Claire Fullerton's Blog: A Writing Life, page 9
August 19, 2016
The First Time She Drowned Book Review
Claire Fullerton's Reviews > The First Time She Drowned
The First Time She Drowned
by Kerry Kletter (Goodreads Author)
Claire Fullerton's review
Jul 18, 2016 · edit
it was amazing
Read from July 14 to 17, 2016
The First Time She Drowned is crowned with one of the better book titles I’ve come across in recent memory. It opens with a poetically metered prologue that sets the book’s searching tone, and progressively leads the reader through a story that could have been maudlin in the hands of a lesser writer. Author Kerry Kletter deftly gives voice to eighteen year old narrator Cassie O’Malley, in language both startlingly honest and languidly circumspect. This is a modern day, relevant story of the damage exacted in dysfunctional families, where there is so much hidden agenda that the only way to the light is to unearth the source. In layered chapters of past and present, Cassie O’Malley is the bearer of the cross in a family dynamic that victimizes her, lands her against her will in a mental hospital then springs her upon her acceptance to college, where she immediately discovers she is ill prepared to meet its predictable challenges: classes, new friends, and the simple logistics of just fitting in. At the core of this story is a mother-daughter dynamic built on the shaky ground of mistrust. Cassie carries
scars like an emotional latch-key kid, wrought from the hands of a mother so self-serving and narcissistic; she thinks the emotional and
physical neglect is her own fault. It is a long road to recovery in this well-crafted tale of a search for truth, and Kletter gives us a protagonist
we desperately want to see triumph. We understand Cassie’s interior life because the author leaves nothing unattended. Kletter dives down to the bone marrow of that which shapes an inchoate psyche and leaves an imprint, then leads the way through to an ending that shines with emotional intelligence. I read this gripping book as close to non-stop as I’ve ever read anything. It is a riveting read written with such maturity, I find it hard to grasp that it is Kletter’s debut novel. Read this book, tell your friends, and stand in line with me for Kerry Kletter’s next book!
The First Time She Drowned
by Kerry Kletter (Goodreads Author)
Claire Fullerton's review
Jul 18, 2016 · edit
it was amazing
Read from July 14 to 17, 2016
The First Time She Drowned is crowned with one of the better book titles I’ve come across in recent memory. It opens with a poetically metered prologue that sets the book’s searching tone, and progressively leads the reader through a story that could have been maudlin in the hands of a lesser writer. Author Kerry Kletter deftly gives voice to eighteen year old narrator Cassie O’Malley, in language both startlingly honest and languidly circumspect. This is a modern day, relevant story of the damage exacted in dysfunctional families, where there is so much hidden agenda that the only way to the light is to unearth the source. In layered chapters of past and present, Cassie O’Malley is the bearer of the cross in a family dynamic that victimizes her, lands her against her will in a mental hospital then springs her upon her acceptance to college, where she immediately discovers she is ill prepared to meet its predictable challenges: classes, new friends, and the simple logistics of just fitting in. At the core of this story is a mother-daughter dynamic built on the shaky ground of mistrust. Cassie carries
scars like an emotional latch-key kid, wrought from the hands of a mother so self-serving and narcissistic; she thinks the emotional and
physical neglect is her own fault. It is a long road to recovery in this well-crafted tale of a search for truth, and Kletter gives us a protagonist
we desperately want to see triumph. We understand Cassie’s interior life because the author leaves nothing unattended. Kletter dives down to the bone marrow of that which shapes an inchoate psyche and leaves an imprint, then leads the way through to an ending that shines with emotional intelligence. I read this gripping book as close to non-stop as I’ve ever read anything. It is a riveting read written with such maturity, I find it hard to grasp that it is Kletter’s debut novel. Read this book, tell your friends, and stand in line with me for Kerry Kletter’s next book!
May 15, 2016
An Irish Lagnaippe
In Louisiana, they use the phonetically pleasing word lagniappe to denote a little something extra. Typically, a lagniappe is a small gift given with a purchase to a customer, by way of compliment or for good measure as a way of saying thank you. I’ve been so enamored with this word that it’s found its way into my psyche and influenced my behavior, where it prompts me to go the extra mile, when in deep gratitude. And deep gratitude I have for those generous souls who have posted reviews, written me, and recommended my second novel, Dancing to an Irish Reel. Some have done as I suspected; they’ve written me to ask how much of the book is true, for I made no secret in sharing that I actually lived on the western coast of Ireland, where the book is set, and most readers know that writers pull from their own life to one degree or another.
I’m a fan of the first person essay. I consider it the art of brevity whose aspiration is to create a whole world around a case in point. I could wax loquacious on how the pursuit thrills me, how the challenge ignites the deep-seated, smoldering embers of why I write in the first place, which is to say I experience life as a witness and write to decipher its nuances in a manner that seeks to compare notes.
Sometimes life itself will hand you a lagniappe when you’re not looking. This was the case for me when I came across the Irish on-line community, The Wild Geese. There lies a compatible fraternity of like-minded souls, who can never get enough of their favorite subject, which is themselves. Proudly, I say, I am one of them; I am one of the island folk by lineage, and I flew into formation the second I found the flock. I brought much of who I am to this union: a writer, a shanachie, a child of Eire. I started writing the stories behind the stories that were my inspiration in the crafting of Dancing to an Irish Reel and as time stretched on, I realized I’d created my own lagniappe to give to those who read my book.
On my website http://www.clairefullerton.com/, there are three tabs on the homepage titled “Dancing Companion,” where a collection of my first person Irish essays can be found along with attended photographs.
Please accept them as my lagniappe!
I’m a fan of the first person essay. I consider it the art of brevity whose aspiration is to create a whole world around a case in point. I could wax loquacious on how the pursuit thrills me, how the challenge ignites the deep-seated, smoldering embers of why I write in the first place, which is to say I experience life as a witness and write to decipher its nuances in a manner that seeks to compare notes.
Sometimes life itself will hand you a lagniappe when you’re not looking. This was the case for me when I came across the Irish on-line community, The Wild Geese. There lies a compatible fraternity of like-minded souls, who can never get enough of their favorite subject, which is themselves. Proudly, I say, I am one of them; I am one of the island folk by lineage, and I flew into formation the second I found the flock. I brought much of who I am to this union: a writer, a shanachie, a child of Eire. I started writing the stories behind the stories that were my inspiration in the crafting of Dancing to an Irish Reel and as time stretched on, I realized I’d created my own lagniappe to give to those who read my book.
On my website http://www.clairefullerton.com/, there are three tabs on the homepage titled “Dancing Companion,” where a collection of my first person Irish essays can be found along with attended photographs.
Please accept them as my lagniappe!
April 4, 2016
Altan: Projecting Irish Bonhomie to the World
Carmel, California:
Before I get to the acclaimed Irish traditional musicians from Donegal who comprise the band, Altan, I’m going to editorialize to put the show I saw the other night into context. When I lived on the western coast of Ireland, it fascinated me to realize that in the local pubs, Irish traditional music was just something going on in the background, not intended to be a focal point. There’s a come as you are feel to the pubs on the western coast of Ireland, as if a neighbor down the road had a reputation for always having an open door, should you be looking for a place to go when the urge hit to ramble. In the dim pubs on the western coast of Ireland, there’s a laid-back mixture of ready camaraderie and space to unwind. Amber spirits flow freely and nobody’s watching in these gauzy safe havens where anything goes. Typically there’s burning turf somewhere in the room, and if someone shows up with an instrument, so much the better; it’s implied there’s a designated area for musicians tucked in the corner, away from the bar. A musician can play to their heart’s content, and nobody will think anything of it; odds are on any given night a few of their ilk came before, and the only common thread I could ever detect is that the musicians manifest well into the night. It was my impression Irish traditional musicians show up without much of a plan. They take their sweet time settling into the corner, for the Irish are a chatty, unhurried lot, collectively unselfconscious and accommodating, so when it comes to the sessiuns, which erupt like spontaneous combustion from the corner, the locals simply scoot over granting berth. Which isn’t to imply Irish traditional musicians are taken for granted by their compatriots, it’s more like the Irish expect the presence of these seraphic spell-weavers, these tribal emblems that represent Irish heritage by channeling its ancestral soundtrack as if it were de rigueur. Many was the night I stood spell-bound by the quality of homegrown musicians, only to realize I was one of few paying attention. So to see the Irish ensemble, Altan, on stage in Carmel, California last week was to see what goes on customarily in an Irish pub under the glare of an unusual light.
