No Time Like The Present
I return from my travels, as always, recharged and with fresh perspective. It seems to me that I need to get off the island every now and then in order to anchor myself in the present. Ireland has the sense of a place where the present is squeezed out by the shadow of a huge ominous past that we live in fear of returning to, and a future of limitless possibilities that we are blindly rushing to embrace with no idea of where we’ll land. But very little sense of the now. Very little sense of the stablility and solidity and timelessness I feel when rambling around Old Europe.
Ireland is very much a work in progress, one that will have to be broken and re-set a few more times before we get it right.
(The destruction/construction at Tara is probably the most obvious emblem of this past/present/future notion but I see it everywhere now. I’m sure it will wear off as the memories of pleasant holidays fade).
Mark Waters marked time at 8:02 am on July 6th, 2007 .
All countries are a work in progress, all societies evolve and change - sometimes in ways that you can’t see until after the fact.
All young people rush to the future - perhaps it’s a symptom of being young. And this country is very young by the standard of countries in a lot of respects. At the same time though, I don’t quite get what you are saying - whether we should leave the past behind and live for now, or whether we should work towards the future with a little more planning, or whether only the recent past is bad (the comment on Tara muddies the water a little) and the long ago past is more valued.
On a separate note, I have to get off this island every so often or I go stark raving mad. I always assumed it was part of the price I paid for having travelled and having gotten a different eye on life. I hope you’d a good holiday; I get the impression you did.
Forgive my poor expression, it’s more a feeling I have - something just beyond the tangible. I think it is the pace of change in Ireland that is unsettling, there is a real sense of the temporary, a lack of permanence. It’s as if it could all go the way of Macondo. Having the opportunity to contrast Ireland with other places really brings it home to me.
Yes, good holiday, thanks.
To try and put a little more flesh on my muddled thoughts (definitelty a WiP), when I say now I’m thinking of The Long Now so it’s not so much about living for the moment as living in the continuous present. I get the feeling that in Ireland we look to the past with a mixture of nostalgia and disdain but definitely a sense of detachment (the past is disconnected), and we look to the future as some undefined time when everything will finally be fixed. The present is somewhere that we are trying to escape.
Waters muddy enough for you now?
Oh dear. My usual time slot for philosophy is 3am on a Sunday morning…I’m not sure I’m quite on top of the game on a Friday morning.
“I think it is the pace of change in Ireland that is unsettling, there is a real sense of the temporary, a lack of permanence”
I feel that the pace of change is not so much the problem. I think it’s the personal cost of that pace of change. I realise that this is coloured by the number of people who are outright jealous of the fact that I drive 7 minutes to work every morning as opposed to 1h15 if the traffic is okay. In short - I get the feeling that more and more people are looking at their wide screen televisions and asking “What is it all for, when you get down to it?” Looked at in that context, I can understand people wanting to escape to some point in the future when “it’ll all be worth it”. I discovered 5 years ago that working for the future without regard to the present was pointless because somehow, you missed the present and the future never quite arrived.
Regarding the Irish attitude to the past - I am not so sure that it is unique to the Irish psyche but also recognise I’ve my own particular little world view - I think part of it is selective history…but one of the things that strikes me about the Irish nowadays is that the identity is moving…and that the things that were very clearly definably Irish about the culture are becoming more diluted. I may build on this on my own site later because I sense a spaghetti mess of thoughts running around my head now. And yes, I find myself having thoughts along these lines, especially when I come back from Brittany.
Some day over coffee perhaps.
Brittany will do that to you. It’s like an alternative version of Ireland. So near yet so far… I’m looking through the rose-tinted glasses of the tourist, but still…
More on the Tara reference here.
[…] Mark Waters put up a thought provoking piece not so long ago. It provoked a lot of thought for me but as of yet, not so much clarity. I was reminded of it slightly today. The seafront in Skerries has different personalities…On it, near the bars, a load of young people spill out with all sorts of drinks, and a serious amount of noise. You can hear harsh loud music. As Fleetwood Mac featured, I’m loathe to accuse it all of being bad pop…but it some how invades rather than enhances. At the end of the pier, a family of four were fishing, the two young kids entranced by the seal in the harbour, looking for easy food. In the trawler moored to the left, two men were arguing about something. Nothing serious I think - certainly no risk of handbags at dawn. […]