THE TIME HAS COME TO MAKE MY RELIGIOUS CONFESSION!

 

It’s time for a confession. Something happened to me, and I’m about to share it with you.

If that sounds an unusually grandiose introduction, considering you’ve been suffering my blather in this noble rag for 20 odd(!) years, it’s because there’s a substantial part of me that can’t believe I’m really going to put this one into print.

Now I’m building up your expectations of the tale, when what is important is not the story itself, but my reaction to it.

Let’s go back to August 2001. I’m living in north Co. Mayo, walking along a glorious sandy beach. The sky is cloudless, the breeze gentle and warm, and I’m the only human as far as I can see, hear or smell.

Stopping in my tracks I splay my arms out, lean back in exultation and roar:

“Thank You!”

In an instant, from deep inside and audibly all around me, a voice booms:

“No! Thank YOU Charlie!”

Simultaneously, I experience a fast-forward slide show of all the pain and hurt I had felt and inflicted upon others during my life in California. I see 4 years of rage and depression fly by. I see hurt morphing into comfort in that house in the Claddagh. I see anger becoming love with the recent meeting of a lass, who later becomes my wife. I see agitation blending with confusion, emerging as delight and enjoyment. At that moment I am loving my life, writing this colyoom and another in the Irish Examiner, selling features galore, finally living my dream.

A second or so later it’s over, and I stand there, alone on the beach. Staring at the ripples of water running around my feet, I laugh out loud, as torrents of thought flood my brain. ‘Woh!’ cascades into ‘Spooky!’ and then ‘Whoops! I’m a crazy man!’

Despite the wonder and awe I feel about what just happened, it somehow makes perfect sense. I understand. I had been grateful and given thanks, but was then reminded that I am merely a speck in the order of things.

My life’s path had caused pain and damage, yet now there was the chance of repair; of joy on all sides.

Hopefully you can understand my trepidation in sharing this experience with you. Maybe you’re off calling the men in white coats to come and get me.

“Oh look, Charlie thinks he’s Joan of bleedin’ Arc! He’s finally losing it, hearing voices. He thinks the sky’s talking to him. Oh, and his ego is so incredibly massive, he actually thinks God is saying thank you to him!”

So it’s out there. Sounds like I am too, but no.

I said this wasn’t about what happened, so why have I just told you this most personal and whacky tale?

The late Gerry Ryan used to say it on his radio show, and recently I heard Newstalk's George Hook say it again, with a giggle:

“Ah well, you see, there are no atheists in foxholes.”

Clearly the inference is that we all turn to God when in fear of our lives. The reason I’ve been willing to prostrate my sanity and vanity in front of you is because this smug self-satisfied denigration of others’ beliefs deeply upsets me. Respect should be shown to all, not just the religious.

Personal beliefs are no less worthy than religious beliefs, yet every time this colyoom mentions religion, I receive abuse.

When I wrote about the abortion referendum back in 1992, I received in the mail used condoms, a dog turd, vile photographs and finally, unaware that I had been successfully intimidated, I stopped writing about the Church.

My argument is no more with Catholics than it is with my own Jewish background. I don’t give a monkey’s if you’re a Muslim or a Sikh. You can be Humanist, Shoemanist or downright Poohmanist for all I care.

I respect your right to believe in what you wish. However I do not respect your right to belittle or mock the beliefs of others. Anyway, religion itself is not the issue here. Faith however, is personal, and until now, I’ve chosen to keep it that way.

Regular colyoomistas know I describe myself as a Jewish Atheist-Pantheist mutant, which might sound like a randomly crass tumble of words, but actually best sums up what I believe.

Personally I feel no need for formalised religions, but as they influence so many people I want to learn of them and from them all. Billions of people want a ticket beyond the grave, and believe that if they obey rules, they’ll make it. On the way, their faith will bring them great comfort; their religion will provide order in their lives.

That’s genuinely wonderful, but for me there is no outside force or figurehead. It’s all one and yet nothing. Essentially I find no comfort in reincarnation or everlasting life. Rather, I would find great comfort in them, were I to believe they existed.

