Heroes and Villains and the Four Faced Liar

Having left the chickens, the dog, the cat, the rabbit, and the distant cows behind me for the day, I walk toward the Crawford Art Gallery, feeling dowdy in my flannel overshirt and jeans. This is Cork. This is the big city. These people are sharply dressed and attractive. These buildings tower impressively, demanding more respect from me than one crumbled down castle wall had. Look at us, they say, look at us!

I’ve got a long list of things to visit and only eight hours before I need to catch my bus home to the countryside again.

So, naturally, I start off with a leisurely breakfast and coffee at the Crawford Art Gallery’s café. It’s been some time since I’ve had the luxury of eating out. It feels indulgent. Silently, I count my pennies and wish I’d washed my hair the night before. Pretending I’m sophisticated enough to be there, I settle back and sip my coffee. While I wait for my food, I look over my plans for the day. I’ve been told Cork is a very walkable city and I’m hoping this is true. I want to go from one end to the other. From that end to somewhere else.

After I’ve finished my breakfast (maybe more delicious for the fact that I didn’t have to make it), after the gallery has officially opened, I walk up the stairs to see the Harry Clarke stained glass and then go down again one flight to visit The Heroes and Villains exhibition.

I make a hurried pass through the rooms, hardly even appreciating that there’s a Picasso, there’s a Larocque, there’s a quote from David Bowie, there’s a quote from Spiderman.

I’ve got too many places to fit into my day to really take my time here. In fact, the gallery hadn’t even been on my original list of places to visit. I’m only here because my host had mentioned the gallery and its nice café when she’d dropped me off. And I’d thought it was as good a place to start as any.

Now, I wish I had a more relaxed mind. For this idea of the Hero and the Villain is an intriguing one. The exhibition plaque’s last introductory paragraph says, “From fallen heroes and reformed villains to accidental heroes, heroes of the moment, and villains for all time, this exhibition showcases a wide variety of real or imagined figures and the many ways that artists have celebrated or presented the shades of good or bad in all of us.”

Surely, that’s a big topic to cover. And surely, life is full of contrasted extremes.

Hoping I’ll think about it all later, I walk outside and head past the Opera House. I cross a bridge and go towards a church bell tower. At the top of my day’s list is the Shandon Bells. “You haven’t done Cork until you’ve played the Shandon Bells!” one website had exclaimed at me. And I’m not one to turn down an opportunity to play bells.

I ask a passing lady if I’m going the right direction (I can no longer see the bell tower from this part of the street) and she says she’s going that way and motions me to come along beside her.

We chitchat amiably, about the weather, about the fantastic summer it has been, and I ask her what I shouldn’t miss on my one day in Cork.

“Oh,” she says. And I recognize that oh. I’ve felt that oh before myself when others have asked me that about the places where I’ve lived. “I’ve lived here all my life and I’m so accustomed to everything I forget.” She thinks for half a moment and then she lists a few places. “The Butter Museum. St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral. Elizabeth Fort is worth a visit. Shandon has many old buildings.”

“Was Shandon a person or only an area?” I ask. My Irish history is still abysmal.

“An area,” she says. We turn a corner and then she pauses, “This is where I go down for work. But if you follow this road up, you’ll see the church.”

I thank her and we bid each other farewell. 

I go up the hill and around another corner. There’s a church, there’s a bell tower. It looks different from what I was expecting from the online pictures I’d seen, but, nevertheless, I venture into the visitors’ center. I wander down a hallway. There’s a man at a computer who stands when he sees me looking lost and hopeful.

“Is this where the Shandon Bells are?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “This is the Catholic church. Shandon is Church of Ireland.” Oh lord, that’s why it didn’t look familiar. I hope I haven’t offended him by asking for the wrong church.

“I’d heard you can play the bells at Shandon,” I say, as an explanation of my choice.

“That’s right, you can. Come on, I’ll show you where it is.”

He takes me back outside, crosses the street with me, points down a road, and tells me I’ll bump into St. Anne’s that way. Sure enough, I will. I can see the Shandon Bell Tower of St. Anne’s from where we’re standing.

