A while ago, I noticed that a brick in the wall hidden behind a light post on my round the block walk has a very inspiring little mural on it. It took a bit of doing to grab a photograph of it as the pole is pretty much obscuring it and I had Puppy Stan pulling impatiently to trot on.
It catches me by surprise every time I pass and that could be three or four times a day!
Today is a sad, sad day as a blogger who greatly admired was inspired by Sue Vincent who has died from cancer leaving behind adoring family, friends and her precious little black dog, Ani.
Sue was one of the very first people to encourage me when I started blogging a decade or so ago and was incredibly generous with her time, humour, practical tips and sheer care. I loved our many ‘live’ to and fro commenting chats, especially late at night.
She was a woman of awe-inspiring talent in terms of writing, photography and painting and certainly epitomised the notion of ‘a life well spent.’
My deepest sympathies go to her loved ones and my enduring hope is that they will find solace in the wonderful memories she has left and in knowing that there is so much love and support out here for them.
Sue has been on my mind all day and I know she would have loved to be out and about basking in the sunshine and soaking in the gorgeous daffodils and tulips that are surrounding me here in Ireland.
More than anything, though, I have been hearing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’ and remembering how Sue once told me how much she loved the song that bore her name. I feel that it is a song that touches very much upon the magic that was Sue and the love that will always surround her memory.
A couple of years ago, this little wooden seat was installed on the Backstrand in Tramore. It’s something I pass regularly on my walks around our lovely beach and it always sets me off thinking about the conversations that have taken place on it as well as potential conversations.
I day dream about it being a social bridge where I could meet people and chat to them about their lives. These people could be famous, like Billie Jean King; local heroes like Waterford hurler, Austin Gleeson; bloggers I feel I know but would love to meet in person, like Sue Vincent ….
I hope that one day I will make this project come to fruition and that the little seat continues to inspire.
I often wonder how other bloggers arrive at what they will write about.
Do you have notebooks with ideas jotted down or just find inspiration hitting you whilst living life or maybe open a blank post and wait for what happens next?
I tend to feel possible posts trickling into my mind as I am doing other things and eventually sit down to write before I have forgotten what the idea was.
The original idea very often changes into something else like it has today because I am never sure how interested others would be in a random thought relating to something that may be very specific to me.
Perhaps those are the things people are interested in.
What are your blogging processes?
It was dank, dark and misty for most of today here in Tramore but I got to see a magical smile as night was closing in.
I’d brought Puppy Stan to Kilfarrasy Beach for a run and we’d got caught in a downpour. It stopped raining just as we got back to the car and I decided to have one last look – with Dad very much in mind.
First a seal appeared all black against the rough seas and then it was as if nature smiled with all her heart.
And how not to love this shining stone that the high tide left as a present for us:
There was a big gathering in Dublin today to honour the Irish poet, Brendan Kennelly, who is now 80 years of age. Watching him on the RTE news, alongside the Irish President, Michael D. Higgins, I was reminded of one of the very first posts I wrote here on my blog. That was back in 2011 and it was highlighting how Brendan Kennelly was a social bridge in my life.
I know that very, very few people read that post which was written from the heart about a man who had a huge impact on me, especially in my first year in Trinity College where he was Professor of English while I was a struggling Sociology student.
This is what I wrote back then:
THE LIGHT
Knowing that Brendan Kennelly celebrated his 75th birthday this week, I am prompted to recall my reaction to his collection Reservoir Voices (2009). Seeing the book on the shelf in the Book Centre in Waterford gave me a sense of comfort and it was almost like he was responding to a poem I had written about him a few months earlier. The poem, The Smile, related to my first term in Trinity College in 1975, when I was just seventeen and incredibly homesick. I had the good fortune to be able to attend a lunch time poetry reading of Brendan Kennelly’s early on that term and it was one of those bridges in my life that I have never forgotten. It was to lift my spirits and give me the hope I needed to press on and gradually come to thoroughly enjoy my College days.
The Smile
That first day on Trinity’s cobbles
confirmed the hard-hitting prognosis
that my dreams of professional tennis
were shattered like my throbbing wrist.
Economic and Social Studies, what a prospect!
