Galway is where ambition goes to die. This is what my friend Susan told me. She was right, and so I left it behind – the watery blast of winter (like living on the bow of a ship), the languid seaside summer. My last months in Galway were strange at best. Blame it on the girls, or better yet blame it on myself. It was death by Pablo Neruda. On an April night, I kissed her softly in the flickering darkness of O’Connor’s Pub while the band played “I want you” by Dylan - the best (or worst) sort of cliché. In the end I was ignoble, limping around on a broken foot. But most ends are ignoble after all...*
Now I’m sitting in the cool green shade of a powerful tree, creeping tendrils of root encircling me. The city beyond reverberates in the oppressive heat. Clouds of ochre dust billow into the hazy sky. Blackbird songs and car horns grab my ears insistently. I’m in Calcutta – the city of joy.
My journey began on an ordinary morning, the sun shimmering across the wind-rippled waters of Galway Bay. I fled Salthill that day, leaving behind the geography of memory, in search of the unfamiliar.
I tumbled through time and place – past a “cowboy” playing slide guitar and stomping his foot on the worn bricks of Grafton Street, then Arabs drifting in their flowing white robes through the sun-bleached landscape of Dubai. I awoke shrouded in the moist, fragrant air of Bengal. My escape from the interminable terminals was nothing less than an emancipation! LHR/YXE/DUB - the sterile, consumerist temples where we perform our most sacred rites: reunification with family, last kisses, and, of course, duty free shopping. Such places are a powerful concoction of the mundane and the sublime.
My own path to India is also a merging of the mundane and the sublime. My purpose falls on the mundane side of the ledger but I hope to discover fragments of the sublime along the way. I’m here doing the first round of my fieldwork for my PhD in Human Rights. For those of you who don’t know, I’m researching the causes of genocide and, as part of this research, I’m examining cases of collective violence and interviewing genocide perpetrators. I’m going to be living in India for five months, during which time I’ll also be travelling to Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Genocide is a weird subject to specialise in. I’m used to people looking at me askance when I tell them, but what’s new is that I’m getting a reputation as the “genocide guy”. Now people feel the compunction to gesture towards me when they use the g word. I never exactly know what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I tried winking, but decided that it’s quite inappropriate to wink in response to mass killing; ditto for the grin and thumbs up. My new approach is to put on my gravely serious face and to slowly shake my head from side to side. Now I’m just known as “that sad bastard”- a definite improvement.
Back to India (where things seem to be getting worse)... Every minute the sun is hotter and hotter. I feel as though I might spontaneously combust. What a way to go! Not in the slightest bit ignoble! It’s the monsoon season so the heat is punctuated by violent bursts of rainfall. The rain comes as a glorious relief but the aftermath is steam sucked off the dirty streets, crawling up my body, and sliding back down as sweat. Endless cycles of condensation and perspiration – where oh where is the dry prairie sky of Saskatchewan?
I have put thousands of lonely miles between myself and my home. Craving the strange disease, the pursuit is over, the quarry is quarried. Now what?
* Postscript
Six days before my disappearance, I found my redemption on an island braced by the cold North Atlantic winds. There we sat amidst the stirring wildflowers and supple, viridescent grasses. The truth is I probably still haven’t left that place. As the heart softens time makes small concessions. The Zen master Dogen put it best when he wrote (on his deathbed):
Now I’m sitting in the cool green shade of a powerful tree, creeping tendrils of root encircling me. The city beyond reverberates in the oppressive heat. Clouds of ochre dust billow into the hazy sky. Blackbird songs and car horns grab my ears insistently. I’m in Calcutta – the city of joy.
My journey began on an ordinary morning, the sun shimmering across the wind-rippled waters of Galway Bay. I fled Salthill that day, leaving behind the geography of memory, in search of the unfamiliar.
I tumbled through time and place – past a “cowboy” playing slide guitar and stomping his foot on the worn bricks of Grafton Street, then Arabs drifting in their flowing white robes through the sun-bleached landscape of Dubai. I awoke shrouded in the moist, fragrant air of Bengal. My escape from the interminable terminals was nothing less than an emancipation! LHR/YXE/DUB - the sterile, consumerist temples where we perform our most sacred rites: reunification with family, last kisses, and, of course, duty free shopping. Such places are a powerful concoction of the mundane and the sublime.
My own path to India is also a merging of the mundane and the sublime. My purpose falls on the mundane side of the ledger but I hope to discover fragments of the sublime along the way. I’m here doing the first round of my fieldwork for my PhD in Human Rights. For those of you who don’t know, I’m researching the causes of genocide and, as part of this research, I’m examining cases of collective violence and interviewing genocide perpetrators. I’m going to be living in India for five months, during which time I’ll also be travelling to Bangladesh and Cambodia.
Genocide is a weird subject to specialise in. I’m used to people looking at me askance when I tell them, but what’s new is that I’m getting a reputation as the “genocide guy”. Now people feel the compunction to gesture towards me when they use the g word. I never exactly know what I’m supposed to do in this situation. I tried winking, but decided that it’s quite inappropriate to wink in response to mass killing; ditto for the grin and thumbs up. My new approach is to put on my gravely serious face and to slowly shake my head from side to side. Now I’m just known as “that sad bastard”- a definite improvement.
Back to India (where things seem to be getting worse)... Every minute the sun is hotter and hotter. I feel as though I might spontaneously combust. What a way to go! Not in the slightest bit ignoble! It’s the monsoon season so the heat is punctuated by violent bursts of rainfall. The rain comes as a glorious relief but the aftermath is steam sucked off the dirty streets, crawling up my body, and sliding back down as sweat. Endless cycles of condensation and perspiration – where oh where is the dry prairie sky of Saskatchewan?
I have put thousands of lonely miles between myself and my home. Craving the strange disease, the pursuit is over, the quarry is quarried. Now what?
* Postscript
Six days before my disappearance, I found my redemption on an island braced by the cold North Atlantic winds. There we sat amidst the stirring wildflowers and supple, viridescent grasses. The truth is I probably still haven’t left that place. As the heart softens time makes small concessions. The Zen master Dogen put it best when he wrote (on his deathbed):
Though I may see it again,
How can I sleep with the moon this evening?
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