"In rain or sun we loved this country; its haunting impersonal bareness, its austerity, aloofness, small lakes, the disproportionate bulking of the mountains, smells of shrivelled seaweed rotting in grey dirt-spume, brine, storm-wood, tarred rope and riggings, sea-wrack, and mud after an ebb tide...
Bare, boulder-strewn land backed by purplish heather and misty mountains. The people lived close to the soil, pushing back the soft bog and making it give food; a barren, troubled existence. Yet this country grips their body and soul; it haunts the imagination in its cruelty, strength and beauty, and the bleak coast with its wild angry sea, changing skies, crashed rocks, as if old gods had sported with pieces of granite mountain, can be recalled when sleek fat land is forgotten. There is a hunger for the soil, an elemental feeling that even a stranger or foreigner can sense."

-excerpt from "On Another Man's Wound", by Ernie O'Malley.

I don't think I've ever read a better description of this fascinating, sad, and hauntingly beautiful country as the one he gave.

There's very little to update concerning my personal life. I've been spending most of my time painting, reading, sketching and walking. Today I made a fantastic batch of carrot soup. Tomorrow Logues's Lodge is giving step-dancing lessons. I'm looking forward to that. Haha.