I’ll now unapologetically generalize by saying when it comes to entertainment, Americans are used to instant gratification: an immediate wow factor, bright and showy and unambiguous because we’re an impatient lot that expects our entertainment up front and center. Knowing, as I did, that the nuances of Irish traditional music sneak up on a person with deceptive subtlety, I couldn’t help but wonder, as I sat in the audience waiting for Altan to take the stage, if the pending performance could possibly be translated into Americanese.
The five members of Altan strolled on stage without fanfare, beneath hazy gray lights in their low-key attire and simply picked up their instruments. There were no roaming lights, no flashing videos, no choreographed dancers, and it wasn’t until after the first tune that lead singer and co-founder, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, finally whispered, “Hiya, we’re happy to be in Carmel.” I had the impression the group could have been anywhere and been comfortable, but of course I knew what many in the audience did not: the five members of Altan had brought their Irishness with them, and this solitary credential gave them card carrying license to fit into any corner of the universe, whether the audience knew it or not. There seemed no appointed front person for Altan; the players took turns making introductions, telling stories, interrupting each other, making asides, and generally taking the mickey out of each other in that free-wheeling way the Irish often do when they’re trying to say they love each other. They brought the back corner of a Donegal pub to two, forty five minute sets, which ebbed and flowed and weaved and dodged through reels, airs and jigs, blending one into the other. In between the sets, fiddler Ciaran Tourish casually announced the intermission by confessing the band always took a wee break. “Here’s what happens,” he began. “We take a break, which means it’s fair play for you to take a break, and what’d really be great is if we could all do it at the same time.” Nobody laughed harder than me at this indirect, underhanded witticism, so flawlessly spun in that classically Irish, self-effacing way.
It seemed to me that after the intermission, the audience at Carmel’s Sunset Center had become acclimated to the tenor and rhythm of Altan’s show, for the air had been relieved of expectancy and a more settled in aura embraced the theater as the players returned to the stage. But I’ve always known the presence of anyone Irish tends to do this to an environment, which is the primary reason why I was so fascinated by the impact of Altan as a group on stage. It was more to me than their foot-tapping, music as it navigated the tides of Irish expression through movements that shifted between exhilarating declarations and sonorous, elegiac laments. There was something so ruffled and homespun about the players; something so unselfconsciously salt of the earth, so loose in the saddle, so easy in the skin. I’ve always said when it comes to the Irish, they’re happy anywhere. They have a salient way of greeting humanity in a manner that lets you know they don’t take themselves too seriously, and the implied suggestion is neither should you. I think Irish traditional music is an expression of Irish character: it’s so complex as to be simple, so simple as to be complex, and somewhere within the crucible of Altan’s hour and a half show in Carmel, California, the members of the band brought more to the stage than their traditional music; they showed the audience what it means to be born of Ireland, in their proud, confident, devil-may-care way of being in the world that was absolutely infectious.
After Altan’s encore, as the audience flowed out into the lobby, there was an all-encompassing, vibratory current of joy that led straight to an eight foot banquet table, where Altan’s latest CD was being sold. It seemed to me the entire audience got in line, wanting to take the experience home with them, as did I. I wanted something representative of my Irish heritage, something haunting, ethereal, and evocative to remind me that the strains of Irish traditional music will always resonate deep within me. As I left Carmel’s Sunset Center, I was brimming with Irish pride from the effects of what I’d just witnessed. To see the band Altan was to understand that there are some musicians that are bearers of the cross and keepers of the flame of Irish heritage, who have perfected their art on behalf of all of us lucky enough to be of Irish descent.
Before I get to the acclaimed Irish traditional musicians from Donegal who comprise the band, Altan, I’m going to editorialize to put the show I saw the other night into context. When I lived on the western coast of Ireland, it fascinated me to realize that in the local pubs, Irish traditional music was just something going on in the background, not intended to be a focal point. There’s a come as you are feel to the pubs on the western coast of Ireland, as if a neighbor down the road had a reputation for always having an open door, should you be looking for a place to go when the urge hit to ramble. In the dim pubs on the western coast of Ireland, there’s a laid-back mixture of ready camaraderie and space to unwind. Amber spirits flow freely and nobody’s watching in these gauzy safe havens where anything goes. Typically there’s burning turf somewhere in the room, and if someone shows up with an instrument, so much the better; it’s implied there’s a designated area for musicians tucked in the corner, away from the bar. A musician can play to their heart’s content, and nobody will think anything of it; odds are on any given night a few of their ilk came before, and the only common thread I could ever detect is that the musicians manifest well into the night. It was my impression Irish traditional musicians show up without much of a plan. They take their sweet time settling into the corner, for the Irish are a chatty, unhurried lot, collectively unselfconscious and accommodating, so when it comes to the sessiuns, which erupt like spontaneous combustion from the corner, the locals simply scoot over granting berth. Which isn’t to imply Irish traditional musicians are taken for granted by their compatriots, it’s more like the Irish expect the presence of these seraphic spell-weavers, these tribal emblems that represent Irish heritage by channeling its ancestral soundtrack as if it were de rigueur. Many was the night I stood spell-bound by the quality of homegrown musicians, only to realize I was one of few paying attention. So to see the Irish ensemble, Altan, on stage in Carmel, California last week was to see what goes on customarily in an Irish pub under the glare of an unusual light.
I’ll now unapologetically generalize by saying when it comes to entertainment, Americans are used to instant gratification: an immediate wow factor, bright and showy and unambiguous because we’re an impatient lot that expects our entertainment up front and center. Knowing, as I did, that the nuances of Irish traditional music sneak up on a person with deceptive subtlety, I couldn’t help but wonder, as I sat in the audience waiting for Altan to take the stage, if the pending performance could possibly be translated into Americanese.
The five members of Altan strolled on stage without fanfare, beneath hazy gray lights in their low-key attire and simply picked up their instruments. There were no roaming lights, no flashing videos, no choreographed dancers, and it wasn’t until after the first tune that lead singer and co-founder, Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh, finally whispered, “Hiya, we’re happy to be in Carmel.” I had the impression the group could have been anywhere and been comfortable, but of course I knew what many in the audience did not: the five members of Altan had brought their Irishness with them, and this solitary credential gave them card carrying license to fit into any corner of the universe, whether the audience knew it or not. There seemed no appointed front person for Altan; the players took turns making introductions, telling stories, interrupting each other, making asides, and generally taking the mickey out of each other in that free-wheeling way the Irish often do when they’re trying to say they love each other. They brought the back corner of a Donegal pub to two, forty five minute sets, which ebbed and flowed and weaved and dodged through reels, airs and jigs, blending one into the other. In between the sets, fiddler Ciaran Tourish casually announced the intermission by confessing the band always took a wee break. “Here’s what happens,” he began. “We take a break, which means it’s fair play for you to take a break, and what’d really be great is if we could all do it at the same time.” Nobody laughed harder than me at this indirect, underhanded witticism, so flawlessly spun in that classically Irish, self-effacing way.
It seemed to me that after the intermission, the audience at Carmel’s Sunset Center had become acclimated to the tenor and rhythm of Altan’s show, for the air had been relieved of expectancy and a more settled in aura embraced the theater as the players returned to the stage. But I’ve always known the presence of anyone Irish tends to do this to an environment, which is the primary reason why I was so fascinated by the impact of Altan as a group on stage. It was more to me than their foot-tapping, music as it navigated the tides of Irish expression through movements that shifted between exhilarating declarations and sonorous, elegiac laments. There was something so ruffled and homespun about the players; something so unselfconsciously salt of the earth, so loose in the saddle, so easy in the skin. I’ve always said when it comes to the Irish, they’re happy anywhere. They have a salient way of greeting humanity in a manner that lets you know they don’t take themselves too seriously, and the implied suggestion is neither should you. I think Irish traditional music is an expression of Irish character: it’s so complex as to be simple, so simple as to be complex, and somewhere within the crucible of Altan’s hour and a half show in Carmel, California, the members of the band brought more to the stage than their traditional music; they showed the audience what it means to be born of Ireland, in their proud, confident, devil-may-care way of being in the world that was absolutely infectious.
After Altan’s encore, as the audience flowed out into the lobby, there was an all-encompassing, vibratory current of joy that led straight to an eight foot banquet table, where Altan’s latest CD was being sold. It seemed to me the entire audience got in line, wanting to take the experience home with them, as did I. I wanted something representative of my Irish heritage, something haunting, ethereal, and evocative to remind me that the strains of Irish traditional music will always resonate deep within me. As I left Carmel’s Sunset Center, I was brimming with Irish pride from the effects of what I’d just witnessed. To see the band Altan was to understand that there are some musicians that are bearers of the cross and keepers of the flame of Irish heritage, who have perfected their art on behalf of all of us lucky enough to be of Irish descent.
