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Sunday, January 25, 2015

"Holy Ground"

              I sit now looking down a valley to Liscannor Bay, and the sweep of the stone walls, the patchwork green, is calming and wonderful.  This is what I do when I have work to concentrate on, and I know why I chose this landscape.  When I was a child in the Mississippi Delta area of Arkansas, I sat for hours looking across the flat sweep of cotton fields-looking to the horizon.  To me this was a place where everything was possible-a magic world based on thoughts and wishes.  I've always felt the landscape dictated this; that everything was possible because the world was big enough.  Growing up I began to place a fervent emphasis on Freedom (which I equated with physical freedom), and I developed a need to move freely and a deep need for wide landscapes. I equated them with that moment of timeless potential.  The mind resting on emptiness-all things possible-the landscape of Creation (creative readiness).  This is an issue now in modern Ireland, the life of the imagination and Freedom of place, set against economic needs and economic identity. For the artist, the visionary, a new way of seeing must acknowledge the first and transcend 
the latter.

              As a child, I had a recurring mental image of a woman standing on a cliff-top dressed in nineteen- century clothes, the wind blowing her hair and lifting the ends of her long dress.  She was searching, and I knew that she was searching for would never be in sight.  This image fixed in my mind as  a symbol of Ireland, although as third-generation Irish I had no close ties and knew little about the country at that time. The melancholy figure, recognisable to me even as a child so symbolic of the loss of home and land, was a marker for me of my own loss of my mother and of suffering-a solitary figure in a landscape-the pain of loss that struck so deeply and formed so markedly much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century of Ireland. This is not to say that I believe anyone in Ireland now wishes to return to loss and struggle, but it is crucial that the Spirit of a Nation, its History and Wisdom that has sustained it, blend with and enhance a society's evolving consciousness.

              We are born to a land in a way totally other than our received history.  Our place on this earth is the same for us as it was for countless others-we, as they, must make our own understanding. We are, in fact, connected not to the past, but to Life.  Our inherited rituals of the land are now self-discovery-involving looking to the earth for Wisdom and finding a core response within ourselves.


Jessie Lendennie
Ireland

~Beannaichte'
25 January, 2015


@beannaichte.twitter.com

Thursday, January 22, 2015

" The Key of Lonely"


~ She changes everything she touches,
and everything she touches Changes.
~ Carol P. Christ
 
The mercury continues to drop
It seems that Nature suddenly changed Her mind
As the temperature continues to plummet
The wind cries as if mourning and olde friend
It is an Ancient Lament; crossing all ages
It calls me to a place of muted patterns and colours-
Tonight, in the Key of Lonely.

The wind has quieted
 Reserving its energy for the colder days, yet to follow
 Inside  me, something resonates with this transitioning
Perhaps it is the memories of the years lived on the Plains
 A place that can be brutal , then kind, in the turning of an hour
Yet, it is forthright in its duplicity-
Played in the Key of Lonely.

The world is such a big and complex place
Here, Life is more straight-forward 
The moon and stars are seen clearly on a cold night
I never become tired of touching them with my gaze
The Constellations still hold the same Marvel for me
As when my Mother Gave me their names-
 While Preparing me, for the Key of Lonely.

She gave me so many treasures to store in my mind
 Teaching me, what can never be Lost; or Taken
She reassured me of the Goodness of Life, and Equanimity in Death
Her words Continue to warm me, on cold nights
Her infectious laugh, Fixed in memory
Reminding me, I am not alone on nights-
Played in the Key of Lonely.

In my Dreams she still Sustains me
 Oftentimes, pointing a Direction to follow
 Her Strength came from Facing the Harsh winters
 Struggle became Mapped on the terrain of her Heart
My Mother Knew the Harshness, and Beauty, of the Plains in winter
She understood, Grace and Dignity are often achieved in the Inner Landscapes-
In the Key of Lonely.


