I’m here with two other writers and we’ve settled into a good working day schedule. One is leaving tomorrow. I was supposed to leave as well, but was offered a decent opportunity to stay on for not too much extra for another week. I figured why not? We have wifi, I can do my actual job from here and no one at work is asking too much of me right now while a new manager figures out what his job is and how to assign work to me. So now my real job is back to working on finishing the manuscript. The feedback has been solid and detailed and I’m diving in again with a fresh perspective.
The news from America is distressing. Roe v Wade is most likely in a death rattle. I left America for many reasons, one was partly because I couldn’t stomach the political divide any longer. Also, I wanted the experience of living abroad. The Irish are shocked by this news as well, having gone through their own history with pregnant and unwed women being sent off to the Bon Secours Sisters. It didn’t matter HOW they were pregnant (rape, incest, boyfriend, etc). It was deemed morally inferior and so this gave rise to being hidden away, giving birth (also how many died in childbirth?) and then many of the children, known as the Tuam babies, also dying and buried in the backyard.
Which version did that God approve of? Which version of American God do the Supreme Court think they are appeasing? I’ve seen all the relevant memes over the last few days coming out social media feeds. But those supporting this won’t be swayed by memes. Frankly, I honestly feel fundamentalist religion is a form of brain washing. In turn, the fundamentalists believe liberals are brainwashed. And on and on it goes, the washing machine of the American divide.
But the reality is, anyone lacking the money to travel to a state where abortion is not considered murder will help increase the population of children in need. Families in need. Products of rape or incest. Risky pregnancies that kill those involved. The hypocrisy is glaring.
Enough on America for now.
My cottage mates are both Irish, one being a translator as well (speaks and writes Irish fluently) as a poet (with two books out). We are learning about each other and our respective countries. Last night we built a turf fire in the wood stove (I’d always wanted one just to experience the smell and the feeling it would impart). We ordered some turf and briquettes from the one store on Inishbofin and a few hours later, a car pulled up outside the cottage and dropped some off. Well, mostly briquettes. We got the turf from another islander. I know, I know…climate change. But it does get cold here in the evening and man, a turf fire smells divine. Scent of sweet earth with the warmth glowing through the stove windows. Rain blown in from the sea and hitting the window.
There is also a TV here in the cottage so after dinner we put on a documentary on the evacuation of a neighboring island, Inishshark. I’m definitely getting more perspective on the Irish and their history, especially as it relates to traditional island life in the west.
But here on Inishbofin, for now, my time has become simple. Wake up, have tea, chat with the others in the morning. Then write, walk, write, check in with work, finish drafts, then walk to the village 1.5 miles up a lonely and winding road that runs from east to west. Stop in Middlequarter for a drink and a visit with those working the bar. There are tables outside that overlook the sheltered harbor with Cromwell’s Barracks guarding the entrance. Its boat traffic is usually just the ferry returning from Cleggan or a lone man in an old currack rowboat like I saw last night, rowing his way across the calm surface in the coming twilight of evening.
The locals are friendly enough. The accent is thick. The food is fresh and on the weekends, music tunes up in both the pubs (one in the middle and the other on the West end). I thought I might feel too isolated, cut off even, by spending a week here. In the end, I’m looking forward to a week longer.
Tomorrow, I plan on going into Cleggan (then a bus to Clifden) to get some more supplies and possibly on Sunday I might take a boat trip to Inishshark or Inishturk or just around the island. Not sure. So far I’m walking 5 – 7 miles a day while here too. Even at night, navigating the pitch black of the island for a few miles with merely a head torch. No predators here to worry about, man or beast. Just maybe the occasional car.
On a passing and possibly interesting note, the poet Theodore Roethke came to this island for a writing retreat of his own back in the 50s. It did not end well. He started off well enough, circulating between the pubs here, bending everyone’s ears on poetry, railing against Robert Lowell and laying himself down in the middle of the roads of the island to gaze up at the stars. But then the intensity started to creep up a bit. And the mania took over until he was wandering the island with a knife and threatening the locals.
Poets and their writing retreats…what more can be said?
