The Wall At Keogh's Pub

In Autumn 1995 Ty Spaulding and I traveled to the Far West of Ireland.

Our rented house in Ballyconneely had a view of the sea, moors, bogs, and the Seven Pins of the Connemarra. The internet had yet to become an instrument of communication and we wrote letters to friends around the world.

Most recently the writer/artist Jocko Weyland emailed a later epistle telling a tale of those times.

Mikey lived in a stone croft outside the village.

He had few good words for anyone.

Here's the long needed edit of said letter.

Enjoy.

Jocko, it was a little strange in Ballyconneely. The first day in town I walked to Keogh's pub, expecting pipe whistles and cheery men singing around a peat fire. Instead a brooding huddle of EU-subsidized cow farmers greeted my entrance with a squinty glare. I offered a round and settled into getting drunk, thinking, "This is the birthplace of the grandparents."

A shove interrupted my sentimental reverie and a bandy-legged gnome with a tam covering a Brillo pad sweep-over aggressively demanded, "What yee lookin' at?"

I answered honestly, "The wall."

"I'll be troublin' yee to not look at that piece of wall. It's mine. Mikey Malone."

The barkeep ordered him to shut his hole, but from that day onward the locals avoided me.

The shunning was extended to Todd, who had a bad back from tree-cutting in Hawaii.

I roamed the boglands in Wellingtons alone.

The weather in September was fine, October was slightly grim, and the rains struck with a sodden ferocity in November.

Everyday Todd's love interest called from sunny Los Angeles.

"Why are we here, instead of there or Thailand?"

My mother's final wish was for me to go the Emerald Isle and meet someone like my sisters, cousins, or aunts. I acceded to her incestuous command, however the only women within ten miles were pregnant fifteen year-old, forty year-old matrons, and two lesbians in Clifden, although one night I was drinking at Keogh's and an attractive twenty-year old redhead tended the Guinness stick. Mikey noticed my gaze and shouted out, "Does the American stand a chance with yee?"

She took one look and answered, "Not a chance."

"None at all."

Mikey was quick with his advice. "Right then, back to yer beer and don't look at me wall."

Todd later married Malibu Stacy. She was good people.

After a few margaritas we swam in the East River on my birthday. The lovely blonde wore a table cloth as a sarong. Todd and she are still happily married and I know well enough when not to stare at someone else's wall.

Milla Slainte.

Thanks for your support. In order to avoid ads, please donate to blogger.com.mangozeen through Venmo. Any amount will help us. I do have a large family. My Venmo account is @Peter.Smith.18

Much more to come__

The Cliffs of Moher - 2012

Last Tuesday I boarded a plane at JFK for Orlando, Florida. My two travel companions, AP and his financier Jerry Mumbels, were attending a builders' convention. I was just along for the ride. My seat had been reserved as an after-thought and I was seated by the window in the rear of the plane. The man next to me was about my age. We nodded a weary hello. This flight had been held for a half-hour for late UK arrivals.

"Where you coming from?"

"Ireland," he explained how it was cheaper to fly from Dublin to London to JFK than Shannon-JFK direct. "If my wife had been with me, then I would have taken the Shannon flight. Women don't like connections."

"I flew from Luxembourg via Paris to JFK. The Heathrow-JFK leg of the flight was $300 more than my roundtrip ticket." I had been planning on flying one-way from Dusseldorf, until Jerry Mumbels offered to purchase my ticket. Sometimes the wealthy have good hearts.

"Are you retired in Ireland?" I'm one of the few men my age and class needing to work.

"No, I'm working at a help center in Cork." He shook his head. "I thought it was going to be an easy job, but we've been dealing with a nasty spate of suicides."

"I read the same in the Guardian." The collapse of the Irish economy had driven a nail of despair into the heart of the nation. "Mostly young men."

"Between 16 and 40. We get about twenty calls a day and at least ten suicides a week in Cork and the government refuses to publish the real figures. They are predicting a thousand for this year. A 50% increase over the previous year, but the figures from my office and those around the country paint a much more dire picture."

"Because they have no hope." Ireland had been on a credit binge. The national debt had led the government to cut aid to all sectors of society, except the banks.

"None at all. Many of the boys I speak with haven't ever had a job and there is no light on the horizon. Russia, Greece, and Spain are suffering similar spikes in suicide and all I hear from the government is more cuts and more cuts."

"Damn." I had been living in the West of Ireland. The oldest son inherits the farm and the rest of the boys hit the road to Galway or other cities in Ireland or beyond. That safety valve is gone. "I wish you luck over there."

"We need luck and not the luck of the Irish."

We bade good-bye at the airport in Orlando. The fat Americans seemed untouched by the economic crisis strangling the world economy. Maybe they were better at putting on a brave face. I didn't mention my conversation to AP and Jerry Mumbels. They had their own problems, but once I got to the hotel I went on line to check on the facts as presented by the Irish press.

irishcentral.com reported that a suicide prevention group had 'received over 33,000 pleas for help in the past 12 months as the suicide rate rises dramatically.' and that 'police are watching known suicide spots like the quays in Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford.'

