Cast a cold eye .....................
You know sometimes when you are curled up in the backseat of a fast car, or the top deck of a city-bus, or on a lit train flashing through the countryside late at night, and you can glimpse moments of other peoples lives? A split second glance at backyards strung with laundry, lights in bedrooms, the flickering neon of a tv set, a shadowed outline passing through rooms.
I like that.
I have always... watched things, people mostly. I like to sit at street cafes and watch a stream of humanity flow by - looking for characters - noticing their clothes, their shoes, their gait. In my pursuit of this I have found anonymity in cities like Dublin or London - Torrevieja or Stuttgart - as no-one will stop to engage. I like to get a sense of people and how they tick, how they interact. As a child I was reprimanded to stop staring, as a lover ditto. I do not mean to be overt but it is my nature, and it is my eyes. They have been described both as beautiful and "eyes that only a Mother could love!".
It was those eyes that spotted the foundations being dug for the home my Mother inhabits now. It is on the N25, and something about the space, the flatness of it, the lonliness of it, disturbed me. Maybe it was prescient to shudder - to conjecture what would its function be.
That was 20 years ago.
The building itself is long and low. It is set back from the road in a green field where horses roam, where cattle graze at the fence, and where the car park is only full for funerals.
I could never have guessed two decades ago that my eyes and I would become an intrinsic part of the fabric of the day to day life of this house, that I would be as familiar with its smells and sights as my own, that I would be a constant presence wandering its halls.
Curled in the back seat of any car (Heaven forfend that I should drive myself) I watched as it slowly took shape.
"It's a B&B" I thought.
Then as it lengthened and stretched -
"It's a Hotel" I thought.
Boy, was I wrong.
In this space I get to use my eyes to my hearts content. And in that vein I have indeed seen things that no- one should see.
Or everyone.
Tonight Siobhan was silent.
I did my usual face washing and creaming and foot rubbing all while she slept. I gave her a small Baileys while she slept. I kissed her goodnight while she slept.
Anyone driving by tonight may not even notice this house. They will be opening their car up after the last village has been left behind, and they speed off into the darkness. If they glance to the right the lit windows will just flash by and be gone in a heartbeat.
Inside the lights are on in every room except the church - which is lit by a single red candle at the tabernacle and the stained glass will flicker and light up the empty chairs in the headlights. The laundry is spinning and drying in the machines, the 50 television sets are all tuned into the Rte News, the residents are preparing for sleep, and the whole messy business of living and dying plays out again and again and again.
I am the Witness.
I like that.
I have always... watched things, people mostly. I like to sit at street cafes and watch a stream of humanity flow by - looking for characters - noticing their clothes, their shoes, their gait. In my pursuit of this I have found anonymity in cities like Dublin or London - Torrevieja or Stuttgart - as no-one will stop to engage. I like to get a sense of people and how they tick, how they interact. As a child I was reprimanded to stop staring, as a lover ditto. I do not mean to be overt but it is my nature, and it is my eyes. They have been described both as beautiful and "eyes that only a Mother could love!".
It was those eyes that spotted the foundations being dug for the home my Mother inhabits now. It is on the N25, and something about the space, the flatness of it, the lonliness of it, disturbed me. Maybe it was prescient to shudder - to conjecture what would its function be.
That was 20 years ago.
The building itself is long and low. It is set back from the road in a green field where horses roam, where cattle graze at the fence, and where the car park is only full for funerals.
I could never have guessed two decades ago that my eyes and I would become an intrinsic part of the fabric of the day to day life of this house, that I would be as familiar with its smells and sights as my own, that I would be a constant presence wandering its halls.
Curled in the back seat of any car (Heaven forfend that I should drive myself) I watched as it slowly took shape.
"It's a B&B" I thought.
Then as it lengthened and stretched -
"It's a Hotel" I thought.
Boy, was I wrong.
In this space I get to use my eyes to my hearts content. And in that vein I have indeed seen things that no- one should see.
Or everyone.
Tonight Siobhan was silent.
I did my usual face washing and creaming and foot rubbing all while she slept. I gave her a small Baileys while she slept. I kissed her goodnight while she slept.
Anyone driving by tonight may not even notice this house. They will be opening their car up after the last village has been left behind, and they speed off into the darkness. If they glance to the right the lit windows will just flash by and be gone in a heartbeat.
Inside the lights are on in every room except the church - which is lit by a single red candle at the tabernacle and the stained glass will flicker and light up the empty chairs in the headlights. The laundry is spinning and drying in the machines, the 50 television sets are all tuned into the Rte News, the residents are preparing for sleep, and the whole messy business of living and dying plays out again and again and again.
I am the Witness.
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