‘Askew’ – Fandango’s one word challenge

Fandango’s FOWC Friday challenge asked us to make creative use of the word ‘askew’. Here’s my offering…

Photo taken at Laxey on the Isle of Man, last week, and post-processed to look like an old postcard…too many ‘p’s’ in there, if you ask me, not to mention ‘post’s. Mutter, mutter.

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

On the back of the card, partly rubbed out, it says in pencil: and he’s inclined to irreverence and humour…

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

———-

What hollow world lies hidden?

—-//—-

What hollow world lies hidden

Within these solid forms,

Inviting me with eyes and mind to follow?

How would I live as leaf or twig

Or fruit as berry: thorn, if scorned?

A solitary round of life unknown but found.

Where would I find myself if self

Surrendered to this leave of flesh

To be enmeshed in natural and abiding weave?

Now hear the silent laughter’s peels

Through unknown trails, when green heart’s

Mischief ends in spoken soft enfolding:

‘We have never been apart’ –

The sweet and holding tones of One whose care

Has, selfless, furnished all my breathing.

—-//—-

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

The waterways of Bolton-le-Sands

(Above: the mysterious tidal waterways, or ‘channels’ of Bolton-le-Sands, begin a short distance from the last

It’s like a Dutch canal system in miniature. It’s usually freezing cold, and seems to go dark quicker, there, than anywhere else we visit.

Welcome to the hidden gem of the shore at Bolton-le-Sands, Lancashire.

(On the foreshore – popular with dog walkers – Tess meets a fellow ‘Lassie’ collie. Tess is a smooth and this was a rough, but apart from coat length, they are genetically identical)

There’s a main channel that divides the long shoreline in two. The collie loves it, as she can vault over the narrow waters in pursuit of the frisbee; then turn to see if I dare follow…

Old two-legs is not as agile as she – even if she is an old girl, now, so I concentrate on landing the frisbee it where I know we can both go…

(Above: the narrow ‘creeks’ can be the most deadly)

With the sun fading in the sky, we turned to pick our way back over the channels to the safety of the car.

We live to bark another day!

Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Notes from Explorers (2) – the magic and mystery of identity

On the third Sunday of every month, the Silent Eye hosts a Zoom-based discussion to explore one of the core topics of modern mysticism.

This series of ongoing posts features a summary of each monthly discussion; of which this is the second.

The talks are open to all, and we welcome new visitors to the group – whether you drop in to take a look, or decide to stay and join our work.

There is link at the end of the post to enable you to join one of our sessions.

No-one wants a dry set of ‘minutes’ of such meetings. We’ll tell the story of these special events as informally as possible.

The SE-Exploration talk for Sunday 15 October 2023 was : The Magic and Mystery of Identity

One of our number regaled us with a journey through comic books! He used it to illustrate how children literally ‘bind’ their attention to a character in an illustrated story, living it in so-called fantasy, but with powerful and very real emotions – a precursor to a later fondness for formal fiction works?

For him, his journey to adulthood was paralleled with a journal of adopted characters that his young self would ‘be’. Being (in contrast to Doing) is important in our work, as its unquestioning and unresisting nature is a key aspect of our own inner selves – and their eventual effect on our world of the personality.

Understanding the difference between being and doing is at the heart of a special relationship with the universe that understands we can – and need to – do both

We felt there was much to discuss in this shared subject and will return to it in future talks.

(Above: the reproduction of a mental diagram we constructed at the end of the previous meeting. The world of ‘the spirit’ – boundless being and creativity – underpins creation. Above that, the Self (Spirit) creates the Soul, whose role is to shape a bridge as the Organ of Experience; which is present throughout the levels, spanning egoic personality to Self and Being. The aspects of the Self include Love, Compassion, Strength and Brilliance of mind and heart. There are many more.

We had explored the actual foundations of the soul the previous month, resulting in a schematic reproduced above:

Now, we were keen to extend this, to pinpoint the origins of the power of identity in our lives – and its shifting focus.

One of the group remarked that that identity appeared to be an inner hunger for something that had been lost… We all agreed that there was a deeper story, here.

A summary of subsequent discussions led us to an inner journey of the soul

We talked about how identity brings us alive in a certain way – empowering us to act with purpose and direction. A comment was made that such action ‘in the world’ was an attribute of ‘doing rather than being’, but nonetheless essential. The view of the group is that our path is one of a twinned being-doing axis, where the presence of individualised Being as the Self was the ultimate identity, and the state to which all the formative experiences lead us.

