Words for a World in Exile
He was concerned – afraid what he’d told me had “broken my heart”. When I heard him say he was fighting a battle on behalf of my work I searched inside my chest and found no panic or pain there. The word for “ heart” in the Irish language is “croi”. It is the seat of emotion, the companion of the soul and the spiritual energy center in the body where personal concerns merge with universal ones. I assured him my heart wasn’t broken. My heart was calm and love still lived there. It was alive with possibilities. But I’d forgotten. The Irish are big-hearted. (They give a larger percentage of their income to charity per capita then any other people in the world.). When you’re Irish it’s easy to forget that an area of your heart can be broken and because of its size you might not feel it right away. Thirty-five years ago there was another battle over my work. The arena, as it is now, was Public Television. This program and the current one invo...