By
noeleenm on July 13th, 2007
Today I’m back to looking at stars, albeit on the internet as the weather is so bad at the moment you can’t see beyond a blanket of grey cloud above us. It was the weather that set me off on this trail today. The river was high and full and brown and threatening, and I wasn’t sure what time high tide was due, so I looked up the tides on the Irish Times website. To my relief, high tide this morning was at approximately 10.26am, just the time I was crossing the bridge on my way to work. Next high tide in Bray will be around 10.44pm today.
Floods are never far from my mind these days, particularly with this continuous downpouring of rain that we’re experiencing right now in Ireland, and the catastrophic floods that have already occurred in England recently. All over Ireland ’minor’ flooding is occurring too, and by that I mean property is being damaged. I wouldn’t wish flood damage on my worst enemy, but at least it’s better than the loss of life that occurred in England, and that could very easily occur here in Bray, if flood defences aren’t put in place very soon.
On Monday a delegation from our flood campaign group is meeting the new Minister for the Environment, John Gormley of the Green Party, to discuss proposed flood defence works, and the importance of the floodplain as part of that protection. It’s probably the best, and most important, thing that has happened in the campaign since Pizarro’s applications were turned down by An Bord Pleanala.
…But, while I started this post by talking about stars and then went on to talk about floods, this morning my concern about floods, and consequently tides, brought me back to looking at stars. I say ‘back’ because the stars have fascinated me for a long time. I don’t study them in the sense of sitting looking at them with a telescope – in fact, the awe stars evoke in me when I look at them on a winter’s evening from the beach, or in summer from a country road late at night, comes close to fear when I see stars too close up. So I look at them with the naked eye, feet firmly planted on earth, and I wonder like a child…
Today, remembering a conversation I had with Jan earlier in the week about tides (he wanted to go to the beach at high tide and then return there at low tide to see the difference), I went on to look up again exactly what causes a spring tide. It’s caused, of course, by the gravitational pull when the sun, earth and moon are all in alignment, so it happens every new moon (when the moon is directly between the sun and the earth) and at full moon (when the earth is directly between the sun and the moon). Its name has nothing to do with the season of spring: it comes from the verb ‘to spring’ because of the force of the tides then.
But, while looking all of this up, and happily meandering off to look at how the earth orbits the sun and the moon orbits the earth, and what other planets revolve around the sun in our galaxy – all of which I find totally fascinating – I came across a website that presents tremendous visuals of all sorts of physical phenomena. It’s called Exploring Earth. I particularly like the model of earth’s yearly revolution around the sun, which demonstrates why our summer is Australia’s winter, for instance, and the simulated views of the night sky from Chicago, Illinois, at midnight, once a week over a year. I would absolutely love to see a model like this showing the night sky from Dublin, Ireland.
One of the most fascinating of all for me though is the simulated voyage from the sun past all nine planets, showing each planet’s average distance from the sun. (For convenience, the planets are lined up in the same direction.) It’s a good desk-bound alternative to the old London Planetarium voyages through space (changed by Madame Tussaud’s in 2006, apparently, to a celebrity based Auditorium), or to the fabulous Space Show in the Hayden Planetarium in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
By the time I’d finished, I’d stopped worrying about how the position of the moon, and the height of the tides, could affect our community, and just enjoyed the wonder. Soon enough, I know, as we continue to argue our case for flood protection works and an open floodplain, it will turn to fear again, but for now it’s simply awe…
Posted in Ireland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 10th, 2007
On Saturday night we celebrated Jan’s 28th birthday with a strange mixture of familiarity and newness. The familiarity comes from the tradition, now quite well established, of celebrating birthdays together in the house – a properly laid table, varied food (from ‘Let’s Eat In’, which delivers excellent Indian, Chinese, Thai or Italian food in our area) and drink, all spiced with talk and laughter… But on Saturday it came also from a feeling of ‘deja vu’, as four of the seven people present had celebrated before together around the same table with the same feeling of contentment.
When Jan brought his Leti to meet us at the beginning of last year, Gint was also living in the house, as well as me. Elke and Michele are now back home in Italy, but Gail, from County Monaghan, almost made it, which would have made us five of that original party together again.
Instead we had Kasia from Poland, and Alba from Spain, with Alba’s Irish boyfriend, Derek, to add in a new flavour to the mix. Spanish vied with English at the table because of the two girls - and Jan who has learned to speak Spanish quite well. At one point, though, it almost caused war as Alba and Leti got deep into nostalgia about the things they miss about Spain.
