time/travel #1: i'm in ireland
in which I'm in Ireland, and you're invited
Hey Hartlist,
“It’s funny Rebecca - most people go to a place to visit people. You go to visit a place.”
- a voicemail from a friend, earlier this spring
(I’m in Ireland.)
JUST THE NEWS (in the last 2 months)
TAUGHT a “found text” songwriting workshop at the New School!
ACCEPTED to the Catwalk Institute Artist Retreat in Catskill NY!
SPRING CONCERT “A Tapestry of Song” w/the Melodia Womens Choir!1
BOOKED my first commercial VO job!!!
READ TAROT for an event at my family’s restaurant to promote this vodka
INVITED to apply for something called the Sacred Artist Retreat at the Kripalu Center which I think we can all agree sounds like something I should do
IRELAND… where I am now, read on.
FROM THE CHRYSALIS
They say you can’t go home again, but it turns out it’s only one hour and $17 on NJ Transit.
No, not to Ireland. To my hometown of Highland Park NJ, which I’ve been visiting frequently this year for … no discernible reason. When I heard my friend’s voicemail, I was on one such trip, and it made me smile. Not only because she was right, but because of how right she was. It’s true, I don’t know anyone in Highland Park anymore, so I was definitely going to visit the place more than a person. But that place wasn’t really just ‘Highland Park’, it was Highland Park … in 1987. Or 1993. Or whatever. The Place I was visiting was really.. The Past.
And, really, if we take this just a little further it must be said I wasn’t just visiting The Past, I’m visiting an earlier version of myself, who exists there. So I actually AM ‘visiting a person’, it’s jus that it happens to be me. (Follow any line and it becomes a circle?)
And one of the reasons you haven’t heard from me in two months is that I’ve spent a lot of that time time telling myself this is what your next blog should be about and then saying But I don’t wanna tell anyone back to myself, in an infinite death loop that resulted - as these things tend to - in my writing nothing at all. The two parties only came to a working agreement two days ago in the airport when it was decided that the Ongoing Highland Park New Jersey Nostalgia Travel and Unofficial Writers’ Residency could only be mentioned in the context of another trip: the one I was taking just took am on. The one to Ireland.
Hi (again). I’m in Ireland. (Again.)
Which is to say, I am once again visiting The Past.
*Writes and erases several paragraphs*
Long story short, if you know me you know that Ireland has loomed large in my life for various reasons - ancestral, romantic, artistic - since childhood. I came here for the first time when I was 13. My (Irish-American) father brought us all here for a family trip, and when the plane touched down in Shannon airport, I looked out the window at a nondescript patch of grass and thought with absolute casual certainty, Oh, I’m home.
This moment, shall we say, set the tone for many of the years that followed, in which I have taken many Ireland trips. Oddly, none of them - until yesterday -involved flying into Shannon airport, and I briefly wondered if I might have that “I’m home” experience again. Because, you know, maybe the past life in question was really airfield-specific.
It didn’t happen. I looked out the window, and… nothing. I mean… I didn’t sleep on the plane at all, and there was turbulence, and the guy behind me kept kneeing me in the back, and I tried to watch ‘Poor Things’ for about 25 minutes (you guys …. WHAT is that movie… should I try again? Does it get better?) It’s possible I was just too out of it or anxious or not 13 anymore to have that kind of rapturous insta-merge with my ancestral homeland.
After two days in Galway and many (seriously, ridiculously many) drafts of this blog post later …. I’m thinking it’s more likely that, you know, things have changed. And that’s… probably good! This trip - a ‘Celtic Spirituality Retreat’ on Inis Mor Island- is an advance gift to myself for a birthday coming up which I will be celebrating multiple times so get ready. It seemed on paper like THE perfect retreat for me, and it is wonderful (actual travel details forthcoming) AND at the same time it now seems like THE perfect retreat for me … ten years ago. Ireland and I are not new friends but old “it’s complicated”s. I’ve needed things from it, written about it, considered moving to it, fell in and out of love with it, fell in and out of love In it, obsessed and longed for and felt possessive of and superior about and superior to and inferior to as well, sometimes all in one day. I’ve watched both myself and the country change over time. Maybe it’s ok to actually know and admit that. Maybe, I thought, standing across from the bar I wrote The Kestrel Strand about five years ago, it’s finally just a country I know well and have been to a lot. I took a picture of the bar, then wandered down to the water instead of going inside for Guiness or singing.