'Corkman Pat Buckley, founder of the charity Let’s Get Together, told the Independent, "The problem with the suicide statistics is that they take about two years to compile and even then they are relatively inaccurate and under-report the true scale of the problem. The problem is now so serious it is terrifying. We’ve battled to raise $7,000 in funds and it was spent on counselling in just a few weeks over November and December.”

Minister of State for Health Kathleen Lynch revealed in the Dáil, “The increase is mainly in men in the middle-age group, however, we are also seeing a rise in the number of women dying by suicide, although the numbers are still significantly lower than in men."

The State recognizes the seriousness of the problem.

The IMF and banks do not care about these people.

They think that they are weak links in the mesh of society.

Until they too find themselves on the Cliffs of Mohar.

The drop tells the truth.

Sonny by The Rubber Bandits - 2017

The Rubber Bandits came to my attention with "Horse Outside" in 2011. They have been a constant comfort to the revolution for the Irish and all of us.

Sonny attacks the staggering stagnation due to the criminalization of the mentally ill and addicted.

According to Wikiepedia Blindboy Boatclub has criticised the art establishment in Ireland, saying that: "[Galleries and museums] preach only to the converted. They remind us of churches, pure solemn and inhabited by very silent people who don't open their mouths, for fear that someone else might find out that they don't fully understand the art that's on display. Art galleries in Ireland are like big vegan churches, and the curator always wears black, like a priest, and the visitors are there for the free wine. Most people who attend Irish galleries are other artists, and they all whisper to each other about commissioning opportunities inside imaginary confessional boxes."

Hell yeah.

My Loved Nana

My Nana came off the boat from Ireland at the age of 14.

She broke her heel coming down the gangway.

Somehow everything turned out all right in that Year of the Crow.

The native of the West refused to pinpoint the date.

We thought the Year of the Crow had something to do with Chinese Astrology.

Nana loved us more than the moon and the stars.

All of the thirteen cousins.

We were her family.

We still are__

Anne Walsh Nolan 1954

My Nana left County Mayo and came off the boat from Ireland at the age of 14. Boston. She broke the heel of her right shoe coming down the gangway. Her only pair. Her Uncle Father Mike was waiting to take her into servitude for a rich family in Salem. She spoke no English.

Somehow everything turned out all right in that Year of the Crow. The native of Western Ireland refused to pinpoint the date. We thought the Year of the Crow had something to do with Chinese Astrology. A friend from Florida thought she might have native Crow in her blood. To this day we know nothing.

Nana loved us more than the moon and the stars.

All of the thirteen cousins.

We were her family.

We still are and will be as are was and will be all our generation.

Slainte

ps my older brother Frank on her left. I'm on her right. Foto taken in the backyard of our house in Falmouth Foresides, Maine

pps Her marriage license from 1919 to Peter Nolan, my namesake, in Boston notes her age as 26. He was a trainman and she was a housewife. Twenty-six years from 1919 pushes her date of birth into the 19th Century. 1883 in County Mayo if family legend is correct.

AI Overview

Based on the search results, there is no direct reference to a specific event named "Year of the Crow" in Ireland in 1883

Roger Casement Martyr

Once a Knight of the British Empire Roger Casement was led to his death before a firing squad.

His crime was treason.

He had plotted to have weapons delivered to the IRA to fight against the English during WWI.

The Germans had failed to supply the arms.

A lover sold him out to the Brits.

His friends rejected the revolutionary after the English published his Black Diaries professing his homosexuality.

He was hung dead and thrown naked into a grave to be covered with limestone.

A traitor and a queer.

In 1965 his remains were returned to Free Ireland and according to Wikipedia after a state funeral the corpse was buried with full military honors in the Republican plot in Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin. An estimated half a million people filed past his coffin. The President of Ireland, Éamon de Valera, who in his mid-eighties was the last surviving leader of the Easter Rising, defied the advice of his doctors and attended the ceremony, along with an estimated 30,000 Irish citizens.

Casement's last wish, to be buried at Murlough Bay on the North Antrim coast has yet to be fulfilled as Harold Wilson's government released the remains only on condition that they not be brought into Northern Ireland.

The BBC reported on his death. They tried to debunk his struggles against oppression in Brazil, the Congo, and Ireland. One thing remains true.

Free the world.

Roger Casement would have waned it that way.

Traitor, but only to end injustice.

A MOTHER'S LAST WISH by Peter Nolan Smith

After Christmas 1997 my mother entered the final stages of her battle with cancer. These last rounds were not a pretty site, but her beauty remained intact to the end. Several days after the New Year my mother held my hand and said, "I'm so happy I made Christmas."

"Me too." I thought about John Wayne at the end of THE SEARCHERS and forced back my tears.

