Tag: Thoughts | Peter O Regan

A Place Called Grange

Posted on April 12, 2020 by Martin O'Regan • 2 Comments

Through the veil of a vague remembrance
something tries to shine distinctly
Something claims the honour of
being remembered beyond the pale.
And whether truth or wishful thinking
it vies for recognition
And whether relevant to a fact
it remains relevant to us all.
It is not the collective notion
of a notion of our past
Nor the romanticised rebellion
in delusion against the truth
It is rather just a memory
mixed and mattered by circumstance
For it is our pain and how
we each deal with it in the end.

Planned to be sent

Posted on March 18, 2020 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

I’ve decided to write this letter on paper just because, in the face of redundancy, I think all things should get at least one last appeal, and here within the artform that is letter writing, once an actual means of basic communication, be it humble or great, I have found need to defend the very form itself. It is dying so they say because of what? Our sense of urgency, our brevity or is it perhaps because little utterances conveyed too often form the emalgamated whale that swallows all sea life, including the beauty that would convey at least dramatically but a slice of all life? In sheer verbosity through quantity of snippets we have served up execution to the draft and thought, to the long evenings delivered into the arms of wonder as we delve, in search of expression, vying with every pen to paper push, a sinewy pleasure, for the perfection which, as writers we should always fear eludes us, for it must, and without attaining that spectacle of greatness, further purpose to ourselves that fair dangled destiny, that truest of beauties, the fatal enterprise, forever flawed for such is its nature.

The title Lost

Posted on October 18, 2019 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Inside, the tap-ad-slap of falling raindrops soothes.
Outside it drenches to the bone.
All adventure set aside,
all such plans they dissipate…

along the fear inflected path…
“Enough,” I say “Enough of that!”
And yet the pen in fruit-continual
Bears Hope in words residual.
The easing of the ex-hibitions
Perhaps to failing my contrition
At every corner subterfuge
The ego does the man delude.

Holnap és hónap Nagy iX

Posted on June 21, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

What did the orange say to the apple at bedtime?
Sweet dreams.
Maybe it could work as a joke. Perhaps it should be a sour cherry talking to a normal cherry, or even the other way around for a piss-take. Am I making any sense?
Let’s go back to the beginning.
Fábry: Ferihegy! Ki a Feri és hol van a hegy?
It was the first Hungarian joke I got and while Fábry may have his detractors, he remains for me the bridge to Hungarian humor. Again, I imagine, many Hungarians clambering to assure me that this is not the quintessence of Hungarian wit and while I’m sure it’s not, as a foreigner getting a joke in the target language (however basic and unsophisticated…yawn) is the greater achievement. And listen maybe I am a paraszt in the Hungarian derogatory sense. Yokel, slack-jaw, redneck…you choose. I don’t quite get the Little Aggressive Pig jokes. I’m merely of the opinion that that tool is a twat and he reminds too much of somebody unpleasant. Maybe this is the point… Maybe I’m still in the dark.
Anyway, why I brought up the original orange and apple “joke” was because years ago after drinking cider with my brother-in-common-law, I later texted him Szép alma-kat. He got it, and I had achieved a result, an originally coined joke in the target language. As for Fábry, feck* that bunkó ember 😁.
Now, trying the joke in Hungarian I might have said:
Mit mondott a narancs az almának a lefekvés ideje előtt (Google translate helped me)?
Szép almákat.
If you are Hungarian and you’re not laughing, you’re humourless, or worse you’re racist! (Didn’t say I was going to box fair now, did I?😁)
Conclusion: As a teacher, going the road of teaching jokes is dark and dangerous and only few of your charges will ever understand, or worse, pretend to.
As a student, be prepared for the fact that your joke is only funny to other target language as a foreign language learners. The native may be forever left flummoxed. Don’t try to over-explain it. That just leads to embarrassment, or worse, anger and murderous rage. Well, hopefully that last part is an example of exaggeration.
Conclusion on the conclusion: As a teacher stick to the slapstick and if people insist on its base essence remind them of the comic genius of Charlie Chaplin, and be prepared to throw them an Andy Kauffman curveball (or Andy’s equivalent in your native tongue).
And remember, teach like you want to not like you have to.

Holnap és hónap to the nines

Posted on June 1, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

“I’m off to the Skyshop*” he announced.
Well, he could have said he was off to burn some shop too, but I was left none the wiser with that unconsoling thought.
“Okay” I replied meekly, afraid of being too non-committal. Maybe this was a desperate admission by a man who needed help from his friends, but this time at least he was going to have to get by without my little contribution.
He paused.
Shit
“ Aren’t you even a little curious?” he asked.
I met his searching gaze with an attempt at a blasé expression.
He laughed.
I was undone.
“Well, I’m off then.”
“Alright then” trying to muster up some feigned notion of courage.
Again he laughed, rather bellowed actually.
“See you some day then…and don’t let them catch you hanging around…or they’ll crucify you upside down.”
The smile washed from his face as he uttered these last words.
Always prophetic, I now took his words to heart.
“You’ll be alright” and with that he was gone.
“Jesus” I ventured into the void but he was gone, back to his father’s kingdom I suppose.
Sons of God, huh. Contrary folk at the best of times.
“Peter!” a voice beckoning from the nearby taverna.
“Alright Mary.”
Mothers of God. Impatient at the best of times.
*Égbolt

Holnap és hónap D Ate

Posted on May 25, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

To render or not to render, that is the question.
But to use it exclusively to mean to represent or depict artistically is to render all other definitions null and void, or to at least unwittingly to narrow ones scope of understanding.
So when a student, an architect, speaks of rendering, I can assume they are implying the artistic definition but when I try to explain its meaning elsewhere and have my word fobbed off as redundant, I am surely allowed to grow annoyed. But of course that is the teacher’s lot.
“That’s funny.”
“No it’s not!”
But I meant funny strange not funny ha ha.
Or when applying the abbreviated “ ‘morning” as a greeting and being met with the reply “Yes, it is” which with the right tone could be meant as a light-hearted joke, but with the obnoxious intent to dismiss the greeting as irrelevant noise, again the heckles rise up.
And then there’s bitch: it has more than one meaning as a noun so learn those other meanings please!
Well, that’s me done. Another day, another bitching session.

