Notes from a Native

To come from Connemara is to learn early, as Joan Didion so aptly put it of California, a lesson in cognitive dissonance. It is also a lesson in duality. The place I grew up in is both stark and beautiful, yet away from it, I am never nostalgic. I carry it with me like a state of grace and darkness. I know where my compass points when at rest, a spot near Slyne Head, an island covered by gold-coloured lichen, with a small sandy beach below a chapel.

My earliest picture of the world resembled Flann O’Brien’s map of the world in An Béal Bocht, a joyous send-up of Dublin Gaelgóirí as well as An tOileánach, a book he greatly admired. The map depicts the world from the viewpoint of the West Kerry Gaeltacht. There are poitín deposits marked with an X as if they were oilwells, and particular prominence is given to Sligo gaol. A large landmass called ‘Overseas’ has three cities, New York, Boston and Springfield Mass. There are money order offices for sending dollars home, and a few long-horned cattle. England, entitled ‘De Odar Saighd’, has fewer money order offices and contains George Bernard Shaw. China is close to America, and the legendary Tír Faoi Thoinn, the land under the sea, is marked by a pair of legs sticking up out of the water between these two unlikely coasts.

My own world, at about four or five years old, looked roughly like this: Slyne Head, the Twelve Bens, Errislanann, Carna, Caillín’s Well, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, where my Aunt was. When I was shown it on ...