02 March 2006

I don't think I've got the cold out of my bones since I got back to Europe. My mind is drifting back now to the call that I got from Elkie (littlefish) and Jason (Blowfish) at the New Year when I was still basking in the sun and Amsterdam was even more lashed with snow and cold wind than it was today. I've been trying to free my mind up in some way or to at least get a grip on how the events of the last month have changed me. I know that it is fundamental but I haven't quite grasped it. I've been wanting to get some rhythm back in my life, get this blog started, but everything seems arhythm and discord at present. I read Aubade over and over, John Donne, Joyce, winter, night and mortality. I try to steer clear of any ideas of "moving on" and "closure", better to keep still, leave it bleeding and let the air get to it. At the moment it's still more breakdown than break through. And still the snow.

"A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.. "