February 5, 2016
The Sessiun
It was nine o’clock on a Sunday night when Johnny Og came to collect me, and it was raining—not one of those misty, soft rains, as is often the case on the west coast of Ireland, but one of those howling, unforgiving, relentless downpours that comes from no discernable direction, save for the threatening sky overhead. Johnny Og had stepped onto my porch, hair wet, wax jacket dripping. “Well, I’m here,” he said. “A bit worse for wear, but I’m here.”
“I can’t believe this weather,” I said, in lieu of hello.
“You learn to live with it,” he returned. “People are always running down the weather in Ireland, but I think it’s all in the attitude.”
“Such is life,” I confirmed, and although running to his car was tantamount to diving into the eye of a hurricane, a plan is a plan, and the plan that night was to pick up his father then drive to Tigh Hughes for the Sunday night sessiun.
The remainder of this post is on: http://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/bl...
“I can’t believe this weather,” I said, in lieu of hello.
“You learn to live with it,” he returned. “People are always running down the weather in Ireland, but I think it’s all in the attitude.”
“Such is life,” I confirmed, and although running to his car was tantamount to diving into the eye of a hurricane, a plan is a plan, and the plan that night was to pick up his father then drive to Tigh Hughes for the Sunday night sessiun.
The remainder of this post is on: http://thewildgeese.irish/profiles/bl...
February 1, 2016
The Gifts of Online Community
What’s important for an author to consider is once their novel is out in the world, the repercussive work that ensues becomes all about connections. It happens organically from the state of affairs at play in today’s publishing world, which is to say that authors are expected to be actively involved, not only in promoting their books, but in simply getting in the online traffic and more or less presenting themselves.
Read More @ https://cffullerton.wordpress.com/201...
Read More @ https://cffullerton.wordpress.com/201...
January 19, 2016
A Divine Letter
I was tired of living in Los Angeles. I’d moved out to the big city with stars in my eyes from my hometown on the Mississippi river to work in the music business. At the age of twenty-six, it was stimulating and thrilling, but after four years, L.A. lost its glitter: the bohemian quality I once loved in my West Hollywood neighborhood began to fade, and all I could see were the cracks in the sidewalk on the seedy side of town.
Turning thirty was an awakening, that’s when it occurred to me the music business is best populated by the youth of the day, and I began to evaluate the course of my life. I kept thinking if I didn’t make a change, I’d wake up one day to find myself with permanent roots in the cacophonous city, where it seemed everyone jockeyed for position in one form or another. I was uninspired. I was tired. I wanted serenity; I needed to get a plan.
I resigned from my job in the music business and took a position in client services at a thriving post production facility in Santa Monica, where I was one of twelve assistants to the clients from major movie studios that came to the cluster of recording studios to synchronize audio with film. It was a unique job, something new and different, but I was still living in Los Angeles. A sensitive friend addressed my discontent by asking two simple questions: “If you could live anywhere, where would it be, and what would you be doing?”
Ireland was my answer. I saw myself in a best case scenario living upon verdant fields partitioned by grey-stone walls on the way to the sea, writing poetry and novels—whichever came spilling from the resources of creativity suited me fine. “There’s only one way to do this,” I said to my friend, “and it starts with a plane ticket.”
It seemed once I’d made the decision, the powers that be aligned in support. After I gave my resignation to the managing director, uncanny things transpired: I’d be standing on a Los Angeles street corner just as a stranger approached to exchange pleasantries in an unmistakable Irish accent. I received useful information repeatedly from surprising quarters and it gave me a feeling of being in tune with destiny. I was certain I’d made the right decision by following my bliss.
And there I was a year later: living by the sea on the west coast of Ireland and employed in the music business because everything had fallen into place. I was living a life imagined: I had friends, a rented home, a schedule, a purpose, all from a start-up business dedicated to the careers of Irish musicians. My life had certainty and security. I grew accustomed to Ireland and its cultural nuances and truly believed I’d found my place in the world.
But the rhythm of life has an ebb and flow. By the end of that year, the tides started to turn so subtly they were imperceptible, up until the moment there was no recourse. My non-profit place of employment lost its funding, and there I was in a foreign country without a job. I was baffled and bewildered. What had seemed like destiny became ambiguity, and I was indecisive and riddled with doubt over every option I weighed. I was not ready to leave Ireland; I hadn’t exhausted her charms and it seemed all was lost, that fate had conspired against me.
I’m the kind of person that possesses an optimistic faith in the goodness of things, that life has meaning and God has a plan. The quandary was I couldn’t see anything beyond the roads that appeared blocked (and two weeks of feeling this way is two weeks too many.) I prayed, I meditated, I believed, and I vacillated between hope and despair. Then a letter arrived at my door.
One of the things I had to accept about living in rural Ireland was it took ten days for a letter to arrive from California. I lived way out in the countryside where there were no mailboxes, so the post master would leave my mail at my door. One day during my quandary, I leaned down to inspect a letter at my doorstep, recognizing right away it came from the United States. I tore open the envelope to discover an offer from the post production facility in Santa Monica, reviewing it twice in complete surprise. “The woman who hired you in client services is leaving to have a baby,” the letter began, and by the time I got to the managing director’s signature, I realized he had offered me her job. My first reaction was complete resistance. No way in the world I’d ever go back to L.A. I put the letter back in its envelope and threw it on the kitchen counter until my disbelief compelled me to read it once more. It was then I noticed the letter’s post mark. Squinting my eyes, I brought into focus the postdated stamp, which was only three days before. “What is this?” I said out loud, “divine intervention?” I considered and weighed until I arrived at the conclusion I didn’t have a choice. Yet all the while, a voice in my head whispered “Follow this, you don’t have to know why.”
“Follow this to Los Angeles?” my petulance screamed, but that is exactly what I did. I talked myself into returning to Los Angeles by holding to faith, by deciding this may be a stepping stone along a bigger path, that perhaps someone or something would be waiting where I least expected.
Today, I am married to the man who wrote that letter. In March of 2015, "Dancing to an Irish Reel," the novel I wrote inspired by my year in Ireland was published. I now have a way of deciphering life’s supposed ambiguities, which is to say I now see life’s quandary’s as full of potential. When in doubt, I don’t fall into despair, instead, I look for a bigger picture, and if I keep my faith and narrow my eyes, I swear I can see divinity.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
Turning thirty was an awakening, that’s when it occurred to me the music business is best populated by the youth of the day, and I began to evaluate the course of my life. I kept thinking if I didn’t make a change, I’d wake up one day to find myself with permanent roots in the cacophonous city, where it seemed everyone jockeyed for position in one form or another. I was uninspired. I was tired. I wanted serenity; I needed to get a plan.
I resigned from my job in the music business and took a position in client services at a thriving post production facility in Santa Monica, where I was one of twelve assistants to the clients from major movie studios that came to the cluster of recording studios to synchronize audio with film. It was a unique job, something new and different, but I was still living in Los Angeles. A sensitive friend addressed my discontent by asking two simple questions: “If you could live anywhere, where would it be, and what would you be doing?”
Ireland was my answer. I saw myself in a best case scenario living upon verdant fields partitioned by grey-stone walls on the way to the sea, writing poetry and novels—whichever came spilling from the resources of creativity suited me fine. “There’s only one way to do this,” I said to my friend, “and it starts with a plane ticket.”
It seemed once I’d made the decision, the powers that be aligned in support. After I gave my resignation to the managing director, uncanny things transpired: I’d be standing on a Los Angeles street corner just as a stranger approached to exchange pleasantries in an unmistakable Irish accent. I received useful information repeatedly from surprising quarters and it gave me a feeling of being in tune with destiny. I was certain I’d made the right decision by following my bliss.
And there I was a year later: living by the sea on the west coast of Ireland and employed in the music business because everything had fallen into place. I was living a life imagined: I had friends, a rented home, a schedule, a purpose, all from a start-up business dedicated to the careers of Irish musicians. My life had certainty and security. I grew accustomed to Ireland and its cultural nuances and truly believed I’d found my place in the world.
But the rhythm of life has an ebb and flow. By the end of that year, the tides started to turn so subtly they were imperceptible, up until the moment there was no recourse. My non-profit place of employment lost its funding, and there I was in a foreign country without a job. I was baffled and bewildered. What had seemed like destiny became ambiguity, and I was indecisive and riddled with doubt over every option I weighed. I was not ready to leave Ireland; I hadn’t exhausted her charms and it seemed all was lost, that fate had conspired against me.
