In an attempt to gain some enlightenment on the (Murphy) Catholic church knowingly allowing pedophile priests to continue to abuse children report, watched a documentary on clerical abuse. Even more perplexed. Suffice to say I consider my time as a Catholic amounts to some kind of removal from the planet by aliens and wouldn’t mind a return on the hours I sat in the bench.
The monarchy, which is what the church amounts to, continue to lie with impunity. To deflect. To throw language around as a softening device. And amid this equivocation what of the lives, the many, many lives in ribbons?
One thing that continues to strike me, and more so after said doc, is the way the church (for priests are the representatives of the church, you would not be letting them into your home if they were simply freelance priests) moved in specifically on women (mothers). Swooping in on them.
Neck protests somewhat at the re-emergence of relearning the steps (lean, fall, push, stretch …) to back handspring.
Front handspring remastered (needs work, but landed much to my surprise) at my second training session.
The front somersault however I am not compatible with. Nor the backward roll. My brain likes tumbling very much. And you cannot tumble without the mighty linking moves. Surrounded by people throwing straight backs, multiple backflips, so plenty to tumble toward.
The intellect curiously interferes and can stall the move. There are seconds before you throw it, where you brain tries to rationalize what you are about to do and the entire sequence can be destroyed.
A figure skater was standing watching through the door, considering joining, come in I told him. A curious cross pollination between sports. It will be interesting to watch how the one informs the other.
A dip in the temperature has sharpened the old mental faculty. The various weather events, as previously detailed in this unrolling blatheration, thrill me in their individual ways. I think my weather intrigue springs from being part of the Sealink Ferry generation. The wind in Mayo has it’s own patois. But the most informative snippet I ever heard about the weather came not from a scientist or a web based reading but from an Icelandic postwoman who I followed on her route in Reykjavik I think it was in 94 as research for a story I was trying to cultivate.
I recall her explaining to me that everybody thinks the weather is all kinds of things and usually terrible, but if you are out in it, she explained it’s really not bad at all. I think she was galloping along with a big bag at the time, me at her heels, eyes a-opened, listening intently for something, and probably not expecting to hear that. In my imagination I had concocted the world of Icelandic post women as something far beyond what the reality entailed.
Back in the sorting office, we gathered with the other women for their coffee break around flasks and during the chatter (quite a bit of why on earth are you interested in the post office) the conversation turned to music. We talked briefly of music incl Bjork (she’s very special) and I think we talked about low pay and much more. It was the weather reflection that stayed with me for I found that once I was indeed out in the weather and actually in it, paying attention to it, it was precisely as she’d described.
When I am looking at the weather I can find it vexing, but by getting underneath it, I have a whole other relationship with it. And that relationship includes moments of oppression, of marvel, wonder, despair and what if? I established this relationship in a country where it can be every season within fifteen minutes.
A bewk has come into my temporary possession by the generous lend of a friend called Undercover Surrealism published by the Hayward Gallery promises to expand on Bataille’s Documents.
Also it came accompanied by The Church A Demon Lover A Sartrean Analysis of an Institution by Roberta Imboden. (Univ of Calgary Press) Am trying and flailing to consider the staggering (can there be any more stagger left in staggering) Murphy commission report. Will post a collection of links if I ever sit upright again. Depravity that, listening to the discussion of whether such and such bishop should resign, continues to know no bounds, nor comprehends the scale and extensive reach of its damage. Damage that has taken lives of those we may never even know about. The diluted apologies from the church that increasingly sound like the same dead note, the donging of a clock to merely fill the silence and mark the passing of time at a press conference or during a news interview.
Question not being asked, or perhaps being discussed quietly out of the public domain is what is at the root of this sexual abuse, the appetite for it, why was it so prevalent even beyond the church, in swimming etc. Where does this come from? If it was only Catholicism then other Catholic countries would be besieged with these horrors. There was a piece I must dig out in the Irish Times talking about the culture of secrecy and saying nothing. But in reading it, it’s not entirely accurate. Perhaps it was once. Power, fear, control, domination yes but there’s something further to it.
What is healthy is the uproar. People are furious. Collectively furious and collectively ashamed. Furious enough that real change may result. There’s a clarity to the fury that needs now to push for further excavation of where this all comes from. Sometimes the terms in which it’s discussed are distancing and it merely pushes it further away as something incomprehensible, but in order to ensure it doesn’t continue in any diluted form, we must attempt to comprehend it.