The human in me wants to believe that there’s a latent benevolence behind the balance of nature and the chaos of the universe, but I don't know. I’m an animal who will return to dust, but on the way I’ll use my faith, my spirituality and moral codes to live what I perceive as a good life; at least a harmless life, at best beneficial.

So now you know. I’m an Jewish Atheist-Pantheist who heard what others have called the ‘Voice of God’, yet nothing changed my beliefs. There’s plenty that we don’t know. We see neither the infra red nor the ultra violet in a rainbow.

Something happened to me on that beach. It’s a beautiful mystery that makes no sense and perfect sense, and I can live with that anomaly. Just because I have no formal religious belief doesn’t mean I lack resolve in my own faith and spirituality.

So please, stop patronising those of us who choose faith without religion. There are atheists in foxholes.

© Charlie Adley

28.02.14.

ARE WHISTLEBLOWERS OUR 21ST CENTURY FOLK HEROES?

In the hope that I might make them proud, my parents sent me to a distant private school. The one thing they never considered was how much of an ‘education’ I’d get on my journey home after school each day.
 
I’d have a long walk to the tube station, a train journey and then pick up the double decker bus. Sitting upstairs in the corner seat of the back row, I did my level best to remain invisible, but it was just about impossible. The bus stopped outside a Comprehensive school where the kids wore green uniforms, and then at another where they wore purple uniforms. My plain grey uniform blended fairly well into the background, and most days passed without incident, but sometimes a lad in a green uniform or a group of boys in purple uniforms would spot me and ask me which school I went to.
 
God help me if that happened to be the same day that I had to travel with my trombone, which I played in the school orchestra. They’d laugh and mock and beg to have a go on my trombone, and I’d end up wrestling them for control of the huge shotgun-shaped instrument case.
 
Sometimes standing out from the crowd became just a little too scary, and I over-compensated by replying aggressively. Other times the questions started out aggressively and headed inexorably towards a fight.
 
Whatever the outcome, every single day of my school life I lived in fear of that bus ride, yet if my mother were to read this now, it’d be the first she’d ever heard about it.
 
As kids we were all assured by grown-ups that if we just told them who the bully was, everything would be okay. Just say the name and nothing bad will happen.
 
Yeh, right. Don’t know about you, but when I was a child, that line never worked on me. To schoolchildren, adults appear as distant ignorant beings who have no idea how the world works.
 
How the hell could they guarantee that if I named the bad boy who was hitting me and tearing up my homework, he’d somehow turn into a benevolent angel the next day and leave me alone?
 
Worse still, how could I name names, when the only thing universally agreed upon by my parents, my teachers and my fellow schoolmates was that being a sneak was the worst kind of behaviour? Nobody should tell tales on another. If you do nobody will ever trust you again. You’ll be disliked, dismissed as a social entity and still get beaten up anyway.
 
It takes real courage to speak out, and sadly the situation doesn’t become any easier when you’re an adult. If you think that you’ve been unfairly fired from a job, do you fight back? Do you really want that job back? What will your work environment be like? Won’t you always be the one who said everyone else was a lying good-for-nothing?
 
Probably best to move on. Easier to keep your mouth shut and get on with your life.
 
Yet these days I see the whistleblower as something of a 21st century folk hero. While we little people cower in the shadows of the intimidating twin towers of state and corporate industry, we feel frightened and insignificant.
 
Of course we find it impossible to believe that everything done for us is in our best interests, yet equally it’s exhausting to even think of fighting back. So we keep our heads down and plod on, until somebody stands up and declares an injustice.
 
Whistleblowers are as vital today as the freedom fighters of yesteryear. On paper it’s not always easy to like them. Edward Snowden is a gun-loving libertarian whose political beliefs make Ronald Reagan look like Leon Trotsky, yet he had the moral fortitude and innate sense of justice to alert the world to the global über-surveillance being undertaken by his beloved USA.
 
Doubtless, in a weak and passive way, we already knew that our calls, texts and emails were being collectively observed by various nations’ intelligence agencies; we suspected that war crimes were being perpetrated in Iraq and Afghanistan; we never doubted that world leaders were all listening into each others’ secrets, but if it weren't for the likes of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Bradley/Chelsea Manning, we’d never have the proof.
 
