A Sense for Skerries

Travelling on my own is great but I miss companionship.  I prefer my company to that of just anyone’s but a good friend and travelling partner would be grand, as the Irish say.  I was told to wait for things to come to me.  I need to trust my intuition.  I should have stayed in Derry another day to enjoy the 2013 City of Culture but I missed out because I got thrown when my booking at the B&B didn’t turn out as the internet had said.  And all the possibilities were still there to be had but I just chose to keep going because I chose the path of limitation.  I thought the drive to Waterford would be long so better to make it easier on myself and get going rather than have a 7 hour drive today.  And I think my initial judgement would have been the right one.  Stay two nights, not one, in Derry.  As I drove out of Enniskillen, I heard on BBC Radio Ulster that last night Derry had been a city of music on the summer solstice and hot air balloons had been released into the sky.   

So I followed my intuition this time and took the longer route to Waterford, to stop at Skerries on the east coast just north of Dublin.  I don’t know why but I felt it was what I had to do and I was rewarded with a delicious vegan meal and a soy latte.  The coffees in Ireland are awful, but this one is actually drinkable.   And Skerries is a nice little seaside village although I had expected something bigger.  The food, the spacious and airy cafe overlooking the sea in the distance, and the vast ocean, made my extra detour completely worth the effort, even if I had come to a road block caused by a van on fire.  I hope the driver had managed to get out.  I know also I cannot be far from the sea.  I felt so much better the minute I saw the water.

And there is a painter at my window next to me - I am on the first floor of this refreshing cafe and a young man is just outside painting.  And it is now pouring behind him.  

And what do I see on the wall across the floor from me but words:

It’s an endless road that asks everything  

It is only life  

That lays itself down  

Gone are the ways of the history wind everyone we love will be all around.

Blessings of the heart on us  

Blessing on our hands  

May our feet walk fearlessly As the heart commands.  

Grace is just some birdsong  

Grace is morning dew 

May our feet walk shoeless  

One day out of two. 

And on the wall next to me:

The heart escapes its prison  

As a kiss, or broken bread, or in forgiveness, 

And lives happy ever after  In the guise of simple kindness.  

  --  Patrick K Lanzing 2011

And now as I look out the window, the sun is out and the rain has stopped.  

Gypsy Queen

A Celtic mystic once told me that I was a Gypsy Queen.  Now I don’t know about being any sort of queen, but perhaps I am a gypsy at heart - a modern day gypsy with a rented car, GPS, laptop and suitcase - for there is nothing quite like being on the road with no set destination except for a meal and bed to sleep in at the end of the day. 

My German B&B host, suggested I visit Glenveagh National Park in County Donegal in the northwest of Ireland so I set off in the car with some vague instructions.  I followed them down the country road, right after the petrol station and straight on.....until I came to a three way fork.....at which point, I decided to use my GPS.  

This part of Donegal is bleak but beautiful - rolling plains with little vegetation, dotted by lakes.  I turned on the classic radio and relaxed into the drive listening to Strauss.  All I had to do was enjoy the scenery and indulge in my own headspace, not having to attend to anyone.

I passed the sign welcoming me to Glenveagh National Park and kept following the road.  I  was the only person in sight - no cars, no people, just the odd sheep and plains all around me as far as the eye could see.  I had been told that there would be a castle in the park but nothing was in sight so I kept driving.

“You have reached your destination”  said the GPS.  I was still nowhere, only in the middle of this rugged landscape.  Perhaps this wilderness was what my gypsy heart was looking for.  

Little did I know that this was to be the start of a frustrating relationship with my navigator.  Between it and a more than inadequate tourist map, I would see the countryside and coastline of Donegal with some hair raising moments.  Eventually I hailed a man driving his tractor and asked for instructions to the castle: left at the T junction, right after the bridge and follow the road to the left.  So off I went and indeed the signs for the castle started to appear.  

With no expectations, I had in mind to spend an hour or two in the park and then head off west to explore the coastline.  I soon realised that I could spend a whole day in the park.  It is extensive, covering 16,540 hectares, and the most popular part is an old castle that used to be someone’s holiday home surrounded by beautiful gardens.  From the parking lot, there was a 5 km track that led alongside the lake to the castle.  Shuttle buses ferried people back and forth but I opted for the exercise. 

