People are asking...Where is The Land Of Cudhabeen?

People who are talking about The Knowledge Seekers & The Land Of Cudhabeen are asking where is that land? What is it?

The Land Of Cudhabeen, I suppose, is a personal place each of us have where we dream of what could have been – if things had worked out differently.

For me it's...if Kate had been able to stay with us. On the Little Lifetime Foundation Forum,  a few years ago I wrote:-

Trying to respond to a subject I can't possibly know how to respond to - because we dad's are totally lost when it comes to handling the loss of a baby. We don't know what to say, at times we even don't know how to HUG properly, we are afraid to break our partners into small pieces. At least that is the way I was. But what has become clearer to me reading the posts in all the forums is simply that the loss of a being you carried inside your body, a being you gave part of your life force to for months must be far more terrifying to endure as a Mum, that to watch it happen as a dad. If we feel lost and powerless then Mams must feel devastated, abandoned, confused, and why me.....why us...

My wife and I understood finally, that what happened happened. We didn't cause it, we were not at fault, we didn't do anything wrong. It just happened and what was most important it was outside our control.

Call it the wishes of a superior being, God or whatever.....accept that that may be so..or not.

But then have a serious conversation with that being... that God and tell them they were wrong if they had any part to play in what happened. Get them to realise they owe you and you are going to call in that favour in the future. I know I DID.
Imagine being able to say God owes me.......

Then for one of the gatherings at The Little Angels Plot, in Glasnevin, I wrote and recited ….

The Land of Cudhabeen: a Bedtime Story.

In the land of Cudhabeen

You could ask for a bedtime story

And I could tell you one.

What would it be about?

What would you ask for?

Would you ask for life?

Would you ask that

It never happened:

That you came and went

So soon. So very soon.

I don't know and I will

Never have the answer:

It's your answer that you

Never got to give.

And can't now.

At least not in words,

Or a language we understand.

Did you answer in the wind?

That time, I thought

I heard you whispering.

Did you sweep the gentle rain drops

Onto my cheeks?

To wash away my sad tears.

Sad tears not just for you

But for all who went too soon.

Did you send the heat to comfort my bones?

My stooped back creaking and sore.

And then: the warmth.

Was it your warmth?

Healing me. But only my body.

My mind in the land of Cudhabeen,

Will never stop asking why?

Why me? Why us? Why them?

There is no happy ever after

In this story.

And yet sometimes you chase that darkness

And show the new light,

The new season to me:

That for now, my child,

Will keep me hopeful.

And in time perhaps,

In another telling

Of the next story. You

Will get to hold me

In your arms.

The Gunship - Youagain visits the Sist-ter!

The Plot thickens, but the soup won't.

“You Again! You brought your bags again!”

“I've left him, Sister. This time it's for good.”  Said Youagain.

“For good again! Ha.” Sister had seen all this before. A few days of weeping, gnashing and knitting odd socks. No! Not odd socks, one without the other. Odd socks that didn't match in colour or size. Or where the heel ends up. And then back home to Wurzel Gummidge and his overgrown weeds' garden. (To the editor. Not weedy garden. A weeds' garden! Where lots of weeds own the garden.)

Will never need a scarecrow while he's around. She thought silently. Then she asked herself can a thought be silent? You hear it as you think/say it. Not getting any answer she continued. “He tried to poison me, you know?

“Ugh.” Youagain replied. Her eyes were on an Apple Tart, cooling on the kitchen table.

“Tart!” She shouted. “He's taken up with another tart! Another Polly.” In the past all the other women, or his girls as he called then, had been called Polly. Girls Ha!  Some of them had been hairy girls. One even had a beard. No hold on. That was Yougain - the morning after the night before - aren't all mornings after nights before. Doh! Doh! - when she looked in the bathroom mirror.

“With a so called salad.” Sister was on a roll here, still claiming that Pal had tried to poison her. “I know there were Dock Leaves in there. I had a nettle sting on my nose that mysteriously cleared up after.” Sister was one of those people who when they licked their lips – washed their face.

