Dear Wanker,
Six months ago, nearly to the day someone broke into my place by crowbarring the French patio doors and stealing my new camera. Last night someone crowbarred the moulding on my car window and then smashed the window in. I think it was you. But if it wasn't, no matter, there are wankers of a certain ilk and you are just one of many.
I hope you enjoyed the one CD you got though I really doubt Sarah McLaughlin is your style. Oh and enjoy the empty Cranberries case. Perhaps you can use it to layout your crack or cocaine. You did get my in-car phone charger but I'm guessing you don't have a phone so if you just grease that thing up you can shove it up your ass. It might stop you from spreading your degenerate shit.
And I really hope you enjoy the lime Tictacs. They're only available in the US, you know, so use them to disguise your dog breath laden with ketosis from not enough food. Hell, keep the plastic knife and fork and use them to pretend you're actually having a meal. And since you took the tiny tube of toothpaste, you can brush away that dogbreath afterwards.
I'm sure the wee bag of rock salt came in handy. I don't need it. You've already salted my wounds. I'm sure the tampon will come in handy too. Stick it up your nose when it starts bleeding from too much coke. Or use it to absorb any blood that comes spurting out from your bungled attempt at sticking a needle in your veins.
I'd wish you the karma you deserve for violating my space and my possessions and causing me needless costs that I can ill-afford. I know you don't care and that you've already sold your mother and anyone else near and dear to you. I'd wish you the karma you deserve but I think you're already experiencing it. Instead, I wish you healing and the ability to find some semblance of a life and a meaning for existence besides being a vacuous repository for substances and a canker on society's ass. I wish you will feel regret for what you did and learn to help others.
I wish you healing, but if I run into you I'm going to take that crowbar and shove it up your ass sideways, then feed you the broken bits of glass.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Stones of Ireland: II
We travelled to the Cliffs of Moher in northwestern Ireland, the tallest in Europe. Rugged and impressive, they remained formidable to drive up and to look down. The sheer audacity of Kinbane castle in Northern Ireland built down a very steep hill right on the promontory of the North Sea kept it impenetrable for years. Out near Kinvara and in the Burren were the Ailwee Caves, great underground caverns carved millennia ago by a subterranean river, fossils and minerals sparkling like the realm of Hades. Cool, pitch black except when they turned on the lights, and a den for extinct European brown bears, their might was in their endurance and solidity.
The Burren was as impressive in its way as the Giants Causeway. At some point in the ancient past a mountain or volcano erupted, spewing tons of flowing mud down mountain and hill. Eventually it solidified into grey rock but still has that look of a mud flow. Smooth in spots, rippled in others, there are dips that are treacherous to walk over but where wind and rain have blown deposits of soil over the centuries. There in those protected trenches are a myriad of plant life, some unique to that area.
The Burren butts up to a rugged shoreline near Kinvara, but on the higher hills it is barren stone, short shrubs and the tiny plants that grow in their coves. Everywhere through this area are stone walls and hill forts that were stacked by hand centuries ago. In fact the stone walls are abundant throughout Ireland but rule supreme in the Burren. The stones might be stacked on their edges, resting against each other, placed flat on top of each other, or made with their widest sides facing out. Some are mortared, and they are ageless. They could have been built a week ago or a thousand years ago. They were used as natural boundaries, pens for cattle and sheep and as fortifications. I’ve been told that they now work at protecting species of flora and fauna throughout the emerald isle, working as borders where invasive species don’t encroach.
Upon the Burren with its hard, alien looking surface, unable to really support any crop, somehow people eked out a life, for centuries. And topping it was Poulnabrone Dolmen, a passage tomb made of four giant slabs of stone with a fifth resting atop them like a table. You can look through beneath the table stone, from one world perhaps to the next. It has stood for over 5,000 years, a part of every person’s life who lived upon the Burren.
All lands have stone in one form or another. Rock is the foundation of our world from its magma core to the volcanic eruptions and tectonic shifts that show our planet is alive. From sand and pebble to rock and boulder, stones have always been there to support and shelter. The Irish reuse the stones from any old building torn down, reworking it into something new.
