Courage

In 1980, abortion was a major topic in Ireland. The public debate was not about legalizing it, or banning it, but on whether the existing ban should be reinforced in the constitution to the point where there would never be a possibility of allowing it, no matter the consequences for women. The rights of women were a non-issue in that country run by old men.

I was a teenager then, attending a Dublin school for boys run by the Christian Brothers, and the ethos of the Catholic Church ran deep in me. I was a fervent anti-abortionist, as were the other thirty or so boys in my class.  Our German teacher was a young woman from the west of Ireland, and one morning she brought a newspaper into the class with an article about abortion and proceeded to debate us. For the next hour she held her ground against us, advocating for a woman's right to choose, in the face of thirty holier-than-thou little pricks. When we couldn't win the argument through logic, we resorted to shouting her down. But though she had tears in her eyes she remained calm, explaining why we were wrong. 

In the Ireland of the 1980s her views would have been considered outrageous, and unacceptable for a teacher. If any of us had told the school principal Brother Kenny about this debate, not only would she have been fired instantly, but she would never have been allowed to teach anywhere in Ireland again.

The thirty of us acted like young fools that day, but at least I can say that none of us reported her. Now, more than forty years later, I know well how wrong I was. Her courage in debating us that morning was remarkable. I've tried many times to find her to say exactly this and to apologise to her, but I've never been able to locate her.

Ireland changed with the repeal of the 8th amendment to the constitution in 2018. In the long run she won the argument, convincingly and courageously.

Coláiste Caoímhín CBS on Parnell Road in Dublin, the Jewish
cemetery on Aughavanagh Road in the upper left background.
(Photo source unknown). The school was demolished in 1995.

2023 Reading list

This should have been my first post of 2023, but here, belatedly, is a list of the books I read in 2023:

Fiction

Companion Piece by Ali Smith

Daydreams of Angels by Heather O’Neill

Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet

Foster by Claire Keegan

Intimacies by Katie Kitamura

Look at me by Jennifer Egan

Nirliit by Juliana Léveillé-Trudel (en Français)

Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood

Tenth of December by George Saunders

The Hour after Happy Hour by Mary O’Donoghue

The Singularities by John Banville

The Writer’s Torch ed. by Boumans, et al

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

Tiohtiá:ke by Michel Jean (en Français)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

Poetry

Ariel – The Restored Edition by Syliva Plath

If Some God Shakes Your House by Jennifer Franklin

Refusing Heaven by Jack Gilbert

Non-fiction

I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jenette McCurdy

Negative Space by Cristín Leach

The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde

It's hard to pick a favourite from this list, but I particularly loved the novels by Paul Harding and Claire Keegan and their completely opposite approaches: the former for the brilliance of his prose in capturing the immediate experience of his characters, and the latter for the deceptive simplicity of her narration and the way it creeps up on you. The non-fiction work by Cristín Leach is wonderfully insightful on the intersection between writing lives and personal lives and I added many quotes from it to my notebook.

See also:

September 2021 - December 2022 reading list

January 2020 - August 2021 reading list

Published!

It doesn't mean much in the world of literature, but it means a lot to me: two of my pieces, Memento Mori and Homing, have been published in the online magazine Sky Island Journal. 

I've been writing fiction and poetry for two and a half years now, and this is motivation for me to keep on writing and to submit more of my pieces for publication. It feels good.

Lake Trousers, innit?

Our chalet is in the township of Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton, close to the river Missisquoi, on the shores of Lake Trousers.

Lake Trousers!

I imagine how it was named by an intrepid English explorer and his lackey.

Explorer: I've discovered and named so many majestic mountains, rivers, and inland seas, I would like to grant you the privilege of naming this delightful little lake.

Lackey: Me, m'Lord?

Explorer: You, sirrah! Behold this vista. What does it bring to mind?

Lackey: Well, I dunno really. Looks a bit like a pair of trousers, innit.

Explorer: A pair of trousers?

Lackey: Yeh. I'll call it Lake Trousers then.

Explorer: Are you quite sure, my good man? It doesn't bring to mind the rich bounties of the green and golden summer of this new world? The sweeping wings of a Loon as it thrills through the clear water in pursuit of its prey? Or perhaps, with a little more imagination, the open jaws of a ravenous wolf racing across the windswept ice in the frozen depths of winter?

Lackey: No

Explorer: (sighing) Alright so, Lake Trousers it shall be. Let posterity forgive me.

Lackey: Yay!

Dehors Novembre

Last Friday Martine and I went to see the show Dehors Novembre about the creation of the celebrated album by Les Colocs (almost twenty-five years ago now) and the too brief life and times of Dédé Fortin (pronounced DayDay and not DeeDee - Martine is a bit frustrated at having to correct my prononciation all the time, and I'm a bit frustrated that she has to).

The show was moving and heart-warming. I had joked beforehand that I'd be the only anglophone in the audience and, sure enough, the couple in the seats beside us were stunned to hear my accented French. (Un anglo icitte? Je ne le crois pas!)

Pretty well everyone in Québec knows the song 'Tassez-vous de d'là' and indeed it was a centre-piece of the show, first just spoken to emphasise the lyrics, and then sung in a boisterous finale. But for me the highlight of the evening was the song 'Le Repondeur' - the lyrics are so poetic, and the actor Hubert Proulx playing the role of Dédé was close to tears as he softly sang them.

