between the rock and the cold, cold sea

GANDALF: Theoden king stands alone.
Eomer: Not alone. ROHIRRIM!

Watching #hometovote on Thursday night and Friday, that was how I felt.

On Friday, 22 May 2015, the Irish nation voted overwhelmingly to give equal protection to all persons choosing to marry without distinction as to their sex. It - we - voted to affirm the equality of GLBT citizens in the eyes of the constitution.

Today we watched the returns come in. Today we saw history made. Today, in the crowds in the courtyard of Dublin Castle, cheering when every constituency went green for YES (and booing for Roscommon-South Leitrim, shame on you, you let the side down a bit there), today we began a new history.

Can you actually believe it? pic.twitter.com/KtK33f8t7m

— PJ Gallagher (@pjgallagher) May 23, 2015

I have now heard a crowd break spontaneously into the national anthem.

This is not a thing I ever expected to hear.

But when David Norris spoke a few words to the crowd in that courtyard - a rowdy, cheerful crowd that nonetheless went silent to hear him speak - ending on a note of liberté, egalité, fraternité, everyone. Just. Started.

Buíon dár slua
thar toinn do ráinig chughainn,
Faoi mhóid bheith saor
Seantír ár sinsear feasta,
Ní fhágfar faoin tíorán ná faoin tráill.

I have never in my life seen anything like it. There was a crush just to get in to the courtyard where the screen was bringing up the constituencies as they turned green for Yes. And every time another one went green the roar. Laughing. Crying. Hugging people met randomly. And when Leo Varadkar appeared, a Fine Gael government minister who only came out this year and turned into the most unlikely gay icon of our time... the whole crowd started chanting, "LEO, LEO, LEO."

One of the highest turnouts for a referendum ever in this country. A landslide in the Dublin constituencies. A two-thirds majority across the country.

Everyone who canvassed. Everyone who came out on national TV, in the newspapers, on doorsteps all over the country, whose courage and compassion and generosity are an example to us all - thank you. Everyone who came #hometovote, that army pouring over the hill - thank you. THANK YOU.

It took me until this year to realise and admit to myself properly that I was bisexual - queer, primarily attracted to women, whatever words are the words that shape the place where a person fits. It took me so long because I was slow to realise it was even possible, much less normal. Much less safe. (My subconscious has some really odd narratives about sex and desire - and I blame being a bastard in nineties Ireland in part for that.)

And now. Now my heart hurts with gladness because this whole bloody country just turned around and said Ah GO ON. Turned out in droves to say Let grá be the law.

It's in the constitution now, bigots. NO TAKEBACKS.

No, it's not the end of the road. No, it's not a panacea. It will not solve quiet social prejudice, or erase Irish homo- and transphobia overnight, or address any number of other problems. But today, Ireland?

TODAY WE ARE LEGENDS WHO MADE HISTORY.

(And I was there to see it.)

What a day. O what a LOVELY day.

I woke at 0630 with a purring cat on my foot, and rolled over to go back to sleep.

It was a good day. The sun had all September's brightness and the last warmth of summer on the blackberries. I walked northeast with the parent after noon, trailing the coast all the way to the passage tombs on the headland, where the shore lies open to your vision south to Skerries and north clear to Drogheda and beyond, colours so sharp you'd cut yourself on the greens, sea a drowning blue glittering with light. The tide low, seaweed-scented and thick with brine. We sat on the mound's half-circle tiny rampart and listened to small animals rustle in the brambles and the farmer's field of dying soya beans.

Two hours' worth of walking, slowly. Then to the supermarket for shopping, and home for burgers and cold sliced carrot and cucumber. I'm still addicted to Coca-Cola: I had my weekly treat on Thursday but the sight of all those special-offer bottles in the supermarket had my tongue thick and dry, and my resolve rather cracked before them.

Two review-like things from the to-do list hit the dust tonight, for a total of ~900 words. It strikes me that even in a slow week I write ~700-1500 words, even leaving aside my thesis. It's no wonder that my inclination to blog about things is not very high...

I blogged this over on my wordpress site, but seriously EVERYONE NEEDS TO WATCH IT. It made me remember why I fell in love with science fiction in the first place. And oh, did I ever fall in love with science fiction. SPAAAACE! BOOM! Ships and stars and weirder wonders, and the great hope that we might still be human, and humane, and ourselves, against all that endless dark.

Oh bright rain, brave clouds, oh stars,
oh stars.

Two thousand four hundred fires
and uncharted, unstudied,
the hours, the hours, the hours.

-- Sofia Samatar, "Girl Hours."


(Video via Aoife O’Riordan at Consider The Tea Cosy, an admirable Irish feminist.)

Also via O'Riordan, this time on Twitter, another video, not quite as excellent but still joyous:

The day I've had - it's been startlingly amazing.

I'd managed to forget that my old friend M., former climbing partner extraordinaire, was back in town for his PhD graduation. But he got in touch while I was still on the train in, and we had lunch in a café with him in his commencement robes, all red and gold and formal.

Turns out, he'd no family coming other than his girlfriend, who was in want of company for the ceremony. When a friend invites you to their two-tickets-only commencement, you don't turn them down: and it was beautiful, and startling joyful to see so many happy people. And M. - I've seen him this happy hardly never: a tall skinny shaved-head geek quite luminous and handsome. He and his girlfriend are delightful together. It makes me immensely happy to see them happy.

(It was an honour to attend his graduation. An honour, which I'm sure he'd brush off in embarrassment if I managed to say how much I meant that.)

(Also, it's going to be a funny story, "How I was press-ganged to M.'s commencements.")

After that - which occupied perhaps the larger portion of the afternoon - the Long Room Hub was holding their New Academic Year Party from 1800, which had free food, free drink, and many interesting people - WHEEEEE PEOPLE - and at 1900 I'd already arranged to meet C.T. and Dr.J. for drinks, so we trailed around to a couple of places. First the Library Bar in the hotel on Exchequer St., and then a place called Wagamama, which I'd never heard of but apparently specialises in doing Japanese-style food fast (I had duck gyoza and plain noodles, since I was both hungry and in distrust of my stomach's reaction to spices): I will call it a definite win, and will have to go back there when I'm slightly richer. Then finally a stop off in the Lombard beside the train station, where I left them because my train was the sooner.

Many things spoken of in passing, which I will not recount.

I have had ALL THE SOCIAL, and will try not to pass out from it before I go home.

(No, I only had one beer. One half-pint of ale, to be precise.)

I am making soup. It is vegetable soup with the scraps leftover from a boiled ham, and will be very protein-heavy soup, because I emptied two tins of different kinds of beans into it.

I am surprisingly happy. I slept well and woke happy. There is rain between showers of sunlight, and I breakfasted upon black grapes and Greek yoghurt drizzled in maple syrup. The words in the reader's report on the submitted chapter of my thesis have not changed during the night: the criticism is still mild and constructive, and the sentence The candidate demonstrates impressive mastery of the archaeological data, writes with elegance and precision, and begins to formulate highly promising theoretical grounds from which to embark upon the kind of cultural phenomenology of healing which the thesis sets out to produce hasn't mysteriously disappeared.

I am still hugging that sentence. I want to frame it.

I am so rarely this happy. This reassured that I am not a waste of space and time, that I am doing what I am meant to do, and doing it well. It is impossible to own my own abilities without anxiety, without fear of overweening pride and self-deception - always I must qualify the sentence. Always, I disbelieve. Always, I am insufficient.

But today I am less insufficient, and can make soup and play videogames and go for a walk and be kind to myself, because today, for a short time, I am happy and full of charity and love towards the world.