Much discussion followed, prompted by one of the group who was experiencing a challenging and very real ascent of his own consciousness, and wondering at his capacity to ‘hold it all’.

Some guiding comments were made by the most experienced members, one of whom said that the ‘Christ nature’ or Self was the creative ‘blueprint’ for the individual human being, so we need not fear its power, because it had always acted in our best interests, respecting our true capacities, and would therefore not unfold within us in a way that was threatening to the stability of our being.

(Above: the modified schematic of the Soul and Self with a faint clock-face laid beneath it, representing the irrepressible and active presence of Self in our world and it’s inevitable emergence; as time and experience turn the ‘fingers of our attention’ from the outer to the inner worlds)

We returned to our core diagram of function of Self, soul and personality, derived after the last SE-Explore meeting. We agreed that an extension to this was only needed in the sense of a universal process that gradually turned our attention from the outer to the inner dimensions of our lives.

The antique pocket watch, laid faintly as a foundation layer of the diagram, reminds us of the (eventua)l inevitability of the correct realisation of our identities with the ever-renewing Self.

Why not join us for our November chat? The details are below:

Our forthcoming meeting for November 2023

The SE-Exploration talk for Sunday 19 November 2023 will be : The Power of Self-Inquiry.

Our regular closing text from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas urges us to Inquire within:

“Knock upon yourself as upon a door and walk upon yourself as a straight road. For if you walk on that path, you cannot go astray; and when you knock on that door, what you open for yourself shall open.

Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he shall be troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be amazed, and shall come to transcend all things.”

Gnostic Gospel of Thomas.

We will examine the practical techniques whereby we may ‘knock upon ourselves as a door…’

Join us for 90 mins of friendship and amicable sharing of views and experiences … not forgetting fun. Bringing a glass of your favourite beverage with you is encouraged.

If you’re not on our contact list and would like a Zoom invitation to join us at the next SE-Explore meeting (see above), send an email to rivingtide@gmail.com.

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Gold from Green in Blue: Haiku

Sun’s gold sinks beneath

Full waters of the open eye

Sea calls, singing ‘home’.

———-

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Silver Fast Thread

(Above: Into the storm – the M6 southbound, near Carnforth, Saturday 13:30)

I’ve often thought what a testimonial to the speed of the modern mind a motorway is.

As our principal driver (though my wife is just as competent), I seldom get chance to take photographs. But when this deluge hit the M6, just south of Kendal, she was driving us to meet with her sister in Morecambe.

I already had the phone camera in my hands, reviewing some of the morning’s shots from Grange.

The sky darkened in seconds. Everyone slowed down as the world went quiet… For once – and probably more to do with it being Saturday than any newly absorbed wisdom concerning wet motorways – the phalanx of cars in front of us behaved impeccably as we all slid into the darkening, watery curtain.

The sunshine was the last thing to go; a dynamic and thankfully present ally as the gloom sucked us in.

Then the heavens opened, and all I had to do was rest the phone on the dash and press the camera’s shutter.

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

00Self

(Martini, anyone? image by the author)

This Sunday is the third of the month, and we have our SE-Explorations talk over Zoom; linking a growing group of people across the world in friendly yet deep explorations of key topics in modern mysticism.

This month’s topic is the mystery of identity.

We begin by asking. ‘What is identity?’ We will all have answers unique to our journeys…

When I was a boy, I loved comics. Over the years I took on the roles of Dennis the Menace, Billy the Whizz and the famous Dan Dare of Eagle comics. 

(Above: Dennis the Menace and his dog Gnasher. Image Wikipedia)

Dan Dare was much more sophisticated and reflected my growing sense that certain things in the world were beyond just having fun, and took you into a world of higher purpose.

(And later, the more sophisticated Dan Dare, all round decent chap and Pilot of the Future! Image: Wikipedia)

(And later, the more sophisticated Dan Dare, all round decent chap and Pilot of the Future! Image: Wikipedia))

Dan Dare’s mission was to protect the Earth from the evil Mekon – a mental giant but an emotional and moral monster… Looking back, there was much of the morality story about the nature of these protagonists. Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand Faceswould have recognised both characters and the plots in the Dan Dare story.

