Where does the heart lie?

Mount Etna, July 2008

and where does my heart lie at all and it is quite yeatsian being a veritable foul rag and bone shop of all bits and pieces collected over the years this and that experience this and that meeting of this and that person and as i age i perceive that a certain cynicism is growing within that things are simply not as they seem that my heart has collected so much rubbish and yet it is that rubbish which has made me which has cut me out as the person or character that i am and i feel singularly diffuse as i type these words singularly lacking a centre singularly like the hedgehog rather than the fox that great metaphor used by the ancient philosophers and especially by one of my favourites in the history of ideas in the writings of the great isaiah berlin oh yes i feel like the hedgehog rolling in the field and picking up every little thing in my spines collecting this and that and the other and all of these sundry little pieces are collected in my heart even if they do fall away over time as i move on in life and all of the things i have collected and some of these things are bits and pieces of this and that and the other person and i wonder truly what it has been all about and then a good friend's remark about the comment made by his mother nearing her death as to what the whole project called life was all about at all and that too has stuck in my heart along with her weary 

Mount Etna smoulders... July 2008

wise old face woman of great wisdom and woman of great love and then my own mother with her memory wiped clean wiped so clean that almost nothing is left... and then all those existential things that weigh upon my shoulders as i age and what is the mind then just some vague or not so vague metaphor for some kind of consciousness emerging from the matter that is the brain and am i no more than a collocation of atoms as russell once described the human animal and human animal is a term i love for when we use human being we are putting so much weight the weight of whole cultures on our creaturely shoulders that i often think we cannot bear poor animal self poor bodily self and within deep within but never as a ghost within a machine for the body is no mere skeletal house for the indwelling of the soul or self or whatever because the body-soul or soul-body is indivisible a continuum for one arises out of the other out of the other arises the totality or rather in and with the other rises the totality of the self... and still i wonder and still the wonder grows as to what it is all about at all and in these christmas times when people rush around like headless chickens looking for this that and the other present for this that and the other thing where lies the heart where lies this heart this rag and bone shop of my soul of my self where lies it all at all at all once it lay on a womanly shoulder safe and yet that once is just that once for the years have faded as have memories of that encounter and yet there is no loneliness here there is no regret for the heart cannot regret its hedgehog ways its hedgehog ways its collecting of this that or the other person over the years all it can do is press on and those beautiful words of jesus that the son of man had no where to lay his head ah maybe he meant that he had nowhere to lay his heart and where is the heart of jesus these christmas times and where is the heart of buddha and where is the heart of vishnu and of every other hindu god and of every single religion under the sun and where is the atheistic heart and the agnostic heart as they are all made of the same crooked wood of humanity...

Pressing on just in spite....

