My Neolithic ancestors (who were of middle eastern origin) more than likely built the structures in the Cavan Burren 6,000 years ago and carved the beautiful rock art. Most Irish people would be descended from them too. Down in the bog. Out in the wastes. The middle of nowhere. Where the boggers and culchies live. In the scraps of good-for-nothing wetlands. That is my home. Among the willows and red alders of the lake’s reflection where the land and watery underworld mix to create sublime reflections. In this world of air, water and trees there is a simplicity and barreness to this wintry world of dark shadows and dreary cloudy skyscapes. A peaceful walk is truly quiet with no birdsong and a calm lake. Trees fall back into the ground and disintegrate back into Mother Earth from whence they came and grew out of and contributed to our valuable air to help us breathe. We would be asphyxated without the forests of the world. And we cut them down by the square mile and pollute our Mothers airs and waters with toxins and poisons without end. Perhaps when this civilisation has run its course, we will have made this planet totally uninhabitable with a raging climate and poisonous barren lands and barren oceans. We took a paradise and made a hellhole of it. Full of murder, hate and ecocide. A zombified populace obsessed with material goods becomes ever more distant from the land which becomes ever more infertile and dead. We live in despotic kleptocracies on a 24-hour news cycle that terrifies us as to how the majority of the people on the planet actually live while the West dies by gorging itself on the fruits of the global poor. A dark time has come but maybe there is hope.