"You've been everywhere in the world. You've never been to Ireland. I'm leaving you a little money. I want you to go to Ireland and find a girl like your aunts or sisters to marry. Will you do that for me?" Her grip tightened to crack my knuckles. She knew her own strength to the measure. Her grandmother had fled the Aran Isles as a girl of twelve. Nana never went back home. The one boat trip was enough for her.

"Yes, I will." There was no refusing here, despite the incestuous nature of her last wish for her second son.

"You're a good boy." She released my hand with a sigh. "Help me with the medicine."

By medicine my mother meant her morphine drip. I hit her up good. Her tender eyes rolled into heaven and I kissed her forehead. Three weeks later she passed from this life. No one in my family contested her will and in August I received enough money to survive four months in Ireland. I had a new computer and the germ of an idea I wanted to nurture into a gem of a book. The west coast of Ireland

My good friend Camp arranged a rental in the far west of Galway beneath the Seven Pins of the Connemarra.

"That would be great." My Nana came from that part of the West. "What kind of house?"

"It belongs to a very aristocratic family."

"So it has to be grand?"

"How grand couldn't it be?" Camp was English. He lived north of New York in a valley dedicated to the pleasures of the wealthy. I trusted his taste, even if the Brit had never been to Ballyconeeley. Camp was an interior designer. Straight, but still an interior designer. They had style. "Are you in or are you out?"

"Count me in." I had read about the nearest town. Clifden had fifteen pubs. The guide books mentioned nothing about women.

"One more thing. Buy yourself some Wellingtons."

"Wellingtons?" I knew that the Irish-born Duke had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. "Are they cookies?"

"Nope, rubber boots. You'll be needing them."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"Good luck with your writing and with your finding a bride."

"Thanks." I'd be happy with one out of two.

At summer's end I sublet my apartment and my boss at the diamond exchange wished me luck with my wife hunt.

"May you make your mother happy." Manny was a mother's boy. We all are in the end.

"I'm doing this for her. I doubt there will be any women." Most Irish women like women everywhere else left their hicktowns for big cities and the guide book had indicated that a small village could get more hickster than Ballyconeeley, which was renown for its cows and windy moors.

"Better you than me." The seventy year-old jeweler was in the first stages of divorcing his second wife. "I'm done with women. But you're still a young man."

"43." My father had six kids at this age. I had none.

"43. I would cut off your right ball to be 43 again." Manny slipped me a c-note. "Save it until you find a girl to take out to dinner. A yard has to go a long way with a girl from the sticks."

"Thanks." I stuck the hundred dollars deep in my wallet. It had to be good luck.

The next days's flight to Dublin took six hours. Customs and immigration went quickly and I caught a taxi from the airport into the city. The sky was crowded with low clouds trailing veils of rain. There was little threat of sun.

"Ah, so this is your first time to Ireland?"

"Yes."

"Well, get used to the weather. It's either raining, just rained, or about to rain. You got a good pair of shoes?"

"Yes." Heavy boots and also green Wellingtons."The driver recommended a cheap bed and breakfast on the other side of the Penny Bridge. The room was clean with a window overlooking an alley of brick walls. I didn't bother to unpack my bag and went to the front desk to I phoned my new landlord.

"So you made the flight over here okay."

"Yes, sir." I was respectful to my betters and elders.

"Why don't you come out here to pick up the keys for the house in the West. The taxi driver will know the way."

"I'll leave now."

I pulled on my cap and buttoned I caught a taxi outside on the street. The drive on the motorway was a short one. Upon arrival at the landlord's address the red-headed driver whistled in appreciation. The gravel driveway led through a quiet park to a large Georgian mansion with a nearby Victorian shed housing a steam museum. The only word for the estate was grand.

"What's this man do?" He impressed by my destination.

"I think he sells beer."

"A lot of beers from the looks of it. Me and mine must have helped pay for this with all the Arthurs I bought."

"Arthurs?" My ear was adjusting to the accent.

"Pints. The founder of brewery name was Arthur."

"So you know the family?" I had never met them.

"There's only the one, but I only know them from the glass in my hand. Good beer. Good people."

"Right." I stored this tidbit of local lore for use at a later time and tipped the driver.

He drove off and I walked up to the front door." Selling beer was a good business and I thought to myself, "If the cottage is a hundredth of this barrack, then I will be living in the lap of luxury."

The door opened before I had a chance to ring the bell.

"Welcome." A silver-haired gentleman greeted me with a handshake and ushered me inside the house. "See you had no trouble find the place."

"None at all, sir." It was a palace complete with medieval tapestries and 16th Century paintings. I tried not to stare. This much wealth was usually reserved for museums.

"Call me Robert." He was tall and slender. His clothing suggested a life of grace.

"Yes, sir." Shaking off my place in the world was not easy, despite Robert's bonhomie.