Given the roles that resistance and intelligence operations played in your recent and distant history, I’d have thought that Ireland had a profound respect for those willing to put their heads above the parapet. I wanted to believe that the Irish valued those willing to speak out.
 
Sadly here, as everywhere else, the whistleblower gets a raw deal. After the recent debacle at GSOC, how eager will the next Garda be to step up and voice disquiet about internal corruption?
 
Did the Irish State learn nothing from the discovery of mass child abuse perpetrated by the foot soldiers of the Catholic Church?  After that dreadful scandal, we all now know that no institution should be beyond reproach, however vital to or ingrained within Irish society it may be.
 
Indeed, if the Church and An Garda Síochána are anything to go by, the deeper ingrained the institution, the more it needs to be regulated.

Whistleblowers relinquish their right to a happy life. By speaking out against injustice they abandon any notions of freedom for the rest of their lives, opening themselves up to the horrors of exclusion and intimidation as the establishment fights back.
 
Some of them, such as Karen Silkwood, make the supreme sacrifice, losing their lives in the process, so that we might live in a better world.
 
We don’t have to like them, or even agree with everything they say. But we do need to respect their work, be grateful that somebody else has the courage to fight on our behalf and occasionally, just once in a while, we need to stand up ourselves, and state the truth, however uncomfortable it may be.
 

GALWAY CITY HAS A NEW SUPERHERO: DONKEY-TICKLE-GIRL!

 Kitty in post ear-tickle bliss!

What is it about the moment when she goes? That feeling in my chest as I watch her car drive down the bohreen, waving to me as she sets out to visit her family and friends back in England.

Part of me has been looking forward to the time I’ll spend here alone, and doubtless a substantially larger part of her is pleased to get way from me for a while too.

So there I am on the front step, waving goodbye, with a wistful ripple of beautiful melancholy wafting through my chest. In the words of the great Labi Siffre, ‘It must be love!’

In that instant I wish I’d given her more of a hug, wonder why I’d said that to her, or not more readily forgiven her for saying blah blah blah. I create artificial anxieties about how her leaving might have been more pleasurable for her, more easy, more loving.

As husband and wife, you live together, share your stresses and create new ones, have your ups and downs and live out languorous lists of clichés such as this.

Rarely do we think of our partners as heroic, because each day we experience all of their wonderfully human fallibilities. Sadly it’s often only when we’re apart that we realise our partners are heroes.

We all think we’re heroes at one time or another. However, in the same way that it’s impossible to be ‘cool’ if you think you are, real heroes tend to be people who do not announce their heroism.

Your scribbler has been known to declare that he is a hero. When feeling fragile and insignificant I’ll announce that I was a hero today, and watch the Snapper try desperately to form an impressed look upon her face, as I reveal that single-handedly I’d finished the laundry, or mended a picture frame, turned the compost or cleared a drain. Whatever it was that I’d done, heroism had no place in it.

So this morning, as I watched the Snapper’s car disappear into the distance, I remembered a stormy night over the Christmas period.

It could have been the first of these many mighty storms that have been assaulting us here on the Atlantic edge of Europe. The gusts were shaking the foundations of the house, and the Snapper returned after taking our collie-lab Lady around the garden for her late night peeper (the dog, not... oh you know!)

Excited and pumping energy, she explained how she’d found both wheelie bins blown over, and the full gas cylinder rolled across the lawn. Somehow, with dog on lead in tow, in storm force winds, she’d picked up all the loose papers, cartons, goodness knows what nonsense, returned it all to the bins, which she then secured with the gas cylinder on the leeward side of the house.

I’d been sitting watching TV, picking my toenails.

I told her she was an absolute hero, and wondered how on earth she’d been able to make all those mini-journeys to and fro, picking up the trash, with an excited 3 year-old dog on a lead, eager to explore the storm.

“No problem babe!” she said, and then proceeded to relate how earlier that day, she’d been a hero.