Staying out late, fiestas, and hot sunshine were all being yearned for causing Alba to give a great sigh and say that she would have to go back soon. Derek innocently said that he would enjoy it, and almost fell off his chair when Alba rounded on him to say: ‘No-o-o! You’re not coming!’ Seeing all of our faces she went on to try to explain, backed up by Leti, that she didn’t mean she didn’t want him in Spain – just that she needed badly to go back and just talk Spanish all day long (Derek doesn’t speak Spanish) with family and friends. The spicy food was needed for quite a while to heat up the atmosphere again at that end of the table, but Derek – a good-tempered lad – got over it quickly, to his credit.
It underlined, though, the difficulties a couple from different cultures, and especially with different languages, can experience. Something – even a tone of voice – that is quite normal in one culture can be seen as very offensive in another. Add to that the likelihood of misunderstandings when one, at least, is speaking in a foreign language, and it’s a minefield. What surprises me most, I think, is that so many couples survive it so well!
The birthday boy and his girlfriend were doing very well, at least, despite both speaking English most of the time, although Jan is studying Spanish as well and Leti is intending to learn Czech. The expressions on their faces, though, when Leti presented Jan with his birthday gift – a red tie to go with the red dress Leti will wear at Jan’s graduation ceremony in the Czech Republic later this month – didn’t need translation.
Earlier that day, Jan and myself had talked of birthdays. He was born at around 11am, he said, and looking at his serious, thoughtful face, I realised how important this day is to him. He feels about birthdays as I do: it’s your own very special day, a celebration of the person that is uniquely you. Oddly enough, I had been reading a novel that centred on an astrologist being murdered (and, no, she hadn’t given someone a bad reading…), and obviously the whole thing of star signs provided a background to the story.
Apparently, it’s not only important to astrologists which star sign you were born under, but also which star was in the ascendant (if I remember correctly). To work this out, they need to know the time of your birth, as well as the date.
Strangely enough, the information this provides seems to be used by the astrologer to predict what kind of person you will turn out to be, more so than what your future will be. Perhaps those two things are so intertwined that you can tell a lot about someone’s future once you know what kind of person they will be? You may not know what fate life will deal them, but you know how they will be likely to react to – or even change – that fate.
Now someone who knows about astrology (and I don’t, as must be blatantly obvious) might tear their hair out at my interpretation of what I picked up from this novel. Maybe I just picked up this bit about the date and time of your birth influencing the kind of person you are – and not the rest, if it was there – because it’s what makes us the kind of people we are that really fascinates me.
Are we really influenced by the date and time of our birth – and the stars above us then? And how much of who we are comes from our genes, from the people who went before us, and how much from the people and the ways among whom we grow up? How much influence do traumatic events have on our lives – even those we block out of our conscious minds?
I was fascinated by the Enneagram when I first came across it. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a system whereby people are divided into nine broad personality types, depicted in the form of a nine-pointed star, with each point representing a number. Each of these personality types is heavily influenced by one or other of the points next to it, known as their ‘wings’. I’ve never been quite sure whether I’m a number Four, with a strong Five influence, or a number Seven.
Four is the dreamer, and Five is the academic that likes to live in an ivory tower and observe life. Sometimes the numbers are depicted as countries and Seven, the other number in which I see much of myself, is sometimes depicted as Ireland – with our tendency to overindulge in drink, food, talk – and to avoid confrontation with unpleasantness.
I have found the Enneagram to be extraordinarily accurate in character description. It is believed it was first used by Sufi priests and later by the Jesuits, to identify personality types and thus encourage them to fight their dark side, and encourage them towards developing towards the light.
But it talks about the kind of people we are – not what made us that way, which is what fascinated me about theories of being influenced by the stars at the time of our birth.
Beliefs are such strange things. At Jan’s birthday dinner, Kasia (who is a devout Polish Catholic) announced that she and I were both going to the Irish Mass the following day, and invited anyone who liked to come along. Nobody accepted the invitation but it sparked a discussion about belief – or lack of it – in God, and belief – or lack of it – in organised religion.
The strange thing is that so many young people seem to find it incredible that anyone can believe in a God of Goodness (Derek seemed to have particular problems with this because of the state of the world) and, worse again, in a church – or churches – founded on the teachings of a Man who proclaimed himself to be the Son of that God. Yet they can believe in Matrix-like scenarios or horoscopes or a thousand other things that seem to me twice as unlikely as a Being who is the essence of Good.
