Envisioning our dream...

For the past month I have been taking action to make my dreams come true - I am going Home - I am moving to Ireland. As Tony, my real estate agent in Leitrim said to me over the phone: "Just come home...come home to Ireland and we'll sort it out."

One has to have faith - Big Faith at a time such as this. Here I am 58, no savings account, no property to sell, no cushy pension. But here is what I do have:

1. Confidence that I have so much goodness to offer Ireland that She will find a way for me to live and to contribute.
2. Confidence in myself because I know dreams don't happen without lots of action and I am an action-oriented person.
3. Friends in Ireland to help me - to point me in the direction I need to go to get my questions answered.

It's all a great and glorious adventure! I refuse to die with regrets!

[Photo of Beanna Bo (Benbo) Mountain, Co. Leitrim - thank you, Nuala McNulty!]

"Wolf Solent" by John Cowper Powys

"Wolf Solent" by John Cowper Powys reminds me why I started my academic life as an English major. I read my first Powys novel in the mid -1970's when I discovered his fascinating novel based upon Welsh hero Owen Glendower. In those years I was hungry for anything about Wales - land of my Grandmother - but there was little to be found. And now, 30-odd years later I discovered a worn copy of "Wolf Solent" in a discard bin.

It's language and imagery. It's a world that is no more. It's Nature nearly eclipsing an array of fascinating characters whose seemingly simple outward world hides the darkest primordial stirrings of Lenty Pond.

Let me share a scene with Wolf and his illicit lover Christie:

"The weight of the immense vaporous summer darkness covered them there like a waveless ocean. They floated there upon a cool, yielding darkness that had neither substance nor shape, a darkness full of a faint fragrance that was the sweetness neither of clover nor of poppies nor of corn nor of grass, but was rather the breath of the great terrrestrial orb itself, a dark interior, outflowing sweetness between vast-rocking waves of air, where firmament bent down to firmament, and space rose up to meet space."

Time Out

Sometimes the Universe forces you to slow down and sometimes that is exactly what you need. Case in point: instead of the whirlwind research 2-days away I had planned I sat in a hospital room with my friend while tests were done and she desperately tried for a few moments of rest. On the way to the hospital I grabbed a book my mother had just read and enjoyed - it haunted her, I could tell. I do not remember the last time I had hours to do nothing but read, drink tea, and knit the occasional row on a project that may never end. The sun came in and warmed my back where I sat in the window seat of her room. I even napped a few times - ah bliss!
My friend is home and safe and the book is completed. This is a great novel - a truly haunting novel. All is well.