The photo.

It is here, now, I am here, always

Theres a photo here, in front of me. Its me and Grandad, in his back garden, with Granny s roses in the foreground.

I remember this incident very well. I found Grandad in the conservatory one morning putting on his boots ready to go out to the veg patch. I wanted to go with him, this sounded like great fun, but Grandad disapproved of my t-shirt, saying it was cold outside. I was already a hardened Kerry girl at this tender age of 6 and thought he was being unnecessary. Still, he wouldnt let me join the expedition until I was covered in Granny s old coat, a pair of mittens, and a bobbled cap. It was roasting in there. We picked broad beans and runner beans and my mother howled with laughter when she spotted us coming back up the gardens toward the house.

It is here, now, I am here, always

But the girl in the photo is not me. Her image stands for something I used to be, true, but there is about as much similarity between the girl in the photo and the woman sitting here than there is between a giraffe and an octopus. My desire to connect thoughts and memories to an image on a glossy piece of paper is quaint and yet somehow restrictive. Who knows whether it really was broad beans and runner beans in the basket. To me the details are important.

All the power that ever was is here now. I am the force of expression for the primal Will to Good which eternally creates and sustains the universe.