Fado, Fado
The Great Mother, Goddess of all that is right and wonderful, pressed her lips upon the desolate barrens that lay next to the ice blue Pacific and breathed life into the blessed land. Special loving mother’s breath to the north and central coast. A life giving kiss from the feminine beautiful transformed the void to the vegetated, the fruitless to the fruited, the enervated to the activated.
Nestled in the hip of one of her most beautiful ocean cliffs lays yours truly, starkers, in a pool of water heated by her inner fires, staring at the moonless star-studded sky. The day’s box score is five shooting stars and one pod of whales. Fellow bathers are shadowed, faceless, nameless, whispering.
But, what’s this? My ritual floating mantra is interrupted. Rude, relentless, caviling:
“Do any of you dream a lot? I have a dream about something or somewhere I’ve never been and then later I go somewhere and it’s the place I dreamt about. I know it without ever seeing it before. Isn’t that freaky? Do any of you have any real deep fears? I’ll tell you something weird, I have a fear of metal towers.”
“I’m fascinated by them at the same time. I’m an electrical engineer and a licensed broadcast radio operator.” Calm now, back to the mantra…. “I’m an electrical engineer and a licensed broadcast radio operator.” Easy now, focus on the stars. Find another shooting star… “I’m an electrical engineer and a licensed broadcast radio operator.” Pray to the Great Mother. Prayer is meditative….. “I’m an electrical engineer and a licensed broadcast radio operator.” No help! I’ve lost contact with the Great Mother…..
“I know everything about every radio tower between San Luis Obispo and Sacramento. I have a book where I write down each type of transmitter, watt strength, height, and broadcast coverage. I even know the type, make, and model of beacon on top of every tower. So, anyway, it wasn’t until I was on a date with this woman when I realized why I have a mortal fear of metal towers”
“You see, I’m an electrical engineer and a licensed broadcast radio operator, and I was explaining to my special lady friend on our date how the radio tower turns electrical energy into wave energy. And, she says, so the tower is a transition mechanism. And, it hit me like a ton of bricks….. I fear transition!”
I’d like to hit you like a ton of bricks, ye feckin’ wanker.
But, what does this have to do with Ireland? Nothing Irish about this place. I’m at home in beloved California, soaking in a bath at Big Sur. I’ve been bathing in this self-same gorgeous spot for forty years whenever I get a chance and somehow I’ve never “done” a workshop or “had a transition”. People sidle up to me in the baths and ask “what workshop are you here for?” I whisper an answer, “Advanced Hedonistic Studies”. I have gone un-noticed and eavesdropping like Bloom for thirty-two years. I wasn’t about to make a scene now by pissing on this guy’s head. Couldn’t risk losing my hot water and massage privileges.
So into the bath slips an Irishman. You heard right, from the Teranure neighborhood of Dublin no less. Teranure used to be the center of Jewish life in Dublin. There’s even a Jewish Cemetery there. Luckily, yer man was not Jewish, or it would have caused me to re-evaluate my existence again, and we don’t want to go there.
Now, just the fact that an Irishman was doing a workshop titled “Upledger Healing From The Core: Grounding and Healthy Boundaries” speaks volumes about the “new” Ireland, but as we sat and soaked and our conversation progressed I realized some things about my adopted home. They didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks, but I think they’ve been seeping into my consciousness over the last few years in Ireland.
The population of Ireland has reached 4.2 million people in 2006 mostly due to massive immigration from Eastern Europe. But, the population has still not been restored to the level of 8.8 million just before An Gorta Mór (The Great Famine) of 1845.
If there is anything the Irish and Jews have in common it is diaspora. Millions of Irish left Ireland to try to find better circumstances. Like Jews, most found what they were looking for in the United States and The United Kingdom.
Until very recently (20 years ago) Ireland was a dirt-poor country. Ireland was one of Europe’s poorest countries for over two centuries. In 1987 Ireland’s per capita GDP (Gross Domestic Product) was only 63% of that of the United Kingdom. But then from 1987 – 1995 per capita GDP grew by an average of 5.66% per year. From 1996 – 2000 per capita GDP increased by an average of 9.66% per year. Per capita GDP now outstrips all other European countries including the UK, and is about dead even with that of the United States.
So this is the great Celtic Tiger, the anti-famine, bread buttered on both sides, hitting the exacta at the Curragh. The perfect storm that combined a well educated young workforce with tons of money from the European Union with land-office investment from foreign corporations looking to cash in on a very liberal tax policy, and interest rates held artificially low by the EU.
At times I feel Ireland is like the guy who finds a briefcase full of cash in the street and is hoping against hope that no one saw him pick it up, and more importantly, that no one is going to take it away. The media, and oftentimes even pub conversation is obsessed with the economy. “We can not sustain the growth of the Nineties!” “Interest rate increases will spell doom for the real-estate market!” “XYZ Corporation moves 600 jobs to Ukraine!” “You see that guy over there, yer man owns the biggest printing company in Ireland!”
Even my bathing Irish friend who has a degree in NLP (Neuro-linguistic programming) is studying the aspects of the Irish mind that support entrepreneurial behavior, and probably getting paid well for it. Now I don’t want to start a pissing match with believers and non-believers in NLP, but the simplest definition of NLP I could find is:
“(NLP) is a set of techniques, axioms and beliefs that adherents use primarily as an approach to personal development. It is based on the idea that mind, body and language interact to create an individual’s perception of the world and that perceptions, and hence behaviors, can be changed by the application of a variety of techniques. An important technique is “modeling” which involves the careful reproduction of the behaviors and beliefs of those who have achieved “excellence”. “
Model excellence. Wow, so, walk the walk and talk the talk and all will fall into place. My only problem with this theorem revolves around who makes the judgment about who has achieved “excellence”. I was pretty excellent myself before yer man with the radio towers just had to tell us about his epiphany.
Ireland herself did a sort of “modeling”. With the wolf at her door she trained her children in the ways of computer technology, pharmacy, accounting, and business. Modeling the excellence of the US and Euro-power economies. And, to some extent, it has worked. But, I hope we don’t lose the Ireland of the pub, and the horses, and the music, and the poetry, and of Joyce to the beat of the runway music and the throbbing excitement of a modeling career.
You know, I sort of believe in the Great Mother, and that she treated us in northern California a little nicer than the other kids. And why not!? It’s wacky, I know, but no wackier than anything I’ve ever heard in these baths, or in any church or synagogue. That’s one of the reasons I love these baths. They’re filled with wacky people, like the woman who told me that her workshop group gathered flowers and herbs from the garden and they all bathed in the flowered, herbed water and later extracted a bucket of the bathed-in water and made a lovely soup and had it for dinner. But, come ‘ere to me “entrepreneurial behavior”? And from an Irishman, and from Teranure no less.
Copyright (C) 2004 – 2019 Abram Richman All Rights Reserved
The Only Other Jew In Dublin 