Two feelings

Rory O'Connor
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read
Lucian Freud, The Painter’s Mother Resting I, 1975–6

Standing before the painting reproduced recently, at IMMA, I was plunged back into an instantly recognisable, but for me long absent, feeling of the purest contingency of being. My own, all. That may come across as an attempt to be philosophical. It is simply an unpleasant feeling, and also primitive, undeveloped. Absurdly, I always think of “the atoms”. As I used to do when that feeling came upon me, I thought of the atoms that make up my physical body, and everything that was around me at that moment. All this was manageable: in some ways better, since I had not had it for so long; it was meeting an old acquaintance. I don’t think it was Freud’s mother that brought the feeling on. It was the design on her dress, the wall, and the bedpost.

At the moment, with two opportunities sunk in recent days, another in the balance, I feel the purest fear. I am very anguished. It feels like the oxygen has been sucked away. How many mistakes have I made? What chances have I not taken? Actually, I don’t know, and I don’t know what these questions could refer to. I just go on, dumbly as I always have. And I am too attached to the passions that have already insinuated themselves into my life. What can I find and do now?I do not know.

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This was a very off-the-cuff piece of expression of the type I wish I could contain. The plan is to keep roryoconnorjournalist.com as a site for fully formed journalism, and to use this as a kind of sottisier and commentary. And if today is anything to go by, blanky.

Rory O'Connor

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Links to journalism by Rory O'Connor. Writing features and news, recording interviews and podcasts. Looking delightfully gassy up there.

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