Worstward Ho, by Samuel Beckett
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” (from Worstward Ho, 1983; Samuel Beckett 1906 – 1989) Irish Writer, best known for his play Waiting for Godot in 1952 and winning the Noble Prize Literature in 1969. ©Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2013. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Dissecting words
“Billie… smile!” “Billie, this is a business company, not the beach!” “Oh Bee, you’re such a bad dancer!” “It must be great being on sick leave so much; it’s like being on a long holiday!” “Look at her, Monday morning and still drunk!” These sentences might just be background noise to some, but to a person with a neurological illness, those words can cut like tiny slithers of glass.
Shortlisted!
After a holiday which wasn’t really a holiday – flying home because a family member passed away is hardly reason to have that excited holiday feeling – and trying to sleep while having half an eye fixed on the Ireland Blog Awards 2013 website every so many hours for the last week or so, I am now still trying to figure out how I got to being shortlisted in the Personal Blog category. Chuffed. Exhilarated. Stunned. In the past I expressed my surprise about that peculiar kind of twist of fate which later turns out to be a blessing in disguise, and yet again I have to admit that life really is a stage show. A show of which I continuously seem to misplace the brochure but manage to grasp…
W.B. Yeats in Sligo, Ireland
In July I visited Sligo in the west of Ireland, where William Butler Yeats is engraved in Drumcliffe near his beloved Ben Bulben mountain. Since I am a big fan of Irish literature, and have a very definite weakness for Yeats’ poetry and life, I took several pictures from a different angle. I was trying out my new smartphone and unfortunately for the thingie; it had to take a lot of photography abuse from my part! Bronze and stone sculpture featuring “He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven” at Drumcliffe Cemetery; work of the well-known sculptor Jackie McKenna of the Leitrim Sculpture Centre. “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…
Hot town!
“There’s always the floor?” my mum asked. With a brain fried like a piece of KFC garbage, thinking intelligently seemed hard to do. “Of course there is always a floor, go figure!” But I was getting desperate, water streaming from me and no place to cool down. Aside from the floor, that is.
The Second Coming, by William Butler Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again;…
Single life?
"However, I am not MS and MS is not me. It may reside inside my brain but that is where the relationship ends. I accept it is there, but it will not make me long for a relationship just to be in a relationship, or to have someone present to care for me day in, day out. Quite independent, indeed."