Working with what they had...

[Connemarra produced 9 pages of notes in 8 hours, not including sketches. I hope you've nothing going for a bit.]

Who knew that a bus ride with an HR lady from Idaho, and a retired teacher from Germany would begin a sight-seeing paradise.

Connemarra is wet. Wet with water. Wet with stone. Wet with history. The name means "son of the sea." His Mother taught him well.

This driver gave a bit of Galweighan history before the road winded. Galway is a college town, hoursing 20,000 students in the school year, plus another set of medical students and residents at the teaching hospital. This explains the Ausssies from the other night at O'Connell's.

Maam Cross holds two movie icons: The Quiet Man bridge and cottage. Good flick, and my best friend's fav.

We drove into the Maam Turk mountains, and spacetime altered. The white dots on the mountain moved. A red sheep, girl; blue, boy. I preferred the black ones. Each photo stop yielded greens and grays. The smell of water, the smell of life soaked into my clothes.

In Leenane, we stopped at Gaynor's for some Irish coffee. This is the town altered to file "The Field." I've already bought the dvd, and it'll beat me home. Sitting by the fire, discussing the 15 yr old bartender's 3 yr career playing Rugby, I decided to rent a house here next summer for 6 to 8 weeks. Who's coming with?

The Killary,the only Fjord in Ireland, wound into the island here. Prince Charles likes to paint in a nearby valley.

Then came Kylemore Abbey. The story is simple. Rich guys takes new bride to Connemarra, likes the place, builds a castle. They kick. Two Benedictine nuns kicked out Ypres by the fucking krauts like the place, borrow 45,000 pounds sterling from the Catholic church, and renovate the place, even adding a boarding school for girls. Madonna is sending her clone here.

But all that is meaningless compared to the impossible bucolic beauty of the place. I've included one pic above. (By the by, I'll throw all my pics up to picasa upon return.)

Silver limestone, wet with rain, reflected a cloudy sun. Patches of green with dots of white flitting about. Water reflecting up all that went down on it. And Stone. Hard granite, soft Limestone, mean red brick, and warm gray clay.

In the Bothy, I found a latin prayer book, a discussion in French of God and Love, and Byron's Poetical works. The stove had a simple lever system to bring a stewpot in and out. I do love the Irish stew.

The furrows of the garden patterned after Celtic knotwork. A City Gardener from Dublin explained the difference in the red and gray brick. Red brick doesn't hold hear, but the gray has more clay and the walls are built with hollow passages. The metal greenhouses butt up against the gray brick. In the winter, a fire was lit in a small chamber at the base of the wall, and the heat went up the walls, keeping the greenhouses warm in the long and dark Irish winters. The builders were "working with what they had," he taught. He later explained the use of Dalkey granite in the building of the castle. How lintel stone was different than wall stone was another mystery the Teacher, er, Gardener taught me.

The final site was the contained Gothic church and cemetery for the dedicated nuns. The stained glass in the main alcove gave silloeutte to Christ on the Cross. Even a pagan like me was moved, took a knee, and remembered what the nun's at St. Joseph's taught me.

The wireless here is acting up...I'll add more later...just working with what I have.