March 15, 2007
Bloody Mary
"Religion has always played a significant role, albeit an often violent one here." Martin said, as he stared ahead into the cloudy horizon, with both hands calmly on the bus's steering wheel.
"Ireland" he continued, "Has been on the striking end of the whip through many religious and political conversions through the centuries."
The sun smeared a streak of pale light through the thin clouds on the flat western horizon.
"After all, the drink many of you have drank after particularly festive nights - a Bloody Mary - was a name given to Mary, the Queen of England, by the Irish in the 1550's. It was not a term of endarment. At least not if you were a Protestant in Ireland at that time."
The bus rode on it's pneumatic suspension quietly over the cracks in the wet asphalt as Kilarney approached in the dim afternoon. I listened to Martin narrate another tale of his country's history, and the strings Ireland has for so long had attached to it; pulling it back and forth between beliefs.
Martin's lesson went on to explain the founding of the Church of England by Queen Mary's father, Henry VIII, King of England. He renounced Catholicism when Pope Clement VII refused to grant him a divorce. King Henry's subsequent decree was to convert England to Protestantism with the newly established Church of England. This news was not met well in Ireland, a Catholic land since it's conversion from Celtic traditions in the 5th Century.
Martin paused in his narrative to remind us, in his white collared satire, that after Henry's excommunication from the Catholic church, the founding of his new Protestant Church - which he made certain did allow his first marriage to be annulled, and blessed the marriage to his second wife, Anne Boleyn, - and a huge religious and social upheaval of religious conversion throughout England that ensued - and by de-facto, the devoutly Catholic Island of Ireland, - King Henry soon had his new wife beheaded on his claim that she was a witch. A witch, Martin noted, who happened to not be able to bear a male heir to King Henry's throne.
As the rain began to fall on the large clean windows, I leaned my head against glass, and continued to listen to the history lesson. Ireland's bloody past was gently orated to us in Martin' impeccable gentile Irish accent. He told us of the monks tortured and executed to repress the Catholic resistance against new Protestant Church of England. He told of the treason, the beheadings, and the decree by Henry that he was second to God, His chosen one.
Martin's deliveries were well rehearsed. As we pulled into the lights of Killarney, his story ended with the complete reversal of religious doctrine with Henry's daughter, Queen Mary. She resented her father's new Church. When she inherited the throne, she claimed England - and it's Irish lands - to return to Catholicism. And the bloody cycle was reversed.
"And they say, the Queen was not as forgiving as her father. Which might not be saying much. Hundreds died in the Marian Persecutions for the same faith they were forced to adopt only decades before."
As his tale concluded, the bus lurched to a stop, shifting all of the passengers weight forward; waking up the many passengers whose interest in Irish history was not as great as their desire for an afternoon nap.
"So next time you drink a Bloody Mary" Martin said as he opened the door at our hotel, "You'll know where the name comes from. I'll see you at dinner in the lobby at 7."
Walking off of the bus into the air awakened me from the fairy tale our guide told in the quiet and still confines of the motor coach. My mind leapt ahead 450 years to the present as the soles of my shoes landed on the curb, sending faint ripples of sensation up my sleepy legs. Cars moved. Light bulbs burned. Doors revolved. Thoughts progressed.
I sat in the pub of the hotel that evening, thinking about the history lesson. Somehow Martin's professionalism had removed any personal inflection on the story. I remembered no cynicism in his voice, though such a story would seem to merit much. Perhaps the repetition of the tale had eroded any effort at editorializing the story. Perhaps his pride in his history prevented any bias or criticism, on whichever side he belonged. Or perhaps, I thought, it was simply too long ago to have any personal understanding of the matter. After all, I convinced myself, those days were long gone. They were called the mid-evil times for a reason, I told myself.
I looked up at the plasma T.V. screen, scrolling news and flashing images that happened hours and minutes ago from all around the world on a clean, 3 inch deep, mass-produced appliance from half the world away.
