Maria Simonds-Gooding

Why do you turn this way and that, love,

…north, south, east

…and west of west, further than the eye can see?

“It isn’t given us to see the soul,” Rumi says.

And so she lays out a golden thread before us, which we can follow or ignore.

But what is it about these islands -- off every western shore?

“We have a plane to catch tonight,” we said. “We don’t have time for any more of this. You’ll have to beckon to someone else instead.”

And anyway, no one lives here any more.

Certainly not on Sceilig Mhichíl where Celtic monks once built stone cells out of a stone island.

Nor on the Blaskets, off the Dingle peninsula, a refugia for an oral literature once so rich that late in life Tomás O’Crohan was persuaded to learn to read and write so that more of us could have his stories.

His sole purpose in writing, he said, was “to set down the character of the people about me so that some record of us might live after us, for the like of us will never be again.”

Is that what we’re straining for – some curraich that could carry us back there?

“Well, what if we just go for a little drive?”

“There were those engravings we saw in Dingle…”

“But we don’t even know who the artist is.”

“Nor if he or she even lives in Ireland, let alone near here.”

“I love this one.”

“’Going into the island’ is what it’s called? What could that mean?”

We leaned into the west

…as long as there was any light at all.

But still it wanted to show us more.

And then in the winter-hail, on the headland, one small light came on.

It was Ionad an Bhlascaoid MhóirBlasket, the Blasket Heritage Center – but it was closed for the winter, too.

“Come on, let’s snoop around a bit,” we said.

And when we knocked on one of the doors, Micheál de Mordha appeared, the director of the center. He was working on a paper late at night, and on his walls were engravings like those we had seen in Dingle.

“Oh, that’s Maria Simonds-Gooding,” he told us. “She lives up this road.”

And so we knocked on her door, too.

And beneath a vault of shining stars, Maria invited us into her cottage and led us through it

…until it opened up into the studio she has built.

And, oh, the work…

We had walked into the middle of new work in a new medium.

Maria has discovered big surfaces of aluminum which she etches and inscribes and roughly brushes and polishes until forms and textures change with each movement of your eye.

“I’m a halfway house between a sculptor and a painter,” Maria says.

And we talked about our pilgrimage as well.

Maria encouraged us to go to Cappadocia, where we’ve just been

…and to Ephesus

…and to St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, where we are now. Maria has a special love for this place, too.

You can see how there’s stone and solitude in all of this.

“I have to go right to the place itself,” Maria says.

“Give yourself the time for anything to happen,” Maria also told us.

And we’ve been following her advice ever since.

“Didn’t we feel like friends as soon as she opened her door?” we asked ourselves afterwards.

In Athanasius’ life of St. Antony of the Desert, he speaks of Antony’s inner mountain,

…the way that Blasket islanders speak of “going into the island.”

Maria has been there many times herself and has known well the last residents of these islands.

And if in the heart of winter you can’t find a pilot for a curraich to carry you across these waters,

Maria’s work can help to take you there as well.