“I can't go back. He talks to slugs now.  Tart! Sister could I have a tlice of sart?”

 She was starting to salivate and slobber now that she had recovered her composure. I just put that in for dramatic effect. No way Jose could you ever say Youagain was composed. She was all shook up most of the time, wound up like the spring on a stopped clock at a traffic light. Like some obscure song lyric I heard or may not have heard one time or another.

“No! That tart is for after dinner. Have a sandwich if you are hungry. There's something in the fridge.”

So Youagain sat down at the table and made and ate a Something Sandwich, but even after that didn't feel satisfied. She remembered the leg of lamb 'remains' in the fridge at home and started to cry again.
“Oh that poor lamb.” She howled. “It saved our lives when the gas was left on by mistake. It blew out the match in time and now it's leg is in the fridge.”

 “If you loved it so much, why did you slaughter it?” Sister asked.

“We didn't slaughter her” Youagain sobbed. “But you wouldn't eat a lamb like that all in one go. She has three other legs left!”

Slugger has Pal's number - all right - see-see...

For weeks he had been watching me. Apparently he alleged as in the various Court Case, where I was the defendant..... well let's move on. I would dig, or rake, or sow - the gardening kind: not on a Knitting Forum. Then I would bounce into the lawn and box - no Box in a ring. Not box as in The Smurfit Box Company - I boxed for Ireland you know! I worked in Smurfits!

He said I would box an imaginary opponent always called Rocky. Well come on. He had a couple of films. And now nottin'. I felt I gotta Guive Him A Job.

And then I would come back and sit on the fence, like various elected representatives do, and speak to myself as follows: Slugger alleged again.

Imaginary Corner-man:

You got him worried Pal.

Pal:

Yea! I got him worried he gonna kill me!

Imaginary Corner-man:

Pal, Pal! Where are you?

Pal:

I'm in a boxin' ring gettin' the sh-one-t beat outa me!

Imaginary Corner-man:

Pal. Pal! Count to ten.

Pal:

Eight, Nine, Ten.

Imaginary Corner-man:

What about one to seven?

Pal:

I ain't never huerd those numbas before.

Pal:

Ah! God! There's a face in the third row I recognise!

Imaginary Corner-man:

Who is it Pal? Who is it?

Pal :

It's me! It's me!

And so, that's how Slugger said he learned our language.

We made a pact. I would sow, a row of Lettuce and Cabbage for the slugs and they would stay away from the rest.

“So that's it then Pal. We have an agreement!”

“That's it Slugger. We done now?”

“Yea that's it. Hey Pal! Watch where you're stepping!, You nearly walked on Harry!”

“Sorry. Why didn't he shout?”

“He can't Pal. He ate Slugtox. Now he's a Muteant.”

I left. But that Harry didn't look like no Ant I seen before. And as I walked away I thought this is terrible I'm talking like him now.

When I entered the house that night I didn't know that Slugger was going to lead me up the garden-path.

A Reader depriving herself of enjoying profound writing – not mine – I must add.

Asked a lady, who reads a lot – well if you call having a Kindle on the go, even when relaxing over a drink: reading – to have a look at The Knowledge Seekers & The Land Of Cudhabeen, proof copy, and give me an opinion.

She glanced page flickeringly at the contents. “Don't read poetry! Can't understand it!”

I felt like saying – well I didn't understand breathing air, while in the womb – but I soon copped on.

Imagine – missing Heaney's We have no prairies/To slice a big sun at evening-- I can see the picture of brown bog prairies just from that.

Heaney inspired me to disagree and write: That Blackthorn Month, which includes the lines –

They kept moving, skulking away from even the dim street light,

back into the tavern glare;

pulling her a creature of the brown black midland bogs,

dark prairies under the night sky, into the bright illumination

squeezed by turbines from its heart-turf.

What is amazing is that the lady is from Wales. So maybe she is from the village Dylan Thomas wrote Under Milk Wood about.

He called it Llareggub – and if you read it backwards you can discern my sentiments exactly.