The two of us sat in the kitchen and conducted the business of exchanging money and keys. The big room was colder than the outside. We drank a glass of an excellent St. Emillion to seal our verbal agreement.

"You'll find the house easy enough. It's the first one on the right before Ballyconneely. There's peat for the fireplace, but I suggest getting a hot water bottle for bed. Houses out that way are not centrally heated like back in the States."

"Thanks for the advice." A light rain pattered against the lead window. I was glad to have my cap.

"One more thing. The phone is on, but only for incoming calls. You want to use it for calls?"

"No." I knew no one in Ireland and international calls were expensive.

"Okay, smart thing. You're writing a book, so I hear?"

"Yes." It was about a black pimp in Hamburg. The subject matter seemed out of place in this house and I closed the subject by saying, "A quiet place without any interference from the modern world should be great for writing."

"The old schoolhouse is quiet."

"Glad to hear it." I also wasn't telling him about my mother's last wish.

"Let me drive you back to Dublin. We can go for a drink at the Shelbourne. It's the best bar in town."

"I'd like that."

Robert's ride was a gray Ferrari from the 60s. The 250 GTE hit 120 mph on the rainy motorway. The windshield wipers worked over-time. A mansion and an Italian sports car were good omen for the cottage in the West.

"I love this car, but I'm getting too old to drive it." Nearing Dublin he slowed down to 60.

"I know what you mean." Getting in was easy. Getting out required a man-servant.

We stopped at the hotel on Stephen's Green for drinks. In the bar my landlord was greeted by several of the men. He ordered the finest whiskey at the bar. My rent money paid for both rounds. It was an early night for both of us. He dropped me at my bed and breakfast and I bid him fare-well.

"Enjoy yourself. My friends have spend many summers in that house."

"You don't stay there?"

"Oh no, we stay at the family house."

Oh." I entered the B and B thinking how bad could the guest house be. The man had a Ferrari.

The next morning I rode the train to Galway. A bus brought me to Clifden. The town was small, but five bars crowded the main square. The rain fell with ease. A taxi was at the curb. A beer could wait.I got in the back.

"Where you going?" The fortyish woman's accent was thick than a slab of breakfast toast. Her face was worn from hard work. Gold glinted on her left hand. Her married status eliminated the driver from my list of eligible.

"The old school house in Ballyconeely."

"Right, it is." She stepped on the gas and we traveled down a two-laner too narrow for the passage of two cars. The sea was to the right on occasion and small farms rolled over the small inland hills. To the north mountains fought for my attention. Their summits were blunted by clouds. Not a single person was working the fields. They belonged to the cows.

"Here we are." We were passing the ruins of a church.

"There?" My great expectations diminished to utter disappointment. I had been scammed by his Lordship.

"No, that's the old Protestant church. It burned down unexpectedly in 1920. Stayed burned too. The schoolhouse is that one."

"Oh." A squat white house lay across a gully from the ghostly church.

"Ah, yes, it's a fine building." The turn indicator presaged our entering a dirt track. The uneven surface would have broken the axel of the 250 GTE. "This is it."

"I guess it is." I got out of the car and shivered in my light jacket.

The lawn was overrun by thistles and the tufts of grass wavering in a wet wind. The whitewashed house was devoid of any modern design or ancient practicality. The tall walls stood facing the west. The Atlantic lay beyond the field. The color blue matched the shreds of sky visible through the tattered clouds.

"You'll be wanting to wear a few more sweaters in the house. It's cold inside." She joined my shiver. "I went to school here. The teacher lived in the upstairs. Some people say the house is haunted. What do they know. You have a good day now?"

"Thanks."

"You need a ride, call me. The name's Peg."

"I will." I watched, as she drove away in the direction of Clifden, then turned to examine my home for the next three months.

The old schoolhouse was not a mansion. Part of the roof was in need of repair. A neglected graveyard lay in the bog separating the schoolhouse and the burnt church. The wan sun slipped into a cloud bank and the rain beat on the hard dirt. I ran inside the house. Peg had been right, It was colder within the old schoolhouse than outside.

The simple decor of sitting room reflected its use as a summer house and the well-used furniture have been rummaged from the local dump. I lifted the phone. There was a connection. I blew in my hands and bent over to pile peat in the small fireplace. The prehistoric carbon lit fast and generated a soft heat, although smoke was curling into the room. Something was wrong with the flue. The old schoolhouse was no mansion. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey was on the desk.

The view out the window was bleak. The wet grass gave way to savage gorse. The sky was descending to the earth. No houses were in sight. Finding a woman here was going to be a challenge.

I poured two measures of Paddy into a fruit glass grimy with fingerprints. I downed the fiery antithesis of Jamison's Malted Whiskey in one go. My body shook with displeasure.

"Cheap whiskey."

I had a second glass and sat by the fire. The glow within matching the glow from the peat.

All and all the old schoolhouse wasn't bad, because this was where my mother wanted me to be and wherever she was in the afterlife, she knew that I had obeyed the first part of her wish.