I thank him and we go our separate ways.

It’s no secret that I like bell tower bells. But I’m even more endeared to this bell tower after reading that the tower’s clock—one clock face for each side—is affectionately (as one site says) called The Four Faced Liar because they are seldom, if ever, telling the exact same time.

The two I see from this side of the road are off by a minute or so.

This time, going inside the correct church, I buy a ticket for the bell tower and get handed a pair of sound-canceling earmuffs and an informative and welcoming slip of paper. Thus equipped, I start up the stone steps. There are 132 of them. St. Anne’s was built in 1722. The little informative paper also says it’s “the oldest church in continuous use in Cork City.”

I reach the first floor and there is the wall with the bell ropes.

The Shandon bells are rung by a mechanism called an Ellacombe apparatus. Each of the eight bells has its own numbered rope set within a wooden frame which is set against the wall. The rope when pulled, going up through the ceiling to the bell tower, causes a hammer to strike against the outside of the stationary bell.

This is contrasted to the change-ringing style of bell ringing where a clapper inside the bell is made to strike either side of the bell as the bell itself is pulled upright and then swung down again by its rope. Ringing a non-stationary bell requires practice and correct technique to ensure both the ringer and the bell’s safety.

The Ellacombe style requires nothing more than the instructions to pull the rope towards you and to pull the ropes at a quick and even pace.

I’m alone in the room, but I still feel the weight of the outside listening world as I choose the song I’ll play and put my hands on the first two numbered ropes. The instructions at the start of the songbook asks visitors to have fun ringing but not to be excessive with their playing out of consideration for the church’s neighbors.

I wonder what it must be like to be a neighbor to this church. Would I like bells so much if I were?

I play Lord of the Rings. Mostly because it’s one of the shorter selections in the book. Whether it sounds like the soundtrack to the movie, I can’t tell. But I ring it out joyfully and then go up to the next level.

Eventually, (I lose count of the stone steps) I arrive to the floor with the clock’s mechanisms. My paper tells me, “the machinery weighs 2 tonnes and is one of the largest caged clocks in Europe.

I admire it and then go up to the next level. As I make my way up and upper still, I put on my sound-cancelling earmuffs (the paper calls them “ear defenders”) and now I’m on the level with the bells.

Someone below is ringing out a song. I watch the red clappers strike the outside of the bells. I listen to the muffled sound. What a bell experience!

From this point—even with the signs pointing me on, even with the official looking sign that says To Balcony, I’m not convinced there is a going on. That’s a pretty non-official looking ladder. That’s a kind of clambering scramble. That’s a pretty tight squeeze on to a flight of ever-narrowing stairs.

Well, I can go on.

I go on.

And then there I am, at the top of the world. There below me is all of Cork. There beyond that, all of Ireland. There, somewhere is the sea.

Someone plays Ode to Joy. Someone plays one of Vivaldi’s seasons.

I could stay here forever, but I can’t. I’ve got a list of other places to visit. Look, below, there is all of Cork. I’ve got all of that to see, to walk.

Still I linger. Finally, though, I make my way down the tiny, narrow steps. I pause to listen to another song from within the bell tower. When the last note has rung out, I scramble down the wooden ladder and climb down to the next level of stairs.

Once more in the ringing room, and there alone again, I flip through the book and for a lark select Edelweiss. It sounds nothing like the song that Captain von Trapp sang in The Sound of Music, but I play it still.

I’ve rung two songs! I’ve rung church bells, I think as I clump down the remaining steps to the ground level. I tell the two women at the front thank you and what a wonderful place this is as I hand them back the ear defenders.

They smile and bid me good day.

I go out into the open air. When has a bell tower ever disappointed! When have I ever got to ring before this day? Apparently, now I can truly say that I’ve done Cork. I’ve rung the Shandon Bells. Happy, I walk around the perimeter of St. Anne’s, noting that the clock faces are indeed all showing different times. I smile. There’s nothing like a four faced liar.

Trying my best to connect the pieces of my day together, I wonder, is a liar a hero or a villain? But that seems a bit of a stretch. I head across a different bridge and make my way toward St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral in all its grandeur. But that’s a story for another day.

