We left the ones who didnt come with the driver - werent media and didnt
have the map
and it was sad that anyone should be left behind
- apart from that it was great
Labhoise driving - Bronagh and Ali who was badly hungover and unwell but had
to come because he had never seen the Causeway - Donal from Northern Visions
and me with a vague plan
We had a copy of the Tara CD - which I should mention is entirely brilliant
and is sold to raise money for the Tara Solidarity camps and costs 11 quid from
various people - I think the Culturlann has
some - Terri Hooley at Phoenix records will soon I hope
Anyway - its a double CD - tracks diviided into Yin and Yang by a logic
understood by Seano who assembled it
and we played it again and again - its great ! ........I do mean it is REally
good 8-)
We thought we had better try find Ossians Grave - the Neolithic tomb behind
Cushendal
just so as not to be wandering round the Glens completely lost with a
couple of buses and no idea how to find it
we all thought we knew where it was - were all entirely wrong but we found
it by asking people
Labhoise braved a very angry Jack Russel terrier - with teetht that seemed to belong to a much larger creature - to talk to the lady who runs
the guest house at the bottom of the lane and we parked the car in her yard and
dragged our unfit and unwell bodies up the track to the hillside with the stones
John Hewitt is buried here - an Ulster Poet before he was a bar in Donegall
Street
- also a Socialist and a political writer - and a promoter of Regional
Identity over National identities of any kind which seems reasonable enough and
would have avoided a heap of trouble and this was where he chose to be ....
either buried or have his ashes scattered , I have no idea which - but there
is stone and cement beehive thing to mark the spot
we walked around it three times before going inside the stones -
superstitious maybe ...? it just seems polite somehow
Not sure what the others did - but I sat down and leaned against one of
the stones and went off into a fever dream -
Since becoming so involved with the Tara campaign Ive really liked being
in burial places and found them friendly which perhaps sounds morbid but its more the feeling that we are connected
through the dead and though the earth
and that somehow they can move around beneath the earth in ways we cant -
like moles
Donal - the Media Man decided to Film and the three of us talked about Tara
into the machine
- all talking about the subject - all in totally different ways - but we werent disagreeing - just
looking at it from very different angles
Somebody noticed that the sun and moon were both in the sky and right
opposite so that we were in an exact straight line with them
It just added to the feeling we already had of somehow being in the exact right place at the exact right time
Later eating an ice-cream in the carpark at Ballycastle , I realised that
though the sun and the moon were certainly in a straight line with us - they
were so far away that the same would apply wherever you were on the planet
-
and not only when you are leaning on a warm rock in a stone circle on a hillside behind Cushendal
Labhoise said " yes , but it isnt everywhere that anyone would notice it "
which seems probably true enough
We could easily have stayed there all day - or I could anyway
but part of our Mission was at the North Coast -- so we piled back into the car as the day was getting on -
- I wanted to see Dunseverick and Ali had lived all his life in Belfast
without ever seeing the Causeway and didnt intend carrying on like that but we needed fed so we went by Ballycastle and fed ourselves on Ice Cream .
Donal is recent from Dublin and had never seen Tor Head which is a sad
thing as it is quite one of the best places ever and we were very near it - but
we hadnt time after all the lounging around at Ossian's Grave so we headed
across country to Dunseverick
Just a bit further on from the village - the castle is spectacular
or rather the location is . The castle itself now is just mainly a ring of
stones and a couple of wobbly looking turrets covered with perching crows . It
is on a high flat bit of land with steep sides down to crashing rocks below
Gulls swooped all around - and another kind of bird - whitish but not really flying like a gull
but I dont think any photograph could capture how wonderful and
totally vertigo-inducing this place is
maybe with a fisheye lens
A bit like Gormenghast ,the mad castle in the book
Though some of the engravings do go the other way and exaggerate the steepness slightly
Some hill walkers appeared from the West and we asked them
if it was possible to get along the Coast path to the Causeway itself
We knew this coud be done , though not necessarilly at
this time of year / weather / tide / state of repair of path etc
Yes - they said - A brave walk - they said - maybe an hour
so we reckoned that meant it would probably take us about two and Donal was
looking anxiously at the sun disapearing and he had video left unfilmed so after taking photos of each other wrapped in L's Royal Rug we reluctantly got back
into the car and set off to the Causeway - Where we have no intention whatsoever to draw any paralels between the
state-sponsored vandalism being perpetrated at Tara and any
controversial Visitor Centre or anything about dodgy relationships betwen
Politicians and Party supporters - not at all
We DID intend to draw attention to the fact that though Tara is the Mythical and perhaps Spiritual centre of Ireland - and the Archaeology shows how special this valley has been in many different Ages - the Irish
Government has never asked for it to be made a World Heritage Site
which would of course involve having to look after it -
and to paint a large banner saying " Tara for World Heritage Site " or
something - drape it across the Causeway and get great photos of it
I had packed the banner - the paints and the brushes - they were in the
boot of the car
but I hadnt told anyone else that that was what my huge amount of luggage
was
and it entirely went out of my mind
The Causeway was brilliant and even more so as the sun went down - the
people drifted off home - the waves got higher - the light shone silver on the
pools left on the tops of the columns the sun dissappeared into the sea and the red glow in the sky behind where the Visitor Centre was became spectacular
and one way and another a brilliant day was had by all ; )
Except that sometime on the way back we were talking about painting and I
remembered that we had paints , brushes and a banner - still unpainted - in the
boot of the car
Labhoise was utterly disgusted - I pleaded Flu
which she didnt seem to impress her much - but I said it was a really good
example of the reason not to rely on one person to remember things - especially
if its me
and the exact reason why we need some sort of a Group
anyway
we have decided that there will be Tara meetings on Saturdays at St Georges
market at 2pm ...probably starting at Mullans Organic egg stall .....then
wafting over to find a quiet table at the Markets end of the market ie/
opposite end to the fish stalls
Not a Big Deal - no Commitee - no Split
but just some way of communicating with each other
not exactly sure what the next plans will be ---
When I got home there was a message from Laoise Kelly who called the Dublin Harp Gathering outside the Dail Eirreann for Tara
She asking if and when we were planning
something for the Causeway
she was asking if we would like her to ask Different Drums to see if they would do something there
I think this would be amazing -
I also know that we would need help with organising something like that -
so - this is something that we will have to figure out - and its finding the right people / person
there isnt a problem that it is Political
South of the border it probably is
.. but here it isnt - or not in a Party Political sense - but in an Eco Political sense perhaps
it is about preserving and respecting the Sacred Places of the Earth
and of course our own relationship with them
other possibilities seem to be opening up too
but I've realised that I can make banners and flyers and this website and that is it !
no trying to organise buses and such - it just isnt possible
and not something Im any good at ...but we
have decided that there will be Tara meetings on Saturdays at St Georges market
at 2pm ...starting at AnneMarie Mullans organic egg stall .....then wafting over
to find a quiet table at the Markets end of the market ie/ opposite end to the
fish stall
and try to figure out ways to take this onwards .....
...... both in Support of Tara - and to celebrate our own places here
,,,,,,,,,,, which is - in a way - the same thing -