I ordered a beer, to celebrate modernity and all of our progress, and I congratulated myself on the advances we have made in the last four and half centuries. I leaned back in the upholstered chair and waited for our tour group to arrive in the hotel lobby for dinner.
As I waited, I watched the news. It was happening around the world. Hours, minutes, even moments ago. The BBC journalists flashed images across the smooth screen from a satellite hanging 22,000 miles into the outer edge of the atmosphere, circling an earth that is no longer deemed to be flat. I watched Tikrit burn. I watched Shiite militia, masked and marching in Sadr City. I watched Hamas fighters piled high in pickup trucks in Gaza. I watched U.S.M.C. infantry kicking down doors in Baghdad. I watched freedom fighters lying dead and drying in the Sudanese sand. I watched tanks tread through Golan Heights. I watched marauders run through the streets in Jersulam. I watched images of wreckage. Of waste. Of conquest and of conviction. Of modern Maries, as bloody as ever.
The thought rose slowly like that whip, 450 years long. Even longer. The sine wave rolled through my spine into my mind until the end of the line - right up until that very present moment, in my present moment, in that chair in that pub in a hotel in Kilarny, and it cracked loud and painful in my forehead.
I humbly reminded myself that my life is not the pinnacle nor even the final product of history. I am not part of the chosen kind. I am at best a the genealogical benefactor of temporary winners; my kind had better weapons and friends in higher places. My tour group began congregating in front of the dining room at the back end of the lobby, waiting to enter the buffet; waiting to enjoy their awards while they could.
I tipped my glass to the notion, and to the conquers and the converted, and religious and the renegades, finished my beer and headed for the buffet.
March 13, 2007
March 11, 2007
What Being American Means
I sat beside my sister in the front row of the tour bus, right behind Martin.
His bright tie matched the paint job on the bus and it was pulled tight between his collar and the first button on his jacket. He was a left brained gentleman in his 50's; a soft spoken and well mannered Irishman. His firmly pressed navy tour guide suit jacket was stretched tight across his back. He learned far forward in his seat over the steering wheel and strained to see into the rearview mirror on the left side. The bus delicately lurched forward a few inches at a time; the front of our bus getting closer and closer to the back of the one in front of us. He was silent as the 60 ft tour bus rocked back and forth as subtlety as the ribs of a sleeping dog under a porch.
His suit grimaced. It's pleats and seams bulged and stretched to allow his body the positon he needed to turn the steering wheel and keep his eyes looking in all the angles he required of them. Slowly, the bus began to rock it's way out of the parallel parking spot on the narrow street that spliced its way through the Guinness Store House at St. James Gate. We were in the medieval district of Dublin, and the stone beneath us gave Martin and our bus no sympathy.
Our bus passed by the motor coach in front of us close enough that I could see the hex-shaped heads on the rivets that held the brake lights. But Martin was looking in the other direction into the traffic, and nudging the accelerator to gently roll us all another inch away from the curb.
As Martin calmly pivoted on his seat to look back towards the curb, I was looking clearly into the filaments of the brake light bulbs in front of us. The bus full of fellow Americans behind me began pausing their conversations about Seinfeld episodes and the cost of pet food at their respective hometown grocery stores and take note of our situation.
The man in seat across the aisle leaned up abruptly and shouted over the railing to Martin.
"We should go to the next city council meeting and get these streets made wider!" he said, amused at his idea.
Martin peered into the rearview mirror and slowly turned the steering wheel.
"We don't need wider streets." Martin replied.
"We need smaller busses."
March 10, 2007
The Ireland Prologue
A map of Ireland was laid out on the kitchen countertop. We were reciting our bus tour and tracing our route from Dublin to Galway.
“Looks like we won’t be passing through Carrickmacross.” My father said.
“Where is that?” I asked.
He extended his arm across the map with his pen in his hand. He let the tip fall at the intersection of several lines several inches above Dublin.
“Why is that?” I asked.
“I finally got in touch with my cousin, Little Kay” my mother answered.