Thankfully her story was the exception that proved the aforementioned rule, as she truly had been heroic.

On her lunch break, she walked up to Eglington Street, where the choir from St. Patrick’s School were singing carols, raising money for the Galway Hospice, if I remember correctly.

To add some festive charm to the occasion, there was a donkey upon which sat a lass playing the part of Mary, and the whole scene filled the Snapper with a warm glow of Christmas wonder. In fact it made her feel quite emotional, the warmth of the Galway moment bringing back happy memories.

Meanwhile, a woman with a hessian shopping bag had moved close to the donkey, who was showing a fondness for hessian, in much the same way that donkeys show a fondness for everything. With part of her bag now in the donkey’s mouth, the woman pulled back, and a comical tug-of-war ensued, much to the delight of the Virgin Mary, who looked down on the tussle, giggling beautifully.

The Snapper loves horses and donkeys and in turn, they adore her. Over the years her experience with horses has helped me to become more relaxed around them. Indeed, when I lived near Killala, Co. Mayo, Kitty the donkey was not only my next door neighbour, but one of my best friends.

Behave.

The Snapper knew that as long as the woman pulled on her hessian bag, the donkey would pull back all the more emphatically. So she wandered over and started to tickle the donkey in the ear.

There’s a certain art to donkey ear-tickling which I confess, I’ve never mastered. Donkey ears are not entirely void of substances, and sometimes a waxy residue which isn’t very pleasant can end up on one’s fingers. Maybe I just don’t love donkeys enough, because Kitty never used to enjoy an ear-tickle from me, but when the Snapper does it, as she now demonstrated on that Galway street, the donkey goes into a tripped-out state of ecstasy. 

The animal’s eyes glaze over ... its jaw slackens ... its mouth drops open ... and before you can say “Madam, you may shop on!”

the donkey’s owner had taken advantage of the Snapper’s help, timed his pull perfectly and released the bag.

As the Virgin Mary clapped and the woman smiled, the Snapper walked into the distance, a female version of Clint Eastwood’s ‘Man With No Name.’

Doubtless, people turned and asked

“Who was that donkey-tickling stranger? She’s a hero!”

She’s my hero.

Gotham City had Batman. Now, thanks to recalling this memory, I can pass the time until she returns playing with the idea of Galway’s new superhero: Donkey-Tickle-Girl!

©Charlie Adley

13.02.14

USUALLY I’M THE LAST ONE TO ACCEPT I’M DEPRESSED!

Thanks as always to Allan Cavanagh at caricatures-ireland.com

The most startling aspect of my depression is my ability to deny it. When I’m not depressed, which thankfully is the vast majority of the time, I joke about how invariably the first symptom of my depression is my denial of it.
 
I work hard at my own personal development. I know I can be a prize prick, a raging bull and at times of writing fiction, a serial solipsist. If there are bad patterns in my life, I try to identify them, break them up and create better ones.
 
So when I realised that the majority of heinous social crimes I’d committed in the past could be filed under ‘Dumping my stress on an innocent friend’, I worked hard to change. If my family is my life blood, my friends (despite being scattered all over the world) are my home. I cannot afford to piss them off, so I worked on it and changed my behaviour. Now, instead of lashing out at people, I withdraw, try to let my heated emotions cool down, so that I can understand whether anyone is in fact guilty of anything.
 
I’m constantly trying to become all self-aware of myself and my mind, a little bit of CBT, a dash of mindfulness, a pinch of meditation and a whole dollop of peaceful space cadet staring out the window at the clouds. I’m on the case.
 
Unfortunately though, the ‘case’ in this case is the case of a man with temporary mental difficulties, (which, dear colyoomistas, you are at present experiencing vicariously, as you try to reap threads of sense from my scattered mental process) and even though I know well my habit of denying depression, when it comes along, it’s just so bloody inconvenient, I go into denial about it all over again.
 
This one was quite easy to deny, because life was offering a mosaic of scenarios which individually would make anyone feel a little blue and collectively prove too much. Hence my denial. Depression is a very rude guest. It moves in just when it wants to, with no consideration for the timing of its arrival.
 