~ Alicia O'Hara c.
 Written;12 November, 2013
Posted; 22 January, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

"Lines"



I   want to be Free  from the Noise of the Grind
SI  Live on  the Outskirts  of  the back of my Mind
With  a Stong  hand a Song man and God on my side
I'm Writing  my  Freedom  one Line  at a Time. 


On  the Highway  to Heaven  that Runs  through  my Mind
A yellow Line Stretches  out  into  the Night
Broken  in Places  it's  my Guiding Light
SI'm Writing  my  Freedom  a Line at  a Time.


I'm  Walking  a  fine  Line between Wrong  and  Right
I   can Live with  the  Problems of  this Day and Time
Consider me Lucky, because  I'll  be all Right 
In  my Mind  I'm  Having  a beautiful  Life.


I'm  Lost  in the Feelings of  this Heart  of  Mine
ISearch  for the Border of  InfiniteTime
I  find  Peace of  mind  in the Songs and  their Rhymes
I'm Writing  my Freedom  one Line  at a Time.


~Waylon Jennings
U.S.A. 

~Beannaichte'
21 January, 2015 


@beannaichte.twitter.com 

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

"Merry-Go-Round Child"

Now your love is but a legend,
I would have liked to live on;
You came and left, like Wind-Blown Sand,
Just a legend, everything else is gone.

You sowed in fields of pleasure, 
While I reaped the fields of Pain;
You were happy, when the sun was shining,
I was Sad, when I walked in the rain.

I may never know your harvest,
Smiling with someone else in the sun;
I wonder if she's also gleaning the fields,
A Barren legend;
 where the harvest is none.

It's taken a lot time to realise,
I'm tired of reaping these same olde fields;
Where the harvest is nothing
 but Wind-Blown Sand,
And a Wounded legend;
 only time can heal.

You see, you are like Wind-Blown Sand,
And I didn't want to admit the sting;
It all seems sort of crazy now,
A Merry-Go -Round Child,
 with a tarnished ring.

If ever you come my way, again,
It's just a Legend that you've left behind;
I'm no longer that Child, of the Merry-Go-Round,
 I don't need tarnished rings
or Wind -Blown Sand.

~ Alicia O'Hara c.
 
~ Beannaichte'
20 January, 2015

@beannaichte.twitter.com

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

"Seven Words"




              Barbara Young was with Kahlil Gibran at the hospital when  he passed away.  Soon afterward she packed the precious paintings and effects left in the studio where Gibran had lived for eighteen years, and sent them to his home town of Bcherri in Lebanon.
              How close a relationship existed during the seven years, prior to his death, can be answered, in part, by excerpts from Barbara's own writing.
              Barbara never lived with Gibran.  She kept her own apartment in the city of New York.
             One Sunday, Barbara wrote, accepting an invitation from Gibran, she went to the studio. Gibran was writing a poem; he was at his desk when she arrived.  While composing Gibran usually paced the floor and then he would sit down to write a line or two.
               I waited while he repeated his writing and his walking again and again.  Then a thought came to me.  The next time he walked I went and seated myself at his table and took up his pencil.  When he turned he saw me sitting here.
              "You make the poem and I'll write it," I said.
              After much protest Gibran consented to try it.  He was pleased with the experiment.
              "Well, you and I are two poets working together."  He paused.  Then after a silence,"We are friends," he said.  "I want nothing from you, and you want nothing from me.  We share life."
              As they worked together and she became more acquainted with his manner of thought and his work, she told him of her determination to write a book about him.  Gibran was pleased and it was from that time on that he talked often of his family, and some of the events in his life.
              One day Gibran asked, "Suppose you were compelled to give up- to forget all the words you knew except seven- what are the seven words you would keep?"
              "I named only five," Barbara wrote.  "God, Life, Love, Beauty, Earth...and asked Gibran what other words would he select and he answered, "The most important words to keep are: You and I...without these two there would need to be no others," then Gibran selected the seven words: You, I, Give, God, Love, Beauty, Earth."

~Mirrors of the Soul
Kahlil Gibran 
Translated and Edited by
Joseph Sheban


~Beannaichte'
7 January, 2015



@beannaichte.twitter.com