I’m the kind of person that possesses an optimistic faith in the goodness of things, that life has meaning and God has a plan. The quandary was I couldn’t see anything beyond the roads that appeared blocked (and two weeks of feeling this way is two weeks too many.) I prayed, I meditated, I believed, and I vacillated between hope and despair. Then a letter arrived at my door.
One of the things I had to accept about living in rural Ireland was it took ten days for a letter to arrive from California. I lived way out in the countryside where there were no mailboxes, so the post master would leave my mail at my door. One day during my quandary, I leaned down to inspect a letter at my doorstep, recognizing right away it came from the United States. I tore open the envelope to discover an offer from the post production facility in Santa Monica, reviewing it twice in complete surprise. “The woman who hired you in client services is leaving to have a baby,” the letter began, and by the time I got to the managing director’s signature, I realized he had offered me her job. My first reaction was complete resistance. No way in the world I’d ever go back to L.A. I put the letter back in its envelope and threw it on the kitchen counter until my disbelief compelled me to read it once more. It was then I noticed the letter’s post mark. Squinting my eyes, I brought into focus the postdated stamp, which was only three days before. “What is this?” I said out loud, “divine intervention?” I considered and weighed until I arrived at the conclusion I didn’t have a choice. Yet all the while, a voice in my head whispered “Follow this, you don’t have to know why.”
“Follow this to Los Angeles?” my petulance screamed, but that is exactly what I did. I talked myself into returning to Los Angeles by holding to faith, by deciding this may be a stepping stone along a bigger path, that perhaps someone or something would be waiting where I least expected.
Today, I am married to the man who wrote that letter. In March of 2015, "Dancing to an Irish Reel," the novel I wrote inspired by my year in Ireland was published. I now have a way of deciphering life’s supposed ambiguities, which is to say I now see life’s quandary’s as full of potential. When in doubt, I don’t fall into despair, instead, I look for a bigger picture, and if I keep my faith and narrow my eyes, I swear I can see divinity.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
January 6, 2016
Taken into an Irish Confidence
This Irish vignette has stayed with me throughout the years, the way poignant moments tend to do. It was only a moment, really, yet even at the time I could have told you of its impact; there was something about sitting in Pol’O’Phoil’s porch on the coast road in Inverin that made me think I’d truly arrived in Ireland, that I’d been invited into its inner sanctum and was a part of it now, even though I’d heard time and again that the look of me would have eventually done the same.
The first time I met Pol’ O’Phoil, I didn’t know he was a big deal. I’d struck up a conversation with a woman in a café on Galway’s High Street, who was in for the day from Carraroe. She sat with her bags clustered around her: the red and white stripped plastic kind with the flimsy handles that are doled out in every shop in Ireland. She’d swept them aside to make room for me on the red naugahyde community cushion against the café’s wall, and I’d scooted in gratefully as she accommodated while saying “You’re all right, there.” Her name was Kathleen O’Toole, and she wore her gray hair swept up in a bun over her round, blue eyes. Somewhere in her mid-sixties, I remember marveling at the quality of her skin: fair and translucent, the color of cat’s cream in porcelain, with high coloring that took up residency on her cheekbones and made me think of my mother.
I’d only been in Ireland a week. I’d flown out of LAX to Dublin on Bloomsday, spent four days in Rathgar at the friend of a friend’s apartment then taken the train across the island to Galway’s Eire Square because I’d been told the west would fulfill the vision I held of Ireland: rolling green fields cut through with gray stone walls on the way to the steel-gray sea. So it was here in the café on High Street that I told Kathleen O’Toole I’d be staying for a while; that I’d been offered a job at The Galway Music Center, and needed a place to live. “Where are the fields with the gray stone walls?” I’d asked her, and without hesitation, she replied, “You’ll be wanting to go to Connemara; you should take the bus to Spiddal and call into Pol’ O’Phoil.”
I stood shoulder to shoulder with Kathleen O’Toole, in front of a music venue named The Lisheen, waiting for the bus out into the countryside. When the bus appeared, it took me by surprise: it was one of those high, huge touring kinds, glossy and black and ominously official. It pitched and rolled through Salthill then turned left on the coast road, and came to a teetering stop in Furbo and Barna, before it touched down in Spiddal, where I thanked Kathleen O’Toole and disembarked. I couldn’t tell you now, exactly where Pol’ O’Phoil’s office was, but I do know it was amongst a cluster of shops along the side of the coast road. I was so new to Ireland at this point that I was swimming with disorientation over the sheer novelty of everything, but I found Pol’O’Phoil’s office because it was the only one with a glass door. He was on the phone when I walked into the worn, linoleum floored room, and I felt his wise owl eyes take my measure knowingly because everything about me screamed American outsider. He hung up the phone and listened patiently as I gave him my complete story, which he nodded through with his poker face as if he’d heard it all before. Without preamble, he reached into his desk drawer and presented me with a lone key topped with orange plastic. He laid it on the desk between us and said, “Now,” which I later learned is the Irish way of completing a transaction.
The place I rented was a one level, two bedroom holiday home in Inverin, with a kitchen and living room behind a spacious glassed-in porch. It was one of four positioned in a row on the same property beside Pol’ O’Phoil’s house; all perched on a hill overlooking the coast road, facing the boundless fields that ambled down to the sea. It was the modern architecture of the holiday homes that told me Pol’ O’Phoil was a forward thinker, for his real estate was glaringly dissimilar to the white-washed, thatched roof cottages peppered throughout the region nearby. In time, I learned his particular vision was the magnanimous sort, for he elected to do his part in bringing this particular stretch of Connemara up to state of the art standards in his capacity as local mayor, and that it was he who saw to it that the Knock Airport was constructed to fly passengers to the Aran Islands, although it was not he who laid this information bare. It seemed Pol’ O’Phoil had a certain reputation in the area, and word eventually drifted to me from the lips of locals that he was impressively well respected, even revered in the little area that was not much more than a certain stretch of the road.
And so it happened, one early evening, that I came to call round to Pol’O’Phoil’s back door to deliver my monthly rent. The kitchen door flew wide in mid-knock, and there stood Pol’O’Phoil’s wife, wearing an embroidered apron and wielding a wooden spoon.
“I was just after making dinner for himself,” she said, when suddenly a voice filtered from beyond, inviting me in. “Well then,” she said, then turned her back to lead the way to the residences’ porch, where Pol’O’Phoil sat king-like in a wicker chair.
Sometimes you find yourself in the presence of someone whose very essence makes you sit up a little taller. Pol’ O’Phoil exuded authority in his low-slung, square intensity; his steady gaze and no-nonsense manner held me fast as he offered me a chair. He conducted himself as if he’d called me to this audience; he asked me about myself in that covert manner the Irish employ when it comes to ferreting out information, which can only be described as leading the question.
“So you’re long here and doing some writing, you are,” he began, and one thing followed another in what morphed into an even, give and take exchange. Somewhere along the line he must have decided I was harmless, for the air shifted when his wife brought me a cup of tea, and he motioned for her to sit down and join us. In soft rhapsody, their story unfurled: that she was from Roscommon; that they had met as teens. They’d settled in Inverin decades before and raised their three sons, one of whom was no longer with us. I knew in that moment that this pair was no stranger to tragedy. They’d known life’s rough edges and cruel adversities, and in this particular instance, it was revealed, their deepest wound had been wrought from their youngest son’s suicide.
There are some moments, when self-revelatory confession is shared, that mere language becomes too weighty and too much. It hangs in the air with such reverberant force as to break the heart open, and as I sat in stunned silence after Pol’ O’Phoil told me about their son, it wasn’t so much that I was shocked by the fact of the suicide as I was by the fact that he had told me. It had been my impression that the Irish hold their cards close to the vest, yet here I was now in possession of this family’s intimate history. And there I sat on Pol’O’Phoil’s porch in the heart of Catholic Ireland, heavy with the realization that such an aberrant intimacy had been revealed.
I offer no moral to this story, except to say that it served as the pivotal point of the year I lived in Ireland. I knew now that behind that easy banter that often times masks the guarded countenance of the Irish people, there lays an individual story replete with life’s mercilessness. But you’d never suspect this in meeting most of them, for they are not a lot prone to laying their burden at your feet. Yet if they do, you are in-crowd, you are one of them, a part of it all, and the confidential grace they bestow will stay with you forever.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
https://www.facebook.com/clairefuller...
