When I grow old and have no voice
No children there to care or to remember me
I shall always know
That there was once a midsummer’s day in Dublin
When I was loved
Then I shall smile in the dream-time
Hearing once more
The dawn chorus announced with trumpet blasts
And see the vivid roses burst into bloom
And twine around the morning of that glorious day in June
When I was finally allowed
To be loved
I shall laugh inside through Stephen’s Green
And leave my dancing footprints in the dew
So you can follow me
And take your place
By my side
On a day which was prepared
Since the beginning of the world
For you are my world
And I have always loved you
Whenever I would look into your questioning eyes of blue
To find myself reflected in your goodness
I could never feel afraid of other’s judgement
Or their shame at these extolling words
As true as you have proved to be
For an everyday eternity
Of table fellowship and fun
The sun swept to attention and saluted us at noon
We did not stand in one another’s shadow
When we vowed either to each
Three times before our family of like-minded friends
Who have supported us for better or for worse
The words were tolling in the golden air
They bathed us in light so that we shone
I shall honour you with my esteem because of your integrity
I promise to support and bear the weight
Of your open unprotected soul
I promised too to love you, as if ever I had stopped
And needed to commence what is continuous
And round as the ring you gave to me
Blessed with your affection
On that laughing summer’s day
The wind was cheering and the leaves on the trees were waving
As we processed towards our future through O’Connell Street
Side by side we laid our bouquet of roses out at the GPO
Acknowledged those who gave their lives so we could be cherished equally
Proclaimed ourselves free
and free to become
Better together than either of us could choose to achieve on our own
And we withdrew relevance from those who disapproved
Of our new and mutual republic of love
There is nothing I regret more than my compliance
That I was not in my life more undignified and reckless and awkward
Like you a fearless fighter joyfully at home in foreign lands
An encourager of dreams an explorer of the soul’s secrets
And warm and tender as the pleasure of our private trysts
Whenever we shall be no more and nobody remembers us
These words of mine shall inherit the earth
They will echo in the heart of every season
That that there was once a midsummer’s day in Dublin
When I was loved
and they will sing out loud
my song
Repeat publically the poem I have told about you
And the treasure you endowed me with
The inestimable adventure of a meaningful life
This simple shining truth shall belong to you immortally
That once upon a time
on a Dublin midsummer’s
day at noon
I always loved you
On the day, I ended the poem at that point, and embraced my partner in public for the very first time. I’ve since composed a postscript, which revolves around the final adverb too, so that the mutual embrace will continue to radiate outwards for as long as words can express the truth:
Then you will be present in the wind and in the trees
And especially when the roses are in bloom
You will gladden with a smile or with a glance
When people feel your presence in the wonder of beautiful words
Lingering in a room like your fragrance
The blown petals falling to earth like prayers
Whispering over and over that I have always loved you
That I have loved you, too
When I signed the register, I made a mistake. The registrar leaned forward, and said, ‘No, not there!’ and indicated where I should sign. There was a ripple of amusement from the audience behind me, so I turned around and talked to them, saying, ‘The French playwright, Jean Anouilh, said that nothing in this life has any business being perfect!’ The transgression was a good omen for our future life together. Terry then signed the register, followed by Barbara and Tiernan, who used the special Italian Delta pens for the first time that we’d given to each of our witnesses as a gift. Then Terry and I stood up and faced each other. We were filled with delight at what we’d accomplished. The twenty-six years that we’d spent in each other’s company, the effort expended in trying to work things out, to make things suit, the many triumphs, the losses, the horror of the family deaths, the assault from cancer, we’d survived them all. On this day we’d confirmed each other in our love, which had proved steadfast and had brought us through. As we embraced each other, our little family rose to its feet and gave us an ovation.
Geraldine Boyle was in Portugal at the time of our not-a-wedding, so she sent her regrets. After her holiday, she brought Terry and me out to dinner to celebrate with members of her family, and we had an uproariously warm and enjoyable evening. Geraldine told us that at a meeting of her Active Retirement Group, she’d overheard a woman regale a group of people about a civil partnership ceremony that she’d attended, albeit reluctantly. The woman explained, ‘As a practising Catholic, I was worried about attending, so I asked the priest about it in Confession. And he advised me that it would be better not to attend lest I give scandal by appearing to approve. But I knew Terry from way back, so his invitation to the Civil Partnership ceremony posed a real dilemma for my conscience …’
‘Are you talking about Terry O’Sullivan and Michael Murphy?’ inquired Geraldine, joining in the conversation. ‘They’re very good friends of mine. I was at the launch of Michael’s book.’
‘But I didn’t see you at their Civil Partnership ceremony: you didn’t attend,’ accused the woman, betraying her anxiety.