(Dan Dare’s deadly enemy: The Mekon, a mental giant but an emotional and moral dwarf! (source)

Fun at the time, these absorbing identifications were far from just a game; they were ways of seeing yourself in a form that had an inner life and a different sort of energy – a kind of sophistication not available to a young boy in his native environment. A fantasy? Certainly… But one that had interesting elements of egoic development that made even more sense from an adult perspective – though the author may not have consciously included that element. Stories have a habit of repeating ageless plots.

The young child is simply fascinated and lost in the characters of a story. The older one typically has a sense of boredom with the person they are, feeling it limited, where the comic or fantasy character is not.

Children naturally escape into fantasy, and love playing games with others where they take on roles. In that sense, they are very ‘plastic’ about their identities. At first they have little idea that they even have a character. Later – typically around the age of seven – they being to realise that the ‘me’ they take for granted is developing, and that the result is a new sense of self.

As teens, we may find ourselves identifying – though more quietly, as we are now deeply self-conscious – with heroic figures from cinema. The great psychologist Carl Jung had much to say about archetypal forces that underlie all mankind’s experiences. These may be seen as heroic figures when brought to life in the human consciousness and the life it lives, though they do not have that representation in their native realm, which is below our consciousness – Jung’s concept of the subconscious.

Figures such as warrior, lover, trickster, child, king or queen, that appear strongly in the stories of our inner lives often seem at odds with our reality and circumstances, if not our intentions. They come from colourful worlds, whereas our is grey.

Alongside this is a growing sense of who we are; largely in terms of our society. Teen years are full of the gap between the expectations of the adult world we are expected to join and the actual state of our self-opinion, stripped of fantasy images we realise hold no power, outside of the imagination.

But we should not rush to diminish the power of the imagination – nor its ‘fantasy archetypes’. Imagination can be made active rather than passive and trivial. It holds great creative power in moulding our future – if we have the will to create or call forth an enduring model of how we wish to develop – more importantly, how we wish to be.

The cinemas would not be so full of people if the latest 007 James Bond films did not strike an essential chord within us. We do not wholly let go the inner attachments of resolve, bravery and brilliance, even if our prowess as liver and lover falls short of fictional proportions…

(Above: Move over, 007. 00Self is here… Image Wikipedia)

What grows, quietly in those moments of recognition of the whole cycle, is the certainty that there is something at our core which is truly us, but which is strong – in the sense that it can be not only cultivated but given free reign to develop itself and us in our ‘outer’ lives.

We may call it soul, or self or many other terms, but its essential character is that of a ‘rightness of me’ that has alway abided in our truthful depths. 

What has been lacking is power…

So now we come to one of the great battles of our lives: the war between unrealistic societal expectations and what we can harvest from the ‘inner self’ which is now revealed. 

Somewhere along that challenging road is a moment when we realise that living the life of a James Bond (substitute your own archetype here) is not actually what we want; that we have tasted far warmer and kinder worlds of the creative self than this. Moreover, when we explore these worlds with our new ‘body of truth’, we find that the actual pleasure of the experience of truth in action is greater – and more personal – than any fiction we could have acted out. 

Metaphorically, a great and familiar stallion draws up alongside us, inviting us to adventure, not war. Everything we truly are becomes aligned, and a quieter and much more real energy now flows in our lives. It has a continuous freshness, precisely because it belongs to the realm of Being and is not made by the mind from dulled and repetitive representations of memory.

We see what is true and false about our outer picture of ‘me’. But we also see that the inner reality of our true identity and its emotional and ‘felt’ presence within us is more potent, in a life seen honestly, than any fantasy could ever be.

In that quiet dawn of the true identity, we climb on the waiting horse … and ride. And smile a lot…

———-

The Silent Eye Explorations talks, held over Zoom on the third Sunday of each month at 8:00 pm, UK time, are open to all. Send an email to Rivingtide@gmail.com.

———-

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Slices of Titanic (1) Malcolm’s pocket watch

That feeling of being behind a time-travelling invisible ‘camera’, the result of a compelling narrative that plays you as witness to the action – or misdemeanour – that’s just taken place.

Crime writers know it well. It’s one of the tools of their trade. The proverbial smoking gun, borrowed by just about everyone else who wants to invoke that sense of vivid event a moment prior.

