I Wasn't Sure I Could

Regardless Of The Advertising Campaigns May Tell Us, We Can't Have It All. Sacrifice Is Not An Option, Or An Anachronism; It's A Fact Of Life. We All Cut Off Our Own Limbs To Burn On Some Altar. The Crucial Thing Is To Choose An Altar That's Worth It And A Limb You Can Accept Losing. To Go Consenting To The Sacrifice.

But This Is What I Know About People Getting Ready To Walk Of The Edge Of Their Own Lives: They Want Someone To Know How They Got There. Maybe They Want To Know That When They Dissolve Into Earth And Water, That Last Fragment Will Be Saved, Held In Some Corner Of Someone's Mind; Or Maybe All They Want Is A Chance To Dump It Pulsing And Bloody Into Someone Else's Hands, So It Won't Weigh Them Down On The Journey. They Want To Leave Their Stories Behind. No One In All The World Knows That Better Than I Do.

I Used To Think I Sewed Us Together At The Edges With My Own Hands, Pulled The Stitches Tight And I Could Unpick Them Any Time I Wanted. Now I Think It Always Ran Deeper Than That And Farther, Underground; Out Of Sight And Way Beyond My Control.

That Kind Of Friendship Doesn't Just Materialize At The End Of The Rainbow One Morning In A Soft-focus Hollywood Haze. For It To Last This Long, And At Such Close Quarters, Some Serious Work Had Gone Into It. Ask Any Ice-skater Or Ballet Dancer Or Show Jumper, Anyone Who Lives By Beautiful Moving Things: Nothing Takes As Much Work As Effortlessness.

Ireland Is Such A Young Society. The British Were The Ruling Class Up Until They Left About A Hundred Years Ago, And We've Been Trying To Work Out What Our Class Hierarchy Is Ever Since.