‘Oh no!’ said Geraldine, and before she turned away, ‘I thought it’d be too sinful!’
Another of the cumulative effects on me of the journey I’ve undertaken following the prostatectomy and the publication of my book concerns perception. The Old French for journey, journée, means a day’s work or travel. For the Celts, that journey began at sunset, during the dreamtime. At this stage, I’ve thoroughly grasped what it means to be an author. I’ve taken possession of that textual territory, planted seeds there, and caused them to grow. I’ve inhabited the sobriquet of writer, and woken up as somebody else, who is more truly me. All the unconscious events of the night and the conscious ones of that day have founded me in my new vocation. Towards the end of my passage through life, I’ve taken hold of evanescent words and combined them into a holding fiction, which has prevented slippage and a cascade of re-shapings, in order to make a reality out of the pleasure and play of pure being. Such a performance is to provide completely, to furnish or equip, to fill out a shape and to accomplish. It’s a continual coming out into words, a resurrection into the visible development of this book.
I heard the accent tugging at me from somewhere behind us as Terry and I waited to board the Malaga plane. It curled forward like Christmas turf-smoke full of warmth, redolent with the richness of the flora and fauna in the Mayo countryside that has been layered over centuries, the whins, the sedges, the bog oak, deep and resonant a
nd welcoming. From my seat in the third row, I saw the man enter and turn to move forward down the aisle, still talking in a loud, comforting voice to the companion he was leading, who was disabled. I leaned across, touched him on the arm so that he looked at me. ‘Is that a Mayo accent?’
‘It is,’ he replied proudly. ‘On the Mayo border. Clonbur. D’you know it?
‘I know it well,’ I said.
‘Are you Murphy?’ he asked.
‘I am.’
‘The broadcaster!’ he exclaimed. ‘I read your book!’
‘Thank you very much,’ I said, surprised.
‘It was very human.’ His comment was sincerely meant. And then he was gone, moving with his friend on down the plane.
Such truthful, fleeting encounters are like a baptism. They immerse me in the waters of my heritage, so that I’m born anew, filled with hope and strengthened in certainty. My grandmother was the Mayo woman, a Hoban from out the Newport road in Castlebar. I recognise the embrace of her intonation in the country accent I’m attuned to. Terry says he too likes the soft sounds of Mayo, the mist and the breeze that he can detect in the way that I use some words. ‘You deliberately put in an “ee” sound in words like today and pay, correcting that sudden Mayo stop at the end of those words, which probably comes from the Irish,’ he concluded.
‘There isn’t that English “y” sound at the end of Irish vowels. It’s the same with Spanish: we say “no” in exactly the same way!’ Terry is aware of the effort I make to iron out the local pronunciations when I’m broadcasting to a national audience. I felt joy that he overheard the original expression of the way that once I’d used the language, an intimate expression of my Mayo roots which I still wear like a fragrance, perceptible to a connoisseur’s palate. Whether speaking or listening, the welcoming clasp is the same, and I’m indebted to those who’ve loved me for the continuous nature of their linguistic holding. It has enabled me to walk the road with a confident fluidity of movement, articulating the sounds as easily as I’ve come to inhabit my body at long last.
There’s an agave plant in Spain beneath our balcony in La Mairena which flowers once in every ten years. This summer, in a final, desperate effort at survival, the succulent sword-shaped leaves suddenly grew a tapering stem six metres tall, with open-wide arms that held masses of tiny golden flowers to the delight of the bees who harvested its nectar in the early morning, scattering its seeds as the plant died, exhausted from the effort of giving so much. I see that I too have written such a love story, which was not my intention, although maybe it was ordained after having survived the assault from cancer. I’ve created a fiction which has revealed the truth: an invention of the mind, a feigning or fabrication, which has been shaped, formed, and devised to uphold my being above ground after the terror of being marked by death. In my own way, I’ve continued on what my mother has had to say, the dialogue my mother had begun, sustaining her desire to the point where it vanishes, that smallest measure of space and time to which she now has attained without the need for my help. I see her swaying unsteadily on the edge of the abyss, flashing a smile, a look, still playing the piano for me. She’s celebrating a moment of pure being, which I deplete with my cancerous experience of the past and my foreknowledge of what awaits, an awareness with which my mother is no longer oppressed. She dwells forever in a house of pure being. Her now is the deepest meditation.
‘I have something to say, Michael.’
My mother’s dramatic statement pierces into the silence of the universe, and disrupts it. In the course of writing this book, I’ve come to see that there’s no need of a response, not even an assent, much less an inquiry from her eldest son. My mother has said what she’s said, and that’s sufficient for an eternity. Mum always loved her hot summers in the south of Spain, and she’d have delighted in the wonder of a plant that can soar so high into the blue of the sky, in a tangible illustration of the Assumption, being received bodily into the heavens.
