A New Journey Starts with a Stone in My Pocket

Day 1,973, 15:15 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by Arjay Phoenician III

A point to be made: the name Arjay Phoenician is already known in this world. My grandfather was a traveler, he wrote with passion that sometimes got away from him, he was called friend and bastard by paupers and presidents all over this wicked world, he made love with some of the most beautiful women ever to walk these sands, and, for the most part, he was a somebody.

I am not him.

Had I merely wanted to continue my grandfather’s legacy, I would have begun my new journey in Bolivia, dug up his bones along the shores of Lake Titicaca, taken his old medals and pinned them to my chest as if they were my own, acquainted myself all of his old drinking buddies and political contacts, and moved ahead, as if the several years between his lonely death and my birth were but an overnight spell.

I was born in Mayo last week and moved to Belfast when the Irish took the region over. This is my home. Wherever I roam, I may fight for other armies and vote in elections elsewhere, but this is where I plant my flag, where I build my fort, where I will always return, not just in her time of need, but in my time of renewal.

I can assure you, this will not be a dialogue of leprechauns and shamrocks and the kiddie dreams of rolling emerald meadows. This is going to be about salty men in a salty town. I want to explore the height and breadth of this world for myself, I want to encounter the quarter-million inhabitants as friend and foe, in the chatrooms and on the battlefields. I want to bleed and to make you bleed. And laugh. And ache. I want to fight at your side, know you for your own troubles and make them my own, but I also want to fight on the other side of the world, take you into battle with me, grow richer for those experiences and come back here to make them part of Belfast.

AN IRISH BELFAST. Forever an Irish Belfast.

What wanderlust drove my grandfather mad, it lures me as well. If there is a kernel of something noble in this world, if after almost two-thousand days there’s been a sighting of something beautiful, I want to see it, be part of it, enrich it, let it enrich me. Countries rise and fall, armies plow over continents and then vanish, kings are crowned and then toppled, all in vain. There must be something higher than all of that, something that keeps our attention and rivets our interest. May Dio grant me with the wisdom to go forth with dignity and not arrogance, may fortune favor the foolish, and may I make a friend or two along the way.

So I pick up a stone from the shore and push it into my pocket before I begin. Wish me luck. I wish you luck as well.