The kind of life I want to have.

Almost every day on Inis Meáin, the landscape bestows upon me a moment that stuns, that leaves me wide-eyed, momentarily forgetful of what I was doing or saying. So, I run home and try to capture the moment in writing, but the perfect words elude me. The words I have, I’ve used a thousand times before. I’ve folders of drafts, of attempts, abandoned in the surety I’d nothing to say. Nothing new anyways.

But the other day, I read an incredible piece of writing by Donal Ryan on what Ulysses means to him. In it, he freely admits to not having the words – his attempts, he says, are glib and trite – but his love of the novel is captured, I think, because he casts his net wider than the single, perfect word. And I think I need to do the same with the moments of joy on Inis Meáin, so that when it’s time to go, I’ll know what to bring with me.

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Ryan’s piece knocked me sideways; it made me want to throw a party for its every word. Because the point of the piece wasn’t the literary merit of Ulysses or analysis of tracts of it. Rather, he wrote about how Ulysses makes him feel; the envy, the grief, the exhilaration, the embarrassment.

I’d say the piece struck a particular chord with me because having described the everyday magnificence at my own doorstep, I ran out of things to say about what I see. What had long eluded me, continued to elude me. I wrote little here because I had little to say that I hadn’t already said. There’s only so much that can be written about the Twelve Bens coloured lavender in the evening sun.

But sight is just one sense. And what happens on Inis Meáin isn’t just seen but smelt and felt and heard. And sometimes it’s neither, and that’s lovely too because there is majesty in living so close to the sea that it ceases to be heard always. (There is, of course, a fine line between subconscious and complacency). A magnificent moment can make the body feel a certain way; like when a particularly effective piece of film score music carries the mind away with a dragon on a carpet or a Victorian love affair.

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Maybe two weeks ago, of a Saturday evening, I was standing at my friend’s doorstep when I noticed that something was amiss, that something was awry. The colour of the world was off, like a filter had been placed across my eyes. Over Inis Mór, the sun was lowering in a most magnificent red sky, and everything it touched was pink. I ran home, grabbed my bike to cycle to the end of the island to bear proper witness; to see that pink creep across limestone, illuminating gables, lampposts and paths. The island glowed magenta, like I half-imagine Mars to.

In that moment, on that rock, I was reluctant to move lest disturbance disappear it. My heart didn’t beat; it thumped, it pulsated in my shoulders, and echoed in my ears like a blow from before. There were no hands and feet, just this beating heart. And a mind stunned. The world, pink.

This was but one moment when, in the face of natural beauty of a stunning landscape, the world felt charged with volts that ran from the rock through to me.  Sometimes, these moments last for minutes. Sometimes they’re gone as quick as a turn of the lighthouse’s beam at Loop Head, a dolphin’s leap, or the break of a wave. In any such moment, I have a sense of the best thing about living.  

I heard one time an idea that happiness is the sum of all the small moments of joy in daily life – hearing a favourite song on the radio, a pleasing look in the mirror, the first sip of something delicious. Joy is the freckles on my arm, and happiness is the tan I hope they’ll unite to be. It is an idea I’ve subscribed to fully, having found so many of such moments here on Aran.

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I do wonder sometimes about paths in life and idly wonder if I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing – with only the vaguest notion of what ‘supposed’ means – and how Inis Meáin might fit into that plan. I never felt wedded or connected to anywhere else, so the question had never really come up before. But more and more I’m seeing that I came to Inis Meáin not to stay, but to see the kind of life I want to lead. The kind of life I want to have.

I want a life in a landscape. To see and recognise beauty every day. To notice changes and movements and see them reflected in my own life. To marvel at evening sky, whose show goes as quickly as it comes – gone by the time I drag someone out to look. To follow the sun and the moon. To be immersed or submerged in nature, just as I am in the water every day. To feel damp grass between my toes, and smell the rain. To witness moments that, quoting Donal Ryan, “could perfectly articulate how glorious it was to be alive.” I want, of course, to be beside the sea and to never, ever feel crowded again; I want a back garden that stretches to Canada, with the sun reflected in lines of silver and gold of an afternoon.

There then arises the dilemma, the compromise, of how much that soul-nourishing is worth in real-world terms. Long-term, is it worth the remoteness? Is it worth the restricted social life, the distance from services, the trek to visit and be visited? Is there such a thing as too much quietude? Similarly, are all the above worth a return to roadways and pavements grey? None of the above has ever been a problem for me on the island, but Inis Meáin was never forever. And though I’ve months to decide – and who knows what’d happen in the mean-time – I find myself mulling over the question more often; what price such joy?

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It’s a dilemma, a real one to me. But I’m writing this in Roscommon at a doorstep, listening to the rain’s patter. I can smell growth. There is a robin at my feet, studying a slug. And I’m thinking, in this moment, Lord but there are worse dilemmas; Connemara is but one landscape, there are many more to witness. There are always nets to cast wider.

What will be, will be.

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Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, other posts can be found here – they’re mostly about Inis Meáin these days, but there’s stuff there about politics, home, rural living and other notions I took on given days. I’m on Twitter too, if you really like what you read!!