Imponderables

Oisin and Jago at McGeown's in Glenavy.

I write almost everyday. Like today i had to write two articles. One for the Newsletter and the other one for the Irish News. Most of the time i write press releases, but every now and then i do write something that i do like. And i liked the article i wrote for the Newsletter. Because it is totally bad form to post something which hasn't appeared in print yet, i can't post it. But i promise i will post it when it's ready to be posted.

Yesterday i brought Jago and Oisin to a local wildlife rescue centre. It's name will remain unknown because it was a place which i thought needed to be shut down. Having the deepest respect for birds and other furry things, yes, even foxes, i was appalled at the state the place was in.

Firstly - oh where do i begin - firstly, there are animals there which should have been dead a long time ago. Buzzards with one wing. Cormorants with gammy legs. Pigeons who have suffered botulism. Kestrals which are going demented because they can't be released and they can't hover either. Foxes looked up at me disconsolatly from their pens. They had clearly lost their will to live. They were only alive.

Secondly, it was entirely unsanitary - and therefore unsuitable for wild things. If i know one thing about wild things is that they like things clean. They do no revel in their own shit. They do not congregate in unnnatural places and spaces unless these places can take them. Natural predators and prey, like, oh i don't know pigeons and peregrines, do not live cheek by jowl. It stresses them out, it drives them nuts. And yet, this place was doing that. Gannets which were not fit for release sat in shit filled pens. They were the colour of dirt. If you have ever seen a gannet in flight, diving into the cold clean waters of the Sea of Moyle, you will know how awful it is for this creature to be here.

If i was a creature penned in here, i would have preferred death. And there's the rub. Why can we not relinquish life when it must go? Why do we persist on clinging on where there is nothing left to cling to? Only our own individual selves can answer that.

I was utterly traumatised by the visit. So traumatised that i kept on dreaming about it all night. It was interlaced with thoughts from Singapore - memories of old friends. I saw ghosts in dilapidated buidlings, friends whom i loved passing through. There was a very very dear friend whom i was in touch with every now and then. And every now and then i would have dreams of this person being so sad. And tonight was one of those times.

We must accept death - and know that it is part of the cycle. Paradoxically that acceptance can spur us on to then live each moment to the fullest, because we know that when we must part with this world and this body, we are ready to do so.

When i woke from my dreams i thought of all the things that i had not done yet. A long time ago i had given up visiting all the places i had wanted to visit when i was 16. Macchu Picchu. The Big Sur. The Serengetti. And why? Because a long time ago i began visiting all these places. Firenze. Roma. Tour Eiffel. Big Ben. Tien Ahn Men. And guess what i found? I found that they didn't unlock anything for me. I went to these places with questions. Questions that they never answered. Questions which i had no idea i had been brewing. Questions that could have been answered by not going anywhere.

Sometimes i think about Singapore. If i had known then what i had know now, then i would never have left. But i was one of those people who needed to leave to know what i knew now. And therefore everything is an imponderable.

These are imponderables, a good friend used to once say. What the heck does that mean, i used to wonder. I now know.

It's no use thinking about them. Accept it for what it is. The irony is that he has probably moved from the position of imponderable to i don't know...certainty...has he? I do not know. I no longer keep in touch with him.

My mother once asked me if i ever thought of my ex-boyfriends. I lied and say no. How could i not? I think about my girlfriends constantly; how could i not think of the people - the men - whom i have shared so much of myself with...

And so we continue on the journey, bringing along everything we have with us. But not as burdens, as aids, if we have got the tuning right.