throw a stone and watch the ripples flow…

instead of going straight home, i went up and over the dart tracks almost exactly between blackrock and booterstown. a narrow ledge protrudes from the stone wall between the dart tracks and the sea, there. the ledge then falls down into short, slanted wall of stones, serving as a breaker, that sinks into the water. at the right end, a few steps lead down into the sea.

i stepped through the gap in the wall onto this ledge, sat down, and dangled my feet out over the water.
the sea was green and light teal–and so calm even though there were troubled clouds lurking over the deep blues and browns and blacks of howth before spreading out in a slightly lighter shade of grey over the rest of the sky. 
and the bay was completely empty–no boats out near the pier in the distance, nothing–except the gulls silently bobbing in the water and me on the side, sitting on the ledge.

beautiful. i love days like this. me, the gulls, the clouds, the sea, the colour, the sound of the gentle waves, the light wind, and the smell of peat mixing with the smell of the sea. 

here, the waves rise to meet the stones of the breaker beneath the ledge. but here on days like this there isn’t a real need for a breaker–the waves aren’t angry–just simply rising to meet the stone and falling back just as serenely. and for the few seconds before they gather back to return, the pockets of water lingering in the gaps between stones trickle back down over the stones and seaweed to rejoin the sea.

and watching all of this, watching the gulls bobbing calmly in the water, interaction between the waves and the stones of the breaker, i felt the sea calling me, so i shed my school shoes and socks and ran down the ledge, down the stairs, and stood ankle deep in the water. the freezing, freezing cold water.
and i stood there, and amid the grey of my coat, school skirt, the stairs, the wall, the sky, there was the green and light teal of the sea and it was beautiful.

another thing i love when the tide is completely in like this–the small birds that usually wade in the shallow puddles of water created by the ridges in the sand when the tide is out–they can’t land–and so they fly in huge flocks out over the bay and across the view in front of me.
they’re so tiny and so fast and they move in perfect unison, except when they turn. when they turn, the birds in front flip from their fronts to their sides to their backs and and back again, followed almost immediately by the birds behind them. like a round. a ripple moves rapidly through the flock–as the brown of their backs flip to the whites of their sides and backs and back to brown again when they’re aright.
and they’re most fascinating to watch–they have all sorts of aerial tricks–dipping and rising and turning so suddenly and rapidly that sometimes its hard to keep track of them.

i adore the sea. i love how one day it can be so calm and the next angry and the next gentle and the next pulsing and throbbing and wild. i love how the colour changes, how one day it can be purple and the next dramatically, richly blue and the next green and teal and the next lavender and light brown and the next all colours at once or any combination of any number of colours.
maybe i talk too much about the sea but it’s so different and so beautiful every day–it’s hard not to enthuse about it. 

1. they replaced the cow gate at the entrance to the park with a different gate that looks like an mri machine standing vertically on its end.

2. i learned today that tomorrow i get to pretend to be a predatory bird.

3. we passed tim’s resolution unanimously at our mun meeting today.

4. one of the lads threw up on the bank during training this evening because we were working so hard.

5. we as a team get to be on rte television on saturday!

the moon has been entrancing these last evenings–incandescent, glowing, shining, so bright and blindingly white against the deep blue sky.
as i walked through the park on the way back home from posting a letter, wisps of clouds in little groups were floating over the moon and away towards the horizon. as they moved over the moon, it luminated a perfect circle of light on the clouds. 
and as i kept walking i was stunned by the beauty of colours and shades in sky–clear white starting at the horizon blending into clear light blue blending into clear carolina blue blending in a darker, more purple blue blending into the deep, dusky blue of the almost-night sky. it was absolutely beautiful.

walking home from school past the park last night, i looked over it from above–the pond surrounded by green grass by the sea–all in the dark. the ribboning shape of the edge of the pond was just discernible; i could barely make out the little island full of trees and shrubs in the far side of the pond; the stone wall separating the park from the sea was an indistinct blur in front of the sound of the waves. but there–in the middle of the pond–one of the swans was gliding smoothly through the water. it stood out of the whole scene–like the moon, blindingly white, bright, shining in the middle of darkness. 

yesterday in chemistry we made ethyne gas. when we’d filled a test tube, a medium gas jar, and finally the biggest gas jar in the lab with the gas, we moved to the workbenches and our teacher tested for the presence of ethyne gas.
the test tube and the medium gas jar both contained ethyne–but the reactions were moderate–a small pop and the flame inserted would leave the splint, burn for a few seconds at the top of the glass, and then fall gracefully to the bottom as smoke.
but the other gas jar–the biggest one–and when he inserted the splint with the flame, there was a noise like a small explosion, soot flew from the top, and the inside of the jar was coated in thick black soot. the flame burned at the top two or three times longer than it had in the test tube and smaller gas jar before turning to thick smoke.
but the soot–long after the experiment was finished, it continued to float and swirl in the air, all around us. like some kind of black, weird snow that couldn’t decide where to settle. it felt so surreal, to stand there with large black flakes of soot swirling overhead.

and there are always the lights on howth–always there in the middle of the blackness, across the bay, glittering and twinkling reassuringly; always the lighthouse at the very end swings back and forth, its blindingly white light shining momentarily in my direction before revolving around to the other side. and it is always back again.

five or ten minutes ago i was seething. 

five or ten minutes ago i raged that we should have heard of it before.  i raged that just because i moved to another country it no longer applied to me. because i’m not there every day, it no longer applied to me. i wondered if that was it.
i wondered if three and a half years away erased everything else that came before? i wondered if that was it. 
but i was being unjust.  i’m sure that i was and i am sorry for it.  but sometimes i can’t contain it.

one half of me raged and the other half shook its head and tried to calm down the other.
maybe we should’ve heard about it before. but i am in no position to criticise or judge.

but now is when i feel living in another country.
right now.
just now. a piece of news and there it goes.
that is why i hate it when someone refers to the atlantic ocean as the ‘pond.’  it is not a pond.  it’s a vast expanse of pulsing water that should never, ever be weakened or subdued to ’pond.’

two months ago i felt it too. 
two months ago one little comment and i wondered if that was it.  i wondered if i will always just be the american.  of course three and a half years is nothing compared to eleven years but still i wondered if that was the way it will always be.
but then again, it was just one comment, out of many other things said to the contrary.
sometimes though, it’s too much coming from one of the people you respect the most even if that person has said a million other things to the contrary.  there’s still that little shadow of a doubt.
so then again, i shouldn’t have been upset about the comment. i can’t expect so much from three and a half years. and it’s so arrogant to expect so much from such a very short amount of time.

i wish so much that it would snow. yesterday we were meant to play frisbee-and we did for about fifteen minutes before we gave up and walked to insomnia instead-but the wind was so strong and so insistent. we’re used to playing in strong wind-we do every week-but yesterday it was impossible.
and then it did snow-a tiny, tiny bit for about five minutes or so-but then it stopped-and was just windy and bitterly cold. oh well. maybe in february.