The last days of Limerick have ended. I have returned to Minnesota. I look out the window as I write this at a brilliant blue sky. The sun is splashing its effervescent rays on all who pass under it with a wholesomeness akin to the lemonade stands of our youth, the liveliness of a train of ducklings waddling across the lawn and the beauty of a northern Minnesota lake. Needless to say my sojourn caused me to miss the sun a bit. Yet I think my new appreciation of our favorite nuclear reaction also captures the essence of what Limerick has done for me over the last nine months. I find as I have come back to the old in my life- those aspects of value, nostalgia, glory and pain- I see them in a new light so different then ever before.
My experience in Limerick was really unlike any I had ever lived through in that it forced me to stay in situations that I had worked so hard to extricate myself from in the past. I found that in plumbing the depths that there are a lot of very important things to understand below the surface of my whirlwind existence I had never ventured to explore before. Like a car speeding down the Autobahn (some might argue careening is a better word) — the driver always pushing to glean the last ounce of performance and speed from his vehicle — that is suddenly forced to halt at the scene of a accident; there is the initial frustration at not being able to continue; yet after that abates, a chance can be taken-if the wait is long enough-to take stock of the car, check the tires, the plugs, the injectors, the brakes, to look in places impossible to inspect on the move, and sometimes, fortuning being what it is, that stop will reveal something that might forestall the car from getting in its own accident. Limerick was that stop. Whether what I have found in my time there will prevent me from my own pileup down the road, or if the days and weeks seemingly lost will be long regretted, remains to be seen. At this point I find myself looking at the sun- and many other things in my life — not only with the happy reunion of a lost love, but also with a new set of questions and new need to find different answers.
If you are interested in the specifics of my time in Limerick, and not my silly verbose rambling needed to satisfy the online journal deity, please feel free to send me an email at zachcoelius@yahoo.com and I would to happy to bore you to tears with my thoughts.