Memoir
I come to the West early in the morning; it’s my direction at the moment. We’re at the beginning of summer, and it’s going to be a hot day. I’ve brought my reading, my writing, some food, and I don’t know what I’m looking for, really, but when I spend time in these places that make up our Circle of Eight always something happens. This particular place—this large, constructed dam that’s more like a lake—always seems peaceful to me, its waters undisturbed except by winds and birds, its grounds big enough to lose a dozen groups of picnickers.
I’m so early there doesn’t seem to be anyone else here at all. I park and walk down to the water’s edge, not the bit closest to the car park but a little way away. There are small islands of trees, shrubs, and native grasses scattered across the lawn, and eventually I sit near one of these, at the edge of the shade cast by the trees. There are three or four of these mini forest patches nearby, and there’s nothing special about this one. I gaze at the water for a while; it looks pristine, and I think about the waters of the West.
Mythically, one sets out on those waters but doesn’t reach the end. This is the direction of the eternal journey—the journey into death, into the mysteries and other worlds. I think of the west coast of Ireland, gazing off Slieve League; how amazed Damon and I were when we found that place. It seemed like the end of the world. That slow, narrow, winding road with room only for cars in one direction, little passing bays every so often and that after miles of twisting, turning, climbing roads with randomly sprinkled signposts; it was definitely the end of something. We’d come here on a whim; perhaps one of us had seen a picture somewhere or it looked something special on the map and we really didn’t know what we’d find.
After an agonizing time on the narrow road, which had helpful little ledges on the cliff side not quite a foot high to show you where the edge was and glorious unfolding banked heather in three shades of purple on the other side, I parked in one of the little bays and insisted we walk the rest of the way, which surely could only be a few kilometers more. I was seriously unnerved at the thought of meeting a car mid-section and having to back along the tight curves, and something about driving seemed entirely wrong; who drives to the end of the world? We were pilgrims, and so we got out and walked, admiring heather and views as we went. We took uncounted photographs that probably all looked the same but close up and live the heather was different, not just in shades of color but in leaf type and density, and together they made a collage on the ground, a composition in purple and green.
We saw Slieve League for a long time before we really saw it; it was in a haze not of distance but of seaspray. The curves of road and land hid all but the top from us, and the top was not the dramatic part. When finally we were standing where we could see it properly, we were silent. All the categories we might have applied to it—Irish sea-coast; the mythical West; the cliff at the edge of the world—it filled and more than filled. It was a massively high, straight-down cliff, made black by water and topped with more heather. Waves cracked against its base, vivid in their determination to devour, shear off another face of rock, to pull the cliff down into their grasp. It was brighter, fiercer, more of a trembling vision than it is possible to describe, and if you did not believe that the sea and earth had a language between them until now, or that in Ireland the mythos lies only just behind the spray of water filling the air, you would do, seeing this. It was west of west, the deep Celtic west; west of a thousand visions and poet’s journeys, the west of imagining and dream.
This West place in the Circle of Eight, now, is tame in comparison. But it still beckons to memories of that other west, of all wests; of west as a place of setting out into the unknown, the beginning of the journey into the mysteries. I read for a while, I write for a while. I’m at a crossroads in my life; I don’t know what will happen next. Of course, everything that is already happening might just keep happening; work and raising my son, writing and rituals and magic, and that would be fine. It is fine. Or—something else might happen. I have a sense of that, though I don’t know what it is. I have longings, of course, and the West seems a good place to express longings—those yearnings I always carry with me for delight, for fierce intimacy, the depths and shades of love.
I think of all the times I’ve been here, alone and with other people, and every single time it seems there’s that flavor of waiting depths, not inaccessible, just biding their time. I’ve come here with my son, I’ve come here with the Circle of Eight, I’ve come here with lovers. There’s always this feeling of walking only on the surface, perhaps because the real spell is in the water and the water’s off-bounds. I like that the water too sacred to go into. I like its pristine quality, but I’ve always been looking for something else as well—for the secret to be revealed.
All the places of the Circle of Eight have different energies, and this one seems the least demanding, or perhaps it is simply that it is peaceful here, whereas so many other directions are challenging, unsettling, fierce, or engaging. I do think there’s something more; that it’s that stillness we summon up before something large begins to happen, like the balance of the Autumn Equinox, knowing we are headed down, afterwards, into the dark. Vaguely I notice that some other people have arrived; this place is so enormous, there is so much space that I don’t pay them any attention. There’s plenty of room for everyone, and perhaps that’s one of the things about this place: I feel it is receptive, listening, whereas many of the other directions are so caught up in themselves that the most one can do is partake or maybe just marvel at the edges.
The group of people who’ve arrived are coming closer; they’re lugging something between them, folded-up bundles of canvas. I turn the other way, back to the lake. I look at the water lilies, so pretty on the surface, but I know about their stems: those slippery, strong connectors to the floor of the lake, how they grapple and twist with you if you try to swim amongst them or pick one. The lake itself is like that, and maybe the whole place; its beauty laid out on the surface and underneath something more—something connected powerfully to the life force, something that won’t let up in a hurry. The scent of those palely purple water lilies is to die for; I think of ambrosia, smelling them; of moonflowers and fairy dust and magical elixirs that can grant eternal life or heart’s desire to a mortal.
The men, three men, get closer and closer; I look around irritatedly. Why are they coming so close to me when there’s so much room? Haven’t they noticed I’m here? They’re talking among themselves; eventually they drop their burden on the ground a little way away from me but not very far. One of them approaches me, clears his throat. He asks if I’d mind moving. I look at him, incredulous. I look around—there is huge space in all directions. There is no one else here. Where I’m sitting is absolutely nowhere special; if they wanted to be next to one of these little forest beds, there are plenty of them and nothing remarkable about the one I’m near. I’m not at the water’s edge, I’m not close to the path, I’m not at the crest of a rise. Into my not speaking he offers some more words.
It’s for a wedding, he says. They’ve come here early to set up. This is the exact place they want to be. Where I am is where the marquee they’ve brought needs to be, the one where the wedding will take place.
If I wasn’t silenced already by amazement, that would silence me. I think I nod. I gather my things and move back twenty paces farther up the hill and sit down again to watch them. I still don’t think there’s anything special about that place; looking at it from a little distance, I can see nothing at all to distinguish it from a hundred other marquee-sized places within my scope of vision, but obviously there is something special about it. Something special about me choosing to sit in the place for a wedding, something special about a wedding coming to interrupt me.
From the moment he spoke to me, said the word wedding, it was as if I was receiving a vision instead of a request to move; I was hearing voices from the other world. They said to me wedding and I was in there with them. I question it; I even try to fight it off or laugh it off or cast doubt over that certainty that visited me in that peculiar parallel-worlds moment, but it still remains, a small but utter conviction that there’s a marriage. Not here, not now; but not that far away. I heard it, I caught it, a glimmering flash beneath the water’s surface, a moment of truth-telling, foretelling. It’s coming for me. And oh, I do want it. For romance and a love to be that deep, that trusting that I could give myself to it; a union of souls. In the West it came to me; how strange but how utterly right. Visions, knowing, dreams; the pause before the change; long journeying.