J'y ai jamais dit "je t'aime" tout court
J'rajoute toujours quelque chose après
C'comme ça qu'on voit si on est en amour
"Je t'aime beaucoup", ça fait moins vrai

Peut-être qu'y neige, peut-être qu'y pleut
L'hiver est même pas sûr de lui
Yé faite comme moé, yé aussi peureux
Dans l'fond, l'hiver, c'est mon ami

At the end we bought the T-shirts, featuring another line from 'Le Repondeur'.

La vie, c'est court, mais c'est long des p'tits boutes

According to an anecdote told on the night, Vander got that line from a homeless man on St. Laurent boulevard, and whenever Dédé passed the man afterwards he'd always give him twenty bucks for the 'droit d'auteur'.

The original album was written and recorded in a chalet in Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton, the municipality where our own chalet is located. We'll probably try to find the place in the coming months.

Facebook link to Dehors November: au cours de la création de l'album mythique des Colocs

  

 

What a coincidence?

I'd never heard of the poet Jack Gilbert until he came up for study in a writing class a few weeks ago. He was never particularly well known, published only six or seven collections in his lifetime, and died in 2012. But I was struck by the works we discussed, their earthiness and in-your-face honesty, the courage of the writer.

Then, in a mysterious coincidence, one of his poems was released this month in a moving video on a channel I follow.

Well, of course there's no mystery here, I simply wouldn't have noticed the video before the class.

The Adrian Brinkerhoff Foundation releases many wonderful videos on its channel (another example: the Doireann Ní Ghríofa poem I wrote about before) but there are very few subscribers. This venture must be making a big loss given the obvious high cost of the productions. I wonder what's behind it?

Talk to the hand

'Is that an Android or an iPhone?'

He was scruffy, short and gap-toothed, walking toward me across the pedestrian crossing, ignoring the forbidding red hand above me. I was waiting to cross, idly looking at my phone.

'Doesn't matter anyway,' he continued without waiting for a reply. 'They're all the same.' He stopped in front of me, standing on the road as the traffic roared past less than a meter behind him.

'Right,' I managed to say, displaying all the fluency I'd developed in two years of creative writing classes.

'What really matters is the number,' he said.

'Oh?'

'Do you know how to use your camera,' he asked.

'Eh…'

'Come on, are you telling me you don't know how to use your camera?'

'Oh, sure I do, yes.'

'Well take a photo of this.'

He held up his phone. There was a scrap of paper taped to its back with a phone number on it, written in black marker in a shaky hand. 'This is the number you want,' he said with a note of pride.

I felt many pairs of eyes on my back, the crowd of pedestrians behind me waiting for my response. I hesitated. The red hand became a white man and we all spilled on to the road in a rush to cross, flowing around the man as a stream does around a rock, overwhelming it. I heard him sigh loudly then saw him no more.

I should have taken his number. 

RIP Sinéad

I wasn't surprised to hear of Sinéad O'Connor's death - she'd seemed so fragile in recent years - but I was shocked. Almost a week later I still have a feeling of great loss.

For many Irish people of her generation, my generation, she wasn't just a brilliant songwriter and singer. She was one of the first to speak and sing the truth about our country: the abusive Catholic chuch and the patriarchy it enabled, the abandonment of children, the lamentable state of mental health services. She sang from anger and hurt, and out of illness, but she sang so that things might change, and she was one of the catalysts behind the wave of changes for the better that have swept across Ireland these past twenty years.

And how she sang. 

The hymn 'Make me a channel of your peace' is known by every Catholic raised in Ireland. But when Sinéad sang it, the prayer of St. Francis, it was like hearing it for the first time. You realised that you'd been saying these lines without thinking about them, whereas she meant every single word. And she wanted us to mean them too.

She sang it on the Late Late Show after having a makeover for charity (in support of refugees from the former Yugoslavia). It was like being visited by an angel.

 

I never had a conversation with her, though I met her a few times. Outside Dún Laoghaire music school, in the passport line at Dublin airport, and most memorably at a birthday party for one of my sons in the Lambert Puppet Theatre.

I've been playing her music in the kitchen these past days and my sons all light up when they hear 'No Man's Woman', a song we used to listen to on the school run. It's how I'd like to remember her: smart and sassy, the woman who was usually right and always right on, and who made a real difference.

Codladh sámh Sinéad.

P.S. This tribute to Sinéad in The Irish Times by Úna Mullally is perfect. And Fintan O'Toole nails it when he writes that her honesty was 'a curse for her but a blessing for us'.

P.P.S. I think Sinéad would have appreciated the candour of this article by Hannah Jane Parkinson in The Guardian: Sinéad O’Connor showed mental illness as it truly is.

The Red Maple at 1

A few weeks after we bought the chalet Martine won a red maple sapling in a 10K run in Magog. We planted it carefully in a sunlit clearing in the front of the chalet, watered it, put stones and a protective cage around it, and spent the rest of 2022 watching it do absolutely nothing. The snow covered it, and by the time winter finally departed, I thought it was dead. 

But now, suddenly, leaves!

We've had a wonderful first year in Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton and our red maple sapling has made it to its first birthday.

My French is pretty good, but...

Sometimes the order of words in French just wrecks my head. 

After chatting about it with Martine I now understand why it's 'ne me le' and not 'ne le me', but getting this right at conversation speed is still beyond me. Harder even than the subjunctive case!

 Learning a language is a project for life.