Dew Sweet

Dew Sweet

There's a peculiar sense of awe settling on the hills as morning dew. It's apart from the everyday curiosity because it stirs my soul to walk new paths of wonder. 

I've made an effort to walk daily, exploring the suburbs, rural hills and riverside baths to experience this awe. Being in this new environment feels as though I have stepped into a new frame of seeing the everyday. I've noticed, especially when reading Irish writers in Ireland, that the place becomes so much more tangible and real and integral. Though I've read a few Irish writers, there are so many more to read, and I'm eager to wander their well-trodden lanes. 

If there was ever a library that could take me through th eworld, it would be the Old Library at the Book of Kells exhibit. I was spectacularly in awe of the books, manuscripts, and history shelved there. There was also an exhibit of the earth in the library, a looming balloon filling the space between the buttressed ceiling and shelves, circling constantly. As it cast shadows on the visitors standing underneath, I saw how the earth and nature could make such an impression on people. 

These two scenes, however different in setting, explore the same subjects: the world around them, and the knowledge from its experience. I believe that every subject of knowledge, learning, and experience could fit under these two categories, be it religion, fantasy, politics, philosophy, physics, etc. But firsthand experience of the world and secondary experience by reading or watching are two vastly different things, which trouble the idea of learning and experiencing at all. 

Yesterday, I stumbled across a Gaelic poem that had been translated to English and I think it sums all of the natural world that Yeats describes (yet cannot every fully know) in the "dishevelled stars." It sums the experience of one week of study abroad, and the act of reading. 

Sweet Jam

There was a jam

On the doorhandle

But I pushed away the feeling

That rose up in me, 

Because I thought of the day

That doorhandle would be closed

And the little hand 

Would be gone.

     --Séamus Ó Néill

We take the steps without knowing what may happen, what we will feel, or what may come of it. But in the poem, the person stopping all of this exploration is holding the handle the entire time. In going to Ireland, we've opened up a door in a long hallway, ready to open all the other doors too. I also think that the way I act is out of habit, which eases the crisis of choice. I've learned, through reading and exploring, that it's in the choices everyday that we make and experience the world: yours, mine, Yeats', Ó Néill's, and such. Though we can never fully know the one outside of our limited understanding, I think it's good to try. 

I write and live and hope, as the title of the poem suggests, that the jam will be sweet.