Thursday, 30 June 2022

Two Creative Non-Fiction Essays by Margaret Kiernan

 


Essay-on- Love - Creative Non-Fiction

 

As I walk down the road I’m thinking about those Greeks, and their eight types of love.

I remember too that  I am of another age. Less scoped, freer.

One thing I agree with them, love is high frequency, not ever low. Traditional people may have viewed it as a one -on-one feeling state, without resistance.

I kick a stray stone off the road. Watch it lodge in a bunch of dead grasses. Alone, without any resistance. It is.

I watch a Kingfisher dip and dive from the blackthorn tree beside the staid canal. Flashing blue colour, intent on catching its supper.

Love is a state of being. Heart full in flow, receiving and giving.

Lived fully it will arrive at joy. I see it in the battered blue metal jug once used to fill blue-stone mix, into a copper drum. I watch it in Ox-eye daisies weaving in the sun haze

I hear it in the music of Yo-Yo Ma. Or a trumpet player in a jazz bar. It catches in my throat breathless, as I fight with tears that want to fall bitter-sweet.

Or a sunset spreading liquid gold, letting go the light, yearning, I swallow it too.

Or Venus rising as dusk evens-out the bare spots of land, blending.

If hate is hell surely love is Heaven.



Perceptions of Peace - Creative Non-Fiction Essay

New-Earth

 

What possibilities exist to share our planet more lovingly, and with each other?

The man on the street corner might say anything is possible. And it is true to say, things are possible, something always works. Does it work for every man and woman in humankind? There was a time perhaps, when it did. Before the before.

The binary highway of Left and Right thinking became established and used to organise society. A Colonial organiser’s dream. A perception of Otherness was created.

Elitism arrived as an aspect of reactionary ideology and, autocracy.

There had been the highway of ancient knowing, food and health knowledge, flora and fauna, original caretakers, oral truths and storytelling with myths, mutual governance. Solace, and learned solutions. Navigation by original caretakers. Indigenous sciences. Voiced for the tribe. By the tribe, the children were considered and protected. No guardian ad. litem needed.

The water tribes of Ecuador had enough savvy to keep the water flowing cleanly. But time brings change, transforms un-thought of situations and things. Before a moth becomes a butterfly, it is happy- out, I guess. It doesn’t know it will become an exotic butterfly.

Then international global autocratic organisations began to behave and operate like owners of the planet. Texaco came to south America, amongst other places. Other businesses arrived there too. Then  the voice of the people was not listened to and, eco-disasters that were beyond  horrific nightmares, happened.

There were river sludges, the trees cried, and natives died. But that is fore- telling. I must return to the past. Back to the calendar of the middle eighteen hundred.

That time, a change came. Selected families and oriented persons decided to create industries on a big scale. It coincided with worldwide white ascendency.

The natural fear of difference may have contributed. To a them and us division, or not. A colonial fascism on a binary path.

Elitism triumphed, and a new order created to last hundreds of years. Families became super-rich and beheld a sense of entitlement.

Powerful because of their cash. They could influence world events, politics, kings and queens, stock-markets trading, land-prices, territories, and outer space.

Even life?

Fortunes made by the few and shipped out.

Over time the system would become a neo-liberal arena with innovative technology and power. Capitalism in a spirit of fascism where trade unions tamed or bought out. The perception of “otherness” remaining, you were either an ally or a threat.

At the turn if the twenty first century there were rumbles of change in society. People on the street had appeared to have arrived at a knowing of discrepancies in the world. Clear eyed seeing of a worldwide ascendency of white nationalism and ultra-right-wing movements. A global financial collapse. Fascism was again evident and renewed. Polarity created a very heavy energy among the peoples, and they spoke about it. On the world-wide web, in the street and elsewhere.

Attitudes and behaviours were informing a different type of person. Who were these waking people? In the morning who was the Self they met. Did they love falling apple blossoms or horseradish sauce. Did Yo-Yo Ma fill a void?

They spoke of galactic beings and native sciences. The endless possibilities for solutions in health, education and, in the language of spirit, art, earth society. No business models, just selves and souls getting on together. Solace. Believing you are me and I am you.

No borders and therefore no passports. No dominant religions. The ecology of the earth and the individual being the same thing. Spirit and soul. Consciousness.

A living wage for each person. A home and time to talk to the trees and lie on the ground, earthing. Ancient places and sacred sites gathering the people to watch the stars. To the music of babbling brooks, the birds will sing. All in harmony of pulsing earth life.

To speak to the Venus star in a dew drenched morning and wait for her reply.

A famous man once said, “I have a dream.”

That a dream is sweet to hold. To bring alive.

Our dreaming so precious we dare to visualise. I have a dream of that peace too,

the endless springtime of hope giving way to summer.




Margaret Kiernan - nominated for Best of the Net in 2021, writes fiction, non-fiction essay, memoir, and poetry. She has had poetry and prose published in e-book, in anthology collections, and literary journals and magazines - including, Black-lion Press, Pendemic.ie journal-C19 collection , archived at University College Dublin, The Blue Nib Lit - Journal, The Write Life Magazine, Unity Global Festival, Vox Galvia at the Galway Advertiser, A New Ulster Literary Press, The Burrow Lit. Journal, Poet-Head.Wordpress.com, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Galway Review and The Irish Canadian Cultural Newsmagazine, New Brunswick.

She writes with Over the Edge, Thursday writing/reading group at Galway Arts Centre, and, Ox Mountain Poets, Sligo. She is listed in the Index of Contemporary Women Poets in Ireland, 2020. She holds several Educational qualifications, Including a Degree in Arts in Humanities, from Sligo IT.

Her background is in Advocacy in Human and Social Rights. Margaret has completed numerous courses and workshops in writing, for prose and poetry.

Margaret has four grown-up children. She lives in Westmeath with her dog Molly. She is a landscape painter. Is into Nature, walking, gardening, music, and heritage. She is working towards a First collection in Poetry.

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