Only this event happened a long time ago. And there was a crime, rather, one crime and vast series of errors; recorded at the time in a set of conclusions that changed the maritime world.

It was an inevitable process of learning at the edges of the science of materials. Directly related to what was was to happen decades later, when the De Havilland Comet airliner pushed the boundaries of passenger aviation to find out that metal at high rates of speed and vibration suffered ‘fatigue’ … and disintegrating planes fell out of the sky.

No sky, here…

Only the chill, dark waters of the North Atlantic on the night of 14th April 1912.

Not smoking, perhaps, since the deep sea would have long extinguished the cigarette that perhaps accompanied the final moments of Malcolm’s life: a life whose cessation was exactly marked by the coming to rest of the mechanism in his pocket watch… found later when his body was recovered from the sea.

(Above: one wing of the Titanic ‘experience’ in Belfast)
So confident it’s simply known as ‘Titanic Belfast’

We’re in the Titanic District of Belfast … And at the end of a self-paced tour of the Titanic Ship set in the context of a proud city that built it; only to see it sink during her maiden voyage, after striking an iceberg in the middle of the ocean, four days after leaving from Southampton en-route to New York.

Despite being viewed as ‘unsinkable’, the giant liner took only two hours and forty minutes to slide into the dark depths. .

The Omega pocket watch belonged to Malcolm Johansson, a third-class passenger onboard Titanic. He was 33-years old when the icy waters of the North Atlantic claimed the ship and his life.

Although he was born in Sweden, he lived and worked in Minneapolis, USA where he owned and ran a successful construction business.

In early 1912, he decided to return home to Sweden where he planned to purchase the farm he grew up on as a boy in Bjorkaryd. However, his attempt to recover the property was unsuccessful and so he decided to return to the USA.

It is believed that Malcolm travelled from Sweden to England onboard SS Calypso before booking his passage on Titanic for £7, 15 shillings. He boarded her at Southampton on 10th April 1912.

The Titanic hadn’t been his first choice. Like so many others at the time he was due to travel to America on board the White Star Line’s RMS Adriatic but as a result of the 1912 coal strike in Britain, the Adriatic was unable to sail, and her coals stocks were transferred to the Titanic.

(Above: waving…)

Malcolm died in the sinking of the famous ocean liner, and his body, No.37, was picked up by the Mackay-Bennett crew.

According to the official records, when his body was recovered he was still wearing his boots, but his socks were missing … the socks that contained the money he had taken to buy back his childhood home. The money was never recovered by his family, despite repeated attempts.

‘A shroud needs no pockets’ comes to mind. We can’t help speculating on the route and destination of the theft…

Malcolm was buried in Fairview Cemetery, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada on 10th May 1912.

The hands of his Omega pocket watch were frozen in time at 01.37 in the morning of 11th May. It may have been the only witness to his passing.

Calculating the time difference reveals that it stopped just four minutes after Titanic began her final journey to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

At auction, decades later, ‘Malcolm’s’ archive sold for £155,000, the luggage ticket leading the way at £59,000 closely followed by his pocket watch at £58,000.

Malcolm purchased the watch in Sweden on 9th June 1910. It was a Lepine Omega of Grade A quality and is the only documented example of an Omega watch to have survived the Titantic disaster.

In addition to the pocket watch there was also a rare Manifest Ticket for Titanic stamped “10th April 1912.” This particular ticket was initially to be used by Malcolm for his journey to the USA on board the Adriatic. It would have been very important to Malcolm as he would have needed to present it to the US Immigration Authorities at Ellis Island after Titanic docked in New York.

(Above: a scale model of the Titanic, suspended in mystery and gentle violin music)

Titanic Belfast is too vast a subject to write a single, encompassing blog about. Instead, I will try to create a series of ‘slices’ through the story of this fine city and its troubled great liner told in this breathtaking ‘experience’.

This is the first of those…

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Summer skin

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

A Donegal Journey (4) : The Ring on the Hill

The wind howled at us as we left the car park to climb the hill to the strange stone ring on its summit. It’s in the Republic of Ireland, near the border with Northern Ireland; all of it within the ancient province of Ulster.

Bernie had seen it in a guide book and we wanted to take a look while we were in the area.

By the time we approached the large stone structure, the gale was actively trying to blow us back down… Donegal weather is not boring!

