Friday, November 14, 2008

...I am not yet fluent; but I have faith...

Did Ireland change me or did it set me free? Am I different today for having gone there than I was before? If it set me free, does that mean that I have changed?

When I first returned home I had a few days of travel-lag. I was glad to be back home, not disappointed, but unsure as to what had actually happened.... We managed to accomplish so much, yet left many things undone. I don't think any of us would have stayed on longer though even if we could have.

Yeah, we didn't get some of the "Ancestral Tree" information I would have liked to acquire, but the connection to place, knowledge of self, feeling of rightness I have now, direction and knowing when I think of how to proceed; are immeasurable.

I walked where I was meant to walk. I found what I was intended to find. This time. I say this time because I know I will return. And when I do unsolved mysteries will complete themselves in the manner they were meant to be completed next time.

~

On Friday October 10th we went to the Ulster Heritage Park, but we didn't do the touristy trap bus-load-o-fun stuff... It was raining, and we had spent the previous several days flying, landing, flying again, landing again, jumping in a car and learning to drive in a completely new way, heading North on a time schedule and, and, and, ...finally driving in the dark and the rain until we stopped for the night in Greenmount Lodge.... WOE!

~

We needed a slow day. A slow day that passed with a fully engaged mind at the Migration Center on the same premises as the Heritage Center. I can imagine that it might have been pretty boring for my brother Richard; while Steve and I messed with Computers, Microfilm and Maps... ...but when we went to the Heritage Center, it was not with the intent to see the "Period Stuff" with the "Re-enacted" "Period Acting". Don't get me wrong, I would have liked to do the "Period thingie" too... but, HEY! I got some really cool stuff there.

I was able to match my Griffith Data to their maps. AND, as I suspected, there was an overlay to the basic map, that combined the Griffith Data, made it possible for me to locate the Gilmour Tenancy, and two Glenn Tenancy's!

~

...I'm getting ahead of myself here. Suffice it to say, with map(s) in hand, on the morning of the 11th of October, we began to drive to drive towards Killaloo; with a fixed destination.

~

We stopped first at the Ardboe Cross, on Lough Neagh; but that however, is also a tale for another day. What follows is what followed at The Beaghmore Stone Circles... and that as they say, follows:





According to the NI Tourist Website, The Beaghmore Stone Circles were: "Discovered during peat cutting in the 1940s the site at Beaghmore consists of 7 stone circles. All of the rings are associated with cairns and a stone row runs towards these cairns. It is possible that Neolithic occupation and cultivation preceded the erection of burial cairns and ceremonial circles and alignments: some irregular lines and heaps of boulders resembling field-fences or field-clearance may predate the ritual structures. At some stage peat started to form over the site, and it may conceivably be that the cairns and rows were erected in a futile propitiatory attempt to restore fertility to the soil by attracting back the fading sun."

Wikipedia also has a very in depth couple of pages as well, with a number of good links that may be of interest.

~

The Beaghmore Stone Circles experience was less academic for me, more "I am old, very old, and you are but a briefness, so soak up the energy and be..."


I hope I conveyed some of that in this video. I am trying to find the "Poetry of Video" it's a new language for me, I am not yet fluent; but I have faith, and I know there is poetry here. With practice I will hone and refine.

14/Nov/08
obeedúid~