On the way, I had a nice chat to a school teacher who was also training to be an outdoor adventure coach.  I was told the water temperature of the lake was about 5 degrees and the ocean about 12 degrees, a far cry from what I had left in Sydney in winter.  I had hoped I would be able to swim at one of the beaches on the Atlantic coast, but it didn’t sound like it was likely to happen anytime soon.   

We soon arrived at the castle, and in contrast to the surrounding stark landscape, the grounds were lush with a diversity of plants.  I said good-bye to the adventure coach and headed into the gardens which was alive with colour.  I have never seen such enormous poppies. They were beautiful.  In fact, it felt like I had come across a treasure chest of jewels, after the equally beautiful but desolate and barren countryside.  

After leaving the garden, I headed further out of the castle grounds and along the lake in the direction of a waterfall.  Unfortunately on the way, it started to rain and as it was also lunchtime, I turned back hoping to get a bite to eat in the tea rooms of the castle.  

After spending a good three hours in the national park, I got back in the car and headed towards the town of Dunfanaghy on the northwest coast.  I thought I would follow the tourist map and stop at the advertised points of interest in the free magazine I had picked up at the tourist office.  It was by no means a Lonely Planet and so with very little information apart from a few attractive photos, I decided first to go to Horn Head.  I couldn’t find it in the GPS so I followed the road signs which took me further away from the main road, up and down narrow lanes that eventually turned into an unsealed road separated from neighbouring fields by a barbed wire fence.  I followed it until it became a dead end where a few cars were parked.  I got out and hoped that I would find something that told me this was Horn Head and perhaps even an explanation of what it was that I was looking for.  

Unfortunately there was nothing.  I don’t know where the people were who must have driven up here in the parked cars.  In all directions, land covered by gorse stretched out before me.  I could see that it led to the cliffs on the coast but they were still quite a distance away.  So who knows where Horn Head was or how one got there.  I didn’t really have time trampling through the gorse in search of it so I decided to get back in the car and this time, I entered a village a bit further along the main road as my next destination in the GPS.  I had assumed it would take me back the same route I had just come.  However,  I found myself going up a narrow unsealed road, with a little sign saying ‘Scenic Route’ .  I thought it must be okay if there was a sign advertising that this was a scenic way so I kept going.  I soon forgot about the scenery as I had to slow down to about 5 km/h as i made my way over rocks and gravel, worrying about doing damage to my rented vehicle.  I looked at the GPS and it told me this that I would not be making a turn off this road for another 3km.  I hoped there would be no oncoming traffic as there was room only for one car as I bumped along the unsealed road which occasionally dipped into pools of muddy water.  By the time the 3km were over and I finally found my way back onto a sealed road, I was stressed from gripping the steering wheel and I found myself breathing more deeply as I must have more or less stopped breathing in concentration and anxiety that I might find myself stuck somewhere with no mobile reception and in the middle of nowhere.  Before the day was out, this experience was to be repeated many more times.  This was truly the road less travelled.

By the time I reached my B&B, I wished no more to go down scenic routes or explore points of interest on my tourist map.  I only wished to find asphalt under my tyres and an end to my adventures for the day.  

Transit at Abu Dhabi Airport

As I found my aisle seat on Etihad flight 451 bound for Abu Dhabi, I smiled and greeted the young girl who was sitting next to the window.  She appeared no more than sixteen or seventeen and was dressed in a chequered shirt, jeans and a birka.  

Suddenly a voice in the row ahead asked if we wouldn’t mind swapping seats with her parents who were seated several seats behind.  She had a baby with her.  The young Muslim girl obliged so I followed suit.  We moved and settled ourselves into our new seats.   