In the past I would be floored, alienated, lost altogether to depression. In 1993 I was walking up Lenaboy Avenue when I doubled over, as if hit in the belly by Mike Tyson. To this day I have no idea what kind of physical chemical imbalance could cause that reaction, but the moment I straightened up, I had my Black Dog walking by my side. 
 
Whether it’s just the passing of time, the result of eating bananas or fish oil, my depressions of the last decade have been far less debilitating. Although in many ways this is a good thing, in several others it has proved far more of a challenge than the older darker immobilising bouts.
 
As a self-employed writer/teacher/editor, if I don’t go out there, create the business, do the job and then get paid, life becomes hard. If I caught the flu, I’d accept being laid up in bed, nursing my fever, willing to let my body do what it must. Yet sometimes those same symptoms come one at a time, One day I’ll have a cough, another a sore throat, the next I’ll be a snot machine and the next I’ll ache all over. During those periods it’s easy to fool myself that I’m fit enough to go out and work. 
More, I’ll order myself to keep going, because I have to work and fortunately, I love every aspect of my work.
 
However, to do my work well I have to have all my faculties up and running. So when depression presents itself to me like those scattered cold symptoms, it’s fairly easy to ignore each individual one.
I simply don’t have the time for it, so I pretend it’s not happening. Inside my head, it sounds a little like this:
 
Ahh, has lickle Booboo got tears lurking behind his eyes? 
Tough poopers Batman! You’ve a meeting to go to!
 
Spiralling helixes of fearful thought wake me at 4am, as they battle for Prime Time viewing in my brainbox with the pain in my foot. 
Pah, get over yourself Adley! It’ll all feel better at sunrise.
 
Never mind the endless pummelling of Atlantic storms, those winds and the sideways rain, hail and sleet. Who wouldn’t be feeling beaten up?
Of course I’m not depressed. It’s just that time of year. 

Keep going you fool, keep going. You have a life to support, three mouths to feed (only 2 human!) but oh. 
Oh I feel so tired. 
Dizzy on the feet tired.
What of that ache in the pit of my soul that wonders the point of it all?
Ah, it’d be the same for anyone going through this winter, wouldn’t it?
 
Finally this ridiculous period of denial comes to an end. I’m sitting in my armchair. The dog is walked and fast asleep on the hearth rug, in front of a blazing fire. There is live Premiership football showing on my TV. The wind and rain are lashing outside, but the room is cosy and lovely. In a few hours my delightful wife will return from work, the dog will go mental with joy ... and there’s whiskey in the jar-o.
 
Nobody could paint a finer picture of my dreams, yet I am lost, wondering how on earth I’m going to get through the day.
 
In that instant the denial is gone. How could I be so stubbornly unaware? Why, once again, has it taken weeks to admit I'm depressed?
 
My head screams in response:
‘Because it’s such a bloody inconvenient time!’
 
Yet there is no good time for a bad thing. 
When I first wrote about depression in this colyoom in 1993, the outpouring of desperate response revealed how deep was this country's ignorance of mental health.
 
Thankfully, the nation’s awareness of depression has since vastly improved.
Now I just need to work on taking responsibility for my own mental health.

©Charlie Adley
17.02.14

WITH A FRIEND LIKE ‘THE BODY’, LIFE IS A LOT MORE FUN!

It was a moment of pure madness. I’d almost managed to pull myself back, just before I made a complete arse of myself, but sadly it was too late. Ever on the ball, The Snapper had sussed out exactly what I’d been about to do.

We were sitting in the back of a taxi, driven by my excellent friend The Body. He was dropping us outside Aniar on Dominick Street, where I was taking my beloved for our non-Valentine’s Day Valentine’s Dinner. Being a natural romantic, I can’t stand Valentine’s Day, because nothing kills romance as fast as falsity and force.

So each year it’s my pleasure take her out for dinner on a night that’s not Valentine’s, and this year she said she’d like to return to Galway’s Michelin star success story. Fortunately, the small change coin jar in my bedroom was full to the brim, so I emptied it, counted it and called to book a table. 
There was some kind of pleasing poetry to the process: Michelin star on a coin jar.
 
