Finding Her Here
© Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2013
Changing Ireland
I’m well into my 10th year of living in Ireland, and I often wonder about what changed during those years. A long list builds itself in my mind on people, mentality, culture, politics, nature, life… Writing about everything would result into one very long blog post that will eventually bore everyone, so I will try to keep it rather short. After all, I’m here to be entertained myself. During my first weeks in Dublin I was house hunting and it’s fair to say that I saw serious differences in what was up for grabs. Apartments with bright blue carpets, surely there to blind its tenants and with hallways like a maze. Now how should I find my way out here? I can’t even find my way out of a cereal…
Invictus, by William Ernest Henley
Invictus Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul. (William Ernest Henley 1849-1903) (At the age of 12, Henley contracted tuberculosis of the bone. A few years later, the disease progressed to his foot, and…
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven, W.B. Yeats
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. (William Butler Yeats) © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012.
James Joyce, Bloomsday and onions
Last Saturday Ireland celebrated Bloomsday, a day that stands out each year because of the many faces Irish people, foreign residents and visitors alike give it. For those unknown to what Bloomsday is, Leopold Bloom is the main character in James Joyce’s Ulysses. The story was set in and around Dublin on June 16th, 1904. In 1954 Bloomsday became what it is today and Leopold Bloom and Joyce got their just rewards: a day named after them and a day to showcase the wonderful artistry of Joyce. I’ve always admired Irish authors; they seem to have a wonderful sense of imagination, and they have the gift of putting this into words, much like the Greeks did with their myths. My love for them is old, ancient and combined with my…