After his first heart-attack at the age of 43, Ronald Patrick Bartholomew Grosse thought seriously about a change of career. He had been a principal partner in the Dublin law firm of Grosse, Malarkey & Shenanigans since 2009, earning his litigious spurs in such high profile cases as saw the notorious Cowboys of Clontarf finally put behind bars, or the getting of the Lennox Street Grocer cleared of eleven counts of caffeineicide. But the stress of a life in law (and the whiskey) was taking its toll.
After a week in intensive care, this time his mind was made up. There was nothing Ciara or Ben could say. No more law (though the firm could keep the name), no more wife (though she could keep the house), most importantly, no more stress. He didn't want for money. What he did want was complete change. Once again, he spent time fishing in Kildare (x still marked the spot). Then he packed a small travel bag and booked a flight from Dublin to Tokyo
He arranged a week's recuperation, fishing in Kildare on the estate of the Countess of Colleen, for whom he had acted in a complex divorce case. X marked the spot of the lodge in the woods on his map, as he was of the pre-sat-nav generation. It was peaceful, isolated, idyllic. He also read lots of poetry, Yeats in particular. On his return, he discussed the situation with Ciara Malarkey and Benjamin Reilly O'Shenanigan, who persuaded him to stay on, against the advice of his beautiful, dutiful wife Séarlait. Surely a bit more exercise, a change of diet and prescription meds would see him right, keep him healthy, in his prime, commanding top fees for the firm.
However, despite the mitigations, he suffered a second, more serious coronary attack a couple of years later, on discovering by accident that his beautiful wife Séarlait was not so dutiful after all. The near fatal shock gave him cause to reconsider what was really important in life.
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| X marks the heart |
There he acquired lodgings in the Suginami ward of the metropolis, in order to be near the workshop of Nakamura, a famed kintsugi artist and teacher. He changed his name to Ron Bartho, started learning Japanese and enrolled as a student and eventually an assistant to Kunio Nakamura. The art and the philosophy of kintsugi (literally 'golden joinery') held a deep appeal for Ron.
The idea that one could take something that was broken - a pot, a plate, a bowl - and mend it, not invisibly with glue but with gold-infused lacquer, struck him as a metaphor for his own physical rupture and subsequent healing process, breakage and repair as part of the tapestry of life, a celebration of recovery and resilience. For him, a golden X on a restored ceramic marked renewed strength, a firm weld where once there had been weakness. Each object renovated by kintsugi was unique, with its healed wounds, and a thing of intrinsic beauty.
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| X marks the join (kintsugi) |
After several months, Nakamura advised Ron Bartho that he had taught him all he could, and suggested that it was time for his disciple to take wing back to Ireland and set up as a kintsugi artist and teacher in his own right.
Ron Bartho wrote to the Countess of Colleen explaining his radical change of lifestyle and asking if she would grant him long-term tenancy of the lodge in the woods on her Kildare estate as a home and studio in which he could work as a kintsugi practitioner and sometimes teacher. He explained that for him that place had the X factor. He had felt it when he'd stayed there recuperating. it was an almost spiritual thing calling to him. The Countess Clíona responded that she would be delighted to accommodate Ron's request on the condition that he would take as his first commission the repair of some heirloom items of broken or damaged porcelain in the family's possession, including pieces of Irish Dresden, Meissen, Sèvres and Spode. Ron readily agreed.
He returned to Ireland not only a new man, but with a cat, Cocoa which he'd acquired while in Tokyo, and yet another name, this time a Japanese one - Xaito (斎翔), meaning 'pure of heart'. The simple lodge, cleaned, aired and newly lime-washed, was entirely to his and Cocoa's liking. He fished for her; she prowled and purred for him.
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| X marks the spot |
Over time, as Xaito, no longer Ron Bartho and certainly never again Ronald Patrick Bartholomew Grosse, he became someone special. His renown spread, not only as a great kintsugi artist and teacher, working at his own pace on the commissions he chose to accept and the kintsugi teaching courses he occasionally ran, through one of which he met his new romantic partner, the poetess Eibhlín Ó Sirideáin (more commonly known by her anglicised form of Eileen Sheridan), but also as a celebrated Irish poet. For Eileen encouraged him to turn his enjoyment of reading poetry and mending broken ceramics into the writing of his own inspired poems. Perhaps his most famous and loved piece is this one, from his collection 'The X Factory':
The Angina Monologue
You crushed with such relentless expectations
I was always waiting for the moment I'd break.
The tension too much to bear, me just wanting
that instance of rupture which must surely end
everything. Until then, whiskey edged my fears
of panic, of letting people down, mostly of pain.
Then when it happened, not once but twice, my
great surprise was that I fought to survive, with
each constricted breath of my leaden chest. Let
me live, I prayed to some unlikely god, take all
I have but let me make it through to begin anew.
After one false start, I have been true enough to
that resolve. Eibhlín likens me then to a spinner
of plates frantically trying to keep them all aloft
such a sorry waste of time, of energy, of passion
and we were bound to break, all of us. A second
gentle lease has taught me how a broken heart or
a cracked plate can be fixed with the golden flux
of love - it's all you need & all you need to know.
Xaito
Thanks for reading. Have a good week, S ;-)
