by Alice Taylor
Because rearranging the books would be a job of marathon proportions requiring the right frame of mind, I put the sorting and shelving on the long finger again. Perhaps the motivating factor finally was the annoying fact that if I wanted to look something up or read a favourite poem, the books were all buried in boxes. It was simply no place to have books, especially books that had been friends for years. I was determined that at last there had to be a sorting job done and proper law and order introduced. Sometimes if you are aiming for perfection, the result is that you do nothing: you set the bar too high and the challenge deters you.
At last, one fine day, I got a rush of blood to the head. All of a sudden I had the mind on me to do it. The first requirement, as in building a house, was location; the second requirement was shelves, and lots of them, and the final requirement was a man to put up the shelves. In the course of the house overhaul, an art studio had come into being at one end of an upstairs corridor, and in it was a high blank wall. Ideal for bookshelves, I decided.
Next plan: introduce a son who is handy with a hammer to the said wall. Was it sound? he wondered. Was it concrete or stone? Would it hold brackets? Would the brackets hold the weight of the books? Could you drill it deep enough? Was it dry? The questions were endless. Men see problem! Women see solution! Eventually a meeting of minds came about due to the fact that I kept my mouth glued shut when I really felt like opening it and braying like a donkey. Now, at times silence is golden. This was one of those times.
My handyman son was on night shift at work so he gave me long and detailed instructions on what to order. A slight problem arose: the world had moved on to centimetres and metres, but Alice was still in feet and inches. But with the help of a tolerant young shop assistant, who must have a confused granny at home, I concluded, we got it all figured out. The plan was wide shelves at the bottom to carry the heavyweights so that if a sudden collapse did occur I would not be rendered lifeless beneath them, and the higher we went the slimmer the volumes would get.
Dozens of shelves of varying width and length, with a variety of brackets, accompanied by long, steel strips into which they would lock, were delivered. All ready for action. Gone are the days when my father would simply arrive home from the creamery with his pockets full of screws and nails and long timber boards swaying across the creamery cart to be borne upstairs by that impatient carpenter, girded with a hammer, saw, ruler – and a short fuse. The onerous job would then begin of creating holes in stubborn old stone walls that had a mind of their own on how deeply they would allow penetration. Sometimes he had to resort to driving solid planks of wood into these cavernous walls with the butt end of a hatchet to provide shelf supports. As this work progressed, a deep well of annoyance began to open up in the carpenter. This shot into eruption in spasmodic outbursts of unimaginable language capable of igniting the surrounding timber work. Every saint in heaven was called on, and not in the most flattering of appeals, and even God himself was not beyond mention. The unfortunate board that was a few inches short when cut with a bow saw became ‘a whore’ of indescribable lineage. While all this was in progress, his cap slid to the back of his head, with beads of perspiration gathering on his forehead, and his tongue swept across his mouth like a demented windscreen wiper. His daughters danced around him, anticipating his every need. Fast reaction was the name of the game, otherwise you could be the target of a flying ruler.
In total contrast, his grandson, who is called after him, requested my immediate departure from the room so that he could work in silence and avoid the views of his opinionated mother. When I chanced a silent peep, my gaze was met by long, laminated, steel strips running up the wall from floor to ceiling. Penetrative drills and electric screwdrivers were whirring in action – a far cry from the butt end of a hatchet and the timber planks of his grandfather. If there was a slight hitch in proceedings, all I would hear was the repetition of the one word which now seems to be the only word in our modern world that serves as release of frustration. No colourful stream of heavenly bodies or tirades of unseemly whores were called on board.
Eventually all was accomplished, and I had an array of shelves fit for the National Library. There were no librarians or archivists, however, to effect a proper layout or indexing system. Just me and boxes of books. And boxes of books are heavy beyond belief so further male muscle had to be coaxed and blackmailed into dragging them from all over the house to their final resting place on this floor.