The first time I met Pol’ O’Phoil, I didn’t know he was a big deal. I’d struck up a conversation with a woman in a café on Galway’s High Street, who was in for the day from Carraroe. She sat with her bags clustered around her: the red and white stripped plastic kind with the flimsy handles that are doled out in every shop in Ireland. She’d swept them aside to make room for me on the red naugahyde community cushion against the café’s wall, and I’d scooted in gratefully as she accommodated while saying “You’re all right, there.” Her name was Kathleen O’Toole, and she wore her gray hair swept up in a bun over her round, blue eyes. Somewhere in her mid-sixties, I remember marveling at the quality of her skin: fair and translucent, the color of cat’s cream in porcelain, with high coloring that took up residency on her cheekbones and made me think of my mother.
I’d only been in Ireland a week. I’d flown out of LAX to Dublin on Bloomsday, spent four days in Rathgar at the friend of a friend’s apartment then taken the train across the island to Galway’s Eire Square because I’d been told the west would fulfill the vision I held of Ireland: rolling green fields cut through with gray stone walls on the way to the steel-gray sea. So it was here in the café on High Street that I told Kathleen O’Toole I’d be staying for a while; that I’d been offered a job at The Galway Music Center, and needed a place to live. “Where are the fields with the gray stone walls?” I’d asked her, and without hesitation, she replied, “You’ll be wanting to go to Connemara; you should take the bus to Spiddal and call into Pol’ O’Phoil.”
I stood shoulder to shoulder with Kathleen O’Toole, in front of a music venue named The Lisheen, waiting for the bus out into the countryside. When the bus appeared, it took me by surprise: it was one of those high, huge touring kinds, glossy and black and ominously official. It pitched and rolled through Salthill then turned left on the coast road, and came to a teetering stop in Furbo and Barna, before it touched down in Spiddal, where I thanked Kathleen O’Toole and disembarked. I couldn’t tell you now, exactly where Pol’ O’Phoil’s office was, but I do know it was amongst a cluster of shops along the side of the coast road. I was so new to Ireland at this point that I was swimming with disorientation over the sheer novelty of everything, but I found Pol’O’Phoil’s office because it was the only one with a glass door. He was on the phone when I walked into the worn, linoleum floored room, and I felt his wise owl eyes take my measure knowingly because everything about me screamed American outsider. He hung up the phone and listened patiently as I gave him my complete story, which he nodded through with his poker face as if he’d heard it all before. Without preamble, he reached into his desk drawer and presented me with a lone key topped with orange plastic. He laid it on the desk between us and said, “Now,” which I later learned is the Irish way of completing a transaction.
The place I rented was a one level, two bedroom holiday home in Inverin, with a kitchen and living room behind a spacious glassed-in porch. It was one of four positioned in a row on the same property beside Pol’ O’Phoil’s house; all perched on a hill overlooking the coast road, facing the boundless fields that ambled down to the sea. It was the modern architecture of the holiday homes that told me Pol’ O’Phoil was a forward thinker, for his real estate was glaringly dissimilar to the white-washed, thatched roof cottages peppered throughout the region nearby. In time, I learned his particular vision was the magnanimous sort, for he elected to do his part in bringing this particular stretch of Connemara up to state of the art standards in his capacity as local mayor, and that it was he who saw to it that the Knock Airport was constructed to fly passengers to the Aran Islands, although it was not he who laid this information bare. It seemed Pol’ O’Phoil had a certain reputation in the area, and word eventually drifted to me from the lips of locals that he was impressively well respected, even revered in the little area that was not much more than a certain stretch of the road.
And so it happened, one early evening, that I came to call round to Pol’O’Phoil’s back door to deliver my monthly rent. The kitchen door flew wide in mid-knock, and there stood Pol’O’Phoil’s wife, wearing an embroidered apron and wielding a wooden spoon.
“I was just after making dinner for himself,” she said, when suddenly a voice filtered from beyond, inviting me in. “Well then,” she said, then turned her back to lead the way to the residences’ porch, where Pol’O’Phoil sat king-like in a wicker chair.
Sometimes you find yourself in the presence of someone whose very essence makes you sit up a little taller. Pol’ O’Phoil exuded authority in his low-slung, square intensity; his steady gaze and no-nonsense manner held me fast as he offered me a chair. He conducted himself as if he’d called me to this audience; he asked me about myself in that covert manner the Irish employ when it comes to ferreting out information, which can only be described as leading the question.
“So you’re long here and doing some writing, you are,” he began, and one thing followed another in what morphed into an even, give and take exchange. Somewhere along the line he must have decided I was harmless, for the air shifted when his wife brought me a cup of tea, and he motioned for her to sit down and join us. In soft rhapsody, their story unfurled: that she was from Roscommon; that they had met as teens. They’d settled in Inverin decades before and raised their three sons, one of whom was no longer with us. I knew in that moment that this pair was no stranger to tragedy. They’d known life’s rough edges and cruel adversities, and in this particular instance, it was revealed, their deepest wound had been wrought from their youngest son’s suicide.
There are some moments, when self-revelatory confession is shared, that mere language becomes too weighty and too much. It hangs in the air with such reverberant force as to break the heart open, and as I sat in stunned silence after Pol’ O’Phoil told me about their son, it wasn’t so much that I was shocked by the fact of the suicide as I was by the fact that he had told me. It had been my impression that the Irish hold their cards close to the vest, yet here I was now in possession of this family’s intimate history. And there I sat on Pol’O’Phoil’s porch in the heart of Catholic Ireland, heavy with the realization that such an aberrant intimacy had been revealed.
I offer no moral to this story, except to say that it served as the pivotal point of the year I lived in Ireland. I knew now that behind that easy banter that often times masks the guarded countenance of the Irish people, there lays an individual story replete with life’s mercilessness. But you’d never suspect this in meeting most of them, for they are not a lot prone to laying their burden at your feet. Yet if they do, you are in-crowd, you are one of them, a part of it all, and the confidential grace they bestow will stay with you forever.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
https://www.facebook.com/clairefuller...
December 3, 2015
Reconnecting with Kieran
After more years than I care to count, Kieran has resurfaced. The last time I saw him, it was raining; it was one of those gray Galway days on New Castle Road, and I’d sleuthed Kieran out, after swearing to Adrian I’d never tell who had told me where I could find him. Sometimes relationships get complicated.
It was fate that brought me to Kieran’s fold. It unraveled in increments, like breadcrumbs leading the way to The Galway Music Centre’s door. I was a newly arrived American, staying in a B&B on Eyre Square without much of a plan beyond spending a little time in Ireland. The nice woman who’d shown me to my room had left me with a copy of “The Galway Advertiser,” and I’d opened its pages to discover a singular sentence announcing the opening of The Galway Music Centre on New Road. There’d been no statement beyond the Centre being open, and, spurred by the lure of the word music, I’d walked round the next day to investigate. The Advertiser hadn’t lied. The Galway Music Centre was open, so I walked in. Then I found Kieran.
He was standing in the loft of The Centre, tacking a poster of the singer Daniel O’Donnell on a bulletin board, on which he’d drawn a mustache and horns because that was Kieran’s idea of humor. I stood undetected, watching him before he noticed me on the worn, redbrick floor. Scattered about were hammers and nails, scraps of plywood, four mismatched chairs, and a fold-out card table, on which sat an electric kettle, a box of Lyon’s tea, and a pint of Oranmore milk. Kieran came clattering down the wooden slat stairs when we finally saw me. He moved with such sprightly agility, he seemed airborne, and when he landed in front of me, he held out his hand and said, “Can I help you?”
I had no way of knowing that moment would be the beginning of a relationship that would set the tone of the year I spent in Ireland, but then everything about Kieran was unpredictable. He was a vortex of frenetic energy; a twenty five year old, rapid talking, plan making youth from Derry with an unintelligible accent, who was the product of an Irish mother and a Chinese father. He was tall and neatly compact, with jet-black hair he wore in a high pony-tail that bobbed behind him with every step of his bouncing stride. He had olive skin, a devilish smile, and upturned oval eyes that could either twinkle like starlight or bore a hole right through you, depending on his mood.
Kieran had moved into Galway to make something of himself, but after knowing him for a while, it occurred to me he had moved into town to take over completely, which in many ways he did. Kieran couldn’t walk down the streets without something happening, and when he wasn’t out prowling around looking for the craic, the craic had a way of coming to him. It’s anybody’s guess if fate works similarly, whether it lays in wait preordained or we meet it halfway. But it seems to me some things are meant to be, for were it not for Kieran, I can’t say for sure that I would have stayed in Ireland for as long as I did, but Kieran’s job offer at The Galway Music Centre was too good to refuse, and one thing led to another, the way things do when you have youth on your side and life by the tail of its unlimited potential.
