Empty”…