Getting to Ireland was easy.

Meeting a girl like my sisters or aunt was the hard part.

There was only one way to make it easy and I finished off the bottle. It went down a little smoother than before and I wouldn't have expected anything different from the old schoolhouse.

Erin Go Gay - 1993

Aristotle wrote in his histories that the Celtic warriors preferred homosexuality to heterosexual joining. The practice of man with man abounded amongst the Gauls and men were deeply upset by the refusal of Romans to join them in gay orgies or one-one-ones. They hated the Latin straights. The Holy Roman Church quelled this freedom in favor of establishing their pedophiliac dominion over the souls of the Hibernian Isles.

Homosexuals and lesbians were put to the torch, whipped, exiled, imprisoned, and forcibly converted to heterosexuality by the wicked priests and lay brothers and nuns, however this weekend of 1993 the Free State of Ireland overwhelmingly voted to legalize the union between men and men and women and women. The Church vowed to fight the law, but the new Pope doesn't have a dog in this fight.

Pope Francis sought a new rock on which to form the new church and that foundation not devoted to sexual prejudice or the criminalization of a woman's right to govern her own body.

Despite having received an outstanding education from the Sisters or St. Jospeh, the Xaverian Brothers, and the Jesuits, my devotion to atheism prays for the eventual destruction of the Holy Roman Church and an end to its two-thousand year old reign of terror.

In the meanwhile Sunday was a good day to be Irish.

Free to be who we want to be forever.

Saoirse go bragh.

The Irish Are Coming 2011

After a month visiting my family in Thailand I returned to New York in 2011. On March 17 I extended invitations to a drinking Craic around the East Village for St. Patrick's Day.

"I’m back. Happy St. Patrick’s Day," I announced at the 169 Bar. To most od my friends, however my good friend Jocko Weyland, skateboarder/urbanologist, had begged off joining us with the following words.

"Thanks for the invitation. I’m honored, but I want to hibernate a bit and stay away from the sauce. Too much sauce in Tucson!"

My response was swift, because hibernating during the high holy holiday of hibernian inebreations was a heresy and I told Jocko, "Go dtachta na péisteoga do thóin bheagmhaitheasach."

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"May the worms choke your worthless butt. But no worries. Tuesday evening I had a practice run in the East Village and I woke in a coma yesterday."

"Too much sauce."

"Too much everything."

Tonight is St. Padraic Eve. I'm beer-hungry.

Drinking with two comrades-in-arms.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day to ye all.

A Long Lost Letter of The Wall

In the Autumn of 1997 Ty Spaulding and I resided in a roughly renovated schoolhouse west of Galway. The Atlantic Ocean was a five-minute walk away. The waves pounded the shore. Summer was gone for good.

 

 We were surrounded by rain-swept bogs, fog-wreathed mountains, and the damp beneath our feet. Fall was the season of rain in the Connemarra, but sometimes there was a glorious sun. The house phone only accepted in-coming calls. We wrote letters to our friends. 

Here is one to Jocko Weyland.

EPISTLE FROM BALLYCONEELEY

Yeah, This town has been a little strange, a view shared with Todd aka TY SPAULDING. September was fine. October grew grim. November the rains struck with sodden ferocity.   

The first day in town (Ballyconeeley) I went to the village pub expecting pipe whistles and sitting around a peat brick fire. Instead the brooding huddle of EU-subsidized cow farming bachelors greeted my entrance with a squinty stare. I offered a round and settled back to listening to the brogue, thinking, "This is the language of my people."

A shove interrupted my reverie and a gnome with a tam covering a Brillo-pad sweep-over demanded, "Whacha lookin' at?"  

I answered honestly, "The wall."  

We both gazed at the wall. It was blank. Nothing special, but the dwarf shouted, "Well, I'll be troubling yer not to look at that bit of wall. It's mine."    

"That wall?"      

It was no different than any other wall in the pub. The barkeep told 'Mikie' to shut his hole   

After that night the locals shunned me.  

Didn't matter, I walked around the bogs with my Wellingtons. Todd had a bad back. He spent most of the day on the telephone with his future wife. Laurie was a dream he told me all the time. I agree, because Ty's wife swam with me in the East River on my fiftieth Birthday Day. The blonde beauty wore a sarong from a restaurant tablecloth.     

Ty and Laurie are still happily married.

Of course the reason for going to Ireland was my mother's deathbed wish.

"Meet someone like your aunts or sisters."

This sounded very incestuous to me, but the only women in Ballyconeeley fourteen year-old girls six-months pregnant, matrons waiting for their hard-working husbands to retire from slavery in the UK, and two lesbians in Cliften.  

One night I was drinking with Mikie at the pub. An attractive plus-18 brunette was tending the Guinness stick. Mikie called her over and asked, "Does my American friend stand a chance with you?"    

"Noe at all."

Mikie was quick with his advice.  

"Go back to your beer and keep your eyes off my wall."