The strong sense of the history of the stones, from the monasteries and castles to the cemetery tombs and headstones, to the walls and hill forts, they all spoke of a true Irish intimacy with stone. There is history, life and death. There is art, utilitarian purpose and mystery. And most of all, there is community; thousand of years of life with each person using what had come before, the ruins or the dead not forgotten but integrated into continuing family rituals. Ireland truly taught me the endurance of time and of stories shown in its stone, its very foundation.
The Burren was as impressive in its way as the Giants Causeway. At some point in the ancient past a mountain or volcano erupted, spewing tons of flowing mud down mountain and hill. Eventually it solidified into grey rock but still has that look of a mud flow. Smooth in spots, rippled in others, there are dips that are treacherous to walk over but where wind and rain have blown deposits of soil over the centuries. There in those protected trenches are a myriad of plant life, some unique to that area.
The Burren butts up to a rugged shoreline near Kinvara, but on the higher hills it is barren stone, short shrubs and the tiny plants that grow in their coves. Everywhere through this area are stone walls and hill forts that were stacked by hand centuries ago. In fact the stone walls are abundant throughout Ireland but rule supreme in the Burren. The stones might be stacked on their edges, resting against each other, placed flat on top of each other, or made with their widest sides facing out. Some are mortared, and they are ageless. They could have been built a week ago or a thousand years ago. They were used as natural boundaries, pens for cattle and sheep and as fortifications. I’ve been told that they now work at protecting species of flora and fauna throughout the emerald isle, working as borders where invasive species don’t encroach.
Upon the Burren with its hard, alien looking surface, unable to really support any crop, somehow people eked out a life, for centuries. And topping it was Poulnabrone Dolmen, a passage tomb made of four giant slabs of stone with a fifth resting atop them like a table. You can look through beneath the table stone, from one world perhaps to the next. It has stood for over 5,000 years, a part of every person’s life who lived upon the Burren.
All lands have stone in one form or another. Rock is the foundation of our world from its magma core to the volcanic eruptions and tectonic shifts that show our planet is alive. From sand and pebble to rock and boulder, stones have always been there to support and shelter. The Irish reuse the stones from any old building torn down, reworking it into something new.
The strong sense of the history of the stones, from the monasteries and castles to the cemetery tombs and headstones, to the walls and hill forts, they all spoke of a true Irish intimacy with stone. There is history, life and death. There is art, utilitarian purpose and mystery. And most of all, there is community; thousand of years of life with each person using what had come before, the ruins or the dead not forgotten but integrated into continuing family rituals. Ireland truly taught me the endurance of time and of stories shown in its stone, its very foundation.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
The Stones of Ireland: I
In October, 2007 I travelled to Ireland, a place I had wanted to visit for years. I’m not sure why exactly as there is no Irish in my blood and other countries have more and bigger castles. It was more the sense of rolling green hills and the land of faery, a romantic notion perhaps.
We circumnavigated Ireland in two weeks, going north, then west, then south and east, starting and ending in Dublin. There were some key sites we wanted to see but then let ourselves be guided by road signs and guide books.
This was a mostly outdoor expedition involving trips to old castles and monasteries and some cemeteries, as well as driving through the changing landscape. The history of the architecture and how it had changed over time was fascinating, small enclosures and Viking settlements built over with increasingly sophisticated fortifications or ecclesiastical buildings.
Newgrange and Knowth were amazing in that these structures were built over 5,000 years ago and are older than the pyramids of Egypt. Some of the passage tombs fell apart or were scavenged for stones for other buildings and roads. Many of these barrows have a corridor or an interior built with slabs of stone, then dirt is mounded over. Newgrange's corbeled stone roof has never leaked in 5,000 years. The hummocked hills gave rise to the tales of the homes of the sidhe and the Tuatha de Danan.
Other barrows were built over with time, dirt being added, and villages or cattle settling upon them. Some of their original use is a mystery but some contain bones or human ashes. Others may have been ceremonial or religious structures. Newgrange is the most impressive as it was built upon a hill and the outer wall lined with white quartz (this was rebuilt in more recent times and there is argument as to how it may actually have been placed), which would be striking in the bright sun and visible for miles around.
