ENCOUNTERED (tul-kah) while trying to make sense of the physical and emotional landscapes in western Ireland, where the language can sometimes be like spider-silk strings that I clutch on days when feeling seasick standing on dry land. Most words we employ during the day do not dare reach so deep. Like connotes several beautiful and sometimes seemingly discordant things at once, which to an outsider is like trying to understand poems literally layered or spoken on top of one another: it means “a large sea wave,” it means “a large mass of fish,” and it means “fluent speech.” My body does not—cannot—understand these words, but my head does, and although I know this means I am hearing my surroundings several octaves below the truth, they do leave me able to converse with trees, with seaweed, with herons.