Then began the long sort. It went on for weeks because big decisions had to be made about what to keep and what to let go to the charity shops. This led to hours of browsing and the discovery of old letters and photographs once used as bookmarks. And hours spent sitting on the floor led to the unpleasant discovery that my ability for fast rising was seriously impaired. I regretted my abandonment of yoga. Then I wised up and introduced into the scene a comfortable old rocking chair, which had the added bonus of tilting forward to assist upward mobility. This chair had been rescued from a junk shop and lovingly restored, and now paid back in full for the investment.
Eventually I got to the point where the books were ready for shelving. The plan was to introduce some sort of system which would eliminate hours of searching to find what you were looking for. This led to endless hours of placing and then increasing the allowed space when a lost companion of those already shelved appeared. Gradually some sort of organisation of categories began to emerge. I could not say that I succeeded one hundred percent in creating the perfect system, but at least now there is some law and order to the entire collection and you might find what you were looking for in minutes rather than hours.
When the floor was cleared and all the shelves full, the books smiled down at me, and my sense of satisfaction was immense. I think that the late owners were smiling too. Our books are so much part of who we are, and now I sometimes sit on the rocking chair with the sun streaming in the south-facing window, overlooking Dromkeen Wood, and take down one of the books and enjoy a leisurely browse. I am very grateful to the enlightened book-lovers with whom I have shared this house.
Chapter 14
The Impossible Dream
‘We’ll need to be in Beara before dark on Friday evening,’ I told my daughter. ‘But why?’ she asked in an amused tone of voice. ‘Don’t you know that I have lights on my car?’ ‘Lights or no lights,’ I told her firmly, ‘that road from Castletownbere to Allihies is lofty terrain, not to mention when we leave the main road to manoeuvre down the steep incline to the centre. And if there’s black ice, which is quite possible at this time of year, we could go waltzing down that slippery slope to eternity. I have no ambition to end my days as fish food in Bantry Bay.’ ‘Not to worry,’ she told me airily, ‘we’ll be there before dark.’
This trip to the Dzogchen Beara centre had been on my bucket list for a long time. I’ve always been fascinated by the lifestyle of the Poor Clare contemplative nuns and curious to know what enabled them to survive that existence of silence and continuous prayer. Then, on visiting Skellig Michael, a tiny remote rocky island off the Kerry coast, the thought of the monks surviving out there in stone beehive huts, enduring all kinds of weather in that beautiful but barren place, brought the same thought to mind. How did people survive in these places? What was the secret? The only common denominator that I could discern between the enclosed order of the Poor Clare nuns and the Skellig monks was meditation. Could that possibly be the key?
But ordinary living distracted me from my quest for more insight and information, and I got bogged down with rearing children and running a business. It was many years later before I found my way back to this voyage of discovery. Here in our parish of Innishannon, the Rosminian order has a monastery where they care for adults with special needs, and they also have another house in Glencomeragh, County Waterford, which is in a beautiful valley at the foot of Slieve na mBan. When I was young, one of my father’s favourite songs was ‘Slieve na mBan’, and, because he did not have a musical ear, he c
hanted rather than sang it, but his chant enhanced rather than diminished the beauty of the melody. So when a friend invited me to join her for a contemplative weekend at the foot of Slieve na mBan, I jumped at the chance to get away from balance sheets that refused to balance and teenagers jumping with uncontrollable hormones. A weekend in a silent valley away from it all seemed like a dream come true.
The weekend was guided by an inspirational young Jesuit who obviously savoured the peace of meditation. He told us that the mind was like a tree full of jumping monkeys and the only way to quieten them was to quieten ourselves – not scream louder than the monkeys! That meditation weekend washed out my cluttered mind and undid the knots along the tops of my shoulders, and I went home viewing the world through calmer eyes. Unfortunately, the new-found tranquillity did not last. I endeavoured to keep up the daily meditation practice, knowing that it was the key to serenity, but soon the demands of everyday living pushed the meditation time aside, and it became a hit-and-miss event. I was to discover that meditation, though simple, is not easy. There must be an element in us humans that even though we know that something is good for us we still allow it to be pushed aside by more demanding events.