        

Sanmhar Samhain

Halloween has nothing to do with Christianity. The Harvest Holiday originated way back into the distant BCs. The Romans dedicated the feast to Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, and the Celts celebrated the summer's end with huge bonfires to evoke the blessing of the spirit world for the dark half of the year. Walking between the fires cleansed the soul for the winter. The practice probably dated back to the Picts and deeper into prehistory.

The following day was the feast of the dead.

For the dead are never dead in our hearts and minds, except for the Living Dead.

In Gaelic the walking dead are called marbhán siúil.

The modern usage is zombai.

Thankfully they are creatures of myth and not reality like banshees and leprechauns.

Nothing was scarier than NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD.

Séanmhar Samhain.

Chair, Pocket Knife, Guitar - Seamus Heaney

Chair, Pocket Knife, Guitar
The slatted folding chair you sat upon,
The scantlings and ad hoc stuff of that playroom
You screened out as you just rocked on and on
In perfect time before the television,
To-day let all that tick-tock bric-a-brac
Come like a drumstick stick-man rolling home.

The one-blade pocket knife you coveted
In a shop window that first evening in France
And I bought then on the spot in thanksgiving
For us just being there: although it’s lost
I stand like a glad Macbeth faced with its ghost
Handle towards my hand, saying, ‘Thank, thank God’.

The guitar you got the day you started school
And were photographed with, up on the picnic table,
Play it again to-day, fierce Andalucian
Serenades and country wedding songs,
Then hang it on the wall, your true love’s token,
Last thing before she sleeps, first when you waken.

According to Wikipedia Heaney was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995 for "works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past".[47] He was on holiday in Greece with his wife when the news broke. Neither journalists nor his own children could reach him until he arrived at Dublin Airport two days later, although an Irish television camera traced him to Kalamata. Asked how he felt to have his name added to the Irish Nobel pantheon of W. B. Yeats, George Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett, Heaney responded: "It's like being a little foothill at the bottom of a mountain range. You hope you just live up to it. It's extraordinary."[

Ireland - ELK BOOKS The Last Issue

Jocko Weyland has published his last issue of ELK and included an excerpt from my journal entries from my long stay in the West of Ireland. 1997. Ballyconneely. Twenty-five years ago.

Yeah, Todd and my stay in Ballyconneely was weird. September was fine ,but October grew grim and November the rains struck with a sodden ferocity.

On my first day in the farming town I went to the village's only pub, expecting penny whistles, singing around a peat fire, and frothy Guinness. Instead a brooding huddle of sullen EU-subsidized cow-farming bachelors greeted my entrance with squinty gazes.

I offered a round. They accepted them with any thanks.I hadn't expected any and settled into getting drunk on Guinness, listening to the brogue and warmly thinking, "This is Ireland, the land of my grandparents".

A shove interrupted my fond memories of my Nana.

"Whatcha lookin' at?" asked a gnome wearing a tam over a Brillo pad of a sweep-over.

I answered the local color honestly, "The wall."

"Well, I'll be troublin' you to not look at that bit of the wall. It's mine."

The bartender told Mikey to shut his hole and the pub sunk into the sullen silence of the West of Ireland.

Over the following weeks the locals avoided Todd and me. Mikey always told me not to look at the wall. It was the only contact I had with the village males.

It didn't matter. I walked through the bogs to the Atlantic. Wellingtons kept my feet dry.Todd had a bad back and stayed close to the haunted schoolhouse, which we had rented from the Guinness family. His girlfriend called the house every day and told him how sunny it was in LA.

He later married Malibu Stacy.

On my next birthday in New York, we drank margaritas at Banditos in the East Village and went swimming in the East River. She wore a tablecloth as a sarong. Todd hated me. They married and had a daughter. They still are married.

The reason for going to Ireland was that my mother's deathbed wish that I marry someone like her, my sisters, or aunts. This sounded fairly incestuous, but the only women in Ballyconneely were fourteen year-old girls pregnant from their pimply boyfriends, women in the forties, and two lesbians from Clifden.

One evening Mikey and I were drinking at the pub.. The village's only attractive female over eighteen was behind the Guinness stick. Mikey noticed my interest and called her over.

"Does my American friend stand a chance with you?"

"Not a chance."

"He punched my arm and said, "Right them, back to your beer and keep your eyes off my wall."

THE LONG MEMORY OF THE CHURCH by Peter Nolan Smith

After the Roman Emperor Constantine I accepted Jesus, the once-persecuted Christians sought their revenge against the Greco-Roman pantheists. The burnt became the burners and the killed were the killers, as the diverse cults of the Empire shriveled under the iron fist of the Messiah's ruthlessness. Mithra and Isis were forsaken en masse for the one True Nailed God, even though the cult of the new divinity was divided into an incestuous menage-a-trois.

God, Jesus, his son, and the Holy Ghost.

