I listen to budgets but I don't belong to that world any more

I feel helpless and lonely, lying in bed at 8am, wondering should I turn off the radio

BIG EVENTS DON’T frighten me. The imminent collapse of the euro or the implementation of the budget leaves me unmoved. But it is in tiny things that I fail, and in tiny failures that I am terrified. It is not on the ocean but in small places that I perish.

In fact, I don’t even feel I am included in big events. I listen to budgets and announcements about economic cuts as if I didn’t quite belong to that world any more. I feel alienated, anonymous, helpless, and lonely, lying in bed at 8am, in the dark, wondering should I turn off the radio and get up. Which is why I get up – because I have to try.

A greetings card lying in the hall on Tuesday, from someone in Clare, contained a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Happiness is at your fingertips. All you have to do is reach out and touch it.” But there was no name on the card, which infuriated me.

I decided to vacuum-clean the front room. At least that would be an achievement. I plugged in the machine and unravelled the flex and rubbed the carpet a few times, and noticed that there was dust on the sofa from an incense stick I had burned the previous night. I dismantled the long arm of the Hoover and poked the short nozzle into the crevices and around the armrests, but before I could stop it the machine sucked up a €10 note that was wedged behind a cushion; my change from a naggin of brandy. I saw the money fly up the spout, but I couldn’t stop it.

I had to open the machine, and of course the bag inside was impossible to penetrate with my fingers, so I ripped it apart in a rage, and poked the dust and found the money.

I spend a lot of time alone, in a house that has become my study and refuge. There’s no one there but me, and after the episode with the Hoover I was full of unfocused frustration, so I drove into town.

I went to a bakery and chose a cherry cake and said: “That’s a miserable day.” In fact it was mild and dry.

“Well,” the woman behind the counter said, “it’s not that bad.”

“But,” I said, “yesterday was rough.” She said: “It’s not freezing and it’s not pouring rain.” “True,” I agreed, “but it is very dark.”

She said: “It’s December!”

And although a Cavan lake can be a foggy world in early December, I went for a walk that afternoon in Killykeen Forest Park, and to my great relief the lake was grey and full of light. The lower half of the sky was a pale water colour, and the woods around me were comforting.

Suddenly the sky darkened and hailstones surprised me. I stood under a tree until they ended, as abruptly as they had begun, and standing before me was a squirrel, a red squirrel, beautiful in shape, colour and fur, and independence of mind. He cast his imperious eye on me for a moment, and then raced up a tree to some unknown world.

There are unknown worlds all around in the forest, and it’s easy to believe in a veil beyond which humans go, to small eternities, when this life is over. But I didn’t realise that the dark woods can hold so much light. Every last bit of colour in the evening sky lingered in the trees. Every way I looked, light came towards me, and even the potholes of rain on the pathway sucked in the twilight and gathered it and threw it back at me.

And it’s strange how, being so far removed from electric light, I could hear voices deep within me, and feel great realisations dawning, like in a dream. For example, it’s not the woods that frighten me; it is death. The unbearable feeling is not that I will eventually be annihilated but that things will go on and I won’t be there. I suppose that’s what kept me at parties when I was young. I could never bear to leave a buzzing room.

Like dreams, realisations come in two parts. After the thought of death, which made me shiver, I remembered again the morning’s greeting card, and so I reached out my hands in the wood and sensed the breath of twilight on them, and knew instantly that I had reached a moment of the day that is commonly described as bliss.