| I left Ireland when I was 22. I've spent the 27 years since living in other countries. There is one question that never leaves me: "Am I Irish anymore?" Sometimes I ask, "What am I if I am not?" "Anomie": The word went through me like a lightning bolt. Not out of any-old-where mind you. I was reading about the experiences of a Scottish minister doing missionary work back in the 1890's. He talked of living in a strange land and reacting to it with his Scottish conditioning. He called this strange divided mental state "anomie". Anomie is how an Irish emigrant lives each day. You see everything through Irish eyes no matter where you are. That habit has to be reined in, to be fair to your hosts. I remember an incident that happened just after I left Ireland. At that time, I had the habit of passing around the Major or your plain Carroll's Number 1 among friends. Each accepted as the occasion or inclination allowed and then as their turn came I would partake of their stash. Such natural fullsome camaraderie! I was in a group and did the same thing only now I was not in Ireland. All partook but when each began to smoke from their own box, so help me, they would not pass the box around. Talk about breaking the round system! I found myself thinking bad thoughts about dark alleys and hurting the begrudgers. But my first advice in living with other cultures is "take it aisy". They don't get it. I was in Thailand, where they sit on their hunkers or kneel to eat. Well, my knees had been bollixed up in one too many hurling matches and long confessions with Fr O'Carroll, so I sat on what God gave me and pointed the soles of my shoes to the honored host. I quickly found that that is like two fingers to the Thais. So I sucked the spawgs home under me arse and eat like an arthritic. I didn't get it.
Ireland is a possesive shegwee. She won't leave me alone. There are benefits though. In the rat race that America can be, insomnia is common. I have a cure. It works for me exclusively. When I was a child living in Newtown Terrace, Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny (me mother is not sure its me on the Internet) I would look out my bedroom window in the late evening as the sun went down over the Knockaroo and see those pine trees stabbing the blood red sky in a final fight for light before the last CIE goods train hooted steadily by on its way to Jackeen City. The sound of the train, the flaming bitching color of the sky, the dusk's softness and the little bollixes who were allowed to be outside playing hurling while I was condemned by my youth to bed, has lulled me to a soft and swift sleep for many years. I have let that image of home slip over me for 26 years now and it beats all sleep aids to hell in a handbasket. Being Irish is so much about being from a culture steeped in history, religion, that damn'd startlingly beautiful geography and the natural warmth of the people, where so many things can be left unsaid because all share a common understanding. When you leave Ireland, none of this can ever again be yours in the same way, if at all. What is it to be Irish after all the Irish cultural supports have been withdrawn? Well, we travellin' Irish become like the rabbit on a golf course who kept trying to reproduce the sensation. We flood our Irish pretend-pubs around the world. We go to the British Market in the hope that they are not sold out on the Irish staples of Denny's pudding -White and Black! the Galtee cheddar - the bit of rasher. You do not care that it costs a second mortgage and is filled with MSG a listed poison in the US. You are, by God, going to have your nostalgia trip via your esophagus and "do something very not nice" to the begrudgers. The Irish don't adapt. They stretch out of courtesy to their adopted country. We Irish have extraordinary stamina for courtesy and stretching but under no circumstances are we changers. My sainted sister-in-law (nee Seybold - I have two with the same name, Mary) has a plaque on her wall that reads: "Ye can tell an Irishman but ye can't tell him much". I only have to say that near any Irishman's wife and the reaction is like a transcendental zap in the arse. That shared look of "Oh, my God! Someone understands. I didn't know they had words for it". Well. There now for ya!
Thomas A. Cahill ©
tom@moof.com
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