If you don’t mind I’m trying to get a flight to Connemara. Simple really, isn’t it? Last words she said before her synapses had retreated was that the best view of the west was from the top of Connemara. Oh so mystical, the land of Connemara, beauty in a speck at the top of Connemara, rain falls into love in the mountains of Connemara.
But how elongated the whole process became. What a chore, and a bore, to get a flight to Connemara! A pound; a paupers pitiful pound and I’m there, on the plane at least, high up in the sky, unfolding beneath me Connemara, I guess. A pound for the chance to let by gones be by gones.
Shame you’ve never actually been, she said.
Then a storm came and confused her, and claimed her from me.
But how long the bloody process became. The process of elongation to get the flight only elongated my sense of distress at the mystical land of Connemara. If it was all so good and well, if she wrote it in the stars, if her last dying wish was that I visit the place, why the hell would a pound turn into twenty after tax? Why in god’s own name, by the blood of his son, by the aura of the ghost would I pay six pounds extra for a bag to carry my toothbrush and camera?
The elongation of the process elongated my distress, which elongated the elongation of the thought in my head that maybe Connemara was not meant to be. Her synapses retreated, her storm slowly forming, the rain falling down on the mountains of Connemara, had started long before I sought to discover it, and I don’t suppose it’ll grow greener for my feet stepping on it. It won’t bring her back, not a flight to Connemara.
(2011)
