I sit down on a stone by the R336 in the Maan Valley. The asphalt is quiet. Along the side of the road, one sheep walks. Thin black legs wobble slightly on the grey rocks. I take a sip of coffee from an orange mug. Brown giants – Maamturk watch me gently. A moment ago I have doubted the sense of being. Now, I contemplate a magical or ordinary fragment that is just happening.
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A few years ago, I got an idea for a book about middle-aged women who consistently work with passion. In Ireland’s humid and changeable climate, I met many self-satisfied women, and they made me love my graying hair. I made interviews to find out how they keep fire in their hearts and shape into action. However, when I wrote seven chapters, I locked them in a file for four years. Not because I didn’t want to continue with this idea, but simply because I didn’t organize my time to work on the book.
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There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing
Alfred Wainwright
The force of the wind on the Beaufort scale is nine, a little tree knocked over on some balcony in Galway. I prepare sandwiches and pour coffee into tourist mugs. We put on hoodies, jackets, hats, I take gloves, even it is May. Dauntless sneakers are ready for the adventure. The songs by Polish band T.Love sound in the car, so memories mix with the N59 road, and beige hills with newborn sheep hug their mums on the fields. Long before Clifden, we turn right to the Connemara National Park. The direction is three beautiful beaches.
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The world is full of magic, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper
W.B. Yeats
I admit as poet W.B. Yeats wrote. Although sometimes I think that I would hide inside myself, and not to look anymore, or dream. However, life goes on and it does not care about my concepts, plans, and fears. It just wanders and catches my hand with it every day. It gives me flowers on the meadow, charms me with the warm rocks on which I can lie like a lizard with the emerald ocean around. It brings me happiness in the rays that appear only for a few minutes. Do you think May is such a month that reminds us of the magic of life?
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Don’t think, man, what your life might be, otherwise, it wouldn’t be yours.
Czesław Miłosz, The Issa Valley.
Where are you from? – I have heard this question a thousand times in my life. And I always wondered what should I respond: where I come from or where I am currently live? When I lived in Poland, the answer seemed simple, because I was born in this country. Although I landed in the world in Warsaw and after years I moved to Wrocław.
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When I walk along the main thoroughfare of the city of Galway, a huge seagull flies over my head. Then I feel that not only people live in our city. Until yesterday, I had no idea that taking fallen leaves out of the park can destroy the ecosystem. And what exactly the animals in Galway need?
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The third lockdown in Ireland lasted almost half a year. We could only move to five kilometers. Recently, the restrictions have been relaxed a bit, and we are allowed to move within one county. Missing Connemara, I could finally visit her. On April 16, the afternoon had a warm gray color, and we went with friends to cut my Birthday cake on the hills.
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Has spring left Ireland? It was last seen in Berlin, Wrocław and Aleksandrów Kujawski. In Galway, the spring left its yellow sneakers, I found them lying near the river in wild garlic leaves. They fit in my feet perfectly, so I laced up my long laces and set off in search of my lost spring.
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“Understanding Racism and Building Allyship” – the Zoom meeting for Wave Makers of Galway 2020, and “Anti-racism – the change starts in the body” – workshop by the new visions became for me another motivation to look at racial discrimination and also at myself. I am grateful to be on the road to change together with diverse people.
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The morning coffee smells like orange trees in the Doña Elvira square in Seville, although it is mystical gray outside the window. I am sitting on the sofa as on a small tiled bench. Instead of the sounds of water in the fountain, I hear the washing machine. Notebook based on corduroy legs. I can’t turn off poetry because it is my life.
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