I discovered that my new friend had travelled from Dunedin, in the south island of New Zealand the night before and she was returning on holiday to her home town, Dammam in Saudi Arabia.  She told me she was studying commerce and had just received a scholarship three days ago to continue the rest of her studies.  It was a Saudi grant for students who excelled academically.  I asked her where she was living and she said with her husband.  I couldn’t help myself and asked her how old she was. Twenty-one.  Her husband was studying medicine and was finishing this year.  He would be joining her a week later as he had not yet finished his semester.  He had been in New Zealand for several years already and she had joined him recently after her would be mother-in-law had chosen her to be her son’s bride.  I was curious.   I asked her how it had all happened and she said that it is common her in culture.  She had met her future husband a few times, had spoken to him on the phone and they agreed to go ahead.  I asked her how the marriage was going and she said ‘good!’.  

What I write here will only show my deep ignorance about Middle Eastern cultures.  This  delightful girl, Zaina brought it to life for me as she patiently answered my many many questions.  We only had 15 hours to share together.  She showed me a photo of herself without her head dress and asked me what I thought.  I told her it looked liker her with hair, to whaffectedmen apart from her husband, father, brothers and uncles could see her uncovered.  I asked her if she went swimming and she said only at the swimming pool where it would be a private booking for her and her family.  They would take food and spend the day there.  I asked if anyone swam at the beach and she told me only the men did.  What a shame.  The inflight video advertisements for the UAE clearly showed images of beautiful coastlines and beaches.  

All I recalled about the Muslim faith, learned in primary school, was that one faced and prayed to Mecca 5 times a day, that Ramadan was a month of fasting, that the key figures were Allah and Muhamad and that there was some black rock which was a famous pilgrimage site.  Apparently that was more than the average non Muslim knew in Zaina’s experience as she was fascinated that I had learned ‘all’ this at school.  She then proceeded to look for another photo on her phone of this black rock.  To my disappointment, it was a black box.  I told her I thought it would be a large black rock or stone in some natural setting.  She told me the rocks were in the box.  

The conversation turned to more serious topics.  Again showing my ignorance, I asked her how and whether she was affected by the violence that we saw on television in other Middle Eastern countries.  She told me that the violence also existed in Saudi Arabia, although she personally did not feel unsafe where her family lived - it just wasn’t being publicised to the rest of the world.  She told me people in her country felt their rights were denied them but what could anyone do - it was dangerous to speak up so it was best to endure and keep quiet.  I asked her how it had been for her the first time she had returned home after living in Dunedin where one could assume and live a life of greater freedom.  She said she was shocked but she didn’t speak of it because those who had never left the country did not understand.  

Seeing that her husband was finishing his studies this year, I asked her what would happen next - were they intending to stay in New Zealand?  To my surprise, she said that she would stay in Dunedin and he would probably return to Dammam.  Here was a culture of paradoxes.  Women who were married off to husbands at a young age and forbidden to be seen by other men with their heads uncovered and yet she was planning to live by herself on the other side of the world in a remote town like Dunedin.  Curious to know what she ate at home with her husband, I asked about her cooking.  She told me they ate out most of the time although choice in rural New Zealand was limited.  She did cook her native cuisine with spices she had brought from home and when I asked her what sort of food that was, she told me it was similar to the biryani that I had just eaten.      

