• Black and white book and milk
    Books,  MS,  Multiple Sclerosis

    Books? Great medicine!

    All joking aside, I cannot even begin to count the number of books I have read since childhood or how many I handled while working in a library. Books become part of life, a friend I will remember forever, a gateway or hiding place where distraction reigns. Just holding them, turning page after page, waiting to be explored, conquered, talked about and put on a shelf waiting to be taken out again. And so the cycle begins again.

  • Literature

    William Butler Yeats @150

    William Butler Yeats: Irish prose writer, dramatist and poet; Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923. 1865-1939; compiled the Oxford Book of Modern Verse. My favourite Irish author would have been 150 years today. Ireland, myself included, celebrates a man so talented, his words still touches people today. Two years ago, and on my birthday, I visited Yeats’s grave in Drumcliffe, County Sligo, Ireland. Because he was one of my favourites since my teenage years, it was a bucket-list moment that was finally realized! I wished I was in Sligo this weekend, but I’m sure I will go back before too long, especially since his house, Thoor Ballylee, has finally been opened to the public, something many fans had been asking for a very long time.

  • Uncategorised

    Books, Ireland and a few blanks

    "To see the real Ireland, the sea, the ocean, the mountains, the patches of green under constantly changing shadows, is to know its people. Despite trying to give Ireland the best of both worlds, it ended up taking up part of me. Lex talionis not applied, I abide by its spirit and ever-welcoming mind."

  • Lifestyle

    Ireland, still here

    "Ireland is still the protagonist in my life that runs away with its stories, and drags me along in its clear chants and rebel songs. I hear tears falling on the sound of uilleann pipes; I feel the waves when I read Seamus Heaney’s ‘Lovers on Aran’. I’ve walked with James Joyce and listened to William Butler Yeats. It feels as if my heart came home. In my mind, I was already part of Ireland."

  • Uncategorised

    From The Frontier Of Writing, by Seamus Heaney

    The tightness and the nilness round that space when the car stops in the road, the troops inspect its make and number and, as one bends his face towards your window, you catch sight of more on a hill beyond, eyeing with intent down cradled guns that hold you under cover and everything is pure interrogation until a rifle motions and you move with guarded unconcerned acceleration— a little emptier, a little spent as always by that quiver in the self, subjugated, yes, and obedient. So you drive on to the frontier of writing where it happens again. The guns on tripods; the sergeant with his on-off mike repeating data about you, waiting for the squawk of clearance; the marksman training down out of the sun upon you like a…

  • Literature

    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.

  • Quotes

    W.B. Yeats’ pain

    “If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise” (William Butler Yeats) © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012. 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.

  • Books

    W.B. Yeats, the collected poems

    “You that would judge me, do not judge alone this book or that, come to this hallowed place where my friends’ portraits hang and look thereon; Ireland’s history in their lineaments trace; think where man’s glory most begins and ends and say my glory was I had such friends.” (William Butler Yeats) © Willeke Van Eeckhoutte and Ireland, Multiple Sclerosis & Me, 2011-2012.