Orfeo is not the only one who’s been to hell and backAt a hotel in Clonmel, a middle-aged couple made a dramatic entrance, like a pair welded together in the hell of matrimonyThu Jul 17 2014 - 01:00
I am too pessimistic to find joy in communal hot tubsI used to think young people went to festivals just to get drunk or do drugs. At Body and Soul I realised I was wrongThu Jul 10 2014 - 01:00
Dermot Healy was afflicted with an unruly mindIn his most famous work, A Goat’s Song, he excelled himself in revealing the Irish male as the dreamer, the broken thing that a man becomes when the women have gone awayTue Jul 01 2014 - 01:00
The sadness of a sandwich reminded me of nunsA picnic is just a matter of getting to some place where you can relax, and for me there is nowhere better than the cliffs of DonegalTue Jun 24 2014 - 11:50
Her eyes were beautiful – I was only telling the truthDermot Healy once remarked that the people with the most beautiful eyes in the world often live by the ocean, which is certainly true for BelmulletThu Jun 19 2014 - 01:00
Thoughts about priests in a priestless worldIn college I knew priests who smoked pipes and shot pheasants, priests who would drink all night long, and chaplains who slept with teachersThu Jun 12 2014 - 01:00
The hopefulness of dance and the dangers of lettuce‘When we sit down to eat, we need to make sure that there’s blood running out of whatever is on the plate,’ said the GeneralThu Jun 05 2014 - 01:00
Once upon a time on a train to Lung-fordThe young couple with backpacks became absorbed by each other like lovers in a play by ShakespeareThu May 29 2014 - 01:00
Bundoran is a great remedy for melancholy‘Lounging around in pyjamas and watching a Vietnamese monk talking about suffering is no excuse for a life,’ a friend told meThu May 22 2014 - 01:00
In Ireland, unlike Tibet, the dead are everywhereIrish people are so afflicted by melancholy that even the living look like they are carrying dead weightThu May 15 2014 - 10:03
Putin was naked and his skin covered in feathersThe idea of the president of all the Russias up there with claw feet shaking the chimney pot was not doing me any good at allTue May 06 2014 - 12:31
Beautifully obscure logic on the slow bus to DublinA man with a peaked cap and a long nose hopped on behind me, sat down beside me and started talkingThu May 01 2014 - 01:00
My inheritance: an endless litany of anxietiesAfter my mother died, I was able to decipher all her worries from every little note and memo and grocery list she left behindTue Apr 22 2014 - 12:20
There’s no telling why the good sometimes die youngA BBC drama about the first World War got me thinkingThu Apr 17 2014 - 01:00
Brothers separated by an ocean, linked by lonelinessThe brother in Ireland sometimes called Chicago, although the two spoke little except about the weatherThu Apr 10 2014 - 01:00
The difference between Shakespeare and JoyceA trip to London led me to the National Theatre’s brilliant ‘King Lear’ and to ‘Riverrun’, Olwen Fouéré’s show based on texts from ‘Finnegans Wake’Thu Apr 03 2014 - 01:02
Gardening, dead wood and the dark night of the soulI began gardening on St Patrick’s Day. It was a strategy to avoid parades and then I started to like itThu Mar 27 2014 - 01:00
‘I started in the gym for Lent, which was a terrible mistake’The General says exercise can be bad for your healthTue Mar 18 2014 - 11:16
A therapy session with a woman in a tartan skirtThe old man in me was thinking she should go and have a wash. The young man in me was regretting we hadn’t more timeTue Mar 11 2014 - 17:00
What I love most about women is their voicesMy earliest recollection is of women chattering above my cot. In adolescence, my greatest comfort was the soft, posh voices of female presenters on BBC Radio 3Thu Mar 06 2014 - 01:00
Old minds quietly running footage on interior screensSometimes I find stillness in old people. They sit in kitchens, pretending to watch the television, or wait on verandas in wheelchairs for visitorsThu Feb 27 2014 - 01:00
Close encounters with a badger and the woman who nursed me as a childI’m always amazed at who I bump into when I’m out and about – and by what they might sayTue Feb 18 2014 - 10:54
Her wetsuit wasn’t sexy and felt as cold as a fishThere were huge waves in Mullaghmore on the day my friend diedThu Feb 13 2014 - 01:00
I could see where the shots had peppered his chestI have been remembering an old friend, who had no limits, which may be why he clung to drink so much, and why he tried suicide with a gunThu Feb 06 2014 - 01:00
