Poppin' the Cork (Ireland)

Through the technological wizardry of StatCounter.com analytics, I discovered that someone from Cork, Ireland, or thereabouts, came to this blog after searching the term "Advent haiku."

Cool.

It's a small world, owing to a semi-creepy sort of reverse virtual voyeurism.

But I don't know any more than that general data, which is all for the better.

Welcome, dear visitor from Cork. [Image from http://www.old-picture.com/europe/Blackrock-Castle.htm]

I loved visiting your breath-takingly lovely isle in 2006, mostly the northwest.

Hope to get to Cork next time.

Oh, and just for you, whoever you are, a brand-new Advent haiku:

snow-dusted evening
skeletal branches wind-whipped
I looked up -- and in

I fear you shall never return to The Laughorist, victim to the ephemeral whims of cyberworld.
Return!

p.s. Is StatCounter.com based in Ireland?

The Virtue of Jet Lag

Jet lag. What a wonderfully oxymoronic term, connoting (or is that denoting?) the rush that slows; the propulsion that regresses. Yesterday, rather hung over from fatigue (late-night browsing in the Double U Double U Double U Universe will do that), I was driving to my haircut place (i.e., Hirsute Psychotherapy by Don), and I experienced memories of recent trips. And the memories were of first moments of arrival in Ireland and in Berlin.

The gauzy, slow-motion sleepwalking of arrival in Shannon, the terror of trying to drive a car on the "wrong" side of the road, the traipsing through a cemetery in Ennistymon as the sun was rising (and Youngest One was toppling over with sleep in the back sleep).

Or sitting in a Mercedes-Benz taxi en route from Tegel Airport, trying to converse with a driver who knew not Word One of what I was saying, canals and rivers, graffiti splattered on stately buildings, falling asleep during a ballet class's lullaby piano melodies, the Brandenburg Gate looming at the end of Unter-den-Linden.

Powerful memories.

And it dawned on me (though not the dawn of vertiginous arrival). These jet-lagged memories recur frequently. They are triggers of further evocations. They are the madeleines featured by Marcel Proust, those tea biscuits that a bite of which [grammar check, please!] transported the narrator into a journey of the past.

I have come to understand that (despite the bone-crushing weariness, deep disorientation, and grouchiness) jet lag is the portal into a new world (it seems to hit me more en route from America to Europe, probably because of the morning arrival). It's really not all that bad, looking back. It's more like we are expected to bemoan it (and I understand why; I do not sleep well at all on planes), but if we roll with it, jet lag yields later benefits (sure, sure, you're saying; so does a colonoscopy).

I salute Jet Lag Memories.

Croagh Patrick Triptych

Croagh Patrick, County Mayo, Ireland, on the road from Louisburgh to Westport, with an elevation of 2,513 feet, overlooking Clew Bay, scene of pilgrimages today and August 15 and Reek Day (the last Sunday in July), where St. Patrick is said to have fasted and prayed for 40 days in Lent in 441, where I climbed part of the way last October, and where I strayed from the path looking for a shortcut to a mysterious bowl-shaped landform, only to encounter boggy, soggy meadows of green and a rock with shamrock-shaped lichen, and where, back on the "normal," rocky path, Fintan with a flinty smile and walking stick told me,"You don't want to be doing that, I've tried it, and anyway that's where Patrick cast the demons."


Three Haiku

misty cloud shadows
simmering sunlight bursting
verdant moss islands

Clew Bay horizon
invigorating crispness
birthday calls Stateside





Patrick's spirit lurks
pilgrims trekking up and down
gleeful light airy

All blessings on St. Patrick's Day.

For a splendid biography, I recommend The Wisdom of St. Patrick, by the inestimable Greg Tobin.

All photos, text, and blarney copyright 2007 by The Laughorist.