Maybe, I thought, I still love Ireland …but I’ve stopped haunting it.
Yeah. I know that might sound odd. Don’t you mean “haunted BY it”, Rebecca?
I don’t know.
It’s common knowledge (right?) that ghosts haunt because of unfinished business. They still want or need something from someone. They retrace their steps, reliving old joy or trauma, trying to understand it better or wring the last bit of the experience out. Or they can’t admit that it’s over. Or they want to communicate something, or get an answer. When I visit my home town, I definitely have the feeling of returning to a former state (not just literally). It feels like of putting on an old pair of shoes, of standing in a spot that actually feels physically warmer. My body relaxes. I walk in her footsteps, feel and remember things from her perspective. I tell her things I want her to know. Sometimes I think what if we could pick up where we left off? You know, before the Decision was made, or the Thing happened, and -
First rule of Time Travel: don’t touch anything.
Right? Doesn’t every book or movie on the subject warn us that the minute you try to CHANGE anything in the past, you’re Effed? Marty McFly’s parents never meet, and his hand starts fading in the middle of Johnny B Goode? Et Cetera?
I believe that these Time Travel cautionary tales are our way of reminding each other to stay present; not to lose our lives to regret or longing. Trying to change - or relive - the past will not improve the present, it will only make it disappear.
When I was a kid, I used to re-read my favorite books over and over, which for some reason drove my mother crazy. “Don’t you want to read something new???” she would cry. “Leave her alone”, my father would interject, “She’s learning to write.” Today (and I mean specifically today), I feel like I see both sides. Looking back is beautiful (and, let’s face it, a core part of my personality)… but so is breaking new ground. Writing this, it strikes me that this is what Spring is all about. Nobody goes, “Crocuses and cherry blossoms… AGAIN??” But at the same time, we’re excited about them because they are ‘Something New’. They are The Future. Our future.
Today, we left the mainland for the island of Inis Mor, where we’ll be for five days … and where I have never been before. I have wanted to visit the Aran Islands before, and have tried a few times over the years, but something always came up to prevent it. This is my first time, and I think that’s what actually made me decide to come on the retreat. It’s what turns this trip to Ireland into something more than a door to the past. It is both a return and a ‘Something New’.
Yesterday, our group met for pre-retreat coffee in Galway and in the flurry of conversation I heard someone refer to the island of Inis Mor as a “portal”. My ears perked up. This is what I want: an open door, a definite wind blowing, a What’s Next.
One of the retreat leaders asked us to do two things before we came. One was to “think about what you would like to get out of this retreat” (a portal), and the other was to bring an object that in some way evokes your ancestry, those who have gone before and paved the way. Folded into my wallet is an ancient postcard, written by my dad to my mom from Ireland when they were first dating. He was on his first trip to the aul country, and he writes with uncharacteristic joy
This land touches a deep and secret source in me, far past words.
(He also begins the card “Dear Babe”, but we won’t dwell on that.)
It feels kind of exciting to bring this postcard back from whence it came after all this time. It feels like closing a circle. Maybe that is what I’m doing for myself. I can’t tell yet.
The plan is to blog this trip daily (ish), pending the wifi, so you’ll be hearing from me more than usual. For those of you still reading (!), the following entries will be shorter. I’d like to say they will have pictures, but so far this connection isn’t allowing that. (See me on instagram @rebeccahartworld).
I’ll leave you with this: here’s what I got so far on the “I didn’t have a past life moment in Shannon airport this time” thing. It might, MIGHT be possible that I’ve been seeing the first one the wrong way. When I, at 13, felt that sense of arrival, of recognition, of Home… maybe I wasn’t sensing my past, but my future. The one that I’ve had am having will have.
More will be revealed!
Love and slainte,
Rebecca
… which I technically missed because I hurt my back, but a) I rehearsed it for four months and did the dress rehearsal, so i’m claiming it b ) rumor has it we will sing it again August 19
brilliant.. waiting for the next :)