WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10
Five days until we depart, and it’s time to find our feminine again, to put things in order for Fiona, and prepare for our re-entry into civilization.
Clonakilty has a spa where we spent a few hours. Chloe had a facial, and I had a pedicure, facial and threading. It was so nice to indulge — 116 euros worth of it! That part wasn’t so nice.
HOW NATURE ISOLATES
The ocean was particularly high when I went out with Saffi in the evening. Water was beginning to flood the causeway, and pushing up through the holes along the road that drain into the sea. When the causeway floods, people who live on one side of it can’t get out. Nature can be isolating here. Isolation must be a problem for some people, particularly those who live alone.
Each time I pass the tiny stone house where the woman burned to death I think of her. The house sits at one end of the causeway, tucked into a mound of earth and stones just above the ocean. With the water so high, it lapped into those stones only feet from the house’s foundation. I imagine the house has no windows on it’s sea side, and only one small window and small door on the other side to keep the ocean out. The house seems so vulnerable to the force of the ocean, like the ocean could overtake it at any time.
Since she died, the window has been boarded up, the front door bolted with a lock. The electric lines that once connected the house have been cut and hang by the small chimney. A small satellite dish on the roof has rusted and tipped over. The woman was probably very poor. Poor like A., the man who lives on the street leading to Olive’s house.
A MAN WHOSE NAME BEGINS WITH A
A. lives on his own and might be in his 80s. He hand washes his few, tattered clothes, and his holey sweater and hangs them to dry over the stone fence in front of his house, not on a clothes line like everyone else. This bothers the neighbors, but even more irritating to them, is that he waits in the middle of the road for a car to come along so he can hitch a ride into town. He is too poor to own a car, and lives an hour walk from the nearest town.
One day when I was on my way to Olive’s house, he told me that he recently had a stroke and lost the mobility in his left side. He drags a foot when he walks. And talks a lot, like the woman from Canada who is now in her 80s and lives by Fiona. She also seems lonely. Sadly, loneliness exacerbates loneliness. People try to avoid people who need others to talk to.
I saw A. walking down the street, cane in hand, toward the causeway, the other day. He had covered half a mile and no one had passed by in a car to give him a lift. When he saw me, he gestured toward me and tried to walk faster, seeking human contact, but I was in a rush and turned as if I hadn’t seen him. I felt awful, sure that what I did so many people do. It only made me feel worse.
I wonder if the woman who died in the fire was like A., but less outgoing, less resilient.