Holnap és hónap Hé7

Posted on May 18, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

With the shades drawn and his shades on, Mr. Shadow looked even shadier in the shadowy room. Suddenly the shadows of The Shades danced along the shades as the shades, whom I had called, arrived full beams glaring, trying to penetrate the shades to find the shady Mr. Shadow who was now trying to find within the shadows of this shadowy room a place to hide himself from The Shades therein approaching.

Whether or not the fate of Mr. Shadow concerns you, it is the very differences in the meaning of the word Shade which I’ve been focusing on this week. Well, when I say this week, I mean this morning. A question put to me, an answer given. In the end I kept my explanation to a minimum and I sure as hell didn’t include all the alternatives I have here. Imagine inviting that tropical thunder into your day.

As it stands, and as I sit here writing this, my students left still a little in the dark, perhaps I should say in the shade, but that itself may depend on how dark it was within their English weary minds, life rolls ever onwards, mysteries at every turn on this long, dark, windy, shady road.

Share or Shadow

Some explanations of shade/Shadow as used in the italicised text:

Curtains
sunglasses
More suspicious
Room full of Shadows
The Police: slang. Capitalised for the sake of the specific group who had arrived
The police: uncapitalised for the general call for help

Holnap és hónap squared

Posted on March 23, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Holnap és hónap squaredl
We could all ascribe word play to any nuance of the language we so wished but in so doing we may risk being misunderstood, or worse being arrogant enough to think we should have been understood. For learners of a foreign language, the vaguely familiar becomes something of a beacon and so it is understandable that we begin to see a logic, a connection, where in reality there isn’t. For example, tomorrow isn’t a toast to Morrow and yet poetic and archaic, morrow still means tomorrow, therefore at least there is an idea to it having meaning, ie making sense. But there are no divisive women in Mérnök, even If to an outsider it’s all just a matter of time: time in this case being the length of time given to the vowel sound Ö , not Ő. Same thing isn’t it. It’s just another funny looking O. Blah, blah, blah. It is, get over it! (Oh, don’t you just hate it when foreigners try to tell you what’s what concerning your own language, well, the language you learnt to speak first, your mother tongue, even if you were snatched from your mother’s arms at birth and raised solely by your father. Many cans of worms could be opened up here, but really, who in their right mind would even want to bother!)
When I think of csizma, rather when I hear it, I’m immediately drawn to the notion of a request for cheese as directed at one’s mother. Then when I playfully rehash it as sajtanya, I get queer looks or prolonged groans. It really isn’t funny, they’re saying, but maybe I don’t want it to be funny. Maybe I was trying to be creative with the language in a way a native never thinks to do. Of course, a Hungarian who knows no English is very much entitled to tilt the head from side to side in incomprehension, but one would at least like the more proficient speakers to accept the foreigners’ input. “We would never say that” Who’s that WE? I have a Hungarian poet friend who probably would, and probably has. Maybe WE is restricted to terribly unimaginative people, or maybe that’s just my way of getting people to come over to my side. Insulting people for their beliefs in the hope of changing their minds, or at least silencing them, is all the rage these days. “Deplorables, I tell ya. Deplorables!”

Holnap és hónap a harmadik

Posted on March 16, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

Seeing then that words are oft times mispronounced, misheard, misunderstood, or mistaken for other words, even among natives of the mother tongue, is it any wonder then that foreigners to the tongue arrive at unforeseeable difficulties and, more appropriately, adapt to its nuances, perhaps even adopting some of the idiosyncrasies associated with other learners of the language. There’s safety in numbers so they say.
Has this ever been truly hammered out in diplomacy? Have studies been undertaken to the degree that there is no possibility that some trade deals have collapsed not because of stubbornness or foolhardiness but rather because of mere misinterpretation? Not just that old claptrappery of lost in translation but rather just lost, full stop. For want of a word the kingdom was lost.
But now that’s another thing: where we see the division is not always where it should be, even if it makes sense. King-dom is clear even if in these nomenclatural times the UQ would be more appropriate , or is that already so 20th century! The United Gender-non-specific-dom? Too much even in these effervescent times? Yet it’s the words that can be broken up differently and still contain meaning; these are the ones that can lead to new perspectives the point of view of the native speakers. Others hold the same sound in the target language but often with quite different definitions.

This Side

Posted on March 14, 2018 by martinoregan • 0 Comments

The scaffolding still stands across the way
And under it other parties now do pass
In the shadow of that tunnel hidden memories
Some borne of repetition some of joy.
Each step a step closer to one’s abode
But- now- the turning wheel dictates the road
Will it be in hindsight our adventure or
In leaving it the spelling of our certain Doom.
The passing faces the road much trodden
The life the thoughts the everything
And in so passing us we too were passing
And are still from this side of the road.

Tag Archives: Thoughts