WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 19
Even the little sliver of water visible from the conservatory danced with white caps this morning. Our windows rattled violently. The lawn was blanketed with small branches and leaves torn from trees and shrubs during the night. Across the street, the tall grasses bowed low, and I finally understood why the trees near the top of the hill had strange flattop hairdos — it was their way of staying rooted by adapting to the direction of the high winds.
WINDS
When Saffi and I went for our early morning walk, the winds gusted at nearly 60 miles an hour. I don’t know that I’ve ever walked in such a strong wind. My coat ballooned. At one point the wind pushed one leg into the other and I almost tripped myself. The quick movement of the clouds reminded me of our drive home Tuesday night when faint shadows, created by thick fog, appeared on the narrow roads and seemed to move away, like a squirrel hiding from a passerby.
No birds flew. Instead, they hunkered down on the spongy mud patches in the water, heads tucked under their feathers. Water frothed along the shoreline. Fallen and broken branches blocked areas of the road. One tree was uprooted. No one drove by, not a person was outside. It felt eerie. We learned later in the day that the wind swept a car off a cliff in Galway.
FINDING OUR WAY
Chloe and I argued in the morning, the grumpiness blowing back and forth between us much like the winds outside. I think this is happening somewhat because we are adjusting to the upended of our lives, whether good or bad, it is disruptive. We need to figure out how to pace our days, to align our bearings now totally out of whack. We are probably pushing ourselves too much, a habit carrying over from Vancouver. One thing we are both aware of, though, is we can’t continue fighting. This is too much of a pressure cooker situation…just the two of us in isolation. We need to get along. We talked through our feelings and solutions this morning.
A GUSTING LOOP
Later in the day when we ventured the loop, the wind had calmed, but it still gusted. No one else was walking, or even tending their farms. I wondered if the locals knew better than to go out in the high winds. Even the cows were lying down.
VINYASA
We drove to Skibbereen for an 8:30pm Vinyasa class. The instructor, Fiona, who we think is English, arrived a bit late so we waited with the other students on the sidewalk outside the building. They turned a skeptical eye our way. We’ve learned we are called the “the blow ins” like everyone else who isn’t from around here, and by around here, I mean from Union Hall or Skibbereen.
I thought I’d break the ice by asking a question of someone, usually a good conversation starter, but was quickly rebuffed. Chloe and I slid over to one side of the locked gate while everyone else, 10 people or more, stood on the other side.
When Fiona arrived, she rushed toward the gate, unlocked it, greeted people nervously, and explaining that she got stuck in traffic. She told Chloe and I to grab yoga mats, which we did, and then went with her in silence up three flights of concrete stairs to the studio.
The studio is large, over 500 square feet, and on the top floor of an old stone building. Lying on my back, I could see the black mold breaking through the corners of white paint and the dust or insect webs discretely growing in corners. Low windows, like bay windows, looked over the street and when an occasional car passed, the light momentarily lit the room.
It was a strange class. Maybe because we aren’t familiar with Vinyasa. But also it was taught in silence, which is weird if you’re used to “new age” music in the background, and between poses, we moved, or jerked, rather than flowed. The room was chilly, too. I think we are spoiled from our cushy, Vancouver yoga experiences.
BLOW INS
This wasn’t the first time we felt like “blow ins”. As we drove home through a landscape without light and with almost no other cars on the road, we talked about it. We wondered what it would be like to grow up here, to know everyone, to have family near, to find and stick to a high school sweetheart, to know each curve in the hills, each wind in the road, each trail along the sea, to be one with a history and a place. How differently people are formed here than we are as city people, who are surrounded by many races and many histories. We may have a freedom to define ourselves, but we also may lack the security of knowing deeply who we are.
A running joke between us was to say, “Oh look, there’s Cormac.” Cormac is my only Irish friend in Vancouver. He’s medium build, blue eyes, square face, greying blondish hair. We see him everywhere, men who look the same as him at various ages — a young Cormac, a middle-aged Cormac, an elderly Cormac.
