The songs of the whales
I sat down to blog at 9 today when Ghin woke up. OK, i said to him, you want to go to the baby clinic. I hoked him into the car and we wet off. East Belfast... a curious mix of past, present, of possibility and poverty. To say that it is one of the most interesting and historic parts of Belfast is to do Belfast a disservice. Mostly because all of Belfast is so. Take for example Belvoir Forest Park. I ran in it everyday for three years, not knowing that it had a Neolithic colony which cultivated yew trees in the middle of the forest. Cave Hill. From the top of Cave Hill you can see the Five Kingdoms. I'm not sure what these are, but it does include Scotland at some point, the Copelands...etc. East Belfast was mostly where all the shipbuilding took place. For a long time it was lowlying swampland and then it was reclaimed and the industrial boom that took place there meant that a colourful and lively community life, to say the least developed in it. Till today, it is mostly working class, Protestant Loyalist and the airport is now located in it. It claims C S Lewis and politician David Irvine as its sons. I don't know of any famous East Belfast women. It is also full of little churches - baptist, presbyterian, church of ireland, and even a few catholic churches. It has some of the best wildlife in Belfast as the Harbour Estate is a protectorate with loads of birds roaming about its vast expanse.
Do you think the land remembers? I was reading about Dal Riata - the kingdom that comprises Scotland, North Antrim and all the Islands in between the two coasts. Certainly there's a real affinity with places like Islay, Kintyre, Iona and other parts of Scotland. Even CuCulainn the great defender of Ulster learnt his fighting skills from the great warrior and witch of Scotland, Scathach. I think the land remembers - the rocks and stones which have always been here bear witness. Even when you round the coast to enter the Glens, you have a sense of the ancientness and how deeply protected the place is there. How mystery and sacredness are still part of the warp and weft, how the valleys cradle and hold its history like a mother holds her baby. Walk in Cushendal. Visit the waterfall. Gaze into it as you would gaze into a scrying bowl and you'll see the face of Finn McCool. You'll see the shining glories of the women who have given birth to and in the land. You hear poetry, music. Laughter. Yes, the land remembers. And the land most of all forbears. It watches the comings and goings of the beasts that walk upon it with patience. The land endures. We come and go. We flail at our lives, we struggle to give it meaning. The land does not struggle. The song of the stones is sweet and true, and brings no comfort - except for the comfort that everything passes, everything must change. They bear testament, as our practise of placing headstone at graves subliminally acknowledges, they will guard us and bear testament till time itself runs out.
In the British Museum this summer Oisin and i went to see the Egpytian Mummies. It was noisy and crowded and far too unmanaged. He was half interested. We spent a fortune on wine and a sandwich and some elderflower pop. Ghin was angelic. But my favourite exhibit were not the dessicated bodies, but the jadite. The cold oily surfaces, the effort of polishing and tumbling. How artists study the pieces, incorporating the veins and colouration to create a braid here, a tooth there. What comes from a jade piece is entirely dependent on the piece itself and the imagination of the artist. And then, when they are done, these pieces will last forever. It is our homage to the ancient gods and goddesses of stone. I don't know if Oisin understood any of this when i said why i thought jade was beautiful. Stones last forever and so they are very wise, i said. Are they alive mom? Can they move? They do move Oisin, but so slowly, that we cannot see it. They are millions of years old. They were here before we were and they'll be here after we are gone. And when they go back to the earth, they can become something else, perhaps something even more mzing, more precious. I'm sure he didn't understand it.
It's all the realm of the faery of course, but my attitude to all this now is, that somethings do and must remain sacred. I was listening today to Sir David King, the retiring (as in he's retiring from his job) Chief Scientist of the British Government declare that science has all the answers and that the Western world has a MORAL OBLIGATION to cultivate GM crops so it can feed the world's population. I listened to him say that the Green Revolutions have managed to feed people in countries like India and South East Asia. Not a mention about how the technology (our arrogance - the have-cake-and-eat-it attitude) has destroyed the environment. Created a dependance on fossil fuel and highly intensive and unsustainable forms of agriculture. How we have had over nutrification and pollution of our waterways. How this has not stopped starvation and hunger. I was actually very, very angry. Which is unskilled of course. Stupid, arrogant, overwheening man i muttered beneath my breath as i fed Ghin his slippery elm and linseed junket. With his colonial attitude that it is WHITE MAN'S BURDEN to look after the rest of the world. Actually Sir David, the rest of the world will look after itself. You just take care of your own patch. Sort out your own malnutrition here. Your own decline in biodiversity and wildlife. If you need to use a technical solution, please inflict it on your own allotment, not everyone elses too. Please do not patronise us. There are no short cuts to a good life.
Of course if i was more skilled, i should have radiated compassion (instead of trying to be clever) and said, i give love to you, and believe that you exist in love. However, it does not stop me from saying, these are my boundaries - and i will defend them as much as i can.
Like i said in the last post, being human is hard.
And sometimes, it isn't.
Last night i went for a run and listened to a Radio Four documentary about whaling. The Japanese are going to kill more than a 1000 whales - including the humpback - for scientific reasons, whaddya know. As they chatted and ruminated, over the obfuscating acronyms and conventions, I saw the sailors setting out to the Antartic. And i saw their faces glowing gold, watching the everlasting sunlight of the summer there. Their bodies rocking and rolling to an aqueous lullaby. And then i thought, may they see beauty, may they feel peace. May they regard what they do with love.
It was a cold bright night and a star or two was visible, despite the street lamps, over East Belfast. A gibbous moon was on the wane, a sliver taken from her fullness. The hare on her face was missing its ears but she was no less beautiful for that. For a moment i experienced a lightness, a skipping for joy. The weightlessness of my wish floated with winges of voile in the damp air. It was a soundless, eternal, radiant bubble over the shining tarmac that ran beneath my feet. As i breathed out, i turned the corner, and saw coming toward me, the lights of my home glowing steadily in no distance; and then i decided, it is good to be alive.
