Alma Mater

I wanted to blog more than this in 2012. This post is more of a personal documentation than a carefully crafted treatise!

I'm at a pretty transitional point in my life at this moment and it's been a little disrupting. I've just left a wonderful school, where I have met inspirational teachers and taught confident and perceptive pupils. I had the chance to work in a brilliant department amongst a staff who value everyones individual contributions. In short I LOVED THAT SCHOOL.

Now i'm moving on

To the place where everything began for me. My alma mater. The school which shaped me, which nurtured me, which encouraged me. The school where the teachers I had have become my friends, where I found people to champion my dreams and encourage my talents. Where I feel at home.

But I am scared.

I'm scared that i've got expectations (something I try never to have) I'm worried that I will fail to be the person my friends here have championed me to be. That it will be too hard to fit in with a different role, that I'll mess everything up and my chances of a full time job here will be ruined.

But I trust in my abilities, in the joy I get from teaching, that everything will work out fine. I trust that there is someone up there looking out for me, even if i'm not always sure where or who.

The cry of my heart is to be someone who makes a difference.
It's not ok to me that kids go through their schooling thinking that they are useless. It's not ok to me that in schools children feel lonely, vulnerable and alone. It's not ok to me that school aged human beings think their voices are not heard or don't matter. I want to be a competent enough professional to ensure that I can make a difference.
This is all I ever wanted from life.

World on Mute

It's like someone put a veil around me, a shroud of uncertainty and isolation. The world, usually in technicolour, seems somehow dulled. The mist engulfing the city tonight engulfs me too, pulling me into its unsearchable depths. My heart aches, my eyes feel heavy, like my soul. 
The river courses its gentle stream as I walk beside her, unaware of the raging torrents of emotion contained inside me. One foot in front of the other I carry on walking. I want to walk into the mist, to disappear from everything, to leave my responsibilities behind me. I want to leave the Lagan to her ageless journey. 
I envy her.
She knows where she starts and where she ends, coming to the final few meanders of her path here at the mouth of the ford where her secrets become the lough's; where the lough becomes the sea. Her path laid out before her every step of the way. But me? I wander at her shore on the edge of a knife, veiled and muffled. 
One foot in front of the other is all I can manage tonight.

You have the capacity to be incredible!

I have just watched I have Never Forgotten you: The life and Legacy of Simon Wiesenthal and I have never wept so much at a documentary before. This man was exceptional.


Friday 27th January was Holocaust Memorial Day and I did a few lessons on it with some of my classes in school that week. When I was researching information I came across this man Simon Wiesenthal the 'Nazi Hunter', I recognised the name but I didn't know who he was. I've only just got round to watching the documentary I found on him and I am so glad I did! His story moved me immensely; he encapsulated the grief of an entire generation lost at the hands of the Nazi's. He raised a daughter who would never have anyone to call auntie, uncle, cousin, grandmother, grandfather. He continued remembering and fighting for justice for those he was never able to forget. And he kept going even when people accused him of making the holocaust up, refused to believe the things he went through and spat at him on the street. Because of this unrelenting vision he had it is possible to quote the paragraph below from the aforementioned documentary:

“Without Simon Wiesenthal’s activity, there would not be war crimes trials today. The reason that there is a permanent UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague is directly attributable to the work that Simon Wiesenthal began in 1946. No one had a more stacked deck against them than Simon Wiesenthal who came out of the holocaust with nothing, nobody, was 99lb and barely alive and with that he wouldn’t give up. To me that’s the lesson of Simon Wiesenthal; that one person if they want to and if they try can make a difference. He made a difference to the world”


For me the year 2012 will always be synonymous with the Olympics, but I want it to be much more than that. I want it to be a momentous personal year. I'll never win a gold medal, but I want to do amazing things, see amazing places, spend amazing times with great friends. So i'm keeping an 'Olympic diary' of all the really cool things I'm going to make a conscious effort to do this year. But after watching this documentary I think i'm also going to add 'find out amazing things that people have done' to the 'Olympic year' list.

Human beings are capable of incredible things, in the same way they are capable of unspeakable things. It is up to us to be incredible in order to prevent the unspeakable from happening in our world! You have a voice, and if you want to, if you try, you CAN make a difference!!

If you were here beside me...

I can't explain what Snow Patrol's music does to me. Gary Lightbody is the best lyricist of the decade, hands down! There is just no arguing with me on this point!
To write a blog about how much I love Snow Patrol would never do my feelings justice, so I won't try. I'll just say that last night was a special experience, and as long as Gary is up there, it always will be!

"I miss it all from the Lough to the Lagan
and the lack of it splits me in two"
-New York

I just love the way he writes. His music is laced with Northern Irish idioms, you're listening to an amazing song and them BOOM, there's references to 'The Lagan', 'Ireland in the World Cup' and setting 'Fire to the third bar' The way he describes emotions is so beautiful it sometimes takes my breath away. Seeing Snow Patrol is always a profoundly spiritual experience for me, the lyrics are so special. It's like he sees into my soul and sings at exactly the frequency that makes it hum.

That is all I have to say.

Silent Conversation

"Words may be less important than I'd previously imagined."

Over the past few months it has become very clear to me that I love conversation. I long for words.Words feed my soul, they make me feel relevant, they make me feel human, they make me feel wonderfully infinite and completely inconsequential all at the same time! I cannot feel fully alive in a world without discourse.
Chat, dialogue, Pow-wow, debate; call it what you will, I will talk to you about anything! Made in Chelsea, Shakespeare, Celebrity Big Brother, Particle Physics advances in CERN; I'm not fussy, but please don't say nothing!