We were four that worked at The Galway Music Centre: Keiran and Shannon and Darren and me. We operated out of an old iron forge on New Road with the intention of creating something theretofore unseen in Galway: a musical haven aimed at furthering the careers of the local musicians. We had no business plan, but eventually created something notable as we went along. In time, we soundproofed a room downstairs and built the only rehearsal studio in Galway City, which sent word out on the cobblestone streets and put money in our pocket. And all the while, Kieran was the hub of the wheel the rest of us revolved around. He was the man with the vision, the face of the Centre, and everything hummed along nicely for a solid year, up until it didn’t. When everything fell apart at The Galway Music Centre, it was predicated upon things I now see as avoidable: misinformation, miscommunication, and the mishandling of funds, which explains why I had to wrangle Kieran’s whereabouts from a young lad named Adrian, for in fine old Irish tradition in the face of conflict, Kieran didn’t feel like talking about it and simply disappeared.
There are more enviable positions to find oneself in than to be an American in Ireland without an income. I had a score to settle with Kieran. All I was really after was the decency of closure, so I’d been grateful to Adrian when he’d said, “Well, I’m not telling you where he is, now; I’m just pointing the way.”
Armed with the full knowledge that the Irish see Americans as direct to the point of pushy, I figured I had nothing to lose. I walked to New Castle Road in the pouring rain, lifted the latch on the low iron gate of a four bedroom guesthouse, and knocked on the door. It was the setting of the last conversation I had with Kieran, and at the time I would have confessed I really wasn’t that mad. There was something so likable about Kieran that I forgave him his capricious edges, and there was no pretending I didn’t have a soft spot for him in my heart. Yet words had been exchanged that catered to our individual ego, which is to say that we never found a bridge on which to meet each other halfway. I wasn’t surprised years later, when I set out to write a novel set on the western coast of Ireland, that Kieran came pouring through my keyboard, traipsing in that bouncing walk of his all over my story. I know now that when something between friends is left unresolved, it will take on a life force all its own and find expression one way or another.
Although I still think it was fate that brought me to Kieran’s fold in the first place, the thing about fate is there’s no way of telling when the story is completely told.
I’m thinking about this now because yesterday I was tagged on Facebook by Shannon, with whom I’ve kept in close touch these many years. I clicked on the notice to see a picture of her with Kieran and I outside a pub in Kinvara, taken during the time we all worked at The Centre. I looked closely at the tag and realized somehow Shannon had reconnected with Kieran without telling me, for there he was tagged in the same picture. And as anyone would, I clicked on his name to find a picture of him standing beside his wife, who held their baby in her arms somewhere in County Antrim. Shannon’s dual tag has given Kieran and me a reason to reconnect, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Now I’m thinking of the adage: what comes around goes around, even though it’s prone to take its sweet time. And with regard to the unpredictable hand of fate, it’s interesting to realize it didn’t forget Kieran and me; that it found its way to Ireland via social media.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
It was fate that brought me to Kieran’s fold. It unraveled in increments, like breadcrumbs leading the way to The Galway Music Centre’s door. I was a newly arrived American, staying in a B&B on Eyre Square without much of a plan beyond spending a little time in Ireland. The nice woman who’d shown me to my room had left me with a copy of “The Galway Advertiser,” and I’d opened its pages to discover a singular sentence announcing the opening of The Galway Music Centre on New Road. There’d been no statement beyond the Centre being open, and, spurred by the lure of the word music, I’d walked round the next day to investigate. The Advertiser hadn’t lied. The Galway Music Centre was open, so I walked in. Then I found Kieran.
He was standing in the loft of The Centre, tacking a poster of the singer Daniel O’Donnell on a bulletin board, on which he’d drawn a mustache and horns because that was Kieran’s idea of humor. I stood undetected, watching him before he noticed me on the worn, redbrick floor. Scattered about were hammers and nails, scraps of plywood, four mismatched chairs, and a fold-out card table, on which sat an electric kettle, a box of Lyon’s tea, and a pint of Oranmore milk. Kieran came clattering down the wooden slat stairs when we finally saw me. He moved with such sprightly agility, he seemed airborne, and when he landed in front of me, he held out his hand and said, “Can I help you?”
I had no way of knowing that moment would be the beginning of a relationship that would set the tone of the year I spent in Ireland, but then everything about Kieran was unpredictable. He was a vortex of frenetic energy; a twenty five year old, rapid talking, plan making youth from Derry with an unintelligible accent, who was the product of an Irish mother and a Chinese father. He was tall and neatly compact, with jet-black hair he wore in a high pony-tail that bobbed behind him with every step of his bouncing stride. He had olive skin, a devilish smile, and upturned oval eyes that could either twinkle like starlight or bore a hole right through you, depending on his mood.
Kieran had moved into Galway to make something of himself, but after knowing him for a while, it occurred to me he had moved into town to take over completely, which in many ways he did. Kieran couldn’t walk down the streets without something happening, and when he wasn’t out prowling around looking for the craic, the craic had a way of coming to him. It’s anybody’s guess if fate works similarly, whether it lays in wait preordained or we meet it halfway. But it seems to me some things are meant to be, for were it not for Kieran, I can’t say for sure that I would have stayed in Ireland for as long as I did, but Kieran’s job offer at The Galway Music Centre was too good to refuse, and one thing led to another, the way things do when you have youth on your side and life by the tail of its unlimited potential.
We were four that worked at The Galway Music Centre: Keiran and Shannon and Darren and me. We operated out of an old iron forge on New Road with the intention of creating something theretofore unseen in Galway: a musical haven aimed at furthering the careers of the local musicians. We had no business plan, but eventually created something notable as we went along. In time, we soundproofed a room downstairs and built the only rehearsal studio in Galway City, which sent word out on the cobblestone streets and put money in our pocket. And all the while, Kieran was the hub of the wheel the rest of us revolved around. He was the man with the vision, the face of the Centre, and everything hummed along nicely for a solid year, up until it didn’t. When everything fell apart at The Galway Music Centre, it was predicated upon things I now see as avoidable: misinformation, miscommunication, and the mishandling of funds, which explains why I had to wrangle Kieran’s whereabouts from a young lad named Adrian, for in fine old Irish tradition in the face of conflict, Kieran didn’t feel like talking about it and simply disappeared.
There are more enviable positions to find oneself in than to be an American in Ireland without an income. I had a score to settle with Kieran. All I was really after was the decency of closure, so I’d been grateful to Adrian when he’d said, “Well, I’m not telling you where he is, now; I’m just pointing the way.”
Armed with the full knowledge that the Irish see Americans as direct to the point of pushy, I figured I had nothing to lose. I walked to New Castle Road in the pouring rain, lifted the latch on the low iron gate of a four bedroom guesthouse, and knocked on the door. It was the setting of the last conversation I had with Kieran, and at the time I would have confessed I really wasn’t that mad. There was something so likable about Kieran that I forgave him his capricious edges, and there was no pretending I didn’t have a soft spot for him in my heart. Yet words had been exchanged that catered to our individual ego, which is to say that we never found a bridge on which to meet each other halfway. I wasn’t surprised years later, when I set out to write a novel set on the western coast of Ireland, that Kieran came pouring through my keyboard, traipsing in that bouncing walk of his all over my story. I know now that when something between friends is left unresolved, it will take on a life force all its own and find expression one way or another.
Although I still think it was fate that brought me to Kieran’s fold in the first place, the thing about fate is there’s no way of telling when the story is completely told.
I’m thinking about this now because yesterday I was tagged on Facebook by Shannon, with whom I’ve kept in close touch these many years. I clicked on the notice to see a picture of her with Kieran and I outside a pub in Kinvara, taken during the time we all worked at The Centre. I looked closely at the tag and realized somehow Shannon had reconnected with Kieran without telling me, for there he was tagged in the same picture. And as anyone would, I clicked on his name to find a picture of him standing beside his wife, who held their baby in her arms somewhere in County Antrim. Shannon’s dual tag has given Kieran and me a reason to reconnect, and I couldn’t be more pleased.