Giants Causeway on the north coat of Northern Ireland was a natural structure of basalt rock that had been rapidly heated and cooled millennia ago causing large octagonal pillars to form. They break apart in slabs, maintaining their structure and can be walked over like steps. Some form natural seats or chairs. There is a section called the organ because it looks like a giant pipe organ in the hill. There seems to only be that one area in Ireland that has such unique stones.
The castles and monasteries abounded as well as the very old cemetery of Monasterboice with the millennium old tower (imagine Rapunzel) that they believe was used for storage, sanctuary and watch for marauders. Some of the carvings on pillars still showed wonderful detail; leaves, faces both animal and human, various designs. Some of the blocks of stone seemed to have been placed with a sense of tone, dark and light stones alternating, or smaller pebbles placed in the mortar between larger stones.
Over the centuries many of these castles and churches fell into ruin but they were not abandoned. Tombs and graves pepper every place. The oldest monastery floors are nothing but tomb after tomb. There is nothing to do but walk over the bones of the past. Even walls have been taken over, a person interred into the very foundation and a plaque sealing them in. The oldest readable stones go to the 1700s. Older than that, the words become too worn away, by feet and weather. There are graves dating over a thousand years in some cases, right up to months of the current date.
Some graveyards have been held by the ruling families or clans and there might be dozens of McDonnells buried in one area such as Ballycastle. Other graves are family plots and in the more modern ones, configured by a low fence, a bar, about six inches from the ground. These more modern plots have pebbled glass or stone in different combinations of colour and some flowers, real or not. Some are very individual. Headstones often denote many generations entombed in the plot, going back a century or more. At one Benedictine monastery there was a family of four cleaning and smoothing the stones of their family’s plot on a sunny day.
Continued tomorrow (images of Ireland can be seen by going back through my posts. If you can't find them, let me know.)
We circumnavigated Ireland in two weeks, going north, then west, then south and east, starting and ending in Dublin. There were some key sites we wanted to see but then let ourselves be guided by road signs and guide books.
This was a mostly outdoor expedition involving trips to old castles and monasteries and some cemeteries, as well as driving through the changing landscape. The history of the architecture and how it had changed over time was fascinating, small enclosures and Viking settlements built over with increasingly sophisticated fortifications or ecclesiastical buildings.
Newgrange and Knowth were amazing in that these structures were built over 5,000 years ago and are older than the pyramids of Egypt. Some of the passage tombs fell apart or were scavenged for stones for other buildings and roads. Many of these barrows have a corridor or an interior built with slabs of stone, then dirt is mounded over. Newgrange's corbeled stone roof has never leaked in 5,000 years. The hummocked hills gave rise to the tales of the homes of the sidhe and the Tuatha de Danan.
Other barrows were built over with time, dirt being added, and villages or cattle settling upon them. Some of their original use is a mystery but some contain bones or human ashes. Others may have been ceremonial or religious structures. Newgrange is the most impressive as it was built upon a hill and the outer wall lined with white quartz (this was rebuilt in more recent times and there is argument as to how it may actually have been placed), which would be striking in the bright sun and visible for miles around.
Giants Causeway on the north coat of Northern Ireland was a natural structure of basalt rock that had been rapidly heated and cooled millennia ago causing large octagonal pillars to form. They break apart in slabs, maintaining their structure and can be walked over like steps. Some form natural seats or chairs. There is a section called the organ because it looks like a giant pipe organ in the hill. There seems to only be that one area in Ireland that has such unique stones.
The castles and monasteries abounded as well as the very old cemetery of Monasterboice with the millennium old tower (imagine Rapunzel) that they believe was used for storage, sanctuary and watch for marauders. Some of the carvings on pillars still showed wonderful detail; leaves, faces both animal and human, various designs. Some of the blocks of stone seemed to have been placed with a sense of tone, dark and light stones alternating, or smaller pebbles placed in the mortar between larger stones.