Brendan Kennelly dissolved my pain
for a fleeting hour, in a packed, steamy
room in Front Square. His voice,
his smile, his dimples inviting
me into his past, his solitude, his heart.
Economics was waiting to trip me up.
Tried to drill it in ‘til dawn
with mugs of black Bewley’s Java.
Saw familiar words on the dreaded paper;
momentary hope, head too heavy, faltered.
I scrambled through the September repeats;
got into my running with Sociology
and tennis. How many times did I
dash past Brendan Kennelly on the cobbles?
He’d smile; but why did I never slow down?
I must confess that I always hoped that I would inspire Brendan Kennelly to write a poem as I ran past him in my short tennis skirt towards the courts in Botany Bay. And if I am really honest, I hoped that I could be his muse like John Betjeman’s, Joan Hunter Dunn, and that he would immortalise me forever in lines like:
Love-thirty-love forty, oh weakness of joy,
The speed of a swallow, the grace of a boy
With carefullest, carelessness, gaily you won,
I am weak with your loveliness, Joan Hunter Dunn.
I still regret that I didn’t seize a golden moment to speak to Brendan Kennelly which was presented to me in Ballybunion one hot Summer’s day in the mid-1980s. I was swimming in the sea at the main beach in the town when suddenly I caught sight of a familiar figure jogging along by the water’s edge. Yes, it was the man himself, in his native Co. Kerry, and there I was paralysed in the water just watching him run with the carelessness of Joan Hunter Dunn. I waited ‘til his back was turned and then sprinted up the beach to retrieve my clothes and disappear into the crowds.
No one was more delighted than I, when Toyota brought Brendan’s Kennelly’s voice back into my life with its massive advertising campaign and then, just a few years back, I heard a haunting programme in which he was speaking of his love of walking around Dublin just before dawn. Suddenly, I was catapulted back to the Dublin of my late teens and early twenties. Yes, I had walked those deserted streets on my way home to my bedsit in Ranelagh. I had known the peace he spoke of – a city with no traffic and the sound of birdsong at dawn. I also knew the comfort and coffee aroma of Bewley’s in Westmoreland Street, at breakfast time, with Brendan Kennelly sitting within my sights and reading with such concentration that I couldn’t possibly disturb him.
Plunging into Reservoir Voices, I was stunned to find that it was inspired by an Autumn sojourn in America where he experienced a period of intense loneliness which he tried to cope with by contemplating a reservoir near Boston College. The very idea of Brendan Kennelly ‘sitting alone … feeling abject emptiness’ stretched my emotions to their absolute limits. How could this be possible? Here was the man who had dissolved my angst in a mere hour and who I had assumed to be beyond the hand of darkness and dislocation readily admitting to his experience of it over a period of weeks. He makes the point that sometimes dark loneliness can lead to light. If I had happened to come upon him sitting alone at that reservoir, I hope I would have had the nerve to tell him how his presence was once that crucial light in my young life.
The world is full of highly complex and challenging issues ~ wars, starvation, greed, absolute poverty, inequality, quiet desperation, physical agony, homelessness, hopelessness …..
I often think that there is far too much of an ‘I’m alright, Jack,’ attitude out there and that there is a ridiculous level of crazy positivity knocking around, which essentially acts as blindfolds and earplugs to the hurt that is just around the corner, if even that far away from any of us.
I really worry about the message that the massive emphasis on positivity sends out. In short, I feel that stuff like: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,’ essentially makes people who are in horrible situations feel like it’s their fault for not being able to get out quagmires that would be overwhelming to absolutely anyone.
Some people, though, have a way of doing very simple things that reveal all that could be great in a world that often seems to be losing its way and imploding into ‘I’ ‘I’ ‘I-ness.’
Here’s one example of such simplicity which I happened upon, as I was out and about the other day here in Co. Waterford:
Unleash all your stresses and dance along with the waves of life (Puppy Stan)
Snuggle into the warm tones of Autumn and know that there’s a sunny spot waiting just for you. (Puppy Stan).
The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.’ Henry Millar
SOCIAL BRIDGE ~ Jean Tubridy connecting with you from Ireland 