Now I’m thinking of the adage: what comes around goes around, even though it’s prone to take its sweet time. And with regard to the unpredictable hand of fate, it’s interesting to realize it didn’t forget Kieran and me; that it found its way to Ireland via social media.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
November 15, 2015
On the Road to an Irish Graveyard
Dean Mulroy is the kind of guy who needs room to roam and access to the stars, which is why he lived way back in the bog behind the house I rented in Inverin. Only a certain kind of guy would want to live as he did. At the time, he was unimpressed with technological conveniences, including a telephone, and the first thing he did when he moved into the lackluster, two bedroom stucco house he rented beside the bog’s serpentine stream was rig the existing phone to such a pitch that people could call in, but he couldn’t call out. He had what he thought of as a reasonable explanation for this, but I didn’t learn it until much later, after our friendship had taken root and he no longer held me in suspicion.
It had been my habit to walk the endless bog behind my house after I got home from work in Galway. It was summer time, and sunlight hovered well until ten thirty during this halcyon time of the year. I ambled through the bog because it seemed to ground me to the soul of this particular region of Connemara. One foot after the other gave way to a rhythmic cadence that put me in tune with something soulful and unnamed. I did my best thinking on my walks through the bog because it gave my feet purpose and allowed my chattering mind to unleash into an impressionable, free-floating stream of consciousness. This is how I learned to interpret rural Ireland; by dreaming my way through, step after meditative step.
The third time I passed Dean in the bog, he abruptly stopped me. He’d had entirely enough of not knowing who this stranger was in his midst. A slightly built girl with long blonde hair and a pair of Wayfarers in rural Ireland must have been anomaly enough, but to see a face repeatedly in Inverin and not know the whole story was an unpardonable sin. People in Inverin don’t keep to themselves; tacitly, it isn’t allowed. By virtue of the fact that one lives in Inverin, they are automatically a part of a collective consciousness that operates under the assumption that all of its residents are members of the same tribe. And because the Irish are not prone to insinuating themselves upon a stranger, Dean Mulroy chose the colloquial way of introducing himself, which is to say that he cast his eyes skyward and commented on the weather. “Ah, she’s blowin’, all right,” he said standing firmly in my path with his hands on his narrow hips and an even stare. I’d been in Ireland for two months thus far and knew how to respond in the Irish way. I raised my eyes to his dark frame of wavy black hair and met his blue-eyed glare. “She is, yeah,” I said rhetorically.
We next got down to the exchange of names and I learned he already knew where I lived because there is no place to hide in Inverin. A single American female living in a holiday home on the side of the coast road is big news in a town the size of Inverin, but Dean still wanted the unadulterated facts. It took him all of two minutes to invite me to call out the next day for a cup of tea. I knew now that people in Ireland are always “calling out,” which shouldn’t be confused with just showing up, because calling out has a much bigger purpose. I turned his invitation over and jumped to what any American would immediately ask. “I’d love to,” I told him, “what time would you like me to come?” Dean looked at me for a heavy, pregnant pause, with a brow so knotted I thought surely it hurt. “Don’t put a time on it,” he said. “Come when it suits you.”
I had two thoughts as I continued my walk through the bog that day, and the first was about the weather. For a population that revolves around the vagaries of the weather, it’s easy to see why the weather in Ireland is personified as she. It’s because she is pervasive and dictates everything, so when someone in Ireland uses the word “she,” everyone knows what is meant. The second thought on my mind was how authentic and unselfconscious the Irish are as a culture. If I extended an invitation to anyone for the following day, I’d be ready and my house would be perfect, but that is not the way it is with the Irish. Dean’s lack of concern over the timing of my arrival demonstrated the open-armed way the Irish receive anyone: there is always an open door, no matter the time, and they are ever at the ready to put the kettle on and offer a cup of tea.
It was a thirty minute walk from my front door to Dean’s rented house, deep in the bog in Inverin. I took my time the next day sauntering through what came to be a habitual pattern along a quiet gravel path through turf and brittle bracken. When I arrived, it was two o’clock in the afternoon and I found Dean in his kitchen, freshly shaved and waiting. He held a guitar on his lap, looked up when I appeared, and said in a matter of course, “I’ve been singing me heart out all day.” We exchanged personal histories and drank tea until our heads were swimming. Dean told me about the dolmen that lay in the bog behind us and said he’d show me himself, but he wanted it to be my own discovery. He next told me that the ancient graveyard down the dirt road across from my house was haunted. “Tis a brave soul, it would be, who would walk that road at night,” he said fixing me with a challenging stare.
“Have you ever done it? “ I couldn’t help but ask.
“I have,” he returned, “but no woman would want to.”
The sky turned the color of bruised eggplant, releasing a torrent of mercurial pelting rain. Running for dear life to Dean’s tan colored van, it took my full strength to pull the door closed against the rousing wind before we rattled the bog road to my house. Dean leaned his head through the window in the stinging rain, shouting as I ran to the shelter of my porch. “I’d call you, but I’ve cut meself off; too many late nights on the drink running me phone bill up. Unless it’s planning on bumping into me on one of your bog-trots, you are, you’re going to have to call in to me.” I told Dean surely I would then ducked safely inside.
Later that night, after the rain let up, I put on a light coat and stepped outside my door. I stood in the darkened stillness until I’d made up my mind once and for all. There are no streetlights that far out in Inverin, but I had the light of a waxing moon. Cautiously, I crossed the coast road. I heard the gravel scratching beneath my steps and put one foot in front of the other in an intonation that sounded like a military march. A slight wind blew like a whisper then rushed forcefully, just enough to startle me before it ebbed. I thought I felt a chill on the back of my neck and wondered if it was the night air or just my fear. Down the lane I continued, until the graveyard loomed on the hill to my left. Granite tombstones in varying heights crowned with Celtic crosses glowed eerily in the moonlight. It was a graveyard forever marking time, halfway down a lane all but forgotten. I walked steadily, not wanting to hesitate, not daring to stop; only wanting to walk the lane at night because Dean Mulroy had said no woman would want to.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
It had been my habit to walk the endless bog behind my house after I got home from work in Galway. It was summer time, and sunlight hovered well until ten thirty during this halcyon time of the year. I ambled through the bog because it seemed to ground me to the soul of this particular region of Connemara. One foot after the other gave way to a rhythmic cadence that put me in tune with something soulful and unnamed. I did my best thinking on my walks through the bog because it gave my feet purpose and allowed my chattering mind to unleash into an impressionable, free-floating stream of consciousness. This is how I learned to interpret rural Ireland; by dreaming my way through, step after meditative step.
The third time I passed Dean in the bog, he abruptly stopped me. He’d had entirely enough of not knowing who this stranger was in his midst. A slightly built girl with long blonde hair and a pair of Wayfarers in rural Ireland must have been anomaly enough, but to see a face repeatedly in Inverin and not know the whole story was an unpardonable sin. People in Inverin don’t keep to themselves; tacitly, it isn’t allowed. By virtue of the fact that one lives in Inverin, they are automatically a part of a collective consciousness that operates under the assumption that all of its residents are members of the same tribe. And because the Irish are not prone to insinuating themselves upon a stranger, Dean Mulroy chose the colloquial way of introducing himself, which is to say that he cast his eyes skyward and commented on the weather. “Ah, she’s blowin’, all right,” he said standing firmly in my path with his hands on his narrow hips and an even stare. I’d been in Ireland for two months thus far and knew how to respond in the Irish way. I raised my eyes to his dark frame of wavy black hair and met his blue-eyed glare. “She is, yeah,” I said rhetorically.
We next got down to the exchange of names and I learned he already knew where I lived because there is no place to hide in Inverin. A single American female living in a holiday home on the side of the coast road is big news in a town the size of Inverin, but Dean still wanted the unadulterated facts. It took him all of two minutes to invite me to call out the next day for a cup of tea. I knew now that people in Ireland are always “calling out,” which shouldn’t be confused with just showing up, because calling out has a much bigger purpose. I turned his invitation over and jumped to what any American would immediately ask. “I’d love to,” I told him, “what time would you like me to come?” Dean looked at me for a heavy, pregnant pause, with a brow so knotted I thought surely it hurt. “Don’t put a time on it,” he said. “Come when it suits you.”
I had two thoughts as I continued my walk through the bog that day, and the first was about the weather. For a population that revolves around the vagaries of the weather, it’s easy to see why the weather in Ireland is personified as she. It’s because she is pervasive and dictates everything, so when someone in Ireland uses the word “she,” everyone knows what is meant. The second thought on my mind was how authentic and unselfconscious the Irish are as a culture. If I extended an invitation to anyone for the following day, I’d be ready and my house would be perfect, but that is not the way it is with the Irish. Dean’s lack of concern over the timing of my arrival demonstrated the open-armed way the Irish receive anyone: there is always an open door, no matter the time, and they are ever at the ready to put the kettle on and offer a cup of tea.
