The Landscapes of Mortality: Ruaraidh MacThomais (Derick Thomson)

 

Glencoe, our last sunrise

"Jessie Weatherston" Kelso Abbey (I think)

Melrose Grey



So...I have been thinking about mortality, about the brevity of life, and how we are never really finished. Perhaps it is this that drives the very engines of human endeavour. Our time is limited by the span of our lives, like breath upon the mirror. We are mist against a triumphant sun, here but briefly, then consumed by time. Dust in the wind...

Derick S. Thomson, Gaelic writer and poet, professor of Celtic at University of Glasgow, died yesterday at the age of 90. The New English-Gaelic Dictionary he wrote (published by GAIRM in 1981) is one of my treasured possessions. He was one of the foremost Gaelic poets of his time, and his influence continues to this day.

"A chionn 's gu bheil am bruadar sgoilte
cha chuir mi mo chridhe air cluasaig,
cha chunnt mi na h-eoin bhreaca
a chionn 's gu bheil an nead creachte."

Since the dream is cleft
I will not put my heart on the pillow,
I will not count the brindled birds
since the nest is raided.

From the poem A CHIONN 'S GU BHEIL by Ruaraidh MacThomais

Cianalas: Missing Scotland...Tillidh Mi Gu Alba

Abbotsford, Borders, with red red roses

Edinburgh Sky with a patch of sunlit green

Caisteal Urquhart, Bratach na h-Alba, agus Loch Nis

Maybe it's cianalas, that divine homesickness of the Gael, but I feel homesick for Scotland. So I thought to post some not-too-good photos to remind me of where we were, and where I want to return. Been revising the 30-year-old novel for the bazillionth time. The one about Skye and music and love....Cheesy, but each time it's better. Practice, practice, practice. And I have to go back to see all the places we missed, and the places in my story, and all the castles. Like for two months or something...

"Tillidh mi dhachaidh...cha chaidil mi gun till mi do mo ghraidh." Runrig, Play Gaelic

On Writing...Or Just Because I Have a Computer Doesn't Mean I Can Write

Writing. I happened to look back over a book I was writing a couple of years ago called "The Island", the story of one James (Seumas) Mackinnon, thirty-four and a bachelor, living on the Island of Skye (an t-Eilean Sgitheanach), around Cruard on the Sleite penninsula: writer, poet, musician, Gael, and brooding farmer, &tc. And a young lady named Julia Herron who comes to the Island for the wedding of her father, and bla,bla,bla, and all of the predictable shite that occurs before they can be together. It might be a good story--I still think it is, as a story itself, but the writing is horrible.

Of course it is. All of my literary pursuits are the same. Why do I do it then? To torture myself? Because the stories are in me and they must come out? Maybe because I have always been a storyteller, just not a very good one where writing them down goes. Here's an example: (please don't laugh, those few of you who read this silly blog!) This is from the first chapter when James' manuscript, "An t-Eilean ag Eirich" (The Island Rising), has been rejected by a 7th publisher.

"James read the rejection letter a third time and looked out over the water and the brown strand glistening dully under a leaden sky as the morning tide receded from the shore, finding that his current state of mind was at least in agreement with the weather: grey and gloomy. Across the sound he could just glimpse the mainland with the humpy forms of Knoydart’s mountains displaying a forbidding aspect through sheets of misty rain, wreathed in low cloud that continually shifted to reveal first one part of their mass and then another. Fey, he thought. The fog was a Faerie bewilderment, the sleight-of-hand that veiled the Daoine-Sìth from human sight. The Faeries, James knew, conducted their daily business under cover of shadow and mist, and their nightly mischief by darkness and moonlight. So it had always been. On this day, they were convening a gathering amid the hills of Knoydart. Judging by the roiling mass of fog, it would be a large one.



Well, he had expected nothing less, either from the publisher or the Faeries. Like grasping at a handful of eldritch vapour, authorial success had eluded him once again...If ever an experiment had yielded such an unambiguous outcome, James couldn't think of one. His trial-run had concluded pretty much as he'd predicted: getting a major work of historical research published in Scottish Gaelic was about as likely as finding a live salamander in a peat-fire, or a Faerie asleep by one's hearth. Drunk, perhaps, but never asleep."
 
 
And so it goes and so it goes. And that's one of the better bits. The rest of it--all 145 pages of this drivel, is just that: drivel. Sigh. And I had the audacity to think, at the time, that it was pretty clever and witty. Alas, I'm no Jane Austen. I'm not even a good hack-writer.
 
I used to think that I was somewhat clever. When I am in the throes of writing, I have that belief. But as I open up these old files like the old, hidden recesses of my delusional mind, I comprehend that I'm not and probably never will be. I am, as a matter of fact, mediocre at everything. It's the one unyielding, incontrovertible fact of my life, and as I near my retirement, I realize that I will have left nothing but mediocrity behind. Depressing, really...
 

Jane Austen's writing table, at which some of the greatest works of clever, witty, and sardonic literature were written, by hand.

 

 

Emancipation Proclamation, Scottish Style

Free Scotland. Saor Alba. (Taken in Alba, summer 2010)

Below: Just an article to read that I found on Facebook. I thought I'd see if I had the technical skills to add it to a post, so here goes. It's a good piece--reasoned and intelligent--from the Belfast Telegraph.

It's time to get rid of English spongers! - Robert McNeill, Columnists - Belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Bruce at Bannockburn

Another good program to watch is the BBC Alba's story of Winnie Ewing, (in six-parts on youtube) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaXMT_7wmXs ,which gives a good presentation of the SNP from its re-emergence in the 60s and 70s as the  tide of Scottish nationalism swelled and eventually led to a devolved Parliament, and finally, to the SNP's rise to power and the possibility of a free (restored) Scottish nation. No matter what happens in the referendum, the idea of independence for Scotland, and indeed, for Wales, Cornwall, Ireland (all of it), and Man--all the Celtic areas of modern Britain, is one that will never again be buried by those who espouse the "necessity and advantage" of an unholy Union. 

Kaua'i, The Garden Isle, Hawai'i

Sunrise over Kaua'i

The Faerie Tree (inspiration for a story someday...)

Boiling Blue Water at Kilauea Light House

I could not get enough of the ocean--just looking at it roll in, those curving turquoise breakers, endless, extravagant permutations of the simple wave. Kaua'i was astounding--columns of clouds, each lit with sunlight, and rainbows everywhere. I am not a water sort of person as far as playing in it, but I love looking at it and could look and look forever. I love rivers and streams, lochs and lakes and rills. I love the Tweed and the Marias, the Columbia and the Flathead, the Tay and the Avon (Abhainn). The North Atlantic and the Mediterranean and the Pacific. Water...because of what it does to light, and I love light most of all.

Remembering Summer in Montana

My Favorite Lake, Glacier Made

...and again, clarity of water and reflection of sky

Nam Beantainn Ard

Just some reflections on reflections in this darkest time of year, when all is brown and cold and ugly, and no sunlight graces our days...time for resting, but there is no rest for the weary, and after the ice storm and days and days off, it's time to return to work once more. Once more with my armor on, once more unto the fray that is teaching. It was nice to have time to post a few things. And I am ten pages into my thirteen page paper--almost finished! Thank goodness for snow-days!

Pictures of Memory, the Memory of Trees

Eilean Donan, Light on the Water (Solus air an t-uisge)

Cluaranain geal aig Siccar Point

Sheep skull on Leodhas

Just thinking about the summer of 2010 when we were there, in Scotland, and how I long to be there again, forever...aite mo ghaoil. Breath of my life, breath of my being... Thoughts on an icy day...dreams in the darkness.