‘I don’t know what comes next.’
It’s clear by now that I’d never let a lie get in the way of a good story, but that’s my way: that’s the individual way that I would do it. And I have spoken the truth, notwithstanding. As they say in my native tongue, má tá bréag ann, bíodh: ní mise a chum … If there’s a lie in it, let it be: I didn’t compose it.
Imagine, just imagine …
www.michaelmurphyauthor.com
If you’ve enjoyed this book, then please tell others about it, and recommend The House of Pure Being to your friends.
And if you’d like to let me how this book has affected you, you can email me: [email protected]. I’d welcome receiving your comments and insights.
For your added enjoyment, the website gives background information on The House of Pure Being. It features further photographs of some of the people who’ve appeared in this book. It also gives information about the various book signings and talks around the country, where I look forward to having an opportunity to meet you. You’ll find the latest news there about how The House of Pure Being has been received by the professional critics. There’s also a section on this website dealing with my first book, At Five in the Afternoon – my battle with male cancer, where some of the characters were introduced.
Finally, I want to thank you for taking the time to read what I’ve written. I hope you felt it was a rewarding experience.
Go dté tu slán!
Acknowledgements
This book is a fashioning of the truth by my imagination. What I’ve written is subjective, and meaningful only in the context of language. As a literary work, it has no end or purpose beyond its own existence: truly, it’s a house of pure being.
I’m indebted to those who’ve allowed the events and situations in which they appear to be re-made, and serve the overall plot of the book. In order to maintain their anonymity in some instances, I have changed the names of individuals and places, and some identifying characteristics and details. I feel it important to state clearly that the analytic sessions described don’t refer to particular clients. Anne Harris asked me to write the chapter about her husband. Aengus had already suggested that I write about our meetings, and I’d felt an obligation to honour his request, and find him as I promised. I want to thank his sons, Dion, Evan and Stephen, for granting me their permission to include it.
I wish to acknowledge the honour that Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science, has accorded this book by writing the foreword. I feel privileged that her response was so personal and warm. I’m thankful for her insights and kindness.
I remember with gratitude Seán O’Keeffe and all those in Liberties Press who helped bring The House of Pure Being to publication, in particular my painstaking editor, Daniel Bolger, and Alice Dawson and Amy Herron who cheerfully handled the publicity. My literary agent, Emma Walsh, and photographer, Conor Ó Mearáin, gave me their time and encouragement. Legal Counsel, Muireann Noonan, in conjunction with Jeanne Boyle, our solicitor, studied the book in such detail that they were able to quote individual words and page numbers by heart! Through their belief, protection, and unremitting desire for perfection, the manuscript has finally been turned into a literary work the whole production team can be proud of.
It’s noteworthy that three women, Muireann Noonan, Anne Harris and Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who have such pressured jobs, sent me back what was asked of them within the same working day. They gave me a lesson in how to be successful, but also in how to write.
The people I love and respect have told me they regard it as an honour to be immortalized by a writer and to appear in a book. I’ve been enriched by the open gift of their supportive friendship. The House of Pure Being is proof of that, and despite the inventions, it’s also my way of saying thank you!
Rath Dé oraibh uilig.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Best-selling author Michael Murphy is a native of Castlebar, County Mayo. A psychoanalyst with a busy practice in Dublin, he
is also an award-winning senior television producer, director and newscaster with RTÉ. He has lectured in psychoanalysis at St Vincent’s University Hospital and University College, Dublin. His highly acclaimed literary memoir, At Five in the Afternoon – My Battle with Male Cancer, was published in 2009, and was a number one best-seller. His best-selling collection of poetry, The Republic of Love – Twenty-five Poems, was published in 2013. The Irish Independent has described him as ‘an author of importance’.
Michael lives in Dublin with his partner of twenty-eight years, Terry O’Sullivan.
‘Terry forgot the intrusive camera setup. He’d turned to me to enquire happily “Well, Cook, how’s the barbeque doing?” and then turned back to Conor. Click, click, click: “Yes!”’ (Conor Ó Mearáin)
‘Aengus and Anne were happy on that afternoon, waiting for a doctor to give them some steer about the symptoms he was suffering.’ (Justin Farrelly)
‘Anna sat on the wooden bench holding a fan in the colours of the famous bullfighter, Manolete.’ (Conor Ó Mearáin)
At the National Concert Hall, Eamonn Lawlor lends a hand. (Conor Ó Mearáin)
‘… the trained voices of my newscaster friends, Eileen Dunne, Emer O’Kelly and Eamonn Lawlor, as soloists, came readily to mind for a concert reading of my book, to be given at the National Concert Hall in Dublin …’ (Conor Ó Mearáin)
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