An Irish Memory

In the spare words of poetry, I find simple elegance and peace.

 

Poetry helps to bring me back to my center.  To take a deep breath.  To slow down and find my direction.

If you are not familiar with William Butler Yeats, he was a distinguished Irish poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1923, the first Irishman so honored, and later, with others, went on to found the world famous Abbey Theatre located in Dublin.

 

Yeats' The Lake of Innisfree is musical in its words and when I close my eyes, I imagine I am in Killarney, Ireland about 24 years ago when my husband was alive.  A local man who owned a boat offered to take us out on the lake near the Muckross House and he is slowly rowing us and as we gently glide through the water of the lake, it's quiet and beautiful and the wind is blowing.

 

The Emerald Isle

 

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
By William Butler Yeats 1865–1939

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
 

You Don't Say!?

I was eating my breakfast and watching the local news yesterday when I heard some good news: a new study says that talking to yourself is good for your brain.

Woot!  Woot! Woot!

What a relief!!!!!!  I'm not alone!!!!!!!

I constantly talk aloud to myself and I think it first started after my son was born.  It didn't matter that he couldn't answer me. I got used to thinking out loud.  While I was in the house taking care of my son as a newborn, and then later as a young child, I would constantly talk to him about what the weather was like, what I heard on television, who I just talked to, what we needed to do next or something that might be going on with him.

Of course, my son is a senior in college now and I still talk to myself all the time so what does that say about me?

What other kinds of conversations do I have with myself, you may ask?  Well, I can honestly say that almost every day I walk into rooms in my house or into places around my office and find myself saying out loud, "Why did I come in  here?"  "What was I looking for?" "I know it's here if I just keep looking." or "Damn, I know it's around here!"

I say other things too about annoying people, but I can't print those sentences here.

In any case, this new study just published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology  concludes that talking to yourself can actually help improve your thinking process and boost your perception of the world around you.

It gets better.

In the first experiment conducted by researchers from the Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Pennsylvania, they presented the participants with 20 labels of various objects.  The volunteers were then asked to go and find the particular objects.  Some of them were directed with a label to look for that item and others were directed to look for the item while repeating the name of the item out loud to themselves.

The people who repeated the name of the item out loud were able to find it faster than those who didn't!  There is actual research and evidence showing that it's smart to talk to yourself out loud and I'm not wacky at all for doing it!

Now that I have proof that this self-talk works, I think I'll conduct an experiment myself :  repeatedly saying out loud, "Money."

Let's see what happens!