My next encounter with the practice was when a calm, serene nun of the order of St Thérèse of the Child Jesus came to work with the Rosminians in our parish, and she was into meditation. She invited some of us to join her, and she suggested a weekly group meeting. In my ignorance, I thought that this did not make sense as I had considered meditation to be something that you did on your own. How wrong you can be! The weekly group meeting keeps you in touch and even if more demanding activities shove the daily meditation sideways, at least once a week you came back to your centre, a bit like a slimming and exercise meeting. It brought me back on track.
A few years later, on a beautiful June day, two friends invited me to travel over the Beara Peninsula. As we climbed the high mountainy road from Castletownbere to Allihies, we saw a blue sign saying Dzogchen Beara. It pointed across the clifftop, and we turned in that direction. We seemed to be going over the edge of the world. Soon, gorgeous billowing banners fluttering along the hedgerows like Swiss Guards led us down the steep side of the mountain. We arrived onto a ledge, and there, perched on the very tip of the precipice, was what looked like a tiny oratory clinging to the side of the rocks. To reach it, we climbed up wooden steps and into an open porch. A scattered collection of shoes conveyed the message of bare feet, so we removed our shoes. There was about the whole place a sense of quietness and peace, so without consciously thinking about it we fell silent.
Nothing could prepare you for the breathtaking experience of entering that room. The sea and the sun simply swam in over you. There was nothing between you and the sea but glass, and you were dazzled by daylight. The few people in the room were either sitting motionless or kneeling on the floor. We quietly joined them. Finally we had to drag ourselves away to continue our journey. I knew that one day I would come back to this amazing place in the mountains.
And now I was on my way, and I had not instigated the journey. To my surprise, it was my daughter, who works in the IT business in the city, who suggested coming here. ‘How did you hear of this place?’ I enquired. ‘Two of the lads at work were there last year and loved it,’ she told me. I was pretty amazed that in that high-tech company of sharp-brained young blades there were individuals who had discovered and wanted to investigate this world of calmness and contemplation. And when we arrived there, I was further surprised to find that many of the almost forty participants were young males.
Dusk was coming down over the Beara Peninsula as we crawled carefully down the steep, narrow incline into the Dzogchen Centre. ‘We are not in Kansas anymore, Toto,’ my daughter quipped. I kept my fingers crossed in case an approaching car appeared as there was no way two cars could get by on this little road.
After a light supper, we gathered in the Shrine Room. I was back in the room of dazzling daylight, only now the dark sea sighed all around the glass walls. Tall, softly spoken Andrew and a gentle-faced woman named Susan were the facilitators. That session was the format for all the others that followed over the weekend. Andrew and Susan took turns at guiding us into stillness and introduced us to the different steps of meditation. Then they turned on a central screen, and a Buddhist monk revealed simple truths of the paths to inner serenity. Now and then we gathered in small groups for discussion, and afterwards were again stilled into restful meditation. It was a calming, settling experience.
In between sessions, my daughter and I climbed the steep path to our accommodation in the Healing Centre. During the day the sea shimmered all around us, and late at night the trees and bushes glistened with frost and a huge moon looked at itself in the navy-blue sea. Each morning we woke to the arrival of the sun over the horizon when it poured streams of rainbow colours across the bay. It is a mesmeric landscape.
Everything, including eating, took place in the Shrine Room, where we collected our vegetarian food in trays off a corner table and sat around the floor or on chairs quietly chatting or silently looking out to sea. After one session, I found myself sitting beside an athletic young man, who, as soon as we began to talk, I knew was American, and he told me that he had come especially for this retreat and that it was his first visit to Ireland. ‘I had heard Ireland was beautiful,’ he told me in awe, ‘but this’ – he waved his hand out towards the mountains and sea – ‘is truly amazing.’ I resisted the temptation to tell him that this was as good as it got!