In pre-Islamic Arab society a person commanded respect based on their command over words. For them words literally were power. The Qur'an talks a lot about the power of words and the eternal consequences of them, so does the Bible. And I guess that I really do believe that words are power. As the most beloved headmaster of Hogwarts once said;

Words are our most inexhaustible source of magic.

I have just been to see the silent movie 'The Artist' in the QFT. I'm not very good at writing reviews of things, but I really loved this film. It was a beautifully told story with an exceptional score and I enjoyed it more than I expected to!
I didn't miss the dialogue and the story was perfectly relevant and moving and enjoyable without it. Humans really are the most wonderful creatures- although this film also has an exceptional dog! If you get a chance I would really encourage you to go and see The Artist.  If you heard 'silent movie' and were put off I encourage you to think again.

Tonight was good.

And while I crave and long for conversation; I am willing to admit that there is, perhaps, more value in silence than I previously gave it credit for.

From the Lough

The flat light swallows the line between sea and sky
and the hazy grey horizon holds it's secrets.

Dreaming of times long passed
The cranes lie sleeping

Silent steel and rope and rivets
inhabit their memories

Giants that built Giants,
White Star Liners and men

Thousands upon thousands of men
streaming through the gates as the siren summons

Silent now, a shadow of what was before.
2012 will resurrect her memory

But memory will not bring life
Not like before

In the flat grey light
The Giants keep their watch
and the Lough keeps her secrets.

My Everest

Along with my early mornings and book reading; another thing I have taken up this year is running. I’ve always wanted to run a marathon, i’m thinking this year might be my year. If you know me you will know how much of a ridiculous challenge this is going to be!

My fascination with marathons began when I read Paula Radcliffe’s autobiography, she quickly became my favourite British athlete and that book started my love affair with autobiographies.

So this morning at 9am (an hour I rarely see on Saturdays) I got up, forced my sleepy little toes into my trainers and set off for my first run on the roads in Belfast. Marathon runners are, in my opinion, alongside rowers and gymnasts; the hardest working and most awe inspiring atheletes of them all.

I am not a marathon runner

But I have a problem. I want to do everything! If I had a hundred lifetimes on this earth it still would not be enough to do all the things I want to do and accomplish all the things I want to accomplish.
Marathon runners are driven, highly motivated, unbelievably disciplined... these are not really characteristics that spring to mind about me and my life! In fact i’ve started a lot of things with the best intentions only to leave them by the wayside in a few weeks

List of things I have started in my life but never finished;
-NaNoWriMo; Writing a novel in a month (twice)
-Learning Latin
-Started learning the piano/ tin whistle/ Bodhran
-Various cross stitch boxes
-Paint by numbers
-Reading The Bible in a year
-War and Peace (I just couldn’t do it)

2012 is my year! I can feel it. It’s an Olympic year, the culmination of years of training by Olympic hopefuls, the pinnacle of their careers. If someone can train for a decade for a chance at a medal, I can get off my ass for 5 months and train to run for 5 or 6 hours.... Oh dear goodness who am i kidding? This is going to be tough, but i’m determined to do this.

I’ll be raising money for SANDS and Life after Loss, two charities that help families in Northern Ireland cope with the tragedies of stillborn or neo-natal deaths.

www.lifeafterloss.org.uk/site
www.sandsni.org

Today when I was running (a measly 2.4 miles) and my body was telling me I needed to stop, I was thinking about Bear Grylls, who’s book about climbing Everest brings my total this year to #3.

My Father was the Base Camp Manager on the First Irish Everest Expedition in 1993 and I have heard countless Everest stories from him and his friend Dawson Stelfox (who successfully summited on 27th May 1993, becoming the first Irish man to climb the mountain) but until I read this book I really had no idea how hard it was to climb Everest! Possibly quite naïve of me, but I really never really considered just how hard it was to reach the top of the world. No amount of cash or medical advances can get you up there. You cannot be dropped off by helicopter because the air is too thin for the blades to catch, you cannot parachute from a plane, it is too high, and for every 6 people that summit 1 dies trying! The only way you can get to the top of the world is by sheer will/man power and a slice of luck.

Whenever I got to the part in Facing Up when Bear reached the top I burst into tears. I don’t cry a lot and I hadn’t even been feeling emotional throughout the book but I had been up that mountain with him, I had felt his pain and frustration, shared in the worry of his family and spurred him on when the going was hard. Whenever he reached the top I was there with him and I don’t know why, but it moved me. I asked my dad what Dawson said when he reached the summit and he told me these exact words which can be found in the book Everest Calling (an account of the 1993 Irish expedition)

... Dermot, the altimeter is reading 8848m and I'm sitting on the summit of the world.
... Dawson listen to me - you're the tallest man in the world ... and you've just made the first Irish ascent of Mount Everest and the first British ascent o f the North Ridge - absolutely magnificent achievement Dawson - we're surrounded here by people - Irish, Nepalese and Tibetan, everyone offering congratulations.


I am not insane enough to desire to scale the heights of the Himalyas, but if Bear Grylls can climb Everest after breaking his back just a few years earlier I would like to try to run 26 miles! Running a Marathon is my Everest and I can’t think of anything that could motivate me more than being able to raise money for these two charities.

Whenever I feel like I can’t go any further I think of Paula Radcliffe and her commitment, Bear Grylls and his determination and my baby cousin Max who I never got to meet.

I have a feeling that 2012 is my year.