Irish weather.
It is impossible to get away from the Irish weather. Though, these days, people do spend most rainy days inside. No need for them to forge or grow anything. No horse or a donkey to feed. You catch my drift. We live in a culture of technology, that 30 years ago was unimaginable. A person had no time, or need to imagine it. They were too busy planting their dinners for the winter. Remember the times of no mobile phones? I am 33 and I remember having no phone at all. Not even a land line. 20 years ago, the place I work in, sold condoms from under the counter, because it was illegal to use them! How did I move on from the weather to condoms? My monologue rolled down the hill with a little push of the wind.
The weather here is not dull. And neither is the land it expresses itself upon. Together they hold focus, they change like woman's mood. You can go outside in a sunshine and come home soaking wet. I talk about the weather with most people I meet. I used to try to avoid it, but the conversation always found me anyway. ''Ah, it's a lovely day today, isn't it?'' Or ''horrible out there, ey?'' The weather can change here 5 times per day. The chances are, the person you are talking to is as delighted, or fed up, as you. ''50 shades of grey'' would have been a perfect title to describe the Irish weather, but it has been taken. Grey is not a dull colour, we find out from the book. Neither are the shades of Irish landscape. When Sun illuminates this place, it is as if a vale is lifted from a young girls' face, revealing beauty rough and untamed. Beauty hard to miss and harder to describe. There is poetry and music in this landscape impossible to capture, but in song, a painting or a poem. And the same goes for the people here.
The weather here is not dull. And neither is the land it expresses itself upon. Together they hold focus, they change like woman's mood. You can go outside in a sunshine and come home soaking wet. I talk about the weather with most people I meet. I used to try to avoid it, but the conversation always found me anyway. ''Ah, it's a lovely day today, isn't it?'' Or ''horrible out there, ey?'' The weather can change here 5 times per day. The chances are, the person you are talking to is as delighted, or fed up, as you. ''50 shades of grey'' would have been a perfect title to describe the Irish weather, but it has been taken. Grey is not a dull colour, we find out from the book. Neither are the shades of Irish landscape. When Sun illuminates this place, it is as if a vale is lifted from a young girls' face, revealing beauty rough and untamed. Beauty hard to miss and harder to describe. There is poetry and music in this landscape impossible to capture, but in song, a painting or a poem. And the same goes for the people here.
I am a Polish bird, and have lived in Ireland for 14 years now. It is enchanting and majestic and other big words that fill my head, but are too serious. I go around with a bit of paper and a brush, and the pictures here are some evidence of it.
Be patient with me, because I would like to share a piece of literature with you that is compelling. It is written by James Stephens in 1914, or earlier perhaps, and it is called ''The Demi-Gods''. It is absolutely beautifully written. The guy had a great insight into human ways and a really wholesome way of bringing it forth. He speaks about life of a tinker and his daughter and their donkey, as they make their way around the country, in all sorts of weather ;-) . Every native should read this book. It is funny, wise, and makes me wish I was Irish and share in the richness of this country's heritage ...But, I am a 'blow in', and know very little of such things. Be the judge of it your-selves then.
''He stood outside
of every social relation, and within an organised humanity he might almost have been reckoned as a different species. He was very mobile, but all his freedom lay in one direction, and outside of that pasturage he could never go. For the average man there are two dimensions of space wherein he moves with a certain limited freedom; it is for him a horizontal and a perpendicular world; he goes up the social scale and down it, and in both these atmospheres there is a level wherein he can exercise himself to and fro, his journeys being strictly limited by his business and his family. Between the place where he works and the place where he lives lies all the freedom he can hope for; within that range he must seek such adventures as he craves, and the soul expansion to which he can attain is upwards towards another social life if he be ambitious, or downward to the underworlds if he is bored.
For Mac Cann there were no upward and no downward movements, he had plumbed to the very rocks of life, but his horizontal movements were bound only by the oceans around his country, and in this gigantic underworld he moved with almost absolute freedom, and a knowledge which might properly be termed scientific.''
''The Demi-Gods by James Stephens
To wrap it up, some beautiful photos of people, who travelled the roads, taken from a book by Alen Macweeney. Worth exploring.
Your paintings and words are so beautiful.
ReplyDeleteWhen you share this rough shorn landscape through the vision of your art, the beauty which is in your soul illuminates the heart.
Thank you for sharing!