Before leaving after lunch on Sunday, I picked up a book, Dazzled by Daylight, written in 2014 by Peter Cornish, who, in 1972, had what seemed like an impossible dream. He and his young wife had come across from England on the Innisfallen boat and taken the road into West Cork. They were dazzled by the beauty of the landscape. Their dream was to set up this centre, and, despite impossible odds, they kept going until it became a reality. They spent many nights in a doorless and windowless cottage when water flowed down the mountain in the back door and out the front; they struggled for years against the elements and the dangers of building on these dizzying heights above the sea. Finally, after years of struggling against the odds, the dream was realised. The Dzogchen Beara centre was created on tip of the Beara Peninsula in the depths of West Cork and now awaits all comers. It is for people of all religions and none. It is a beacon of light erected by a young couple who had what seemed like an impossible dream.
Chapter 15
Friendship
When we have a job to be done in the village that demands heavy machinery, my farmer friend and neighbour, Paddy, who can turn a tractor in very tight corners, always comes to the rescue. Over the years, he sometimes mentioned a friend of his called Donal, who lived in Dublin, and I assumed Donal to be around Paddy’s age. Then, a few years ago, we were restoring our church and we had a craft fair to raise funds, and Donal came to help, bringing his handcrafted bowls and lamps, and I was surprised to discover that Donal was about twenty years older than Paddy and in a wheelchair. I was a bit intrigued by this and inquired as to how they had become friends.
It had all begun years earlier, when Paddy’s father, then in his forties, was in hospital recovering from back surgery. Sharing the ward was a young man in his twenties, suffering from the after-effects of polio. The decades of age difference between the two men was bridged by the common bond of pain and suffering. A deep friendship grew between Paddy’s father, a middle-aged farmer, and the younger Donal, a shipwright from a fishing village in the depths of West Cork. Confined to hospital for many months, they forged a deep understanding of each other’s personality, and, during the tedious pain-filled nights, when neither could sleep, they kept each other sane.
Eventually, both men were sufficiently recovered to be discharged, and, though intending to keep in contact, they soon got caught up in their own lives and lost touch completely. Life was just too busy. During the following years, Paddy often heard his father and mother talk about
Donal, and he became familiar with the name. Over the years, he came to realise that this special friend of his father’s, whom he had never known, would never be forgotten by his parents, who would be forever grateful to this kind young man who had helped them through a tough patch of their lives.
Meanwhile, Donal left home and went to work in Dublin, where he married and raised a family, occasionally coming back home to visit his West Cork roots. Sometimes, when travelling through Innishannon, he thought of his old friend and wondered how he was getting on. But with a carful of children and not being sure of the correct address, he never quite got around to looking up his friend. Life was just too busy. Time went by, and then fate stepped in and played a hand. A niece of Donal’s wife was in college with a girl from Innishannon, and one weekend while she was staying with her friend in Innishannon there was a wake at a neighbour’s house. Back in Dublin, she happened to mention the wake to her mother, who in turn mentioned it to Donal. This triggered off memories in Donal. After a few pertinent questions he figured out that the man who had died could be his old friend. A sense of regret for the many years without being in touch came over Donal. He decided that the next time he was passing through the village he would try and make contact. His friend might be gone, but Donal felt the need to meet his family, to see his home place and remember him. Death can sometimes propel us into taking steps that might have been at the back of our minds for a long time. He realised that his friend’s children would now be grown men with the same age gap between him and them as had been between himself and their father when they first met in hospital.
Some months later, when he was driving through Innishannon, Donal stopped and made a few enquiries. He found himself on the road to the farm. When he drove into the yard, there was a man leading a horse towards him. Doing mental arithmetic on the years, Donal concluded that this could be the youngest of the family – who had probably never even heard of him. This man would wonder what had brought him. Still, Donal wound down the window and asked hesitantly, ‘Did your father die recently?’ That’s right,’ Paddy answered, puzzled. ‘I knew him many years ago when he was your age,’ Donal told him. ‘But you’ve probably never heard of me. My name is Donal Brown.’
