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Pól Ó Lorcáin
Paul Larkin

Chroniclers are privileged to enter where they list, to come and go through keyholes, to ride upon the wind, to overcome in their soarings up and down, all obstacles of distance, time and place.
Charles Dickens - Barnaby Rudge, Chapter The Ninth

The Beautiful Squaw and the Visiting Brave


The country road where he walks with her is made long
By a wish that it may go on forever down to the sea

For miles around not a sinner to be seen

Gola island ahead of their gaze
Ancient cairns guarding their passage downwards

Observation posts for swirling constellations and the Gods

An eagle swooped on a rabbit just before they turned towards the shore
Tóin an Bhoid Bhuí - Arse of the Yellow Stack
Protruding from the heavy, moon-induced swell
A cock in fact.

Breathless on the steep, gravelly climb going back
Weighing the gap between them and distant snow capped Errigal
She took his hand

The brown winter-scorched heather quivered and shook
And turf smoke suddenly rose in rings all about the townland

Credo - Creidim - I believe

The story – the very heart and soul of humanity. Or – Why philosophers don’t do ordinary language

(Includes a bonus mini Christmas Panto at the end!)

In the times that are in it, I’ve been reading a lot about storytelling. Storytelling and what some fascinating and relatively modern philosophers have said about language and stories. These philosophers (Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell in particular) deal with the signs and symbols we use to communicate with each other, or indeed refuse to communicate with each other. However, I think that they are talking about storytelling. This, if you wish dear readers, is my discovery.

Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....

Scéal don nollaig - Christmas Story

The Cry For Help


She blamed herself. If she hadn’t humoured him at the beginning things would have been different.
She remembered it vividly. He had come down one morning with fluorescent blue bicycle shorts on him and a white cyclists top that did nothing for him but pronounce his middle class paunch. It had all been a great laugh and he asking her to feel his testicle pad. A great laugh, that is until he told her that he was going into work like that. Their three kids were appalled. “Dad, you look ridiculous”, said Sebastian, the eldest boy. Jenny had actually started to cry and couldn’t eat her croissant and Simon closed his eyes as their father sped off on his new mountain bike. He returned that night with a sprained calf and a scrape along his shin. He could hardly walk and she had hoped that that would be the end of it but... Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....

Terry Eagleton – Cozying up to “The Man”?


Anyone, like me, who over the course of an adult lifetime has looked upon Terry Eagleton as a hero of the left must be wondering what is going on. Many would have read his paean of praise to Fintan O’Toole in the Guardian recently with a rising sense of nausea; not least because Eagleton (not for the first time – see below), uses the worst of pro colonial stereotypes whilst lauding O’Toole’s new book. This is not just a case of my Manchester Irish gorge rising, Eagleton is now being dissed in the liberal English Guardian for being, or aspiring to be, clever for the entertainment of those at the “top table”. Is Eagleton trying to give his roots a blue rinse?

Léigh an t-alt uilig - Read Full Article....

Flamingos in Dublin

The broad crown of the tall and elegant tree stands right in front of me since we rebuilt the house and moved upstairs.
 
Our living room is now in the tree line. I am so close to leaves and branches that they yearn to caress my face if I would only let them. Flouncing their skirts, flying and swooning in the autumn winds. Filling my bright window with waves of motion. The annual migratory dance of arboreal flamingos.

Paul Larkin
Samhain 09

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