The Church waged several centuries of crusades to exterminate any trace of the Old Religions from the European continent, but the bishops of persecution desired live souls more than dead pagans and persuaded many non-believers to abandon their idols through the adoption of traditional rites of the Northern Nations.

The Winter Solstice celebration was transformed into Christmas. The Irish Cross became the Cross of Jesus and Thor's Oak evolved into a pine tree adorned with lights and color for Christmas. Many pagan gods and goddesses changed faith and today marked the feast day of St. Bridgit of Kildare, the patron saint of Ireland, which coincided with Holiday of Imbolc honoring Brigit, the one-eyed Celtic goddess of healing and poetry.

A statue of St. Bridgit graced the first apse on the left in St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue and several years ago I decided to visit the church on my lunch hour. My boss asked where I was going.

"To lunch."

Most companies gave their employee an hour to eat. The 82 year-old diamond dealer considered lunch a waste of time and he repeated his question, "When are you coming back?"

"None of your business to be truthful."

Manny had stiffed my raise two consecutive years.

"You show me no respect."

"That's true." Respect was accorded not to his age, but how he treated his two employees. "Since you're so interested, I'll tell I'm going to St. Patrick's to light a candle in honor of Breo-saighit or the Fiery Arrow."

"Brio-sate?" Manny was mean, but he wasn't stupid despite having never finished high school.

"It translates into Bridgit, the Celtic goddess of health and poetry."

"Bridgit like Brigitte Bardot."

"Close."

"I saw her movie AND GOD CREATED WOMEN with my first wife. She was gorgeous." Manny had a good memory for women and like so many men of the 1950s, Brigitte Bardot stole away the breath in that movie. Manny handed me a dollar and said, "Light a candle for me. Can't do nothing, but good."

"You got it." Manny and I were friends going through a tough stretch. No one was buying diamonds and Manny was still paying my salary. He acted like a piece of shit, but he was my piece of shit.

It was winter. It was cold and I strolled up 5th Avenue through the tourists meandering the broad sidewalks like lost cows. The steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral were crowded with sightseers posing for photos. None of the shooters had read the camera's instructions about perspective or distance.

I entered the cathedral without wetting my fingers in the fount or genuflecting to the Crucified Man from Bethlehem. I headed straight over to the first apse on the left aisle holding $3 for three candles; one for Manny, another for world peace, and the third for my family.

The offering box was in its normal place, however the array of candles had been stripped from the apse and a black sheet covered the statue of St. Bridgit.

This was sacrilege and I looked around for an explanation.

Several rows closer to the altar a guard was evicting a groggy tramp. I approached him with a lifted hand.

"I only do what the priest tell me. No one can sleeping in the church." His accent was Jamaican. Maybe Trenchtown and his dreadlocks were short. Jah would forgive the cutting. These days every man needed to keep his job.

"Not even during the sermon?" Nothing put the snooze on me faster than a priest preaching salvation.

"There are some exceptions." The guard gave up on waking up the bum and asked, "What can I do for you?"

"I'm just wondering why St. Bridgit doesn't have any candles and why the statue is covered with a sheet."

"The priests told us to tell anyone asking that question that the candle holders were removed for repairs."

"Repairs? The candle holders were steel. Their only enemy is rust.

"That’s what I was told."

"But there's another reason?"

"Jah, mon." The guard’s shrug answered my question. "Last year Pagans came to honor the Saint. The Church don't like that."

"Really?"

"Jah, mon."

"Thanks for the info."

The Holy Motherfucker Church had not forgotten its crusades, for her memory stretched back 2000 years and the Vatican was not surrendering its position as # 1 to a dead religion, but I was here to honor Brigit and Imbloc.

I purloined three candles from St. Bernard's apse without dropping a dollar in the offering box. I lit them in front of Brigit. The black robes could clean off the wax after Mass. I mumbled a quick prayer to health before the goddess's statue and then hurried out of the cathedral into the cold winds of 5th Avenue.

I gave the $3 meant for the candles to Lenny the Bum on 47th Street. He's no saint, but the Hassidic beggar was funny after a few chugs of cheap cognac.

"Damien, you're a good goy." Lenny lived with his spinster sister in Washington Heights. "Jesus loves you."

"Lenny, I'm an atheist. There is no God. Only you and me and the rest of the Cosmos." My boss was watching my conversation with Lenny. Manny hated loafers and considered Lenny a disgrace to the Jewish race. The octogenarian from Brownsville tapped his watch.

"So neither of us are going to heaven or hell?"

"Not a chance.Besides Jews don't believe in Heaven or Hell, but Olam Habah, the world to come, where you'll study the Torah for eternity."

"I'd rather go to Gehinom."

"No such luck. You beg to care for your crazy sister. At worst, you'll go to Sheoh." It was the Jewish Purgatory.

"Thanks, Damien."

Manny greeted me at the counter.

"Why do you waste your time with that bum?"

