Samhain: the lord of the underworld walks among us, as ghouls, spectres, and witches visit homesteads across Ireland. I went away for the weekend, because life staggers on, despite grief. Light persists, in myriad forms, even as night deepens and the dead intermingle with the living. Strangers cradled candlelight at a vigil for Savita Halappanavar under the boughs of an old churchyard tree. Friends joked and guffawed beside a cackling hearthfire, warming my numb heart. And on Sunday, the sea flowed through the streets of Galway. Seductive sirens, frantic urchins, and lost sailors glimmered under the streetlamps, propelled on the surging waves of our wonder. "Bonita! Que bonita!" cried a woman, as a giant fisherman glanced our way, galaxies shining in his eyes. Sometimes I suspect that wonder is but a queer sense of one's place in a bigger, ever-unfolding story; it returns us to a community that we had forgotten, the stars of which we are their dust.





<<