This dark and – on this day – forbidding destination is named Grianan of Aileach, and it has an illustrious history that is believed to have begun in the 6th century, CE.

(Above: the ground drops away steeply to a variety of landscapes below)

From the site of the ring, you can see practically everything in the neighbouring landscape of sister hills and a vast amount of water.

‘And a vast amount of water’

My immediate impression was of a similarity to Glastonbury Tor, which is much more celebrated, but has a similar (to me) ‘self-contained’ feel..

In an emotional sense – and there was a lot of it up there – you can feel the hill’s suitability for seeing what lies below it – and, I suspect, above it, too. This has a dimension that is not simply physical.

(The strength of a three-layer stone wall)

The wall is about 4.5 metres (15 ft) thick and 5 metres (16 ft) high. Inside it has three terraces, which are linked by steps, and two long passages within that. Originally, there would have been buildings inside the ringfort. Just outside it are the remains of a well and a tumulus.

(Above: a very solid – and fortified – single entrance, modernised for visitors, but showing the thickness of the walls)

The main structure of the stone ring is five metres high and visible for miles around.

It is undoubtedly ancient. There is evidence that the site had been in use before the fort was built. It has been identified as the seat of the Kingdom of Ailech and one of the royal sites of Gaelic Ireland.

(Above: The interior walls and the passageways…)

The place-name Aileach means a rocky place. The amount of rock used in its construction becomes apparent from the multiple layers of the interior. This was created with a huge amount of effort.

(Above: the sheer size of the pleasant and peaceful interior is highlighted by this panoramic photo)

Ancient History:

Evidence for an earlier prehistoric hillfort survives at the site in the form of three, low banks or ramparts and ditches which enclose the stone fort.

Above: excavations revealed earlier tracks to the hilltop)

An ancient roadway ran up to the site (see above). There is a holy well, dedicated to St Patrick to the south of the stone fort and the site of a burial cairn to the east.

The stone fort (also known as a cashel) as we see it today was probably constructed in the late eighth or early ninth century CE as the capital of the Cenel n Eogain, the Kings of this part of Ulster.

(Above: The interior, showing the three levels)

In 904 and 939 Aileach was plundered by the Vikings. The final destruction of the original fort was carried out in 1101 by the army of Jar Muirchertach Ua Briain, King of Munster.

By the 12th century, the Kingdom of Ailech had become embattled and had lost substantial territory to the invading Normans. According to Irish literature, the ring-fort was mostly destroyed by the then King of Münster, Muirchertach Ua Briain. Substantial restoration work was undertaken in 1870. Today, the site is protected as an Irish National Monument.

In the 1870’s the cashel was restored by Dr Walter Bernard of Derry who recorded the finding of stone objects. In 2001 there were further archaeological and engineering investigations prior to an intensive conservation project.

These uncovered glass, pottery and clay pipe fragments dating from the nineteenth century works, but no other remains.

The lintel-covered entrance in the cashel leads into an interior enclosed by a wall that rises in three terraces and is accessible by inset stairways.

Within the wall are two wall chambers which stop short of the entrance. In 1935 the archeologist George Petrie recorded a rectangular stone building in the centre which is no longer standing.

(Above: An ariel view from a local drone)

A social history?

I’m no expert in hill-forts. I do, though, have a keen sense of ‘feel’ for a place. When we were walking up the hill towards what was simply a ‘ring of stone’ on the summit, I felt a mix of impressions.

There was ‘security’ here, but upon entering, there was a sense of ‘meeting and community’. One could imagine a gathering of tribes, perhaps? Maybe even some commerce in the form of a market outside the walls.

Such sites are seldom without ritual significance. The top of a hill opens up the sky and the parade of seasonal events, including the all -important equinoxes and solstices by which the cycles of all life were calibrated and ‘seen-felt’ to have their different living qualities.

The ancients extended their sense of ‘self’ deeply into the landscape. What we view dispassionately as objects were seen to have qualities derived from life, and attributed, in modified form, to all of the ‘world’ around them. To use other language, the ‘out-there’ was not seen as a separate domain to their ‘in-here’.

When they did gather, they carried this openness to the ‘out there’ with them, which makes places of ancient ritual so rich in potential for our own communion with the natural world.

None of this takes away from our rational and scientific skills; they are simply different perspectives on the same world. They lived in an age of qualities; we inhabit an age of quantity.