In any event, my day in Cork is a day of contrasts. Country and city. Heroes and Villains. Protestants and Catholics. Old and New. Dowdy and Stylish. North and South. East and West. This side of the bridge and that one.

In any event, it’s a full and wonderful day.

After visiting St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral, Elizabeth Fort, having seen fountains, statues, old city walls, the Nano Nagle Centre, the Red Abbey Tower, the English Market, and another clock (not a liar, I presume), I find my way to the bus station. Exhausted and satisfied, still wearing my flannel shirt, I catch the bus back home to the country where possibly (for now) I belong.

In the Company of Writers

The house overlooks the sea. An unrestricted view. As if there were no other place than this, nothing else but the sea and sky. The gulls cry as they circle the water. Occasionally, one dives—a plummeting streak of white—and disappears into the grey, into the blue only to bob up one breathless moment later. Whether successful or not (for bird or for fish), I never know. Children dot the summer beach like giant grains of sand. A morning mist glides by.

“I feel a lot of pressure,” my host says as we walk down the stone steps toward the blue door and then into the house where we’ll spend the next three days on a writing retreat. “I hope you like it.”

I know what she means. It’s how I’d felt when my family came to visit. I’d been trying to sell my mom on a vacation for years, and then she’d finally gone for it. And then all my promises of the virtues and joys of travel, of exploration, of adventure seemed unreasonable and unfulfillable.  Would it be worth the money to them? Would they have fun? All the Woulds in my world had hung in the balance. Even though I’d known I couldn’t control the outcome, I had wanted to. To have this perfect thing to give. To have this perfect thing to share.

Today, stepping into this house, home of the well-known [except to me who seems to know no one at all. Where have I lived all my life, under a rock?] and late Irish novelist and playwright Molly Keane, I feel like the new kid in class. Will they like me? Will I write anything good? Will I like them?

The entry way has a small table with scones, butter, and jams. A vase of bright, fresh flowers. The walls pose with their pictures; a commanding painting of a woman as well dressed as Queen Victoria, photographs of a couple at a picnic, the couple with three horses, a small painting of a colorful cow who looks as if it is surprised to be taken notice of. We go down the wooden stairs and into a large room with windows that look past the garden to the sea. The shelves are thick with books. A large mirror sits at the top of one shelf like an averted gaze, reflecting only the edge of a curtain.  

I get a cup of coffee and find a seat at the large table. Two lit candles bookend two small vases of fresh, garden flowers in the center. A thin, soft-rose-pink blanket overlaps another soft-rose-pink blanket to make a tablecloth big enough to cover the entire square. I take a seat that has a view of the sea.

Some of the writers are already seated, and soon enough all fourteen of us are.

The retreat facilitator, Lani, welcomes us and says, “Let’s take a moment to come into this time. Close your eyes if you feel comfortable doing so.” For a space of calming time, she settles us in. “With your feet on the floor. Take a moment to breathe. What do your thoughts look like?”

I see my thoughts as a school of tiny, fast fish which dart through the water of a rock bottomed, silver-brown river. They’re very busy, very fast my thought fish.

“Now put your thoughts into a pink cloud,” Lani says. “And let them float away.”

My fish rise, floating up from the water and into the pink cloud. Still busy. Still fast. Then they’re enclosed and I can’t see them anymore. I smile. A pink cloud is amusing. All my thought fish in the pink cloud is delightful.

They float away.

When we’ve observed how our bodies feel and what emotions are present for us on this morning, we open our eyes. Here we all are. Outside, the real clouds, not pink, have made the sea blue-gray. Lani reads us William Carlos Williams’ The Red Wheelbarrow. It’s a short poem. It’s perfect in its imagery and succinctness. I know it. As do all the other writers here. Many of whom are poets themselves. We make low murmurs when the last word is read. Then there is a light mist of silence. Will our words ever do the same to others?

