Grey Matters

Recently I heard a Junior Certificate History student talking about what she had learned from studying the subject. She spoke so eloquently about how it made her realize that life is rarely black and white, that it is in fact (and we all know historians love their facts) populated by a fair old smattering of grey. Her wisdom brought me back to a time when I was agonizing over the Troubles and the terrible loss of life on the island of Ireland. It was only when I read David Beresford’s Ten Men Dead which tells the story of the 1981 Hunger Strike that I grasped the complexity of what was going on just a stone’s throw up the road from Dublin. We learn so much from stories. The little pieces of fabric joined together to create something much bigger than itself. This is when grey areas are brought into our consciousness.

Sadly there has been a lot of black and white thinking thrown about during the last two years of the pandemic and not enough grey for my liking. People seem to have forgotten that it’s okay to think differently and make choices based on free will. To think between the lines. To question. To step back. To think for themselves. We went back in time. That much more than the threat of death has troubled me the most about what went on. A polarisation in thinking based on fear. And I accept that you’re free to say well that's all very fine because I wasn’t the one doing the dying and you’d be right about that. But I could have been. After all, death is the one certainty that happens to us all. It’s just a case of when and where. Not even NPHET and the HSE can halt the decaying process, no matter how much of our money they throw at it. Eventually, I know, but hopefully, not too soon, my ashes will be scattered in the wind on some hillside by the sea. It’s the one absolute certainty we have to hold onto in a world full of doubt. Death comes to us all in the end.

Maybe I might even choose the Burren as my final resting place. I’ve always felt perfectly alone and at home there, even when I’m surrounded by the best of friends. Trev. Duff. Quigley. Prosser. Stu and Darren. We’re scattered to the four winds of life now, but the memories remain of the good times we spent down in County Clare. Moments that made life worth living. I feel the quiet in my bones whenever I walk the stone. It’s as if when I am there I am touched by God. The whistle of the wind blowing conformity’s cobwebs clean off my teacher self. I’ve struggled with being a teacher all my life. Too much black-and-white thinking and not enough grey for my liking. Rules upon rules that strangle difference. Here on the limestone, I walk on sacred ground. It is here that I can reveal myself to what matters. To open myself up to mystery. The ancient history is wrapped up in a grey canvas, allowing the color of the wildflowers hidden in the grikes to reach their mature beauty. Like us all, they too die when their time comes. The exuberance of youth caught up in the idea that the best is yet to come. It’s important to believe that. The pleasure to be had in the simple things we say. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Everything will be okay.

Grey exists in the in-between and any of you who read my blog regularly will know that I am endlessly banging on about the in-between. That’s because it’s where I spend most of my time. Hovering. Wondering. Dreaming. Over thinking. Most of it running from the past and fretting about the future to be perfectly honest. Chasing whatever it is I’m chasing at the time. I’m working on that and writing is one place where I get to luxuriate in a beautiful grey. Football matches are another. Gigs also. A sweet melody reasserting my pure energy. The luxury of a good book. Those moments when I’m lost in the moment. Those moments when I can forget. Those moments when I step outside of myself into the silence. I feel my body relax as my thoughts slow to a crawl before they stop altogether. It takes a while. It’s not easily done when there’s always such a steady race to be run. I step out into hope and feel the taste of its sweet rain wash across my face. I felt it watching Limerick and Clare hammer the shit out of each other last summer. The players’ skill under pressure had to be seen to be believed. It was as if they were somewhere else and that’s because they were in a bubble of their own making. Sport’s magic lies in its ability to push everyday worries to the periphery for a couple of glorious hours. Only winning and losing matters, fuck the taking part.

Grey is where we get to mix it up and make choices we might otherwise not make. It’s where creativity finds its colorful vibe before it explodes into the sky. It’s the rain cloud that hides the sun until it’s ready to shine. It’s the stony grey soil of Monaghan and what lies beyond. It’s the disappointment felt before hope. It’s the darkness before dawn. It’s the opportunity to begin all over again. The ability to take a chance on it all working out for once. It’s the wisdom to be found in grey hair as nature takes hold. It’s the lily-white tainted by the experience. She was dressed in grey. He was greying at the sides. It’s the grey waiting for the story to fill it in. Berlin November 1989. The wall comes tumbling down. The black and white photos of long ago tell their own story. Kenneth Brannagh’s Belfast demands to be told in black and white so that the grey underbelly of northern life can be revealed in all its complicated simplicity. It’s history. It’s now. It’s for eternity.

I wear grey sometimes. Not much. I’m not afraid to say that I find it hard to trust. I don’t want to bring others down, so I stick to blue more often than not. It’s a good in-between color. Not too dark. Not too bright. Safe, but dangerous in its way. And it helps to make you look thinner. I feel like I’ve done a grey job all my life. I’ve done it to pay the mortgage. To put bread on the table. I still eat too much of it. Not enough meat and two veg. But hopefully, there’s still time before I hit the bottom line. I wonder as I write if it’s grey or gray. It seems that nothing is ever black and white. In the end, it matters little. American English. English English with a little Irish thrown in for free. Grey in Irish is liath or is it glas? It’s the Burren and the Wild Atlantic Way. It's the Giant’s Causeway and the Magillicuddy Reeks. These places of grey beauty are etched in stone.

They’re with us still.