Source Notes: Grianán of Aileach. Abandoned. 12th century CE. Periods. Iron AgeMiddle Ages. Cultures. Gaelic. Associated with. Kings of Ailech. Site notes Excavation dates. 1830s; 1870s. Archaeologists George Petrie; Walter Bernard

———-

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

A Donegal Journey (3) The Last Inch

(Above: the location of Inch Island on Lough Swilly. Source: Apple Maps, enhanced by the author)

We thought we’d save it for the final day of our time in Co. Donegal but then – on the way back from visiting a nearby hilltop ring fort and surviving a gale that tried to hurl us off the elevated walkways – we felt in need of a gentler experience.

(Above: Inch Island from the nearby hill fort. A further blog post will cover this!)

Driving back to our rented cottage, we passed the Inch Banks causeway that connects the island of Inch to the mainland on the Buncrana side of Lough Swilly … and looked at each other.

‘Perfect end to the day,” said Bernie, still looking flushed from the wind’s battering and glad to be dry and driving a now-warm car.

We turned the car onto Inch Banks. My wife groaned slightly, looking at her watch.

“You realise we’ve only got thirty minutes…”

We had arranged to meet up for a drink with an old friend who was also on holiday in Donegal.

“What can we do in thirty minutes?” she said.

“We can photograph… and try to capture the essence of the place.” I was having none of this negative stuff … thirty minutes was plenty!

The heavens opened at the news. This was not a new phenomenon. It had been happening to us (and everyone else in Buncrana) on a several-times-a- day basis.

I looked back into her mischievous expression. “Rain-soaked photography is its own art-form. “

I’d made it up on the spot. But it would do as a pretext, and I was keen to try this distinctive ‘time trial’.

We’d crossed half the island at this point in our conversation, and were arriving at a deserted cove with a harbour wall.

“I’m staying in the car,” she said, parking as close to the beach line as she dared.

With the moments ticking away, I took stock and ran from point to point to get as many shots as I thought worthy – and knowing I could dismiss most of them, later.

About halfway through, I realised that the rain had stopped. I couldn’t suppress a smirk … and kept on snapping.

The survivors are here in the post.

Inch island is approximately five square miles in area. It lies at the southern end of the 21 mile stretch of Atlantic water that is the beautiful Lough Swilly.

Inch Island’s highest hill – Inch Top, is just over 200 metres high, which gives the place an appealing curvature when viewed from the mainland.

(Looking through the rain at the western edge of the Lough and the hidden village of Rathmullan – the place we had failed to cross to on the ferry)

In the Irish language, Inch is known as Inis na nOsirí, meaning ‘Island of the Oysters.

According to the latest survey, 396 (lucky) people live here.

A blog post on the intriguing Ringfort will be published, soon.

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog

Breakfast at Tank and Skinny’s

(Above: the sun does shine… just not every day)

There’s a ferry across this largest of Donegal’s Lochs. It takes you, with car, from Bruncrana to Rathmulan, on the far shore. It departs from the end of the pier, as in the shot above, which is how we first encountered it.

If it’s not raining, that is, or too blowy … or if it’s not September, when the summer timetable is replaced by a less formal approach.

Above: as near to the sea as you could be without getting wet)
(Above: turning back and accepting the alternative)

The good news about turning up for your much-anticipated crossing and finding the boat tied up on the side of the jetty that doesn’t have the slipway, and looking as empty of crew as the Marie Celeste, is that you can turn round and make your way back through the downpour to the start of the jetty.

where the excellent Tank and Skinny’s cafe awaits to cushion the disappointment.

Later, when the mood is soft and satisfied, you can watch the arrival of your second latté, and gaze out over the scant remains of a bacon pancake-stack drizzled, liberally, with maple syrup.

(Reasons to return..)

And wonder about trivial things like the origin of the name ‘Tank and Skinny’s’, while staring at the driving rain that now obscures even the end of the jetty, let alone the far shore at Rathmullan – normally a thin line of white harbour-houses in the far distance but now beyond even imagination.

It’s a place to visit if you like weather … and wildness; which we do. The ferry can wait for another day. The coffee is calling.

©Stephen Tanham 2023

Stephen Tanham is a writer, mystical teacher and Director of the Silent Eye, a correspondence-based journey through the forest of personality to the dawn of Being.

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk and http://www.suningemini.blog