The Turbulence of all things

a guest post by Pádraig Ó Tuama

Pádraig Ó Tuama is a poet from Ireland. He presents Poetry Unbound and writes a weekly Substack on looking at the world through the lens of poetry. He lives in New York City.

From Nadia:

(I am on a medical leave of absence - but here’s another substitute teacher you can misbehave around)

I actually think Padraig might be one of God’s favorites. He’s one of mine, at least, I know that. For nearly 20 years, our friendship has traveled though many countries, a few marriages, countless conversation topics, a lot of laughter, and one shift scooping ice cream together at Holden Village.

The Turbulence of all things

by Pádraig Ó Tuama

When I was a teenager, I’d take evening walks: out the front door, over the old stone wall, down the dark hill, and left along the road that followed the river to the woods and then onto the sea. I’d see the lighted windows of houses, and imagine the lives of the people inside. Once I borrowed a walkman and listened to Paul Simon’s Negotiations and Love Songs while I walked, but I missed the silence so I never did it again. Silence? Not really, I don’t know if anywhere is silent. I missed the night sounds: the purr of an oncoming car, then its and receding; an occasional owl; someone opening the door of their house to let a guest out — good night, safe home, thanks for calling over.

These walks were always to the same place: a small wall right by the water that I’d hop over and then step down to a ledge. Because it’s so near the sea, the estuary affects the level of the river daily, so it could be full, or its mudflat bed could be visible. There was a view across to the other side: trees, occasional car lights, a house or two. The river — the Owenabue river, from Abhainn na Baoi — flows into Cork Harbour a mile or two downstream, and then onto the Atlantic. The water at this stage is the mix of sweet and salt. It’s a homeplace for herons, so I’d hear their nightsounds too.

I looked it up just now on google maps and, sure enough, there it is, unspectacular and largely unchanged. God, I loved going there — the walk, the stop, the time I’d stay, the walk home, the silence. How often do you go to your Place, my friend Sinéad asked me once. Most nights, I said. And after that, she’d often ask me about my walks. I began to call it what she called it: the Place.

Once, the tide was in. It was November and the river was higher than I’d ever seen it. I’d walked in daytime, a Saturday or Sunday, and I had an oilskin coat on to protect me from the drizzle. My mother hated that coat. You look like an old man, she said, and now at 50, older than she was then, I wonder what she meant. Usually, even at high tide, the water was fairly gentle, but this time there were slapping up against the ledge, and I could taste the salt from the water on my lips. The wind was strong, and I could see the watermuscles flexing, moving the the river in strange formations, even as it ploughed on toward the sea.

That day, as I was leaving the Place, a car drove by, slowly for safety, lights on because of the grey. I waved, so did the driver, and I wondered what he wondered about me. I memorised the licence plate — CZ 680 — and used as the title for a poem I wrote later that afternoon. I have lost it since, but I remember some of it “This is no day for driving / on the cold wet roads with potholes / but a day for walking / to the place of salt and rock and water.”

The wind, the grey, the drizzle, the salt, the spray, the wet shoes, the inadequate coat, the mediocre life, the far-away-from-everything that I felt, the passing driver, the small Irish village… they were all — for a moment — elevated to exhilaration. Like many people, I just wanted to get the hell out of the village. Gay, with nobody to talk to about being gay, alone even in the midst of a large and lively group of siblings and parents, melodramatic at times, and stoic at others, I landed on a Place that could meet me. I learnt to plot the tides so I could go back there when the water would be high, but even when it was low, with the familiar scent of mudflats and effluent, I’d stay for an hour. Not reading. Not writing. Not speaking. Not praying. Not shouting. Not wishing. Not leaving. Just breathing. I found steadiness on that ledge.

Recently I’ve been reading Meister Eckhart’s sermons. He’s become a companion. I think he’s nuts, and I think I’d have liked knowing him. He lived from about 1260 to 1328 in what is now Germany, joined the Dominican order of priests, became a Meister — an achievement of great intellectual renown — wrote scholastic discourses in Latin (I’ve read them all, and any essayist who uses the word “seventeenthly” needs better friends). He gave sermons in his native German and I love them because they are bewildering, beautiful and not infrequently bonkers.