How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney

Author:Elaine Feeney [Feeney, Elaine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529193954
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2023-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

15

This is the best concrete example I have of a meitheal: When Maryam Mirzakhani was awarded the Fields Medal for her achievement in Simple Geodesics on Hyperbolic Surfaces and the Volume of Moduli Spaces in 2014, the year I turned eight years of age, Mirzakhani already knew she had cancer. And when she was considering travelling to Seoul to collect the medal in person and due to the exhaustion that cancer has on a body, some distinguished academics acted as the ‘MM Human Shield’ to help her.

Our meitheal is happening today. We have been planning since November, and the frame is complete after Mr Foley bolted the gunwales and transom bars with the seniors and Terry and I sanded oars and laths, polished the seat after suddenly realising what I had been working on, we have all been busy bending rods for the couples, to get it into shape, and then to the water, to use a direct phrase of Mr Foley. He likes direct phrases.

The fact that Mirzakhani survived a terrible bus crash but later died of illness is, I think, coincidental. Her survival of the accident had much to do with the laws of luck and chance. Which I am beginning to accept as a thing-thing. I am also spiralling into a space where things are chaotic because I know I can destroy them. How easily I could tear a leaf into two because I have broken many rods trying to bend them. How I can twist things to the point of destruction. How on some nights instead of my mind pacing about the streets of Emory, it dreams vividly about twisting Boys One and Two until their eyes pop out, as this is a very real phenomenon, popping out eyes = exophthalmos. What is of a great surprise to me, is that Mr Foley is encouraging this. (The rod breaking, not the Boys’ strangulation.)

After our trip out on the currach, he would not let it go. He’s had me out so many times now, rowing, rowing. If I think back to the very beginning, it all seemed to begin with chopsticks. Mr Foley had me snap a few sets of the sticks that he got in the Chinese takeaway in town. The breaks trigger a snap-back effect, and sap-filled rods have a wild natural tension to them, to use Mr Foley’s phrase. He spoke about coaxing and not forcing, and in the early stages Jonesy and O’Toole were there, helping.

The rods will go into the gunwales and this will form the skeleton. We have spent a lot of time drawing out on white sheets of paper, and I found this enjoyable. But Jonesy and O’Toole might, I think, have developed a fixation with the boat. I am concerned about this. They keep arguing now over steamed laths or rods, and if we are, being from Galway, too inspired by Donegal currachs and coracles, the latter which looks very much like a soup bowl you get in the hotel.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.