I know a woman, sweetly or ironically named Erin, you can decide, who came to Ireland to live with the sweetheart she met on the internet at age 17. She's married, with two beloved children and another on the way, embracing and feeling alienated by her adopted country by turns. She lives on the West coast, which is far more traditionally Irish than the area I live in - tiny stone walls. the wild Atlantic sea, fierce Catholicism, parochial and pagan all at once.
Tonight she posted that there are days when she's walking down the street, and the cobbles, or the sea air or the peat smoke or grass make her think, I'm in Ireland! I'm really here, I can't believe I live here! And she went home to her two small children who demanded Ceilí music to lep around to, and thought, who are these little people?
And even though I 've lived here all my life, I know what she means - soon, believe me, I'll be rapturising about the smell of the gorse flowers in the sun, and the springy turf under my feet where the mud only just squelched, and the view of the sea, blue again, from the hill. Misty blue mountains in the distance. I feel the same sense of surprise and delight.
And yet, my imaginationless fuckwitted compatriots have voted back in the party that screwed us royally into the ground after screwing us for years for their own gain, and got away with it - because they can't imagine there to be any other way than the X or Y they and the people across the road have voted for since the establishment of the State. So small minded, so ... impossibly limited in their vision.
I have a hilarious example of this I'm going to share but it's late and I must sleep. Tomorrow x
Tonight she posted that there are days when she's walking down the street, and the cobbles, or the sea air or the peat smoke or grass make her think, I'm in Ireland! I'm really here, I can't believe I live here! And she went home to her two small children who demanded Ceilí music to lep around to, and thought, who are these little people?
And even though I 've lived here all my life, I know what she means - soon, believe me, I'll be rapturising about the smell of the gorse flowers in the sun, and the springy turf under my feet where the mud only just squelched, and the view of the sea, blue again, from the hill. Misty blue mountains in the distance. I feel the same sense of surprise and delight.
And yet, my imaginationless fuckwitted compatriots have voted back in the party that screwed us royally into the ground after screwing us for years for their own gain, and got away with it - because they can't imagine there to be any other way than the X or Y they and the people across the road have voted for since the establishment of the State. So small minded, so ... impossibly limited in their vision.
I have a hilarious example of this I'm going to share but it's late and I must sleep. Tomorrow x
3 comments:
Same-same for all of us who love where we live and yet, are horrified at those elected to lead us.
NOT OBAMA!
Not talking about him.
You know what I mean.
Love you, Jo.
I do.
I think I'm missing something with the 'Erin' - how it can be sweet or ironic. Can you explain?
I'm often wondering about the kind of politics going on EVERYWHERE right now. I like the movement that is springing up in which people are trying to understand what makes the 'other side' tick. It might be more productive than the endless assumption that the other is stupid or evil. I'm tired of thinking more than half the world are stupid and evil...
Erin is an Anglicisation of the word Eireann, which is the Irish word for Ireland. It's a popular American girls' name.
You're right, Mwa, seductive as blaming and deneigratingthe 'other' side is!
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