London Bridge, 1999

and still the talk goes on and on and all those voices with their answers ah but there are too many too many answers surely they must know that answers are all so cheap too easily tripping off the tongue too easily summing things up too easily too easily and now the years have slipped in way too quickly way too quickly ró scioptha ar fad as they put nit in Gaelic that other language of my heart that claims my allegiance so often and yes the years seem to be folding in on themselves like dough being kneaded and the image of my mother's knuckles over the years as she rolled out the pastry for this or that loaf of bread and into the mix she was poring weeks and days and months and years and sprinkling the dough with the fruits of her labour and oh she worked so hard so hard to make ends meet and still the image of her weathered knuckles haunt me as i write these words these wee cyphers that dot this screen in an order coming from somewhere in my unconscious and i remember gerard smyth all those years ago sitting in the staff room of my first school greeting me one winter's morning and asking me what was it all about what was it all about at all at all and then how i was taken aback at such a question so early in the morning and i was undone so undone as undone as t.s. eliot's crowd swarming like ants over london bridge a crowd flowed over london bridge i had not known that death had undone so many undone so many and i was undone then that morning with your question gerard as i knew you were getting at the meaning of the whole enterprise we call life and back then i hadn't known that the poor lad had been given a short time to live having had a congenital heart condition since he was a child and no wonder he had asked that question because he was facing the exit door and i type on and and on here and let the words come randomly or as randomly as i can into my mind and thence out onto this screen and my mother is not far from death now either as we look forward to her ninety fifth birthday that she has lasted so long is a miracle beautiful beautiful soul also so constant always so dependable always there strong strong strong soul in a wizened body poor vessel poor weak vessel and i and i i don't know don't know anymore after all after all the books and notes and courses and i like gerard wonder what it is all about and i am moved as i type these words moved by the fragility of things the very brittleness of life and the randomness of it all the randomness the sheer randomness and then the strange theory of chaos so strange that patterns emerge from the chaos patterns and order from the chaos belying randomness what a paradox what a paradox that there is order in randomness and i wonder and i wonder is there randomness in order too and so i write and so i write to rid my soul of the ache of being of the ache the ache of soul ah the soul the soul which cannot be separated ever from the vessel of the body and as i type these cyphers as i type them the words keep coming and i am so convinced that the soul cannot be separated out from the body not for me not for me the cartesian dualistic lie of the  ghost within the machine no no no there is something greater at issue here some new unity of matter and energy of body and soul call it what you want yes call this unity the body-soul or the soul-body you simply cannot have one without the other and i will type these words as i plumb the dark corridors of my labyrinthine self those shadowy passageways of self and i find these words this stream of consciousness the only valuable guiding light through the shadows through the shadows and i follow i follow i follow towards the light at the centre of the chamber like a volume of spermatozoa squirting up the vaginal passageway of the ancient tumulus or womb of time at brú na bóinne or newgrange and like gerard i ask and i ask and i implore i implore all the deep down gods of the psyche of the psyche and my question is on my lips always like gerard what is it all about what is it about at all at all and much more importantly i try i try to be as honest and as sincere and as congruent and as authentic as i possibly can...

and the wind and the rain and the need to connect

Self at Mount Oliver Summer Conference 1996

.... and now something moves something stirs within some ancient primordial instinct perhaps and yet and yet it is more so much more so much more it is as if the strings of the heart are being played by the hands of angels by the hands of angels delicate as the touch of tears as they trickle in the crevices below my sore tired eyes and yes there is indeed a deep down passion struggling to be expressed struggling to reach out and embrace the whole world to embrace all in its elemental primordiality to embrace the rains that lash the windowpanes and the wind that howls to catch the wind as donovan had it in a song of all and now let the music of the soul play on play on play on let the music play on and let it never end until we have shuffled off this mortal coil this mortal coil this brittle house of bones this brittle house of bones and there is so much to be embraced if the spirit is only willing if the heart is at ease with itself if the gut is listened to listened to listened to and this is so much needed today for we all want to go beyond the stress beyond the sturm und drang of life beyond the pain that bites beyond the weight of stones the weight the weight that presses down on little people little people whom i teach these weakest of the weak these brittle reeds in our gentle pool of care and yes this something this something deep within this yearning for union for unity with the centre point of all creation with the still point of being with that strong ontological centre of gravity that pulls us like little planets to its supporting sun and still the tears come and still the tears trickle for this life was meant to be experienced deeply deeply deeply and yes there is a deep down well of wisdom from which we may drink and all is a going inward deeply an exploration of the caverns and passageways of what it means to be alive to be truly human to be caring to be caring of others yes oh so very much caring of others especially those significant others and even the insignificant broken people who cross our paths on a daily basis and yes this desire is deep within this mystical desire for the great unity of being and these words cascade out looking for shape but like the rivulets that stream from a larger waterfall of being and these little streams are enlivening and nourishing and sustaining and hope giving and thirst slaking and there is more so much more like the music of bob dylon and that of leonard cohen a music a deep music a music a music which seeps into the soul like water into the parched soil like water slaking the thirst of the parched soil and so the music comes the music comes through their old cracked voices but the music the music is so young so young while the voices are so old and we are told we are told that the music is eternal that the music is eternal that it will go on and on and on and there will be young voices who will come and take up the tune and carry it on and carry it on and on and on and still the wind beats wild on my window pane and the rain washes down the glass in healing rivulets and these old eyes water and i listen and i listen to the music of the spheres somewhere within...