Sonja Landweer made this. It's called Relationships: Community. It sits on the very top level of the Ulster Museum, just waiting for you. Basking in the bright, white, atrium light of that floor. Admittedly you do first have to prise yourself away from the display with the Venice Throne.
Just the very thing to find on the first morning of a new term when you've raced across town to pick up a birthday present from the museum shop (and therein lies another story!) and think maybe you just might have time to rise up through the levels of history, nature and dinosaurs to the section you never get to stand still in at all, ever!
Even better when you realise that there is definitely time for tea and a cupcake and a view of the park before you return! All this on the day when Ireland starts to vote on which of its paintings it loves the most...
Bonsoir, companion bloggistes! I have had more than a week off now, and feel ready to offer humble adventures in Advent! Last Sunday I lit my candle here:
It was a whole weekend of abundant peace- much more than Mrs Large's three minutes and forty-five seconds! With lots of opportunites to kneel with all the santon figures of French nativity, a little teacher beside the little millers and shepherds and holy family waiting for the empty crib to be filled.
From the very beginning, reading a whole newspaper and supplements start to finish on the outward trip, I felt released, especially wandering the markets with a vin chaud in hand!
And less like a woman made up entirely of small toys and other flotsam and jetsam of family life, strung out for all to see her weaknesses and helplessness. The morning of sharing His peace with all languages and nations in Notre Dame led to an afternoon of un-peace, being challenged at Beaubourg. Yet both were invigorating! It was good to think as well as breathe!
So now I am home. Where the rhythm of my daily millimetre is less monotonous, with the undercurrent of Immanuel's joy welling up and breaking through! May joy be yours this week and next week and always!
St Canice's Cathedral is old and grey. It has that air of being on the edge of crumbling, which makes you wonder, before you notice the solid wood carvings on the entrance door of anglican nature or proceed inside to see the Mother's Union display, if this isn't a little church of Ireland church that was long ago made to be grand. And when you sit down on your narrow pew with its anciently faded velvet, you never want to leave! It might be the pretty lengths of pink ribbon that fasten "seat" numbers at your back. It might be the brightness that defies the gathering dusk and sails through the stained glass that has white-now-off-white background panes. It will certainly be the unhewn stones that build the walls, without any need of the slick fine arches that pepper the sides.
Last year I booked to hear Colm Toibin and Peter Murphy. They were dazzling. The setting was too. But once they took the stage your mind was on nothing else. Toibin was the outgoing curator of the literary strand and his introduction was already erudite, yet then came Brooklyn, then came John the Revelator, then came the authors discussing their themes between them, and only finally did the questions come and the answers too, and it was good.
Hugo Hamilton writes from a perspective that is one of my favourite themes in contemporary novels- immigration. His style is journalistic, you can hear him below, and the insightfulness of his prose comes laterally. The bemusement of Vid, the narrator in Hand in the Fire, is the vehicle for the telling of Concannon Family's tale and colours then the illustration of Irish society. Hamilton seemed jolly, and pleased to be there in St Canice's, which pleased me as I was so charmed!
With no further ado the formidable John Banville presided. Reading not at all from The Infirmities but from a work in progress. Oh we all felt very imporatant. He criticised the lighting and the flowers. And he read a scene- you can hear it below. And his prose was mighty. The style with which that man can write filled that place with the authority of an accomplished and established figure. But he was not jolly, and evidently not pleased to be there. He was contrary, and I think he despised us all!
And I wished so much that I had read both books before the event. I'm falling into the habit of buying the books when we arrive in town. But I so wanted to ask both of them if they felt Hand and Infirmities were linked by the eye they both cast on the internal workings of family, if Vid the Observer is like Banville's mischievous gods. I strongly wanted to know if Banville's descent into bawdiness was a conscious path after The Sea. But I didn't, despite the fact that the questions asked were actually so poor that I despised us all too!
Thankfully St Canice's didn't seem to care. She welcomed Hamilton and Banville alike. And when I could finally bear to leave her, I still had the imprint of light that had filled me up during the long minutes of standing staring before they started to usher in the next event.
(Competition winners coming soon- still time to enter!)
fraise lachrymose is moved and flattered and actually quite challenged by recent references to high culture. Thank you, GretchenJoanna and Pom Pom.
However, honour must prevail. The seat of High Culture in Belfast is open to all at Blue Lamp Disco.
Little Queenie would not like me to tell you who she is or what she does, but I can't resist telling you that it has been my very great privilege to have worked with this woman!
So I'm standing in an orderly line waiting to be called. I am occupying myself in constructive fashion, neither fidgeting nor prodding the people on either side of me. I am not whispering comments designed to amuse or denigrate. I am practising being clear-minded!
I am endeavouring to calculate the sum of the individual items that I have ordered. I am waiting for two things at £1.80 each. This comes from the top of the board on the left. From the bottom of this list I take £2.85. Moving across to the wider board in the middle I am concerned with one £2.00 and one £1.50.
I attempt six times to total all five things. I am ashamed to say that I came up with six different answers each time! One of them was, at least, correct. Needless to say Prince Charming got it right first time and with alacrity. (No writing down of the sum was permitted!)
Sonja Landweer made this. It's called Relationships: Community. It sits on the very top level of the Ulster Museum, just waiting for you. Basking in the bright, white, atrium light of that floor. Admittedly you do first have to prise yourself away from the display with the Venice Throne.
