Moooving Metals on the Copper Coast

On Saturday, most of the group set off to bike the Waterford Greenway, which goes right along the beautiful Copper Coast. It was breathtaking, both the views and the bike ride! I ended up in a group at the end of the pack, and we split off to fix a bike malfunction, leaving the rest of the group to go ahead of us. For a while, it was just Ella and I, biking peacefully with many stops in between. We ended up biking around 11 miles, and Connor caught up to us later on. I loved being able to make small stops every once in a while to take pictures and bask in the sunlight, which made the entire trip worth it! 

My favorite stop was at a farmer's gate to take a picture with a cow! They started coming up to see us, and it was my favorite moment of the day. Yeats' poem "A Coat" reminds me of this experience, especially after going through a section with little faery doors:

"A Coat," W.B. Yeats (Poetry Foundation)

I made my song a coat 

Covered with embroideries 

Out of old mythologies 

From heel to throat; 

But the fools caught it, 

Wore it in the world’s eyes 

As though they’d wrought it. 

Song, let them take it

For there’s more enterprise 

In walking naked.

I love how witty this poem is, and how he describes his writing practice and thoughts through experience. The coat (the poems, fame, and so on) becomes something sought after, but not the experience of writing, which is such a distinction to make, because Yeats writes about how difficult writing is, for example in "The Fascination of What's Difficult."

Much like this poem, the experience is what I seek after. I don't want to come back from Ireland simply to say that I have been, seen, gone, but that I lived, experienced, communed with the land, people, culture, literature, food, and everyday life while abroad. 

Yeats' poem is a practice of presence, too. Even in his writing, he's in the present moment, as though he is captured and lived in these very words. But, there's a distinct sense that he's moved on from them as well, that the fools have moved on, worn the coat, and still not found the fulfillment they're looking for. In some ways, the acknowledgement of his self-consciousness about having written things people desire is contrasted with the self-consciousness and egoism of walking naked. 

Anyway--the Copper Coast might be another one of those aphorisms for a beautiful place, like Yeats' coat. Maybe renaming it and redescribing it are part of the reflection. But I think the experience of the thing, the day, the moment and moving from it to another can only be understood in pieces. I know those cows already have names, places, and purposes, but to me they are the living coats of that day. Maybe that's what experience is all about, though William Blake might not agree. I might have experienced the sublime that day, regardless of the focus on corruption, on the metallic leagues of the coast.