After many conversations that were interrupted only by periods of intermittent sleep, we finally arrived at Abu Dhabi International Airport.  I had a two and a half hour layover and Zaina’s was slightly shorter.  As we walked through the transit area and came to the duty free section, she exclaimed that she could now shop.  I laughed.  Her manner was so typical of a young girl and I said ‘really?’.  She told me Dunedin had no shops.  Of course.  She then told me she had to pray and that I could come with her.  I was a little unsure about this but I followed.  I found myself in the ladies bathroom so I asked what the normal protocol was before praying.  She said you washed your hands and face, so I did the same as she did.  She then proceeded to leave the bathroom and headed down a passageway - she told me she wouldn’t be long so I wasn’t sure if that meant I was to wait for her or whether she wanted me in there with her.  I said I would wait for her outside and she looked disappointed so I asked if it was really okay for me to go in.   She led me down the hall and to a closed door and next to the door was a row of what looked like square blocks (not dissimilar to diving blocks at swimming pools) with some sort of washing facility in front of each block.  We removed our shoes, entered the room and she walked to the opposite wall, placed her bags on the floor and put something on the floor before her.  It was an object wrapped in a piece of cloth.  She faced a corner of the room adorned by an  ornament - presumably that was the direction of Mecca.  I felt a little fraudulent being in here.  There appeared to be some sort of attendant, half lying on the floor in the opposite corner who was eyeing me suspiciously.  I knelt behind Zaina, bowed my head, not knowing what else to do.  She proceeded to mutter something to herself very quickly as she started a process of standing up and kneeling down repeatedly.  After  several minutes of this, she packed up the little cloth and whatever it contained and picked up her bags and I followed her out of the prayer room. As we stepped out, I asked her what the white blocks were and she told me it was where people washed their feet.  She then suggested we get a drink so I followed her to the food hall.  She wanted fresh strawberry juice - I really didn’t think that was an option at the airport.  I grabbed a bottle of water as I waited for her to decide what she wanted in the absence of strawberry juice.  While she was waiting to pay for her purchase, I spotted a man dressed as if he had walked off the set of Lawrence of Arabia.  I asked Zaina if that outfit represented a particular country.  She told me all Arab men dressed like that.  I was puzzled. He was the only man dressed in a white robe and a white cloth draped over his head secured with a red and black head band.  I told her we hadn’t seen anyone else dressed like him.  She said, they probably didn’t feel comfortable.  Fair enough.

We finally proceeded in the direction of the gates only to find that hers was in one direction and mine in another.  She looked at me forlornly and said ‘so you have to go now’.  We really had had a pleasant time together in spite of the twenty years and our different cultural backgrounds that separated us. Zaina on many counts was so much more mature than her years, and only her delight at the prospect of shopping or her desire for strawberry juice gave her age away.  I was grateful for her gifts of a new experience and a window into a culture I would like to see more of.  

Graced by Love

About a week before I was due to leave on another adventure back to Europe, my friend and past work colleague, Vanessa, invited me to visit her home and to spend some non-work time with her.   Although I had so much to do before I left Sydney, and I had been knocking back requests to meet people, I felt compelled to visit her.  

It had been a long day that had started out with a yoga class with my mother and my favourite yoga teacher, a visit to my grandmother of 94 to say good-bye, knowing that i may never see her again, followed by the drive from the northern beaches of Sydney to the upper north shore, where my friend lived.  

When I arrived, Vanessa showed me her home, offered me a cup of tea and then told me we were going to her friend’s house around the corner where we could have time alone without the rest of her family.  Plus, her home was being painted so the furniture was all over the place.    

Her house, her friend’s house - it didn’t really matter.  I liked Vanessa.  She was a good woman and I enjoyed her company.

I drove us to a home at the bottom of a steep drive-way, built into the side of a gully, where the living room on the second level opened out to a large balcony that seemed to merge with the trees of the gully.  It was as if I was in a huge tree house, surrounded by silver trees with blackness through and beyond.  

I was shown to my room for the night and we had a tour of the ‘House that Jack Built’ as Vanessa called it - a quirky home with lots of rooms, built by her friends and who were currently overseas.  

Vanessa offered me a glass of wine, cheese and a homemade date paste that the mistress of the house had made.  This was the beginning of a very interesting evening on the tree house balcony.

We talked and drank and learned more about each other, parts of us that we normally do not show in the realm of work - our childhoods, past relationships, our dreams.  I was treated to delicious Thai takeaway and more wine.  Sometime during the course of the night I thought I saw something move in the corner of my eye - inside the glass windows of the living room.  Vanessa noticed me turn my head and asked what was wrong.  I told her I thought I’d seen something.  She said not to worry, that it was nothing.  

Our conversation naturally turned to work and we commiserated over the goings on of the circus that had been my workplace and still was for her.  But that is another story.  I don’t remember the sequence now but Vanessa said that she is looking forward to when she can leave this Earth.  I asked her why.  She didn’t appear suicidal to me.  She told me it was pretty awful down here on Earth.  To which I agreed, but I told her that we would have to come back so what was the benefit of leaving?  Upon which she vehemently disagreed with me and I with her.  So, curious, I asked her what she believed happened to us when our time was up.   