I also believe in a Being who is the essence of Evil. I just don’t believe he capers around with horns and cloven foot… And I believe that one has to choose between those two extremes. I also believe that the saying: ‘The easiest way for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing’ is a challenge. We have to choose. And we have to do make that choice count for something.
I looked around the dinner table that night and thought about the different personalities in these increasingly dear people who come to our house. And what had made them that way…
…And I prayed that my God of Goodness will walk with them all through their lives, whatever name they may choose to give Him.
Posted in Czech Republic, House Family, Ireland, Latvia, Poland, Spain | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on July 2nd, 2007
My car, Fred, has broken down – again and again and again. My feet, particularly my left foot, has broken down in sympathy. My friend, Gerti, maintains that life is trying to tell me something – “Like, rest, Noeleen!”
Fred’s problems have ranged through the exhaust coming off, the alternator needing to be replaced, and, ultimately, a blown head gasket – and that’s just in the last three weeks. My patience with Fred finally blew along with the head gasket. I’m now trying to source another, more reliable, old car. …Maybe like my Sweet Caroline… (Even in cars, you see, women are more dependable.)
My foot problems started with a pain in my right instep, spreading out into the toes of my right foot when I tried to walk any distance at all. Then my right foot eased and my left foot produced exactly the same symptoms, but this time it continued to get worse. Driven to the doctor (in both senses), he said it could be a small ’stress fracture’ due the sudden onslaught of activity that followed my three sedentary months as I struggled through work and evening course. Like a child out of school, I climbed Bray Head, dug the garden, and generally refused to come back indoors until I couldn’t see any longer at around 11pm.
The other thing it could be, he announced, was arthritis. Arthritis! That couldn’t come on so quickly, I bleated. Yes, it could, he said mildly, so he sent me for x-rays, and over a week later I’m still waiting for the results. I’d moan about that except that I know, with our wonderful health system in Ireland, there are people waiting for far longer for far more important things than x-rays of their feet for a tiny fracture or arthritis.
Today, though, I went to the chiropodist, who said she believes it may be Plantar Fasciitis, which apparently is the thick connective tissue which supports the arch of the foot. She said, like the doctor, that it was probably brought on by the sudden transition from a particularly sedentary lifestyle to a very active one. I looked up Plantar Fasciitis on the web, and the funny thing is it seems to be a condition (mostly affecting runners) that causes pain in the heel. I have no pain in my heels at all. It’s going forward onto the ball of my foot that’s causing me problems: the pain then moves forward from my instep and splays out into my toes. So I can walk about my home or the office or the classroom without any great problem. It’s only when I have to propel myself forward that the pain kicks in, causing me to plant my foot in such a way that it’s causing my back problems, too. …The joys of aging…
But the chiropodist gave me a very simple treatment for it. (I love professionals who give simple practical advice – I always trust people who don’t feel they have to dress up their knowledge in esoteric rituals to impress). She told me to get a can of cooked beans or anything else that takes my fancy, put it in the fridge to cool it – and then roll it under my foot so that the coolness of the tin eases the inflammation while the rolling movement massages the plantar fascia!
I can even eat the baked beans afterwards…
The chiropodist also said, though, that the problem was being worsened by very dry skin on my feet. Again I waited to be prescribed some fancy cream. Instead, she advised me to put Vaseline on my feet – “the way you’d ice a cake” (she’s obviously never seen my baking) – and then to wrap my feet in clingwrap and cover the whole lot with old socks! I’ll do it, gladly, because the idea of having arthritis made me realise just how spoiled I am with good health all my life. Not being able to climb hills and dig gardens, or only being able to do it in pain, has me lying awake at night in horror at what I might lose.
Even now, over these last weeks of hobbling, I’ve been living off the memory of those few climbs up to the top of Bray Head in glorious evening sunshine, and re-arranging the garden with the aid of Jan’s strong back. And if I’ve to roll every tin of beans in every supermarket in Ireland, and sleep every night with cling-wrapped feet for the rest of my life (despite the danger of the washing machine, which is also giving trouble, breaking down and bursting into flames and having to emerge into the arms of the fire brigade in clingwrapped, old socked feet), I’ll gladly do it to get back to that glorious life again.
…But this time I’ll do it more slowly and with a little more gentle preparation…
Posted in Ireland | No Comments »