random reminiscing

I had a lovely dinner last night with 6 random people from my Queen’s days... random but in a good way! It’d been five years (almost to the day) since I’d talked at any length to most of them so we had a proper catch up and put the world to right.... everything from cheesy jokes and legendary quotes... to conversations about the beauty/struggle of ‘doing life’ with the people around us. In a letter my friend sent organising the dinner, she said it was to “mark these past five years... and freely look ahead with hope and faith for the next five years, longing for more of what God has for us all and this land...”

We’ve all gone in different directions, from designing sewage works, to teaching physics, to training to be a minister, to the Belfast music scene, to Newry solicitor, to getting married/engaged, to journalism, Kansas and back again, (to *ahem* still being a student)... but it was great to just touch base, even if it was a bit of an unlikely group of people round a dinner table!

Here’s to the next five :)

unremembered skies

This got me thinking about memory/memories... In my psychology degree (which seems so long ago now), I had whole module on cognition that looked at all the processes of memory and recall, but looking back it all seemed a little reductionist.

Marilynne Robinson writes that ‘memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it’.
Sometimes that seems true for me about my memories of Nigeria. However good the memories are, they are sometimes tinged with a sense of loss and many painful goodbyes. Sometimes I think that many of my memories (especially as a child) are shaped by photos, but we usually don’t take photos of the depressing days, so does this give an inaccurate record of what we remember?

This is one of my favourite family photos from our early days in the south of Nigeria. It must have been a Sunday because in those days my sister and I only wore dresses (and shoes for that matter) on a Sunday. My dad’s so skinny too... when we returned from Nigeria after the first two years my aunt cried when she saw my dad because he was so thin! Guess I blinked. And yes, I looked like a boy... blame it on my mum’s haircutting... she says it was so short because of the heat, but seriously, I was called ‘fine boy’ in the market for about 3 years of my life... or else I needed my ears pierced like all other Nigerian baby girls...
--
Or is it the forgetting, but not wanting to that brings the sense of loss? Dylan Thomas writes...

"My tears are like the quiet drift

Of petals from some magic rose;

And all my grief flows from the rift

Of unremembered skies and snows."

And Robinson again on remembering people we love...
“There is so little to remember of anyone – an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.”

Anyway, back to the short term memory cramming...

bittersweet dichotomy

A few years ago, I had a 5 day trip to the States for a friend's wedding / to see another friend (the joy of having friends all over the world, but rarely seeing them is the bittersweet dichotomy of an mk's world). One of the random memories I have when the 3 of us met up after over 4 years apart was that we were all wearing the same kind of shoes... i'm not sure if that was to be attributed to globilisation, good taste or just pure coincidence... but I bought a new pair of shoes this week to replace the ones i've been wearing for the last 3/4 years of my life that were about to die (about time!)... and the memory made me smile. i couldn't bear to break tradition...

anyway, here's to distant friends... I wonder if the 3 of us will be on the same continent again before this pair die?

spontaneity

I loved the spontaneity of yesterday. My sister and I caught the train into town, met some cousins and other friends to watch the st patrick's day parade (which was pretty lame) and got lunch. Then we decided to head north and loads of us ended up in ballintoy harbour and white park bay and watched the amazing sunset while walking the beach, before headed to my aunt's for irish stew and guinness & a bit of craic... a proper holiday feeling, hanging out with my family & co... hard to beat :)

it's days like yesterday that i'd miss if i decide to jump ship to NZ to find a job....

have you ever seen...

I love sunsets. For 10 years of my life, we could watch the sunset at the back of our garden through the silhouette of eucalyptus trees...I miss that view. I'm getting to see loads at the minute because the sun's always setting as I'm leaving work these days and I drive mostly in the direction it's setting. In my unrealistic world I think I'd like to live on the western side of a land mass (odd that I've thought about this I know...) because sunsets over ocean are just the best combination ... ie west donegal or the western cape of south africa being my 2 experiences of this ocean/sunset combo. Anyway, here's a poem...

The Sun by Mary Oliver

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea, and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere,
in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?