Knowingly, she told me that only a part of us returns - the part that still needs to learn any unresolved lessons and the rest of us doesn’t have to come back.  She then proceeded to tell me that she had psychic abilities and that she can see things but that she tries not to go there because she doesn’t always see pleasant images.  I was intrigued. I asked her if she could see anything now.  She told me it doesn’t work that way, she can only see things if they want to make themselves seen.  And they, specifically, referred to dead people.  She then went on to say that when I had earlier seen something in my peripheral vision, she had thought I had seen the ‘wa wa’ Indian (as she gestured like an American Indian making a war cry -  as opposed to an Indian like Ghandi).  And next unfolded a fascinating tale of her seeing this Indian one night when she was on this same balcony sharing an evening with her friends.  That story is not mine to tell, but needless to say, this Indian apparently makes his appearance every now and then in this home.  

Suddenly, she said to me that there was a short Asian man standing behind me, wearing a white robe, with something gold around his neck, and a wooden, gnarled staff in one hand and what appeared to be a drum and beater in the other.  She asked me if I knew him.  

I told her unfortunately, I didn’t, as I wracked my brain thinking of who it might be.....what dead person did I know that matched the description of what sounded like a Buddhist monk?  I asked her what he wanted and she said that he knew me and he couldn’t say until I recognised who he was.  

Here was someone coming to see me from the other side and I couldn’t recognise him!  Vanessa then said that there was now a woman standing next to him in a red dress.She described her some more but again I couldn’t work out what dead person would come and see me in a red dress.  She told me that the woman had something in her hair and that her hair line had a slight V in the front.  As I tried to find out some more about her appearance, the pair of them both disappeared.  Vanessa reassured me that they would be back.  This was so interesting.  As we continued to talk about what was happening, Vanessa told me that they had returned.  I turned around, and not surprisingly, I couldn’t see anyone.  

I then thought that the only person that remotely matched the description of the woman was my grandmother but she didn’t wear red dresses.  I asked Vanessa if it was a Western dress or whether it was some other kind of dress and her description seemed to indicate that it was actually a kimono.  So I asked her if it was my grandmother, to which Vanessa told me that the woman was nodding in agreement.  So we had worked out who she was.  I still didn’t know who he was.  The only men I could think of that were significant to me in some way, who were Japanese and known to me and who were dead were my grandfather and my cousin.  And neither of them had been Buddhist monks.  

Vanessa then told me that they were saying something but she couldn’t understand them.  I asked her to repeat back what she had heard them say, but alas, it was all gibberish.  Her psychic abilities clearly did not include speaking Japanese.  

As we continued to work out the man’s identity, Vanessa next informed me that the American Indian had also appeared and that my grandmother was smiling at him.  Of course she would.  She had been larger than life and had had conversations with anyone including an intruder that had once broken into her home, so why wouldn’t she be smiling at an American Indian?  

Vanessa then told me that she had a feeling that the man was my grandmother’s father.  I knew very little about him and from memory I had thought he had been some sort of merchant.  

So I asked her now that we had some idea of who these people were, why had they appeared?  Throughout this entire conversation, it was clear from her body language and facial expressions, that she was somehow seeing something and trying to communicate with something or somebody.  

After some time of communing with our visitors, she told me that they wanted me to know that they were looking after me as I set out on my next adventure, that if I handed over my angst and my concerns, they would look after them, that I could talk to them and ask them for guidance.  She told me that she saw me travelling with a group of people - at which point, I saw in my mind’s idea, something akin to a caravanserai but without the caravan, travelling on foot as a group - and that these two were part of that group.  

What an amazing evening with Vanessa, my grandmother, my great-grandfather and an American Indian!  By 1 am, I had had way too much red wine and had a splitting head-ache and I told my dear friend that although I would have loved to have continued our conversations,  I needed to go to bed.  And strangely, I had a warm and homey sensation, that we had been graced by a loving presence as I tumbled into an unfamiliar but comfortable bed surrounded by projectors, speakers, and hundreds of DVDs, a home cinema known as the Roxy.

So, as I write this on a flight to Dublin via Abu Dhabi, I am aware of the presence of my two guides and companions.  I hope they are comfortable on this long journey.  

*names have been changed