Too Far From Donegal

I've never lived this far from Ireland, the land I've called home for most of my life, even though I was nearly fifty before I visited Ireland. I now live surrounded by green and hills and rocks and even wells....some of the voices are musical...but it's not Ireland and I am soo far away and I am so homesick for Donegal and Skellig Michael, Guinness, and the "mizzly rain" and the angel breath smell of peat fires. Sometimes traveling back to the mainland on the evening water taxi, I detect the slightest hint of some kind of similarity...green, fog, water, even rain. But the tropics are just so fucking INTENSE and so OVER THE TOP in everything...I've found no peacefulness and a sense of solitude...quiet monasteries and churches, hills with only sheep for company, the poetry of my heroes. I need quiet and it is always soo fecking NOISY! Living in a house of two stories, I hear the constant day and night noises...people slamming things in work, horrible music (at least to my ears), LOUD voices, but the night noises are the worst--dogs tied or chained or hungry or whatever, howling and howling in sounds of agony; babies screaming as babies scream; babies and children screaming as some adult in their life, some adult responsible for them screams at them; and worst, the babies that scream because I can hear them being beaten. I also hear the women screaming...crying...begging...as THEY are beaten. I walk the night; I try to find these dogs, children, women--to confront their abusers, to identify the house/street/location and I can't....the sound from "up here" displaces the location. I have abraded areas inside my ears from shoving earplugs into them. I live and sleep with as much white sound as possible...air conditioner, fans, white noise...and the power goes out for hours and hours each day, leaving me with noise years of yoga has been unable to quiet and heat that takes every bit of energy I might have.....even the jungle is noisy....it used to be that the flocks of parakeets in the morning brought joy--not they only irritate me--can't they just be quiet for ONE morning? and the incessant whistle of the banana companies--of which I an so conflicted....only the gatos, the cats here are quiet, what few cats there are...there is something NOT RIGHT about a place that does not honor and love cats. I stop the little boys from chasing the gatos with sticks or throwing rocks at them. I try to teach them the sacredness of God's Creation and the joy of soft furr and glorious purr. I worry that our two will escape and someone will harm them. And, yes, Sr. Cromey Samuel Beckett, I feed the wild and feral cats, but the big black birds eat much of their food. And that's okay; we'll find a system for getting you and your gato comrades adequate food..........God gave us the cat so we can pet the tiger.... I am so grateful to walk outside into this den of endless NOISE and SOUND and see you sitting there, Tabby Cat, so peaceful, knowing you are safe...and somehow I've made the world a better place for providing a haven for gatos...