And thuswise

Oh but, I keep forgetting other remembrances in a much sharded and smashed up mind rather than intellect, a memory much broken into little bits and smithereens by the traumas of a life lived too close to the edge at times, what with riots in the Middle East, in the North of this island of Ireland, carjackings, carsmashes in western bogs, leprechauns in little boreens near fairy wroths, and so on and so on. Murders in Belfast bars and ambushes by soldiers pointing long rifles at my little Triumph Spitfire. Trauma can produce memory burn-out. The memory fades in and out. Slowly as I wander down here on the beaches of Thanet, and try to piece together my broken love of the piano, my once total mastery of classical pieces by Bach and Mozart and Beethoven, my compositions now lost, my amusing musical conductor style, my love and feeling for complex pieces of piano concerto, but especially music by Mahler, I am struggling to recall. To recall a recalling. But yes, we are the earls of Ormonde and of other places in Spain and Garonne and Aquitaine, now in modern times associated with republics such as Spain and France and and Scotland and Ireland. Dim recallings, snatches of discourse around the old kitchen table in a little boreen cottage on the Old Bog Road. Snatches only now. Grandmother telling us things. Lost earls.