Mike McCormack - Solar Bones

got smaller and smaller in my rear-view mirror, disappearing completely as

I rounded the bend for home at Belclare, following the sea road once more along the coast, slowing down a little, no hurry now that I was nearly there so that my gaze settled on those bright pockets of glare which winked and shifted in a dappled morph on the water’s surface, a mosaic of light and texture from the tide mark all the way across what at this point is the narrowest span of Clew Bay with all its islands crowded so close to the shoreline, the sight of which always brought to mind one of those facts I still remember from my Inter Cert Geography all those years ago — that detail about how

this whole area is a glaciated valley dating back to the pre-Cambrian era, that time in the world’s youth when the light was clearer and this whole region lay under a glacier six miles deep which scoured the land east to west, depositing drumlins of sand and gravel along the length of this bay, these little egg-shaped island humps in the water which taper off in whatever direction the glacier was moving, a piece of knowledge from my early teens still lodged in my head thirty-five years later when no doubt other, more valuable things, have long been forgotten and

I slowed down because

I needed to pull into the side of the road for a minute, into that layby near the Deerpark which the council have used for years to dump gravel and hard-core for road surfacing because

now I remember

I remember this pain

fucking Jesus

this pain in my chest spreading through my arms and down the backs of my legs, causing me to brace both hands on the steering wheel and close my eyes for a moment, as if either of these reactions would drive it away, pulling into the lay-by and parking between two mounds of gravel, knocking her out of gear but leaving the engine running because this pain, which was now clawing its way through me, would surely pass in a minute and then I would be on my way home to Mairead who by now would be starting to worry about me as

the pain worsened

clamping across my chest so

I wound down the window to let a gust of fresh air in and opened my shirt, pulled open the collar, a few buttons, to get some cold air on my chest, that might do the trick, ease the pain a little because it was seriously fucking bad now, rooted like a black sun in my chest from where it flowed out to the furthest parts of me, down the hands and feet and into the small of my back, like some electric foliage firing its way through me, wrapping itself around my whole nervous system and choking me right up to the top of my skull with steel claws, my breath rising in jagged heaves from my chest with my body rigid in the seat as

I caught sight of the clock in the dash and saw that it was coming up to one o’clock

the one o’clock news, so I

reached out and turned on the radio and sure enough the last ads were leading into the time signal for the bulletin — the pips — and something frantic in me scrambled to focus on them as though they were solid things to which I might hang onto with both hands and steady myself, a hopeless idea even as I formed it but in desperation seemed to be my only option — setting the time-signal pips against this savage pain in my chest and

Jesus, this fucking pain

this world of pain as

my body burned, head to toe with a molten current which flared in the smallest molecule of my being, pain like nothing I had ever felt before, chest and arms engulfed and my vision warped in blue depths of electrical waves as the light darkened and

I remember thinking in panicked despair that

I’ll just hang on to the pips and then the news headlines will come on so I’ll listen to them for a few minutes, that’s all I have to do, just listen to the newsreader tell me what’s happening in the wider world which lies outside this pain in my chest, tell me the world is filled with strikes and pay disputes … that economic indicators continue to fall all over the place … that there are road deaths and stabbings … that there are car bombings in Baghdad and stalled offensives in Helmand … that a child is missing or that a body has been found … that accident and emergency wards are inundated and that patients are lying on trolleys in hospital corridors … that the polls indicate … that the courts have recognised and warrants have been issued … that there are disputed election results but that someone has already declared themselves president for life … that legislation has finally been passed or has been referred to the supreme court … that the whole warp and weft of the world is ongoing, circumstances rising up and falling down

rising up and falling down because

if I knew that these things were still happening, still ongoing, how ever awful or distant they may be, then I would be happy to know that the world was about its proper business and that I, as a citizen and engineer was still part of it all, and that no matter how far away these things may be I would still have some stake in them simply by dint of drawing breath and raising a pulse and hearing about it on this car radio, I would have an involvement in these affairs no matter how tenuous or tangential because that was part of my circumstance as a man who took these things seriously

pain or no pain

fucking Jesus

so that it was essential now that I pay attention, pay attention to kill this fire in my chest and give myself over to whatever I was now going to hear when sure enough, thank Christ

I heard the pips

pip, pip, pip

the time signal for the one o’clock news pulsing across the air- waves, calling the whole nation to attention, the time signal followed by the fanfare theme music just as the pain embedded itself deeper through my chest, burning across every rhythm which upheld my body, searing through every pulse which measured me, smudging them under a scalding red tide which scorched within me to drive my shoe deep into the foot-well, slamming hard on the accelerator so that the engine screamed out over the radio and I strained to hear the newscaster greet the nation with

good afternoon, this is Friday, March the 21st, here are the headlines, as

I was thrust up out of myself on a wash of pain, a spar breaking in my chest, crying out as my head was thrown back against the seat, mouth agape and my spine rigid to slam my shoe down into the foot-well once more, ramming the accelerator to the floor again and now the car was screaming over a hundred thousand revs, a throaty roar with a metallic whine at its centre, so loud it would surely draw someone’s attention, some man or woman out walking the road would hear it and come to the car where they would see me with my head thrown back and my mouth open, my hand reaching across towards Mairead’s prescription in the passenger seat, clawing towards that package which seemed to lie at such an infinite distance from me with pain lacing through my chest as if some essential structural component, some load-bearing lintel, had come asunder in my chest and I was engulfed in pain to hear again

Friday, March 21st

the day on which my wife was widowed and my two children lost their father, the day my name was unhinged from the man who owned it, such a clear and detailed memory of my own death at the precise moment I said to myself through blinding pain

I’ll just listen to these news headlines when

at that precise moment

the vast harmonic of my whole being was undone and I came apart in sheets and waves, torrential and ever falling, my grip on all those markers which gathered and held me to this world completely gone as the light around me blackened and for a split moment I saw the world in negative as all its colours bled to a narrow palette of black and grey with a complex melding of all shapes and outlines into each other, the mountains and sea converging onto the windscreen in front of me and