Sometimes I walk through forestry in remote corners of the country where people once lived in homes that are now just crumbling stones between the Sitka trees. I see roofless shells and flagstone floors and wonder who might have lived there with the door always open, as if listening for children coming home from school. It’s not that life wasn’t harsh and cruel, but what people like to remember most about the past is the flame of love. And as my own body grows more fragile and I carry my years like stones, I too cherish love stories that lighten the heart.
I met a farmer recently who lives on land that was in his family’s possession for more than two centuries. This was unusual considering the family were Catholic and many anti-Catholic laws were only repealed in 1829, and the farm was in Connacht.
He told me a story about his father. When the old man was short of money many years ago, he went into a bank in Sligo and took out a loan on a particular field of 12 acres that constituted their sweetest meadow. But when he was making the final payment a few years later there was a dispute about dates, and the money was not paid on time, and the bank ended up in possession of the field.
We gazed across a gate at the field in question as he told the story, and I could feel his sense of resentment towards banks in general and grief for what his father had lost 60 years ago.
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My own past is less durable. My family never owned land. People like me create fictions around the fragments of memory we have inherited, in order to create a past in which to belong. Writers do it a lot, and especially writers of memoir.
But the storyteller is at his or her most subversive when recounting a love story. What I enjoy about Joyce is not his use of crude language and innovative grammar, but that he uses the crudity to shape a tale of love. It may be an unrequited love and a longing for intimacy, but Ulysses is a love story nonetheless. And love stories are magnificent acts of defiance.
I was at Kneecap recently and went into the cinema without either popcorn, ice cream or even a cup of coffee, all of which are easily available in the Cineplex in Carrick-on-Shannon. But I fasted because I was wary of the film.
I expected the glorification of IRA violence, a weaponising of the Irish language and an unrestrained contempt for the British dimension of a place some folk like to call Northern Ireland.
The film began with reports of RUC officers flying around in helicopters, which I found a bit comical, and ghostly killers telling their children that a word spoken in Irish was as good as a bullet fired for the cause of Irish freedom, which turned my stomach.
But then I lightened up because the film was exciting and sort of beautiful. The quiet moments of restraint with the ghostly father and the neglected widow grounded the narrative, and steadied the focus on love or the failure of love, while the comedy and satire soared ever higher.
But what clinched it for me was the sex scene: two young adults from diametrically opposed cultural communities clawing at one another with feverish abandon. I didn’t think it was possible to capture an intimate moment of love-making with such satire; the lovers copulated while flinging political slogans at each other and moved to orgasm crying “Tiocfaidh ár lá”. The absurdity of their Romeo and Juliet entanglement was thus kept alive with abusive cliches repurposed as a kind of erotic cheerfulness.
What clinched it for me was the sex scene: two young adults from diametrically opposed cultural communities clawing at one another with feverish abandon
I left the cinema feeling that the movie was an eloquent celebration of life in the aftermath of war. From the chaos of the Troubles that haunted the Kneecap generation, the movie had constructed a story of hope and tenderness. It’s more proof that the love story always triumphs, because in the final analysis love is the thing people want to remember.
As for my friend whose family held land for more than two centuries, I asked him how he might feel when the time came for him to leave the place to someone else.
“I have already bought a small house in town,” he said.
“Will you miss the land?” I wondered.
“No,” he muttered, “it’s different here since the wife passed away. I don’t have the same interest any more.”