She wasn’t returning my calls. Turns out she winters in Florida. The girl who watches her house finally listened to the messages and called them down to her.
My mother had inquired about her family history several weeks ago, in preparation for our family trip to Ireland. Her family tree has been pruned close to the trunk and there is little left of it and few to ask about what remains. With nothing more than a surname, my mother was led to Monsignor James Carroll who serves in Arizona. He is a cousin of my grandfather. The Father, in failing health was not able to take the call. But his care taker, Mary Francis, was an informed caretaker. She told my mother all she could. My grandmother’s surname, Finnegan was confirmed, and my mother learned that the families origin was a town called Carrickmacross, on County Monaghan.
It was a small town situated at the end of my father’s pen, roughly splitting the distance between Belfast and Dublin. With that information, my parents dug a little deeper and found there is no shortage of Finnegan’s still in the area today.
“You’ll be happy to know” my mother added, “that one was a proprietor of a grocery and spirit store.”
Upon verification, I learned my distant relatives were not witches, they sold liquor.
My father sat down his pen and continued reading the week’s itinerary.
“And one other thing.” My mother added, as an afterthought. “Mary Francis said they came through the port in Boston. They were told they could find work in Albany, so they bought train tickets to there. But they accidentally took the train to New Albany, Ohio. Hence, I was eventually born in Columbus."
Family ancestry has been a recent topic for me. I have had the good fortune to travel many places in recent months, some near to the places from which I came. The effects of uncovering this information and trying to define who I am - from a pedigree’s standpoint - have been tumbling in my head. So too for that matter - is why is why anyone is born into what they are and where they are, and why it never seems to be questioned too much.
I looked again at the map lying on the kitchen counter. I stared at the small circle with the mark from my father’s pen tip. I stared at that spot where the lines crossed in the white space north of Dublin. I looked up from the kitchen counter and out the window into the dark Ohio farmland. Even in the black of night, I could still visualize the flat and quiet horizon that cleaved clean across the landscape; the silent backdrop of every sight and every memory I have ever made of my home; A home that was made in part from a mistaken train ticket from an unemployed family that took them 500 miles too far past Albany. I looked out into the blank darkness. My mind drew the line for me, dividing everything is see and everything I know.
There is no such thing as fate. It is just another man’s mistake at a train depot in Boston. It is not divinely prescribed nor inherently controlled. We are all bastards born of unanticipated consequence. We are born into a reality that is made unknowingly for us. It is made from the residual effects of past lifetimes full of everyday actions and the effects they create. It is a reality I cannot escape, even if I wanted to. Life will always have an outcome. And it is the only outcome we can ever know. Whether the 190 pounds of the world I occupy would be from upstate New York or Central Ohio, it is meat and blood and bones just the same.
[For thoughts on 95 lbs. of it, read: The Germany Impact ]
I folded up the map. I abandoned fate. I looked again into the dark and silent landscape a mistaken train ticket eventually bought for me. My mind drew that long horizon that divided and defined my life. For it, I am grateful, I reminded myself. And to honor it I must question it. Understanding is the greatest respect I could pay. Life is not preordained. It is being written everyday with the hands and train tickets of men.
I fell asleep in my parent’s house on the couch in the front room. The couch sits under the big picture window overlooking the fields south of the house. I closed my eyes and saw a mountaintop in the Great Rocky Mountains under a full moon. I stood alone at the summit in the velvet snow glowing from the moon. I screamed from the top of my lungs upon that mountaintop. It echoes through the canyons and granite. It resonates through space and through time, making sounds I could scarcely foresee, and could never intend.
Such is life, I supposed.
And should I have decided - by my own inclination and my own two feet - to turn and stand in another direction, and scream my scream down a different canyon, the echo would be of a different sound, but of equal volume just the same.
I fell asleep with the echo from Carrickmacross in my head. Outside the picture window, in a farmhouse in Ohio, the southern horizon cleaved clean through the night.
Footnote: The Thompson Ridge Road Incident