Just before stepping out of The Body’s taxi, I’d made an impulsive forward movement and then hurriedly pulled back.
From the tips of my toes to the top of my curly hair, I’d shocked myself.
 
“Oh my god! What was that about?” I exclaimed.
Ever helpful just when I don’t want her to be, The Snapper announced
“You were going to kiss him!”
“Ohmygoodgord! Yes, yes I was! What I was thinking? Must’ve been miles away, but I don’t even know where that was! Ah sure, I’ll kiss him anyway! Come here, ya big lump of manhood!”
 
Leaning forward I tangled and mangled myself around my mate as he laughed and shook me off.
Nothing more was said, the matter consigned to the crammed cellar wherein are stored Charlie’s Immaterial Moments of Madness.
 
To be honest, I don’t think I really and truly wanted to kiss him. Some severed synapses were dwelling in another place and time, but where, when and with whom I have no idea. The thing is, though, that if any man in Ireland deserves a kiss from me, it’s probably The Body.
 
Throughout my life I've been exceptionally fortunate to be surrounded by the best of friends, and thankfully when I moved to Ireland back in 1992, that luck continued. A couple of weeks after arriving in Galway City, I was approached by Blitz one night in the Jug o’Punch, a pub beside Monroe’s, long ago destroyed by fire. We hit it off straight away, talking laughing drinking and smoking, then dancing at Setanta’s, as you did back then.
 
At that time Blitz was sharing a flat with The Body, while Whispering Blue, who had just returned from Berlin, was sleeping on their sofa.
 
I was overjoyed to meet these three local lads. Nearly everyone I’d encountered in Galway up to then had been English, either Crustified or New Agey, and while I bore no ill will to either, I hadn’t moved to Ireland to hang out with white Rastas from Reigate. So it was magical to meet this trio of local lads.
 
A few days later, I was sitting outside Neactain’s, when The Body walked by and took me around the corner to an Tobar. At that time the tiny little pub on Mainguard Street was humming and thriving, buzzing with gobshites and creative types, home to the lost souls of Sean McDonagh’s Quays. To my greenhorn eyes the place seemed thrilling. It felt as if I’d been given a special pass into local life.
 
Blitz and The Body’s flat was just around the corner from my house, so I’d pop over on a regular basis, always cautious not to outstay my welcome.
 
Then one day The Body turned to me. 
“Charlie, have to say, you’ve been causing a lot of tension in the flat. Tension and bad feeling.” 
My heart sank. What had I done? How could I make amends?
 
“Well it’s like this. When Blitz or I ask you if you want to stay for dinner, from now on you’ll say ‘Yes!’ All your politeness is making us nervous.”
 
That was 22 years ago, and ever since The Body has continued to take me by surprise verbally. 
Whenever I take myself too seriously he mocks me in a gently absurdist yet very effective way. When the Black Dog moves into my head and I can no longer see the point of life, The Body is the only person able to make me laugh.
 
When I moved to America in 1995 it never crossed my mind that the lads might keep in touch. By that time I’d copped on to the way Galway City worked: you had to be in it to win it. If you were away, you didn’t exist.
 
Yet The Body telephoned me regularly when I lived in San Francisco. He knew I was having a difficult time and when I told him how grateful I was for his calls, he said something that made my heart swell.
 
“You’re good blood Charlie, and there’s not many of ‘em.”
 
Years later, returning to Ireland in a quivering emotional mess, I took up residence on the Body’s sofa. I remember him screening telephone calls on my behalf, on the days when I wasn’t up to communicating with anyone else.
 
My friend has been through the most testing of times over the last few years, so it has been my pleasure to try and support him as well as I can. Sometimes my attempts to help him or cheer him up feel feeble to me, so maybe somewhere in my subconscious I felt guilty.
 
Maybe I felt grateful for his friendship over two decades and guilty because, even though I know there’s nothing much I can do to help, I want to do more.
 
Maybe that cocktail of emotions got the better of my motor functions, and made me lean forward to kiss him.
 
I really hope not!


©Charlie Adley
30.01.2014