Over the centuries many of these castles and churches fell into ruin but they were not abandoned. Tombs and graves pepper every place. The oldest monastery floors are nothing but tomb after tomb. There is nothing to do but walk over the bones of the past. Even walls have been taken over, a person interred into the very foundation and a plaque sealing them in. The oldest readable stones go to the 1700s. Older than that, the words become too worn away, by feet and weather. There are graves dating over a thousand years in some cases, right up to months of the current date.
Some graveyards have been held by the ruling families or clans and there might be dozens of McDonnells buried in one area such as Ballycastle. Other graves are family plots and in the more modern ones, configured by a low fence, a bar, about six inches from the ground. These more modern plots have pebbled glass or stone in different combinations of colour and some flowers, real or not. Some are very individual. Headstones often denote many generations entombed in the plot, going back a century or more. At one Benedictine monastery there was a family of four cleaning and smoothing the stones of their family’s plot on a sunny day.
Continued tomorrow (images of Ireland can be seen by going back through my posts. If you can't find them, let me know.)
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
The Black Hole
I'm not sure any of this will make sense. I have three blogs: Wordpress, here and Live Journal. I recently stopped posting to Live Journal because although it was more the community aspect and personal side of life I found it wasn't communication. Many people post/read to keep track of each other but how much can you read about one person's theses, knitting, angst, writing, etc. every day?
At least it does let you know what someone you know is doing and you can check in from time to time. But for communication, it didn't work very well. Few people would ever respond to my posts, not that responses were required most times, as I didn't respond to everyone else's.
But when I asked a question, even a serious question, I would only get a few comments and fewer rarely answering the question. Of the thirty or so people supposedly reading my journal, I believe at least 5-10 read periodically or not at all. The others are fairly steady. I'd sometimes post questions to their posts and would likewise receive no response when I asked a question.
When I decided I was wasting my time and would go back to writing in a paper journal and I posted this to the site; no one commented. Which told me everyone is too busy, or no one cared or no one read. Good reasons to stop. Two people wanted to know where my other blogs were and that was it. So communication, no. One way info blurbs, sure.
I have enough to do anyways and three blogs is a bit too much for me. I repeat myself, like a creaky wheel. Most of us aren't that witty in the day to day and then it becomes boring.
But then perhaps I'm in a vortex. I've sent emails to people and received no answer. I've called people and received no answer. Not everyone, mind you, but many things and many time sensitive questions. Enough that I've begun to wonder if my communications are broken. It's a very odd feeling, feeling like one is in a black hole.
As a pagan, I put out calls (so to speak) to the gods (a general concept with more explanation needed) and there is no answer there. Soon I'll pull the plug there too. One last week to get some sort of positive (as opposed to negative--I have enough of that) response or I'll walk away. I'm not a catnip toy after all; to be toyed with when it amuses one and forgotten the rest of the time.
At least it does let you know what someone you know is doing and you can check in from time to time. But for communication, it didn't work very well. Few people would ever respond to my posts, not that responses were required most times, as I didn't respond to everyone else's.
But when I asked a question, even a serious question, I would only get a few comments and fewer rarely answering the question. Of the thirty or so people supposedly reading my journal, I believe at least 5-10 read periodically or not at all. The others are fairly steady. I'd sometimes post questions to their posts and would likewise receive no response when I asked a question.
When I decided I was wasting my time and would go back to writing in a paper journal and I posted this to the site; no one commented. Which told me everyone is too busy, or no one cared or no one read. Good reasons to stop. Two people wanted to know where my other blogs were and that was it. So communication, no. One way info blurbs, sure.
I have enough to do anyways and three blogs is a bit too much for me. I repeat myself, like a creaky wheel. Most of us aren't that witty in the day to day and then it becomes boring.
But then perhaps I'm in a vortex. I've sent emails to people and received no answer. I've called people and received no answer. Not everyone, mind you, but many things and many time sensitive questions. Enough that I've begun to wonder if my communications are broken. It's a very odd feeling, feeling like one is in a black hole.
As a pagan, I put out calls (so to speak) to the gods (a general concept with more explanation needed) and there is no answer there. Soon I'll pull the plug there too. One last week to get some sort of positive (as opposed to negative--I have enough of that) response or I'll walk away. I'm not a catnip toy after all; to be toyed with when it amuses one and forgotten the rest of the time.
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