Under blue skies, the blackness has changedI’m not getting overexcited about anything and I’m not wallowing in despair. It’s a kind of equilibrium that I usually associate with fishermenThu Jan 30 2014 - 01:00
Perhaps I could have treated my mother betterMaybe I could have loved her more, or at least said ‘I love you’ more often, I realised too lateThu Jan 23 2014 - 01:00
I’m a changed man, said the General with a faint smileNot another bungled affair at 3am with some unfortunate actress in the foyer of a five-star hotel, I thoughtThu Jan 16 2014 - 01:00
Happiness eludes me, so now I’m looking for meaningI confessed to a man with a heart of stone in a midlands bar that I’m rarely happy nowadaysThu Jan 09 2014 - 01:00
Message to a heartbroken widow: embrace your griefThe house where my mother lived became a shell where she protected herself after her husband diedTue Dec 31 2013 - 01:00
Ghost of Christmas past breathes in, breathes outMy Christmas was always focused on mother. And even though she is no longer walking on the Earth, nothing much has changed. She is with me in other waysThu Dec 19 2013 - 01:00
When I was a child I played with the baby JesusIn winter I am overwhelmed by darkness, because the dark is the only thing that remains unchanged in a thousand Leitrim wintersThu Dec 12 2013 - 01:00
If I were a woman, I’d have fallen in love with the manIs it because men are afraid of naked emotion that they seek to cover women?Thu Dec 05 2013 - 01:00
The dinner: quintessential sign of mother’s loveThe cult of the Great Mammy endures, as young women in filling stations and Centra cafes all around the country feed dinners to large, rugged truck driversTue Nov 26 2013 - 11:23
God’s Labrador and a turbulent priestThe attempted silencing of Fr Tony Flannery was tragic. The censure of Brian D’Arcy verged on the ridiculousSat Nov 23 2013 - 01:00
This country is too small to find a strangerI can never get a sense that I am away from home. Even in the most remote Centra filling station, I always end up talking to someone who knows me, or knows someone I knowThu Nov 21 2013 - 01:00
November: even the cat is thinking of deathIt’s a dark month, as nature holds its dying breath and the light fails. But it’s a time I love, because the other world seems closerThu Nov 14 2013 - 01:00
A powerful chemistry in intimate IrelandThe General considers himself to be strong, especially since his recent success in the art of love. But there’s something he doesn’t knowThu Nov 07 2013 - 01:00
I believe in angels – and I saw one recentlyHe was disguised as a homeless man in a Warsaw restaurantThu Oct 31 2013 - 01:00
Explaining Cavan to a boy from BangladeshI felt close to the boy, whom I met in Warsaw, as exiles feel with others who are far from homeTue Oct 22 2013 - 01:00
I’ve never been comfortable with real menI never played football as a boy. I wrote poetry on Saturday afternoons. I wore pastel-coloured clothes and I had long hairThu Oct 17 2013 - 01:00
Making love to the sound of ‘Sunday Miscellany’Maybe that’s why so many people enjoy the radio show: so they can make love to the sound of poets intoning their verses in the distanceThu Oct 10 2013 - 01:00
I’m not sure if I’m praying or just sittingThere are plenty of churches in Warsaw; I usually sit for half an hour at a time, thinking about God, and Mary, and what I’ll write in my next columnThu Oct 03 2013 - 01:00
Suddenly a Monaghan woman started singingAt Park Hotel Kenmare, a clatter of Americans were delighted to find a roomful of Irish peasants with full bellies singing away to their little Irish hearts’ contentTue Sept 24 2013 - 01:00
The woman who put me off golf for lifeLooking out over Galway Bay in the autumn sun reminds me of encountering a furious Connacht mammy with my lovely American girlfriendTue Sept 17 2013 - 01:00
Iron masks, sunglasses and other evidence of tortureShe looked as fragile as a woman on a cliff, as if she were about to fall into the wind. Then she put on sunglasses to make herself invisible. It didn’t workTue Sept 10 2013 - 01:00
Ireland has united without me noticingThere’s no sign of a Border any more. Just a few signs saying ‘Welcome to Fermanagh’, or ‘Welcome to Cavan’Tue Sept 03 2013 - 01:00
Anne’s head got sliced off as I landed in GatwickIt’s funny the way people always fear that the person sitting beside them might be hiding somethingTue Aug 27 2013 - 01:00
Going Coastal: youthful dreams in DonegalOur series continues with a walk back in time along the windswept shores of the Atlantic in west DonegalThu Aug 22 2013 - 01:00
The war is over. Feral boys are everywhereAt the vibrant Féile an Phobail, it was hard to imagine that the Falls Road was ever a war zoneTue Aug 20 2013 - 01:00