“There’s power within objects,” Lani says, or some words that mean the same thing. She talks about how an object can convey feeling, thought, the weight of the world, a question. Reaching for the seven-metal singing bowl she’s brought with her, she holds it up. “I want you to write about an object. This object. Six or eight lines describing it. We’ll take about five minutes or so to do it.” We pass the bowl from hand to hand, some of us sound it with the wooden clapper, the notes resonant and deep. Some of us feel the weight of it in our palms, some of us pass it quickly on. Then we put our heads down and write. When the allotted time is done we go around the room and share one line—making a poem of collective descriptions. Which changes the meaning of what I’d written. Changes the meaning of what each of us have written. There’s a sorrow and a power in that. I’m surprised by my feeling of selfishness that wants to keep my line in its place, in a place on the page of my notebook that exclaims, mine, mine, mine. “Now,” Lani says, “I want you to focus on an object. Maybe an object that was important to you as a child.”

Those are our only instructions as we wander out of the group room to go and find the nooks and crannies in which to tuck ourselves in to write. The house is full of them, as is the garden. As is the charming, seaside village which is only a short walk away.  

I go and sit in a little sunroom surrounded by ancient and fresh spider webs. I sit and write about a mirror, about two sisters, about childhood games.

The hours disappear, the days go too quickly by.

With the sea to watch, with the garden to explore, with lunch set for us every afternoon at half one, with writers all around, I settle in to the work. In my day to day life, on my own, I do put in the work, I do put in the hours, I do write. But I’ve missed this. In my nomadic and transient way of living, I’ve missed the community and the accountability of face-to-face contact. I’ve missed the exchange of ideas and the hearing of new words put together in ways which they’ve never been put together before. I’ve missed out on the poetry. On the hilarious, heartbreaking, subtle, metaphysical, succinct, fearful, brave stories that come out in so many lines, in so few lines from people as much like me and as different from me as I can imagine.

I’ve missed the sharing of titles and authors.

Here, these thirteen other people speak the names of Irish poets and writers; James Joyce, Danielle McLaughlin, Kevin Barry, Mary Costello, Claire Keegan, John Banville like a litany, like a poem of its own. As if Ireland is the world. And it is. And I wonder where I’ve been to not know so much. How can I not know so much? Have I been living under a rock? As if these are the only writers. And they are. But they’re not. We are here too. We are also writers. With names and words, memories and ideas.

As the days vanish like the mist, as the hours pass by like the clouds, I write, I listen, I read, I think.

We write of a first love using an object to describe the experience rather than expressive words like heart, pulse, soft, desire, moon, moonlight or any of the long list of other words that usually evoke passion or even the innocence of love. I find a ping pong table and an old tool shed as objects. How strange. How strange those objects are.

We write of making a cup of tea using all the senses; sight, smell, taste, touch, sound. I write of the slow, lingering drip of a faucet, the open mouth of a kettle, of the fear of not fitting in.

We write our reflections on the day. And I’ve written so much already, pulled out so many unexpected objects from my memory and from my childhood that I’m almost empty of words. “The sea is a powerful influence,” I write and that almost sums it up.

On the last day, the sun comes out and the sea turns blue and bright. The gulls circle and cry. A group of people, children and not children jump off the pier into the water. A swimmer returns to shore.

On the final day, we write about what it was like to read our work aloud to each other. And I write that reading to this group of writers, of new friends was like reading to trees.

Trees listen.

Trees always listen.

Trees listen

Swaying

Creaking.

On the final day, as my host and I head up the stone steps for the last time, I look down at the house. I look past it to the sea. I think of what I’ve discovered for myself over these days and what I’ve learned. I think of other objects which I could use to tell stories.

Thanks to these days, I can think of objects in a new way now. For, as Lani said, objects do have power. They can speak in a way that fast fish thoughts can’t—even fast fish thoughts floating away in pink clouds.

Objects.

A house on the sea. A notebook and a pen. A mirror on a top shelf. Even a ping pong table. Even an ancient cobweb in the corner of a window in a small sunroom. Even a tree. As I get into the car and put on my seatbelt, I find that for me, even childhood itself is an object. A precious object of joyful pain and inexpressible, sorrowful, precious, innocent beauty.