"Because he's a human same as you and me." I stopped taking off my coat and walked toward the door.

"Where are you going now?"

"I forgot my food. I'll be right back and eat at my desk."

"First a candle to Brigitte Bardot and now lunch." Manny rolled his eyes in disgust, then dipped his hand into his pocket. "What are you getting?"

"Pizza."

"Sounds good." Manny handed me a ten. "Get us both a slice of pizza. I did like that Frenchie broad."

“Brigitte Bardot?"

"There was only one."

"And that's the truth." I had worshiped Brigitte Bardot's movie poster as a young man. It was no sacrilege to St. Bridgit. My adulation was pure from afar and a goddess would have it no other way.

ps St. Brigit is also the patron Saint of bastard children.

A Baguette, Butter, and Jam

In the Sixties on the South Shore my Irish grandmother Nana used to serve her grandchildren sugary tea and buttered Wonder Bread toast upon our return from parochial school. We dipped the crisp slices into the sweet milky tea and each bite revived our bodies and souls from eight hours under the nuns and the New England cold, as if we were long-buried vampires tasting blood for the first time in centuries.

This afternoon I purchased a baguette and butter.

At home I turned on the kettle, toasted the split demi-loaf, and listening to Leonard Cohen's SUZANNE.

Time travel to 1962.

I rose from the table and mimicked my Nana preparing tea and toast for her six grandchildren.

I sat down, a youth of ten.

Lucinda Williams' SUNDAY.

I first bite and I felt my school uniform.

White shirt, blue trousers, sky-blue tie.

My feet on my grandmother's linoleum floor.

None of us speaking and Nana smiling from above.

Today I finished the tea and toast, but 1962 lingered on my teeth like sugary tea.

The Year Of The Crow

My grandmother traveled by ship from Ireland to Boston at the age of 14. One heel of her good shoes broke coming down the gangway. It was her welcome to America.

Once on a visit up to Maine someone asked the year of her arrival and Nana responded, "The Year of the Crow."

None of us knew what she meant by that date.

My mother hazarded a guess.

"It refers to the Chinese Astrological signs."

"There's no Year of the Crow in the Chinese Astrology," commented my Aunt Gloria, who had graduated from a state university for teaching.

"There is a Rooster." Her husband Jack had met more than his share of Chinese troops in Korea as a Marine. "But all I ever heard was trumpets. Lots of trumpets."

"What year was it?" My Aunt Helen worked as an operator for the New England Telephone Company. She liked a simple answer.

Nana wasn't giving one.

"Is it Babd?" asked my Aunt Mary. She had gone to college too.

"Babd?" My father was stumped by this answer.

"Babd, the Irish battle goddess, was a crow. She sang a song to those about to die."

"I shall not see a world that will be dear to me.
Summer without flowers,
Kine will be without milk,
Women without modesty,
Men without valour,
Captures without a king."

The look on Nana's face shined with pride. Her oldest daughter was a true daughter of Eire, but she shook her head.

"Maybe someday one of you will be smart enough to know the Year of the Crow."

She patted my head and that of my older brother.

But none of discovered her age and with the demise of my Aunt Gloria I ma obliged to pass on my ignorance onto the next generation.

And we remain many.

And even more in Thailand.

3Is And A Genie

An Israeli, an Iranian, and an Irishman are lost in the desert. They discover a brass lamp in the sand. The Israeli rubs it and frees a grateful genie, who will grant a wish to each of them. The Israeli insists on going first and demands a wall 100 feet high around all of Biblical Israel with no Muslims inside the wall.

The genji claps his hand and the deed is done.

"What about you?" the genie asked the Iranian, who says, "I want a wall 200 feet high around the lands of the Muslims with no infidels.

The genji claps his hands and the deed is done.

The genie turns to the Irishman, who asks, "Can you fill those walls with whiskey?"

The genie smiles and says, "Your wish is my command. Fainne oir ort!"

The Irish are a sensible people, although an old friend asked after hearing the joke, "Jameson or Bushmills? It matters."

Jamesons of course with its pure pot still taste.

Slainte."

Irish Ha-Ha

An Irishman who goes on to a building site looking for a job and is told by the foreman that he will have to undertake a brief test.

'Fine,' says the Irishman. 'OK then,' says the foreman. 'First up, can you tell me the difference between a joist and a girder?'

'That's easy,' the Irishman replies. 'Joyce wrote Ulysses and Goethe wrote Faust.'

If we can't laugh at ourselves who can we?

The rest of the world because today everyone is Irish.

Except for anyone not drinking beer.

Somethings Never Change

In the autumn of 1997 I lived in the West of Ireland with my cousin, Ty Spaulding. We were both writing novels. His book on political intrigue was set in his native Hawaii and mine took place in Hamburg. The two of us experienced the full beauty of the Irish fall. "It's either just rained, going to fall, or will rain." That adage holds true to every corner of the British Isles, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. To this day. But it a sunny one in Fort Greene.