This arrow, made out of a wild thought

Up until some point last night, when the sneezes grew more frequent and my head nodded off to one side, I thought I might write about surfing. About how my Fanore Beach could become Mark Twain's Hawaii, Gidget's Santa Monica, Didion's Malibu. Or some equally ridiculous nonsense about how no matter how many times I failed, no matter how exhausted I became, I kept trying.

But this morning, when I woke up on my last day of vacation with a strong cold, shallow breathing, and tears filling my eyes as I listened to the folks discuss a trip up to the Poulnabrone dolmen, I reconsidered. They were off to see the hole of sorrows, while I was left behind to sit and blow my nose in my own hole of sorrows. Selfishly, I didn't want them to go. I didn't want any of this togetherness to end. I had my pout on. I think I cried and made my father check my lungs for pneumonia. There was something I was missing out on, and it had better be for a good reason.

And so I thought I had better write this all down somewhere.

Yesterday we visited the Aran Island of Inis Mor, with its sweaters and roofless churches and horses with auburn tipped manes. We rented bikes straight off the ferry, wore ourselves out on the high road trying to reach Dun Aengus.

I was told there'd be fairies.

When I asked Patsy where the fairies live, he turned half around, and pointing in the direction of Dun Aengus, which was in full view on the sharp sky-line of Aranmore, said that there, in a large tumulus on the hillside below it, they had one of their favourite abodes. But, he added, 'The rocks are full of them, and they are small fellows.' (The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, 1911)

We parked our bikes, filled ourselves with soda bread, then climbed higher on foot, and stepped into the carved fort perched on the edge of a cliff. My sister couldn't get her head around how old this place was. "2000 B.C.... Who were these people, monkeys?" We lay on our stomachs at the edge, peered over into the ocean, breathless and wide eyed. We imagined Norse enemies approaching full-sailed on the water, Celts kneeling at the edge of the cliffs, arrows and slingshots readied. Possible ancestors. I raced back down the rocky slope and claimed that I must be a part of that very tribe because I didn't once misstep.

(I saw no fairies, no Sidhe living in the rocks below. Though why they'd reveal themselves to me, I have no idea. Because I wore a pale pink dress that blew around in the wind? Did I hope they were the types of fairies who were into that brand of old romanticism?)

Aengus was said to be the god of love, youth, and poetic inspiration. (My mother told me that there is not one/Of the Ever-living half so dangerous/As that wild Aengus.) With the beat of a Bodhrán, Aengus led my sister, apparently, to a sudden desire to make her way to Cork. I'm being inspired to read more Yeats. To write my way through these shallow breaths. I watched my father become rejuvenated by a bike ride, a cliff, and the music in a crowded pub. The same music that brought tears to my brother's eyes. And my mother, too, racing off ahead of us on her bicycle, freed by two tires and the wind in her hair. We all, all of us, fell in love. How could we not?

So you can see why my hole of sorrows is a miserable place. I'd much rather be out there, peering over the edges of cliffs, exploring rocks and grass and moss. Out there with my family, on the lookout for fairies.

© Zan McQuade. All rights reserved.