It was a thirty minute walk from my front door to Dean’s rented house, deep in the bog in Inverin. I took my time the next day sauntering through what came to be a habitual pattern along a quiet gravel path through turf and brittle bracken. When I arrived, it was two o’clock in the afternoon and I found Dean in his kitchen, freshly shaved and waiting. He held a guitar on his lap, looked up when I appeared, and said in a matter of course, “I’ve been singing me heart out all day.” We exchanged personal histories and drank tea until our heads were swimming. Dean told me about the dolmen that lay in the bog behind us and said he’d show me himself, but he wanted it to be my own discovery. He next told me that the ancient graveyard down the dirt road across from my house was haunted. “Tis a brave soul, it would be, who would walk that road at night,” he said fixing me with a challenging stare.
“Have you ever done it? “ I couldn’t help but ask.
“I have,” he returned, “but no woman would want to.”
The sky turned the color of bruised eggplant, releasing a torrent of mercurial pelting rain. Running for dear life to Dean’s tan colored van, it took my full strength to pull the door closed against the rousing wind before we rattled the bog road to my house. Dean leaned his head through the window in the stinging rain, shouting as I ran to the shelter of my porch. “I’d call you, but I’ve cut meself off; too many late nights on the drink running me phone bill up. Unless it’s planning on bumping into me on one of your bog-trots, you are, you’re going to have to call in to me.” I told Dean surely I would then ducked safely inside.
Later that night, after the rain let up, I put on a light coat and stepped outside my door. I stood in the darkened stillness until I’d made up my mind once and for all. There are no streetlights that far out in Inverin, but I had the light of a waxing moon. Cautiously, I crossed the coast road. I heard the gravel scratching beneath my steps and put one foot in front of the other in an intonation that sounded like a military march. A slight wind blew like a whisper then rushed forcefully, just enough to startle me before it ebbed. I thought I felt a chill on the back of my neck and wondered if it was the night air or just my fear. Down the lane I continued, until the graveyard loomed on the hill to my left. Granite tombstones in varying heights crowned with Celtic crosses glowed eerily in the moonlight. It was a graveyard forever marking time, halfway down a lane all but forgotten. I walked steadily, not wanting to hesitate, not daring to stop; only wanting to walk the lane at night because Dean Mulroy had said no woman would want to.
http://www.clairefullerton.com
November 3, 2015
Notes on Pat Conroy's Birthday Celebration
It’s a long way from Southern California to Beaufort, South Carolina, but there was only one way to attend my favorite author’s 70th birthday celebration. In my mind, Pat Conroy is the king of American literary letters; his gift of lyrical language and sense of place is unparalleled, and I’d have rather flown across the country to meet him than anyone else in the world. Oh, I hemmed and hawed and weighed and measured to exhaustive degrees before I remembered life is short and I should grab onto its once in a lifetime opportunities with both fists. So I booked my passage and accommodation, bought my event tickets online, and attended what was billed as the University of South Carolina’s “Pat Conroy at 70” celebration. It was a three day celebration of Conroy’s work, beginning with the movie screening of “The Great Santini” followed by two days of panel discussions from writers touched and influenced by Conroy’s rarified way with language and prose, and ending with a birthday cake the shape of the shrimp boat “The Miss Lila,” featured in Conroy’s masterpiece, “The Prince of Tides.”
As a writer who hails from the South, I was in my element, yet hadn’t expected to feel this way. All around me were vibrant, chatty book lovers and Southern writers so lit with joy and enthusiasm at the thrill of simply being in this literary icon’s presence that it was like being in an ecstatic beehive with a jury of my peers. In this day and age of instant gratification and technological immediacy, book lovers are an esoteric lot, but you wouldn’t have thought this in the crowd assembled to celebrate Pat Conroy; it wouldn’t have crossed your mind that there was anything else going on in the world outside of the event, and if it had, it wouldn’t have mattered. Within the walls of the University of South Carolina Beaufort Center for the Arts, an overarching spirit of what I can only describe as pure love radiated from pillar to post, connecting each person one to the next in an inclusive, tribal embrace. And there in the midst sauntered Pat Conroy, humble, bemused, self-effacing, and accessible, comporting himself as if three hundred of his closest friends had gathered in his living room.
The thing about book people is nothing else lights their fire in quite the same way as a good book. A good book opens interior doors, calls things by name, and grants permission for the reader to take the risk of feeling outside of the parameters of self-consciousness and vulnerability. A good book tells us we are not alone in this world, that it’s okay to be human, and that there is safety in numbers. I think this is why so many flocked to bask in the glow of Conroy: to many he is the bearer of the cross; the keeper of the literary flame; the way shower who has mastered the art of storytelling in such a way that it suggests there is rhyme and reason to this business of living.
What struck me the most about Pat Conroy is his humility. He is the kind of guy who is baffled by his own impact. He possessed a kind of wide-eyed, child-like wonder at the realization that so many came to attend a three-day conference in his honor. And because he is sincerely interested in writers and what they have to say, he sat in the audience of every panel discussion with rapt attention, as if it were he who had something to learn from the authors who read from their works and expounded on his virtues.
I can’t recall what I expected from the weekend celebration of Pat Conroy’s life, for it has now been supplanted by what actually transpired. All I remember was the demanding, inexplicable lure of wanting to be a part of it because I sensed, in some dramatic fashion, that there would be something for me to take away, to pocket in the archives of my own literary journey that I would value forever. And I will. I will value forever the fact that Pat Conroy has not only shown me what is possible with the written word, but what is possible should one find themselves with the distinction of wearing the mantle of fame and acclaim. Pat Conroy exudes docile grace and a generosity of spirit that takes him outside of himself and into the arena of an inclusive, generous camaraderie with all people. He stands not only as an example of how to comport oneself as a writer, but as an example of dignity and decency in how to be a human being.
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http://www.clairefullerton.com/
As a writer who hails from the South, I was in my element, yet hadn’t expected to feel this way. All around me were vibrant, chatty book lovers and Southern writers so lit with joy and enthusiasm at the thrill of simply being in this literary icon’s presence that it was like being in an ecstatic beehive with a jury of my peers. In this day and age of instant gratification and technological immediacy, book lovers are an esoteric lot, but you wouldn’t have thought this in the crowd assembled to celebrate Pat Conroy; it wouldn’t have crossed your mind that there was anything else going on in the world outside of the event, and if it had, it wouldn’t have mattered. Within the walls of the University of South Carolina Beaufort Center for the Arts, an overarching spirit of what I can only describe as pure love radiated from pillar to post, connecting each person one to the next in an inclusive, tribal embrace. And there in the midst sauntered Pat Conroy, humble, bemused, self-effacing, and accessible, comporting himself as if three hundred of his closest friends had gathered in his living room.
The thing about book people is nothing else lights their fire in quite the same way as a good book. A good book opens interior doors, calls things by name, and grants permission for the reader to take the risk of feeling outside of the parameters of self-consciousness and vulnerability. A good book tells us we are not alone in this world, that it’s okay to be human, and that there is safety in numbers. I think this is why so many flocked to bask in the glow of Conroy: to many he is the bearer of the cross; the keeper of the literary flame; the way shower who has mastered the art of storytelling in such a way that it suggests there is rhyme and reason to this business of living.
What struck me the most about Pat Conroy is his humility. He is the kind of guy who is baffled by his own impact. He possessed a kind of wide-eyed, child-like wonder at the realization that so many came to attend a three-day conference in his honor. And because he is sincerely interested in writers and what they have to say, he sat in the audience of every panel discussion with rapt attention, as if it were he who had something to learn from the authors who read from their works and expounded on his virtues.
I can’t recall what I expected from the weekend celebration of Pat Conroy’s life, for it has now been supplanted by what actually transpired. All I remember was the demanding, inexplicable lure of wanting to be a part of it because I sensed, in some dramatic fashion, that there would be something for me to take away, to pocket in the archives of my own literary journey that I would value forever. And I will. I will value forever the fact that Pat Conroy has not only shown me what is possible with the written word, but what is possible should one find themselves with the distinction of wearing the mantle of fame and acclaim. Pat Conroy exudes docile grace and a generosity of spirit that takes him outside of himself and into the arena of an inclusive, generous camaraderie with all people. He stands not only as an example of how to comport oneself as a writer, but as an example of dignity and decency in how to be a human being.
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http://www.clairefullerton.com/
A Writing Life
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